Current

If El Paso continues on its current path, there will be nopipelines left to buy. The Houston-based energy giant stretched itsstreak of purchases yesterday by announcing an agreement betweenits subsidiary, El Paso Natural Gas Co., and Plains All AmericanPipeline L.P. to buy a portion of the All American Pipeline for$129 million. El Paso said it plans to invest $75 million toconvert a segment of the pipeline from an oil pipeline to a naturalgas pipeline upon FERC approval.

Five former and current members of Enron’s board of directors were put on the firing line last week during a hearing by an investigating subcommittee of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee into their role in the Enron fiasco. Most board members testified that Enron’s upper management kept them pretty much in the dark, and that they didn’t learn the extent of the financial nightmare until it was too late.

Expected to replace the current program expiring at the end of June, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton said last week that the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) is proposing to schedule 20 lease sales in eight outer continental shelf (OCS) planning areas in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Alaska as part of a new five-year leasing program. The proposed sale areas are in the Gulf of Mexico’s western, central and parts of the eastern planning areas, as well as Alaska’s Beaufort Sea, Norton Basin, Cook Inlet/Shelikof Strait and the Chukchi Sea/Hope Basin.

Due to the current interdependency of the U.S. economy, an attack at a key point along a pipeline could actually disrupt communications, information technology and power, as well as the petroleum and natural gas supplies that run through the pipes, according to Bobby R. Gillham, manager of global security for Conoco Inc. Environmental concerns over the past 20 years have forced interstate pipelines to not only carry natural gas and liquid petroleum products, but also fiber optic cable for communications, and power lines, which are run in the same rights of way, he said.

Due to the current interdependency of the U.S. economy, an attack at a key point along a pipeline could actually disrupt communications, information technology and power as well as the petroleum and natural gas supplies that run through the pipes, according to Bobby R. Gillham, manager of global security for Conoco Inc. Environmental concerns over the past 20 years have forced interstate pipelines to not only carry natural gas and liquid petroleum products, but also fiber optic cable for communications, and power lines are run in the same rights of way, he said.

Expected to replace the current program expiring at the end of June, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton said Monday that the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) is proposing to schedule 20 lease sales in eight outer continental shelf (OCS) planning areas in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Alaska as part of a new five-year leasing program. The proposed sale areas are in the Gulf of Mexico’s western, central and parts of the eastern planning areas, as well as Alaska’s Beaufort Sea, Norton Basin, Cook Inlet/Shelikof Strait and the Chukchi Sea/Hope Basin.

Due to the number of responses and suggestions regarding FERC’s current online systems, the Commission said that it has issued a notice of intent to modify its Commission Issuance Posting System (CIPS), Records Information Management System (RIMS) and its Docket Sheet System.

Deregulation within the U.S. power industry is losing momentum, and to move the country beyond the current “crisis of confidence” to a fully workable, deregulated marketplace, 12 policy and structural changes at a minimum need to be implemented, according to a study released Tuesday by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). The study concluded that the only way for deregulation to move forward is to adopt the game plan used by regions where competition is already in place.

Despite the 35% reduction in domestic drilling activity, drilling service costs have fallen only 15-20% so far because of consolidation in the industry. Today’s drilling and oil field service prices are 20-200% higher than during the same rig utilization in the last industry downturn, analysts at Raymond James & Associates said in an equity research note.