In its second major energy services move in the past five days,CMS Marketing, Services and Trading, (CMS-MST) announced afive-year energy management agreement with Chicago-based Bank OneCorp., the nation’s fifth largest bank holding company. Neither thefinancial terms of the deal, nor Bank One’s energy output weredisclosed.

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.

“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 energy services arena has been CMS-MST’s focus for the past fewmonths. Late last week, the CMS Energy Corp. subsidiary said itpurchased Viron Corp., an energy services and management company (seeDaily GPI, Oct. 1) from YorkInternational. The deal expanded CMS’ presence into 12 new states. Twomonths ago, the company’s Canadian affiliate, PremStar Energy,acquired ECNG Inc., an independent energy consulting firm, from ElPaso Energy Marketing Canada Inc., giving CMS the ability to provideenergy procurement and management services for over 1,000 industrial,commercial and institutional clients with more than 10,000 end-uselocations across Canada (see Daily GPI, Aug. 4).

Energy management is just the latest hat worn by CMS’ marketingarm. The company is also CMS’ main buyer of liquefied natural gas.

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