Turns

NiSource Inc. last week said cold weather and an asset sale offset the negative effects of a rate review settlement, accounting rule change and higher pension expense during the first quarter, resulting in a 5% hike in net income for the period from a year ago.

NiSource Inc. on Tuesday said cold weather and an asset sale offset the negative effects of a rate review settlement, accounting rule change and higher pension expense during the first quarter, resulting in a 5% hike in its first quarter net income from a year ago.

Merchant energy earnings fell 89% at Duke Energy last year and international results were equally bad. The company reported a fourth quarter net loss of 6 cents/share (net loss of $52 million) compared to earnings of 28 cents/share (net income of $225 million) in 4Q2001.

Merchant energy earnings fell 89% at Duke Energy last year and international results were equally bad. The company reported a fourth quarter net loss of 6 cents/share (net loss of $52 million) compared to earnings of 28 cents/share (net income of $225 million) in 4Q2001.

In yet another week’s worth of twists and turns for California’s power markets, a California state senator last week said that he is proposing legislation that would eliminate the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and return management of the grid to the state’s three major private sector utilities to oversee their own control areas.

The energy merchant business may be a much smaller universe today, but Mirant has no plans to pull out of the sector, CEO Marce Fuller said Friday.

Plano, TX-based Perot Systems Corp. said Thursday that it has turned over another 12 boxes of documents to state and federal investigators looking at the California energy crisis of 2000-2001. In total, Perot said it has spent $8.5 million in the second and third quarters, fulfilling requests for past data.

In stunning news by one of the top energy traders in North America, Aquila announced last week it plans to close its Merchant Services unit by the end of summer and fire nearly all of the unit’s 1,200-plus employees across the country and overseas. Merchant Services, once the crown jewel and future of the company, laid off “hundreds” of employees last Monday in Kansas City, and expects to shutter the rest of its North American and overseas trading units within weeks.

Hours after the deadline passed for the White House and the Office of the Vice President to comply with congressional subpoenas, the White House late last Tuesday began turning over documents to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee related to its contacts with the now-bankrupt Enron Corp. The committee said “one box and one accordion folder of documents” had been delivered by the end of the day, containing about 2,170 pages of e-mails and other papers.