Held

A new giant is set to emerge from a venture of New Orleans-basedEntergy Corp. and privately held Koch Industries Inc. Entergy-KochLP will be a North American and European powerhouse in electricityand gas, gas transmission and weather derivatives and will be owned50% by each of its partners. A big focus of the venture will beweather derivatives, of which Koch is a pioneer.

A new giant is set to emerge from a venture of New Orleans-basedEntergy Corp. and privately held Koch Industries Inc. Entergy-KochLP will be a North American and European powerhouse in electricityand gas, gas transmission and weather derivatives and will be owned50% by each of its partners.

After suffering a 9-cent setback late Wednesday afternoon,natural gas futures held their ground Thursday as traders electedto play it safe ahead of the holiday weekend. The May contractchecked to either side of unchanged, but ultimately finished inpositive territory, up 1.8 cents at $3.073. A narrow 4-cent tradingrange and a modest 54,989 in estimated volume were evidence of thequiet trade Thursday.

With little in the way of technical or fundamental news, naturalgas futures were held to an extremely-tight, 4-cent range in quiettrade yesterday. By finishing at $2.949, the May contract was just0.1 cents below its opening price and 2.2 cents lower for the day.Estimated volume was thin, with only 31,720 contracts changinghands.

The somewhat surprising recent firmness of swing prices held uponce again in most cases Friday, refusing to yield to either thenormal drop in weekend demand or a continuing dearth of fundamentalweather support.

The public meeting held by the Gas Industry Standards Board(GISB) last week to determine whether it should develop standardsfor retail gas and power, as well as wholesale power, was short onsolutions but big on questions.

The public meeting held by the Gas Industry Standards Board(GISB) last week to determine whether it should develop standardsfor retail gas and power, as well as wholesale power, was short onsolutions but big on questions.

Moving another step closer to becoming a privately-held company,MidAmerican Energy announced yesterday that its shareholdersoverwhelmingly approved the company’s proposed sale to BerkshireHathaway Inc. The company anticipates receiving all requiredapprovals in the first quarter of this year.

The controversial two-year period in which Dynegy Marketing andTrade held a huge chunk of El Paso’s firm capacity to the SouthernCalifornia border is coming to an end, and western gas traders arelooking for a new market regime in the new millennium. Unless thepipeline manages to negotiate a deal for most if not all of thecapacity expiring at the end of 1999, traders are expecting theabundance of transportation space from Southwest basins to theborder to lower regional prices next year.