A bankruptcy judge in New York last week approved the sale of Eagle Energy Partners I LP to EDF Trading North America by bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

James M. Peck, bankruptcy judge for the Southern District of New York signed the order approving the sale last Friday. The deal, which was announced late last month (see Daily GPI, Sept. 30), requires the approval of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The parties are seeking a Commission order no later than Oct. 31.

Eagle, a Houston-based wholesale gas and power marketer, is just the latest enterprise to be targeted by EDF as the international conglomerate seeks bargains in an energy patch rocked by troubles on Wall Street and beset by credit worries.

EDF Trading, which is owned 100% by France’s EDF Group, trades in the international wholesale energy markets, buying and selling electricity, emissions, natural gas, coal, freight, biomass and oil, according to the company’s website. EDF Trading is one of the largest electricity traders in Europe, a leading European gas trader and one of the first traders to move into the global market for liquefied natural gas, it says.

According to a recent report by Bentek Energy LLC, Eagle holds 60 transportation contracts on 12 pipelines and storage facilities for a total maximum daily quantity of 1.2 MMDth/d. “Over half of that total is on TransCanada’s ANR system, associated with market-area storage capacity,” Bentek said. TransCanada was one of numerous intervenors in the Lehman Brothers Holdings bankruptcy and it sought, along with Lehman, to block the sale of Eagle to Barclays Capital Inc. because the transaction might have given Barclays the ability to reject Eagle contracts even though Eagle itself had not declared bankruptcy (see Daily GPI, Sept. 23).

Lehman acquired the two-thirds of Eagle that it did not already own in May 2007 (see Daily GPI, May 10, 2007) after it acquired its first third of Eagle in 2006 (see Daily GPI, March 28, 2006). Eagle was formed by former Dynegy executives in 2003 (see Daily GPI, July 2, 2003) and manages and optimizes supply, transportation, transmission, load and storage portfolios on behalf of wholesale natural gas and power clients.

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