Nevada official also wants sale blocked

Friday, Jan. 19, 2001 | 11:27 a.m.

The power plant sale California's Public Utilities Commission is trying to block could affect Nevada Power Co. of Las Vegas, since it is one of the four co-owners of the generating station.

In May, Nevada Power announced it was selling its 14 percent stake of the Mohave Generating Station near Laughlin. The deal, which has yet to close, was the first in a series of power plant sales the company planned as a government condition of Nevada Power's merger with Sierra Pacific Resources Inc. of Reno.

Nevada Power's stake in the deal with AES Corp., Arlington, Va., is $133 million. As it has done in other power plant sales, Nevada Power negotiated an electricity buy-back contract with AES. That deal, which will enable Nevada Power to receive electricity at lower rates through March 2003, is for $10 million, making the net proceed of the sale $123 million.

Southern California Edison, which operates Mohave, owns a 56 percent stake in the plant. The remaining 30 percent of the plant that AES is not buying is held by the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which holds 20 percent, and the Phoenix-based Salt River Project, which has 10 percent.

It's unclear what the California PUC's action means to Nevada Power and the deal with AES.

Nevada Consumer Advocate Tim Hay has recommended that Nevada Power and its parent company, Sierra Pacific Resources Inc., be stopped, at least temporarily, from selling their coal-fired power plants as a precaution against energy shortages in the state. But Nevada Power says it has contracts to sell nine plants, for a total of $1.7 billion.

"We haven't had an opportunity to sit down with all the parties involved and we are under legal contracts to sell our power plants and to complete the sales," the company said in a statement today.