Remaining

FERC Monday approved a second extension of a temporary waiver of the agency’s capacity-release rules so remaining issues related to Barclays Bank PLC’s acquisition of UBS’ natural gas trading portfolio can be addressed.

Rapid City, SD-based Black Hills Corp. said it has paid off the remaining $105 million of borrowings used to acquire five utilities (four natural gas and one electric) from Aquila last year. It was part of a $383 million bridge acquisition facility loan originally obtained to acquire the Colorado electric and gas utilities and three other gas utilities in Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska in a deal that closed July 14, 2008. Last December Black Hills extended the bridge facility to a Dec. 29 maturity date this year from one that originally was set for last Feb. 5. This allowed the utility holding company more time to line up long-term debt financing. In April Black Hills used $30.2 million from the sale of a 25% ownership interest in its Wygen III power plant to pay down a portion of the facility, and then in May the company completed a $250 million public long-term bond offering, the proceeds of which were used to pay off the final $105 million. Black Hills now has about $300 million of liquidity to support its businesses and it plans “to obtain additional long-term debt financing by year-end to support our growth initiatives,” said CEO David Emery.

Rockies Express (REX) said Thursday it has experienced delays with its two remaining horizontal directional drills and now projects it will begin interim service on REX-East in mid-May. Late last month the pipeline said service on the segment would begin in late April or early May (see NGI, March 30). Most notably, the Wabash River has significantly exceeded flood stage and is projected to remain above flood stage through the coming week, the pipeline said. REX affirmed its previously projected in-service dates for Lebanon, OH (June 15), and Clarington, OH (Nov. 1). Initial REX-East service is projected to commence mid-May with a capacity of 1,800 MDth/d into Zone 2 and 1,600 MDth/d into Zone 3. Zone 3 delivery points for interim service will include deliveries to NGPL (Moultrie County, IL), Trunkline (Douglas County, IL), Midwestern (Edgar County, IL), and Panhandle Eastern (Putnam County, IN). In addition, REX expects to have the Ameren (Moultrie County, IL) delivery point available for service contemporaneous with the interim service delivery points, it said. Service to Lebanon is projected to commence June 15 with a capacity of 1,600 MDth/d to the Lebanon delivery points and a pipeline capacity of 1,800 MDth/d to the interim service delivery points upstream of Bainbridge Compressor Station. In-service of the fully powered REX-East pipeline to Clarington is projected to commence Nov. 1.

Rockies Express (REX) said Thursday it has experienced delays with its two remaining horizontal directional drills and now projects it will begin interim service on REX-East in mid-May.

A marketer had correctly predicted Monday (see Daily GPI, April 7) that the screen softness that day would outweigh any remaining midweek heating load and drive Tuesday’s cash prices lower. But while he looked for mostly modest declines, a large majority of them were in double digits.

With colder weather returning to much of the East and remaining in the northern half of the West along with Western Canada, prices increased at a large majority of points Tuesday.

Despite frigid weather remaining in several areas Friday, some isolated warming trends helped push cash prices lower at most points Thursday. The small decline by expiring February futures a day earlier and the fact that a weekend day was involved in Thursday’s deals were other bearish influences.

An extended deadline for troubled Commerce Energy to close a deal selling most of its remaining gas and electric retail customer base to Universal Energy Group Ltd. (UEG) passed last Saturday without comment from the company.

Houston-based Plains Exploration & Production Co. (PXP) has completed the sale of its remaining interests in some properties located in the Permian and Piceance basins to Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy) and to some undisclosed companies with contractual preferential purchase rights for a total of $1.25 billion in cash. Oxy in September agreed to acquire the stakes (see Daily GPI, Sept. 26). In late 2007 Oxy paid PXP a total of $1.55 billion for a 50% stake in PXP’s Permian and Piceance leaseholds (see Daily GPI, Dec. 18, 2007). The Permian and Piceance basin assets have net production of around 52 MMcf/d of gas and 4,300 b/d of liquids, or 13,000 boe/d. The properties also have about 92 million boe of proved reserves, 45% developed and 69% weighted to gas. PXP is expected to use the proceeds to develop a joint venture with Chesapeake Energy Corp. in the Haynesville Shale (see Daily GPI, July 2).