Different

Industry observers shouldn’t be surprised to see Texaco marchingto a different drummer in the industry’s high-stepping mergerparade, Texaco Chairman Peter I. Bijur said last week. Unlike manyof its peers, Texaco appears to be looking outside the upstreamindustry for a merger partner.

Texaco Chairman Peter I. Bijur said industry observers shouldn’tbe surprised to see Texaco marching to a different drummer in theindustry’s high-stepping merger parade

The East-West divergence in price tendencies was repeated againTuesday in a slightly different way. While Monday’s overall uptickshad been most pronounced in the West, eastern markets retreated byabout a nickel Tuesday as Western markets managed mostly flat tobarely-off-a-penny performances.

Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s Eastern Express Project 2000 is a muchdifferent expansion today-mainly much smaller-as it arrives at FERCthan when it was announced more than a year ago. Last winter, thecompany said there was market interest in more than 4 Bcf/d of firmcapacity along nearly every stretch of its system, from the Gulf ofMexico north, from Chicago and Niagara east and from New Hampshiresouth. But Tennessee filed an application yesterday with FERC toadd only 168 MMcf/d of capacity along the northernmost part of itspipeline at connections with PNGTS and Maritimes.

Same story, different company. That summarizes third quarterresults reported recently by Anadarko Petroleum. Like everyoneelse, Anadarko suffered from lower gas and oil prices last quarter,and the hurt shows plainly in its financials.

Canadian prices were strong Thursday, but it was a verydifferent market south of the border. Nearly all U.S. points werefalling between a nickel and a dime in what several sources agreedwas a “very quiet” trading day near the end of a quiet tradingweek. One marketer said he thinks everybody in the industry wantsto go play golf and say, “See you Sept. 1.”

NGC Corp. announced it is reorganizing its marketing and tradingoperations to reflect continued convergence of the gas and powerindustries and to “meet growing and different customer demands fora single source supplier.” In particular, the company announcedplans to combine the trading functions of Natural Gas Clearinghouseand Electric Clearinghouse, its gas and power marketing operations,and to make its gas liquids business a separate enterprise.