Former

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) lost a bid to collect close to $4 million from the estate of former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay and his wife Linda. Kenneth Lay, 64, died of a heart attack in July 2006, six weeks after he was convicted on 10 fraud and conspiracy counts (see Daily GPI, July 6, 2006; May 26, 2006). The tax case dated to Sept. 21, 2001, when the Lays sold $10 million in annuities to Enron as part of an agreement for Kenneth Lay to retake the CEO position, which had been vacated by Jeffrey Skilling a month earlier. The agreement with Enron at the time stipulated that the annuities would be returned to Lay if he worked a 4.25-year term. However, Enron filed for bankruptcy protection less than three months later (see Daily GPI, June 21; May 3, 2006). The IRS contested the Lays’ contention in their 2006 tax filing that the annuities were sold to Enron for no monetary gain; in 2009 the IRS filed a notice of tax deficiency for $3.9 million. U.S. Tax Court Judge Joseph Goeke disagreed, ruling that the Lays’ transactions were legitimate and neither of the Lays nor the estate received any distributions or death benefit from the annuity.

Kevin Cassidy, former CEO of Valhalla, NY-based brokerage firm Optionable Inc., has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a 2003-2007 commodities trading scandal at Bank of Montreal (BMO). Cassidy was among the Optionable and BMO employees who were charged by federal and state authorities in 2008 for deceiving and defrauding the bank about the true value of its natural gas options book (see NGI, Nov. 24, 2008). A multi-count indictment charged Cassidy with criminal counts of wire fraud, making false statements to a bank, making false and misleading statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission and securities fraud. Under terms of the plea agreement, Cassidy would serve 30-37 months in prison. Cassidy also agreed to forfeit illegally obtained profit from the deal and could be fined. He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 15 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

BP plc has appointed Fergus MacLeod as the new strategy chief. MacLeod, a former Deutsche Bank oil analyst, has been in charge of BP’s investor relations unit since 2002 and he will continue to run that unit. Ian Smale, 51, who has been BP’s head of strategy for the past three years, has retired from BP after 30 years. MacLeod will report directly to CEO Bob Dudley. Because MacLeod formerly was an energy analyst, he is expected to be attuned to shareholder concerns as the oil major attempts to revive investor confidence. Dudley said in July that stabilizing the company was his top priority (see Daily GPI, July 27).

It’s deja vu all over again as Kinder Morgan floats a proposal to convert a 635-mile Wyoming to Missouri section of its former Pony Express Pipeline from natural gas back to its original function of carrying crude oil. Chalk it up to the booming oil development in the Bakken and the Denver-Julesburg/Niobrara shales and a shrinking demand for Rockies gas in the East.

It’s deja vu all over again as Kinder Morgan floats a proposal to convert a 635-mile Wyoming to Missouri section of its former Pony Express Pipeline from natural gas back to its original function of carrying crude oil. Chalk it up to the booming oil development in the Bakken and the Denver-Julesburg/Niobrara shales and a shrinking demand for Rockies gas in the East.

Despite the promise of a veto from Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania lawmakers are pushing to get a tax or fee on Marcellus Shale development included in the state’s fiscal 2012 budget, which is due at the end of June.

Former Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard, who now serves as president of the Quebec Oil and Gas Association (QOGA), appeared before a Quebec National Assembly committee to urge compensation for companies in limbo from the province’s environmental study of shale gas, but the meeting became heated after a legislator called Bouchard “unfaithful” to Quebec’s citizens.

Former Houston gas trader Stephanie Roqumore was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Houston to six years in federal prison without parole for defrauding numerous natural gas trading companies of nearly $8 million. In February Roqumore, 48, pleaded guilty to wire fraud, admitting that from March 2002 through April 2010 she used fraudulent financial statements to defraud 12 companies (see NGI, Feb. 14). She was ordered to pay $7.8 million in restitution to the victim companies.

Anthony Eggert was appointed by California Gov. Jerry Brown to the five-member California Energy Commission (CEC), a position he held last year in former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration. An engineer by background who previously worked for the California Fuel Cell Partnership and for Ford Motor Co., Eggert was a senior policy advisor at the California Air Resources Board from 2007 to early 2010. The appointment requires confirmation by the state Senate, but appointees can serve for up to a year without confirmation. Eggert’s appointment fills out the CEC, which had been operating in recent months with only four members.