Fleet

Key Energy Services Inc. said it is selling the assets of its U.S. land drilling operations to Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. for $62 million in cash and will retain $10 million in working capital of the business, net of other liabilities.

Key Energy Services Inc. said it is selling the assets of its U.S. land drilling operations to Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. for $62 million in cash and will retain $10 million in working capital of the business, net of other liabilities.

Reliant Resources is mulling whether to mothball certain power plants in its U.S. fleet that are losing money, and a top official with the company said that announcements related to such a move are likely to occur in the near future.

In an attempt to dissuade anyone from the notion that power markets are going to become over-built any time soon, Calpine Corp. held the second of a series of three conference calls last week with the financial community, reinforcing that it is not backing off its goal of having 70,000 MW of new capacity on line by the end of 2005, and growth in its $1.4 billion natural gas holdings will increase along with the new plants.

Indicative of the demands placed on California’s aging fleet ofin-state natural gas-fired electricity generating plants in thelast half of 2000, Sempra Energy’s Southern California Gas Co.utility established its all-time sendout record of 1.142 Tcf,eclipsing the previous record year (1991) by almost 100 Bcf.

Indicative of the demands placed on California’s aging fleet ofin-state natural gas-fired electricity generating plants in thelast half of 2000, Sempra Energy’s Southern California Gas Co.utility established its all-time sendout record of 1.142 Tcf,eclipsing the previous record year (1991) by almost 100 Bcf.

Indicative of the banged up status of the state’s aging fleet ofpower plants, the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO)declared its first weekend Stage One Alert last Saturday despitethe fact that peak demand was only 36,000 MW.

Duquesne Light Co. of Pittsburgh, a DQE subsidiary, filed withthe Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) to transfer itsgeneration fleet to Baltimore-based Orion Power Holdings Inc., thewinning bidder in a previous generation auction. Orion will payDuquesne Light $1.705 billion for seven wholly owned fossil-firedgeneration stations, certain transmission facilities, and the rightand obligation to supply wholesale power to serve Duquesne’sprovider of last resort customers. As a result, Duquesne will endstranded cost collection in 2001 for most major customer rateclasses, reducing rates by more than 25%, assuming market pricesfor electricity remain at or below the commission-approved shoppingcredits.