Millions

New Orleans-based McMoRan Exploration Co., which is spending millions in start-up costs to develop the Main Pass Energy Hub (MPEH) to regasify liquefied natural gas (LNG) offshore Louisiana, on Thursday reported 2Q2006 net income of $14.1 million ($0.32/share), compared with a net loss of $16.2 million (minus $0.66) for the same period a year ago. The independent also reported its oil and natural gas output jumped 46% sequentially over 1Q2006.

In what could take years and expend hundreds of millions of dollars, California’s major utilities are taking different tacks to respond to state regulatory encouragement to switch their vast utility systems to smart metering in which a whole host of special ratemaking and demand-side management programs can be offered to retail utility customers, particularly on the electric side.

The former chief accounting officer of Enron Corp.’s wholesale energy trading operations testified Monday he transferred millions of dollars of reserves from the unit in 2000 to help the company top Wall Street’s earnings forecasts.

On top of energy companies contributing millions of dollars to fund relief efforts, their employees have been donating their time to help Hurricane Katrina victims rebuild their lives amid the disaster along the Gulf Coast. Energy firms also have been taking extraordinary steps to aid employees who were displaced from their homes due to evacuation or damage.

Energy companies that were either directly or indirectly affected by the destruction from Hurricane Katrina were contributing millions of dollars to the American Red Cross last week to fund relief efforts. Utilities across the national also were sending or had already sent crews to help rebuild the energy infrastructure along the devastated Gulf Coast.

Energy companies that have been either directly or indirectly affected by the destruction from Hurricane Katrina have contributed millions of dollars so far to the American Red Cross to fund relief efforts.

For a utility that has spent millions of dollars and more than a decade to boost its environmental programs, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. now can tout its 33-story headquarters building in downtown San Francisco as another ecological resource of immense value since two nesting endangered peregrine falcons set up a permanent household atop the building and are nurturing their second group of eggs over the past 12 to 15 months. The scene has attracted widespread attention from local news media, academia and bird lovers in California.

Exelon Corp. and ExxonMobil, two of the U.S. energy industry’s largest companies, announced major relief efforts Thursday, totaling more than $5.5 million, for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Southeast Asia.

Energy traders with the once-powerful Enron Corp. were robbing California “to the tune of a million bucks or two a day” during the state’s energy crisis in 2000-2001, and these activities may have been reported to the company’s top leaders, former Chairman Kenneth Lay and ex-CFO Jeffrey Skilling, according to documents filed last Monday.