Pays

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) agreed to a $3 million settlement with Dynegy Inc. Tuesday, settling the first of its far-reaching investigations of energy merchants’ “round-trip” transactions. It also completed its scrutiny of a Dynegy off-balance sheet transaction.

Pengrowth Energy Trust of Calgary has agreed to acquire Calpine Corp.’s oil and gas holdings in British Columbia for US$248 million (C$387 million).

Pengrowth Energy Trust of Calgary has agreed to acquire Calpine Corp.’s oil and gas holdings in British Columbia for US$248 million (C$387 million).

IntercontinentalExchange has signed a long-term license agreement for eSpeed’s Wagner Patent (United States Patent No. 4,903,201), which deals with automated futures trading systems in which transactions are completed by a computerized matching of bids and offers of futures contracts on an electronic platform. According to the deal, ICE will pay eSpeed $2 million per year as well as at least 10 cents per contract per side or at least 20 cents per contract traded per round trip, whichever is higher.

Shell Oil has will pay the state of Alabama $27 million plus another $6.4 million in legal fees to settle accusations the company underpaid natural gas royalties for drilling in state waters. Shell denied any wrongdoing.

California’s second largest private-sector utility, Southern California Edison Co., on Friday obtained $1.8 billion in secured financing and along with cash on hand that had been steadily increasing since the mid-part of last year paid off all of the past-due part of its outstanding $5.5 billion to its creditors. The utility detailed the transaction in an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Progress Ventures, Inc., an affiliate of Florida Power, Carolina Power & Light and North Carolina Natural Gas, paid about $153 million in cash and stock to Westchester Gas Co. for about 140 Bcf of gas reserves, 215 producing gas wells, 52 miles of intrastate pipeline and 170 miles of gas gathering systems in Texas and Louisiana. The purchase price includes about $135 million in common stock and about $18 million in cash.

While leaping into the top five Canadian natural-gas producers, Burlington Resources Inc. also raised questions about its ability to stay there when it laid out C$3.3 billion (US$2 billion) cash for its takeover of Canadian Hunter Exploration Ltd. (see Daily GPI, Oct. 10).

In a move to stave off a possible involuntary bankruptcy attempt, Southern California Edison announced it has agreed to pay the City of Long Beach, the largest municipality in its service territory, $14 million for past-due bills related to power that the city sells to the utility from a municipal waste-fired generation plant.