Travis

Thousands of jobs would be created in West Virginia if a thermal cracker facility was built to process ethane gas from Marcellus Shale drilling, state officials said Wednesday.

Peoples Energy’s oil and gas production subsidiary, Peoples Energy Production, added about 59 Bcfe of proved gas reserves in the heart of the Cotton Valley/Travis Peak (Hosston) gas trend in East Texas, North Louisiana and Mississippi for $139 million. The company also announced that it has received proposals and is in negotiations to sell its power generation assets (800 MW) and exit that business.

TXU Electric, a wholly owned subsidiary of TXU, received apartial ruling from the Texas District Court of Travis County thisweek regarding its appeal of a financing order of the PublicUtility Commission of Texas (PUCT). The PUCT order authorizessecuritization of regulatory assets under Senate Bill No. 7, Texaslegislation that restructures the electric industry and authorizesretail competition. Securitization of regulatory assets is a tooladopted by the bill to provide a low-cost way for the electricindustry to transition to a competitive environment. The districtcourt gave a partial ruling reversing that part of PUCT’s financingorder that used regulated asset life (up to 40 years) for purposesof present-valuing the benefits of securitization. The court ruledthat present-value period based on asset life did not conform tothe applicable statute. Instead, it believed that a present-valueperiod based upon stranded cost and regulatory asset recoveryperiod should have been used by PUCT. The court did not set a valueperiod to be used, but said that PUCT could, for example, use thealternative 12-year discounting period contained in its financingorder with the amount to be securitized by TXU Electric increasedto $1.3 billion from $363 million. A final ruling from the court isdue Sept. 5.