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Houston’s Burlington Resources said this week that a tax benefitreinstated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Septemberwill raise the independent’s earnings in the third quarter by 14cents, beating analysts’ expectations.

CMS Energy Corp. announced it intends to implement a programthat will strengthen its balance sheet while maintaining itsforecasted earnings per share for 2001. The company also plans toretain the goal of a 10% per year growth rate thereafter.

Austin, TX-based Green Mountain Energy has received aninvestment of $53.5 million to fund its growth in marketing cleanerenergy sources in deregulated markets in the United States. Oddlyenough, the investment will come overseas from Nuon, the largestutility in the Netherlands and a leading provider of green energyin Europe.

CMS Energy, Ameren Corp., KeySpan and UGI Corp. have joinedAllegheny Energy, Allete (formerly Minnesota Power) and PPL Corp.in the formation of Enporion Inc., a global e-procurement exchangefor the energy industry. The companies see the potential for bigsavings in pooling their buying power over the new exchange.

Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown analyst Ed Tirello initiated coverageof Caminus Corp. with a Strong Buy rating, predicting that theenergy industry’s spending on information technology and softwarewould grow significantly in the next few years.

Internet-based electricity and natural gas provider SmartEnergyannounced that it has entered an agreement to become a featuredmerchant on Yahoo! Shopping, marking the first residential energyservice provider on the e-commerce provider. Yahoo! Shopping willnow give customers in deregulated energy markets a choice in thepurchase of electricity and gas.

Hoping to benefit in both efficiency and cost savings, CompaqComputer Corp. inked an agreement with Enron Corp.’s Enron EnergyServices yesterday, a deal in which Enron will manage theelectricity, natural gas and energy-related management services forCompaq’s facilities in Texas, California and Massachusetts.Financial details for the five-year agreement were not disclosed.The deal between the two Houston-based corporations adds to thegrowing list of energy service management contracts Enron has inkedduring the past few years, which has ramped up this year. In earlySeptember, Enron Energy Services secured a 10-year $1 billionenergy management service agreement with Starwood Hotels andResorts Worldwide (see Daily GPI, Sept. 7). The energy services armof the marketing giant remains on track to reach its goal of $16billion in agreements this year, nearly double 1999’s total of $8.5billion. That’s up from $3.8 billion in energy agreements in 1998(see Daily GPI, May 31).

Yankee Energy’s board has named Michael G. Morris president andCEO, succeeding Charles E. Gooley, who died two weeks ago followinga long battle with cancer. Morris currently is chairman, presidentand CEO of Northeast Utilities and Chairman of Yankee EnergySystem. In addition, Dennis E. Welch was elected senior vicepresident, COO and director of Yankee Energy and subsidiaries.Welch, formerly vice president of environment, safety and ethics atNU, will run the day-to-day operations of Yankee.

Florida Gas Transmission discovered a leak on its 22-inchmainline downstream of Station 4 (Matagorda County, TX) betweenvalves 4-7 and 4-5 (west of Galveston Bay). That section was beingisolated and its pressure reduced. As of Tuesday afternoon,estimated downtime was 24-36 hours. FGT was keeping shippers wholeTuesday and trying to re-route as much affected gas as possible, aspokeswoman said, but for today’s gas day there will be no flow at15 receipt points and two delivery points.