Houston, Texas, May 29, 1997-East Tennessee Natural Gas Company, a business unit of El Paso Energy Corporation (NYSE:EPG), today announced the Virginia Expansion Project. With a proposed in service date of November 1, 1998, this expansion will provide Virginia customers with upstream connections to gas supply from the most prolific supply basins in North America, including Gulf Coast, Canadian, Mid-continent and Appalachian supply basins. Although a separate project, the Virginia Expansion Project compliments the East Tennessee expansion announced in August 1996 for customers in eastern Tennessee.

The open season for the Virginia Expansion Project commenced at 8:00 a.m. central daylight time May 28, 1997 and will close at 5:00 p.m. June 23, 1997. The addition to system capacity and cost of the project will be based on the open season results.

The East Tennessee system consists of approximately 1,100 miles of pipeline with design capacity of 630 MMcf/d and serves markets in Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia.

El Paso Energy Corporation provides total energy solutions through four business units: El Paso Natural Gas Company, Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company, El Paso Energy Resources Company and El Paso Energy International Company. With offices worldwide, the company has operations in interstate natural gas transmission, gas gathering and processing, energy marketing, and international energy infrastructure development.

This release includes forward-looking statements and projections, made in reliance on the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The company has made every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and assumptions on which these statements and projections are based are current, reasonable, and complete. However, a variety of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the projections, anticipated results or other expectations expressed in this release. While the company makes these statements and projections in good faith, neither the company nor its management can guarantee that the anticipated future results will be achieved. Reference should be made to the company's (and its affiliates') Securities and Exchange Commission filings for additional important factors that may affect actual results.