In response to continued softness in the wholesale energy market, Raleigh, NC-based Progress Energy said Wednesday that it will reduce the scope of its marketing and trading as well as its power plant operations.

In conjunction with that move, the company said it will eliminate 50 jobs within the Progress Ventures business unit in power plant operations, marketing and middle and back office support areas. Progress Ventures manages plant construction for both regulated and non-regulated generation within Progress Energy.

“The wholesale power market continues to underperform,” said Tom Kilgore, president of Progress Ventures. “Our strategy remains the same: to market and trade around the assets we own — electric, natural gas and coal. The wholesale power market dictated during this past year that we reduce our power generation growth expectations.

“The action we are taking now is to scale back the workforce associated with the electric portion of our non-regulated business until the demand for wholesale power is more robust,” Kilgore said. “The outlook for the natural gas and coal businesses, which [are] a significant part of our operations in Progress Ventures, remain positive.”

The company also announced the resignation of Joe Hirl as senior vice president of marketing and trading. Hirl joined Progress Energy in January 2002.

“I appreciate Joe Hirl’s contribution to our business in the past year, but our plans for the scope of the marketing and trading operation that he was brought in to manage have changed significantly, so he has decided to move on,” Kilgore added.

Currently in its asset base, Progress Ventures owns roughly 3,100 MW of generating capacity either in operation or under construction. Of this, the company said more than 2,100 MW are under long-term contract and more than 1,500 MW are currently in operation.

The Progress Ventures business unit also contains Progress Fuels Corp., which owns and operates the company’s fuel extraction, manufacturing and delivery operations. This includes coal mining, synthetic fuel operations and fuel transloading facilities at several sites in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. The unit also owns natural gas assets in Colorado, Texas and Louisiana and ash management operations in Florida.

Progress Energy has more than 21,800 MW of generation capacity and operates two electric utilities, Progress Energy Carolinas and Progress Energy Florida, that serve more than 2.7 million customers.

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