| Based in London, Aquila Energy Limited is the U.K. arm of Aquila Energy Corporation, an international energy wholesaler, energy trader and risk management company headquartered in the United States with operations throughout North America and Europe. Aquila serves a variety of customers in the U.K. including trading utilities, other counterparties, onsite-embedded generators of energy, industrial and commercial businesses.
Aquila began operating in the U.K. market in 1991 under the name United Gas and has played a leading role in shaping the competitive market here. Aquila Energy Limited has become the leading mid-stream player and provider of wholesale energy services in the U.K. gas market. The company provides energy services to more than half the retailers supplying gas to the U.K. domestic market and indirectly to some one million of their gas customers. Under the umbrella name of Aquila Energy Europe, Aquila currently has European operations in Norway, serving the Scandinavian region and in Germany. Expansion into other European countries is planned as liberalisation in new markets increases.
The company also plans to be a significant player in the rapidly growing gas storage business in the U.K. In the UK, Aquila owns and operates an underground natural gas storage facility in Cheshire and is currently seeking to develop a 800MW gas-fired power station at Marchwood, near Southampton.
In the U.S., Aquila has grown to one of the top five North American energy marketers on a Btu basis. Aquila's parent company, based in the U.S., is UtiliCorp United Inc., an international energy company with $10.0 billion in assets and 12 month sales of $23.0 billion, at September 30, 2000. Headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, UtiliCorp has an estimated 4.5 million electric and gas utility across North America and in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and selected European countries. In 1999, UtiliCorp was again named by Fortune Magazine as one of America's Most Admired Companies and made the Forbes Platinum 400 List of best-performing companies in the U.S. based on growth and profitability.
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