The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in areport issued yesterday that the 2000 hurricane season could be awhopper with 11 or more tropical storms, of which seven or morecould become hurricanes, with three or more classified as major.”The greatest influences in this forecast continue to be theon-going La Nina and a lesser-known climate phenomenon of warmerthan normal Atlantic Ocean temperatures that affect hurricaneactivity over very long time scales,” said NOAA Administrator D.James Baker. “La Ni¤a is defined by cooler-than-average sea-surfacetemperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. Duringlast year’s hurricane season, La Ni¤a was bold, and clearlydefined, and gave forecasters more certainty. This year, La Ni¤a’send is in sight,” Baker said. “Even if La Ni¤a fades by August (asthe current forecast suggests), La Ni¤a’s remnants and otherinfluences will still likely bring more storms than usual,” headded.

The Mid-America Interconnected Network (MAIN) said yesterday anaudit of ComEd’s electric power supply resources shows the companyhas lined up 22,494 MW, which exceeds MAIN’s 15% supply reservebenchmark. ComEd officials also said they expect additionalidentified resources to be added before June, boosting theutility’s reserve margin to more than 16%.

Kinder Morgan Power and Southern Energy Inc. plan to build a 550MW gas-fired peaking power plant southeast of Little Rock, AK.Construction on the $250 million plant is expected to begin thissummer in Pulaski County, with the plant scheduled to beginproducing power by April 1, 2002. Gas transportation service forthe plant will be provided by Kinder Morgan Inc. subsidiary NaturalGas Pipeline Company of America (NGPL). Southern Company’smarketing affiliate will market the electric output.

The New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission approved theacquisition of EnergyNorth, Inc. by Eastern Enterprises andEastern’s merger partner KeySpan Corp., following a favorablereview of a settlement between the utilities, the Office of theConsumer Advocate and the Staff of the NH PUC. “The decision of theNew Hampshire Public Utilities Commission keeps us on track forcompleting our merger in the fall,” said KeySpan CEO Robert B.Catell. The settlement calls for ENGI’s customers to receive a 2.2%rate cut and other future benefits created by the merger. It alsoallows the utilities to request the amortization of transaction andintegration costs, including the acquisition premium, in rates onlyto the extent that they can demonstrate the benefits of the mergerto the customers equal or exceed the amount of the costs proposedfor amortization. On July 15, 1999, Eastern agreed to acquireEnergyNorth, owner of New Hampshire’s largest gas distributor. OnNovember 4, 1999, KeySpan announced plans to buy Eastern for $64per share, in a transaction with an enterprise value of $2.5billion. Terms of the EnergyNorth merger were adjusted at that timeto increase the price paid to EnergyNorth shareholders to$61.13/share to reflect the increased price of Eastern stock.Manchester-based EnergyNorth’s subsidiaries distribute gas andpropane gas to 100,000 customers throughout New Hampshire andVermont.

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