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Mitsubishi Motors Manufacturing of America (MMMA) announced itentered into a multi-year agreement with Duke Energy’sDukeSolutions Inc. last week to manage energy service forMitsubishi’s two-million-square-foot manufacturing plant in Normal,IL. Over the contract term, DukeSolutions will support up to $30million of energy expenditures for MMMA.

President Clinton signed into law this week a bill thatestablishes a multimillion dollar federal loan-guarantee program tohelp independent oil and natural gas producers recover from theeffects of depressed crude oil prices. The measure was passed bythe House earlier this month, and approved by the Senate in June.

Sempra Energy Trading entered into a one-year, $30-$35 milliongas management contract with California’s Department of GeneralServices (DGS) yesterday. Under the terms of the contract, SempraEnergy Trading will provide natural gas management for a total of117 state government buildings including San FranciscoInternational Airport.

Attempting to meet steep generation acquisition goals set by itsCEO for 1999, El Paso Energy recently bought a 49% ownershipinterest in East Coast Power, a subsidiary of Enron Corp. Terms ofthe deal were not disclosed. Enron still maintains control of thecompany with its 51% interest. El Paso said this deal is the firstdomestic power alliance between the two companies.

The national heat wave continued through Friday into theweekend, and electric utilities continued to use appeals forcustomer conservation and other demand-side management tools tokeep juice flowing as needed. But the heavy cooling load lost itsability to keep cash gas prices moving higher. Instead, most pointswere about a dime or more down in flows for the last day of July,and although quotes for Sunday and Monday tended to surpass thosefor Saturday, they still were below monthly indexes. Sources citedthe usual drop in weekend demand, a small screen decrease andforecasts that major market areas will have cooled off a bit bytoday as reasons for the softness.

As high temperatures and humidity pushed heat indexes into thetriple digits, electric output for the week ending July 24 reached81,144 gigawatt hours (GWh), surpassing the previous record of80,335 GWh set last August, according to data collected by theEdison Electric Institute.

Santa Fe Snyder, the resultant company from the recently approved Santa Fe Energy Resources and Snyder Oil Corp. merger, bought $210 million of interest in four Shell Exploration & Production Co. (SEPCo) Gulf of Mexico (GOM) assets. Closing is expected in August. Last week’s deal, which would give Santa Fe Snyder access to production from the Macaroni, Troika and Brutus deep-water fields as well as the Angus Complex, is expected to add 14.5 MMcf/d and 11,500 b/d of oil to the new company’s production results in 2000.

Marking its initial promotion to capture some of the residentialgas market in Georgia, Southeastern States Energy, Inc. (SSE)announced a partnership with PowerTrust.com, an Internet-basedpower services company, to offer customers the ability to sign withSSE through the PowerTrust.com web site. Although the GeorgiaPublic Service Commission (GPSC) will decide market share for thestate’s suppliers on Aug. 11, Beth Perry Sewell, president of SSE,said there is still time to be successful in the Georgia market.

Santa Fe Snyder, the resultant company from the recentlyapproved Santa Fe Energy Resources and Snyder Oil Corp. merger,bought $210 million of interest in four Shell Exploration &Production Co. (SEPCo) Gulf of Mexico (GOM) assets. Closing isexpected in August. Monday’s deal, which would give Santa Fe Snyderaccess to production from the Macaroni, Troika and Brutusdeep-water fields as well as the Angus Complex, is expected to add14.5 MMcf/d and 11,500 b/d of oil to the new company’s productionresults in 2000.