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Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Louis Dreyfus Corp. is bought
Dreyfus, which has a local office, was purchased by Dominion
Associated Press

   RICHMOND, Va. - Dominion Resources Inc. is buying Louis Dreyfus Natural Gas Corp. for $1.8 billion in cash and stock in a deal that will increase its natural gas reserves by 60 percent.
   The deal announced Monday also calls for Richmond-based Dominion to assume $505 million in Louis Dreyfus debt.
   Louis Dreyfus, based in Oklahoma City, is an independent natural gas production and exploration company operating primarily in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico.
   (In Corpus Christi, Louis Dreyfus has offices at 500 Shoreline Blvd. and employs seven people here.
   (David Carr, district operations manager, said the acquisition so far has not had a negative impact on local employees.
   ("They said there probably won't be any changes," Carr said. "But you never know. The closing date is in November and we should know by then."
   (The local operations group oversees 500 gas wells from Houston to Laredo, he said. Louis Dreyfus has a proved reserve base of 1.8 trillion cubic feet, 89 percent of which is natural gas. Locally, the employees oversee half of those natural gas reserves, Carr said.)
   Dominion has about 4 million customers in the mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Northeast.
   The acquisition will boost Dominion's natural gas reserves to 4.6 trillion cubic feet. It also will allow the company's exploration and production unit to produce more than 450 billion cubic feet annually, an increase of more than 40 percent.


Business writer Laura Elder contributed to this report. She can be reached at 886-3678 or elderl@caller.com

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