Corp

Apache Corp. dramatically grew its asset base and shiftedattention away from its poor first quarter financial performancelast week by buying 22 fields in the Outer Continental Shelf of theGulf of Mexico (GOM) from Shell for $715 million and one millioncommon shares of stock. The acquisition will go into effectretroactive to March.

Both El Paso Energy and Coastal Corp. wracked up record earningsfor the first quarter, while The Williams Cos. gave a lacklusterperformance – with most of its major business groups posting lowerresults compared to a year ago.

Enron Corp. has eliminated the last vestiges of its one-timehigh-profile venture into California’s residential electricitymarket by pulling out of its deal with the resort city of PalmSprings. Enron was the energy service provider for a citygovernment-established aggregation business, which had about 2,000mostly residential customers lured away from the local monopolyprovider, Southern California Edison.

CMS Corp.’s marketing division, CMS Marketing, Services and Trading (MST), completed an agreement last Tuesday to purchase a total of 9.3 Bcf of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the North West Shelf LNG project in Australia for delivery to the CMS Trunkline LNG facility in Lake Charles, LA. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. announced a common stockoffering of 6.25 million shares. Proceeds of about $240.6 millionbefore expenses are to be used for general purposes, including U.S.gas and oil projects. The offering is Anadarko’s first since it wasspun off from Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line in 1986. Moody’sInvestors Service changed its rating outlook for Anadarko’s fixedincome securities to stable from negative based on increasingproduction, reserve replacement at reasonable finding costs, aswell as the common equity issuance. Anadarko has replaced more than200% of production for the past five years and in 1998 replacedmore than 500% of production at finding costs below most of theindustry, Moody’s said. The addition of mainly gas reserves lastyear lowered oil reserves to about 53% of the total.

Combating its poor first quarter performance, Houston-basedApache Corp. dramatically grew its asset base Thursday, paying $715million and transferring one million common shares of stock toShell in exchange for 22 fields in the Outer Continental Shelf ofthe Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Apache expects the transaction to add 20cents/share of value in 1999. The acquisition will go into effectretroactive to March 1.

CMS Corp.’s marketing division, CMS Marketing, Services and Trading (MST), completed an agreement Tuesday to purchase a total of 9.3 Bcf of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the North West Shelf LNG project in Australia for delivery to the CMS Trunkline LNG facility in Lake Charles, LA. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The announcement marks the second major deal CMS has struck to take advantage of its purchase of Eastern Panhandle Pipeline and Trunkline Gas Co. from Duke Energy last year.

Enron Corp. has eliminated the last vestiges of its one-timehigh-profile venture into California’s residential electricitymarket by pulling out of its deal with the resort city of PalmSprings. Enron was the energy service provider for a citygovernment-established aggregation business, which had about 2,000mostly residential customers lured away from the local monopolyprovider, Southern California Edison.

Both El Paso Energy and Coastal Corp. wracked up recordfirst-quarter earnings last week, but for completely differentreasons.