El Paso's divestitures. (Company News).(El Paso Merchant Energy)(Brief Article)

El Paso executives anticipate a quick sale of its assets. "We believe all of these are highly attractive assets, and so we expect to execute that first phase of the plan largely during the first quarter," said Ralph Eads III, president of the El Paso Merchant Energy group, in a teleconference with financial analysts.

"A lot of these assets are pent up things that we would have sold previously, but we really couldn't. Now we re in a position where, as part of this program, we're going to do this," Eads added.

El Paso Chairman and CEO William A. Wise told analysts, "We were in a post-pooling period after completing two large pooling transactions. We weren't contemplating disposing of any of the …