HOUSTON — Enron Corp. might seem close to needing its last rites, but detractors shouldn't order the casket yet, one securities analyst says.

        The embattled energy trader could emerge from one of the biggest Chapter 11 reorganizations ever with a second life as a smaller trader with different management and a supporting bank as a partner, said John Olsen, director of research at Houston securities firm Sanders Morris Harris.

        “The trading company did not bring Enron down. The energy outsourcing and pipelines did not cause Chapter 11. It was an egregious and overly aggressive financing strategy that blew up in their faces and everyone else's,” Mr. Olsen said.

        Enron shares surged Tuesday as investors took heart in news that Enron had secured $1.5 billion in short-term financing after seeking bankruptcy protection.

        While shares jumped 47 cents, or 118 percent, they were still trading at just 87 cents on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. A year ago, they were worth more than $80.

        Shares of Dynegy Inc., Enron's downtown Houston neighbor that last week bailed out of plans to buy Enron, were up $3.83, or 14 percent, at $31, also on the NYSE.

        Analysts said the surge likely shows that shareholders are gambling that Enron will emerge from Chapter 11 as a viable business and that their stock might be worth something.

        “The only reason it makes sense (is) if you think this is going to come out of Chapter 11 and it comes out a viable entity,” said A.G. Edwards & Sons analyst Mike Heim. “I think a lot of people are taking comfort in the fact that J.P. Morgan and Citigroup provided the funding.”

        Mr. Heim added that A.G. Edwards is not recommending that people buy Enron, “so I'm speculating as to why people are doing it.”

        The jump in Enron shares showed that investors are trying to assess what the infusion from J.P. Morgan and Citigroup means, said Mike Greenberger, a bankruptcy and securities professor at the University of Maryland School of Law.

        “This is an issue of psychology more than it is economics,” he said.

        In a related matter, House Energy and Commerce Committee staff met for several hours Tuesday with Securities and Exchange Committee officials over the Enron implosion, said Ken Johnson, spokesman for Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., the committee's chairman.

        Mr. Tauzin plans to ask the SEC for documents related to Enron's books and records, Mr. Johnson said. In addition, a team of committee investigators plans to go to Enron's headquarters in Houston later this week.

        “Sorting through this mess is going to take some time,” Mr. Johnson said. He said the off-balance-sheet partnerships Enron used “created a sort of accounting black hole. ... But one way or another, we intend to get to the bottom of this.”

        SEC spokesmen had no immediate comment on the meeting.

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