David Ratcliffe
Management
Thanks, Glenn, and good afternoon, and thanks to all of you for joining us. I'm sure most of you are aware by now the changes in our senior management team that we announced yesterday. With my retirement from Southern Company on December 1, we have begun a transition in the office of the Chief Executive. Tom Fanning, who many of you know very well from his four years as Chief Financial Officer, will become President of Southern Company on August 1. Tom is also with us on the call this afternoon. Paul Bowers will be moving to Georgia Power on August 13 as Chief Operating Officer, while Art Beattie, who is also with us today, will become the Chief Financial Officer. Tom, Paul and Art are key members of our management team and are well prepared for their new assignments, and I know will do an outstanding job for us. As you can see from the materials we released this morning, we had a good second quarter, which was influenced by favorable weather and the continuing economic recovery here in the Southeast. Since our last earnings call in April. We've had three significant new regulatory developments in our Retail business, including a rate case filing by Georgia Power. Paul will cover the rate case filing in more detail in a few minutes. First on May 26, the Mississippi Public Service Commission approved the construction of our 582-megawatt coal gasification project in Kemper County, Mississippi. Yesterday, the South Mississippi Electric Power Association signed an agreement to purchase 17.5% of the plant to fill the projected capacity requirements of its members. The plant, which will use Mississippi lignite coal is scheduled to be placed in service in May 2014. The facility has a construction cost estimate of $2.4 billion. The project, which…