Trade

Duke Energy Trading and Marketing and Dynegy Marketing and Tradewere the winning bidders in the first auction of Gulf Coast gastransportation services in the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS)Gulf royalty in-kind pilot program. The two companies will betransporting a total of 198 MMcf/d of royalty gas production to theGeneral Services Administration (GSA) onshore Louisiana fromDecember through March 2000.

Canada’s National Energy Board has sent a message toparticipants in the international natural gas trade: Stay cool andgreet predictions of Canadian supply shortages with healthyskepticism.

Kinder Morgan and KN Energy announced the completion of theirmerger. The company has been renamed Kinder Morgan, Inc. and willtrade under the New York Stock Exchange symbol “KMI.” The $900million merger was announced last July.

Canada’s National Energy Board has sent a message toparticipants in the international natural gas trade: Stay cool andgreet predictions of Canadian supply shortages with healthyskepticism.

El Paso Energy Corp. will sell East Tennessee Natural Gas, theSea Robin Pipeline and its interest in Destin Pipeline to gainFederal Trade Commission (FTC) approval of its merger with SonatInc. El Paso said yesterday it has signed a consent agreement withthe FTC and expects the agency to sign “shortly.” Subject to FTCand FERC regulatory approval, El Paso Energy and Sonat expect toclose the merger in early October.

A broad coalition of natural gas and electric trade groups haveasked FERC to reconsider a July rehearing decision that prompted itto purge any reference to immediate relief from its final rule oncomplaint procedures.

A broad coalition of gas and electric trade groups has askedFERC to reconsider a July rehearing decision that prompted it topurge any reference to immediate relief from its final rule oncomplaint procedures.

With only a day left before the capacity now held by DynegyMarketing and Trade on El Paso Natural Gas opens to bids for nextyear, parties are continuing to fight over the legality of theoriginal contract.

Taking a cue from Thursday’s Access trade sell-off, the futuresmarket continued lower Friday as traders fully discounted thecurrent trio of storms by aggressively exiting their longpositions. By 2:40 p.m., the September contract had fallen justshort of filling in the chart gap down to $2.805. However, $2.83was all that the sellers could muster and prices rallied in thelast 30 minutes of trading. The September contract settled at$2.912, down 3.6 cents for the day but up more than 8 cents fromits earlier low.