Southern Company Energy Marketing has named Catherine Sullivan to head up its newly opened business development office in Los Angeles. Southern Company Energy Marketing is the natural gas and electricity — trading and marketing — business unit for Southern Energy Inc., a unit of Southern Company.

Sullivan will be responsible for Southern Company’s gas and power marketing efforts in Southern California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. Before joining Southern Company Energy Marketing, Sullivan was western region manager for Enron Capital and Trade Resources (ECT), where she was most recently responsible for energy sales to industrial, commercial and residential markets in 11 Western states. She has held previous marketing and sales positions with MidCon Marketing, NGPL, Mobil and Louis Dreyfus Corp.

The Los Angeles office is located at 1334 Parkview Ave., Manhattan Beach. The telephone number is (310) 796-1530 and the fax number is (310) 796-1539. In addition to the new Los Angeles office and its headquarters in Atlanta, Southern Company operates U.S. business development offices in Boston; Dallas-Fort Worth; Houston; San Francisco; Eugene, Ore. and Columbus, Ohio.

“We are approaching our goal of becoming one of the top five energy marketing organizations in the nation,” said Marce Fuller, chief executive officer of Southern Company Energy Marketing. “These new business development offices, located in key energy markets around the country, are helping us to establish a presence and to pursue opportunities in the rapidly developing gas and power marketing business.”

Southern Company Energy Marketing is a unit of Southern Company’s Southern Energy Inc., which develops, builds, owns and operates power production and delivery facilities and provides a broad range of services to utilities and industrial companies around the world.

Southern Company Energy Marketing was formed when Southern Energy Inc. entered into a joint venture with Vastar Resources Inc. (NYSE: VRI), one of the nation’s leading independent exploration, production and marketing companies. Atlantic Richfield Co. owns 82 percent of Vastar’s stock.

Southern Company Energy Marketing is one of just six companies in North America to hold a top 10 position in both natural gas and power marketing, based on first-quarter volumes. Southern Company Energy Marketing provides, where regulation allows, energy trading, marketing and financial services and other energy-related commodities, products and services to customers in North America. These customers include other energy marketers, local gas distribution companies, municipal and cooperative utilities, investor-owned utilities and large business customers.

Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE: SO), the largest producer of electricity in the United States, is the parent firm of Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Gulf Power, Mississippi Power and Savannah Electric. Based in Atlanta, Southern Company supplies electricity in eight countries on four continents and provides energy-related marketing, trading and technical services and wireless telecommunications. Southern Company’s common stock is one of the 20 most widely held corporate stocks in America.