CLEVELAND -- Power plant company FirstEnergy Solutions has won a Tuesday morning bankruptcy court initial hearing, the first step in untangling debts of more than $2 billion that could drive the company out of business.

In an Easter Sunday ruling, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Alan Koschik of the Northern District of Ohio ordered an expedited hearing to handle the initial spate of more than 60 motions the company filed earlier in the day.

FES and a committee of its creditors filed an initial petition for bankruptcy protection close to midnight on Saturday, arguing that the case was an emergency. The company faced a $98.9 million bond payment Monday.

Top executives of parent FirstEnergy Corp. had told analysts in January and again in February that it if were up to them, they would not make the April 2 bond payment

When FirstEnergy Solutions filed its petition with the court, FirstEnergy issued a statement simultaneously announcing that it was not involved in the bankruptcy.

FirstEnergy again on Monday, in letter to investors filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, noted that as of Mar. 31 FirstEnergy Solutions and its subsidiaries are no longer part of FirstEnergy's consolidated financial statements.

The investor letter also noted that FirstEnergy had created a "restructuring working group" to figure out how to restructure FirstEnergy Solutions if it sought bankruptcy.

The group has also been negotiating with a steering committee of the subsidiary's note holders and will continue to do so "regarding a potential comprehensive resolution through a constructive settlement."

Saturday's initial petition to the court from FirstEnergy Solutions and the FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. shows that the Bank of New York Mellon Trust Co. holds notes totaling about $1.6 billion with a schedule of payments due through the 2020s, ending in 2041.

The petition also indicates that the company owes more than $140 million to two railway companies, BNSF and CSX, in an arbitration settlement of outstanding freight bills for coal deliveries the company cancelled.

FES is still locked in litigation over its rejection of other coal deliveries by BNSF and Norfolk Southern rail companies, according to the court filing. The company has traditionally negotiated long-term rail contracts; they have become liabilities as it closes its coal-burning power plants or operates them on reduced schedules.

The company owes more than $45 million to other vendors or services, including engineering companies, a wind turbine farm, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which bills the owners of nuclear power plants for inspections its engineers perform.

FES also faces a $2 million bill from another coal-burning power company, the Ohio Valley Electric Corp, (OVEC) a company created at the request of the Defense Department in the 1950s by Ohio and Indiana utilities to generate power for a uranium enrichment plant in southern Ohio. The company buys less than a 5 percent share of OVEC's ouput.

Despite the debt, FirstEnergy Solutions told the court it has enough cash on hand, about $500 million, to continue operations for the time being of its three nuclear power plants, including Davis-Besse near Toledo and Perry east of Cleveland in Lake County.

The company on Mar. 29 announced it would close Perry, Davis-Besse and the two-reactor Beaver Valley plant near Pittsburgh within three years.

The court filings do not indicate whether the company intends to continue operating its nuclear plants until their licenses expire years from now. Perry's license expires in 2026, Davis-Besse's in 2037, Beaver Valley 1 in 2036 and Beaver Valley 2 in 2047.

Parent company FirstEnergy Corp. has warned since 2014 that at some point it would be forced to sell or close the plants without additional funding, that is, higher customer rates.

FirstEnergy Corp. a decade ago supported deregulation of electrical power generation, but found itself at a competitive disadvantage, it now claims, when readily available and cheap shale gas and improved solar and wind technology made other fuels cheaper than coal or nuclear power.

The bankruptcy filing prompted Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dennis Kucinich to call for re-regulation of Ohio's electric utilities.

"Out-of-state energy interests, particularly in gas, have used deregulation of power generation to game the market and have developed price points to undercut Ohio's largest energy company. There are now 1,600 Ohio jobs at risk at two nuclear plants, 350 at the W.H. Sammis [coal] plant, and 1,200 corporate jobs in Akron," Kucinich wrote in a statement issued by his campaign.

The company blames the structure of competitive wholesale markets, which set real-time prices on the cost of the least expensive power needed to stabilize the regional electric grid. And it blames competitive auctions that select power plants three years out that will be chosen first to supply routine demands, arguing that its fuel costs cannot be precisely predicted three years in advance.

FirstEnergy announced 18 months ago that it wanted to become a fully regulated company, meaning it did not intend to own power plants that must operate in deregulated competitive markets such as Ohio and Pennsylvania because of the financial risks that entails. In other words, the company has intended to sell -- or close -- its nuclear power plants.

FirstEnergy intends to continue to own and operate its coal-burning power plants in West Virginia, where lawmakers never deregulated the industry and the company charges a traditional "bundled rate," which includes the cost of running the plants.

FirstEnergy and FirstEnergy Solutions have campaigned, unsuccessfully, to convince Ohio regulators and lawmakers to create new customer charges to finance the nuclear plants.

They have also twice asked for federal intervention to order wholesale market manager PJM Interconnection to assist with the financing of the continued operation of the old power plants by creating special charges for them.

Donald Schneider, president and chairman of the board of FirstEnergy Solutions, argues in the bankruptcy case that the company's bleak situation is not its fault, blaming market forces and cheap gas as FirstEnergy executives have.

FirstEnergy's numerous opponents have argued since 2014 that any intervention by regulators or lawmakers would constitute an anti-competitive "bailout" and lead to higher bills for customers.

Attorneys for the Sierra Club argued before Ohio regulators that FirstEnergy's strategy had been based on the incorrect assumption that natural gas prices would increase substantially in this decade.

Other opponents have suggested that the company's problems trace back to its purchase of Pennsylvania utility Allegheny Energy in 2010 in a stock transaction valued at $4.7 billion and an agreement that FirstEnergy would assume a $3.8 billion in Allegheny's debts