Headquarters

Although serving as headquarters for one of the nation’s major energy providers, San Diego County’s elected board voted unanimously Tuesday to continue to buy its own natural gas and electricity and to pursue a state-backed loan to further solarize its county government facilities. Past efforts have resulted in reducing the county government’s annual power bill by $655,000, the county has calculated.

Although serving as headquarters for one of the nation’s major energy providers, San Diego County’s elected board voted unanimously Tuesday to continue to buy its own natural gas and electricity and to pursue a state-backed loan to further solarize its county government facilities. Past efforts have resulted in reducing the county government’s annual power bill by $655,000, the county has calculated.

With a bid of $55.5 million, a group led by a Houston cardiologist won an auction to buy Enron Corp.’s headquarters. The 50-story tower in downtown Houston had been owned by a syndicate of banks that included J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which bought it in the 1990s for $285 million and leased it back to Enron. The company had moved into the building in 1986, according to a spokesman. The building is carried on Houston’s tax rolls for $93 million. The transaction is scheduled to become final Dec. 16, pending approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Proceeds from the sale will go to the bank syndicate. An adjoining 40-story skyscraper, which was built for Enron and nearly new when the company declared bankruptcy in Dec. 2001,sold for $105 million about a year ago.

As a group of protesters from Mount Vernon, NY, looked on at Commission headquarters in Washington, DC, Wednesday, FERC voted out an interim order authorizing the construction of all but two miles of the Millennium Pipeline project to deliver natural gas into New York state.

The mood around Enron Corp.’s Houston headquarters Monday was resolve as much as anything else, as thousands of employees prepared for the inevitable pink slips following the weekend Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by what was the world’s leading energy trader just a few weeks ago. With almost 21,000 employees worldwide, Houston’s offices will take the largest hit, with more than 4,000 of the 7,500 employees expecting to be let go this week.

On a day in which market power issues took center stage at FERC headquarters, the Commission last Tuesday proposed revising all existing market-based rate tariffs and authorizations in order to prohibit anti-competitive behavior or the exercise of market power. In addition, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission also instituted a proceeding to establish a refund effective date should it find that electric power rates are unjust and unreasonable.

PPL Corp. was lighting the peace candle on the west side of its 22-story headquarters building in Allentown, PA, Thursday night and continuing through the weekend “as a symbol of the light that the American spirit can bring to even the darkest circumstances.” The commemorative gesture, and an accompanying donation, was just one of the many donations and supportive messages from energy companies in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the United States Sept. 11, 2001.

To facilitate the transition of El Paso Natural Gas operational headquarters from El Paso, TX to Colorado Springs, CO, the pipeline is suspending the cash-out tariff for the current production month. No automatic triggering of cash-out will occur, El Paso said. Cash-out notification requirements will resume in August with the processing of July results. Imbalance paybacks and makeups will continue to be accommodated using existing procedures for resolving physical imbalances.

In a $334 million tax-free stock deal that will triple its gas reserves and double its daily production, Denver-based Westport Resources Corp. announced it will buy Belco Oil & Gas, a peer company similar in structure with mirror assets in the Rocky Mountains, Permian Basin, Gulf Coast region and the Midcontinent.