Marathon

Natural gas marketers might save a few pennies on each trade by doing their business online rather than over the phone, and they probably will handle more volume, but at some point in time it’s going to come back to haunt them, said Kevin Huntsman of Mastio & Company. Mastio just released its fifth customer satisfaction ranking of gas marketers and the results are a little scary for many of the mega marketers, who boast about huge gas volumes, but often have very few satisfied customers.

Two weeks of marathon settlement talks on refunds for California electric customers came to a grinding halt at FERC yesterday, with neither side even coming close to resolving the contentious issue. While the state had insisted that it was owed $8.9 billion in alleged overcharges on electricity sales, the offers by the out-of-state generators and other suppliers came to less than one-ninth of that.

Marathon Group, a unit of USX Corp., said the strategicre-organization of its upstream business is largely complete but anadditional 250 positions likely will be eliminated, leaving theupstream business with 24% fewer employees than in 1999. “We haveplans in place for dramatic change and improvement and I believethat the organization is both ready for change and able to deliveron our commitments,” said Company President Clarence Cazalot.Cazalot introduced a new senior leadership team in September afterannouncing the restructuring plan in October. Commenting on thecompany’s target of implementing $150 million of annual repeatableefficiencies by the end of 2001, Cazalot said, “We are on track todeliver a $75 million reduction in above-the-field costs and wehave made substantial progress towards cutting exploration expensesby $50 million. As we also realize annual savings of $25 millionthrough global procurement, we are well on our way to meet ourambitious overall target.”

CMS Energy Corp., Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC, and TEPPCOPartners LP. are forming a limited liability company to own andoperate part of Trunkline’s mainline that is being converted totransport refined products from the Gulf Coast region to Illinois.Each of the companies will own a one-third interest in the venture.CMS already is seeking FERC approval to convert the 720-mileportion of its pipeline from gas to refined products service.Conversion of the pipeline to liquids service is expected by theend of 2001.

Amoco Production, Amoco Energy Trading, Dynegy and Marathon Oilhave filed a protest at FERC charging Koch Gateway withdiscrimination and violation of affiliate rules. The four shipperssaid the pipeline and its affiliate, Koch Energy Trading (KET),have been speculating on price spreads between market points andthe Henry Hub using Koch’s gas parking and lending (PAL) service,and preventing other Koch shippers from taking advantage of thesame opportunities.

Amoco Production, Amoco Energy Trading, Dynegy and Marathon Oilhave filed a protest at FERC charging Koch Gateway withdiscrimination and violation of affiliate rules. The four shipperssaid the pipeline and its affiliate, Koch Energy Trading (KET),have been speculating on price spreads between market points andthe Henry Hub using Koch’s gas parking and lending (PAL) service.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear appeals byUSX-Marathon and Mobil regarding the drilling ban on leasesoffshore North Carolina. The two producers spent $156 million in1981 on leases that became subject to a drilling ban in 1990 whenCongress adopted the Outer Banks Protection Act.