Sales

Denver-based Tipperary Corp. said last week that it has closed its previously announced transactions with Delta Petroleum Corp. and has subsequently acquired additional interests in the Comet Ridge coalbed methane project in Queensland, Australia. In addition, Tipperary said it has agreed with Williams Production RMT Co. to cease dewatering activities on the Hanna Basin project in Wyoming.

The transaction, subject to approval by Pennzoil’s stockholders and customary regulatory reviews, is expected to close in the second half of 2002 and is expected to add to Shell’s earnings and cash flow in the first full year after it is completed. Shell’s estimated pre-tax benefits from the transaction will total about $140 million a year by 2004. One-time transaction costs were estimated at $100 million.

Agreeing that Georgia’s natural gas deregulation program is flawed but not foundering, a Blue Ribbon Natural Gas Task Force empowered by Gov. Roy Barnes recommended last week that the state not give up on the more than three year-old initiative. Instead, the group decided on a list of proposals to reform the program, including the reinstitution of a single regulated marketer.

Agreeing that Georgia’s natural gas deregulation program is flawed but not foundering, the Blue Ribbon Natural Gas Task Force empowered by Gov. Roy Barnes said it recommends that the state not give up on the more than three year-old initiative. Instead, the group decided on a list of proposals to reform the program, including the reinstitution of a single regulated marketer.

Andrew Fastow, the 39-year-old former CFO for Enron Corp. who has become a central figure in the company’s dubious off-balance sheet transactions and earnings discrepancies that precipitated a stunning bankruptcy in six weeks time, held a telecast press conference from his attorney’s office in New York City, to quell rumors that he was “missing in action.” However, Fastow was there in body only, with his high-powered attorney, David Boies, doing most of the talking.

In the continuing string of unpaid power bills that sits at the heart of California’s lingering electricity crisis, the state association of independent power producers last Wednesday asked the state transmission grid operator, Cal-ISO, to pay up. The nonprofit public benefits organization said that it is “working on it.”

FERC’s recent waivers to allow qualifying facilities (QFs) in California to sell output that isn’t earmarked for the state’s investor-owned utilities (IOUs) to third parties have run into a snag in the state, says a Daggett, CA-based solar electric generator

Chevron, Amoco Production, CanWest Gas Supply, Aera Energy and RME Petroleum have called on FERC to stop Kern River Gas Transmission from overselling delivery point rights at Wheeler Ridge into the Southern California Gas Co. distribution system.

Chevron, Amoco Production, CanWest Gas Supply, Aera Energy andRME Petroleum have called on FERC to stop Kern River GasTransmission from overselling delivery point rights at WheelerRidge into the Southern California Gas Co. distribution system. TheFirm Shippers said in comments filed this week that, in a situationstrangely similar to the recent El Paso capacity reallocation case,Kern River has oversold capacity at Wheeler Ridge, and its proposedexpansion project will only exacerbate the situation (DocketCP01-31).