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The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued aproposal for public comment that would, among other things,eliminate the pooling of interests method of accounting forbusiness combinations. As part of its public consideration of theissues, the Board also will hold hearings on the subject early nextyear in New York and San Francisco. Comments on the proposal arerequested by Dec. 7.

Among the more notable sacrifices being made to get KN Energy”out of the ditch” and back down the highway are the decisions byRichard Kinder and William Morgan to work for annual salaries of $1with no bonuses. They will become the two largest shareholders ofthe new company once the merger of Kinder Morgan and KN Energy iscompleted. They also will be the top two executives.

The first fruit has fallen from the new Canadian tree ofcompetition among natural gas transporters, as TransCanadaPipeLines prepares to auction spare capacity that is developing onits system.

The first fruit has fallen from the new Canadian tree ofcompetition among natural gas transporters, as TransCanadaPipeLines prepares to auction spare capacity that is developing onits system.

Resistance to hedging has declined significantly amongindependent producers. But now that they’re hedging, some companiesare doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, according toexecutives at Statoil Energy.

In what one observer described as one of the first “blunders”among energy mergers, Sempra Energy and KN Energy last weekmutually agreed to call off their $6 billion marriage, which wasfirst announced in February.

In what one observer described as one of the first “blunders”among energy mergers, Sempra Energy and KN Energy said yesterdaythey have mutually agreed to call off their $6 billion marriage,which was first announced in February. The two companies said thatas they were studying the integration process they discovered thecombined company “would not be able to realize the businessobjectives they originally anticipated.”

The demonstrative trend among the top energy marketers appearsto be that the big movers continue getting much bigger while thesmaller marketers are struggling to maintain previous sales volumesand profitability, according to NGI’s marketing survey. The surveyalso indicates volume growth has very little correlation withfinancial performance.

Chesapeake Energy 1998 year-end results were hammered bynon-cash impairment charges of $881 million. Due mainly to “thesevere decline in oil and natural gas prices during 1998″Chesapeake lost $934 million on revenues of $382 million.