DOTD announces $101 million in recent bid lettings

The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) considered bids totaling more than $101 million at its Aug. 30 public bid opening.

With a bid of $26,806,512.25, Denton-James LLC of Baton Rouge was the apparent low bidder on the state's most expensive job, a project in East Baton Rouge Parish calling for clearing and grubbing, grading, drainage structures, lime treatment, class II base course, Superpave, Portland cement concrete pavement, precast-prestressed concrete girder spans bridge, traffic signalization and related work on La. 946 from Jones Bayou to Hooper Road.

Dow Chemical to purchase Plaquemine cogeneration facility from AEP

The Dow Chemical Co. recently reached an agreement to purchase the cogeneration facility in Plaquemine, La., from a subsidiary of American Electric Power Company.

The Plaquemine cogeneration facility, which consists of four, 170-MW, gas-fired combustion turbine generators and a 200-MW steam turbine, has a capacity of 880 MW of power and 5 MM pounds per hour of steam. Dow has leased and operated the facility since it began commercial operations in 2004.

"Purchasing this world-scale facility will enable Dow to generate power and steam via more energy efficient assets, while decreasing our use of older, less efficient equipment over time," said John Dearborn, global vice president for energy. "With domestic natural gas at high and globally non-competitive prices, purchasing this state-of-the-art cogeneration facility will help to lower Dow's energy costs, while making our Plaquemine manufacturing site more competitive.

"This purchase will also allow Dow to make additional opportunistic sales of excess power."