Constellation Energy Group Inc. (CEG) raised its stakes in the New York generation market by announcing it will pay $401 million to purchase the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant, a 495 MW facility located on Lake Ontario near Rochester. Once the transaction is approved, CEG plans to invest $32 million over the next several years to increase plant capacity by 17% to 580 MW. The Ginna asset, along with CEG’s Nine Mile Point Nuclear Power Station, also located on Lake Ontario, enhances its physical presence in the New York generation market and boosts its involvement in the New York Independent System Operator, the company said. The deal will give the Baltimore-based utility three nuclear power stations with five units total, as well as a fleet of natural gas, coal, hydro and geothermal generators that together total nearly 12, 600 MW of capacity. CEG is acquiring the New York facility from the Rochester Gas & Electric Corp. (RG&E), a unit of Albany, NY-based Energy East Corp. CEG also will purchase nuclear fuel from RG&E for the plant for $21.6 million. Completion of the transaction is expected in June. Because of refueling and uprate initiatives, CEG said the Ginna acquisition would be “mildly accretive” through 2006. After that, CEG expects the plant to add substantially to its profits. Constellation will sell 90% of the plant’s output and capacity through a power purchase agreement (PPA) to RG&E for 10 years at an average price of $44/MWh.

Spanish energy group Repsol YPF said on Monday it will supply Royal Dutch Shell with about 2 billion cubic meters (70.6 Bcf) of liquefied natural gas (LNG) over the next two years. Repsol said it was the largest ever LNG supply deal in the United States. The LNG will come from Trinidad and Tobago, where Repsol and its partners British Petroleum and British Gas have liquefaction capacity. It will be shipped to Dominion’s recently recommissioned Cove Point, MD, LNG import terminal. BP Energy, Statoil and Shell each own one third of Cove Point’s current storage capacity of 5 Bcf and its send-out capacity of 1 Bcf/d. Statoil also has a supply agreement with Repsol.

FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. (FENOC) officials have submitted a comprehensive restart report for the Davis Besse nuclear plant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), stating that the plant “has completed major actions necessary to ensure safe and reliable return to service.” The 935 MW plant located in Ohio has been in an extended outage during which personnel replaced the damaged reactor pressure vessel head, inspected and addressed other equipment issues and revamped programs and procedures. Additionally, FENOC senior management said it has restructured the organization, and put in place a number of initiatives to improve the plant’s safety culture. Since the damage was discovered when the plant went down in February 2002 for a routine refueling outage (see NGI, April 1, 2002), Davis-Besse employees have completed 7,700 work orders, 120 modifications to plant systems, 23,800 corrective actions, 15,000 surveillance tests, 2,200 preventative maintenance tasks and 2,700 procedure changes, the company said. “Many of these projects added substantial safety margin to the plant,” said Lew Myers, FENOC COO. He cited completion of the plant’s full pressure test of the reactor coolant system as a major achievement that proved the integrity of this vital system.

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