Williams Energy Marketing & Trading is buying an undisclosedminority stake in Houston Street Exchange, a Web-based powertrading exchange that Williams believes will be actively taken upby the energy trading community.

“Emerging technologies continue to change the way the energyindustry operates, and HoustonStreet.com is on the leading edge ofthe revolution. Internet-based trading has exploded, and we believethat this investment will allow us to play a significant role inthe development of new markets and platforms,” said Bill Hobbs,president of Williams Energy Marketing & Trading.

Since the launch of HoustonStreet.com in July 1999, the exchangehas attracted a large number of power companies with 110 registeredso far. The company would not release the daily volume currentlytraded on its physical trading platform, called PowerPit. It isabout to launch a new platform, called Speedway, for financialpower traders, and is expecting a significant increase in Internettraffic as a result. It also recently announced plans to launch newWeb-based platforms for trading crude and refined products at thewholesale level and is looking into offering electronic trading innatural gas.

Electronic trading, sales and procurement systems are “comingout faster than I can look at them,” noted Nancy Gustine, directorof eBusiness for Williams Energy Marketing & Trading. “But fromwhat we’ve seen so far, [HoustonStreet.com] is an attractivesystem. They have good technology behind it, good research fromtheir focus groups, and number one, if the traders want to use itthat’s a good indication [it’s an effective system].”

Gustine said the investment in HoustonStreet.com is just onepiece of Williams’ eBusiness strategy. “By acquiring a stake inthis innovator in the electronic-exchange industry, we cancapitalize on our marketing strengths while helping them transformthe trading industry.

“There are a lot of things going on in the market, and as wetake equity positions in interests in them it’s to support theefficiency and effectiveness of how we do our business. We aregoing to see more and more eBusiness. That’s what it’s all about.If we’re not looking at what’s coming in the market to see what’sgoing to be surviving, we would not be doing a good job.” She addedthat this purchase does not mean Williams will play an active rollin the software business as it had in the mid-1990s with its stakein Altra Energy. It sold its share of Altra to two venturecapitalists in 1997.

Houston Street Exchange CEO Frank Getman said having one of theleaders in the energy industry invest in Houston Street is “adirect validation of our technology and our vision for the futureof energy trading.” Williams is not the first energy company toinvest in Houston Street; Equiva, the joint crude oil trading armof Saudi Aramco, Shell Oil and Texaco invested $6 million in thecompany earlier this year.

Designed by traders for traders, Houston Street Exchangerepresents one of the first Web portals for the trading ofwholesale energy products. HoustonStreet.com provides an onlinetrading engine that allows traders to buy and sell their energyproducts fast. Houston Street Exchange is headquartered inPortsmouth, NH, with offices in Houston. It is a majority-ownedsubsidiary of BayCorp Holdings, Ltd., which also ownsPortsmouth-based Great Bay Power. For more information, visitHouston Street at www.houstonstreet.com.

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