Provides

Gas industry representatives applauded the Senate Finance Committee’s passage of energy tax legislation late Wednesday. The tax bill provides $4 billion in credits and incentives to the oil and gas industry. The full Senate is expected to begin debate soon on the national energy policy bill, which will include the tax incentives. A key issue going forward will be whether lawmakers can find budget offsets to fund the tax incentive program.

Houston-based RedMeteor Inc., which provides both Internet and voice brokerage services for physical crude oil, wholesale refined products, natural gas, electricity and natural gas liquids, will begin offering price indications as well as firm bids on its exchange platform beginning next Monday (June 18).

Fluor Corporation and Duke Energy Corp. named Jeff Faulk president and CEO of Duke/Fluor Daniel, a joint venture of the two companies that provides global engineering, construction and operating services to fossil-fueled power generating facilities. Faulk comes to the partnership from Fluor Daniel, where he most recently served as senior vice president, operations for the Americas, within the energy & chemicals strategic business unit. Harvey Padewer, group president of Energy Services for Duke Energy, said the partnership is poised to emerge as the clear leader in fossil-fueled power generation under Faulk’s leadership. “Last year, Duke/Fluor Daniel was building one out of every 3 MW of natural gas-fired generation under construction in the U.S.,” Padewer said. “The industry is beginning to take serious notice of this partnership and its global project portfolio — that includes everything from combined cycle plants to innovative clean- burning coal technology.”

The Transco pipeline system’s capacity has increased by 204,099Dth/d with the start-up of the SouthCoast Expansion project. The$108 million expansion provides additional firm transportationcapacity to gas markets in Alabama and Georgia

Soliance Networks, the San Diego-based joint venture thatprovides total information solutions for the energy industry, hascompleted its first information technology project for an energyservice provider, getting the system running in just eight weeks.Soliance created an Internet-based “virtual utility” system forEnergy America’s customers that included enrollment, customerbilling operations, bill creation, and support. The “virtualutility” took six weeks to certify and validate, and two more weeksto become fully operational for Energy America. The system willsupport over 1 million customers by mid-2001. Energy America sellscompetitively priced natural gas and electricity to residential andsmall business customers in New Jersey, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio,Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

The first-ever broad-based study analyzing finding anddevelopment (F&D) costs by strategy area and cost componentsfor companies operating in the Shelf and Slope areas of the Gulf ofMexico shows that technology plays a key role in determiningcompetitive advantage. Ziff Energy Group, which released the studythis week at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston,analyzed activity on the Shelf and Slope to 1,500-feet water depth.

Given modest support by a small screen gain, most cash tradingpoints tended to level off Thursday instead of continuing a slidethat many had expected would last into the weekend. Northeastcitygates constituted the rare weaker market in the East with dropsof almost a nickel as the region cooled off further from a heatwave that set power generation load records early this week.

Aiming at easing the personal pain involved in the oil and gasindustry downturn, the Texas Independent Producers &amp RoyaltyOwners Association (TIPRO) has instituted an Oil and Gas Job Bankat its website www.energyconnect.com.

The role the Natural Gas Supply Association “provides is unique,and our members haven’t given us any indication that they areanything but pleased,” said Rebecca McDonald, this year’s chair ofthe organization and the future senior vice president of global gasmarketing for BP-Amoco. McDonald was questioned by NGI aboutpersistent rumors that NGSA, which originally was created topromote the decontrol of natural gas, would be disbanded and itsfunctions rolled into the American Petroleum Institute. McDonaldsaid the two organizations address very different issues, with APIfocusing on upstream oil and gas and NGSA involved mainly indownstream activities. “NGSA has done a good job with a difficulttask.”