Divest

Enron Corp. Chairman Ken Lay told Wall Street analysts and investors the company plans to divest up to $5 billion in assets over the next two years in order to support its plummeting stock price. Included among the assets are Portland General Electric, which the company has been trying to unload for more than a year, some unnamed power plants on the West Coast, the company’s generation interests in India, and some energy businesses in Puerto Rico and Brazil. Enron also may be in talks to sell its wind turbine business, which represents a 6% share of the world market for installed wind turbines.

Schlumberger subsidiary IndigoPool.com said Thursday it would provide the online marketplace to divest of seven coalbed methane property packages in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. The project, co-developed by Waterous & Co. and IndigoPool, allows potential buyers to evaluate the properties online.

TransCanada PipeLines Limited announced late Tuesday that it plans to divest its natural gas marketing business in order to focus on its core natural gas transmission and power businesses in Canada and the northern tier of the United States. The news came almost a year-and-a-half after the company embarked upon a $3.45 billion divestiture program as part of a strategic restructuring (see Daily GPI, Dec. 9, 1999; Oct. 13, 2000).

Claiming that a state-imposed moratorium on divestiture in Nevada would not be in the consumers’ best interest, energy expert Susan Tierney testified before the Public Utility Commission of Nevada (PUC) last week that Nevada Power Co. ratepayers could save up to $281 million over the next five years if the proposed divestiture of certain Nevada Power Co. plants is approved.

TransCanada PipeLines has taken the first steps in a bold planto divest $3 billion in assets in its Canadian midstream,international and refined products transportation businesses. Thecompany sold subsidiary NovaGas Canada LP’s Provost gas plant andgathering system to a subsidiary of Midcoast Energy Resources Inc.last week for an undisclosed sum and completed the sale of its PeshCreek processing complex and East Australia pipeline system earlierthis month. The total value of the two Canadian processing planttransactions comes to about $42 million.

TransCanada PipeLines has taken the first steps in a bold planto divest $3 billion in assets in the Canadian midstream,international and refined products transportation businesses. Thecompany sold subsidiary NovaGas Canada LP’s Provost gas plant andgathering system to a subsidiary of Midcoast Energy Resources Inc.yesterday for an undisclosed sum and completed the sale of its PeshCreek processing complex and East Australia pipeline system earlierthis month. The total value of the two Canadian processing planttransactions comes to about $42 million.