Duke Energy: Three Employees Receive Pinnacle Awards

CHARLOTTE, N.C., July 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Three Duke Energy employees were honored today with the company's Pinnacle Award -- the company's highest award for outstanding contribution to Duke Energy's business success.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20040414/DUKEENERGYLOGO) Honored were: - Ellen Ruff, group vice president, power policy and planning, Duke Power, Charlotte, N.C. - Wouter van Kempen, managing director, mergers and acquisitions, Charlotte, N.C. - Bill Yardley, vice president of marketing, Duke Energy Gas Transmission, Waltham, Mass.

Awarded annually, the Pinnacle Award recognizes Duke Energy employees for outstanding contributions to business success -- focusing on business results above and beyond expectations in the areas of customer service, innovation, business generation, financial performance, operational excellence and enhanced corporate capability or reputation.

Ellen Ruff led Duke Power's efforts to share bulk power marketing profits with shareholders, customers and communities. In North Carolina, Ruff proposed a plan that would reduce industrial customers' bills and provide $5 million annually to boost the company's existing Share the Warmth, Cooling Assistance and Fan Relief programs. In addition, the profits would support Duke Power's Community and Technical College Challenge Grant Fund.

In South Carolina, AdvanceSC was established to manage Duke Power's shared bulk power profits. AdvanceSC resources are allocated to support economic development initiatives, fund public assistance programs, fund education-based programs that promote economic development, and fund efficiency and improvement projects for existing industrial customers.

Wouter van Kempen led Duke Energy's effort to divest of about 1,380 miles of pipeline and approximately 450 megawatts of power generation in Australia and New Zealand. The investment community advised that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to sell the entire business at once -- instead suggesting that the company divest the assets via an initial public offering (IPO).

To achieve maximum value, van Kempen simultaneously pursued an IPO and a competitive trade sale auction. Concurrently pursuing both approaches allowed Duke Energy to benefit from the advantages of each, and created competitive tension that ultimately drove up the assets' market value significantly.

In March 2004, Duke Energy announced the sale of its Asia-Pacific assets to Alinta as one business for $1.24 billion, over $300 million more than the price expected from an IPO. Van Kempen's strategy also allowed Duke Energy to fully exit the Asia-Pacific market and nearly reach its entire 2004 asset divestiture goal, only three months into the year.

In 2000, Bill Yardley and his team began working to develop Duke Energy Gas Transmission's (DEGT) Dominion Expansion Project in Pennsylvania -- transporting 223 million cubic feet per day of natural gas to gas markets in the mid-Atlantic region.

As originally proposed, DEGT would construct and operate the pipeline and related facilities, and a subsidiary of Dominion Resources would reimburse DEGT once the construction was complete. But budget constraints at Duke Energy in 2002 forced the company to postpone a number of projects and the future of the Dominion Expansion looked dim.

However, Yardley and his team negotiated new arrangements for the Dominion Expansion that led to the project being completed in 2004 -- $8 million under budget.

Duke Energy is a diversified energy company with a portfolio of natural gas and electric businesses, both regulated and unregulated, and an affiliated real estate company. Duke Energy supplies, delivers and processes energy for customers in the Americas. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Duke Energy is a Fortune 500 company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DUK. More information about the company is available on the Internet at: http://www.duke-energy.com/.

CONTACT: Randy Wheeless Phone: 704/382-8379 24-Hour: 704/382-8333