Jose

Among the sea of red ink flooding the U.S. economy’s third-quarter earnings reports, San Jose, CA-based Calpine Corp., the merchant power plant developer/operator, Thursday stood out as a glaring exception, reporting a 102% increase in net income for the quarter ($320.8 million versus $158.5 million for the same quarter in 2000) and a 292% increase in quarterly revenues ($2.9 billion versus $744.8 million for year-earlier period). Diluted earnings/share were up 80% to 88 cents for the quarter.

San Jose, CA-based Calpine Corp. last week unabashedly touted its successes in the past 15 months of turmoil in California’s energy markets, noting it is a litmus test for the soundness of its corporate strategy nationally. Senior officials with the merchant power plant developer/operator also declared that the state in which it sees “tremendous opportunity” is no longer in a crisis mode.

As part of another glowing quarterly earnings announcement last Thursday, San Jose, CA-based Calpine Corp. said it will be making future merchant power plant investments in California, while outlining an aggressive hedging strategy for the company that is centered on an internal trading operation that has grown to more than 200 people in the past two years.

San Jose-based Calpine Corp. and Kansas City-based Aquila Inc. announced that the Aries Power Project near Pleasant Hill, MO, has begun simple-cycle operations. The 320 MW gas-fired facility will serve the growing electricity demand in the region.

Ever-expanding San Jose, CA-based Calpine Corp., one of the nation’s fastest growing merchant power plant developers, Tuesday bought another 236 Bcf of natural gas reserves through two purchases–one in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico and the other in South Texas. This brings Calpine’s gas reserves to about 1.5 Tcf, with a goal of having 6.7 Tcf in the company’s portfolio by the end of 2005 to support an almost exclusively gas-fired fleet of plants totaling 70,000 MW of output.

San Jose, CA-based independent power company, Calpine Corp., Friday announced it has reached a binding agreement with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to modify and assume all of Calpine’s Qualifying Facility (QF) contracts with PG&E, which means the utility accepts responsibility for $267 million in past-due billings it owes Calpine. The 11 contracts cover about 600 MW of power supplies.

Under an ongoing partnering agreement, Calpine Corp., the voracious San Jose, CA-based power plant developer, and a part of the venerable San Francisco-based international infrastructure builder, Bechtel, applied to the California Energy Commission to build and operate a 600 MW natural gas-fired power plant in the East San Francisco Bay town of Hayward.

Under an ongoing partnering agreement, Calpine Corp., the voracious San Jose, CA-based power plant developer, and a part of the venerable San Francisco-based international infrastructure builder, Bechtel, applied to the California Energy Commission Wednesday to build and operate a 600 MW natural gas-fired power plant in the East San Francisco Bay town of Hayward.

Reflecting the uncertainty of the regulatory process andextremely tight time frames, San Jose, CA-based Calpine Corp.Monday dropped plans for three of five temporary natural gas-firedpeaking power generation plants it had proposed as a stopgapmeasure to meet expected power shortages next summer.