UCG breaking bold, new ground with petroleum exchanqe."Our internet oil adventure is off to the races." That was the response of Bruce Levenson to the first online auction of 90 million gallons of fuel oil through the American Petroleum Exchange (APExchange), a spin-off The situation that arises when a parent corporation organizes a subsidiary corporation, to which it transfers a portion of its assets in exchange for all of the subsidiary's capital stock, which is subsequently transferred to the parent corporation's shareholders. information technology company of United Communications Group (ucg) (NL/NL 7/31/00). Levenson is one of the founding partners of ucg, which has used its newsletters and databases dealing with petroleum pricing to develop APExchange. The impact on the petroleum and transportation industry of this high-tech way of purchasing petroleum products was noted in a front-page article in the Washington Post. United Parcel Service United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE: UPS), commonly referred to as UPS, is the world's largest package delivery company, delivering more than 15 million packages[1] a day to 6.1 million customers in over 200 countries and territories around the world. Inc. used APExchange to accept bids from large and small suppliers to provide 69 million gallons of diesel fuel and 18 million gallons of gasoline gasoline or petrol, light, volatile mixture of hydrocarbons for use in the internal-combustion engine and as an organic solvent, obtained primarily by fractional distillation and "cracking" of petroleum, but also obtained from natural gas, by for its trucks and airplanes in its southern region. Levenson told NL/NL that "launching this business is a far cry from launching a newsletter. We've spent $20 million to launch the Exchange. On the other hand, our first 'subscriber' bought 90 gallons of fuel using our system. Our fee on that transaction was a little more than the $300 or so that we charge for a year's subscription to one of our newsletters. "It sounds like a huge leap from a newsletter that reports oil prices to becoming the central exchange for the buying and selling of fuel. But our newsletter, Oil Price Information Service, ideally positioned us as a neutral player in the industry that had earned the respect and loyalty of buyers and sellers." APExchange is currently 100 percent owned by ucg but the firm is in discussions with a few strategic investors who may take a minority position. FedEx and Wal-Mart will use APExchange this week to purchase a total of 125 million gallons of fuel. Levenson said the list of big buyers signed up by APExchange include Federal Express Ground, Ryder Leasing, Overnite Delivery, and most of the large trucking companies including Yellow Freight, Consolidated Freight, CNF CNF Configuration (File Name Extension) CNF Conference CNF Conjunctive Normal Form CNF Could Not Find CNF Chin National Front (Burma) CNF Canadian Nature Federation CNF Cornell NanoScale Facility and Schneider National Schneider National, Inc. is the largest privately owned truckload carrier based out of Green Bay, Wisconsin. The company was founded in 1935. The company is the third-largest of all trucking & logistics companies in the United States based on annual revenue. , plus several large convenience store chains and truckstop chains. Levenson expects that the commitment of these major companies to use APExchange to purchase fuel, plus the fact that APExchange is operational, will establish the Exchange as the premier internet commerce site for purchasing petroleum products online and will give it a competitive edge over other rival companies. "UPS is the first in a long line of large, fuel-thirsty businesses looking to the Exchange to help wring wring v. wrung , wring·ing, wrings v.tr. 1. To twist, squeeze, or compress, especially so as to extract liquid. Often used with out. 2. every dollar out of their skyrocketing fuel costs," the Washington Post reported. "And by skimming Skimming An electronic method of capturing a victim's personal information used by identity thieves. The skimmer is a small device that scans a credit card and stores the information contained in the magnetic strip. a fraction of a penny per gallon from both buyer and seller, the fledging APExchange hopes to profit handsomely from the current oil crunch (1) To process data. See number crunching. (2) To compress data. See data compression. 1. (jargon) crunch - To process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated way. ." |
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