Plans for the pipeline were announced last December (see NGI, Dec.27, 1999). Project completion is scheduled for third quarter 2001.

The plant, which will be located on a 310-acre site in El Dorado, AR,will be near the Entergy Corp. system adjacent to a 500 kV switching station,enabling it to sell power to wholesale markets in Texas, Louisiana andArkansas.

The power plant is targeted for in-service in spring of 2002, accordingto the application filed at FERC last December.

The Arkansas plant is not the only major power facility project Pandais involved in. In April of last year, Panda Energy and a subsidiary ofPublic Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) announced a joint venture to builda 1,000 MW combined cycle gas plant in Guadalupe County in South CentralTexas. The project is slated to start construction this summer and be completedby January 2001.

Plans for two other Texas facilities are also in the works, representingan additional 2,000 MW of power generation. Total investment in the threeplants initially will be about $1.3 billion financed with both debt andequity.

Panda Energy has about 410 MW of generation capacity in operation; 2,150MW of capacity under construction; and about 7,800 MW in advanced development.It has confined its generation activities mostly to the U.S. — Texas,Maryland, Pennsylvania and Arkansas, for example — but it is now reachingout to international markets, such as China, Nepal and Brazil.

Willbros Group, Inc. is one of the leading independent contractors servingthe oil and gas industry, providing construction, engineering and otherspecialty oilfield-related services to industry and government entities.Its list of clients includes Tenaska, CMS Energy and El Paso.

John Norris

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