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After making in August 2002 what were expected to be the last remaining organizational changes since it bought Columbia Energy Group in 2000 (see Daily GPI, Aug. 30, 2002), NiSource announced another major corporate restructuring last week that includes the internal promotion of six new leaders for its major utility companies.

After making in August 2002 what were expected to be the last remaining organizational changes since it bought Columbia Energy Group in 2000 (see Daily GPI, Aug. 30, 2002), NiSource announced another major corporate restructuring this week that includes the internal promotion of six new leaders for its major utility companies. The moves are part of what has become an industry trend of selling off high-risk and costly unregulated operations and focusing on a back-to-basics strategy of optimizing regulated utility and pipeline businesses.

Former Enron Corp. executive Ben Glisan Jr. was led off from a Houston courtroom in chains last week after pleading guilty to one count of criminal conspiracy. Handpicked by former CEO Jeffrey Skilling as the company’s treasurer in May 2000, the former whiz kid was given the maximum sentence of five years. He will serve his time in a federal minimum security prison.

Former Enron Corp. executive Ben Glisan Jr., handpicked by former CEO Jeffrey Skilling as the company’s treasurer in May 2000, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Houston to one count of criminal conspiracy and was sentenced to the maximum sentence of five years in a federal minimum security prison. He was immediately taken into custody.

Entergy Corp. has hired Jerald V. Halvorsen to head its Washington, DC, government relations office. Halvorsen will be retiring later this year as president of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, the interstate gas pipeline industry’s main advocacy group in the nation’s capitol. He has been president of INGAA since 1987. Halvorsen will join Entergy as vice president, federal governmental affairs on Sept. 1 and will succeed S. M. Henry Brown Jr., who will retire Dec. 1. Prior to joining INGAA, Halvorsen was vice president for government affairs of the American Trucking Association. He also served as senior vice president for congressional affairs of the National Coal Association. He began his career with Consolidated Edison Co. in New York City in 1969, serving as coordinator of environmental affairs. Entergy owns and operates power plants with about 30,000 MW of electric generating capacity and delivers electricity to 2.6 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

Over the lone objections of the former head state regulator, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Thursday received a $7.6 million conditioned reward from state regulators for its natural gas buying in 2001-02, including the period of extreme wholesale energy price spikes. The reward for keeping costs below a formula tied to gas price indices was less than half of the almost $17 million requested by the utility and was subject to future forfeiture pending the outcome of pending California wholesale border price investigations.

In another indication that California’s new top regulator wants his own team, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Thursday replaced its civil service executive director with an outsider who is a long-term consumer/environmental activist, Bill Ahern, a former state government manager who has been a senior policy analyst in the Consumers Union San Francisco office.

TXU Corp.’s investors continued to sell off their stock in record numbers on Wednesday, despite the third conference call in four business days by the executive management team. The hour-plus conference call offered a lot of plain speaking, but to no avail, and by the market’s close, the shares had tumbled another 15% and the European subsidiary had been downgraded by Moody’s Investors Service.

Just when producers thought it was safe to head back into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Lili appeared on the horizon ready to take another big bite out of Gulf gas production. Isidore forced 25 Bcf of gas to be shut in last week, according to the Minerals Management Service (MMS). It looks as though Lili could force a repeat of that situation this week, according to the latest reports from producers.