Enron winding down

Collapsed US energy giant Enron took another step towards disappearing when the company closed the €1.4bn sale of its most prized remaining assets, making effective its plan to emerge from one of the most costly and complicated bankruptcies in history.

Enron’s sale of its interest in three natural gas pipelines to CCE Holdings LLC, a joint venture of Southern Union Co and a unit of GE Commercial Finance, was approved in September by US Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzales in New York. CCE Holdings also will assume €377.5m in debt.

Still pending is a €1.1bn sale of Portland General Electric, Enron’s Pacific Northwest utility, to a holding company backed by Texas Pacific Group.

If that sale closes as expected, the last remnant of Enron will be Prisma Energy International – a smattering of pipeline and power assets in 14 foreign countries, mostly in Latin America.