It’s been a little more than a week since the IntercontinentalExchange launched online energy trading among member companies, andthe site already has posted $1 billion in energy transactions.

“It was a week for [worldwide] oil [trading] but only a coupleof days for power and gas,” said spokesman Chuck Vice. “About halfthat billion was for oil and the other was split between power andgas with gas getting most of it.”

“We are trading firm power at all the major hubs across the U.S.and we are trading both fixed-price and index-priced physical gas,and a number of the most heavily traded basis swaps, swing swapsand some of the other financial instruments in gas,” he said.

ICE launched power and gas trading last Tuesday. “We wereactually just kind of winding down the last stages of beta testingon energy last week. It’s pretty much just trading among thepartner firms right now,” said Vice. “We’re about to open it up toa lot of other customers.”

ICE has been trading metals since August with about 500 users.In total, it has handled about $4 billion in transactions. But Vicesaid those numbers are expected to grow significantly as theexchange launches full commercial trading probably this week ornext. It is expected to have about 1,500 traders logged oninitially.

The exchange was launched in March with backing from BP Amoco,Royal Dutch Shell Group, Societie Generale Investment Banking,Totalfina Elf Group, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and MorganStanley Dean Witter. Once launched, multiple energy companiesjumped on board, including Southern Co., American Electric Power,Utilicorp United, Duke Energy, El Paso Energy and Reliant Energy.

With so many energy companies having a direct stake in theexchange, it is expected by many observers to surpass otherexisting sites in volume of transactions and revenue. However, ithas a long way to go given that EnronOnline already is exceeding2,100 transactions a day. Earlier this month, Enron said trades onits exchange totaled more than $155 billion.

Another important new exchange being launched this month isTradeSpark, which is powered by eSpeed and has TXU Energy Trading,Coral Energy, Dominion, Koch Energy, Williams, Dynegy and Entergy asits energy partners (see Daily GPI, Sept. 26).

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