Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Greg Gordon with Citi.
Greg Gordon - Citi
Thank you. Good morning.
Thomas Farrell
Good morning.
Greg Gordon - Citi
I want to echo what Tom said that guys like me been in the industry for 15 plus years, its hard to think of getting up in the morning and coming to work without Tom Chewning being a part of it. So congratulations on your retirement.
Thomas Chewning
Thanks.
Greg Gordon - Citi
My first question is with regard to the quarter. Can you review for us or refresh our memories on the producer services business model and what led to your ability to put such a good number. And is that a structurally sustainable number? Or does that have to do with, sort of market conditions in this quarter?
Paul Koonce
Greg, this is Paul Koonce. Thanks for the question. The business model of producer services is a physical business model. We've got a real nice set of storage and transportation assets that come from asset management arrangements made up of our unregulated portfolio. They have certain transportation contracts that we can manage.
You've got upstream transportation that are in support of our retail business and so you take that portfolio and you put it together, you really have a very nice Mid-Atlantic Northeast presence. And then you add to that the Dominion field Service, Appalachian and aggregation business, those came together with the weather and really produced a very strong result. It was really accumulated a day at a time. I would not expect that to continue throughout the year. It's more function of the weather condition and the different basis relationships that set up. But it's a very strong result and one we're very pleased with.
Greg Gordon - Citi
Great. My second question sort of goes to sort of the book end comments at the beginning and the end around economic outlook as it pertains to earnings outlook. Would it be fair to summarize those comments as saying that should 2011 commodity prices not recover to what we all believe they should, that there are offsetting factors that would mitigate that impact on your ability to meet your long-term earnings growth goal but not fully offset it. Is that fair?
Paul Koonce
I don't know about the last part about fully offsetting it. Not one particular factor would fully offset it but the combination of factors well could. My estimate in terms of this we continue to and we're assuming that Greg that the commodity prices are tied to a level of the economy. That's not the only part of that equation. Some of it is actually supply which we think is going to be diminished here in the next couple of years.
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