Either

FERC should either reject outright or suspend for the maximumfive-month period Dominion Transmission Inc.’s request for a”massive and unsupported rate increase” of $65 million, a municipalgas distributor contends.

Archie W. Dunham, chairman and CEO of Conoco Inc., is thehighest paid executive of all the energy companies eitherheadquartered in Houston, TX, or with a significant local presencethere, according an annual ranking by the Houston Chronicle thatwas released last week.

Archie W. Dunham, chairman and CEO of Conoco Inc., is thehighest paid executive of all the energy companies eitherheadquartered in Houston, TX, or with a significant local presencethere, according an annual ranking by the Houston Chronicle thatwas released yesterday.

Natural gas futures seesawed to either side of unchanged only tofinish just a fraction of a cent higher yesterday as a late roundof fund buying retraced losses stemming from commercial and localselling earlier in the session.

Having the merry month of May start today gave Friday’s tradingfor the weekend something of a split personality, but except for afew western points there was no need for a psychiatrist. There waslittle appreciable difference between prices for Saturday/Sundayand Monday-only in most cases, sources said.

In a remarkably uniform display of softness, prices fell byabout a nickel Tuesday at nearly every point across the board.Rarely has the market been so consistent with the great majority ofdeclines clustered within the range of 3-7 cents and with nogeographical bias.

Energy East Corp. has announced the successful completion of itsmerger with Connecticut Energy Corp., the first of four New Englandutility acquisitions initiated by the New York-based company in1999.

During Sept. 7-11 maintenance on its Topock (AZ) Lateral andrelated facilities, Transwestern expects no flows to either SoCalGas or PG&E at their Topock interconnects. However, thepipeline said it is investigating “limited alternative deliveryarrangements” for the two points. It will be able to schedule up to300,000 MMBtu/d at Mojave Pipeline’s Topock interconnect.

Without any impetus to break in either direction, natural gasfutures continued to subsist on a steady diet of range-boundtrading yesterday at the New York Mercantile Exchange. But incontrast to Tuesday’s session, which featured the market closingnear its high trade for the day, Wednesday’s session was dominatedby selling that ushered the prompt August contract down 3 cents to$2.146. Estimated volume was light, with only 44,985 contractschanging hands.