No bumps in the road so far for HoustonStreet.com, as tradersare motoring to its newest platform to buy and sell oil products.The web-based exchange expanded its virtual garage last Thursday,and now offers crude oil and refined product trading. The expansionadds to HoustonStreet’s energy markets, a cyber marketplace thathas been offering trades on wholesale power and natural gas salesnationwide since last summer.

In its first two days of operation, traders had already boughtand sold nearly $20 million of crude and refined products acrossmultiple hubs, products and grades. And yesterday’s trading wasriding well, too.

HoustonStreet’s Kim Salem said the 150 registered traders hadbeen busy Monday. “It’s going really well,” she said. “We’ve beenpleased with business so far, and expect it to continue.”

Crude oil and refined products are just the newest area of tradingin HoustonStreet’s overall energy trading portfolio. The Portsmouth,NH-based company already included wholesale power and naturalgas. Another new area, SpeedWay, will give users a streamlined methodto trade standard electricity products through large power tradinghubs. Relatively new, HoustonStreet only extended its trading coverageacross the country last September (see Daily GPI, Aug. 25, 1999).

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