Natural gas marketers on average have done a poor job ofsatisfying their customers this year, according to a biennialreport issued by Mastio & Co. yesterday. Thirty six out of 77marketers got unsatisfactory report cards from their customers inthis area compared to 1997, it said, while only 16 marketers showedimprovement.

“This tells me that many, many marketers in the 1999 time periodwhen this data was collected…weren’t doing nearly as good a jobof keeping their customers happy and delighted as they” were twoyears ago, when the survey was last conducted, said Richard C.Mastio, president of St. Joseph, MO-based Mastio & Co.

He attributed the lack of responsiveness by marketers to thelower gas prices in 1999. Marketers have “cut some services or cutsome responsiveness…They didn’t do the things that they typicallydid in the years prior,” he said. “Now you can say they didn’t doit because they weren’t making any money. That’s the excuse peopleare going to use who didn’t do as well [in the rankings]. Buteveryone knows that the gas business is a supply-demand-related andweather-related business. And if you don’t take care of yourcustomers when times are not so good, they’re not likely to takecare of you [the marketer] when times are good.”

Within the past year, marketers “got rid” of a lot of their”marginally profitable” customers. “There was an awful lot ofpruning going on because gas wasn’t profitable. But it has sinceturned profitable,” Mastio said, and he seriously doubts marketerswill be able to attract those customers back.

In the Overall Index of 77 marketers, some of the top-rankedmarketers were the smaller ones: Clayton Energy Corp. [ranked one];Alliance Gas Services Inc. [2]; Tennergy [3]; Perry Gas Marketing[4]; and Volunteer Energy Corp. [5]. The basement-dwellers were thelarger marketers, including Koch Energy Trading [ranked 77]; ElPaso Energy Marketing [ranked 76]; Equitable Resources Marketing[ranked 74]; Texaco Gas Marketing [72]; KN Energy [71]; and EnronCapital & Trade Resources [69].

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that the smaller marketers aredoing a better job of being more customer responsive than largermarketers, he said. Although not ranked at the top of the OverallIndex, Mastio noted that several larger marketers showedsignificant improvement in customer satisfaction during the pasttwo years.

Sempra Energy had a “huge improvement,” rising from a ranking of67 in 1997 to 27 this year, he said. Exxon Co. USA jumped from 65thto 36th this year; Columbia Energy Services rose from 60th to 29th;Tenaska Marketing Ventures went from 53rd to 24th; Fina Natural GasCo. skipped from 66th to 57th; and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. rose to17th from 34th, Mastio noted.

Some of the big disappointments this year were U.S. GasTransportation [ranked 75]; Cabot Oil & Gas [ranked 61]; AvistaEnergy [51]; CXY Energy Inc. [56]; C.C. Pace Resources [20]; TexacoGas Marketing [72], and Southern Co. Energy Marketing [58],according to Mastio. Avista “had the largest decline” in customersatisfaction of all the marketers.

One of the brightest stars overall was ONEOK Gas Marketing,Mastio said. It was ranked the most customer responsive of the 25largest marketers in the nation, and fourth most customerresponsive marketer of the 50 largest marketers. Both industrialand LDC customers gave the company high marks, and it was ranked11th on the Overall Index of marketers.

The rankings were based on over 1,100 interviews with across-section of gas customers.

For more information on the Mastio Natural Gas Marketer CustomerSatisfaction report, contact Mastio & Co. at (816) 364-6200 orat www.mastio.com.

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