Rights

The current financial stars in the pipeline firmament areColumbia Energy, El Paso Energy and Enron Corp., while distributorsto watch are AGL Resources, MarketSpan, Peoples Energy and UGICorp., according to Curt Launer, vice president of Donaldson,Lufkin & Jenrette.Prospects are good for the companiesnamed, although a biannual report by the New York investment houseshows the overall interstate gas pipeline group “has not been doingvery well” so far in 1998, with stock prices significantlyunderperforming the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

Duke Energy Power Services (DEPS) named David L. Rehn presidentand chief executive officer. Rehn first joined Duke Power’s designengineering department in 1975. As an engineering project managerin the mid-1980s, he was instrumental in the development of the BadCreek Hydroelectric Station. He replaces Paula Rosput, who departedto become president and COO of Atlanta Gas Light Co.

In a move to build up the natural gas side of its business andbecome a Btu trading power, American Electric Power subsidiary AEPResources agreed to buy the midstream gas operations of EquitableResources, principally the Louisiana Intrastate Gas (LIG) system,for $320 million in cash. The addition will be AEP’s firstmidstream gas holdings.

Petal Gas Storage, a subsidiary of Crystal Oil Co. ofShreveport, LA, is holding an open season for 3.2 Bcf of storagecapacity it plans to add at its high deliverability salt cavernstorage facility near Hattiesburg, MS. The open season began lastweek and continues through Oct. 30.

The power price spike to $7,000 MWh this past June in theMidwest was not out of line with the cost of running little-usedpeaking generators, according to a leading marketer, and from aregulatory viewpoint the key lesson was that residential customersdid not have to pay those prices.

As industry replies to FERC’s data requests on the June pricespikes in the power market began to pour in yesterday, critics insome electricity circles said that the questions posed by theCommission were too little, too late to elicit any meaningfulinformation into the causes for the price run-up earlier thissummer in the Midwest.

Two Canadian energy retailers soon will be served byAtlanta-based Utilipro Inc., provider of customer care solutions.Utilipro recently signed a letter of intent with Direct EnergyMarketing Limited (DEML), Canada’s largest independent gasmarketer, and Apollo Gas Inc. (AGI), a subsidiary of Apollo GasIncome Fund, to directly bill customers for gas and energy-relatedservices.

The Gulf Coast from Brownsville, TX, to Spring Hill, FL, hasbeen hit by 34 intense hurricanes this century, and there’s a highprobability one could make an unwelcome visit in 1998. In his firstlook at hurricane landfall probabilities, esteemed hurricaneforecaster William Gray of Colorado State University said the GulfCoast region is 14% more likely to suffer through an intensehurricane (category 3, 4, or 5) and 16% more likely to be hit by alower level cyclone this year than the average landfall probabilityover the past 98 years.

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