Hard

El Paso Natural Gas has agreed to pay Southern California Edison$32 million and make other concessions to prevent its hard-fought1996 rate settlement from collapsing like a house of cards. Thedeal ends four years of litigation by Edison, which tried to derailthe settlement from the very start.

“The Three Stooges didn’t fall as fast or as hard,” one traderremarked, as the usual weekend demand crunch, a bearish 6- to10-day forecast and Thursday’s futures market plunge were cited asreasons for the nearly universal drops of over a nickel. New YorkCitygate prices were among the hardest hit Friday, as Monday’shighpoint of $2.75 has given way to the mid $2.40s at the week’sclose.

Significant savings are increasingly hard to come by for large,multi-facility energy users even with the help of outside energyexperts, according to panelists last week discussing energymanagement outsourcing at NGI’s GasMart/Power ’99 in Dallas.

As presaged Tuesday by late retrenchment in cash quotes and ascreen drop that carried over into Access trading, the cash marketwas in full retreat Wednesday. All points were off by at least anickel or so, and most of the decreases were around a dime. In whatwas described often as quiet trading, the softening Henry Hubfutures contract for June was the only significant influence oncash that sources could cite.

Significant savings are increasingly hard to come by for large,multi-facility energy users even when using outside energy expertsin the face of volatile commodity markets and increasing pressuresinside their companies to show significant returns on investments,according to panelists yesterday discussing energy managementoutsourcing Monday at GasMart/Power ’99 in Dallas.

Exxon was hit and hit hard during the first quarter, posting a40% drop in profits, the company announced yesterday. Earningsdropped to $1.02 billion from $1.82 billion in 1Q98. Revenue fellto $26.884 billion from $29.964 billion in 1Q98. The results fromthe first three months of 1999 also included a $120 million chargefor restructuring Japanese operations.

California is learning the hard way that yet another earlyoffshoot of more competitive energy markets is the arcane world oftrying to police the activities between state-regulated utilitiesand their unregulated affiliates. Nearing the end of its first yearof dealing with this issue, California is experiencing, at best, anuneasy peace between state regulators and the state’s three majorinvestor-owned utility holding companies.

California is learning the hard way that yet another earlyoffshoot of more competitive energy markets is the arcane world oftrying to police the activities between state-regulated utilitiesand their unregulated affiliates operating in the gas and electricmarkets. Nearing the end of its first year of dealing with thisissue, California is experiencing, at best, an uneasy peace betweenstate regulators and the state’s three major investor-owned utilityholding companies.

Weak commodity prices hit major producers hard in the thirdquarter. Texaco, Amoco, and Exxon all reported sharply lowerresults compared to third quarter 1997. All blamed, for the mostpart, lower commodity prices.