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BP shareholders gave their overwhelming support to the company’smerger with Amoco last week. About 700 shareholders voted toapprove the merger at a general meeting at the Royal Festival Hallin London. Shareholders representing another 3.2 billion sharesvoted by proxy with 92% approving the merger. Chairman PeterSutherland called the vote a “massive endorsement” of the deal. Theall-stock transaction will result in a 60-40 equity split with BPshareholders having the majority.

Only five of a possible 19 marketers are making deliveries toabout 16,000 out of 1.4 million customers of Atlanta Gas Light thismonth, but it’s a start in the LDC’s state-approved plan to workits way out of the regulated merchant business.

As an enticement to do business, Aquila Energy is sending giftsto about 2,000 large energy users as part of a $3 million-plusdirect marketing and national advertising campaign. The gifts are aphone, antique bank replica, or a weather radio and are being sentto prospects in Chicago, Denver, Pittsburgh, New York, Houston,Baltimore, and Washington, DC.

It has been a long time since bullish traders have had much tosmile about in the natural gas market. Both fundamentals andtechnicals have exerted their influence on the market for most ofthe summer, and, in doing so, have forced natural gas prices todepths not witnessed since 1995. However, Monday morning traderswere greeted with two potentially bullish developments — onetechnical in nature and the other fundamental — that prompted ashort-covering rally enabling the market to eat away at some oflast week’s price loses. The October contract led the way,advancing 8.8 cents to settle at $1.752 yesterday.

Dynegy CEO Chuck Watson attributed his company’s improved secondquarter performance to stronger margins in the wholesale gas andelectric businesses despite weaker margins in the company’s liquidsbusiness.

The next round of restructuring is about to unfold in Canada’snatural-gas community as a white knight buyer prepares to stepforward for the country’s second-biggest supply aggregator,Pan-Alberta Gas Ltd. In fact, a team of rescuers has emerged.Senior Canadian industry sources say a producer consortium has comeup with a winning bid that will both keep the mammoth dealer inhome-grown hands and heal the worst remaining sore spot in thecommunity.

Boston Edison issued a request for proposals (RFP) seeking bidsfor about 2,000 MW of electricity to replace power now supplied bySithe Energies from plants Sithe recently bought from BostonEdison. The short-term power purchase agreement with Sithe expiresNov. 30. The power purchased through this competitive biddingprocess, combined with power from the Pilgrim nuclear plant andother power supply contracts, will be used to meet Edison’s needsDec. 1 through May 31, 1999. Proposals must be submitted by Aug. 3.

The sun likely won’t set on the Gas Industry Standards Boarduntil at least the end of 2001. After about an hour of debateThursday, the GISB board of directors voted to extend GISB’s sunsetclause from Dec. 31, 1998 to Dec. 31, 2001. Had the board notextended the clause, GISB would have ceased to exist at year-end.The original resolution called for extending the clause to Dec. 31,2000. Some on the board wanted to do away with the clause. Hadthere been enough support for that, future disbanding of GISB couldresult only from a majority vote by the board. Others wanted thesunset clause not to come up again for four or five years. GISBExecutive Director Rae McQuade said she was happy with the boarddecision.

Bulls have had very little if anything positive to talk aboutlately with respect to gas prices at the New York MercantileExchange. Mild June temps, a healthy storage level, and amplesupply have weighed on the market since the current downtrend beganon April 9th. So it comes as no surprise that upon the release ofthe less-than-expected 86 Bcf AGA storage injection, bulls sawtheir first opportunity in a while to push the market higher. Thefirst thrust was registered in Wednesday night’s ACCESS session.Then, after opening higher yesterday, the contract traded in a neat5-cent trading range settling at $1.970, up 4 cents for the day.