DukeSolutions is actively looking to sell the gas and electrictrading portion of its business, a spokesman confirmed last week,hastening to explain that this sale has nothing to do with DukeEnergy’s main North American trading operations under Duke EnergyMerchants.

The natural gas and electric contracts held by DukeSolutionsrepresents “a small portion of their business,” said spokesman PaulMason, and are not core to the subsidiary’s operations. He declined toquantify the property to be sold, however; nor would he comment onindustry rumors that Sempra Energy is the possible acquirer. Sempraalso reportedly is bidding on PG&E Corp.’s energy servicesoperations, which were recently put on the market (See Daily GPI, March 3).

In its statement of 1999 earnings, Duke Energy took a one-time$35 million charge “related to the repositioning of DukeSolutions.”The unit provides a variety of services including electric and gasrisk management, asset monetization, performance contracting,distributed generation, cogeneration, metering, billing andadministration, end-use analysis and energy audits, facilitymodernization and engineering, and equipment retrofits.

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