Skip to main content

The NEI Morning Clip File

Image
By Janice
Here are some of the news clips we're reading at NEI this morning.

Oil prices are still slipping (down to $65.83 a barrel), but experts warn us not to be fooled by this:
"There is no particular reason why prices should go down significantly any time soon," said Deborah White, energy analyst at SG Securities in Paris.

"If they (prices) will near $60 a barrel, people will start buying immediately," pushing prices back up, White said.
In fact, the Asia Times posits, "the idea of oil hitting $75 a barrel is no longer so farfetched."

Oil's isn't the only price skyrocketing lately -- experts point out in today's Billings Gazette that "natural gas prices are very high and ugly on the futures board."
The amount of natural gas going into storage for use during the heating season - November through March - is sharply below normal for this time of year.

... The price culprit now is the hot weather and the use of natural gas to produce electricity for air conditioning. Much of the country has suffered searing heat this summer, from the Southwest through the Midwest on to the Eastern Seaboard. Crude oil prices at $65 a barrel also are pulling the natural gas market higher. Petroleum industry analysts figure a 6-to-1 ratio between oil and natural gas prices, which means $10 per dekatherm might not be a ceiling later this year.

The use of natural gas to produce base-load electricity "is expensive and makes the price volatile," said Dan Sharp, public relations manager at Montana-Dakota Utilities.
In other news, China has picked a possible site in the Guangdong province for a new nuclear power plant:
China is suffering severe power shortages due to its booming economic growth. The problem is especially severe in Guangdong, the country's most populous province with more than 100 million people and the center for its export-driven manufacturing industries.

Power demand in Guangdong last year is believed to have outstripped generating capacity by about 10 percent, the China Daily said.

"We hope that increasing nuclear electricity output will help ease Guangdong's energy crisis," China Daily quoted Hu Guangyao, a Guangdong Nuclear Power executive, as saying.
Come back this afternoon for more news from the NEI Clip File.

Technorati tags:

Comments

Stewart Peterson said…
I made a statement in the first draft of my book, which I wrote about two months ago, that people would definitely get fed up if oil went up to $75/barrel. I think it might be time to revise that figure significantly up.
August 16, 2005 at 8:42 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

By
You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...
1 comment
Read more

Wednesday Update

By
From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

By
Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...
Post a Comment
Read more