Houston, Texas, January 10, 2000—Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company, a business unit of El Paso Energy Corporation (NYSE:EPG), announced today that the company filed its application for the Stagecoach Expansion Project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on December 30, 1999. This project will connect the proposed Stagecoach Storage Field in Tioga County, New York, to Tennessee's mainline at its compressor station 319 in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. The Stagecoach Storage Field is being developed by Central New York Oil and Gas Company, L.L.C., an affiliate of eCORP, using its proprietary Salternatives Technology™. While the field is a conventional depleted reservoir, the storage facility will have the high deliverability characteristics similar to salt cavern storage operations.

"Tennessee is pleased to be the pipeline choice for the Stagecoach Storage Field," said John W. Somerhalder II, president of Tennessee Gas Pipeline. "As power generation loads become a much larger factor in the northeast gas market, facilities like Stagecoach will play an important role in handling load variability."

John F. Thrash, president and chief executive officer of eCORP added, "The value of our storage project is further enhanced by the access to markets directly connected to Tennessee and their connections to other pipelines, as well as Tennessee's access to diverse supplies."

A new lateral to the storage field will consist of 23.7 miles of 30-inch pipe and have a capacity of 500,000 dekatherms per day (Dth/d). In addition to the new lateral, the project will expand Tennessee's 300 Line to provide 90,000 Dth/d of firm transportation service from station 319 to its interconnect with New Jersey Natural in Passaic County, New Jersey. The 300 Line expansion portion of the project will include 3.9 miles of new 30-inch loop, a new compressor station near mainline valve 323, replacement of 6.5 miles of 24-inch pipe, and other pressure upgrades to the existing system. The total cost for this project is an estimated $86.5 million. Service on the lateral is scheduled to begin August 1, 2001, and service on the 300 Line is scheduled to begin November 1, 2001.

With over $15 billion in assets, El Paso Energy Corporation provides comprehensive energy solutions through its strategic business units: El Paso Natural Gas Company, Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company, Southern Natural Gas Company, El Paso Field Services Company, El Paso Merchant Energy Company, El Paso Production Company, and El Paso Energy International Company. The company owns North America's largest natural gas pipeline system, both in terms of throughput and miles of pipeline, and has operations in natural gas transmission, gas gathering and processing, gas and oil production, power generation, merchant energy services, and international project development. Visit El Paso Energy's web site at www.epenergy.com.

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.