Joint

Southern Company Energy Marketing – the marketing joint ventureof Southern Company unit Southern Energy and Vastar Resources’Vastar Gas Marketing and Vastar Power Marketing — plans to movesome of its Houston employees, mainly traders, to its Atlantaoffice.

Southern Company Energy Marketing – the marketing joint ventureof Southern Company unit Southern Energy and Vastar Resources’Vastar Gas Marketing and Vastar Power Marketing – plans to movesome of its Houston employees, mainly traders, to its Atlantaoffice.

Stone & Webster and Sonat Marketing Company L.P., haveannounced they are forming a 50/50 joint venture to provide largecustomers with a variety of bundled energy management services,including building or upgrading power and steam generationequipment, commodity supply, portfolio and risk management,metering, billing, operations and maintenance, as well as selectedasset ownership.

Chevron U.S.A. Production and its joint-venture partners – ShellDeepwater Development, EEX Corp. and Enterprise Oil Gulf of Mexico- set a new water-depth world record of 7,718 feet as they begandrilling their initial exploratory test well in the Gulf ofMexico’s Atwater Valley Block 118, about 175 miles southeast of NewOrleans. The Chevron-led team anticipates the well, designatedAtwater Valley 118 #1, will reach target depth of 15,471 feet belowthe seabed in the fourth quarter of this year. The companies areusing the fabled Glomar Explorer drill ship – initially built forU.S. intelligence work – owned by Global Marine to drill the well.Chevron and Texaco plan to alternate into the operator position asthey go forward with plans to drill 20 deepwater wells in the Gulfof Mexico.

El Paso Energy, Enron, Peoples Energy and Northern BorderPipeline have formed a joint venture to target prized Midwest gastransportation markets left unguarded when TransCanada Pipelinesand Northern States Power put the Viking Voyageur project on holdearlier this year.

NGC Corp. and Texaco signed a memorandum of understandingyesterday to create a new joint venture company that will useexisting gas liquids pipelines to create a 290-mile, bi-directionalnatural gas liquids (NGL) transportation system, extending fromSorrento, LA, to Mont Belvieu, TX.

Stone & Webster Development and PP&L Global Inc. haveformed a joint venture to build a 250-500 MW gas-fired, merchantpower plant in Wallingford, CT to compete in the New Englandelectricity market. The partners have a signed “exclusivityagreement” with the city government of Wallingford to develop theproject on the site of a small oil-fired power plant theWallingford Department of Public Utilities (DPU) is retiring.

The way one observer sees it, Oklahoma Natural Gas and ONEOK GasTransportation can ask for whatever they want in their jointrestructuring filing with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission(OCC); they won’t get everything. “It’s a pretty bold proposal. Ican tell you, ONG’s not going to get what they filed for. If you’reasking for something, you might as well ask for the moon,” said thesource, who asked to be anonymous.

FirstEnergy Corp. and Belden & Blake Corp. agreed to createa joint venture called FE Holdings to acquire natural gasproperties. The companies also agreed to buy privately held MarbelEnergy Corp., a fully integrated natural gas company. “The creationof FE Holdings – with access to low-cost, high-quality explorationand production capabilities combined with utility distribution andtransportation facilities – will produce tremendous opportunitiesfor our company, customers and shareholders,” said FirstEnergy CEOWillard R. Holland. “The ability to offer customers bothelectricity and natural gas, as well as a wide range of otherenergy-related products and services, will further enhance ourposition as a strong competitor in the evolving energy industry.”