Tri-State To Charge Up $500M Capex Revolver

The Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a cooperative that provides power to rural areas of Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming, is close to obtaining a five-year, $500 million unsecured revolver with an undisclosed bank.

The Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a cooperative that provides power to rural areas of Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming, is close to obtaining a five-year, $500 million unsecured revolver with an undisclosed bank.

The credit facility, which supplements $150 million of undrawn facilities already in place, will help bankroll $315 million of pre-construction costs relating to 2.1 GW of planned baseload generation and 1,000 miles of accompanying transmission infrastructure developments.

Charles Yetzbacher, cfo in Westminster, Colo., says ground will be broken on projects including two 700 MW units at an existing coal-fired facility owned by Sunflower Electric Power Corp. in Holcomb, Kan., and a separate 700 MW coal plant at a site to be determined in southeast Colorado. “We’re putting in place this facility as [these plants] are being built. Then as we draw down funds we’ll be going to the public debt markets to replace the revolving credit drawn,” he adds. The borrowings will likely be paid down via future long-term debt offerings to be handled by relationship banks. He declined to say which bank is providing the new revolver, nor which banks are in its relationship roster.

Tri-State members’ energy requirements are expected to grow at an average of 7% over the next five years, according to Michael Scholder, analyst at Standard & Poor’s, which assigned an A- rating to the proposed revolver.

The co-operative has four existing revolvers--split $75 million between two undisclosed banks--but has not yet drawn on these facilities. As of Sept. 30, it had about $1.7 billion in outstanding debt.