NGC expands into metering

By CHRIS DANIELS

Listed energy company NGC has revealed the latest step in its expansion into the power metering and energy IT industry.

It has announced that it paid Trustpower $7.2 million for nearly 7000 meters and was paying $7.6 million for a 25.05 per cent stake in Wellington IT company Energy Intellect and its Australian data management business, named Elect Data Services.

NGC also says it will sign a five-year service agreement with Agility Management, a subsidiary of AGL, under which Agility will transfer to NGC time-of-use metering data services it now gets from EIL and others.

NGC is 66 per cent owned by AGL.

Chief executive Phil James said the deals represented a milestone in the company's strategy to provide integrated meter and information services to power retailers and big energy users in Australia and New Zealand.

He said the agreements with EIL and Agility were conditional but the commercial arrangements should be completed this month.

Trustpower said it would be making a small capital gain on the sale of its "time of use meters" to NGC.

NGC has also announced it has entered into a deal to buy gas coming from the Kahili field in Taranaki, which was discovered in 2002 and is operated by Indo-Pacific.

NGC will spend up to $8 million building a gas pre-treatment plant and a pipeline to deliver gas to its other Taranaki facilities.

In April this year NGC paid $2 million to Indo-Pacific, for the first rights to negotiate for any gas found in the next 10 years, though this did not apply to the Kahili gas.

* Ratings agency Standard and Poor's yesterday removed its "creditwatch with negative implications" tag from both AGL and NGC. It re-affirmed both companies' credit ratings, saying that uncertainty surrounding AGL's proposed purchase of Victoria's Loy Yang A power station had been resolved.

S&P said recent improvements in AGL's financial profile meant that any risk from buying the station could be accommodated at its current rating: A for its long-term debt and A-1 for its short-term debt.