Conoco announces equity investment in Altra Energy Technologies

Conoco announced its equity investment in Altra Energy Technologies, a leading provider of electronic trading systems and end-to-end transaction management systems to the wholesale energy industry. Conoco is a current user of Altra systems for end-to-end natural gas and natural gas liquids electronic trading and transaction processing, as well as Altra's natural gas pipeline operations management systems.
The investment amount was not disclosed. This is the third equity investment Conoco has made this year in e-commerce. In April, Conoco was one of 14 founders of a giant global procurement exchange for energy and petrochemical companies. Also in April, Conoco announced an equity investment in HoustonStreet Exchange (HSE) for wholesale trading of crude oil, refined products and natural gas on Houston's Web-based energy trading site, HoustonStreet.com.
"With our investments in Altra and HSE, we expect to substantially increase our volume of electronic transactions for all energy commodities,"said Mike Johnson, Conoco vice president and general manager of natural gas and gas products. Altra's commitment is to provide a quality product and service which connects the trading clearinghouse to the transactional requirements of the commodity itself," Johnson said. "Altra provides the industry's first mid-office and back-office support for natural gas trading systems," he added.

Altra Energy Technologies is listed in Red Herring magazine's "Top 100" technology companies for the second year, and was named in May by AMR Research as the world's No. 1 business-to-business independent trading exchange. Other major energy companies that have committed capital to Altra Energy Technologies include AEP, BP and Koch Industries.
"Conoco's investment in Altra is yet another vote of confidence in our trading systems and supporting transaction management solutions, and in the growing adoption of online trading," said Mark Crosno, executive vice president of business development for Altra. "Conoco is a sound investor and a good fit with our existing energy investment participants."

Conoco is a major, integrated energy company active in more than 40 countries.

Altra Energy Technologies is a world leader in enterprise-wide business solutions, delivering electronic trading platforms, transaction management products and integration services for the energy industry.