Short-term Debt and Other Financing Agreements

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2011

Short-term Debt and Other Financing Agreements [Abstract]

Short-term Debt [Text Block]

(8)Short-term Debt and Other Financing Agreements

PacifiCorp has a $635 million unsecured credit facility expiring in October 2012 and an unsecured credit facility with $720 million available until July 2012, and $630 million until July 2013. The credit facilities include a fixed or variable borrowing option for which rates vary based on the borrowing option and PacifiCorp's credit ratings for its senior unsecured long-term debt securities. These facilities support PacifiCorp's commercial paper program and certain variable-rate tax-exempt bond obligations. As of December 31, 2011, PacifiCorp had $688 million of commercial paper borrowings outstanding at a weighted-average interest rate of 0.5% and no borrowings outstanding under its credit facilities. As discussed in Note 9, in January 2012, PacifiCorp issued $650 million of long-term debt, the proceeds of which were in part used to repay a significant portion of the commercial paper borrowings outstanding as of December 31, 2011. As of December 31, 2010, PacifiCorp had $36 million of commercial paper borrowings outstanding at a weighted-average interest rate of 0.3% and no borrowings outstanding under its credit facilities.

As of December 31, 2011 and 2010, PacifiCorp had $601 million of letters of credit issued under committed arrangements, of which $304 million were issued under the revolving credit agreements. These letters of credit support PacifiCorp's variable-rate tax-exempt bond obligations, were fully available as of December 31, 2011 and 2010, and expire periodically from May 2012 through November 2012.

Each revolving credit agreement and letter of credit arrangement requires that PacifiCorp's ratio of consolidated debt, including current maturities, to total capitalization at no time exceed 0.65 to 1.0. As of December 31, 2011, PacifiCorp was in compliance with the covenants of its revolving credit agreements and letter of credit arrangements.

The following table summarizes PacifiCorp's availability under its two unsecured revolving credit facilities as of December 31 (in millions):

2011:
Available revolving credit facilities	$	1,355
Less:
Short-term debt	(688		)
Letters of credit supporting tax-exempt bond obligations	(304		)
Net revolving credit facilities available	$	363
2010:
Available revolving credit facilities	$	1,395
Less:
Short-term debt	(36		)
Letters of credit supporting tax-exempt bond obligations	(304		)
Net revolving credit facilities available	$	1,055

As of December 31, 2011, PacifiCorp had approximately $13 million of additional letters of credit issued on its behalf to provide credit support for certain transactions as required by third parties. These letters of credit were all undrawn as of December 31, 2011 and have provisions that automatically extend the annual expiration dates for an additional year unless the issuing bank elects not to renew a letter of credit prior to the expiration date.