Making

Making its third purchase of some of Enron Corp.’s European metals trading businesses, Sempra Energy’s Stamford, CT-based trading arm Tuesday shelled out another $24 million in cash to acquire Liverpool (UK)-based Henry Bath Ltd and subsidiaries, a provider of warehousing services for non-ferrous metals in Europe and Asia.

Electric utility companies across the U.S. are getting much higher customer satisfaction marks from midsize businesses in 2002 as compared to last year, according to the results of a new J.D. Power and Associates survey released last Tuesday. Power quality and reliability have combined to become the most important factor comprising overall customer satisfaction, the survey reveals.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Wednesday generally re-affirmed key earlier decisions on price mitigation measures for California and the West, making minor modifications in a sweeping clean-up order encompassing a number of dockets in its year-and-a-half long battle to subdue the western power crisis.

Accounting companies providing auditing services and stock market analysts making investment recommendations took it on the chin Tuesday in the first of what promises to be a lengthy Senate investigation into the collapse of Enron Corp., and the failure of Wall Street watchdogs to sound a warning before the meltdown, described as “one of the largest, most destructive company failures of all time.”

Continuing its rapid expansion into the void left by EnronOnline, IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) is making a move into the European over-the-counter (OTC) gas and power markets with the introduction of markets for UK natural gas-related products in December.

Making steady progress since Monday against a rising tide of declining energy stock prices, Atlanta, GA-based Southern Co., Akron, OH-based FirstEnergy and New Jersey-based GPU Inc. again were on the plus side Wednesday. It wasn’t hard to figure, as U.S. aircraft carriers steamed toward the Caribbean and the Middle East, with fighter planes expected to follow soon. The three utilities own no foreign facilities.

The New York Mercantile Exchange re-opened Friday for a two-hour Internet-based, eNymex Access trading session, making it the first New York exchange to resume trading, three and a half days after terrorists ripped the heart out of Wall Street with the destruction of the World Trade Center. Nymex, whose regular address is just a few hundred yards away from where the Trade Center used to be, ran Friday’s trading from an off-site location. It had suspended natural gas futures trading before the opening of the regular open-outcry session on Tuesday, after the first plane hit the Trade Center at 8:45 a.m. EDT.

Cantor Fitzgerald L.P. announced Wednesday it was making grief counseling services available for surviving employees and the families of employees, including those of affiliates eSpeed and TradeSpark, who had been working on floors 101 to 105 of the World Trade Center.

A BP team of more than 100 employees and contractors was making “significant progress” on recovery operations at its Fort Saskatchewan Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) storage facility that caught fire in an early morning explosion Aug. 26 (see Daily GPI, Aug. 28). The facility is located about four miles northeast of Fort Saskatchewan, AB.