Yesterday

After plumbing to the lowest levels in over a month Monday, thefutures market rallied yesterday as scale down commercial buyingreceived unexpected support from local traders eager to reverseshort positions. The June contract finished at $2.200, up 2.4 centsfor the day.

A House Commerce subcommittee hearing yesterday revealed thatlawmakers aren’t much closer to agreement on the tough,controversial issues associated with restructuring of the powerindustry than they were a year ago.

After tumbling 8.1 cents lower in Tuesday’s sell-off, the marketseemed to take a breather yesterday with neither bulls nor bearsable to influence price movemnet in their favor. The June contractwas limited to a tight 4-cent trading range, slipping just 0.8cents to finish at $2.254. Estimated volume was moderate, with67,082 contracts changing hands.

Allen Franklin was named Southern Co.’s COO yesterday. In thenewly-created position, Franklin will be responsible for five ofSouthern’s Southeastern subsidiaries: Alabama Power, Georgia Power,Gulf Power, Mississippi Power and Savannah Electric. He will alsobe in charge of Southern Generation, including all of the company’sregulated fossil and hydro generation. Franklin is currentlyexecutive vice president of Southern and CEO of Georgia Power. Hejoined Southern Company in 1970 and has held various executivetitles.

Petal Gas Storage, a subsidiary of Crystal Oil, announced itsigned a major 20-year gas storage agreement with Southern Co.yesterday for firm deliverability from its Mississippi salt cavernstorage facility of 700,000 MMBtu/d of gas and storage injectioncapacity for 350,000 MMBtu/d. Southern Company Services will managethe capacity and will act as an agent for its affiliated operatingelectric utility companies: Mississippi Power, Alabama Power,Georgia Power, Gulf Power and Savannah Electric.

Enbridge Inc., a Calgary-based energy transportation anddistribution company, entered the midstream business yesterday withthe purchase of a 35% share in AltaGas Inc., a Calgary-basedmidstream gas company, for $160 million. The deal is expected toclose in September.

At an annual meeting yesterday, Avista Corp. CEO T.M. Matthewsunveiled a new strategy that will include the purchase of 10% ofAvista’s common stock and will defer any major acquisitions soAvista can concentrate on the company’s existing energy business.

Conoco yesterday held its first meeting of stockholders in 18years following the company’s record-setting $4.4 billion initialpublic offering in October 1998, that launched Conoco’s eventualseparation from DuPont. Conoco CEO Archie Dunham said the finalsplit-off from DuPont is expected to occur in the third quarter ofthis year when DuPont will offer its shareholders the opportunityto exchange DuPont shares for Conoco shares.

The shareholders of Santa Fe Energy Resources and Snyder OilCorp. approved the merger of the two companies during specialmeetings yesterday. More than 99% of the voting shareholders ofeach company voted in favor of the merger. The new Houston-basedcombined company, which will be called Santa Fe Snyder Corp., willhave a market capitalization of $1.6 billion, with reserves of 315million boe. Combined production for 1999 is expected to be 105,000boe/d, 55% of which will be gas and 70% of which will be producedin the U.S.