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Brazilian development bankBanco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Economico e Social is likely to give AES subsidiary Eletropaulo Metropolitana Electricidade de Sao Paulo an extension on some $580 million of debt coming due in the third quarter, says an official familiar with the bank's plans.

Estonia's state-owned energy company Eesti Energia, is considering issuing a fixed rate bond next month as a hedge against interest rates rising. The company recently arranged a EUR150 million, 15-year floating-rate loan to finance modernizing its generation fleet, according to Sandor Liive, cfo in Tallinn. He indicated that the second week of July is a possible issue date, declining all further comment on this point.

San Jose, Calif.-based Calpine is backing away from the search for a partner to bolster its trading operation, partly because of potential regulatory difficulties. "We were in the throws of discussing an alliance. We've put that on the backburner," said Peter Blood, director of marketing and transmission. "We think we will go it alone now." The IPP has been hunting for much of this year for ways of bolstering its power trading and marketing operation after the company was downgraded to junk status and teaming up with a partner was a central plank of its strategy. Blood was speaking at the Current Challenges in Energy Trading conference in Houston Monday.

Mirant recently received competitive bids for $200-300 million of generation assets and will shortly reach its stated goal of divesting $1.6 billion of assets, according to Marce Fuller, president and ceo. The company has already divested $1.4 billion this year, she noted.

Entergy-Koch Trading has hired three traders to cover the U.S. energy marketer's first push into the Nordic power and weather market. George Georgiou and Ola Rosengren joined earlier this month from TXU Europe and Electrabel, respectively, to trade the Nordpool and Martin Erikson, a former Enron trader, also joined recently to trade Scandinavian weather derivatives. The Nordic market's reliance of hydro generation means it's important to trade weather alongside Nordic power, explains Molly Rogers, a new business development official at EKT in London.

Landsvirkjun, Iceland's state-owned power utility, is in negotiations with Alcoa, the world's leading producer of aluminum, about buying electricity from a proposed 690 MW power project the utility plans to build in Egilsstadir, eastern Iceland. Bjorn Stefansson, project manager, says the company will meet with Alcoa for further discussions next month. Alcoa is looking to buy the entire 690 MW output from the Kárahnjukar project, he says, most likely through a 20-25 year power purchase agreement. Stefansson declined to comment on pricing. Jake Siewert, v.p. of global communications and public strategy at Alcoa, confirmed it is in talks with the company.

Bank of America is reportedly planning to establish an electricity derivatives trading desk in New York and has landed four former Enron traders to staff the operation. The quartet consists of Rogers Herndon, who heads the team, Gautam Gupta, John Suarez and Paul Broderick, according to market officials. David Mooney, global head of commodities, referred calls to BofA's media relations department. Jeff Hershberger, a spokesman in New York, says BofA is not currently a participant in the power derivatives market and does not comment on future business plans. Herndon referred calls to Mooney.

In November Rob Doty, cfo at Dynegy in Houston, was poised to take on an even bigger role as his company plotted an audacious takeover of its troubled crosstown rival Enron. Last Wednesday Doty became the latest high-level power company executive to lose his job in a week that also saw AES co-founder and chief executive Dennis Bakke step down on the back of a precipitous fall in both companies' share prices.

Thomas O'Flynn, cfo of the Public Service Enterprise Group, said the Newark, N.J.-based energy holding company plans to issue a $500 million convertible preferred equity deal in the third quarter to help pay down short-term debt. The convertible offering will come from a $1.5 billion debt and equity shelf registration it filed in April with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he said.

Reliant Resources is considering combining two maturing non-recourse loans totaling $1.93 billion in a new project finance facility, thereby ditching existing plans to refinance at the corporate level. Until now the Houston-based independent power player has been aiming for a corporate-level refinancing of the $1.2 billion Orion Power Midwest project loan, which matures in October, and the $730 million Orion Power New York facility that matures two months later (PFR, 4/29). The rationale was that it could tap into cheaper funding, but after getting caught up in the round-trip trading affair, bankers say project level funding would now likely secure better rates for the company. Calls to Sandy Fruhman, a Reliant spokeswoman, were not returned by press time.