Incumbents

Robert S. Boswell, architect of Forest Oil Corp.’s amazing growth as the independent increased its North American reserves five-fold and raised its equity value from less than $50 million to more than $1 billion in recent years, announced Thursday he would resign as CEO immediately and retire as chairman and director at the end of September.

A leading shareholder proxy service on Tuesday recommended that El Paso Corp. shareholders vote out the current management team and elect a slate of energy professionals proposed by a dissident stockholder group. Only Selim Zilkha, who leads the dissident group, was not recommended because he was a board member and adviser to the company until last year.

While incumbents in the natural gas and power electronic tradingfraternity were predicting eventual fall-out and consolidation inthis exploding technology sector (see related story) a new entry— The Energy Consortium, including American Electric Power,Aquila, El Paso, and Reliant Energy and Southern Company EnergyMarketing — entered the fray last week.