NGI The Weekly Gas Market Report

With an upbeat conference call and better-than-expected earnings for the first quarter, Dynegy Inc. swung to a profit for the first time in over a year, and further encouraged investors that it now expects to surpass 2003 guidance. The sector-leading stock soared on the day of its earnings announcement, with more than 34 million shares exchanging hands, sending Dynegy up 25% in one day to close higher than it had closed since last July.

Following more than a year of investigations into Enron Corp., several former top executives, including the wife of indicted CFO Andrew Fastow, were led in handcuffs into the Houston Federal Courthouse Thursday, where they were charged in various fraud schemes. Fastow, already under indictment on 78 counts of fraud and embezzlement, also was indicted Thursday on 31 additional criminal charges.

One of California’s long-time natural gas market analysts sees Rocky Mountain supplies and the expanded Kern River Pipeline as adding to new competitive capacity entering California, although there may be some excess capacity to market on a short-term basis due to delayed construction of new electric generating plants.

FERC last week said that it will review all ownership interests by former energy trading giant Enron Corp. or Enron affiliates in any facility claiming qualifying facility (QF) status to assure that those facilities meet the Commission’s ownership criteria for QF status.

Bringing two Calgary-based E&P rivals together, Roseland Resources Ltd. and Rival Energy Inc. said that they have entered into a merger agreement under which one Rival Energy share will be given for every five Roseland shares.

Due to much warmer than normal temperatures during the first quarter in California, Nevada and Arizona, Southwest Gas Corp. announced consolidated earnings of $0.76 per share for 1Q2003, a $0.56 decrease from the $1.32 per share earned during the first quarter of 2002. The company’s consolidated net income was $25.5 million, compared to $42.9 million in the prior period.

Continuing with its plan of focusing on core assets, Duke Energy Field Services (DEFS) on Friday signed two separate purchase and sale agreements by which it will sell one package of assets in Mississippi, Texas, Alabama and Louisiana to Crosstex Energy Services LP. and a second package of assets in eastern Oklahoma to ScissorTail Energy LLC.

Casting off the contracts that once catapulted it to the top of the gas marketer rankings, Mirant Corp. last Thursday said it will sell a significant portion of its Canadian gas aggregator, transportation and storage agreements to food processing giant Cargill Ltd. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but financially struggling Mirant said it would reduce its collateral obligations by about $200 million.

In an unusual move last Wednesday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, without any prodding from the courts, vacated an order that authorized Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line to spin off its 400-mile South Texas mainline and lateral facilities to an unaffiliated Texas intrastate pipeline, Enbridge Pipelines LP.