Building

Thunder Creek Gas Services LLC, a joint venture of KN Energy andDevon Energy, has completed construction on a major new gatheringtrunkline designed to meet the expanding production in Wyoming’sPowder River Basin, which is being touted as the “most active”coal-bed methane play in the nation.

TransCanada PipeLines, led by interim CEO Doug Baldwin, unveileda new organizational structure Friday, aimed at “building greatervalue for shareholders from its pipeline, power generation,midstream and marketing infrastructure across Canada and thenorthern tier of the United States.”

Building on its success developing the first salt cavern storagefacility in the Northeast, Energy East announced plans to developanother high-deliverability gas storage facility in the same areaof southwestern New York about five miles north of Watkins Glen.The proposed plant will be designed by Energy East subsidiarySeneca Lake Storage in two caverns owned by U.S. Salt and will beconnected to Columbia Gas Transmission via a proposed 3.2-milepipeline. It is expected to be in service in November 2001 with750,000 Dth of working gas capacity and 75,000 Dth of dailydeliverability.

TransCanada PipeLines, led by interim CEO Doug Baldwin, unveiled a new organizational structure Friday, aimed at “building greater value for shareholders from its pipeline, power generation, midstream and marketing infrastructure across Canada and the northern tier of the United States.”

Building on its success developing the first salt cavern storagefacility in the Northeast, Energy East announced plans to developanother high-deliverability gas storage facility in the same areaof southwestern New York about five miles north of Watkins Glen.The proposed plant will be designed by Energy East subsidiarySeneca Lake Storage in two caverns owned by U.S. Salt and will beconnected to Columbia Gas Transmission via a proposed 3.2-milepipeline. It is expected to be in service in November 2001 with750,000 Dth of working gas capacity and 75,000 Dth of dailydeliverability.

Columbia Transmission Communications (CTC), a wholly-ownedsubsidiary of Columbia Energy Group, unveiled plans to beginbuilding the initial leg of its telecommunications network Monday.The initial leg of the overall route will extend 260 miles from NewYork City to Washington D.C. using Columbia Gas Transmission’sright-of-way. It will be capable of providing voice, data and videosignal access to 16 million people. The company is developing plansto extend this network to 2,500 route miles with direct access to35 million people throughout the eastern United States, includinglines to Cleveland, Cincinnati and New Orleans. CTC said usingColumbia’s right-of-way will allow for a competitive, low-costfiber network. Columbia still needs to get landowner approval forthe lines, a company spokesman said, because the right-of-way wasapproved for pipeline use, not telecommunication wire.

Just in case there were any doubters still out there, AlliancePipeline says it now has nine of 10 mainline construction crews inthe field installing the $3 billion pipeline system. The crewsstarted construction on two spreads in North Dakota, one inMinnesota, two in Iowa and one in Illinois. Two spreads inSaskatchewan are to start today and one early next week.

Illinova Energy Partners (IEP) purchased another niche retailmarketing operation last week to bolster its presence in keyderegulating markets. The company, which has added EMC GasTransmission in Michigan and Equitable Resource Marketing inIndiana during the last six months, purchased Tempe, AZ-basedQuality Energy Services (QES) to gain a foothold in thesoon-to-be-deregulated Arizona energy market.

Panda Energy International Inc. and PSEG Americas, part ofPublic Service Enterprise Group, announced 50-50 joint ventureTexas Independent Energy to develop and operate high efficiency,low-cost electric power generating plants in Texas.