Dollars

Despite revenues jumping by nearly half a billion dollars, PG&E Corp. Wednesday reported that earnings in the first quarter were essentially flat compared to the same period last year. On a nonGAAP accounting basis, first quarter earnings were $214 million, or 60 cents/ share, compared to $218 million, or 56 cents/share, for the same period in 2005. Total revenue was $3.1 billion, compared to $2.66 billion in the first quarter a year earlier.

Coming off 2005 utility results in which net earnings tripled to more than half-a-billion-dollars, Berkshire Hathaway’s growth-hungry MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. is looking at a two-fold jump in its electric utility customer base to more than 2.4 million, revenues of more than $3 billion and a total portfolio of utility energy assets exceeding $14 billion. These are the numbers Berkshire’s billionaire founder and CEO Warren Buffett spelled out in a letter to shareholders posted on the parent conglomerate’s website earlier this month.

A former Arthur Andersen LLP accountant Monday testified that Enron Corp. tried to avoid reporting millions of dollars in losses within its water subsidiary by announcing in mid-2001 that it would invest $1 billion in the failing business. However, no evidence of its growth strategy was ever found, John R. Sult told jurors.

The former chief accounting officer of Enron Corp.’s wholesale energy trading operations testified Monday he transferred millions of dollars of reserves from the unit in 2000 to help the company top Wall Street’s earnings forecasts.

Coming off record 2005 profits approaching a billion dollars, San Diego-based Sempra Energy is looking to solidify more of its high-profile natural gas projects in the weeks and months ahead with cash from some of its ongoing merchant electricity sector sales, according to CEO Donald Felsinger.

Key Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that seeks to halt billions of dollars of royalty incentives for crude oil and natural gas development on federal lands.

On top of energy companies contributing millions of dollars to fund relief efforts, their employees have been donating their time to help Hurricane Katrina victims rebuild their lives amid the disaster along the Gulf Coast. Energy firms also have been taking extraordinary steps to aid employees who were displaced from their homes due to evacuation or damage.

Energy companies that have been either directly or indirectly affected by the destruction from Hurricane Katrina have contributed millions of dollars so far to the American Red Cross to fund relief efforts.

Despite billions of dollars of current and future natural gas projects, San Diego-based Sempra Energy expressed a new appreciation for coal last week in responding to newly organized local opposition to its very early plans to develop a major coal-fired power plant 100 miles north of Reno, NV. It is a “strategic” location with access to serving load centers in California, the Pacific Northwest and Nevada, a corporate spokesperson told NGI/Power Market Today on Thursday.