Successfully

Capping off its first full year of offering energy products and services successfully, Tractebel Energy Services Inc. (TES), the retail energy subsidiary of Tractebel North America Inc., said it now plans to expand its retail product offering in the future to include natural gas and information-based services and will continue to enter newly deregulated states where opportunities exist to meet customer needs in the commercial and industrial energy sector.

After failing to successfully probe the downside, natural gas bulls took control Thursday at Nymex following the news that only 80 Bcf was injected into underground storage facilities last week. At 12:45 p.m. EDT the June contract was up 22.5 cents for the session at $5.885. It closed at $5.772, 11.2 cents above Wednesday’s close. With 96,927 contracts changing hands, trading volume was heavy.

At literally the eleventh hour, Reliant Resources Inc. (RRI) last week successfully completed a $6.2 billion financing package to refinance $5.9 billion of existing bank credit facilities with new ones that won’t mature until 2007. The lenders also provided the cash-poor company a $300 million line of credit, which matures in 2004.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. said Monday that it has successfully completed and begun sales from a natural gas discovery at its Cat Creek 1-19 well in the Comanche Lodge Prospect in the Greater Mayfield area of the Deep Anadarko Basin. Located in western Oklahoma, the well has produced 17 MMcfe/d over a 24-hour period beginning last Sunday.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. said Monday that it has successfully completed and begun sales from a natural gas discovery at its Cat Creek 1-19 well in the Comanche Lodge Prospect in the Greater Mayfield area of the Deep Anadarko Basin. Located in western Oklahoma, the well has produced 17 MMcfe/d over a 24-hour period beginning last Sunday.

Ontario’s Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO) successfully opened the province’s competitive electricity marketplace at midnight on May 1, and began calculating market-clearing prices every five minutes for the 239 participants. The new market, run by the IMO, has more than 200 participants, including 93 local distribution companies, 89 industrial consumers, 19 generators, 34 wholesale buyers/sellers and four transmitters.

The ability of FERC to successfully form regional transmission organizations (RTOs) throughout the country will in large measure be tied to how much cooperation and support federal regulators receive from their counterparts at the state level, a key FERC staff member told an audience of energy attorneys in Washington, DC, last Thursday.

Denver-based Gasco Energy Inc. said Thursday it had successfully completed a strategic exchange of certain properties located in the gas-rich Uinta Basin with El Paso Corp. In the transaction, Gasco received 2,571 net acres located in its Uinta Basin Riverbend Project in exchange for the contractual right to earn Wasatch rights on 10,850 gross Uinta Basin acres (2,713 net acres).

Calgary-based Gemini Corp. said Wednesday that its new natural gas processing facility in Burstall, SK has successfully commenced operations. “This is significant because it is the first custom gas processing facility to be designed, constructed, owned and operated by the corporation,” said Carl Johnson, CEO. “We will continue to pursue similar projects, including those outside the oil and gas sector, since we believe that this type of service has strong growth potential and could represent an important part of the corporation’s future operations.” The initial design capacity of the plant is 3.8 MMcf/d with provision to expand to 7 MMcf/d. The cost was approximately $1 million and it should generate revenues of $3.6 million over the next 10 years, the company estimated. The anticipated life of this project is in excess of 15 years based on estimates of recoverable reserves in the immediate area. Gemini supplies engineering, project management, fabrication and construction, custom contract operating services and electrical and instrumentation services in Canada and internationally, predominantly to the oil and gas industry.