Blackstone emerges as potential bidder for Ireland's Bord Gáis Blackstone has emerged as a potential last-minute bidder for the retail arm of Ireland's state gas company, Bord Gáis Eireann, amid frantic efforts by Dublin to reinvigorate a flagging sales process initiated as part of its international bailout programme. The New York-based private equity group has been invited into the final round of bidding for BGE following the withdrawal of Malaysia's state power company Tenaga Nasional from the sale process and a decision by UK utility Centrica not to raise its bid above the €1bn mark, several people with knowledge of the talks said. This left only Viridian, which is owned by Arcapita Bank, and Canadian green energy group Brookfield in a process, which is the centrepiece of Dublin's planned sale of state assets under its European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout. Blackstone considered a bid for the Irish company at the early stages of the sale process before withdrawing partly because of the large number of contenders. It is now expected to make a decision on whether to bid over the next couple of weeks, after conducting due diligence. The group, which manages a $16.7bn global buyout fund, declined to comment. Brendan Howlin, Ireland's minister for public expenditure, said Dublin was under no legal obligation to sell BGE under its bailout programme. "We will look for fair value for the Irish taxpayers for any assets that are sold and they will only be sold if we get fair value," he told the Financial Times. Mr Howlin said he had not been briefed by officials on the BGE sale process but had no reason to believe it was not going well. Dublin was hoping to achieve a price of up to €1.4bn for BGE, which sells gas and electricity to about 900,000 customers, owns an energy distribution network business in Northern Ireland and wind energy assets. But final round bids submitted by Centrica and Viridian disappointed the evaluation team, prompting them to approach Blackstone. Dublin is under pressure to sell BGE as it has promised the EU-IMF under its bailout programme that it would raise up to €3bn from selling state assets to pay down debt. Half of the proceeds of the state asset sales are targeted for plans to stimulate job creation. Earlier this year Dublin aborted controversial plans to sell harvesting rights to the 445,000 acres of forest owned by Coillte, the state forestry company, for up to 80 years. The forestry sell-off attracted considerable public opposition. So far Dublin has only managed to sell a licence to operate the national lottery, which raised €405m. Blackstone is one of several big US private equity companies that have invested in Ireland following its financial crisis. In 2012 its property team paid €67m to acquire one of Ireland's biggest hotels, the Burlington in Dublin. The private equity group is also a shareholder in Eircom, Ireland's former state telecoms company which underwent a debt restructuring last year.