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Chevron and Arco both said yesterday they will be chopping $500million from their costs for 1999. “To successfully weather thebusiness conditions of low crude oil, natural gas and commoditychemicals prices, we have to continue to find ways to minimize thecost of operating our business,” said Ken Derr, Chevron’s CEO.

Houston Industries Wholesale Energy Group has opened an officein the financial district of San Francisco to help coordinate thecompany’s California generation, power marketing and associatedregulatory activities. “Houston Industries is a major player inCalifornia energy markets with nearly 4,000 MW of power generationcapacity and more scheduled to go on line in the region in 1999,”said Charles Oglesby, chairman of the HI Wholesale Energy Group.Mark Davis, regional marketing director, opened the San Franciscooffice in November.

Dynegy has agreed to manage all of Rochester Gas &Electric’s (RG&E) gas supply, transportation and storageassets, and help find ways to cut costs and optimize assets.

Charging “price gouging” and “a raw abuse of market power”several Midwest utilities and power marketers have asked theFederal Energy Regulatory Commission to hold an emergencyconference to find out what went wrong in the Midwest electricmarket last week that forced some to pay as much as $7,500 MWh.

Amoco Corp. and Snyder Oil Corp. traded interests in Wyomingproperties to help each company focus its gas operations in theGreen River Basin. Amoco acquired Snyder’s interest in asubstantial portion of the Jonah field in Sublette and Sweetwatercounties. In exchange, Amoco gave Snyder 75% of its interest in theBeaver Creek Unit in Fremont County, WY. Amoco retained 25%interest in Beaver Creek. The deal involved property only.

Energy Pacific launched a new energy service called Power ChoiceCalifornia, which will help companies make electricity buyingdecisions in a restructured marketplace. The company launched theservice through a pilot with Hewlett-Packard earlier this year andwill begin marketing the service in April. “We’re finding that manycustomers just don’t know where to begin when asking energyproviders for price quotes, or even what their energy options are,”said Eric Nelson, president of Energy Pacific, an unregulated jointventure of Pacific Enterprises and Enova Corp.