Dynegydirect, the B2B portal and trading site launched by Houston-based Dynegy Inc. that began trading Nov. 1, announced it had exceeded $1.5 billion in online notional transactions by early last week, with more than $1 billion of the energy and communications commodity transactions generated by new customers. The site now has more than 400 registered users (see NGI, Oct. 23).

A proprietary system for Dynegy customers, the site offers access to more than 300 commodities, including North American power, natural gas and natural gas liquids. Coal, emission allowances and weather derivatives will be offered in the first quarter of 2001, and international energy products and bandwidth will follow in the second quarter.

The site’s success has been “enormously gratifying to us,” said Matt Schatzman, president of Dynegy’s Energy Trading unit. “We knew customers wanted speed, accuracy and cost-efficiency, and we have been pleased with their response to Dynegydirect. We expect site traffic and transactional volume to continue to grow as we add new products and our customers and trading partners become more familiar with Dynegydirect’s features.”

R. Blake Young, president of Dynegy’s Global Technology unit, called the site “more than a trading portal.” He said that “ultimately,” the site would be the customers’ “doorway to doing business with Dynegy. Dynegydirect puts in motion our vision for a highly customized, flexible and scaleable electronic interface with our customers, suppliers and partners.”

Before launching its own site, Dynegy had begun building its Internet presence earlier this year through other portals. In April, the energy marketer invested $25 million in a joint venture with Williams for a minority stake in B2B developer eSpeed Inc. (see NGI, May 1). In September, Dynegy began trading on the Internet portal TradeSpark, developed by eSpeed, which is a non-proprietary commodity-trading site (see NGI, Oct. 2). TradeSpark is a partnership of Williams Cos., TXU Corp. and Koch Industries, and Dynegy plans to join the partnership in the future, but no time frame has been set.

Whereas TradeSpark offers a neutral exchange and large standard blocks for trading, Dynegydirect is customized for Dynegy customers, who are able to pick and choose what types of trades they want to conduct and what size trades they want to perform. In the near future, Dynegydirect will offer other services, including news and weather.

The site also is set to expand globally in the coming months. The first expansion will be into the United Kingdom. Long term, Dynegy hopes to extend its global reach offering trades in power, natural gas, coal, emission allowances, weather derivatives, international natural gas liquids and bandwidth.

Carolyn Davis, Houston

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