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Enron Mail |
Cash-Strapped Farms Embrace Winds of Change Agriculture: Electricity-generating turbines are cropping up across America.
Los Angeles Times, 09/16/01 INDIA PRESS: Foreign Lenders May Exit Dabhol Power Proj Dow Jones International News, 09/16/01 India: 'DPC may have to pay $20 m as interest for Sept' Business Line (The Hindu), 09/15/01 India: Reliance not keen on DPC: Mukesh Ambani Business Line (The Hindu), 09/15/01 EQUITY MARKETS - Alkane works old seams for new energy - SMALLER COMPANIES. Financial Times, 09/15/01 California Power Grid Still Needs Bolstering KRTBN Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News: Contra Costa Times - Walnut Creek, California, 09/15/01 Exxon Mobil, Sunoco, Enron Join in U.S. Aid Donations (Update1) Bloomberg, 09/15/01 California; Advance Desk Cash-Strapped Farms Embrace Winds of Change Agriculture: Electricity-generating turbines are cropping up across America. H. JOSEF HEBERT ASSOCIATED PRESS 09/16/2001 Los Angeles Times Bulldog Edition B-2 Copyright 2001 / The Times Mirror Company WALLULA JUNCTION, Wash. -- Like many ranchers facing pressure from developers, Shirley Hindman worries that one day she might have to break up her Nine Mile Ranch, one of the largest spreads in the Walla Walla Valley. "That would make me sick," she says. But now she and her father, Billy, have found another way to protect their 14,000 acres of sagebrush-covered hills and canyonland. The answer has come in the wind--something "we have plenty of," she says. And something also in growing demand. Soon the ridgelines across U.S. 12 from Hindman's corrals will be dotted by windmills. By next year Hindman and several other property owners, including a nearby college, expect to be landlords to the world's largest wind farm. Along southeastern Washington and into neighboring Oregon, 450 Danish-built windmills--sleek white towers 200 feet high with rotors 200 feet across--will churn out enough power for 75,000 families served by Pacificorp, one of the Northwest's leading electric utilities. Nearly 100 of the wind turbines already are producing. Gravel roads and concrete slabs for the others are in place. "It will help us keep Nine Mile. It will help us sustain a way of life," says Hugh Preston, Hindman's husband. More than just an economic hedge for farmers and ranchers, wind farms across the West and upper Midwest are emerging as a growing part of the nation's electricity picture. Major projects are operating or earmarked for completion within a year in Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada and Texas. While windmills still account for only a fraction of 1% of the electricity produced in the United States, they no longer are the exotic playthings of a few dreamers. Increasingly, big-time players are showing interest in wind to supplement fossil fuel-powered electricity plants, nuclear reactors and hydroelectric dams. "Wind is a technology that's now reliable and proven," says Robert Morrison, vice president for renewable business development at FPL Energy, the Florida-based company building the 300-megawatt Oregon-Washington project. The cost of generating electricity from wind has declined from 38 cents a kilowatt-hour 20 years ago, to 3 to 5 cents a kilowatt hour in today's larger projects, says the industry. That's competitive with natural gas. "Suddenly this stuff is economical," says Morrison, whose company has other wind projects under way or being planned in a half-dozen states including Texas, Kansas and Wisconsin. Other emerging players include Enron, the giant Houston-based energy conglomerate, and the government's Bonneville Power Administration, which this year sought $1 billion worth of wind energy projects and received more bids than expected. "The response blew us away," said George Darr, Bonneville's manager for renewable resources. Some of the projects will begin operating late next year. Windmills now account for only about 2,500 megawatts of generating capacity nationwide, but the production is expected almost to double by the end of 2001 to provide enough electricity for 1.3 million households. The industry anticipates that in two decades wind power will grow to 100,000 megawatts and account for 6% of the country's electricity. In comparison, nuclear power currently provides about 20% of U.S. electricity, coal-fired plants 52%. Wind's sudden popularity has astounded even its biggest boosters. "We are in a boom year," says Randall Swisher, executive director of the American Wind Energy Assn., the industry's trade group in Washington, D.C. "We are expecting huge growth, especially in the West." That is good news for David Bittersdorf, president of NRG Systems Inc., a Vermont company that makes wind-measuring devices. "We've grown 40% this year," he says. His company, which had $10 million in sales, expects business to quadruple over the next five years. For the Hindman family at Nine Mile Ranch, turbines rising from the scrub mean cash in the bank, while not interfering with their 700 head of cattle. Typically, farmers and ranchers involved in such lease arrangements get about $2,000 a year per turbine. "Wind is a very lucrative crop for farmers," says Bill Clemens, president of the Chamber of Commerce in nearby Walla Walla. The windmills are "a real curiosity" and may even add to the valley's tourist trade, he said. Ironically, the region does not provide the most ideal location for wind power. What some call the Saudi Arabia of wind stretches from eastern Montana and the Dakotas, through Kansas, Nebraska and into Texas--a region with enough wind potential to power the nation, according to the Energy Department. James Dehlsen, an early wind energy pioneer, dreams of putting together a massive wind complex of 2,000 turbines stretching over 90 miles of prairie in South Dakota. It would be 10 times as large as the Washington-Oregon project and produce a staggering 3,000 megawatts of electricity. "We're at the early stages of the project," said Dehlsen, founder of the Zond Corp., a U.S. wind turbine manufacturer that has since been bought by Enron. But he said he already has a commitments from 150 farmers for use of 176,000 acres. PHOTO: "Wind is a technology that's now reliable and proven," says Robert Morrison, vice president for FPL Energy, the Florida-based company building the 300-megawatt Oregon-Washington project.; ; PHOTOGRAPHER: JEFF HORNER / Walla Walla Union-Bulletin / Associated Press Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. INDIA PRESS: Foreign Lenders May Exit Dabhol Power Proj 09/16/2001 Dow Jones International News (Copyright © 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) NEW DELHI -(Dow Jones)- Foreign lenders to U.S. energy company Enron Corp.'s (ENE) Indian unit, Dabhol Power Co., may exit the power project located in the western state of Maharashtra, reports the Business Standard, quoting Press Trust of India. "The 15-odd foreign lenders have now declined to disburse funds urgently needed for care and preservation of the project. The offshore lenders might be inclined toward the quickest exit route from this project," PTI quoted Dabhol Power spokesman Jimmy Mogal as saying, according to the report. Dabhol is a 2,184-megawatt power project in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Enron holds a controlling 65% stake in Dabhol. Enron has threatened to pull out of the Dabhol project following payment disputes with its sole buyer, the Maharashtra State Electricity Board, and the failure of India's federal government to honor a payment guarantee for the Dabhol project. Web site: www.business-standard.com - By Himendra Kumar, Dow Jones Newswires; 91-11-461-9426; himendra.kumar@dowjones.com Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. India: 'DPC may have to pay $20 m as interest for Sept' 09/15/2001 Business Line (The Hindu) Fin. Times Info Ltd-Asia Africa Intel Wire. Business Line (The Hindu) Copyright (C) 2001 Kasturi & Sons Ltd. All Rights Res'd MUMBAI, Sept. 14. ENRON'S Dabhol Power Company will have to make interest payments of $20 million for September 2001. The prospect of paying its "lenders and bankers" led the company to invoke a letter of credit for Rs 136 crore, drawn on the Canara bank, the company's lawyer Mr P. Chidambaram, told the Bombay High Court on Friday. The company's 728-MW phase one plant has remained unused after MSEB stopped buying power and rescinded the PPA. The second phase is still incomplete. The Maharashtra State Electricity Board is DPC's sole customer and source of income. The company may reportedly find it difficult to make interest payments to lenders after the end of this month due to paucity of funds. - Our Bureau Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. India: Reliance not keen on DPC: Mukesh Ambani 09/15/2001 Business Line (The Hindu) Fin. Times Info Ltd-Asia Africa Intel Wire. Business Line (The Hindu) Copyright (C) 2001 Kasturi & Sons Ltd. All Rights Res'd MUMBAI, Sept. 14. RELIANCE Industries Ltd has ruled out any possibility of picking up a stake in Enron's Dabhol Power Company (DPC). "We have our hands full at the moment. And we are simply not interested in the project," said Mr Mukesh Ambani, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Ltd, here on Friday. Mr Ambani denied reports that the group was interested in picking up a stake in the 2,184-MW project, which had been hanging fire after the Maharashtra State Electricity Board stopped buying power citing expensive rates. The group has plans to set up a 3960-MW independent power producing unit at Hirma in Orissa. He said the Reliance group planned to set up extra tankages for storing liquefied natural gas in Gujarat. The gas will be transported through the planned LNG pipeline to "land-locked regions". The pipeline is scheduled to run parallel to the 1,700-km Central India pipeline planned by Petronet India Ltd for transporting petroleum products to the northern States. "We have planned two cross-country pipelines to link the relatively fuel-rich coastal areas with locations in interior regions," Mr Ambani said. - Our Bureau Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. EQUITY MARKETS - Alkane works old seams for new energy - SMALLER COMPANIES. By DAVID BLACKWELL. 09/15/2001 Financial Times © 2001 Financial Times Limited . All Rights Reserved In the days when Britain had a thriving coal industry, miners sometimes tapped the methane gas that seeps from coal seams to heat the water for their baths. It made sense to utilise what was virtually free energy. But the closure of most of the UK's mines left the dangerous and environmentally damaging gas venting into the atmosphere. Alkane Energy was founded in the early 1990s to look into the commercial possibilities of harnessing methane. This week the company said it planned to open 100 methane production platforms across the UK in the next five years. Among greenhouse gases, methane is far more harmful than carbon dioxide. Yet at relatively low concentrations it can be used to generate electricity for about half the cost of natural gas. Alkane has three production sites in the East Midlands. It believes the gas it is already capturing for commercial use has the same environmental benefit as taking 100,000 cars off the roads. The company has started building a further six plants to extract methane from abandoned coal mines. It has signed memorandums of understanding with Enron, the US energy group, which is interested in 10 sites, and Scottish & Southern, which is interested in five. Alkane's strategy is to get electricity supply companies to build their own generating plant at the sites and contract to buy gas on a take-or-pay basis. The advantage to the generator is that the gas costs 12p a therm compared with other natural gas prices of about 25p a therm. But the pioneering nature of the work is illustrated by problems at the company's first site at Markham, Derbyshire, opened in early 1999. The site supplies gas not to an electricity generator but to Coalite, which uses it in its chemical distillation processes for soaps and disinfectants. After running well initially, production was hit by an air leak from a mine three miles away, diluting the concentration of methane. David Cross, chief executive and one of the founders of Alkane, says the leak has been sealed and the concentration of methane is starting to rise. But it will be some time before production is back to normal levels. SG, the company's broker, is expecting Alkane to make profits of #1.25m next year, rising to #5.24m in 2003. But the problems at Markham pushed the company #363,000 into the red at the operating level in the first half this year as sales fell from #707,000 to #552,000. Mark Redway, oil analyst at Teather & Greenwood, says this sort of energy company should be encouraged because of the clear environmental benefits, but he warns that there seems to be a "green premium" in the share price of just over 100p. Markham has revealed technical risks, Redway says, and highlighted the fact that some problems show up only when a site is up and running. "In addition, the roll-out programme makes the considerable assumption that the company can find a buyer for all its sites," he says. Cross believes most of the technical problems of production have been solved. The site at Shirebrook, Derbyshire, "has run from the day it opened in January last year with no problems". It is producing 6 1/2m therms a year, enough to drive a 10MW generator and supply power for 10,000 houses. When the company floated last December, raising #30m at 90p a share, it detailed the problems at Markham in its prospectus. At the end of the first half Alkane had #24m on the balance sheet, enough to cover the opening programme for the next two years. David Blackwell. © Copyright Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. http://www.ft.com. Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. California Power Grid Still Needs Bolstering Rick Jurgens 09/15/2001 KRTBN Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News: Contra Costa Times - Walnut Creek, California Copyright (C) 2001 KRTBN Knight Ridder Tribune Business News; Source: World Reporter (TM) Not surprisingly, Tuesday's terrorist attacks 3,000 miles away did not disrupt operations of California's fragile power grid, but they did slow up efforts to stabilize and restore financial health to the state's electricity industry. The day of the attack, the California Independent System Operator experienced no operational problems but did step up security at the Folsom and Alhambra control centers, where it manages the grid, said Stephanie McCorkle, a spokeswoman. For the electricity buyers at the California Department of Water Resources, Tuesday was "a somewhat normal day," said Oscar Hidalgo, a spokesman for the agency that procures power for customers of the state's cash-strapped utilities. "We didn't see any fluctuations in prices that were significantly up or down," he said. All but a "skeletal crew" of DWR employees were sent home for security reasons, but power buying and selling continued normally, he said. That was despite the evacuation of some large Houston trading floors where short-term contracts to deliver electricity and natural gas normally change hands. Reliant Energy sent home most of its employees, halting speculative or risk-management transactions, but a handful of traders remained to handle physical transactions affecting the dispatch of generation capacity and the flow of power and gas, said spokeswoman Sandy Fruhman. San Jose-based power plant operator Calpine Corp. said the mayor of Houston ordered the trading floor evacuation, but that did not knock Calpine out of the market. "They moved the people to another location to continue trading," said spokesman Bill Highlander. "It was a disruption, but a minor one." Wholesale giant Enron also closed Tuesday. It reopened for a half day of trading on Wednesday and resumed full trading Thursday, said spokesman Eric Thode. The giant market maker saw a brief 4 percent run-up in natural gas prices, but those prices soon fell back to their pre-attack levels, while electricity prices were up a barely noticeable $1 or $2 per megawatt hour, he said. But the attacks seem likely to have some long-term effects on the costs of domestic natural gas and electricity. On Friday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said in a release "that electric, gas, and oil companies may need to adopt and/or update procedures and install facilities that further safeguard electric power grids and natural gas pipelines." The commission, which regulates the wholesale power and natural gas markets, said that it would "approve applications proposing the recovery of prudently incurred costs made in response to the heightened state of alert the country is now experiencing." More immediately, Tuesday's shutdown of the nation's financial markets delayed the state of California's sale of $5.7 billion of revenue anticipation notes scheduled for Thursday. That short-term financing is needed to tide over the state until its planned sale of $12.5 billion of revenue bonds to finance past and future electricity purchases. The timing of the bond sale was not affected by the market shutdown, because it cannot go forward until related measures are approved by the state Public Utilities Commission, state Treasurer Phil Angelides said in a release. The week's traumatic events were also blamed by Edison International Chief Financial Officer Ted Craver for banks' inability to extend some of the company's due-to-expire credit lines. A "quickie" two-week extension was provided so that banks, unable to function normally this week, could conduct a more thorough review of the extension application, he said in a conference call Friday. Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Exxon Mobil, Sunoco, Enron Join in U.S. Aid Donations (Update1) 2001-09-14 17:34 (New York) Exxon Mobil, Sunoco, Enron Join in U.S. Aid Donations (Update1) (Adds Enron donating $1 million in third paragraph.) Irving, Texas, Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest publicly traded oil company, said it and its employees will donate as much as $20 million to relief efforts for Tuesday's terrorist attacks in the U.S. The company, based in Irving, Texas, will donate $5 million to agencies and charitable organizations assisting surviving families of the injured and deceased in New York and Washington. It also will match donations from employees, retired workers, dealers and distributors on a 3-to-1 basis. Enron Corp., the biggest energy trader, said it will donate $1 million, half to the American Red Cross and half to organizations set up by New York City to help families of police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel. Houston-based Enron asked its 18,000 employees to donate as much as $15,000, and the company will add as much as $30,000. Terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers in New York, destroying the buildings. Another plane crashed into the Pentagon, outside Washington, collapsing part of the building. The fourth crashed in western Pennsylvania, about 80 miles from Pittsburgh. Philadephia-based Sunoco Inc., one of the biggest fuel sellers in the U.S. Northeast, said it pledged $1 million for relief efforts. Phillips Petroleum Co., the sixth-largest U.S. oil company, said it will donate $3 million to the victims of the terrorist attacks. BP Plc, Chevron Corp., Texaco Inc., Amerada Hess Corp. and Williams Cos. pledged a combined $21 million in the past two days to help attack victims.
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