Brought

In a two and a half hour hearing last Thursday the Illinois Commerce Commission brought together various representatives from government bodies as well as state utilities to discuss and pose questions regarding the current crisis involving high natural gas prices.

A successful transformation of its energy business brought a no-surprise expanded earnings forecast for 2001 last week from Tulsa-based Williams. The company expects to meet or beat Wall Street expectations of $1.26 per share for the entire company and $1.73 per share for its energy division, which has seen its marketing and trading earnings soar along with higher energy prices.

A successful transformation of its energy business brought ano-surprise expanded earnings forecast for 2001 yesterday fromTulsa-based Williams. The company expects to meet or beat WallStreet expectations of $1.26 per share for the entire company and$1.73 per share for its energy division, which has seen itsmarketing and trading earnings soar along with higher energyprices.

Southwestern Energy said yesterday that the lawsuit brought byroyalty and mineral rights owners alleging damages from anunderground natural gas storage facility in Franklin County, AR isnot supported by the facts or the law, and said that it had actedaccording to the guidelines of the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission.

The first civil lawsuit was brought Tuesday against El PasoNatural Gas for the deadly explosion in southeastern New Mexico,accusing the pipeline of negligence in failing to “properlyinspect, maintain and operate” its system.

Arguments opened last week in a $7.5 billion lawsuit brought byTransAmerican Natural Gas Corp. and its founder, Jack Stanley,accusing Coastal Corp. and its founder Oscar Wyatt Jr., El PasoNatural Gas, and William Wise, CEO of parent El Paso Energy, ofvarious illegal acts aimed at financially underminingTransAmerican.

Arguments opened this week in a $7.5 billion lawsuit brought byTransAmerican Natural Gas Corp. and its founder, Jack Stanley,accusing Coastal Corp. and its founder Oscar Wyatt Jr., El PasoNatural Gas, and William Wise, CEO of parent El Paso Energy ofvarious illegal acts aimed at financially underminingTransAmerican.

Today’s conference was brought to you by the letter E. Indeed,the fifth letter of the alphabet loomed large on the first day ofthe Cambridge Energy Research 19th annual Executive Conference inHouston yesterday.

Since mid-1995, exponential growth of the Internet has broughtthe number of pages on the World Wide Web from about seven millionto approximately 800 million by mid-1999, according to a statisticcited by Gas Industry Standards Board (GISB) Executive Director RaeMcQuade.