Archive for October, 2006
Posted by Edward G. Lanza, Esq. on 28 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General
The Hartford Courant:
A combination of factors is driving businesses to start shopping for generation.
For the past seven years since deregulation started, suppliers have said the utilities’ prices were lower than what competitive suppliers could offer. Recent price increases are changing that. Customers who get their generation from CL&P saw their rates climb an estimated 20 percent this year. That could increase again next year. The state’s other major utility, United Illuminating, which serves the New Haven and Bridgeport areas, could see rates jump 50 percent. Suppliers say these rate increases are making their prices competitive in Connecticut for the first time. Their pitch is that they can tailor a power purchase by purchasing from generators a mix of fixed prices and real-time prices, on-peak and off-peak rates. The utilities, in contrast, purchase power less frequently, in larger blocks.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza, Esq. on 25 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General
PRNewswire:
FPL Group, Inc. and Constellation Energy today announced they have reached a joint and amicable agreement to terminate their plans to merge.
Constellation Energy initiated a request to end the planned merger, citing continued uncertainty over regulatory and judicial matters in Maryland and the potential for a protracted and open-ended merger review process.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza, Esq. on 24 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General
HispanicBusiness:
Sending a strong signal to the corporate community, a federal judge convicted former Enron Corp Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling to more than 24 years in prison on Monday for his role in an accounting fraud that brought down the company.
US District Court Judge Sim Lake sentenced Skilling in a Houston, Texas courtroom after hearing testimony from several victims in the case. Skilling was convicted in May on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy and insider trading at the energy-trading firm.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza, Esq. on 24 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General
Forbes:
Bell South’s earnings are up 30%
AT&T’s earnings are up 74%
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza, Esq. on 23 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General
The New York Times:
[E]ven as some investors have profited handsomely by buying and sometimes quickly reselling power plants, electricity customers, who were supposed to be the biggest beneficiaries of the new system, have not fared so well. Not only have their electricity rates not fallen, in many cases they are rising even faster than the prices of the fuels used to make the electricity. Those increases stand in contrast to the significantly lower prices in other businesses in which competition was introduced, such as airlines and long-distance calling.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza, Esq. on 21 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General
The Times Leader (PA):
The cost of electricity for customers of PPL Electric Utilities could spike in a few years, as price limits imposed in 1997 come off at the end of 2009. To cushion the blow, the company has asked the Public Utility Commission for permission to buy power on futures markets over the next three years, averaging the cost rather than taking a chance on what prices will be just as the caps come off.
Because the cost of fuels like oil and natural gas that are used to generate electricity spiked after the 2005 hurricane season, the caps have kept customers’ bills artificially low.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza, Esq. on 21 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General
MarketWatch:
AT&T Inc. executives reiterated a series of proposals on Friday to win final regulatory approval for its acquisition of BellSouth Corp., but the company did not publicly offer any new incentives aimed at swaying critics of the merger.
One week ago, the Federal Communications Commission postponed its vote on AT&T’s $80 billion purchase of BellSouth until Nov. 3, after the agency’s two Democrats demanded concessions from the two phone companies.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza, Esq. on 20 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General
The Deal:
[The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] FERC approved British utility National Grid plc’s plan to acquire KeySpan Corp., an operator of natural gas utilities in the Northeast, for $7.3 billion in a move that would create the nation’s third-largest energy delivery utility.
National Grid already distributes electricity and natural gas to nearly 4 million customers in the Northeast states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island. KeySpan, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., is the company’s fifth U.S. acquisition and the largest natural gas distributor in the Northeast. National Grid agreed to pay $42 per share for KeySpan and assume $4.5 billion in KeySpan debt, valuing the deal at $7.3 billion.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza, Esq. on 19 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General
The New York Times:
BUFFALO, Oct. 18 — More than 100,000 homes and businesses remained without power here on Wednesday, nearly a week after a preseason snowstorm dumped almost two feet of snow and wreaked havoc on trees and power lines.
Twelve deaths have been attributed to the storm, and schools are still closed. Officials say the cleanup could cost more than $30 million.
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Posted by Edward G. Lanza, Esq. on 18 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: General
Light Reading:
GERMANTOWN, Md. — Telkonet, Inc., the leader in providing in-building broadband access over existing electrical wiring, and EarthLink, the next generation Internet service provider, have agreed to test broadband over power line access and Internet voice service in nine apartment complexes located in the Washington, D.C. area using Telkonet’s powerline backbone.
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