Pulling energy professional resources provider Skipping Stone out from under the Commerce Energy umbrella, Skipping Stone President Greg Lander and founder Peter Weigand have partnered to acquire the company for an undisclosed sum. Founded by Weigand in 1996, Skipping Stone will continue to focus on the energy industry. The partners are expanding the company’s existing consulting service offerings to add interim management and contract resources, as well as executive search services. “We are pleased with the transaction and believe it results in Skipping Stone being better positioned to serve its clients by returning to its original focus of providing clients with seasoned energy industry veterans to help develop and evaluate strategic alternatives, pursue opportunities and solve problems,” said Lander. The purchase included all of the assets, intellectual property, client contracts and the operational and consulting personnel. Included in the assets is Capacity Center, www.capacitycenter.com, a wholly owned subsidiary that provides interstate gas pipeline capacity release transactions and other capacity and operational information to physical and financial trading companies and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Skipping Stone’s headquarters are in Boston with additional locations in Chicago, Houston, Tampa and Orange County, CA. The company has more than 200 clients worldwide in the natural gas, electricity, renewable energy, software and clean energy technology markets.

Derivatives exchange giant CME Group announced it will launch 18 new natural gas basis, index and swing swaps futures contracts on ClearPort, beginning on Oct. 19 for trade date Oct. 20. The new futures contracts and their commodity codes are: NGPL STX natural gas basis swap (T5); Algonquin Citygate natural gas basis swap (B4); TCO natural gas index swap (Q1); TETCO STX natural gas index swap (Q2); Tennessee Zone 0 natural gas index swap (Q4); Transco Zone 3 natural gas index swap (Y6); Tennessee 500 leg natural gas index swap (Y7); MichCon natural gas index swap (Y8); CIG Rockies natural gas index swap (Z8); TCO natural gas swing swap (A1); TETCO STX natural gas swing swap (T2); Tennessee Zone 0 natural gas swing swap (T4); Malin natural gas swing swap (W9); Stanfield natural gas swing swap (Q3); Transco Zone 3 natural gas swing swap (T6); Tennessee 500 leg natural gas swing swap (T7); MichCon natural gas swing swap (T8); and CIG Rockies natural gas swing swap (U8). The basis and index swap futures contracts will be listed for 36 consecutive months, and the swing swap futures contracts will be listed for two consecutive months. The first listed month for all contracts will be November 2008. The contract will be 2,500 MMBtu in size with a minimum price fluctuation of $0.0025 per MMBtu.

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