The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has already reached 13 settlements with companies including Aquila and has filed lawsuits against two other companies accused of providing false information intended to manipulate gas price indexes.

The commission typically gives little information about the status of investigations. But the commission's chairman, James Newsome, in a speech made last Friday -- and recently posted on the agency's Web site -- said although the investigation was being wrapped up the agency was still looking at other companies and employees of all the companies that had been the target of the investigation.

The speech was made before an American Bar Association committee meeting in Key West, Fla. Officials declined Thursday to elaborate on Newsome's remarks. Vincent McGonagle, the deputy director of the commission's Enforcement Division, said they're "working to a resolution as soon as possible."

Aquila agreed last month to settle allegations that it had intended to manipulate natural gas prices over about a three-year period that ended in August 2002 by providing false prices and other information to trade publications that use such data to calculate the indexes. The $26.5 million civil penalty it agreed to pay was the second largest of the companies that have settled. The indexes are important because they are used to set the price of many gas contracts.

He said the company had provided whatever information the commission had asked for, but the agency had not told it where the investigation was heading.

"It would be improper for us to speculate," he said.