Natural Gas Prices Fueling Consumer Anger

In speech after speech this year, our CEO Skip Bowman has been warning that the U.S. is in for a rough Winter because of rising natural gas prices. While it might be too early to call this a trend, this post from Freedom's Trumpet may provide a preview of what lies ahead:

My furnace ran for an hour last night and I am ticked about it. I have been trying to reduce my fuel usage, shutting off rooms that I don’t need. I compacted my living environment and try to heat only the rooms that are being used. So far it’s working but it got to 55F in the house last night, where I keep it as a minimum, and the furnace ran for an hour. It was about 15F out. The gas company will want to inspect my meter. Let them. I’ll freeze to death before I pay $16/mcf and give them $400 for a month this winter. So far I’ve used less than 5mcf (thousand cubic feet) of gas. With the temperatures where they have been I should have used about twice that...

[Why did this country] increase in natural gas usage for electricity which increased demand substantially while at the same time... locking up land and preventing exploration and drilling that could have been used to keep costs down. … and where is our nuclear power?

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Energy, Politics, Economics, Natural Gas, Home Heating

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Fluor Invests in NuScale

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Wednesday Update

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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...

NEI Nuclear Notes

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