Buying

Amerada Hess agreed to buy gas and power marketer Statoil EnergyServices Inc. of Alexandria, VA. Statoil serves industrial andcommercial customers, mainly in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland,Virginia and Washington, D.C.

As part of a continued streamlining, Kinder Morgan Inc. unloadedall of its Oklahoma, Kansas and West Texas gathering and processingbusinesses last week to ONEOK Inc. In addition, ONEOK agreed to buyKinder’s marketing and trading business as well as certain storageand transmission pipelines in the Midcontinent.

Kinder Morgan Inc. and ONEOK Inc. agreed for ONEOK to buy all ofKinder’s gas gathering and processing businesses in Oklahoma,Kansas and West Texas, the companies announced Tuesday. Inaddition, ONEOK agreed to buy Kinder’s marketing and tradingbusiness as well as certain storage and transmission pipelines inthe Midcontinent.

In an attempt to decide between buying third-party capacity orbuilding the facilities to generate the capacity itself, FloridaPower Corp. issued an RFP yesterday, seeking bids from companiesinterested in generating 530 MW for the electric company beginningin Nov. 2003.

Fueled by the East’s worst winter storm in four years, naturalgas futures erupted higher at the open yesterday as tradersestablished new longs with confidence.

After a strong opening at $2.28 failed to entice much in the wayof additional buying, natural gas futures gave back most of thegains achieved during Wednesday’s Access trading session anddrifted lower for much of the yesterday’s session. Although itsmomentum was decidedly to the downside Thursday, the Februarycontract did manage to post a higher high at $2.29 and escape witha modest, 0.8-cent advance to finish at $2.252. Estimated volumewas thin with only 45,585 contracts changing hands.

Kinder Morgan Inc. agreed to sell the capital stock of MidCon Gas Products of New Mexico Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary, to GPM Gas Corp., a unit of Phillips Petroleum, for $20 million in cash. Closing is expected by year-end. MidCon Gas Products owns the Big Eddy and Logans Draw gathering systems in Eddy County, NM. The combined systems include 159 miles of four- to ten-inch pipe with average throughput of 50 MMcf/d. Richard D. Kinder, CEO, said the sale is part of Houston-based Kinder Morgan’s back to basics strategy to divest of non-core assets. Sale proceeds will reduce debt.

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP (KMP) continued amassing gasassets yesterday, buying an indirect 33.3% interest in TrailblazerPipeline from an affiliate of Columbia Energy Group for $38 millionin cash. The move comes only a week after Kinder Morgan Inc. (KMI),parent of the general partner in KMP, announced plans to transfer$700 million in former KN Energy assets to the company, includinganother 33.3% share in Trailblazer.

Indianapolis-based Indiana Energy continued to expand itsregional service territory last week through a $425 millionpurchase of the retail gas distribution business of DPL Inc. ofDayton, OH. The deal, which will grow its distribution customerbase by more than 300,000 customers and will add 5,000 miles ofdistribution pipe, comes only a few months after the $1.9 billionmerger of Indiana Energy with Sigcorp, the Evansville, ID-basedholding company of Southern Indiana Gas and Electric (Sigeco),which provides gas and electricity to 150,000 customers insouthwest Indiana.