Lease Commitments

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2016

Leases [Abstract]

Lease Commitments

Lease Commitments

The Company leases office buildings, vehicles, and other equipment under operating leases. In addition, PNM leases interests in Units 1 and 2 of PVNGS and, through April 1, 2015, leased an interest in the EIP transmission line. All of the Company’s leases are currently accounted for as operating leases. See Note 1. Additional information concerning the Company’s lease commitments is contained in Note 7 of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in the 2015 Annual Reports on Form 10-K, including PNM’s actions with regard to renewal and purchase options under the PVNGS leases.

The PVNGS leases were scheduled to expire on January 15, 2015 for the four Unit 1 leases and January 15, 2016 for the four Unit 2 leases. The four Unit 1 leases have been extended to expire on January 15, 2023 and one of the Unit 2 leases has been extended to expire on January 15, 2024. For the other three PVNGS Unit 2 leases, PNM exercised its fair market value options to purchase the assets underlying those leases on the expiration date of the original leases. On January 15, 2016, PNM paid $78.1 million to the lessor under one lease for 31.25 MW of the entitlement from PVNGS Unit 2 and $85.2 million to the lessors under the other two leases for 32.76 MW of the entitlement from PVNGS Unit 2. See Note 12 for information concerning the NMPRC’s treatment of the purchased assets and extended leases in PNM’s NM 2015 Rate Case.

PNM is exposed to losses under the PVNGS lease arrangements upon the occurrence of certain events that PNM does not consider to be reasonably likely to occur. Under certain circumstances (for example, the NRC issuing specified violation orders with respect to PVNGS or the occurrence of specified nuclear events), PNM would be required to make specified payments to the lessors, and take title to the leased interests. If such an event had occurred as of September 30, 2016, amounts due to the lessors under the circumstances described above would be up to $176.1 million, payable on January 15, 2017 in addition to the scheduled lease payments due on January 15, 2017.

At March 31, 2015, PNM owned 60% of the EIP and leased the other 40%, under a lease that expired on April 1, 2015. PNM purchased the leased capacity at fair market value, which the parties agreed was $7.7 million, on April 1, 2015.