FirstEnergy Solutions Corp.outlined a bankruptcy strategy that reveals how its nuclear- and fossil-fuel assets will be treated and a legal path for restructuring a knotty sale-leaseback transaction, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. A proposed agreement with creditors and bond trustees would fix a 180-day period for FES and its largest bondholder group to negotiate a standalone restructuring of its nuclear assets, two plants in Ohio and one in Pennsylvania that FES recently said that it might deactivate within three years. A standalone restructuring would turn creditors into owners of those units at a time when four other nuclear plants across the U.S. are slated to close by 2025, including Entergy Corp.’s Indian Point in New York, PG&E Corp.’s Diablo Canyon in California and Entergy’s Palisades unit in Michigan. Such a deal with FES creditors also presumably requires keeping its nuclear plants open, which may depend on an intervention from the Trump administration forcing the largest U.S. grid operator, PJM Interconnection LLC, to favor dispatching electricity from those assets over gas-fired and renewable sources.
