Even

Enron likes to say about half its earnings come from businessesthat didn’t even exist five years ago. Considering the company’sresults for 1Q 1999, that bodes well for areas where the big E isjust now getting its feet wet, such as retail energy services,water, and communications.

Enron likes to say about half its earnings come from businessesthat didn’t even exist five years ago. Considering the company’sresults for 1Q 1999, that bodes well for businesses where the big Eis just now getting its feet wet, such as retail energy services,water and communications.

The majors have had their day, now it’s the independents’ turnin the merger mart, and analysts are targeting Burlington Resourcesand possibly even Mitchell Energy as companies in play.

After halting a three-day, 25-cent price slide Tuesday, naturalgas futures slowly began to build yesterday what bulls would liketo think is a base on which further gains will be added. Andalthough it is far from universal, that sentiment was echoed byothers who think that the confluence of relatively strong cashprices and rallying crude oil prices are supportive factors fornatural gas. The April contract finished 3.1 cents higher at $1.748in light trading.

Eastern markets maintained the week’s general pattern of flatpricing Friday, even eking out small increases here and there. TheWest tended to be a little softer due to the usual weekend fall-offin demand, but the declines there were fairly minuscule at no morethan 1-4 cents down in nearly every case.

Incremental prices closed out the month of January once againdefying bearish demand factors. In deals done Friday, most averagesvaried little from their Thursday positions. And though traderswere separating weekend business into Saturday/Sunday andMonday-only deals due to the shift from January to February, theyreported little appreciable difference in pricing between the twotime periods.

Despite a dearth of fundamental support, the cash market sawmostly minor gains Wednesday. The firmness came as a surprise tomany who couldn’t understand where the demand was coming from. Aminuscule gain in Henry Hub futures didn’t give cash much impetusat all, one trader said.

Surprising even itself, Consumers Energy announced last weekthat in only eight months of the Gas Customer Choice program,100,000 of its customers switched to an alternate supplier,reaching the limit for the first year of the plan. Out of the 10suppliers vying for Consumers’ market, Sempra Energy affiliateEnergy America-Michigan topped the list by signing 90% of theenrollments, a Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC)spokesperson said.

In this uncertain world Pittsburgh-based Weatherwise USA isoffering to eliminate one weather-related stress factor – that ofskyrocketing gas heating and cooling bills. The WeatherwiseWeatherProof Bills program claims to be the first to offer afixed-price gas service that eliminates weather- and gasprice-related uncertainty for individual consumers.