Corporate

US Power Prices Will Continue to Increase

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Power prices are too low. That’s what utility executives believe. They need prices to increase for their generators to return healthy earnings. Otherwise, they will have to retire plants and exit the market.

Dominion Resources decided not to wait. They recently announced plans to retire their Wisconsin-based Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station 21 years early. Dominion concluded they would not be able to achieve any earnings for their 556-megawatt unit, they might even lose money and they could not find anyone to buy it. They had no choice but to shutter and decommission Kewaunee. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 6, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Ahead of the US Election, Energy Sector Prepares for a Pivot

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The US energy sector has been a rare bright spot through much of the past four years as first financial firms and then the rest of the global economy has struggled to recover from a grinding and often jobless recession.

Statistics about jobs vary, but any region with significant oil or gas resources has noted the uptick in employment in those sectors as development has accelerated. The most recent numbers from Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor and Industry, for example, show core employment in the Marcellus Shale developments in the state up by 177.5% from first quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2012, even as the state’s overall employment level has lagged that of the rest of the country. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 5, 2012 at 3:45 PM

What should the world’s top energy economists be discussing?

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 /  Published November 5, 2012 at 10:15 AM

Big Banks Await US Carbon-trading while Focusing on Core Energy Plays

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The major investment banks remain heavily engaged in the energy markets, hedging fuel prices and even producing energy for their own or their clients’ benefit. But Brad Hintz, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. research analyst who tracks the investment banking and securities industries, told Breaking Energy that the big banks are also positioning themselves for potential regulatory changes which will force the launch of a national carbon-trading market.

“Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Barclays are all major energy traders,” Hintz observed. “They are the banking giants in that space, and they – along with the commodities exchanges – provide the risk management services needed to balance demand and supply in the global energy markets.” Keep reading →

 /  Published November 1, 2012 at 2:30 PM

Fracking the Economy

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The economic boom in oil and natural gas production resulting from advanced drilling technology lifted the US gross domestic product a full percentage point during the recent recession, says an IHS Global Insight expert, and it can continue to boost the economy for the foreseeable future.

John Larson, Vice President, Public Sector Consulting with IHS, said the fossil abundance unleashed by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing also lowered energy prices enough in the recession that the average household saved $1,000 overall on what energy would have cost. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 31, 2012 at 3:00 PM

Government Subsidies are Scaring Away Capital from Green Deals, Investment Banker Says

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Global investment in sustainable and cleantech businesses has softened during the last couple of years, and there are multiple reasons for the trend. In the US, an investment banker says, one of the key reasons is that government subsidies are scaring away capital. But the banker has detected a growth area that could become a significant driver for clean-tech and sustainability deals.

Most of the major investment banks don’t have stand-alone sustainability practices. But there’s a fair number of middle-market banking firms focused on clean tech and sustainability. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 31, 2012 at 8:30 AM

US Natural Gas Exports

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Will exporting large volumes of US natural gas in the form of LNG raise the price of the commodity and potentially create a competitive disadvantage for gas-intensive industries? And what portions of the US economy are experiencing the impacts of increasing natural gas output most? These are some of the important questions that analysts, government officials, companies and environmental organizations are trying to answer.

In this second installment of our video series about the prospects for and implications of increased US natural gas use, Ian Nathan, Manager of Global Gas and LNG Research at Energy Intelligence Research & Advisory delves a bit deeper in to the issue. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 30, 2012 at 1:00 PM

BP/Rosneft Deal: What About Oil & Gas Reserves and Production?

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BP’s heads of terms agreement to sell its 50% TNK-BP stake to Russian oil giant Rosneft was major news this week. But there was little mention of how oil and gas reserves would be treated as part of the transaction.

This is perhaps the most important aspect of this deal because reserves are one of the main factors that go into valuing an oil company. “On completion of the proposed transaction, BP expects to hold 19.75 per cent of Rosneft shares, including BP’s existing holding of 1.25 per cent, and to have received $12.3 billion in cash,” according to BP’s press release. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 29, 2012 at 1:00 PM

Renewable Energy and the Corporation: Leaders Offer Insight

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Why would major corporations – absent a political requirement – get involved in renewable energy investments? Representatives for a group of major North American companies gathered in New York recently to discuss the results of a release of a pair of studies on renewable energy use and its perception among global consumers.

While each speaker at the Energy Transparency 2012 launch at the Bloomberg building in New York said that their companies were in part pursuing energy because it was “the right thing to do,” each also stressed a business reason behind their expansion of investments in renewables. Brand differentiation was cited by TD Bank’s Head of Environmental Affairs Diana Glassman, but so was the appeal to employees. Employees want to work for companies that are responsible about their environmental footprint, even when – as financial or insurance companies – their emissions output is relatively small. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 29, 2012 at 11:00 AM

Benefits and Risks Associated with Increased US Natural Gas Use

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The dramatic ramp up in US natural gas production in recent years caught many by surprise, as an anticipated need for imports changed seemingly overnight to mainstream talk about exporting natural gas as LNG.

In addition to the export conversation, there are numerous other applications for natural gas that are now attractive given the fuel’s abundance and historically low price. The power generation, petrochemical and transportation sectors are three major sources of increased consumption, but there is even a company using cheap gas to melt down waste plastic in order to separate out crude oil that can be sold back to refineries. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 26, 2012 at 1:00 PM
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