Lynne Kiesling The following is a post I wrote in March 2004 about the regular, annual, seasonal rise in gasoline prices that always occurs at this time of year. I am reposting it here because it generally still applies, and I am inserting some updated comments in bold below. Being systematic, here are the primary …
Michael Giberson Two years ago, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a staff report diagnosing problems with the way reactive power is procured, paid for, and used in the U.S. electric power industry. The report was widely recognized as authoritative and thoughful, and as laying well the foundation for further progress on the topic. As …
Michael Giberson For a long time in the United States, ethanol has been a fringe act, a political plaything, a way for Congress to subsidize the income of well-connected agribusinesses without thinking too hard. Now, ethanol has become a member of a small cluster of “ideas” that are supposed to help us get on down …
Michael Giberson The Fort Worth, Texas Star-Telegram reports that private capital groups Blackstone Capital Partners LP and the Carlyle Group are considering their own bid to take TXU private. While it may seem a little late in the day for a new bid – after all the TXU board has already approved the offer from …
Rival Bid for Txu? And What About the Politicians? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling TXU is going private. KKR and other private investors will acquire TXU and take it private. This is fascinating. Note from the press release two important things: the focus on environmental attributes of the deal, and $400 million planned for “demand side management”: Planned Coal Units Reduced from Eleven to Three, Preventing 56 …
Txu Going Private: Private Equity Buys Into Competitive Power Markets Read More »
Lynne Kiesling The Wall Street Journal Energy Roundup has a post on new estimates of the supply of “unconventional oil and gas”. Not surprisingly, it’s good news and bad news: there’s lots of potentially recoverable stuff out there, which means that there is indeed potential for rightward shifts of the supply curve, but the Wood …
Michael Giberson In letters to the chairmen of FERC and the CFTC, Senator Jeff Bingaman asks what actions the agencies have taken in response to recent episodes of natural gas price volatility. Particularly of concern to the Senator were allegations of manipulation of the NYMEX gas futures contract price at the end of August 2006. …
Lynne Kiesling Here’s a great new source from the Wall Street Journal: Energy Roundup, an energy economics blog. Excellent! Welcome to the party. HT to Environmental Economics for the link; now let’s persuade Mr. Gongloff that KP should be on his list of “blogs we’re reading” …
Lynne Kiesling I’ve often wondered how nanotechnology can contribute to increased efficiency, load factor, and conservation of energy. My first thoughts were probably wrong; we don’t need nano-scale devices to perform remote monitoring and automated repair and self-correction within the wires network itself. Regular small-scale devices can do just fine for that. But here’s some …
Lynne Kiesling Ooooh, baby, it’s cold outside! The cold snap affecting a large proportion of the U.S. population is placing upward pressure on oil prices, particularly because the cold snap is affecting U.S. regions that rely more on home heating oil than natural gas or electric heating: The onset of cold weather in the U.S. …
Temperature, Oil Prices, and Weather Derivatives Read More »
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