Story

Just so you’ll know: “The natural gas market is a real successstory…..FERC has gotten an enormous amount of things right. Themarket may not be unblemished, but there are lots who consider thenatural gas market the best market in the world offering genuineprice discovery on a daily basis across dozens of products. It’ssomething everyone should be proud of,” Robert Levin of the NewYork Mercantile Exchange told a FERC conference last week.

Just so you’ll know: “The natural gas market is a real successstory. …FERC has gotten an enormous amount of things right. Themarket may not be unblemished, but there are lots who consider thenatural gas market the best market in the world offering genuineprice discovery on a daily basis across dozens of products. It’ssomething everyone should be proud of,” Robert Levin of the NewYork Mercantile Exchange told a FERC conference yesterday.

The numbers, it seems, don’t tell the entire story. Even thoughoil and gas industry upstream revenues, profits and cash flow areshowing record profits for 1999 compared with the previous year’scollapse, exploration and development spending dropped and provedreserves spending rose significantly, according to ArthurAndersen’s 21st annual Global E&P Trends survey.

The numbers, it seems, don’t tell the entire story. Even thoughoil and gas industry upstream revenues, profits and cash flow areshowing record profits for 1999 compared with the previous year’scollapse, exploration and development spending dropped and provedreserves spending rose significantly, according to ArthurAndersen’s 21st annual Global E&P Trends survey.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp., an independent oil and gas company,announced Wednesday it has purchased 7.5 acres in a Houston suburbin order to build a 32-story, 800,000 square foot headquartersbuilding. The company said it needs to move to accommodate itsgrowth needs. Groundbreaking is expected early next year. Anadarkoplans to move in mid-2002.

The recent rash of producer spending cuts (see related story)comes at a time when the message on prices from the analystcommunity is pretty gloomy, too. “There’s not much holding [gasprices] up,” said Thomas J. Woods, Ziff Energy vice president forU.S. Gas Services. Woods said Ziff has been warning its clientsthat current prices are not supportable. “We had put out some earlywarnings in July when prices first frayed, and we said that therewas a very significant possibility that this would go [on].”

Same story, different company. That summarizes third quarterresults reported recently by Anadarko Petroleum. Like everyoneelse, Anadarko suffered from lower gas and oil prices last quarter,and the hurt shows plainly in its financials.

A story that ran in NGI’s Daily Gas Price Index Oct. 14 falselyreported that a state court had ordered the break-up of ProLianceEnergy. It also contained several other inaccuracies. The decisionby the Indiana appellate court merely reversed an order by theIndiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) in which supplycontracts between ProLiance and affiliates Indiana Gas and CitizensGas Light & Coke were approved. The court ruled thatcontractual provisions relating to the use of published gas priceindexes required a different approval process. ProLiance “disagreeswith the court’s interpretation of the state statute and believesthat the IURC had full authority to approve the contracts under thestatutes cited in the IURC’s opinion.” The company intends toappeal the decision. The decision also does not require refunds tocustomers.

A story titled “NGC Releases First Batchof El Paso Capacity” in the Tuesday April 7 edition of NGI’s DailyGas Price Index mentioned only one of two El Paso capacity packagesbeing released by NGC Corp. NGC is releasing the 593,122 MMBtu/d firmcapacity package through the end of April, but also is releasing thesame quantity with the same delivery and receipt points for a muchlonger term: May 1 through December 31, 1999, which is the end of thecontract term for NGC.