Performance

Occidental Petroleum beat analysts’ third quarter earningsexpectations by a solid 10 cents/share. Higher gas and oil pricesand improved performance from its chemicals division produced netincome of $126 million ($0.35/share) for the third quarter, 232%higher than the $38 million ($0.10/share) posted in 3Q98. Earningsbefore special items were $125 million compared with only $3million in 3Q98.

The cash market turned in a decidedly mixed performance Monday.In general, quotes at many western points were up a nickel or so,while the East ranged from essentially flat to down as much as adime. A marketer had a simple explanation: “The West had a littlemore weather (cooling load) than the East did.” A screen drop of 2cents only had the barest negative influence on cash, sources said.

The performance of Dynegy’s gas liquids business during thesecond quarter indicates the market is finally making aturn-around. Operating income from the liquids division grew 41% to$54.9 million, Dynegy reported. Its power marketing and generationdivision, including operating margin and equity earnings from jointventure power projects, also showed continued improvement with 28%growth in operating income to $56.8 million. But gas marketingsuffered a 31% decline in operating income to $21.8 millionprimarily because of “weak market conditions” in Europe, thecompany said. Dynegy posted a 19% increase in net income during thesecond quarter to $28 million compared with $23.4 million in 2Q98.It sold a total of 9.2 Bcf/d of gas (6.1 Bcf/d domestically), upfrom 8.2 Bcf/d in 2Q98, and sold 17.4 million MWh of power, down40% from the 28.9 million MWh sold in 2Q98. Dynegy also showed ahigh retail marketing loss of $2.4 million compared with $600,000in 2Q98 because of the expansion of its SouthStar retail marketingalliance with AGL Resources and Piedmont Natural Gas in Georgia.SouthStar markets gas under the name Georgia Natural Gas and hasbuilt one of the largest market shares in Georgia. Dynegyattributed the mounting losses to increased advertising inpreparation for the Oct. 1 deadline for retail customers to switchto buying gas from marketers.

The cash market emerged from the July 4 holiday weekend with astrong performance in which prices ranged from flat at some pointsin the Gulf Coast and Midcontinent to nearly 20 cents higher inCalifornia. The West made a remarkable recovery from last Friday’ssteep dives, reclaiming nearly all of the ground it had lost. Aheat wave over the eastern third of the U.S.-especially acute inthe Northeast-kept prices firm in the producing and market areas.

The Department of Defense intends to award the federalgovernment’s largest energy-saving performance contract ever toPepco Energy Services and Viron Energy Services. Pepco EnergyServices is a subsidiary of Potomac Electric Power Co. Viron EnergyServices is a subsidiary of York International Corp. President BillClinton announced the $200 million contract, designed to implementenergy-savings measures for the Military District of Washington(MDW). The MDW is a major Army command encompassing five Armyposts: Fort George G. Meade in Maryland; Fort Myer, Fort Belvoirand Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia; and Fort Lesley J. McNair inWashington, DC. More than 2,100 buildings were examined for energyimprovements. The 18-year MDW contract will result in about $220million in overall cost savings.

The cash swing market kind of “muddled around” Tuesday,unimpressed by a small screen uptick or anything else for thatmatter, according to a Midcontinent trader. Nearly all points wereflat to barely a penny or two lower. The big drop of a nickel or soat Sumas likely was due to a three-day outage of Jackson Prairiestorage operations starting today, causing Northwest to get strictabout banking gas on the system, one source said.

“Following the screen” obviously didn’t apply Tuesday as thecash market’s mostly flat performance was a far cry from the8.1-cent drop in the Henry Hub futures contract for June. But, as aGulf Coast trader noted, a substantial portion of the screensoftness occurred after cash had finished trading for the day, andto him that means it’s a safe bet to expect a decline in cashprices today.

While eastern markets meandered around in a generally flatperformance Monday, the West was achieving significant gains ofabout a nickel or more. Topping the list was San Juan Basin, wheresupply outages helped drive quotes up by about 15 cents. Prices inthe Rockies, Pacific Northwest and western Canada also were strongdue to cold weather. It snowed in Calgary Monday morning, onesource said, adding this is late in the season for snow but not arecord for Calgary.

Combating its poor first quarter performance, Houston-basedApache Corp. dramatically grew its asset base Thursday, paying $715million and transferring one million common shares of stock toShell in exchange for 22 fields in the Outer Continental Shelf ofthe Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Apache expects the transaction to add 20cents/share of value in 1999. The acquisition will go into effectretroactive to March 1.