Stepping

Cheniere Energy Inc. of Houston this week detailed a plan toaccelerate its exploration program in the shallow Gulf of Mexicoregions. “Cheniere has a window of opportunity that may last 12 -18 months, during which time the economics of exploration drillingin the Gulf of Mexico will be particularly attractive,” saidPresident Michael L. Harvey. “Currently, oil and gas prices arerelatively high, but the costs of drilling are low.”

The Chancery Court of Delaware is stepping up the pace on alawsuit filed on June 24 against Columbia Energy Group by NiSource,NiSource said yesterday. The court has called for an acceleratedschedule for the case in which NiSource is seeking to compelColumbia to reopen its 1999 annual meeting so that another directorcan be elected to a vacant seat on Columbia’s board.

Industry observers shouldn’t be surprised to see Texaco marchingto a different drummer in the industry’s high-stepping mergerparade, Texaco Chairman Peter I. Bijur said last week. Unlike manyof its peers, Texaco appears to be looking outside the upstreamindustry for a merger partner.

Like a grizzly bear accidentally stepping on a porcupine, VikingVoyageur seems to have tread on a Wisconsin landowner whose husbandhappens to be a Noble Prize winning economist with a dislike ofpipeline infrastructure. In testimony filed at FERC on behalf ofhis wife Katherine D. Miller, Merton H. Miller, McCormickDistinguished Service Professor of Finance, Emeritus, of theGraduate School of Business, University of Chicago, warned theCommission if its goal in approving new pipelines is to benefitconsumers then it should toss the Voyageur project.