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Lead arrangers Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria,Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento and the Inter-American Development Bank closed $290 million of non-recourse financing late last month for the construction of a 502 MW natural gas-fired power plant in northeastern Brazil, says Sylvia Larrea, an investment officer at the IDB in Washington.

Joint sponsors Iberdrola and Petrobras are looking to line up bank financing for the construction of a $290 million, 340 MW combined-cycle plant in Rio Grande, Brazil, dubbed Termoacu. Market officials say the pair are seeking a $150 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank and $140 million in loans from commercial banks.

St. Louis, Mo.-based Ameren is looking to acquire Illinois Power, the transmission and distribution subsidiary of Dynegy, according to New York bankers. They say the companies have held preliminary discussions, but add Dynegy has not yet decided whether it is amenable to Ameren's advances. A likely sale price could not be determined by press time, nor could it be ascertained whether either party has retained an advisor. Officials at Illinois Power referred calls to Steve Stengel, a Dynegy spokesman in Houston, who declined comment. Susan Gallagher, an Ameren spokeswoman, also declined comment. Calls to Charles Mueller, president, chairman and ceo of Ameren, were not returned.

Financial news and data company Bloomberg has begun talking to weather derivative players about how it can become an intermediary in the weather market. One Wall Street official, who has met with Bloomberg representatives, says the company is looking at ways it can tap into the market by providing price quotes, or build a platform to aid the brokering of trades. He adds that he got the sense that the project was in its formative stage and no game plan has been set. Calls to Richard Derico, a Bloomberg staffer in New York who has been in involved in the meetings, were not returned by press time.

Embattled energy company El Paso axed its Houston-based mezzanine funding group May 29 and let go all seven of its remaining staff. The group, formed two years ago and named EP Power Finance, had a portfolio of six deals with a total value in excess of $100 million, according to a market official. The business was profitable, but El Paso was no longer willing to provide the capital to support it, he says. "All energy companies are retreating to the core," he notes, adding that the move is in response to tumbling share prices, lowered credit ratings and an erosion of investor confidence across the sector. In a statement e-mailed to PFR, El Paso spokesman Mel Scott said: "The EP Power Finance group was a very young business with a small group of employees that we didn't want to continue with."

TECO Energy plans to use the proceeds from a secondary share offering due to close today to help pay down $545 million in short-term debt. As PFR went to press late last week, Laura Plumb, spokeswoman, said the Tampa, Fla.-based energy concern, was in the process of selling 13.5 million common shares at $23 per each.

Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Companies last Monday launched a $1.8 billion, 364-day revolving credit facility, and while bankers say the company story is a strong one, persistent questions about the propriety of its trading operations may make for a rocky syndication. "If they continue to be in the headlines every day, whether it is fair or not, it is going to make it tough," says one official, who attended the Houston bank meeting. The Federal Regulatory Energy Commission last week said the company had failed to cooperate with information requests related to its investigation into power trading in the western U.S. The move followed a published report that Williams tried to manipulate gas prices in California two years ago. Kelly Swan, a company spokesman, denied both charges.

Xcel Energy is facing a potential collateral bill of some $1 billion if newly-reacquired subsidiary NRG Energy is downgraded. Minneapolis-based Xcel wrapped the buyback of NRG at the end of last month and the expectation is that Moody's Investors Service will make a move by mid-summer, says Daniele Seitz, analyst at Salomon Smith Barney in New York. Moody's has had NRG on credit watch since December when a $1.5 billion acquisition of generation assets from FirstEnergy was announced. That deal is expected to close this month.

PSEG Global has retained Citibank to lead a $200 million bond offering that it's arranging to refinance debt associated with its acquisition of Chilean distribution company Sociedad Austral de Electricidad (SAESA). An official at Miami-based PSEG Americas, a subsidiary of PSEG Global, says the U.S. dollar-denominated offering will be executed in the Chilean bond market this September or October.

PSEG Global is looking to refinance within the next couple of months a $100 million bank loan that was set up last December to partly finance its $227.1 million acquisition of Electroandes, a Peruvian generation concern. A Peruvian banker involved in the deal says PSEG Global plans to either take out a U.S. dollar-denominated bank loan or tap the local capital markets with a nuevo sole denominated bond offering. He declined comment on why PSEG is looking to refinance the deal, but says Bank of Boston, Banco Espanol de Credito and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, which arranged the original acquisition loan, would likely lead the refinancing as well.