Dynegydirect, the B2B portal and trading site that was launchedby Houston-based Dynegy Inc. and began trading Nov. 1, has alreadyexceeded $1.5 billion in online notional transactions, with morethan $1 billion of the energy and communications commoditytransactions generated by new customers. The site now has more than400 registered users (see Daily GPI, Oct. 17).

Specifically designed for Dynegy customers, the site offersaccess to more than 300 commodities, including North Americanpower, natural gas and natural gas liquids. Coal, emissionallowances and weather derivatives will be offered in the firstquarter of 2001, and international energy products and bandwidthwill follow in the second quarter.

The site’s success has been “enormously gratifying to us,” saidMatt Schatzman, president of Dynegy’s Energy Trading unit. “We knewcustomers wanted speed, accuracy and cost-efficiency, and we havebeen pleased with their response to Dynegydirect. We expect sitetraffic and transactional volume to continue to grow as we add newproducts and our customers and trading partners become morefamiliar 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 doingbusiness with Dynegy. Dynegydirect puts in motion our vision for ahighly customized, flexible and scaleable electronic interface withour customers, suppliers and partners.”

Before launching its own site, Dynegy had begun building itsInternet presence earlier this year through other portals. InApril, the energy marketer invested $25 million in a joint venturewith Williams for a minority stake in B2B developer eSpeed Inc.(see Daily GPI, April 28).

In September, Dynegy began trading on the Internet portalTradeSpark, developed by eSpeed, which is a neutral commodity-tradingsite (see Daily GPI,Sept. 26). TradeSpark is a partnership of Williams Cos., TXUCorp. and Koch Industries, and Dynegy plans to join the partnership inthe future but no time frame has been set.

Dynegydirect complements the TradeSpark partnership by offeringcustomers whatever they want and need, according to Schatzman.Whereas TradeSpark offers a neutral exchange and large standardblocks for trading, Dynegydirect is customized for Dynegycustomers, who are able to pick and choose what types of tradesthey want to conduct and what size trades they want to perform.There is no minimum trade volume on Dynegydirect.

In the near future, Dynegydirect will offer other services toits U.S. customers, including news and weather. The site also isset to expand globally in the coming months. The first expansionwill be into the United Kingdom. Long term, Dynegy hopes to extendits global reach offering trades in power, natural gas, coal,emission allowances, weather derivatives, international natural gasliquids and bandwidth.

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