New Deadline for Duke - Progress Merger

It could be six months before the Duke Energy-Progress Energy merger is complete.

Leoneda Inge:  Duke and Progress informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that they would likely need 18 months to complete the 26-billion dollar deal.  That would mean jumping a lot of hurdles by July of this year.  The plan was to have the merger complete this month.  FERC, The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has several concerns about the merger, including the impact on customers.   Tom Williams is a spokesman for Duke Energy.  He says the companies will soon re-file the merger agreement with FERC.

Tom Williams:  We haven’t pulled anything off the table and we’re still doing some internal studies on what would be best to address FERC’s concerns and then we would make a determination of whether the economics of that would work.

If the merger is approved, it will create the nation’s largest utility, serving more than seven million customers.