Category: News

June 20 2017

Centrica Poised to Miss Silver Lining From Rough Gas Sales

Centrica won’t have much change left after selling all the spare fuel it keeps at a North Sea gas facility it’s decided to close. The so-called cushion gas, sitting in a reservoir 18 miles (29 kilometers) off the English coast, is worth about 750 million pounds ($950 million), according to Lakis Athanasiou, a utilities analyst […]

June 20 2017

Centrica to Close Gas Rough Storage Buffer Against Winter Shocks

Centrica Plc’s plan to permanently close its loss-making gas storage site in the U.K. will boost the utility’s earnings but make the nation more dependent on foreign supplies. The Rough facility off northeast England has operated at reduced rates for more than a year, plagued by technical problems after operating for over three decades, and […]

June 20 2017

Texas Is Too Windy and Sunny for Old Energy Companies to Make Money

As attractive a renewable-energy concept as wind power is, it’s plagued by a fundamental flaw. It blows the most in the dead of night, precisely when there’s the least demand for electricity. That’s true for just about every wind-blown spot across the U.S., from the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains in California to the coastal […]

June 20 2017

ExxonMobil and Stephen Hawking Just Agreed to the Same Climate Fix

Less than three weeks after President Donald Trump pulled the United States from the 195-nation Paris Agreement on climate change, there’s a new ragtag group of underdogs supporting carbon-cutting. ExxonMobil Corp., Total SA, Raymond Dalio, Laurene Powell Jobs, Stephen Hawking, Ratan Tata, and Michael Bloomberg, the founder and owner of Bloomberg LP, among others, have signed on […]

June 20 2017

Shale’s Record Fracklog Could Force Crude Prices Even Lower

There’s yet another concern growing as oil prices continue to erode: A record U.S. fracklog. There were 5,946 drilled-but-uncompleted wells in the nation’s oilfields at the end of May, the most in at least three years, according to estimates by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In the last month alone, explorers drilled 125 more wells in […]

June 20 2017

Tesla Said Close to Agreeing on Plan for China Production

Tesla Inc. is close to an agreement to produce vehicles in China for the first time, giving the electric-car maker better access to the world’s largest auto market, according to people familiar with the matter. The agreement with the city of Shanghai would allow Tesla to build facilities in its Lingang development zone and could […]

June 19 2017

Exxon Makes a Biofuel Breakthrough

It’s the holy grail for biofuel developers hoping to coax energy out of algae: Keep the organism fat enough to produce oil but spry enough to grow quickly.  J. Craig Venter, the scientist who mapped the human genome, just helped Exxon Mobil Corp. strike that balance, with a breakthrough that could enable widespread commercialization of […]

June 19 2017

Japan Has Surprise Deficit as Import Growth Beats Exports

Japan had a surprise trade deficit in May, as stronger-than-expected imports overpowered the best export growth in more than two years. Highlights Exports rose 14.9 percent from a year earlier (estimate +16 percent), according to data released by the Ministry of Finance. Part of that was a rebound from weak shipments last year caused by the […]

June 18 2017

Taiwan Lays Plans for $59 Billion in Renewable-Energy Finance

New energy, meet new finance. That’s the thinking of Taiwan’s government, which is starting to map out funding plans for a power system that can no longer rely on nuclear reactors. Prime Minister Lin Chuan’s administration aims to increase the share of renewable energy such as water, wind and solar to 20 percent of total […]

June 16 2017

Westinghouse Collapse Sparks a Nuclear Bond Buying Opportunity

Southern utilities are leaving investors in a dark mood. Shares of Scana Corp. and Southern Co. have lagged their rivals, as have the bonds of public agency Santee Cooper. The reason: fear of their exposure to billions of nuclear power plant cost overruns in South Carolina and Georgia after reactor builder Westinghouse Electric Co. filed […]