Merchant

After 14 hours of deliberation, jurors in the false gas price reporting case of former Dynegy gas trader Michele Valencia and former El Paso Merchant Energy vice president Greg Singleton reached a verdict on some counts but not others.

After surviving near-death experiences following the collapse in the energy merchant sector in 2002, The Williams Cos. and El Paso Corp. are both on the comeback trail, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) said in a recent report.

After surviving near-death experiences following the collapse in the energy merchant sector in 2002, The Williams Cos. and El Paso Corp. are both on the comeback trail, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) said in a recent report.

Firm in its rejection of unsolicited takeover moves by a fellow merchant power generator, Princeton, NJ-based NRG Energy, Inc. late last Monday asked Delaware’s Chancery Court to dismiss a complaint filed last month by Mirant Corp, the would-be acquirer of NRG. Mirant sued over NRG’s staunch rejection of its proposed buyout offer as being undervalued and offering a weak stock.

Progress Energy has agreed to sell a total of 1,245 MW of merchant generation in Florida and North Carolina to Southern Power, a subsidiary of Southern Co., one of several transactions that Progress has entered into with two subsidiaries of Southern having a total value of approximately $1 billion.

Since the Enron debacle and the collapse of the energy merchant sector, the face of natural gas marketing in the U.S. has changed along with the way business is conducted, according to a panel of speakers at GasMart 2006 in Denver.

A dozen to 20 employees have left Calpine Merchant Services Co. in recent weeks, according to one former employee, and at least some of those people will surely wind up at Bear Energy LP, the new Houston-based energy trading group being launched by Bear Stearns, Calpine’s former partner in the now-defunct CalBear energy trading venture.

The banking/brokerage link-up with energy trading is continuing. Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking has taken a one-third interest in Houston-based energy marketer Eagle Energy Partners. Lehman, producer Chesapeake Energy, and Eagle management each will own one-third of the company.

Separate trials have been ordered in Houston for two former natural gas traders, one from Dynegy Inc. and the other from El Paso Merchant Energy. The two former traders are accused of attempting to manipulate gas prices by reporting bogus trading data to index publishers.