Dominion, Statoil Sign Contract for Cove Point Expansion

		DOMINION LOGO This is the logo for Dominion (NYSE: D), the United States' largest fully integrated natural gas and electric power company. The company's major subsidiaries are Dominion Energy, Dominion Exploration & Production, Dominion Retail, Dominion Virginia Power, Dominion North Carolina Power, Dominion East Ohio, Dominion Peoples, and Dominion Hope. Dominion's headquarters is in Richmond, Va. For more information, visit the company's Internet site atwww.dom.com. (PRNewsFoto)[PM TK AG] RICHMOND, VA USA

RICHMOND, Va., June 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Dominion (NYSE: D) and Statoil ASA (NYSE: STO) today announced agreement on a 20-year contract giving Statoil access to increased capacity at the Dominion Cove Point liquefied natural gas plant in Maryland. The two companies had signed a letter of intent in February. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000831/DLOGO ) Plans call for increasing the plant's capacity from 1 billion cubic feet per day to 1.8 Bcf per day and its storage capacity from 7.8 Bcf to 14.6 Bcf by 2008. The project also includes associated pipeline and natural gas storage projects in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Construction of new LNG storage tanks would begin as soon as regulatory approval is received and will take about three years to complete. New pipelines in Maryland and Pennsylvania will be timed to go into service no later than the completion of the new LNG facilities, which is anticipated to be in late 2008. Dominion purchased the LNG terminal at Cove Point in 2002 and successfully reopened it in the summer of 2003. The plant is located on the Chesapeake Bay, south of Baltimore. Dominion is one of the nation's largest producers of energy, with a portfolio consisting of more than 24,000 megawatts of generation, 6.4 trillion cubic feet equivalent of natural gas reserves, 7,900 miles of natural gas transmission pipeline and more than 960 billion cubic feet of storage capacity. Dominion also serves five million retail energy customers in nine states. Additional information about Dominion is available on the Internet at http://www.dom.com .