Announcement

Following an announcement earlier this month that it is embarking on a companywide restructuring, industry giant BP plc last week released disappointing third quarter results — a 29% decline in net income — that were largely influenced by refinery problems, lower refining margins and weak marketing and trading results.

Following an announcement earlier this month that it is embarking on a companywide restructuring, industry giant BP plc Tuesday released disappointing third quarter results — a 29% decline in net income — that were largely influenced by refinery problems, lower refining margins and weak marketing and trading results.

Assuming that banking and energy regulators in the UK and United States agree, Sempra Energy’s announcement Monday of a $2.65 billion joint venture with Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to run and capitalize the San Diego-based energy company’s trading operations (see Daily GPI, July 10) provides it with the best of both worlds. Sempra can use RBS’s financial heft to realize upside growth while at the same time lowering its risk.

Southern California Gas issued a high-linepack OFO for Saturday but didn’t send the OFO announcement until that morning. The order, with a 10% tolerance for positive daily imbalances, was kept in place through Sunday before being allowed to lapse Monday.

Not to be outdone by the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) announcement last week that it posted new volume and commission records during February, the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) reported last week that exchange-wide volumes during February were up over February 2006 levels and that electronic trading of its contracts through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) Globex system is enjoying “significant increases.” The dueling announcements from Nymex and ICE brought on a little bout of deja vu from early February, when both companies touted record January volumes (see NGI, Feb. 12).

Not to be outdone by the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) announcement last week that it posted new volume and commission records during February, the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) reported Monday that exchange-wide volumes during February were up over February 2006 levels and that electronic trading of its contracts through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) Globex system is enjoying “significant increases.” The dueling announcements from Nymex and ICE brought on a little bout of deja vu from early February, when both companies touted record January volumes (see Daily GPI, Feb. 6).

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating insider trading that allegedly took place just prior to the announcement last week of the $45 billion leveraged buyout of TXU Corp. Acting on an SEC plea Friday, a Chicago District Court judge issued summons for “unknown purchasers,” who the SEC claimed benefited from a more than 13% run-up in TXU’s common stock on Feb. 26 when the buyout bid was announced.

Investors welcomed Devon Energy Corp.’s announcement Tuesday to sell its West African oil and natural gas assets to concentrate more of its resources in North America and the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM). In heavy trading, the Oklahoma City-based producer’s share price gained more than $2.15, or 3.2%, to close at $69.43 for the day.

The New York Mercantile Exchange’s (Nymex) announcement late Wednesday that it intends to enter the soft agricultural commodity futures markets ruffled more than a few feathers in the trading world, chiefly those of the New York Board of Trade (Nybot), which accused Nymex on Thursday of a “transparent attempt to interfere” with Nybot’s $1 billion-plus merger with IntercontinentalExchange (ICE).