Finance/Companies news briefs, June 13

Williams, Tulsa, said it has accepted for purchase 16.7 million shares of common stock of Barrett Resources Corp., Denver, as part of its acquisition plan. That is about half the shares outstanding before the offer. The preliminary count by the depositary for the tender offer indicated 21.1 million Barrett shares were tendered and not withdrawn, and another 13.7 million were tendered pursuant to notices of guaranteed delivery. Williams will purchase shares tendered on a pro rata basis.

Sunoco Inc., Philadelphia, has agreed to acquire from Coastal Mart Inc. and Coastal Refining & Marketing Inc. 65 direct retail sites and assume supply contracts with 24 Coastal distributors for 163 distributor sites in the Southeastern US. Coastal Mart and Coastal Refining are subsidiaries of El Paso Corp.

Wood Group Light Industrial Turbines Ltd. Tuesday finalized a 5-year agreement with BP PLC to provide a total maintenance support package for the majority of the Alstom gas turbines in its UK Continental Shelf fleet. Under the new deal, Wood Group will take on management of the maintenance for more than 80% of BP's UKCS Alstom gas turbines, which includes Tornado engines on the Andrew platform. The BP assets that will be serviced under the contract are Greater Forties, East of Shetlands, and southern North Sea. Originally awarded in May, this deal comes on top of a previous 7-year maintenance contract which Wood Group held for BP Forties.

Gas oil futures on the London-based International Petroleum Exchange reached a new daily record high June 12, when the contract traded 60,639 lots -- equivalent to more than 6 million tonnes of gas oil. The previous record, set Aug. 4, 1999, was 57,778 lots.