While at press time OPEC was mulling whether to support high oil prices or moderate them, companies in the E&P world just kept keeping on. That's all they can do, whether prices come in for a soft landing or fall drastically. Prize Energy acquired Vista Resources to form a new Dallas-based public company. The former CEO of King Ranch Oil & Gas, Tom Fiorito, formed his own company, Sextant Energy LLC. George Solitch left his acquisition and divestiture duties at HS Resources in Denver to form his own acquire-and-exploit firm, as yet unnamed, but to be bankrolled by EnCap Investments. Noted E&P analyst Tom Driscoll left Salomon Smith Barney to join Lehman Brothers. Forcenergy Inc. emerged from Chapter 11 with $320 million in financing and added five prominent new members to its board. John Thompson and Scott Josey shut down their private capital shop and rejoined Enron North America to co-manage that entity's upstream finance group, which contrary to rumor, is gearing up again for E&P deals of all types. So far in 2000, we're getting as much news flow of an Internet, IT and software nature as we are of wells drilled and acquisitions closed. E-commerce news releases continue to flood in, from Schlumberger and EOG Resources and others. E-commerce was somehow mentioned on many of the panel discussions at Cambridge Energy Research Associates' annual conference in Houston in early February. Darn few public financings have been completed and fewer still are in the pipeline. That's why we sympathized with the title PaineWebber gave its energy conference in February: "Putting the Spotlight Back on Energy." The firm is quite bullish about oil and gas equities. Meanwhile, companies are getting smarter. In January, two of the largest-BP Amoco and Burlington Resources Inc.-announced significant outsourcing contracts. A week later, Newfield Exploration Co. said it was outsourcing its oil and gas accounting to Novistar Inc., a Houston company, on a three-year contract. These deals say a lot about the future: companies are focusing on cost-cutting, efficiency and core competencies, and are willing to leave some key operations to others. Kind of reminds us of the old TV commercial: "Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us." BP Amoco announced a $200-million, 10-year contract to extend to the downstream the finance and administrative services that Andersen Consulting now provides to some of its upstream operations. This is the largest deal of its type ever inked in the downstream. Andersen will perform back office functions for BPA's refining and marketing business, including credit card support, accounts payable, general and service station accounting, treasury services and financial analysis. About 150 former Amoco accountants are moving from Tulsa to Houston in the second quarter, to join Andersen's Senergy Business Center, a hub for information technology and business process outsourcing. The goal is to move manual transactions to e-commerce through web-based solutions, and to deliver savings to BPA. The same week, Burlington Resources said it will outsource operations and maintenance of all 54 of its manned and unmanned Gulf of Mexico Shelf platforms to BakerOPCO, a unit Baker Energy, itself a unit of Michael Baker Corp. The latter is a public engineering and management services firm in Pittsburgh. This three-year contract has an estimated annual value of $20 million. Baker Energy has created an infrastructure of supply boats, helicopters, shore bases, information technology, safety systems, management personnel and training to facilitate the sharing of resources, all offshore. In addition to receiving a fixed fee, it will share in revenues if certain operating cost savings are reached and will be penalized if they are not. Goals in health, environment and safety are also included in the performance contract. BakerOPCO has been providing similar services to Chevron, El Paso Production Co., BP Amoco, Exxon Mobil and Pogo Producing Co. in the Gulf and offshore Venezuela. In one case, the company reduced costs 30% for the producer involved, Baker says. Novistar will provide Newfield revenue and production accounting, other transaction processing and information technology services using Oracle software and application hosting. NFX gets reduced IT costs, state-of-the-art technology and the ability to focus on finding oil and gas. By the way, the editors of Oil and Gas Investor would love to hear from you any time. We welcome letters to the editor, questions, suggestions for articles, and feedback. Please contact us at lhaines@phillips.com or 713-993-9325, extension 151. And for more perspective, be sure to visit our website, oilandgasinvestor.com, where from many global sources we compile news about field discoveries, acquisitions, company announcements, careers, and financing. We also provide unique commentaries every day from all of our editors and reporters.