Unocal to Sell Unit to Magma
Unocal Corp. will sell its Imperial Valley geothermal energy facility to San Diego-based Magma Power Co. for $225 million.
With the sale, the Los Angeles oil company is now about midway through its program to sell assets as part of a restructuring announced last April.
Unocal plans to plow some of the money from the sale into overseas projects, including a more promising geothermal development in Indonesia.
“Geothermal energy remains a core business for Unocal,” said John F. Imle, president of Unocal’s energy resources division, “despite our decision to sell certain domestic geothermal properties.” Geothermal energy represented about 2% of Unocal’s revenue for 1991.
The Imperial Valley site includes three generating plants in which the earth’s underground heat, used to produce steam, produces 80 megawatts of electricity daily--enough to power about 80,000 California homes for one day. The company received annual revenue of about $70 million from the site.
As part of the deal, Unocal will also assign exploratory leases for geothermal energy at sites in Long Valley, Calif., and Blue Clay and New York Canyon, Nev.
