After less than two years as president of NGC Corp., TomMatthews is leaving the company for an organization he considers anon-traditional utility, Washington Water Power (WWP). He said thecompany he will run as CEO and chairman of the board is among abouta half dozen utilities that have been “inventive and creative” inresponding to deregulation.

“From what I’ve seen in the couple months I’ve looked at them,all four areas of their company are doing very well and havesubstantial opportunities for growth. And this is the generationside, the transmission side, the distribution side in both powerand gas. as well as the non-regulated side.

“One of the things that looks good is [WWP marketing subsidiary]Avista [Energy] which has done very well in the fundamentalphysical business rather than just play a lot of the volatilefinancial trading between marketers.” Avista recently joined thetop 25% of the nation’s power marketers, ranking 21st in salesvolumes. Attaining the assets necessary for successful physicaltrading has been a focus of NGC.

One possible future move for WWP would be the acquisition ofadditional generating assets, although details are not yet known,Matthews said. “It depends on what areas of the country we want togrow into and how much we want to add right where we are.” Matthewssaid what he learned at NGC about opportunities for powergeneration and the running of a disciplined trading operation willbe useful knowledge at WWP.

Matthews’ NGC responsibilities included oversight of worldwideoperations, including Warren Petroleum, NGC’s gas liquidssubsidiary; NGC Global Energy, the company’s internationaldivision; Destec Energy, the company’s power division; and thecorporate merger and acquisition, legal, regulatory, andinformation technology functions.

Prior to his time with NGC, Matthews held the position of vicepresident of Texaco, president of Texaco’s Global Gas and PowerDivision, and president and chief executive officer of TexacoNatural Gas, where he was responsible for worldwide power, naturalgas processing, gas liquids, gas pipelines, and gas sales andmarketing operations. Matthews also held positions in Texaco asvice president of gas for Texaco U.S.A and president of TexacoRefining and Marketing, Inc.

Before joining Texaco, Matthews spent eight years at Tenneco aspresident of Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company and executive vicepresident of Tenneco Gas. He also spent 16 years with Exxon invarious domestic and international engineering, management, andexecutive positions.

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