Floor

The Oil & Gas Asset Clearinghouse will hold its next Hybrid Live Floor/Internet Auction, offering 1,525 quality oil and gas properties combined into 253 lots, at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on Jan. 30. For the third consecutive year, the clearinghouse has been selected to hold an auction in conjunction with the North American Prospect Expo (NAPE). Properties in the auction are located in 15 states. Sellers include BP, 3-TEC Energy, PITCO, Redstone Energy, Bass Enterprises, Permian Basin Acquisition Fund, Delta Petroleum, Yuma, Casillas Petroleum and many others. Some of the more notable properties being offered include Red River Production’s Ladder Creek Field in Cheyenne County, CO; Southwestern Energy’s Wattenberg Field in Weld County, CO; Harris Oil & Gas’ Victory Field in Haskell and Morton Counties, KS; and Bass Enterprises’ Leleux Field in Acadia Parish, LA. The properties can be previewed online through Data Room Explorer hosted on the Petroleum Place web site (www.petroleumplace.com). Data rooms, including complete seller files for most of the notable properties, are open through Jan. 27. Call the clearinghouse at (281) 873-4600 to schedule a data room appointment. A pre-sale conference will be held Jan. 29 at the convention center from 8 to 5 p.m. All seller files will be available for review at that time.

The Oil & Gas Asset Clearinghouse sold more than $18.1million of properties as of its Oct. 25th Hybrid auction, whichfeatured simultaneous floor and Internet bidding in Midland, TX.Based in Houston, the company is a wholly owned subsidiary ofPetroleum Place, an Internet portal and marketplace serving theupstream energy industry. The Clearinghouse said it offered 128lots, consisting of more than 800 wells, including 46 higher valuedproperties. Year-to-date, Internet bidders have purchased more than$25 million properties through Selective Offerings, andparticipation on the Internet also is increasing, said the company.

New York Board of Trade reached an agreement last week to “makewhole” all floor operators whose funds were used to meet marginobligations of Klein and Co. Futures Inc.

New York Board of Trade reached an agreement last week to “makewhole” all floor operators whose funds were used to meet marginobligations of Klein and Co. Futures Inc. NYBOT said it will payback the innocent traders and customers of Klein. NYBOT’s decisioncame not long after the New York Mercantile Exchange and 15 of itsmembers filed a class action complaint against NYBOT, New YorkClearing Corp. (NYCC) and Klein, alleging that NYBOT improperlyused funds of Klein customers who also traded Nymex energy, oil andmetals contracts to satisfy obligations of an unrelated Kleincustomer on the New York Futures Exchange, a unit of NYBOT.

Current commercial trends, such as the building of floor spaceand Internet use, will be factors that drive commercial gas demandup 1.2% annually from 3.3 quadrillion Btus in 1997 to 4.0 quads in2015, the Gas Research Institute said in its latest report, the1999 Commercial Sector Summary (GRI-99/0007). It also predicts thatcommercial energy consumption – which accounts for 10% of alldomestic energy demand – is expected to grow 1.1 % annually, from7.6 quads to 9.2 quads by 2015.

Sempra Energy Trading, formerly AIG Trading Corp, said itopened a satellite trading floor in San Diego to take advantage ofCalifornia’s deregulated market for electricity. The company’s WestCoast operation will initially have 19 employees. They willinterface with power scheduling operations of California’sIndependent System Operator (ISO) and work with Sempra’s East Coastoperations. Sempra is based in Greenwich, CT.