By all accounts, the gas trading business was a huge success. By 1992, Enron was the largest merchant of natural gas in North America, and the gas trading business
became a major contributor to Enron’s net income, with earnings before interest
and taxes of $122million. The creation of the on-line trading model, EnronOnline,
in November 1999 enabled the company to develop further and extend its abilities
to negotiate and manage these financial contracts. By the fourth quarter of 2000,
EnronOnline accounted for almost half of Enron’s transactions for all of its
business units and had enabled transactions per commercial person to grow to
3,084 from 672 in 1999.