NorthWestern Shareholders Given Rosy Picture

In 2008 NorthWestern had net income of $67.6 million, up 27 percent from 2007. The company emerged from bankruptcy in 2004.

Rowe said the company wants to develop several major capital projects, among them the proposed Mill Creek Generating Station, a 200-megawatt, gas-fired plant that would be built about three miles from Anaconda in southwestern Montana. A Montana Public Service Commission decision on that project might be issued in May, he said.

Other projects include the proposed Mountain States Transmission Intertie, a 500-kilovolt power line extending several hundred miles across private and public lands in southwestern Montana and southeastern Idaho.

In November, Montana utility regulators gave final approval for NorthWestern Energy ratepayers to buy Montana's Colstrip 4 power plant in a $407 million deal. The Public Service Commission said the prospect of stability in consumers' power rates influenced the approval.

Colstrip 4 will be the first large-scale power plant owned by Montana's main utility since energy deregulation occurred in the late 1990s and Montana Power Co. broke up.

Rowe said NorthWestern has been buying power "in a market that is becoming more and more challenging" and the company wants to rebuild a system with in-house generation of power in Montana. Seventy percent of NorthWestern's business is in Montana, according to company spokeswoman Claudia Rapkoch.