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BP Amoco added another 3,000 to the heap of 7,000 job cutsalready announced in the wake of the merger of British Petroleumand Amoco and in the midst of depressed oil and gas prices. Thenewest job cuts will be worldwide, and it is not yet known how manywill be in the United States. Last week the company also announcedreplacement cost operating profit for 1998 of $6,437 million, off39% from $10,583 in 1997.

SRI Oil & Gas Ltd., a private Montreal company, agreed withCalgary-based Hornet Oil & Gas Ltd. to acquire all outstandingshares of Hornet in exchange for SRI shares. SRI already owns 11.8%of private company Hornet’s common shares. It is estimated about1,650,000 common shares of SRI will be issued in the event theoffer is successful. The exchange ratio will be based on the netvalue of each entity Dec. 31, 1998.

Southern Co. is seeking a Securities and Exchange Commissionwaiver of Public Utility Holding Company Act rules so it can doubleits already massive investment program in nonregulated powergeneration assets primarily in North America over the next fewyears.

With storage levels already above 3 Tcf, few observers areexpecting the industry to have any trouble meeting gas demand earlythis winter. But the first quarter of next year, could provide amarket test not seen in the past two winters, several analystswarned last week. In its October Short-Term Energy Outlook, theEnergy Information Administration (EIA) seems to agree.

Crews were already starting to leave platforms Thursday in theMobile Bay area, but it was hard to tell from cash priceperformances, which ranged from flat to down about a nickel.Perhaps that was because virtually no shut-ins are occurring yet, aTexas trader suggested.

The common stocks of some natural gas companies which alreadyhad been showing a downtrend got caught in the sinkhole that wasMonday’s cliffjumper stock market and several established new lows.There was no one explanation for the declines in the stocks of someof the hardest hit, including Coastal Corp., Consolidated NaturalGas, Dynegy, El Paso Energy and Williams. Some were pointing to thecompanies’ exposure in the international arena or to declining oil,natural gas and liquids prices for the trend.

Traders who hadn’t finished already wound up their July bidweekbusiness Tuesday and started looking for clues on aftermarketdirection. What they found in swing deals done for today only was amixed bag of flat to up or down slightly from bidweek levels. Butmany sources are expecting an overall strong aftermarket. There maybe some initial softness since the July Fourth holiday weekend isconsidered the lowest demand period of the year. But sources lookfor fundamental cooling load to support gas prices after that.

The Public Service Co. of Colorado announced yesterday italready has begun construction of its 53-mile Front Range Pipelinewhich, when completed, will serve the Denver, CO, natural gasmarket. The construction comes less than one month after theColorado Public Utilities Commission gave the go-ahead for the $25million pipeline project.

Before its massive 700 MMcf/d expansion/extension project iseven put in place, Northern Border already is planning to fileanother expansion/extension that would provide shippers with 545MMcf/d of transportation capacity into Indiana markets.