Merger Acquisition Newsroom

Commission Approves The Mergers Of National Grid And Keyspan

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission today approved the merger of KeySpan Corp. and London, U.K.-based National Grid. Separately, the Commission approved NorthWestern Corp.’s merger with Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Ltd. (BBI), a company based in Sydney, Australia.

“These orders were decided under the new rules implementing our expanded authority to review electricity industry mergers and acquisitions. We find the transactions to be consistent with our rules, and approve the acquisitions,” Chairman Joseph T. Kelliher stated.

National Grid owns and operates transmission facilities and distributes electricity and natural gas in New York State, and owns and operates transmission facilities in New England. KeySpan, a holding company headquartered in Brooklyn, N.Y., provides utility and nonutility services in the Northeast U.S., primarily in the New York and Long Island region. KeySpan is also the largest natural gas distributor in the Northeast.

“[T]he combination of their electric generation resources is not likely to harm competition in any relevant market,” the Commission found. National Grid has and will likely continue to have significant POLR (provider of last resort) obligations, and has all of its generation resources dedicated to serving those obligations, thus removing that generation capacity from the wholesale market. Therefore, National Grid will have no Available Economic Capacity that would increase the market concentration in any relevant market. In addition, most of KeySpan’s generation is committed under long-term contracts to the Long Island Power Authority. Read more at ferc.gov