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El Paso sold some of its natural gas transportation assets to El Paso Energy Partners for $750 million. El Paso, which had $17 billion of debt at the end of last year, has been under pressure to restructure its balance sheet and reduce gearing. El Paso Energy Partners, formally known as Leviathan Gas Pipeline, is 27% owned by El Paso (Reuters, 2/19).

Executives at Barclays Bank may be forced to give evidence to Congress about a loan they made to Enron in 1997 that contributed to the energy company's collapse. The Barclays loan was disclosed in a 218-page report written by William Powers, dean at the University of Texas Law School, who was appointed to Enron's board to lead an internal investigation into the company's accounting techniques. He said that the loan was "fatal" to compliance with U.S. financial regulations (The Times, 2/20).

Russian electricity giant RAO Unified Energy Systems needs $20-35 billion in investment over the next 10 years to boost production capacity to meet demand, Anatoly Chubais, ceo, said in an interview in the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore. Chubais expects Russian electricity demand to grow strongly in the next 10 years, but noted the supply side is stretched (Dow Jones, 2/19).

EnXco, one of the largest developers of wind farms in the U.S., has put itself on the block and hired Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein to find a buyer. An official familiar with its plans says the primary driver behind the sale is EnXco's lack of capital. It has ambitious plans to develop some 1,000 MW of wind farms, but as a privately held company it doesn't have the financial wherewithal to meet this target. A lack of funding means that EnXco has typically developed and then sold wind farms or built them for clients, he explains. Bankers at DrKW declined to comment, and calls to Jorn Larsen, president at EnXco, were not returned.

Power trading officials are up in arms about the U.S. credit rating agencies' recent downgrades of power companies, a move that they perceive as a "knee-jerk" reaction to the collapse of Enron.

Cinergy is looking to unload its entire 1 GW international generation portfolio and is in active discussions with several bidders about a trade sale. Joseph Toussaint, v.p. of marketing and operations at the Cincinnati-based energy concern, told PFR the divestiture program is aimed at redistributing more resources to its core Midwest utility business and domestic merchant-trading effort. Proceeds will also be used to pay down debt to strengthen the company's balance sheet. He declined to elaborate on details of the sale or set a price tag on the diversified portfolio.

Citibank andBank of Nova Scotia are pitching arranger and co-arranger slots ahead of launching a $2.5 billion construction revolver for FPL Energy. The two co-bookrunners are committing $500 million each, says a banker. A timeline for full launch could not be ascertained.

GFI, PowerITS, Powernext and IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) are racing to establish competing clearing systems for over-the-counter electricity trades in Europe. These efforts, most of which have been in the works for over a year, have been given additional impetus because the failure of Enron has focused traders' minds on managing counterparty credit risk. "It will be one of the big stories of the first quarter," says Etienne Amic, manager-risk management and power trading at TotalFinaElf Gas and Power in London. "Only one will emerge as the winner," he adds.

MidAmerican Energy, an Omaha, Neb.-based utility, issued $400 million of 30-year senior unsecured notes earlier this month to take advantage of low interest rates and the tight yield spreads over Treasuries, notes Karen Anderson, an associate director at Fitch in Chicago. The company plans to use the proceeds to refinance existing or recently matured debt, but has yet to determine the exact credit it will refinance, she adds.

American Electric Power is expected to launch a non-recourse loan within the next month to finance its GBP650 million ($940 million) purchase of two coal-fired plants in the U.K., says a bankers close to the deal. Westdeutsche Landesbank, Barclays Capital and Commerzbank, which arranged a bridge loan to fund the acquisition of Fiddlers Ferry (1,400 MW) and Ferrybridge (1,900 MW) from Edison Mission Energy in December (PFR,12/17), will also lead the project loan, says the banker. An AEP spokesman was unable to provide details by press time.