Macquarie Group has priced its first U.S. prepaid natural gas bond transaction for which it is the gas supplier. The transaction will provide Texas Municipal Gas Acquisition and Supply Corp. III (TexGas III) with a 20-year supply from Macquarie. TexGas III has sold and will issue fixed-rate U.S. dollar-denominated serial bonds maturing annually from December 2013 to December 2032 with annual yields of 0.75-4.05%. The bonds have a total par value of about $1.4 billion and were issued at a premium for total proceeds of $1.5 billion. They are rated “A3” by Moody’s Investors Service and “BBB” by Standard and Poor’s Ratings Services. Macquarie will supply 405 Bcf of gas over the term of the deal, which is subject to approval by the Texas Attorney General.

A natural gas-fired fleet and local compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling station in Atlantic City, NJ, played a key role in recovery efforts from Hurricane Sandy last month. In the aftermath, when electrical power and gasoline availability was severely hampered, a public CNG fueling station that fueled Atlantic City’s 190-vehicle jitney fleet operated without any outages, said Seal Beach, CA-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp., the builder/operator of the fueling station. “Equally important was our ability to provide fuel to South Jersey Natural Gas utility vehicles and local refuse truck operators,” said a Clean Energy spokesperson. Some of the jitneys also proved valuable providing emergency transportation services to the New York/New Jersey Port Authority when gasoline shortages and other issues had mass transportation at a standstill. The port authority also used existing CNG fueling facilities at the Newark, NJ, and New York airports.

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