Enron's durable business approach, which has driven our success in the natural gas and electricity markets, is eminently applicable to other markets and geographical regions. While we are remaining focused on increasing earnings and opportunities in gas and power, we also are extending Enron's method to large, fragmented industries and products, where intermediation can make markets more efficient and responsive to customer needs. We expect these new businesses to contribute to earnings in 2001.
Enron Metals was launched in July 2000 when Enron acquired the world's leading merchant of non-ferrous metals, MG plc. Together, MG and Enron are a powerful team. Enron's financial resources and eCommerce abilities add a new dimension to MG's widespread physical merchant skills and excellent customer relationships. The early results are right on target, with physical volumes up 31 percent in 2000.
Enron Metals opens an additional door to large energy customers. Cominco Ltd., a zinc producer and an Enron Metals customer in Vancouver, British Columbia, worked with Enron to halt zinc production for six weeks and sell its power into the Northwestern power market, where it was needed. Enron North America protected Cominco by structuring a fixed-price swap to guarantee the sale price of the power, and Enron Metals arranged to supply a portion of the zinc required to fulfill Cominco's obligations. Cominco's profit from the deal exceeded the annual profit it makes from producing zinc.
Enron Credit is a new business with strong market potential. Enron has leveraged its internal risk management processes and systems to create a real-time, market-based online credit evaluation system. The idea is simple: Existing credit ratings and scoring mechanisms are not market-based and cannot respond in real time to credit events. This means creditors must figure out their credit risk exposure on their own. Enron Credit posts the cost of credit as a simple interest rate for more than 10,000 companies on its web site, www.enroncredit.com. Enron Credit also gives corporations the ability to hedge their credit risk via a bankruptcy product.
Coal intermediation moved to a new level in 2000. The industry has been radically affected by the worldwide deregulation of the electricity industry. Like natural-gas-fueled generation, coal-burning generators require flexible terms and risk-management protection. Enron is able to provide unrivaled logistical support. Our coal business has led us to participate in sea and land logistics as well.
Weather has never been better for us. Our weather risk management business is up about five-fold to 1,629 transactions in 2000 from 321 transactions the year before. As in all of our markets, we bring cross-commodity capabilities to our weather products. For instance, we closed a threeyear precipitation transaction that provides financial compensation linked to natural gas prices if precipitation falls below a pre-determined minimum. The weather unit worked with several other Enron groups to transfer Enron's risk, ultimately transacting with 10 external companies in three markets (natural gas, weather products and insurance). The bundled end-product resulted in an effective hedge for the customer.
Crude oil. We now average crude deliveries of 7.5 TBtue/d to 240 customers in 46 countries. We have introduced the first-ever 24x7 commodity market of a West Texas Intermediate crude product on EnronOnline, allowing our customers to respond to market-changing events at any time, day or night. We also concluded our biggest physical jet fuel contract, providing 100,000 barrels for one year at the flexible and market-based prices that the customer needed.
LNG. Enron is establishing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) network to create merchant LNG opportunities and to bring more gas to areas of the world that need it. Our LNG-related assets in operation and development in the Caribbean and the Middle East form part of this network. We source surplus LNG from the Middle East and Asia and currently market it in the United States.
Forest Products. Enron has offered pulp, paper and lumber financial products for several years, and now we are marketing physical volumes. In 2000 we acquired Garden State Paper Co., which gives us access to 210,000 tons of newsprint a year and four recycling centers in key markets. In January 2001 we agreed to purchase a newsprint mill and related assets in Canada. With this acquisition, Enron will become the seventh-largest producer of newsprint in North America, giving us the physical liquidity necessary to quickly grow this business. Enron's Clickpaper.comâ„¢ is powered by the EnronOnline platform but is totally customized for the forest products industry. It offers more than 100 financial and physical products and features news and information tailored specifically to forest products industry customers.
Steel. In some markets, such as steel, we believe we can run our network with minimal assets. The industry currently suffers from overcapacity, but lacks a market mechanism to efficiently market the surplus. We will offer a core commodity baseline product that can be indexed against almost all other products in this $330 billion industry. The outlook is promising - we have transacted our first steel swap. This year we will build liquidity, improve pricing efficiency and gain contractual access to the physical product to provide comprehensive logistical support.
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