Remaining

Unocal Corp. announced plans to pick up the remaining 35% of Pure Resources Inc. which it does not already own, offering 0.6527 shares of Unocal common stock for each outstanding share of Pure’s common stock. The transaction is valued at about $400 million based on Unocal’s current share price.

NiSource is making some of the last remaining organizational changes since it bought Columbia Energy Group two years ago, announcing actions last week to reduce the size of its management structure. Under the plan, the streamlining will move executive management closer to customers and promote efficiency while lowering costs in response.

After remaining for more than two months in a range of 350-400 Bcf, the natural gas surplus finally has begun to show signs of yielding to a combination of “relentless” summer heat, a continuing production decline and a positive demand response and “steady trend” toward a higher oil-to-gas price ratio, said an energy analyst Monday. However, the return to “tight gas markets” may not occur until “some point in 2003.”

Exelon Generation Co. LLC is buying the other half of Sithe New England Holdings LLC from Sithe Energies, Inc. for a $543 million note, plus the assumption of $1.15 billion of project debt. Exelon currently owns 49.9% of the company, which operates 4,400 MW of generation produced by seven gas or gas and oil fired power plants in New England.

Severely depressed basis spreads in the Rocky Mountain region “scream the message of shut-in gas,” yet very few pipeline expansions have been put in place to solve the problem, noted energy consultant Mary Menino of Energy Security Analysis Inc. She predicts that export constraints will continue to plague the Rockies market as long as power generators and producers are unwilling or unable to sign firm agreements for pipeline transportation capacity on expansion projects.

The sole remaining Republican appointee on the five-member California Public Utilities Commission, Henry Duque, received a four-week extension to his term to have time to file an appeal of an earlier ruling regarding alleged conflict-of-interest violations involving his ownership of telecommunications stock of a company the CPUC regulates. The extension was granted despite an earlier court ruling recommending his removal from the state regulatory panel.

One of two remaining minority Republican appointees and a former two-time president of California’s regulatory commission, Richard Bilas announced Wednesday he is resigning from the California Public Utilities Commission effective March 8. In a letter to Gov. Gray Davis, Bilas, a Ph.D. free-market economist and former university professor, curtly referred to being “most frustrated by the policy changes at the Commission.”

One of two remaining minority Republican appointees and a former two-time president of California’s regulatory commission, Richard Bilas announced Wednesday he is resigning from the California Public Utilities Commission effective March 8. In a letter to Gov. Gray Davis, Bilas, a Ph.D. free-market economist and former university professor, curtly referred to being “most frustrated by the policy changes at the Commission.”

With fundamental influences remaining weak and a falling screen to boot, it was hardly surprising Monday when cash prices failed for the most part to rebound from their weekend softness. Movement ranged from essentially flat to down a dime or so at nearly all eastern, California and Permian Basin points. The weakness was more pronounced in the Rockies/Pacific Northwest and San Juan Basin markets, where declines ranged from about a dime to 20 cents.