Enron Pres: Still Committed to Power Generation Business
Wednesday, September 6, 2000 12:49 PM	

	
	
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	By James Covert 
	Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES 
	NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Despite an increasing emphasis on wholesale trading 
rather than asset ownership in its electricity operations, Enron Corp. (ENE, 
news, msgs) will continue to develop and purchase power plants, president 
Jeffrey Skilling told Dow Jones Newswires on Wednesday. 
	"Generation assets are essential to a successful trading operation," Skilling 
said, responding to recent trade reports that the company plans to exit the 
power generation business. The Houston-based energy company is "absolutely 
not" selling its power plants as part of its strategy, he said. 
	Enron will continue to build and purchase natural gas-fired "peaking plants," 
which produce power only during times of high demand and wholesale prices, 
Skilling said. 
	Enron has begun construction of a few such projects in the U.S. Midwest and 
South, and will continue development chiefly in the U.S and Europe, he said. 
	"The margins are higher (in wholesale power markets) in Europe," Skilling 
said. "The market there is more fractional, and that creates more 
opportunities for someone who's playing across the board." 
	Developments in Europe, particularly in southern Europe, also offer a higher 
per-unit rate of return, Skilling said. 
	Nonetheless, Skilling did confirm that the company isn't interested in 
building larger-sized plants in any country, and that its construction goals 
may not be as lofty as those of other energy companies. 
	"We are not interested in building base-load plants," Skilling said, 
referring to large power plants that produce power in steady quantities 
around the clock. 
	"Base load simply delivers megawatts - that's a bulky, undifferentiated 
commodity," Skilling said. "But peaking plants allow us to play on the shape 
of the market of that commodity." 
	Skilling declined to give any projections or figures related to Enron's 
future development plans, saying that they weren't set in stone. 
	But Skilling said the company generally aims to site power plants where there 
are bottlenecks in the transmission system, and that Enron isn't focused on 
any one geographic region as opposed to others. 
	"There are companies out there saying they're going to build 40,000 
megwawatts by such-and-such a date, and I don't really see how that's 
possible," Skilling said. "There are just too many variables to approach 
markets like that." 
	-By James Covert, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2061; 
james.covert@dowjones.com 
	Quote for referenced ticker symbols: ENE
	
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