INDIA: India's GAIL says study for gas pipeline on track.
Reuters English News Service 
AEP Realigns Executive Management Team to Prepare for Planned Corporate Separation
PR Newswire 
Enron Unit Files Claim To Recover Argentine Investment
Dow Jones International News 
Seminar Geared to Extrusion Engineers and Supervisors
PR Newswire 
INDIA: India states may face blackout as Enron unit idles.
Reuters English News Service 
Zurich authorities okay EWZ, Enron JV.
Neue Z?rcher Zeitung 
Crude oil rises on possible OPEC cuts
Bloomberg News
National Post 
. 
India: Vijaynagar power project likely to hit roadblock
Business Line (The Hindu) 
India: Tata Power, IDBI discuss Dabhol
Business Line (The Hindu) 
India: SCI in a spot over LNG tanker project
Business Line (The Hindu) 
INDIAN STATE POWER GIANT SAYS NO TO DISINVESTMENT, ENRON STAKE
Asia Pulse 
DPC braces to serve MSEB asset-transfer notice
Business Standard 
Global lenders demand their inclusion in talks
Business Standard 
ONGC not keen on Enron's liquefied natural gas facility
Business Standard 
rethinking the office Say goodbye to the Dilbert cubicle and hello to a new breed of...cubicle. Make that "workstation." The difference is better design, stylish layouts and the thing most offices lack: fun. So long to the old workplace hierarchy
The Globe and Mail 
PGNiG Board Ratify Norwegian Gas Deal
Polish News Bulletin 
World Watch
The Wall Street Journal 


INDIA: India's GAIL says study for gas pipeline on tck.
By Shailendra Bhatnagarws Service 
(C) Reuters Limited 2001. 

NEW DELHI, Sept 28 (Reuters) - State-run Gas Authority of India Ltd said on Friday its technical-commercial feasibility study for a deep-sea gas pipeline from Iran was proceeding on schedule despite fears of war in the region. 
But the New Delhi-based firm said the overland option was not a priority now because of heightened political uncertainty in neighbouring countries.
"We're going ahead with the deep-sea feasibility study and hope to see it completed in a year's time, Proshanto Banerjee, Gas Authority's chairman and managing director, said. 
"But the onshore feasibility is not a priority right now because it would involve Pakistan and Afghanistan which are disturbed politically at the moment," he told reporters. 
GAIL is the agency mandated by the government to carry out the $10-million feasibility study for the proposed 2,500-km (1,550 mile) pipeline that could partly meet India's growing hunger for energy. 
Analysts estimate India has a demand for 115 million cubic metres of gas a day against a supply of 65 million. The pipeline from Iran, which has the world's second-largest gas reserves, makes economic sense. 
But the overground route from Iran to India for the project, estimated at $4.0 billion, would pass through Afghanistan and Pakistan - a country that has fought three wars with India. 
FEARS OF WAR HAVE RISEN 
Prospects of a conflict in the region have risen since the devastating September 11 hijack attacks on the United States. 
Washington accuses Afghanistan's ruling Taliban of sheltering Osama bin Laden, its prime suspect for the attacks, and has asked him to be handed over or face possible military retribution. 
On being asked whether GAIL would be interested in taking over energy giant Enron's Corp Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, Banerjee said the "company would certainly look at the proposal". 
Enron's Indian unit, the Dabhol Power Co, is involved in a bitter payments battle with the state's electricity board, and the U.S. firm wants to sell its 65 percent stake in the unit. 
Dabhol's 740-MW first phase has been idle since May and its second 1,444-MW phase is 97 percent complete but further construction has stopped because of the dispute. The first phase uses Naphtha as fuel and the second was to run on LNG. 
But Banerjee added GAIL had not been approached by any institution or Enron with a proposal and did not make any estimate of what the 5.0-million tonne LNG facility would fetch. 
GAIL's shares ended 0.50 percent lower at 50.50 rupees on Friday on the Bombay exchange, whose main index closed up 3.54 percent. ($1 = 47.85 rupees).


AEP Realigns Executive Management Team to Prepare for Planned Corporate Separation

09/28/2001
PR Newswire 
(Copyright (c) 2001, PR Newswire) 

Company reaffirms earnings guidance for 2001: $3.50 to $3.60 per share 
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) announced today that it has realigned executive management to prepare for the planned separation of its regulated and unregulated businesses.
According to E. Linn Draper Jr., AEP chairman, president and chief executive officer, the realignment, which is effective immediately, will allow the company's executive team to apply diverse management experience to all of AEP's businesses. 
Thomas V. Shockley III will continue to report to Draper as vice chairman with the additional title of chief operating officer. He will have overall responsibility for AEP's regulated and unregulated businesses as well as its engineering and technical development operations. Shockley was formerly president and chief operating officer of Central and South West Corp. and joined AEP when the two companies merged last year. 
Two executives reporting to Shockley will head AEP's marketing and trading operations. Eric J. van der Walde, executive vice president - marketing and trading, for AEP Energy Services, will continue in that role, overseeing the company's trading activities in electricity, natural gas, energy futures and emissions credits. Van der Walde has led the tremendous growth in AEP's trading business since joining the company in 1997 from Enron Capital and Trade Resources. 
Steven A. Appelt, executive vice president - administration, AEP Energy Services, will also continue in his role. Appelt, who guided the development and implementation of AEP's trading architecture and trading support functions, joined the company in 1998 from Enron Oil Trading and Transportation, where he was chief financial officer. 
John F. Norris, senior vice president - operations and technical services, retains responsibility for AEP's power plant fleet, the largest in the U.S., as well as the company's natural gas pipelines, storage facilities, processing plants and other facilities. Norris, who will report to Shockley, joined AEP in 1999. He was previously president of the American Bureau of Shipping Group Inc., and earlier served in several senior positions with Duke Energy Corp. 
Paul D. Addis, executive vice president - wholesale, is leaving AEP to pursue other interests. Addis founded AEP's competitive wholesale business, which includes power generation, engineering, natural gas storage and pipelines, energy trading and marketing in the U.S. and Europe, and AEP's unregulated retail business. "Paul has been the driving force behind the development of AEP's competitive businesses into the vibrant, sustainable businesses they are today," Draper said. "Our competitive wholesale business will remain a major focus of AEP's strategy. We thank Paul for his efforts and wish him well. 
"AEP remains committed to its wholesale strategy, which has achieved remarkable success in a short time," Draper said. "We have every confidence that Eric and Steve, who have been integral parts of our competitive wholesale business since day one, will continue that record of success. Our wholesale businesses, together with our substantial regulated businesses, provide a balanced combination of growth and stability for our shareholders." 
Henry W. Fayne, executive vice president - finance and analysis and chief financial officer, has been named executive vice president and head of AEP's regulated businesses. Following AEP's corporate separation, the company's regulated businesses will include regulated generating plants as well as energy delivery operations in 11 states. Fayne, who will report to Shockley, has held numerous positions with AEP since 1974, including controller and senior vice president - planning and budgeting. 
William J. Lhota, executive vice president responsible for AEP's energy delivery business, plans to retire at the end of the year after 37 years with AEP. "Bill Lhota's contribution to AEP can't be overstated," Draper said. "In the history of AEP and the utility industry, few can match Bill's standard of leadership and professionalism. We are grateful to him." 
Susan Tomasky, executive vice president and general counsel, becomes executive vice president - policy, finance and strategic planning. Tomasky, who will continue to report to Draper, will serve as chief financial officer. She will also be responsible for AEP's corporate development activities. Tomasky joined AEP in 1998 and is former general counsel of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Jeffrey D. Cross, senior vice president and deputy general counsel, has been named acting general counsel, reporting to Tomasky. 
Donald M. Clements Jr., executive vice president - corporate development, plans to retire following a distinguished career in energy and law, spending the last seven years with AEP. Draper thanked Clements for his role in AEP's success. "Don has played an important role in building today's AEP and he will be missed." 
Robert P. Powers, senior vice president - nuclear generation, has been named executive vice president responsible for all nuclear engineering activities as well as some non-nuclear engineering. He will also oversee AEP's research and development operations. Powers will report to Shockley and retains responsibility for AEP's Cook nuclear generating station and AEP's interest in the South Texas Project. 
Joseph H. Vipperman continues in his roles as executive vice president - shared services, reporting to Draper. 
"The changes we are making will infuse different strengths and new perspectives into all of our operations," Draper said. "At the same time, we will maintain management continuity in critical areas. That will make AEP a stronger and more flexible competitor in the evolving energy marketplace." 
Draper reaffirmed AEP's previously announced earnings guidance for 2001 in the range of $3.50 to $3.60 per share. 
American Electric Power is a multinational energy company based in Columbus, Ohio. AEP owns and operates more than 38,000 megawatts of generating capacity, making it America's largest generator of electricity. The company is also a leading wholesale energy marketer and trader, ranking second in the U.S. in electricity volume with a growing presence in natural gas. AEP provides retail electricity to more than 7 million customers worldwide and has holdings in the U.S. and select international markets. Wholly owned subsidiaries are involved in power engineering and construction services, energy management and telecommunications. 
News releases and other information about AEP can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.aep.com . 
AEP has scheduled a conference call with financial analysts that will be broadcast live over the Internet at 10 a.m. EDT today. The webcast is available at http://www.videonewswire.com/event.asp?id=1274 . 
For those unable to listen during the live webcast, the call will be archived for replay on AEP's web site, http://www.aep.com . To access the replay, click on "Investor Relations." Once in "Investor Relations," go to "Company Updates" and click on "Conference Call Webcast." 

Enron Unit Files Claim To Recover Argentine Investment

09/28/2001
Dow Jones International News 
(Copyright (c) 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) 
(This article was originally published Thursday) 

By Tim Loughran
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

BUENOS AIRES -(Dow Jones)- Azurix Corp., a unit of Houston, Texas-based Enron Corp.(ENE), has decided to abandon its $440 million, 30-year concession to oper ate drinking- and wastewater services in the province of Buenos Aires and is try ing to recover all investments made there in the last 26 months, a company spoke sman told Dow Jones Newswires.
In addition, Enron and Azurix will seek "some level of damages in addition to the money we've spent," said John Ambler, Enron's spokesman for its Latin Am erican operations. 
On Sept. 19, the company filed a claim with the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes in Switzerland against the Republic of Argent ina to make sure "that all of our rights are protected," Ambler said. 
In the meantime in Argentina, "we are continuing discussions with the appro priate government authorities, which we hope will result in a negotiated recisio n of the concession contract without having to resort to arbitration," he said. 
Azurix owns 90% of the Azurix Buenos Aires water company, which serves the l argest and most populous of Argentina's 23 provinces. The company's employees ow n the rest. 
Elsewhere in Argentina, Azurix owns 32.1% of Obras Sanitarias de Mendoza, a water company in the province of the same name. France's Societe de Amenagement Urbain et Rural, or Saur, owns another 32.1%, while company employees own 10% an d the provincial government retains a 20% stake, according to Enron's 2000 annua l report. 
"For the time being, (Azurix) remains active in Mendoza," said Ambler. 
Earlier this year, reports circulated that Enron planned to sell all Azurix assets in Argentina to its French partner. 
At the time, Ambler said he could not comment on any possible sale of compan y assets, but did tell Dow Jones Newswires that Enron is in the process of selli ng Azurix assets worldwide. 
When asked if Saur would be a candidate to take over the Buenos Aires water concession, Ambler said that decision would be left to provincial officials afte r Azurix satisfied its claims against the province. 
Buenos Aires Dispute

In Enron's 2000 annual report, officials said Azurix Buenos Aires lost $11.6 million on operating revenue of $89.5 million in the year ended Dec. 31, 2000. 
More recent earnings figures for Azurix Buenos Aires are not yet available, Ambler said. 
Azurix has complained for most of the last two years that provincial officia ls had yet to fulfill their pre-purchase promises to complete important infrastr ucture projects or allow Azurix Buenos Aires to raise prices to the levels set i n the concession negotiation. 
In addition, Azurix claims that provincial officials failed to transfer impo rtant assets to Azurix Buenos Aires or pay assorted pre-takeover costs, as stipu lated in the concession agreement. 
Provincial officials were not immediately available for comment on Azurix's claim and plans to abandon the province. But in the past they have taken an equa lly hard line against the water company, saying the company should lose its conc ession for its alleged failure to modernize and expand the province's network of water lines or improve service. 
To accommodate Azurix's complaints and compensate the company for lost reven ue, in February 2001 the company and provincial officials signed an agreement th at would allow Azurix to raise prices and invest less than the $350 million it p romised to spend when it won the water utility, according to the company. 
Unfortunately, those negotiations yielded little, according to Ambler. 
"The fundamental flaws have yet to be resolved and that's why we are moving ahead to work with officials in the province to revert the concession back to t hem," he said. 
Argentina has begun the fourth year of a recession that began in mid-1998 an d should last until the second half of 2002 at the very least, according to econ omists. 
Buenos Aires province, where about half Argentina's 37 million people live, is so strapped for cash to pay its bills and loans on time that it has printed i ts own currency to pay public employees, retirees and government vendors. 
Several other provinces have followed suit, a trend critics say could in the long run keep consumer prices artificially high and prolong a protracted slump in domestic spending, which accounts for 70% of Argentina's $260 billion gross d omestic product. 
-By Tim Loughran, Dow Jones Newswires; 5411-4313-1918; tim.loughran@dowjones .com

Seminar Geared to Extrusion Engineers and Supervisors

09/28/2001
PR Newswire 
(Copyright (c) 2001, PR Newswire) 

AKRON, Ohio, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- No matter if your job is fine-tuning the shop-floor extruder, designing the die, or overseeing your plant's extrusion department, Plastics Encounter Atlanta (formerly Plastics Fair) offers something for you. In addition to the Plastics News-organized Encounter business conference and trade show being held Nov. 13-15 at the Georgia International Convention Center, other groups are staging events on site to help maximize attendee value. 
On Nov. 13 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., the Society of Plastics Engineers' Southern Section is partnering with SPE's Extrusion Division to present a regional MiniTec educational seminar and conference for extrusion engineers. This day-long event will feature several technical presentations delivered by officials from such firms as Conair, Coperion, Davis-Standard, Xaloy, Leistriz, Fluortek and Crescent Associates. Participants will have time during the 12 to 1:30 p.m. lunch break to visit the 100+ exhibits on the show floor.
Cost for this seminar is $125 before Oct. 29, and $150 after that. Register separately for the MiniTec by visiting www.spesouthern.org/minitec.htm online. 
The SPE event also is timed to allow interested parties to attend both the MiniTec on Tuesday, and the separate-admission Compuplast International extrusion troubleshooting and training seminar for machine operators and supervisors on Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This seminar will also have an extended lunch break from 12 to 1:30 p.m. to allow participants to visit the show floor. 
This seminar, taught by former long-time Brampton Engineering official John Perdikoulias, is designed to show attendees how to analyze, design and troubleshoot all extrusion processes through a better understanding of the behavior of the polymer within the equipment. This hands-on, two-day simulation seminar costs just $100. Preregister by clicking the Training Seminars button at www.plasticsencounter.com/atlanta online or by calling (888) 368-7229. Paid subscribers to Plastics News receive a 10% discount. 
Plastics Encounter Atlanta is co-sponsored by Enron, Fast Heat, GE Polymerland, Gefran, JSW Plastics Machinery, Maag Pump Systems, Mold Base Industries, Progressive Components, SPE Southern Section and Extrusion Division, and Ultrasonics For Less. 

INDIA: India states may face blackout as Enron unit idles.
By Sriram Ramakrishnan

09/28/2001
Reuters English News Service 
(C) Reuters Limited 2001. 

BOMBAY, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Five Indian states, including two of the most prosperous, face the prospect of a blackout even as U.S. energy giant Enron Corp's plant on the west coast lies idle, a senior government official warned on Friday. 
"There is every chance of a total grid collapse in the western region, which means there will be no electricity anywhere - in hospitals, railway tracks, offices," the official told Reuters.
India's western region, comprising the five states of Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, consumes an average of around 25,000 MW of electricity per day, the most in the country. 
Maharashtra and Gujarat are two of India's most prosperous states and Bombay, the capital of Maharashtra, is the country's financial capital. Several key factories of multinational companies such as the BG Group Plc , Royal Dutch Shell and Hindustan Lever Ltd are based there. 
In January this year, the northern grid buckled, plunging most of northern India, including the capital New Delhi, into darkness for hours. The official fears a similar collapse could occur in the western region. 
Patchy rains in some parts of the western region and maintenance shutdowns by thermal plants have affected supplies, the official told Reuters. 
India's western region has a capacity of 30,548 MW a day of which about 3,000 MW comes from hydro-electric power plants. 
During peak hours the shortfall is about an average 4,500 MW, and about 2,500 MW during off-peak hours, the official said. 
"Rainfall this year has been low, particularly in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh," he said. "Availability is down as hydro reservoirs have not been able to accumulate water." 
About 6,000 MW of thermal capacity has also been hit as these plants are shut for annual maintenance. This has resulted in a generation of 19,000 MW, versus a demand of over 22,000 MW, the official said. 
CRISIS SECTOR 
"We are in crisis," he said. "Load-shedding to reduce demand has to be done on an hourly basis." Load shedding is cutting off electricity for short periods in a day, to prevent excess demand from straining the grid. 
A blackout, the official said, would disrupt industrial production and normal services. It would also turn the spotlight on the country's beleaguered power sector, dominated by loss-making state utilities. 
It could also hasten efforts to end a dispute between Dabhol Power Company and the Maharastra State Electricity Board (MSEB) over payment defaults and high tariffs. 
Enron's 740 MW plant, built by its Indian unit Dabhol Power Company, has been lying idle after its sole buyer, a loss-making state utility, stopped buying power in June. 
The official said Dabhol's power would be welcome now, but said they have not proposed to MSEB that it resume purchases from the plant. 
Many Indian utilities have little money to invest in new capacity or to buy power from private units, thereby choking private investment. South Korea's Daewoo's Corp, Electricite de France and Cogentrix of the United States have already exited the country. 
Demand is growing at the same time. Government estimates show India needs to add around 100,000 MW per day by 2012, but with stagnant capacity, most grids are under pressure during times of peak demand, the official said.

Zurich authorities okay EWZ, Enron JV.

09/28/2001
Neue Z?rcher Zeitung 
(C) Copyright 2001. 

The Zurich municipal authorities in Switzerland have approved plans for the establishment of a joint venture electricity trading company by municipal power utility Elektrizitaetswerk der Stadt Zuerich (EWZ) and the US-based Enron group. The joint venture will be headquartered in Zurich and will be equipped with share capital of SwFr 2m. It will employ around ten staff. 
The new company aims to play a leading role in wholesale electricity distribution in Switzerland and neighbouring countries. The city council will retain ownership of EWZ's power stations and will retain responsibility for supplying customers in Zurich.
The joint venture, which represents a strengthening of existing cooperation between the two partners, forms part of the city council's efforts to boost EWZ's competitiveness in preparation for deregulation of the Swiss electricity market. Cooperation with Enron has already enabled EWZ substantially to increase the volume of electricity traded and to improve the marketing of electricity from its own generating stations. 
[Original article approx 300 words] 
Visit the website of Switzerland's leading international newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung at http://www.nzz.com


Financial Post Investing
Commodities
Crude oil rises on possible OPEC cuts
Bloomberg News

09/28/2001
National Post 
National
IN02
(c) National Post 2001. All Rights Reserved. 

NEW YORK - Crude oil rose yesterday on speculation that OPEC might cut production at a November meeting if prices don't rally in the weeks ahead. 
The producers, meeting yesterday in Vienna, left their output targets unchanged, though they've trimmed them by 3.5% this year as demand slipped from a sagging economy.
Saudi Arabia is urging members to meet their quotas, which they exceeded by an estimated 3% in August. OPEC still may reduce production if prices stay low, Iran's oil minister said. 
"The focus on compliance is an intermediate step between a cut and doing nothing," said Matt Anderson, an analyst at Enron Corp. in Houston. "They want credibility as guardians of oil price stability and don't want to be seen hurting the global economy." 
In other markets, gold and soybean futures fell. The Bridge- Commodity Research Bureau index rose 0.61 to 191.18, while the energy-weighted Goldman Sachs Commodity Index rose 0.95 to 180.03. 
Crude oil for November delivery rose US36 cents, or 1.6%, to US$22.74 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices yesterday fell to US$20.30 a barrel, their lowest level since August, 1999. Oil has dropped 18% since terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11. 
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has an informal accord to cut supply if its price index stays below US$22 for 10 consecutive days, though Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister, Ali al-Naimi, has indicated the group may not use that method for boosting prices. 
Mr. Al-Naimi said yesterday OPEC members would seek to improve compliance with existing output targets as a means of boosting prices. 
Gold futures fell for the first time in three sessions as some investors who had purchased the metal after terrorist attacks loaned it out, adding supplies to the market. 
Soybeans fell to a three-month low on signs that overseas demand for U.S. supplies is weakening just as Midwest farmers accelerate the harvest of a record crop. Dry weather in the Midwest is expected to speed harvesting of the crop. 
"Exports are weak and we've got new supplies coming on with the harvest," said Curt Kimmel, an analyst with Grain Field Marketing in Normal, Illinois. 
Soybeans for delivery in November, after the harvest, fell 3.25 cents, or 0.7%, to US$4.6175 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, the lowest closing price since June 28. Soybean prices have fallen in three of the past four sessions and are down 7% from a year ago. 
Overseas buyers arranged to purchase 416,300 metric tons of soybeans last week, down from 568,800 tons a week earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said before trading opened. The drop was bigger than analysts expected. 
Exporters shipped 505,200 tons of soybeans between Sept. 1 and Sept. 20, down from 1.01 million tons during the same period a year earlier, the USDA said. 
China, the No. 1 importer of U.S. soybeans last year, has arranged to buy 923,500 tons of beans since Sept. 1, a 66% increase from a year ago. Still, Chinese importers have yet to take delivery of any of those soybeans because of a dispute with the government over new rules for handling gene-altered commodities. 

India: Vijaynagar power project likely to hit roadblock
C. Shivkumar

09/28/2001
Business Line (The Hindu) 
Fin. Times Info Ltd-Asia Africa Intel Wire. Business Line (The Hindu) Copyright (C) 2001 Kasturi & Sons Ltd. All Rights Res'd 

BANGALORE, Sept. 27. THE proposed Vijaynagar power project is headed for trouble at the nascent stage itself with the joint venture (JV) partner Larsen & Toubro (L&T) imposing conditions as a prerequisite to participation. 
L&T is the shortlisted partner in the 500-MW project along with Karnataka Power Corporation Ltd (KPCL).
Sources said here that one of the major conditions of L&T for participation in the joint venture is award of the engineering procurement and construction (EPC) contract to the company. In such a situation L&T had offered to increase its equity stake in the project. 
However, KPCL has rejected the conditions put forward by L&T. Instead KPCL has indicated that it would abide by the guidelines of the Electricity Regulatory Commission (ERC) which entail that EPC contractors be chosen entirely through the competitive bidding route. This was to ensure compliance with the least cost principle of the ERC. Power producers, the sources said, were expected to comply with these guidelines. 
Accordingly, one of the alternatives put forward is that L&T should be given the first right of refusal where competitive bidding process was adopted for selection of EPC contractors. The sources said, that this proposal was also not acceptable to KPCL. Instead, KPCL had suggested that L&T also participate in the competitive bidding process for the EPC contract. The sources said that giving the first right of refusal to L&T would not allow the Vijaynagar project to obtain the benefits of the competitive bidding process, they added. Since none of the proposals were acceptable to KPCL, L&T had sought more time in finalising a decision to participate in the Vijaynagar project. 
However, KPCL has already made it clear that it was prepared to implement the project. "We are prepared to implement the project on our own," the sources said. But any project implementation would have to be done through the special purpose vehicle route. This is because the current balance sheet of KPCL is unlikely to allow the company to leverage for the debt funds for the new project. 
KPCL had originally short listed Powergen International and Enron along with the L&T as the joint venture partners for the project. 
But both Enron and Powergen had pulled out of the financial bids, leaving L&T as the lone bidder for the power project. The original proposal had envisaged a 25 per cent stake for the partner, with 26 per cent with the KPCL and the remaining equity funds to be raised through the participation of Financial Institutions, banks, equipment suppliers and the public. 
The project cost has already been revised upwards. The new cost per MW is estimated at Rs 4.62 crore. This is in line with the estimates made for two of the 1000-MW stations - CLP- Tata, and Nagarjuna Power - proposed in the State. The original cost estimate was Rs 2,099 crore or Rs 4.1 crore per MW. The revised project cost is now about Rs 2,400 crore. This is to be funded through a 70:30 debt equity ratio implying that the equity component would comprise about Rs 692 crore. 
KPCL has also obtained a fuel linkage with Talcher. The coal requirement for the project is estimated to be in the region of 2.8 million tonnes per annum assuming a plant load factor of 80 per cent and a calorific value of 3000 kilo calories per kilogram. This coal is to be brought by sea to the newly corporatised port of Ennore and evacuated by the Railways to Vijaynagar.

India: Tata Power, IDBI discuss Dabhol

09/28/2001
Business Line (The Hindu) 
Fin. Times Info Ltd-Asia Africa Intel Wire. Business Line (The Hindu) Copyright (C) 2001 Kasturi & Sons Ltd. All Rights Res'd 

MUMBAI, Sept. 27. TATA Power officials, along with advisors J.M. Morgan Stanley, are understood to have met senior officials of the Industrial Development Bank of India on Thursday to discuss the details of Tata's proposal to buy Enron's Dabhol Power Company (DPC). 
Officials said these were "preliminary discussions" before going in for serious negotiations.
The Tata's had sent a letter of interest to the Centre expressing their interest in buying out Enron's stake in the controversial Dabhol Power Company. 
When contacted, Mr Adi Engineer, Managing Director, Tata Power, said there had been "no development worth mentioning." 
- Our Bureau


India: SCI in a spot over LNG tanker project
P. Manoj

09/28/2001
Business Line (The Hindu) 
Fin. Times Info Ltd-Asia Africa Intel Wire. Business Line (The Hindu) Copyright (C) 2001 Kasturi & Sons Ltd. All Rights Res'd 

NEW DELHI, Sept. 27. SHIPPING Corporation of India (SCI) is faced with a Hobson's choice on the 137,000-cubic metre capacity LNG Laxmi, the tanker project it is developing jointly with Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and Atlantic Commercial Inc. (an affiliate of Enron) for Dabhol Power Company (DPC). 
A meeting of SCI board slated for Friday will have to decide whether to go ahead with the project or call it quits. "Both are difficult choices to make", Government sources told Business Line.
With the lenders to the project led by ANZ Investment Bank declining to release the last tranche of the project loan worth $55 million out of a total loan commitment of $165 million, the project promoters will have to chip in with the remaining project cost for taking possession of the vessel at the scheduled delivery date of November 15. 
If the promoters sink in the remaining project cost according to their equity holding, take delivery of the vessel and deploy it elsewhere, it is felt that the viability of the project will not work out due to uncertainty over charter hire rates. 
The SCI-Mitsui-Atlantic Commercial Inc joint venture has signed a time charter party agreement with DPC to charter out LNG Laxmi for a hire rate of $98,600 per day for 10 years to bring gas from Oman for the plant. 
With the DPC project in trouble, there is a view that the joint venture will not get $98,600 per day as charter hire even if the vessel is deployed elsewhere on spot basis. 
"Forget about getting $98,600 per day. It is difficult to get $68,900 per day which was the rate at which SCI- MOL-NYK-K Line consortium had bagged the LNG shipping project for Petronet LNG Ltd. The time charter hire rates are expected to go down even further to about $50,000 per day", the sources said. 
Besides, there is a perception now that the contracted price of the LNG vessel of $220 million was $18,000-20,000 higher than the market price prevailing at the time when the tanker was ordered on Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Yard. 
"The price paid for the vessel is so high that even if the promoters abstain from pumping in the remaining project cost, and given the uncertainty over charter hire rates, the viability of the project will not work", the sources said.

INDIAN STATE POWER GIANT SAYS NO TO DISINVESTMENT, ENRON STAKE

09/28/2001
Asia Pulse 
(c) Copyright 2001 Asia Pulse PTE Ltd. 

NEW DELHI, Sept 28 Asia Pulse - At a time when Indian government is going ahead aggressively with the disinvestment of PSUs, state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) said this was not the right time for disinvestment in NTPC. 
"We feel that government should go for disinvestment in NTPC only after completion of power sector reform to get better value for its equity in the corporation," NTPC chairman and managing director C P Jain told reporters Thursday.
Government has invested about Rs 240 billion (US$5 billion) in the corporation, Jain said, adding with the power sector reform the returns and dividend to government should go up substantially and then it would be the right time to think of disinvestment. Meanwhile, Jain clarified that corporation was not interested in buying equity in the Enron promoted Dabhol Power Corporation, saying that "the corporation does not think that the option was commercially viable." 
He, however, refused to comment on the issue and said NTPC had to clarify its position to government as some of the financial institutions had suggested NTPC buying equity in the disputed DPC project for resolving the matter. 
(PTI) 28-09 1026

DPC braces to serve MSEB asset-transfer notice
Our City Editor Mumbai

09/28/2001
Business Standard 
2
Copyright (c) Business Standard 

Offshore lenders to the Enron-promoted Dabhol Power Company today gave it the go-ahead to serve an asset-transfer notice to the Maharashtra State Electricity Board. This marks the beginning of the last phase of the DPC imbroglio which is expected to culminate in the serving of the final termination notice around mid-November. 
The serving of the asset-transfer notice by DPC will be followed by the valuation of its assets. Technically, if MSEB does not contest the notice, it will be required to pay $1.86 billion worth of liabilities to the lenders - Enron's investment in the project and the next 20 years' projected return on investment. The assets will, of course, be transferred to MSEB.
BA Asia, the facility agent of DPC, sought the permission of the lenders to serve the transfer notice early this week. This was put to vote yesterday where the State Bank of India, which has a substantial foreign currency exposure in the 2,184-mw project, opposed the move. 
"The majority of the foreign lenders voted in favour of the transfer notice. The company may serve it over the next few days," said a source in the lending community. 
Enron holds a 65 per cent stake in DPC, General Electric and Bechtel 10 per cent each and MSEB a 15 per cent stake. 
"Armed with the lenders' consent, DPC will start the valuation process next month after serving the asset-transfer notice. When the lenders consented to serving the preliminary termination notice (PTN) in May, they had refused to give the go-ahead for the asset-transfer notice," sources said. 
DPC served PTN on May 19 under Section 17 of the power purchase agreement. It was "forced" to resort to this move as the state government and MSEB showed their unwillingness to "honour their offtake commitments for the entire power station". On April 25, the DPC board authorised Enron India managing director K Wade Cline to take a decision on serving PTN.

Global lenders demand their inclusion in talks
S Ravindran Mumbai

09/28/2001
Business Standard 
2
Copyright (c) Business Standard 

Global lenders to the Enron-promoted Dabhol Power Company have warned the Union government that no solution can be found to the problem without their consent and have demanded their inclusion in the subsequent discussions. 
The global lenders, with a direct exposure of about $590 million in the 2,184-mw project, have stated this in a letter to the finance ministry yesterday.
The letter has been written by the steering committee of the global lenders, comprising Bank of America, Citibank, Credit Suisse First Boston, ABN Amro and ANZ Investment Bank, sources in the lenders consortium told Business Standard. 
The foreign lenders are miffed as the government, so far, had sidelined them in its attempts to find a solution to the problem, and had instead, entrusted the task to the domestic financial institutions. 
"We have pointed out to the finance ministry that under the loan covenants, any final solution, like selling the stake of Enron in DPC, will have to be approved by us and have asked them to involve us in future discussions. We have also sought a meeting with senior finance ministry officials to put across our point of view," sources in the lenders consortium added. 
Recently, the Union government mandated the domestic financial institutions to find a solution to the issue. 
The institutions, led by the Industrial Development Bank of India, had suggested major sacrifices on the part of Enron and its two US-based partners, General Electric and Bechtel, which together hold a 85 per cent stake in the company. 
They had said that the three companies should sell their stake for $400 million. Enron Corporation chairman Kenneth Lay had summarily rejected the suggestion. 
In a letter to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lay had said that the equity should be bought at about $1.2 billion.


ONGC not keen on Enron's liquefied natural gas facility
Our Energy Editor New Delhi

09/28/2001
Business Standard 
2
Copyright (c) Business Standard 

The upstream major Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) today ruled out taking over liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal and regassification facilities of the Dabhol Power Company. 
"We are not keen on taking over Enron's LNG facility," ONGC chairman and managing director Subir Raha told reporters here today. As of now, he said, the corporation would like to stick to its core business. The corporation would invest Rs 5,000 crore in oil and gas exploration to double its reserve base to 12 billion tonne oil equivalent by 2020, he said.
"We have finalised an elaborate plan for enhancing reserve base and production. We expect to increase oil production by 20 per cent in five to seven years," Raha said. During the current fiscal, ONGC is targeting 25 million tonne oil production. 
ONGC has planned a two-pronged strategy to increase output from the existing fields by putting the fields on improved oil recovery and enhanced oil recovery schemes. Nineteen schemes in 15 fields have been identified for the purpose. Of the 19 schemes, 13 projects have been approved which would yield an additional oil equivalent of more than 61 million tonne in 20 years, the chairman said. 
Outlining the company's financial performance, Raha said, ONGC made the highest-ever net profit of Rs 5,229 crore in 2000-01. The company has proposed a dividend of Rs 1,728 crore, which is 110 per cent of equity and also the highest ever dividend paid by any corporate. 
ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the corporation's overseas arm, is expected to earn first revenue overseas with the Vietnam offshore gas project going onstream in 2002. OVL has 45 per cent interest in the Vietnam offshore gas project. 
The corporation will trim its employee strength by 10 per cent to less than 40,000 personnel through a voluntary retirement scheme, he said.


Report on Business Magazine
rethinking the office Say goodbye to the Dilbert cubicle and hello to a new breed of...cubicle. Make that "workstation." The difference is better design, stylish layouts and the thing most offices lack: fun. So long to the old workplace hierarchy
Gerald Levitch

09/28/2001
The Globe and Mail 
Metro
62
"All material Copyright (c) Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved." 

A year ago, New York's Museum of Modern Art commissioned Palo Alto, Calif.-based IDEO, one of the world's leading industrial design firms, to create a workplace design for the future. IDEO responded with a metaphorical fantasy. 
For an exhibit called Workspheres, the company invented two tools that would "send a visible personal message to the rest of the office." One was a chair that changes colour; a small, built-in camera takes an image of the sitter's back and reproduces it on the exterior back of the chair, using a liquid-crystal display. The idea was to personalize the object, like draping a jacket over your office chair to indicate possession.
The other "worktool" consisted of a miniature projector showing images of skies. "If you want to change your space," says IDEO designer Craig Syverson, "you could dial up the sky of your choice." 
You won't see either of these fantasies in today's head offices, but the same principles are at play among the most forward-thinking. IDEO's headquarters, for instance, blur the distinction between home and the office-the idea being that the more comfortable a staff member is in their space, the more productive. 
To that end, say hello to Bailey, a friendly mutt who wags his tail and pushes his nose through the wire fence that serves as the door to his enclosure. Bailey's owner, Ana Chang, is an IDEO mechanical engineer, and she keeps Bailey in a disused storage area just behind her workstation. Next door is a black Labrador named Roxy, who belongs to another engineer. And then there are Chang's pet turtles, who live in the aquarium just across the aisle. The nice thing about turtles is that, even when they get excited, they don't make any noise. 
None of this bothers IDEO's management, or their extensive client list, which includes Ford, Cisco Systems, Apple and Pepsi. Nobody breaks a sweat when visitors arrive. After all, what the clients see is a work environment that's at once bohemian and fully functional. In this way, the IDEO space works as a perfect promotional tool for the company's services. And it's all by design. 
For the past 20 years, IDEO has developed office environments in which "anything goes," according to general manager Tom Kelley. Rules are flexible, as long as no one disturbs anyone else. 
The company has 400 employees globally; in the Palo Alto area, eight separate IDEO locations house about 200 people, with each space designed as the working equivalent of a neighbourhood. In other, conventional corporations, says Kelley, "space is entirely in the hands of the facility manager. Office space is viewed as a utility." At IDEO, "there's no sense of, 'Well, we've got to take to what the corporate people give us.'" None of the corporate studios is the same. "We let people create and personalize the spaces they wanted." 
Given that freedom, one woman has hung dozens of strands of beads over the doorway to her workstation. Others suspend patio umbrellas from the ceiling to reduce computer glare from the skylights. To save space, some employees hoist their bicycles overhead on pulleys. 
Kelley likes to tell the story of two neighbouring workers who wanted to collaborate more closely, so they brought a sledgehammer to the office over a weekend and reduced the drywall between them to rubble. No one said a word. "Thank God there was nothing electrical in that part of the wall," says Kelley. 
Of course, IDEO also has formal conference rooms, war rooms dedicated to project teams in the throes of a deadline, casual public spaces for employees to meet and talk, as well as "enclaves"-the company term for private rooms geared to heads-down concentration. 
Altogether, it creates what Kelley calls the "greenhouse effect," in which the workspace provides all of the basic infrastructure within a nurturing environment. "It's about culture and morale but, ultimately, it's about competitiveness," he says. 
Potential new employees are always given a tour. "Many of them say, 'This seems like a place where I'd enjoy working.'" Which, of course, is the point. "Everybody accepts our offers," says Kelley, "and nobody leaves." He's exaggerating, but IDEO has a churn rate of less than 4% a year. 
So what looks like chaos isn't. Despite Kelley's claims that there are no rules, IDEO's offices embody a new set of principles that are common to just about every important new office design. 
You may not find Bailey the dog at other companies, but certain ideas are becoming universal: a greater interest in the changing nature of work, a willingness to accommodate shifting demographics in the workforce, and a smoother incorporation of new technologies into buildings. Companies are learning how to use office space as a competitive tool. The new offices being built today are, in fact, the offices of the future-designed to last for 10, 15, 20 years. 
Certainly, one change that seems inevitable is that growth will outstrip expectations. Recent labour statistics show that the number of office workers in North America has increased by 15% since 1981, from roughly 74 million to more than 85 million, and is projected to approach 100 million by 2010. 
Offices have become the new factories, whose end products are fresh ideas. The old model-squeezing maximum productivity from the largest number of employees in the smallest possible space-won't work any more. Across North America, companies that once left the layout and furniture of their offices to lowly facilities managers are now sending their CEOs to meet with the heads of the leading office design firms-such as Herman Miller and Steelcase. 
"The work environment is moving up the strategic food chain," says Michael Volkema, president and CEO of Holland, Mich.,-based Herman Miller Inc. "And some senior executives are starting to expect their work environment to do more than serve as a production tool." 
Among Volkema's recent visitors are executive VPs of BMW of North America, the CEO of Enron (the Houston-based electricity company) and a delegation from the Seattle-based biopharmaceutical firm Immunex. "I tell them to think about their space, first and foremost, as a communications tool," he explains. "Offices make a statement about how employees are expected to work together, about the company's vision and aspirations. All of that can be embodied in the physical environment." 
Volkema also stresses the changing relationship between management and workers. The goal of flattening management hierarchies and improving interaction between staff and bosses isn't new; what's new is using workplace design to achieve it. As a result, hierarchical layouts are going out of style. You know these well: Step out of an elevator at most Old Economy firms, and you will see a posh reception area, behind which is an open-style maze of drab cubicles. The senior management typically hog the corner offices with their luxurious square footage, doors and windows, and splendiferous views. 
Come the revolution, those barriers won't exist. Just look at the desk of Jim Mitchell, president of the suburban Toronto-based office designer and equipment-maker Steelcase Canada Ltd.-it's an open workstation no different from those of other employees. Mitchell works in the middle of an area that was previously a manufacturing floor. To reach his desk, he has to pass through rows of employees, and they see him, seated near his CFO and various divisional vice-presidents, at the centre of an accessible executive hub. 
"I don't look at my desk and see an 8'x10' area," says Mitchell. "I come in here and say, 'I've got 70,000 square feet. I happen to share it with hundreds of people. And I use the space that way. 
"If you followed me for a day, you'd find that what you call my office, I'd call my process area. This is where I take calls and do computer work, read and correspond. If I want to write a report without interruption, I can go to an enclosed environment." 
Mitchell notes that most senior managers are so caught up in their day-to-day business that they don't give much thought to their workspace. "They look at it as cost, not as a strategic opportunity." But that's beginning to change. 
"A CEO came to me and said, 'I need to change the culture of my company. Here's what I see happening today. Teams don't talk to each other, departments are remote from each other. It's just taking too long to get things done.'" 
Mitchell's solution is to design spaces to support the process of work. Steelcase uses its open-plan headquarters as a demonstration tool for clients-a model of how to reorganize an office. 
And yes, people collaborate better in open environments. But not every open concept works. The most notorious example is ad agency TBWA/Chiat/Day's makeover in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s. Management at Chiat eliminated both the private office and the individual cubicle, gave employees a locker for their private belongings, and told them to wander through what looked like a sci-fi movie set. They had to find a different place to sit every day. In a 1994 interview, Jay Chiat said, "We're trying to structure things more like a university, rather than like an elementary school. Most businesses are run like elementary schools-you go to work and you only leave your office to go to the bathroom." 
All the same, the staff hated it and fled home to work. "It was a really interesting space that was painful to work in," says Tom Kelley of IDEO. In particular, it didn't give the workers a private place to think, and it failed to acknowledge one of the basic needs of human beings, which is to be territorial. 
That lesson hasn't been lost on today's office designers, who recognize that people want private space-no matter how small. New forms of environments have been created, such as enclosed meeting areas or rooms for taking confidential phone calls. But the greater emphasis is on shared spaces. A certain amount of variety is crucial, says Kelley. "It's kind of like Club Med, where the rooms are deliberately spare, practically bleak. That's because the whole Club Med experience doesn't want you to stay in your room. They want you out at the pool. If you can't afford a lot of private spaces, you need some other places for the workers to go." 
Making the most of small spaces has become a new art form for office equipment designers. Says Mark Harris, media relations director for Toronto-based designer Teknion: "We had a client in Silicon Valley whose workstations were so tiny that they couldn't spare the extra space for a visitor's chair. So we invented a new product." It's simply a low-profile file pedestal on wheels with a padded seat cushion, and it can be stored under any desk or work surface. 
Meanwhile, it's out with the old coffee klatch in the Xerox room. People need better ways to interact, and management needs a place to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi. This has given way to "back yards" and "front yards"-the common spaces between workstations-plus Zen gardens, on-site fitness centres and rec rooms containing such 21st-century office cliches as video games. 
Of course, having toys on the premises appeals most to the younger demographic. Workers in their 20s and 30s are further catered to by new floor plans. "The kids at schools today sit around the teacher in circles," says Trish Clarry, a workplace strategist at Steelcase Canada. "They don't sit in neat rows of desks facing the teacher at the front of the room-which is how offices used to be laid out. Gen-Y employees start working together collaboratively in teams at school, and they're bringing these new work habits and mindset into the workplace." 
Likewise, workers are being given what Volkema calls "more user control." Instead of the old, cell-like cubicle nested in a "six-pack" or egg-crate configuration, the new offices change in shape and landscape. In the past, you had no choice: The only thing that moved was your chair. Now, you can shift the walls of your work area, arrange shelves, desktops, chairs, work surfaces and storage areas to suit needs and tastes. 
In offices equipped with the latest wireless or wire-line networks, employees can simply work wherever they please. One example is Steelcase's employee cafeteria, called "The Hub"-a 7,000-square-foot, marche-style food court where people eat, socialize and have office-wide meetings. Some staff members plug in their laptops, forward calls to their cellphones, and work in a sunny spot under a skylight. 
One of the more radical designs in office furniture is Herman Miller's Resolve system, introduced in 2000. Designer Ayse Birsel looked at honeycombs, bubbles and even molecules and found what she calls "nature's favourite angle," which is 120 degrees. Unlike a traditional cubicle's right angles, the divider walls of Resolve open out at 120 degrees, letting in light and air. The system consists of a range of components-desk space (which can be adjusted for height), filing boxes on wheels, erasable boards, shelving, and so on. Birsel applied fabric screens and graceful canopies to hang over it all, defining the space and offering a measure of privacy. 
TransCanada PipeLines' new headquarters in Calgary is the first major Canadian user of Resolve-650 workstations dispersed throughout the corporate headquarters. The rest of the 5,000 staff now occupy private offices or refurbished workstations, all within one million square feet of a just-completed $225-million, 36-storey TransCanada tower in Calgary. 
When TransCanada merged with Nova Corp. a few years back, Nova had its own building (since sold), and TransCanada was split into five locations. "With hindsight," says TransCanada executive vice-president Al Bellstedt, "I suppose we could have squeezed everyone into the old Nova building." What changed those circumstances was a series of reorganizations, rationalizations, selloffs and layoffs. 
A new building helped smooth the rough edges of the Nova merger. TransCanada wanted to improve morale while fusing two distinct corporate cultures. Nova had had a much softer public image. Says Al Bellstedt, "it was like G.I. Joe merging with the Care Bears." The old TransCanada executive offices contained imposing dark-wood panelling; at Nova, they had contemporary art on the walls. "But both were quite opulent," says Bellstedt. 
Eventually, the new company chose an unusual design-an elongated rectangular shape with more window exposure and a reduced central core. The layout allowed management to reduce the number of enclosed offices. Employees were given a choice between one of a limited number of standard-sized enclosed offices or a larger, open-concept desk with window views. In the end, 40% wound up with open-plan workstations. 
And instead of the traditional top-floor executive department sitting on top of the ant heap, TransCanada executives now occupy the third level, with the other employees housed on the floors above them. "It's an optics thing, no more complicated than that," says Bellstedt. It's also an effective symbol of change. TransCanada employees now occupy a space that "doesn't have the old company logos," says Bellstedt. "It doesn't look like the old spaces in either layout or colour. It's fresh and clean. Everything works." Even after a few months, "the effect on morale has been terrific." 
Meanwhile in Toronto, IBM wanted a new building to consolidate workers from three locations around the city, accommodating a total of 2,500 people. The older IBM buildings, some dating back to 1970, had proved barely adequate for the company's needs-which included a 10 mbps desktop voice-and-data pipe capable of streaming live video. Not only would it have been incredibly expensive to install this in the old facilities, "but it would have been hugely disruptive," says Harold Quinton, director of real estate and site operations for IBM Canada. 
And because so much of software development is a product of teamwork, it was important to bring departments together under one roof. Given the opportunity to start from scratch, IBM began with detailed surveys asking employees what they wanted in a new facility. At the same time, they commissioned Toronto interior design firm Marshall Cummings to research how to meet the company's long-term needs. 
The end result, in what will eventually be part of a new town centre in Markham, Ont., is a campus consisting of low-rise, four-storey buildings, arranged in a four-pod pattern, all linked together by roads. There are three spaces between the buildings-called "links." "It's at those points," Quinton says, "that we created different themed oases-a Muskoka-like library, a mini-South Sea island-to encourage interaction among co-workers." 
Often, the most productive communication occurs, not in structured environments, but in informal ones. In the past, such spaces were accidental. As Quinton notes, "they did exist, but in very small and localized areas, in whatever space was left over from an office." Today, they're planned. As well, IBM provided a gym and a day-care centre-a first for the company in Canada. 
And not everything in the office is aggressively high-tech. The company discovered that many of its most youthful employees have a paradoxically conservative streak. Accordingly, IBM installed a reading room that wouldn't be out of place in a 19th-century gentlemen's private club. 
The new facility factored in a lot of disparate needs, retaining enclosed environments because software developers need privacy as much as they need to collaborate in the open. 
As the project developed, says Quinton, "the need for the quiet space took greater importance, so we put more emphasis on acoustics-how to provide both acoustic privacy and visual privacy. People need to cocoon at times. So low-level dividers would not be satisfactory. We experimented with different heights, with different structures of walls." 
IBM hired designers at Teknion to develop a customized workstation. It has fairly high dividers, but also a 15" glazed glass panel along the top, to allow natural light from the windows. It comes with a sliding door made with a white-board surface on both sides-if you want people to stay away, write a message on the door. 
The biggest lesson that Quinton learned was "to be adaptable to the specific needs of every individual employee." Times have changed: "People are measured on their productivity, not their face time. The goal is to design a place that allows them to be productive, that attracts the brightest and the best, and retains them." 
It's remarkable, the way a new common wisdom develops. All at once, it seems as if everybody in the office design business has started to think alike. And this tendency will certainly have an enormous impact on the $13.3-billion (U.S.) North American office furniture industry. 
President and CEO of Herman Miller since 1995, Michael Volkema is trim and fit at 45, and could easily pass for someone 10 years younger. Herman Miller employs 10,000 people globally. It was Volkema's decision to move the firm's executive offices to the "design yard" in Holland, Mich., which houses the company's creative and development arms. The yard is a rustic, farmlike complex, complete with round, silo-like structures. Colonial windows look out over a pond, and there's a beekeeping area on the premises. 
The leadership team, which had been dispersed across several locations in Michigan, were brought here in early 2000. In the past, says Volkema, there had been dry periods in the creative life of the company, and he believes "that wouldn't have happened if our leaders were sitting right on top of the development process." He also wanted to have a living demonstration "of our team space." Customers are suitably impressed. 
Herman Miller was founded in 1923 by D.J. DePree. Formerly the Star Furniture Company, it was renamed after DePree's father-in-law, who became the chief shareholder in the new company. Herman Miller achieved international prominence through its association with the husband-and-wife industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames (the Eames lounge chair, etc.), who worked for the company from 1946 to 1978. 
For Volkema, the future success of the company depends upon a correct reading of how the workplace will evolve. "In a nutshell," he says, "we are going to see a new social dynamic." 
Volkema recalls a session with management guru Peter Drucker a few years ago. ("We just listened to him talk for three days," Volkema notes. "It was one of those times when you realize that God gave somebody else a lot more marbles to play with than you.") Drucker reminded the company's executives that every developed country will hit a crisis-a competition for the best available knowledge workers. 
To successfully compete for talent, even in a softening economy, Volkema notes that "more and more employers will have to satisfy the wants and needs of the people who show up for work, or they're not going to want to work for you. 
"We'll have to create work environments that don't feel like production facilities. They'll have a radical, much more residential flavour. There will be much more ability to do all of the other things that you do in your personal life, which will complement your work life." 
It will be "a village," he says, "where people will want to live and work. The work experience will be more like being a part of a community." 
So say goodbye to the ranks of unhappy souls rattling the chains that bind them to their desks. So long to the idea of a business as a clerical factory. 
All you need is a little window space, and a very big sledgehammer.


PGNiG Board Ratify Norwegian Gas Deal

09/28/2001
Polish News Bulletin 
Copyright (C) 2001 Polish News Bulletin of the British and American Embassies; Source: World Reporter (TM) 

The Supervisory Board of the Polish Oil and Gas (PGNiG) has ratified the contract for the supply of Norwegian gas to Poland. The "take or pay" contract for the supply of 74bln cubic metres was signed on 3 September. Meanwhile experts claim that in 2010 Poland will be over-supplied in gas, with 25bn cubic metres of supply and an estimated 18.4bn cubic metres demand. Enron Poland president Jacek Astramowicz said: "I do not know the terms of the Norwegian or Danish contracts. They should, however, be flexible when it comes to the minimum amount bought." The alternatives are either to boost domestic consumption, which would entail huge investments running into billions of dollars (eg. replacing coal powered power stations with gas powered ones) or cutting down on domestic production. The latter is also a costly and dangerous option, since domestically produced gas is cheaper and dangerous, since extracting below a certain level may cause irreparable damage to fields. gjjb 28 September issue of Prawo i Gospodarka p. 1

International
World Watch
Compiled by David I. Oyama

09/28/2001
The Wall Street Journal 
A12
(Copyright (c) 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) 

THE AMERICAS 
Quebecor to Buy Some Hachette Assets 
Canadian commercial printer Quebecor World agreed to buy the European printing assets of Hachette Filipacchi Medias, controlled by France's Lagardere, for $65 million, including assumed debt. The assets include printing and bindery facilities in France as well as Hachette's 50% stake in a Belgian operation. As part of the transaction, Hachette is entering into a 10-year, $400 million agreement with Quebecor World for the printing of many of Hachette's magazines, Quebecor said. 
Enron Unit Aims to End Argentine Pact 
Azurix, a unit of Enron of the U.S., has decided to abandon its 30-year, $440 million concession to operate water and waste-water services in Argentina's Buenos Aires province and is seeking to recover its investments over 26 months, an Azurix spokesman said. Azurix has said provincial officials haven't fulfilled promises to complete infrastructure projects or allow its local unit to raise prices to levels set in the concession agreements. Provincial officials weren't available to comment.