CMS Marketing, Services and Trading, (CMS-MST) has madesignificant additions to its energy services operations recently,signing a five-year energy management agreement with Chicago-basedBank One Corp. last week and expanding its national presencethrough the purchase of Viron Corp. from York International in lateSeptember.

John Barnett, a CMS spokesman, said the Bank One deal is thecompany’s largest energy management contract. CMS will procure allelectricity and gas for Bank One, and analyze utility bill paymentservices for Bank One’s 3,200 facilities in 34 states and theDistrict of Columbia. Neither the financial terms of the deal, norBank One’s energy output were disclosed.

“This decision leverages CMS’ energy expertise to minimize ourenergy costs and to consolidate utility bill payment and energytracking information for all of our facilities across the country,”said Robert J. Reinhard, vice president of Bank One’s real estatedepartment.

CMS-MST, which already has over 12,000 commercial and industrialcustomers, said it will also provide: utility bill handling,auditing, analysis and payment services; reports on energy usageand costs; and negotiate services for utility customer choiceprograms. In 1998, the company completed 560 energy serviceprojects.

“CMS will utilize our full range of nation-wide capabilities tominimize Bank One’s energy costs and improve efficiencies at itsfacilities,” said Royal P. Lefere, CMS-MST’s vice president ofenergy management services. “Consolidation of energy purchasing andmanagement activities is guaranteed to save Bank One millions ofdollars, as well as time, and will allow them to focus moreattention on their core business of banking and financialservices.”

The CMS Energy Corp. subsidiary said its purchase of Viron Corp.was made to expand its presence into 12 new states and help itincrease its total number of energy service projects from lastyear’s total of 560. Viron will operate under the name CMS VironEnergy Services.

The new company intends to keep all of Viron’s 148 employees and22 offices. It will design energy solutions, arrange financing forcustomers, provide turnkey energy services to facility upgradeprojects and provide measurement and verification of energysavings.

“With Viron now a part of our business, CMS has offices in 30states, the District of Columbia and three Canadian Provinces,”Lefere added. “We have added capabilities to provide commercial andindustrial customers a full range of energy management services,which includes electric and gas commodity procurement,” Leferesaid. For 1998, CMS-MST procured 370 Bcf, 14 million MW, and 1.2million barrels of NGL.

John Norris

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