Leviathan Gas Pipeline Partners subsidiary Flextrend DevelopmentCo. bought a 100% working interest in the Sunday Silence field fromTatham Offshore Development, a wholly-owned subsidiary of DeepTechInternational, which was recently acquired by El Paso Energy. Thefield is contained within four blocks in the Ewing Bank area of theGulf of Mexico in about 1,500 feet of water. Flextrend has begundrilling of a new delineation well, the third to be drilled in thefield. Sunday Silence was discovered in July 1994, and its firstdelineation well was flow tested in September 1994 at a sustainedproduction rate of 8,700 barrels/d of oil and 5.4 MMcf/d of gas.Sunday Silence has received a royalty abatement from the MineralsManagement Service for its first 52.5 million Boe. ElÿPaso Energy,general partner of Leviathan, said the company plans to sell aportion of the field to a development partner as it is not thecompany’s custom to hold a large shares in single E&ampP ventures.

TransCanada del Bajio was awarded a permit to build and operatea system to transport gas from Calamanca, Guanajuato, Mexico, tothe capital city of Aquascalientes. Mexico’s Energy RegulatoryCommission (CRE) awarded the permit to the consortium made up ofTransCanada Pipelines Ltd. (95%) and Mexico’s Corporacion GUTSA(5%). The project entails construction of a 126-mile network of 12-and 16-inch pipelines with capacity of 90 MMcf/d. TransCanada delBajio will invest $56.4 million during the first five years of thesystem’s operation. The project is intended to supply gas to theBajio geographic zone whose distribution permit has been put up forbidding by the CRE. The winner of this permit will be announced byDec. 17. The TransCanada pipeline will originate at theValtierrilla station interconnection point with a Pemex Gas yPetroquimica Basica (PBPB) 36-inch diameter pipeline about 4 milesfrom Salamanca Guanajuato.

Nuevo Energy agreed to sell its East Texas gas assets for $190.6million to an affiliate of Samson Resources. The East Texas assetsaccounted for about 275 Bcfe of Nuevo’s Jan. 1 proved reserves. Theproperties are long-lived reserves located mainly in the Oak HillField and interests in the Carthage, SE Carthage and Chapel Hillfields, as well as small interests and royalty interests inadditional East Texas fields. Proceeds from the sale will be usedto eliminate Nuevo’s outstanding senior bank debt. Nuevo’s cashflow from these assets for the first half of 1998 was about $10million. Almost all of the reserves sold by Nuevo are gas. In thesecond quarter, Nuevo gas production averaged 89 MMcf/d. Of thatfigure, 37 MMcf/d came from the properties that are to be sold.

Illinova Energy Partners, one of the top-30 largest powermarketing operations in the nation, grabbed a foothold in theMichigan retail gas and power market with the purchase of EMC GasTransmission Co., which holds a large chunk of the state’scommercial and industrial gas customers. St. Clair Shores, MI-basedEMC, formed in 1986, is an energy supply management firm with 15Bcf/year of retail sales and more than 300 commercial andindustrial customers in Michigan and other states in the Midwest.

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