Skip to main content

NEI's Energy Markets Report - May 19-23, 2008

Here's a summary of what went on in the energy markets last week:
Electricity peak prices decreased $1-24/MWh at all hubs except for Entergy. PJM West fell to $64/MWh, the lowest price it’s been over the past four months, due to moderate temperatures. Entergy prices increased to $83/MWh, the highest price since the end of July 2006, due to hot temperatures at the end of last week. ERCOT peak prices fell less than $1/MWh last week; however, the ERCOT Houston and ERCOT South hubs “baffled” experts as the peak prices rocketed to $315-440/MWh last Friday – Platts, Megawatt Daily 5/27 (see pages 1 and 3).

Estimated nuclear plant availability increased to 88 percent last week. Three units finished refueling outages and three units began maintenance (see pages 2 and 4).

Gas prices at the Henry Hub fell $0.04 to $11.31/MMBtu (see pages 1 and 3). According to EIA, the final leg of the Rockies Express West pipeline is in service. This 210-mile segment connects Audrain County, Missouri, with almost 500 miles of REX-West that had already begun service in January 2008. REX-West is a 42-inch-diameter pipeline that begins in Weld County, Colorado providing 1.5 Bcf per day of capacity from Rockies production fields to markets in the Midwest. By the end of 2009, the pipeline is expected to expand further eastward to Clarington, Ohio, as part of the 638-mile REX-East segment.

Uranium spot prices remained at $60/lb U3O8 for the third week in a row (see pages 1 and 3). According to EIA’s 2007 Uranium Marketing Annual Report, owners and operators of U.S. civilian nuclear power reactors purchased a total of 51 million pounds U3O8e (uranium oxide equivalent) of deliveries at a weighted-average price of $32.78 per pound U3O8e. The 2007 total of 51 million pounds U3O8e decreased 23 percent compared with the 2006 total of 67 million pounds U3O8e. Eight percent of the 51 million pounds U3O8e delivered in 2007 was U.S.-origin uranium at a weighted-average price of $28.89 per pound U3O8e. Foreign-origin uranium accounted for the remaining 47 million pounds (92 percent) of deliveries at a weighted-average price of $33.05 per pound U3O8e.
For the report click here. It is also located on NEI's Financial Center webpage.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should