Howard

Howard Energy Partners (HEP) announced it has acquired Texas Pipeline LLC and Bottom Line Services LLC for $76 million. Two firms — Crosstex Energy LP and Quanta Services Inc. — each provided $35 million in initial funding in exchange for about a 35% share of San Antonio-based HEP. Texas Pipeline operates 250 miles of gathering lines in the Eagle Ford and Pearsall shale plays. Bottom Line has built more than 500 miles of pipeline and installed more than 50 midstream facilities in the Eagle Ford.

Tenaska Inc. co-founder Howard Hawks said he will retire from his role as CEO effective July 1 but will remain chairman of the company and of two affiliated private equity investment companies developed by Tenaska — Tenaska Power Fund LP (TPF I) and TPF II. When Hawks steps down, current Tenaska CFO Jerry Crouse will become CEO and vice chairman with responsibility for holding company assets and activities, and Paul Smith will become vice chairman in addition to his current role as CEO of affiliate Tenaska Capital Management LLC (TCM). Smith is a co-founder of TCM and manager of the TPF I and TPF II private equity funds. Current Tenaska finance vice president and treasurer Greg Van Dyke will be promoted to CFO and treasurer, while current vice president and controller Tim Kudron will become senior vice president and corporate controller. Under Hawks’ leadership since its inception in 1987, Omaha, NE-based Tenaska has developed about 9,000 MW of power generation and currently manages and operates eight power plants totaling 6,700 MW that it owns in partnership with other companies. Tenaska affiliates are involved in natural gas, electricity and biofuels marketing, as well as private equity funds, gas exploration and production and investments in renewable energy.

El Paso said Wednesday a maintenance outage of Line 3110 inHoward County, TX is now scheduled for March 10-14. The pipelinepreviously had said the work would occur March 5-11 (see Daily GPI,Feb. 27). The IVEALMOR interconnect will not be able to deliver anygas into El Paso during the outage.

Santa Fe Snyder Corp. of Houston said last week that anexploration well in Howard County, TX,Sellers 119 #1, has beensuccessful, and will extend the company’s Lost Peak area there. Thewell targeted Cisco Canyon sandstones now being exploited in theSignal Peak field six miles northwest of the well. The Sellers wellencountered 115 of gross pay sand with productive gas shows over a200-foot interval. Santa Fe has 80,000 gross acres (60,000 net)under lease in the play, and through the end of this year, expectsto drill an additional 15 development and three exploratory wells.Santa Fe plans to develop the field on 160-acre spacing, withportions of the field on 80-acre spacing. Current plans for 2001call for drilling up to 50 wells there. Gross operated productionfrom the Signal Peak field is now 25 MMcf/d and 1,300 b/d of oil.Cost of finding and development for the area has averaged $.80 perMMcfe, with operating costs of $.30 per MMcfe.

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean last week voiced strong opposition to a$100 million gas pipeline project and two power plants proposed inhis state. The governor’s position, local opposition and financingtroubles for the power plants have left project planners EnergyEast, Iroquois Gas Pipeline and Vermont Energy Park Holdings withvery few options.

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean this week voiced strong opposition to a$100 million gas pipeline project and two power plants proposed inhis state. The governor’s position, local opposition and financingtroubles for the power plants have left project planners EnergyEast, Iroquois Gas Pipeline and Vermont Energy Park Holdings withvery few options.

“You can’t win the game if you give the ball away” was aseemingly logical but somewhat superfluous observation made byHoward Cosell on Monday Night Football back in the 1980s. If Cosellwere to have commented on the natural gas futures market yesterday,he probably would have said something like, “The market couldn’tmove lower because there was no additional selling.” And althoughthat comment would also have been redundant, it aptly describes thenature of yesterday’s price action at the New York MercantileExchange, where once early selling dried up, the market was free tobubble higher in near-frictionless trade. The May contract finishedup 3.2 cents to $2.128.