NGI All News Access

After 26 years of service, Energy West CEO and president Larry Geske announced he would not stand for re-election to the Great Falls, MT-based company’s board of directors and will retire in November. Geske said he plans to focus his time on personal and community projects. Edward Bernica, COO and CFO, has been appointed president and CEO effective immediately. Bernica has been CFO for five years and COO for two years. During Geske’s tenure, Energy West grew from a utility serving Great Falls to a company now serving customers throughout the inter-mountain west with natural gas, propane and electricity.

The aid from energy companies came in all shapes and forms: from the millions of dollars donated by major oil companies to office space, oil-filled tanker trucks, respirators, boots, gloves, flashlights and cell phones, in response to the national emergency created by the massive terrorist attacks on the United States last Tuesday.

Noble Affiliate Inc.’s board of directors has approved an expanded program to repurchase common stock from time to time in the open market or privately negotiated transactions. The Houston company’s original program of $50 million has been increased to $100 million, and of the $100 million now authorized, about $70 million remains available to purchase additional shares. The company has already repurchased $30 million of stock and intends to hold all of the repurchased stock shares as treasury shares. As of Aug. 6, there were 56.6 million shares of issued and outstanding common stock.

An affiliate of Houston-based Nabors Industries Inc. said it intends to make a cash offer to acquire all of the common shares of Command Drilling Corp. for C$3.30 per share. 19552 Yukon Inc. said the bid represents a 20% premium over the closing price of the Command shares on Sept. 14, 2001.

Citing fully used capacity, warmer weather in its market area and lower overall linepack, Florida Gas Transmission issued Tuesday an Overage Alert Day notice with 10% tolerance for negative daily imbalances.

The cash market got little support from the return of industrial load following the weekend. Instead, with a much weaker screen in Nymex’s abbreviated session Monday, and with few areas experiencing bullish weather, most points softened by up to a dime or so.

Following a successful restart of its Internet-only, Access trading session late Friday afternoon, the New York Mercantile Exchange resumed open-outcry trading Monday morning at 11 a.m. (EDT) in an abbreviated, three-hour session. And just as it has been each day since the beginning of the year, sellers had the upper hand in the natural gas pit, as they pressured the October contract to within striking distance of recent lows. The prompt month finished at $2.369, 18.3 cents beneath Friday’s $2.552 close.

Energy stocks fared fairly well yesterday — i.e. losses were moderate — during the first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange following the terrorist attacks last Tuesday that left a gaping hole in New York City’s financial district. There were only a few companies that escaped red ink, but the across-the-board losses for the most part stayed in the moderate range.

While energy analysts remain shell-shocked following the brazen terrorist attacks of last week and admit they have “no answers” for industry, some predict that the war-provoking events may cause the public, Capitol Hill lawmakers and investors to look more favorably upon North American energy producers, service companies and pipelines.