1999

After power price spikes, contract defaults and costly supplydeals cost Cinergy $73 million in July, the company said it wasseriously considering quiting the supply business altogether. (SeeDaily GPI, Aug. 9, Aug. 11, and Aug.13) But CEO James E. Rogerssaid yesterday the company’s board of directors has unanimouslydecided Cinergy should stick with it as the industry moves to acompetitive environment.

One of the nation’s fastest growing nonutility power plantdeveloper/operators, Calpine Corp., San Jose, CA, is taking ahands-on approach to building a diversified natural gas portfolioto fuel what it eventually hopes is a network of highly efficient,environmentally clean combined-cycle power plants with a collectivecapacity of 25,000 megawatts.

The purchase of the combined gas and electric utilityMidAmerican Energy by Berkshire Hathaway Inc., one of the nation’slargest and most successful investment groups led by legendaryinvestment guru Warren Buffett, could focus increased financialinterest on the industry.

No sooner has El Paso Natural Gas resolved its dispute withSouthern California Edison over the 1996 capacity-turnbacksettlement than another potential threat has cropped up. Last weekthe D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals gave Williams Field ServicesGroup Inc. another bite at the apple to challenge the rates in thecontroversial settlement.

Southwestern Energy sold its Missouri gas distribution assets toAtmos Energy last week for $32 million in cash, but SouthwesternCEO Harold M. Korell said the company isn’t ready to part with itsArkansas utility operations to complete its transformation intoentirely an exploration and production company.

Dynegy announced the sale of all of its gasification assets toCincinnati-based Global Energy Inc. for an undisclosed sum lastweek, effectively exiting the Houston-based company from thegasification business. The sale, which the companies said willclose by the end of the year, is not expected to impact Dynegy’searnings.

Maybe the third time will be a charm for El Paso Natural Gas.After two failed open seasons — one of which ended last week —the pipeline is left holding the greater part of the 1.35 BBtu/d ofsoon-to-be-available firm capacity on its system. El Paso now hopesto do a negotiated arrangement for the California-bound capacity— similar to the one it worked out with Dynegy Marketing andTrade two years ago.

In a move creating an entity that will challenge CMS Energy Corp. for the title of Michigan’s largest gas and electric utility, DTE Energy Co. announced the purchase of MCN Energy Group last week in a cash and stock transaction valued at $2.6 billion. The combined company will be headquartered in Detroit and named DTE Energy Co. The merger is expected to be one of the speediest among utilities, closing in six to nine months.

Independence and MarketLink pipeline sponsors were forced to runthe gauntlet last week at a special FERC conference. The event drewbuses filed with t-shirted crowds of pipeline supporters and anopposing army of congressmen, state representatives, localpoliticians and landowner advocates, the likes of which hasn’t beenseen at the Commission since the Iroquois Pipeline project wasproposed in the early 1990s.