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Enron Mail |
OUTLOOK Enron Q3 EPS 43 cents vs 34
AFX News, 10/11/01 UK: UPDATE 1-Rothschild exits base metals, precious unaffected. Reuters English News Service, 10/11/01 INDIA: London court gives Enron India unit respite in row. Reuters English News Service, 10/11/01 ECUADOR: Three firms accept Ecuador oil contracts at WTI-$6.97. Reuters English News Service, 10/11/01 UK: Asian clean tanker freight seen falling - brokers. Reuters English News Service, 10/11/01 JOBS South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 10/11/01 OUTLOOK Enron Q3 EPS 43 cents vs 34 10/11/2001 AFX News © 2001 by AFP-Extel News Ltd NEW YORK (AFX) - Enron Corp is expected to report next Tuesday third-quarter earnings per share of 43 cents, compared with 34 cents a year earlier, according to the First Call/Thomson Financial consensus of 17 brokers. The integrated energy company is expected to meet near-consensus results driven by its wholesale services division, analysts said. Montgomery Securities analyst Daniel Tulis is calculating third-quarter EPS of 42 cents, 1 cent below consensus. Full-year EPS stands at 1.85. Enron's third quarter was marked by the unexpected departure of chief executive Jeff Skilling, for personal reasons, with Chairman Ken Lay reassuming the key position. Lay is likely to remain in the position until it is filled within 12-18 months, Tulis said. The company remains embroiled in arbitration proceedings in India after its 2.9 bln usd Dabhol power plant in India was closed. The plant's sole client, the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB), failed - and later refused - to pay bills that now total about 45 mln usd. blms/gc For more information and to contact AFX: www.afxnews.com and www.afxpress.com Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. UK: UPDATE 1-Rothschild exits base metals, precious unaffected. By Andy Blamey 10/11/2001 Reuters English News Service (C) Reuters Limited 2001. LONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Blue-blooded banker N M Rothschild & Sons Ltd said on Thursday it would shut down its base metals trading operations except in Australia - the third base metals trader this week to announce cutbacks. Rothschild remains firmly committed to its precious metals activity, however, company managing director and group treasurer Geoffrey Spice told Reuters. The company, the merchant banking arm and UK branch of the Rothschild family's financial empire, chairs the twice-daily benchmark price-setting London gold fix. "In light of difficult trading conditions in the base metals markets, we have concluded that our limited base metals operation is no longer viable," company Chairman Sir Evelyn de Rothschild said in a statement. "We've been reviewing the situation for quite some time. We've found that trading conditions (in base metals) have been difficult and opportunities have been limited," Spice said. Rothschild would not be taking on any new positions in base metals but would see existing positions on its books through to fruition, according to clients' wishes, he said. Rothschild is a category 2 (associate broker clearing) member of the London Metal Exchange (LME); the company would maintain its LME membership while existing positions run their course and would review it in due course, Spice said. The move to exit base metals will involve the closure of Rothschild's metals sales desk in New York and a number of redundancies in the London and New York trading, sales and support areas, the company said. Employees were informed of the decision on Thursday afternoon; around 20 Rothschild staff in total would be affected by the move, Spice said. The company's Australian base metals activities would continue as normal, however, he added. "Australia has a very strong franchise and will continue to operate in the base metals market," he said. The Rothschild move follows news this week that the Bank of Nova Scotia will scale back its base metals trading desk and that Enron Metals plans to cut around 10 percent of staff as a part of a Europe-wide job cut programme. Base metals traders have been struggling in recent months in the face of falling business volumes and sagging metals prices as continuing economic gloom and uncertainty after the September 11 attacks on the United States leave buyers sidelined. PRECIOUS METALS STRONG Spice stressed, however, that the company's precious metals operations would continue as normal. "We have a very strong position in precious metals which will not be affected in any way," he said. "N M Rothschild remains strongly committed to our core business in precious metals and continues to be at the forefront of spot, forward and option bullion markets and a leading member of the London Bullion Market Association," the company statement said. Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. INDIA: London court gives Enron India unit respite in row. 10/11/2001 Reuters English News Service (C) Reuters Limited 2001. BOMBAY, Oct 11 (Reuters) - The Indian unit of U.S. energy major Enron Corp . said on Thursday it had obtained a ruling from a London court preventing a provincial government from legally challenging international arbitration proceedings. Enron's Indian unit, Dabhol Power Company, has taken a local Indian utility to the International Court of Arbitration in London for a breach of contract. The utility, the Maharashtra State Electricity Board, had signed a contract to buy the output from Dabhol's $2.9 billion power plant on the western coast of India. It later said it did not need all the power from the 2,184 MW plant, and that it was too expensive. But a local regulatory authority, the Maharashtra State Electricity Commission, said the power company's dispute with the utility fell within its ambit, and that Dabhol could not proceed with the arbitration. This sparked a round of litigation, which is now at a stage where the Bombay High Court must decide whether Dabhol can take the dispute to London. In order to prevent more litigation, Enron obtained an injunction from the Commercial Court in London which restrains the government of Maharashtra, which owns the utility, from also filing a suit in India challenging the international arbitration proceedings. "Over the past few months, the government of Maharashtra and other government entities have taken actions to avoid complying with their contractual obligations," Dabhol said in a statement received late on Thursday. "This has frustrated the rights of international investors that were legally agreed to by the relevant parties several years ago." Government officials were not be reached for comment. Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ECUADOR: Three firms accept Ecuador oil contracts at WTI-$6.97. 10/11/2001 Reuters English News Service (C) Reuters Limited 2001. QUITO, Ecuador, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Anglo Energy, Enron and Rio Energy agreed to match the price of $6.97 below West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for Ecuador crude contracts for November, a Petroecuador official said Thursday. Petroecuador last week retendered eight three-month crude contracts, each for 12,000 barrels per day (bpd), following a price dispute with former contract holders that led Ecuador's state oil company to break the contracts. The company awarded Coastal Petroleum two contracts on Friday at WTI minus $6.97, with a floor price for WTI at $20 per barrel, and offered other interested companies the chance to match this price for November. Petroecuador will set the price of Ecuador's crude for December and January. Anglo Energy will take two contracts while Enron and Rio Energy will take one contract each, the official said on the condition of anonymity. It was not immediately clear what would happen to two crude contracts sought by Glencore. Glencore had yet to respond to the offer on Thursday, the source said. Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. UK: Asian clean tanker freight seen falling - brokers. 10/11/2001 Reuters English News Service (C) Reuters Limited 2001. LONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Asian petroleum product trades are likely to benefit from falling freight costs next week, as a raft of surplus tankers makes its way towards Singapore, tanker brokers said on Thursday. "There's a lot of ships ballasting down from Japan, arriving from the middle of next week onwards," said a Singapore broker. "From October 15 to 20 there will be eight to 10 ships in the area. Rates will fall further." He said that intra-Asian freight rates had already started to slide from a spike that topped W280 at the start of the week to W260 on Thursday ($17.52 per tonne). He said that transpacific trade, which often serves to tighten up the intra-Asian market, was dead. "The only arbs that are open are gasoline to Singapore from Europe and jet going the other way," he said. "Cargill did 35,000 tonnes from Malacca to UK-Cont on the High Challenge: we're guessing jet." London brokers said Enron had also booked a ship, the Teekay Freighter, to shift 70,000 tonnes of gasoil from Jamnagar, India to Europe. Brokers said that the Mideast Gulf trade, which occasionally sucks surplus ships out of Asia, was also quiet. Glencore booked two tankers for 40,000 tonne clean cargoes from Yanbu to East Coast India at W235, down 15 points on week-ago levels. "Long Range trades from the Gulf are quiet," said a London broker. "Nothing's happening so it's difficult to know where rates stand, but basically it's going down." A panel of brokers from London's Baltic Exchange pegged the naphtha trade on 75,000 tonners from the Gulf to Japan at W189 late on Wednesday, following a fall of eight points from week-ago levels. Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. LOCAL DANIA RESIDENTS POKE HOLES IN PIPELINE PLAN David Fleshler Staff Writer 10/11/2001 South Florida Sun-Sentinel Broward Metro 3B (Copyright 2001 by the Sun-Sentinel) A proposal to build a natural gas pipeline from the Bahamas to Broward County drew harsh reviews Wednesday from an audience in Dania Beach. Not a single speaker spoke in favor of the project, although one or two were neutral, during a public workshop held by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the I.T. Parker Community Center. "It is totally insane to put a high-pressure natural gas pipeline through such a densely populated area," said Susan Epps, of Oakland Park. "The loss of life and property if there would be an accident would be catastrophic." The commission is preparing an environmental impact statement for the project. More workshops will be held once a draft is ready. The process is expected to take several months. Enron Corp. of Houston proposed the pipeline as a way to meet the state's growing demand for natural gas, a relatively clean and increasingly popular fuel for power plants. Two other companies have made similar proposals. Enron's representatives say construction of the pipeline would do minimal damage to the coral reefs in its path. And it is an extremely safe way to transport natural gas. But few people in the audience saw it that way. Dan Clark, a member of a Broward County group that monitors the health of coral reefs, said that the company's representatives painted too rosy a picture of the project's impact on coral reefs by claiming that drilling a path under the reefs would leave them unharmed. "What they failed to tell you is that they're going to have to assemble the pipe across the second reef and drag it across the second reef," he said. "At a time when we're losing these habitats, we don't want to lose any more, willingly." Some speakers questioned the wisdom of bringing in another source of fossil fuels, however clean it may be, rather than putting more effort in conservation and renewable energy. "Why don't we regulate people's use of energy?" asked Judy Kuchta, of North Beach in Hollywood. "Why do people have to waste energy playing stupid video games and watching mindless TV?" Several speakers worried about the project's effects on John U. Lloyd State Park, a popular beachfront park under which the pipeline would run. "The park simply can't sustain the additional degradation of pipeline construction and operation," said Sara Case, speaking for Save Our Shoreline, a Hollywood conservation group. "The beach is one of Broward County's most important sea turtle nesting areas. Shore birds are attracted to the park. We simply find it difficult to believe that significant environmental damage is not inevitable from this monumental project." David Fleshler can be reached at dfleshler@sun-sentinel.com or 954- 356-4535. Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. BUSINESS JOBS Bloomberg News 10/11/2001 South Florida Sun-Sentinel Broward Metro 3D (Copyright 2001 by the Sun-Sentinel) Enron Corp., the largest energy trader, plans to cut as many as 500 jobs in Europe, or as much as 10 percent of its work force there, to reduce costs and boost profit. The company has 5,000 workers in Europe and plans to trim jobs by 5 percent to 10 percent. "Business continues to grow in terms of traded volumes and numbers of transactions, but like any company, we are constantly seeking ways to do more with less," John Sherriff, chief executive of Enron Europe, said. Copyright ? 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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