Aquila Offers Web-Based Solution to High Natural Gas Bills for Consumers

Business Wire, June 5, 2001

Business Editors/Energy & Technology Writers

KANSAS CITY, Mo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 5, 2001

Aquila, Inc. (NYSE:ILA) today announced that it has expanded its current family of e-business products to include an Internet offering designed to help residential and small-business customers better manage their energy costs.

Called GuaranteedBill(SM), the product is an extension of the company's pioneering weather and alternative risk management products. Rather than being marketed directly to the end users, GuaranteedBill is provided through their local utility or market aggregators.

GuaranteedBill will offer customers a fixed monthly bill for natural gas. The monthly price is based on the historical relationship between usage and weather, as well as commodity prices. This price, once established, does not change regardless of fluctuations in usage or commodity price. Aquila will design Web pages for the utilities and aggregators, which will fit seamlessly with their own Web sites. The Web page will allow customers to sign up for GuaranteedBill online.

"Increased energy prices have caused the consuming public to look for product offerings that allow them to manage their household energy budget with a high degree of certainty, without large true-ups due to weather and/or commodity price changes," says Beth Armstrong, senior vice president of Aquila Client Services. GuaranteedBill is an outgrowth of Aquila's GuaranteedWeather(R) family of weather hedging financial derivative products marketed to industrial and other large customers. Aquila sold its first weather product in the summer of 1996. (More information about GuaranteedBill can be found at www.GuaranteedBill.com.)

Based in Kansas City, Aquila is one of the top wholesalers of electricity and natural gas in North America. The company is an innovative provider of risk management products and services and owns and controls a diverse portfolio of merchant assets, including power plants, gas storage, pipeline, and processing facilities, and other complementary merchant infrastructure facilities. Aquila also provides wholesale energy services in the U.K., Scandinavia, Germany and Spain. Additional information is available at www.aquila.com. Aquila is 80 percent owned by UtiliCorp United, a multinational energy company based in Kansas City with more than 4 million customers. It operates in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. At March 31, 2001, UtiliCorp had total assets of $13.3 billion and 12-month sales of $36.3 billion.