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Utilities Switch Off Investment in Fossil Fuel Plants - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ent-in-fossil-fuel-plants.html utilities switch investment fossil fossil fuel fuel plants
shared by Gene Ellis on 10 Jan 14 - No Cached
    • Gene Ellis
      Gene Ellis on 10 Jan 14
       
      Note:  a LARGE power station =s 40 direct jobs.
  • workers at the large power station known as Keadby 1 are preparing to shut it down at the end of the summer, with the loss of about 40 jobs.
  • fluctuations in global energy markets have made the natural gas power plant unprofitable
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • It has also delayed new energy investments and is planning to close almost a quarter of its fossil fuel power plants,
  • European energy companies, struggling to respond to weak demand in a flatlining economy, say they need guaranteed pricing to keep open unprofitable plants or to invest in new ones.
  • Their revenue is being hit by dwindling demand for electricity and by new wind and solar projects that undercut the price of the energy produced from many fossil fuel plants.
  • At the same time, record-low prices on carbon emissions trading markets, which were introduced to encourage clean and efficient energy production and use, have perversely become a disincentive to investment.
  • Many of the Continent’s aging power stations, particularly those that burn highly polluting coal, are earmarked for closure by 2020 to meet stringent local environment regulations.
  • Without these investments, industrial companies in Europe may face higher energy prices when local economies eventually recover,
  • “Energy utilities are facing a perfect storm,”
  • In a bid to generate 20 percent of the European Union’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020, Germany, Spain and other E.U. countries have provided hefty subsidies to wind and solar farms, which now constitute a sizable minority of daily electricity generation, often surpassing the 20 percent target.
    • Gene Ellis
      Gene Ellis on 10 Jan 14
       
      In effect, a cheaper overall form of energy (non-renewables) had to compete with heavy subsidies to renewables, which, once built, had low operating costs.  They cannot compete and do not invest, and there are major problems w/investing more in renewables (they are overall more expensive, and they have built-in faults, producing electricity erratically, or during the wrong times.)  The high costs of energy also lie with government, who cemented long-term deals with the ex-USSR linking other energy prices to the price of oil.  In short, they shot themselves in the foot.  Several times.
  • Despite the upfront costs associated with green energy projects, they are inexpensive to run. In contrast, Europe’s gas and coal plants, which also provide backup power when renewables cannot operate, need constant spending on fossil fuels.
  • European utilities like E.On of Germany have announced plans to shut down less-polluting natural gas-fired plants that have been undercut by dirtier coal-burning generators benefiting from a flood of low-cost coal imports and low carbon emissions prices.
  • Policy makers are debating a system of support payments to keep uneconomic power plants open,
  • “Without long-term signals of energy prices, investment won’t happen.”
  • Some analysts also expect domestic regulators to eventually create financial incentives for companies
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The Quality of Jobs: The New Normal and the Old Normal - NYTimes.com - 0 views

economix.blogs.nytimes.com/...-new-normal-and-the-old-normal
shared by Gene Ellis on 20 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Despite 42 consecutive months of gains in private-sector employment, the unemployment rate is still at 7.3 percent; in December 2007 it was only 4.6 percent. The current unemployment rate is higher now than in 2007 across all age, education, occupation, gender and ethnic groups.
  • That’s despite the fact that about four million workers have left the labor force, driving the labor force participation rate to a historic low
  • Although the share of the long-term unemployed has fallen from its peak of 45 percent in 2011 to 38 percent today, it is still far above its 2001-7 average. And about eight million people are working part-time for “economic reasons,”
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  • 60 percent of the net job losses occurred in middle-income occupations with median hourly wages of $13.84 to $21.13. In contrast, these occupations have accounted for less than a quarter of the net job gains in the recovery, while low-wage occupations with median hourly wages of $7.69 to $13.83 have accounted for more than half of these gains.
  • Over the last year, more than 40 percent of job growth has been in low-paying sectors including retail, leisure/hospitality (hotels and restaurants) and temporary help agencies.
  • Based on history, what’s distinctive about this recovery is its sluggish pace, not the composition of its jobs.
  • The economy’s growth rate has been less than half the rate of previous recoveries and the employment losses in the Great Recession were more than twice as large as those in previous recessions.
  • What is distinctive during this recovery relative to earlier ones is the growing disparity in wages across sectors, a trend that was apparent long before the Great Recession.
  • Since then, however, wage growth has fallen far short of productivity growth, and that’s true for workers regardless of education, occupation, gender or race.
  • But technological change and the globalization it has enabled have played major roles, and these driving forces have probably strengthened during the recovery.
  • Jobs that are routine, that do not involve manual tasks and that do not need to be done near the customer are being replaced by computers and automation or are being outsourced to low-cost workers in other countries.
  • According to another study, the top 1 percent of households captured 65 percent of real family income gains (including realized capital gains) between 2002 and 2007 and 95 percent of the gains between 2009 and 2012. In 2012, the top decile claimed more than 50 percent of income, the highest share ever.
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Brazil Registers Anemic Growth in 3rd Quarter, Surprising Economists - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...arter-shocking-economists.html brazil growth low
shared by Gene Ellis on 01 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • including its byzantine bureaucracy and woeful public schools.
  • Gene Ellis on 01 Dec 12
     
    Brazil low growth includes structural dilemmas, including byzantine bureaucracy and woeful public schools
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France Says It Will Ban Uber's Low-Cost Service in New Year - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-cost-service-in-new-year.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 16 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • France Says It Will Ban Uber’s Low-Cost Service in New Year
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As LED Industry Evolves, China Elbows Ahead - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...lbows-its-way-to-the-fore.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • As LED Industry Evolves, China Elbows Ahead
  • “LED lighting could see itself become the next solar, wind or other future opportunity that the U.S. will have given away by failing to address Chinese industrial policies and unfairly traded products,”
  • SolarWorld, a solar panel maker that complained to the American government about what it considered unfair advantages for Chinese competitors, was later the victim of a cyberattack by Chinese military officials, according to a recent indictment by the Justice Department.
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  • American, European and Chinese regulators have put in effect energy-efficiency rules that phase out the use of incandescent bulbs. Big multinationals that make light bulbs like Philips, Osram and General Electric have responded by embracing light-emitting diodes, which use one-fifth of the electricity of incandescent bulbs and half the electricity of fluorescent bulbs.
  • Many Chinese producers also have a poor and worsening reputation for quality, which may hurt them in the long term.
  • The industry, for instance, is highly segmented.
  • Lighting accounts for about 6 percent of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases, and LEDs have the potential to steeply reduce them.
  • Prices have fallen by nearly half in the last year for low-end, low-wattage LEDs made in China, and by 15 to 20 percent for the higher-wattage versions made elsewhere, buyers and manufacturing executives said.
  • “We do not buy Chinese LEDs,” said Mike Pugh, the procurement director at Xicato in San Jose, Calif., a large provider of indoor lighting systems for retailers and hotels. “We just can’t take that chance.”
  • Xicato instead buys LEDs from multinationals like Cree of Durham, N.C.; Philips Lumileds, based in San Jose, Calif.; and Osram Opto Semiconductors of Regensburg, Germany.
  • Three-quarters of China’s electricity still comes from burning coal, which contributes to severe air pollution as well as global warming.
  • The Chinese LED industry has created tens of thousands of well-paid jobs for young community college graduates
  • She earns $500 a month plus medical benefits and free food and lodging in an air-conditioned dormitory where employees sleep four to six i
  • the solar and LED industries in China received huge loans at low interest rates from state-owned banks following directives from Beijing
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Dani Rodrik shows why Sub-Saharan Africa's impressive economic performance is not susta... - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...performance-is-not-sustainable economics africa
shared by Gene Ellis on 27 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Africa’s Structural Transformation Challenge
  • As researchers at the African Center for Economic Transformation in Accra, Ghana, put it, the continent is “growing rapidly, transforming slowly.”
  • Fewer than 10% of African workers find jobs in manufacturing, and among those only a tiny fraction – as low as one-tenth – are employed in modern, formal firms with adequate technology. Distressingly, there has been very little improvement in this regard, despite high growth rates. In fact, Sub-Saharan Africa is less industrialized today than it was in the 1980’s. Private investment in modern industries, especially non-resource tradables, has not increased, and remains too low to sustain structural transformation.
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  • As in all developing countries, farmers in Africa are flocking to the cities. And yet, as a recent study from the Groningen Growth and Development Center shows, rural migrants do not end up in modern manufacturing industries, as they did in East Asia, but in services such as retail trade and distribution. Though such services have higher productivity than much of agriculture, they are not technologically dynamic in Africa
  • Xinshen Diao of the International Food Policy Research Institute has shown that this growth was led by non-tradable services, in particular construction, transport, and hotels and restaurants. The public sector dominates investment, and the bulk of public investment is financed by foreign grants. Foreign aid has caused the real exchange rate to appreciate,
  • What Rwanda and other African countries lack are the modern, tradable industries that can turn the potential into reality by acting as the domestic engine of productivity growth.
  • Studies show that very few microenterprises grow beyond informality, just as the bulk of successful established firms do not start out as small, informal enterprises.
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How Apple and Other Corporations Move Profit to Avoid Taxes - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ove-profit-to-avoid-taxes.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 03 May 13 - No Cached
  • It got so bad that late last year Starbucks promised to pay an extra £10 million — about $16 million — in 2013 and 2014 above what it would normally have had to pay in British income taxes. What it would normally have paid is zero, because Starbucks claims its British subsidiary loses money. Of course, that subsidiary pays a lot for coffee sold to it by a profitable Starbucks subsidiary in Switzerland, and pays a large royalty for the right to use the company’s intellectual property to another subsidiary in the Netherlands. Starbucks said it understood that its customers were angry that it paid no taxes in Britain.
  • “It is easy to transfer the intellectual property to tax havens at a low price,” said Martin A. Sullivan, the chief economist of Tax Analysts, the publisher of Tax Notes. “When a foreign subsidiary pays a low price for this property, and collects royalties, it will have big profits.”
  • it is especially hard for countries to monitor prices on intellectual property, like patents and copyrights.
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  • The company makes no secret of the fact it has not paid taxes on a large part of its profits. “We are continuing to generate significant cash offshore and repatriating this cash will result in significant tax consequences under current U.S. tax law,” the company’s chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer, said last week.
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Nouriel Roubini explains why many previously fast-growing economies suddenly find thems... - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...selves-facing-strong-headwinds
shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Nonetheless, the threat of a full-fledged currency, sovereign-debt, and banking crisis remains low, even in the Fragile Five, for several reasons
  • Many also have sounder banking systems, while their public and private debt ratios, though rising, are still low
  • a large war chest of reserves
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • and fewer currency mismatches
  • All have flexible exchange rates,
  • But the short-run policy tradeoffs that many of these countries face – damned if they tighten monetary and fiscal policy fast enough, and damned if they do not – remain ugly.
  • As it is widely known, transfer pricing is the major tool for corporate tax avoidance, and it creates current account deficit when a multinational company receives from its own branch
  • abroad, the previously transferred own profit, as a debt.
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Eurozone crisis: can the centre hold? | Nouriel Roubini | Business | theguardian.com - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...eurozone-crisis-euro-european
shared by Gene Ellis on 29 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Several developments helped to restore calm. The European Central Bank (ECB) president, Mario Draghi, vowed to do "whatever it takes" to save the euro, and quickly institutionalised that pledge by establishing the ECB's "outright monetary transactions" programme to buy distressed eurozone members' sovereign bonds.
  • And, even if such adjustment is not occurring as fast as Germany and other core eurozone countries would like, they remain willing to provide financing, and governments committed to adjustment are still in power.
  • For starters, potential growth is still too low in most of the periphery, given ageing populations and low productivity growth, while actual growth – even once the periphery exits the recession, in 2014 – will remain below 1% for the next few years, implying that unemployment rates will remain very high.
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  • levels of private and public debt, domestic and foreign, are still too high, and continue to rise as a share of GDP, owing to slow or negative output growth. This means that the issue of medium-term sustainability remains unresolved.
  • At the same time, the loss of competitiveness has been only partly reversed, with most of the improvement in external balances being cyclical rather than structural.
  • The euro is still too strong, severely limiting the improvement in competitiveness that is needed to boost net exports in the face of weak domestic demand.
  • a continuing credit crunch, as undercapitalised banks deleverage by selling assets and shrinking their loan portfolios.
  • The larger problem, of course, is that progress toward banking, fiscal, economic and political union, all of which are essential to the eurozone's long-term viability, has been too slow.
  • all imply that banks will have to focus on raising capital at the expense of providing the financing needed for economic growth.
  • Moreover the ECB, in contrast to the Bank of England, is unwilling to be creative in pursuing policies that would ameliorate the credit crunch.
  • Meanwhile, austerity fatigue is rising in the eurozone periphery.
  • And bailout fatigue is emerging in the eurozone's core.
  • But the eurozone's political strains may soon reach a breaking point,
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Do not kid yourself that the eurozone is recovering - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...aa-11e3-bbeb-00144feab7de.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 29 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Comparing the first half of 2007 and the first half of 2013, real GDP contracted by an accumulated 1.3 per cent in the eurozone, 5.3 per cent in Spain and 8.4 per cent in Italy.
  • In the same period investment was down by an accumulated 19 per cent in the eurozone – and 38 per cent in Spain and 27 per cent in Italy. Between the first quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2013, employment fell 17 per cent in Spain and 2 per cent in Italy.
  • Italy is stuck with a combination of an unsustainable high level of public debt and no productivity growth. It has essentially two options to adjust – become like Germany, or leave the eurozone. The country is unable to do the first, and unwilling to do the latter
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  • Italy faces no immediate threat for as long interest rates remain low. The country will be able to muddle through for a while until some political or economic shock will force a decision one way or the other.
  • Meanwhile, the single largest constraint on the resumption of eurozone growth is not fiscal policy – which is broadly neutral at present across the single currency area – but the continued failure to clean up the banks. The growth rate of loans to the non-financial sector turned negative in 2009, showed some intermittent improvements, only to then deteriorate again last year.
  • The monetary and banking data are telling us that the economy will teeter on the brink of zero or low growth for the foreseeable future because the financial sector is not supplying the economy with sufficient funds to expand.
  • Banking union could help, but only if it were to break the relationship between banks and sovereigns and clean up the balance sheets.
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Productivity: Technology isn't working | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...higher-productivity-and-better
shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Technology isn’t working
  • Technology isn’t working
  • n the 1970s the blistering growth after the second world war vanished in both Europe and America. In the early 1990s Japan joined the slump, entering a prolonged period of economic stagnation.
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  • Between 1991 and 2012 the average annual increase in real wages in Britain was 1.5% and in America 1%, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a club of mostly rich countries.
  • Real wage growth in Germany from 1992 to 2012 was just 0.6%; Italy and Japan saw hardly any increase at all.
  • And the dramatic dip in productivity growth after 2000 seems to have coincided with an apparent acceleration in technological advances as the web and smartphones spread everywhere and machine intelligence and robotics made rapid progress.
  • A second explanation for the Solow paradox, put forward by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (as well as plenty of techno-optimists in Silicon Valley), is that technological advances increase productivity only after a long lag.
  • John Fernald, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and perhaps the foremost authority on American productivity figures, earlier this year published a study of productivity growth over the past decade. He found that its slowness had nothing to do with the housing boom and bust, the financial crisis or the recession. Instead, it was concentrated in ICT industries and those that use ICT intensively.
  • Once an online course has been developed, it can be offered to unlimited numbers of extra students at little extra cost.
  • For example, new techniques and technologies in medical care appear to be slowing the rise in health-care costs in America. Machine intelligence could aid diagnosis, allowing a given doctor or nurse to diagnose more patients more effectively at lower cost. The use of mobile technology to monitor chronically ill patients at home could also produce huge savings.
  • Health care and education are expensive, in large part, because expansion involves putting up new buildings and filling them with costly employees. Rising productivity in those sectors would probably cut employment.
  • The integration of large emerging markets into the global economy added a large pool of relatively low-skilled labour which many workers in rich countries had to compete with. That meant firms were able to keep workers’ pay low.
  • By creating a labour glut, new technologies have trapped rich economies in a cycle of self-limiting productivity growth.
  • Productivity growth has always meant cutting down on labour. In 1900 some 40% of Americans worked in agriculture, and just over 40% of the typical household budget was spent on food. Over the next century automation reduced agricultural employment in most rich countries to below 5%,
  • A new paper by Peter Cappelli, of the University of Pennsylvania, concludes that in recent years over-education has been a consistent problem in most developed economies, which do not produce enough suitable jobs to absorb the growing number of college-educated workers.
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The Economist explains: Why airlines make such meagre profits | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...economist-explains-5
shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Why airlines make such meagre profits
  • In those six decades passenger kilometres (the number of flyers multiplied by the distance they travel) have gone from almost zero to more than 5 trillion a year. But though the industry has done much to connect the world, it has done little to line the pockets of the airlines themselves. Despite incredible growth, airlines have not come close to returning the cost of capital, with profit margins of less than 1% on average over that period. In 2012 they made profits of only $4 for every passenger carried. Why has a booming business failed to prosper?
  • Airlines were state-owned beasts in receipt of juicy handouts from state coffers. These “flag carriers” were regarded as important strategic businesses with monopoly powers that conferred national pride and international prestige. But they rapidly turned into bloated nationalised industries that regarded profit as a dirty word.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Air travel was governed by inter-governmental deals that dictated which airlines could fly where, how many seats they could offer and, in many cases, what fares they could charge. The result was inefficiency and losses.
  • Low-cost carriers, such as SouthWest and Ryanair, introduced cut-throat rivalry on short-haul routes. Former flag-carriers struggled with the legacy of older fleets, large networks, uppity unionised workforces and vast pension liabilities. Low-cost carriers devastated their model of feeding short-haul passengers onto more lucrative long-haul services.
  • As well as stiff competition from their rivals, airlines face the problem that there is little competition in the industries that supply them. Two firms—Airbus and Boeing—provide the majority of the planes, and airports and air-traffic control are monopolies
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IEA - December:- Coal's share of global energy mix to continue rising, with coal closin... - 0 views

www.iea.org/...name,34908,en.html coal
shared by Gene Ellis on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Although the growth rate of coal slows from the breakneck pace of the last decade, global coal consumption by 2017 stands at 4.32 billion tonnes of oil equivalent (btoe), versus around 4.40 btoe for oil, based on IEA medium-term projections. The IEA expects that coal demand will increase in every region of the world except in the United States, where coal is being pushed out by natural gas.
  • “This report sees that trend continuing. In fact, the world will burn around 1.2 billion more tonnes of coal per year by 2017 compared to today – equivalent to the current coal consumption of Russia and the United States combined. Coal’s share of the global energy mix continues to grow each year, and if no changes are made to current policies, coal will catch oil within a decade.” 
  • The report notes that in the absence of a high carbon price, only fierce competition from low-priced gas can effectively reduce coal demand. “The US experience suggests that a more efficient gas market, marked by flexible pricing and fueled by indigenous unconventional resources that are produced sustainably, can reduce coal use, CO
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • As US coal demand declines, more US coal is going to Europe, where low CO2 prices and high gas prices are increasing the competitiveness of coal in the power generation system.
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Even Greece Exports Rise in Europe's 11% Jobless Recovery - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...ope-s-11-jobless-recovery.html undefined greece exports rise europe recovery bloomberg
shared by Gene Ellis on 21 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • “The current- account deficits of countries that have been under stress diminished over the last years considerably.”
  • Just two of 14 euro-zone government leaders have kept their posts in elections since late 2009 and extremists such as Golden Dawn in Greece are gaining support.
  • “The internal rebalancing in the euro area is progressing,” said Fels. “Some of them, especially Spain but also Portugal not to speak of Ireland, are regaining competitiveness.”
  • ...18 more annotations...
    • Gene Ellis
      Gene Ellis on 21 Mar 13
       
      This is the same sort of response which companies would have made to a depreciation in the local currency without the euro, but with the added problem of deflationary effects on the rest of the economy.
  • Ford Motor Co. (F) (F) said at the end of last year it will increase capacity near Valencia as it shuts plants in the U.K. and Belgium.
  • While a slide in imports accounts for some of the correction, Greece boosted its exports outside the EU by about 30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 from the previous year, while Italy’s rose 13 percent in January from a year ago, he said.
  • In Ireland, U.S. companies such as EBay Inc (EBAY) (EBAY)., Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG) and Facebook Inc (FB). all have expanded in the past two years, taking advantage of a corporate-tax rate of just 12.5 percent compared to Spain’s 30 percent.
    • Gene Ellis
      Gene Ellis on 21 Mar 13
       
      'Beggar thy neighbor' kinds of effects.
  • The metamorphosis is known as internal devaluation
  • Prevented by membership of the euro from driving down currencies, governments and companies are squeezing labor costs to spur productivity.
  • reducing social- security payments
  • aising the retirement age, making it easier to fire workers in downturns and preventing unions from clinging to boom-time wage deals.
  • On average, the periphery is about halfway to eliminating large structural current-account deficits, which allow for declines related to recession-driven weaker import demand, estimates Goldman Sachs (GS).
  • The OECD today published an index showing that relative labor costs in Spain and Portugal have now dropped below Germany’s for the first time since 2005.
  • “It’s potentially good for the economy but only if it results in faster investment,”
  • “If not then there’s a downward spiral risk.”
    • Gene Ellis
      Gene Ellis on 21 Mar 13
       
      An important point.
  • The smaller trade imbalances really reflect a collapse in demand for imports as consumers and companies hunker down,
  • It’s the mirror image of the euro’s first decade, when historically low interest rates in the periphery fueled inflationary spending booms, reflected in credit bubbles and deteriorating current accounts and government budgets.
  • “At this stage it is still demand destruction which has helped current-account deficit countries balance their accounts,” said Mayer. “It’s not a healthy situation.”
  • They also say countries will need to run even healthier current accounts than now if they are to stabilize the debts they owe abroad.
  • Gene Ellis on 21 Mar 13
     
    Good update article, as of March, 2013.
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Sasol Betting Big on Gas-to-Liquid Plant in U.S. - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...gas-to-liquid-plant-in-us.html betting plant natural gas
shared by Gene Ellis on 17 Dec 12 - No Cached
    • Gene Ellis
      Gene Ellis on 17 Dec 12
       
      These are areas with lots of natural gas, and little chance of getting it to market, save for liquefication, but even then lacking access to ports.
  • The process is challenging and complex. First a synthetic gas is made from pure oxygen and methane, the main component of natural gas, which is cleansed of sulfur, metals and other impurities, under intense pressure and heat. Then the synthetic gas is put in giant reactors that make a synthetic crude through the Fischer-Tropsch process. The process essentially forces heated synthetic gas to react with a catalyst, typically cobalt, to convert into a liquid hydrocarbon. Finally that liquid is refined into one fuel or another. The process is far more complex than that at a typical refinery, so the plant is much more expensive to build and operate. Alfred Luaces, a refining specialist at the consultancy IHS, said a conventional oil refinery could be built for $50,000 per barrel of capacity, less than half of what Sasol says it is willing to spend on the proposed Louisiana plant.
  • Sasol is building a gas-to-liquids plant in Uzbekistan with the Malaysian oil company Petronas. It is working with Chevron to build another plant in Nigeria.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Rick Manner, a vice president at consultancy KBC Advanced Technologies who has contributed to gas-to-liquids studies for Sasol and other companies, estimated that the projects must keep capital costs at $100,000 for every barrel a day of production capacity to be worthwhile economically at current prices of about $100 a barrel for oil and $4 per thousand cubic feet for natural gas.
  • Mr. Louw, Sasol’s Qatar president, said that the Oryx plant was designed to be profitable with oil at $25 a barrel. That implies a very low long-term price for the natural gas feedstock. He would not specify what Sasol pays its Qatari partner for gas, but he said it was “not zero.”
  • Gene Ellis on 17 Dec 12
     
    The potential, or lack thereof, of natural gas to diesel conversion.
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The Excel Depression - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...gman-the-excel-depression.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • As soon as the paper was released, many economists pointed out that a negative correlation between debt and economic performance need not mean that high debt causes low growth.
  • and the mystery of the irreproducible results was solved. First, they omitted some data; second, they used unusual and highly questionable statistical procedures; and finally, yes, they made an Excel coding error.
  • Over time, another problem emerged: Other researchers, using seemingly comparable data on debt and growth, couldn’t replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • For three years, the turn to austerity has been presented not as a choice but as a necessity.
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