CSG Discussion

[wolverine]

In Reply To: henrietta's post @ Dec 8 2012, 11:18 AM

The future fund pissed away their chance to own a large slice of RIO at the bottom of the market so I wouldn't hold your breath on anyone having vision unless you count myopic vision to step up to the plate in super.

[henrietta]

In Reply To: triage's post @ Dec 8 2012, 10:46 AM

I suspect that the Canuk government suddenly realised that multi billions were actually better off in Canada than in some other place. Maybe a few other governments will open their doors a little wider as well.
Must admit that I'd rather see Aussie companies exploiting Aussie finite resources such as minerals, but I guess there's the "free trade" thing, and the need for investment.
I do wonder why we can't use the many billions of super fund monies to exploit some resources and build infrastructure for the future . Perhaps it's already happening and I'm just not aware of it.

Cheers
J

[triage]

In Reply To: triage's post @ Nov 1 2012, 09:17 AM

In a major reversal, which appears to have caught some speculators by surprise, the Canadian government has now agreed to allow CNOOC and Petronas, both foreign government owned oil majors, to each complete multi-billion dollar takeovers of local cannuck oil firms. But they have warned that enough is enough and that any future attempts by foreign governments to acquire Canadian oil assets will be viewed as being against the national interest (ie these latest approvals should not be seen as setting any sort of precedent).

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/08/...E8B619M20121208

So, contrary to what I'd requested from Santa there will not be a couple of state owned east asian outfits heading down under with twenty billion or so of unemployed cash jingling in their pockets. Bugger.

[triage]

In Reply To: triage's post @ Oct 21 2012, 07:19 PM

Whoa! My normal fault is that I extrapolate from small to way too large but in this case I got the direction about right but the scale way too conservative....CNOOC has signed a heads of agreement to increase its exposure to BG's Gladstone based LNG project, spending about A$1.9b in doing so. So much for Senex being of a size to be of interest...

http://www.news.com.au/business/breaking-n...r-1226507992879

...maybe the Malaysians will also start nibbling at our local csg plays again.

It may well be that CNOOC always intended to do this as BG continued to derisk the project but this move also sends a clear message to the Canucks that if they don't want serious Chinese money to bolster their economy then there are other options available.

[triage]

Here's good news of sorts for those who have put a few investment dollars into the local junior gas plays. The Canadians have surprised everyone by blocking the Malaysian major, Petronas, from a $5b takeover of a Canadian gas producer on the basis that it would not be of "net benefit" to Canada, or in our terms, not in the national interest. Petronas can make another submission to the government if they want but the feeling is that the Canadians have their eyes firmly fixed on setting a tough precedent for the much larger deal that the Chinese state owned enterprise CNOOC is also trying to get approved (I guess the idea is that they could hardly let the Malaysians through and then block the Chinese).

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/20/...E89J02X20121020

If the east Asians get the feeling that the north Americans don't like their money they may well decide to double up on their investments in another relatively low risk jurisdiction such as Australia. Petronas already has an active interest locally through the GLNG project with Santos and and the Koreans and French...

http://www.industry.qld.gov.au/lng/projects-queensland.html

... and whilst CNOOC has signed up as a cornerstone customer of BG's QCLNG project and has taken a minor equity position in that project as far as I can see it has not so far committed to Australia to the same extent as the other big hitters from China, PetroChina and Sinopec (though I'm not know how active they are in WA).

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/m...f-1225844902114

The east Asians clearly believe they are playing musical chairs with regards to securing long-term supplies of gas, and if they believe that there is only limited supplies of gas in sufficient quantities to meet their future demand and that they are being blocked from securing what supplies there are in north America then it makes sense for them to come shopping back down under (imo).

It's been a while since there were any blockbuster deals announced - PetroChina's Molopo deal was over with hardly a whimper and Arrow's deal for Bow and the Santos deal for Eastern Star Gas were pushovers - so it'd be nice to see some sparks fly in the unconventional gas space again (Senex would be my long shot roughie here).

Of course this decision to block Petronas, and the one to block BHP from taking over a major Canadian fertiliser company a couple of years back, contrasts with our much more open arrangements regarding foreign ownership (but that is more into the realm of politics than economics or finance imo so I'll leave it there) .

[triage]

Here's one of the more tempered articles on fracking that I've come across.

I agree with the author of the article that it is not plausible to argue that there are no risks involved with fracking - or with just about anything for that matter - but on the other hand there needs to be some perspective of the gains versus the risks.

The comparison with cars is a good one I think: no doubt that it is a tragedy that car accidents are the biggest killer of our young people and every measure should be taken to make their use safer but to argue that cars should be banned is denying how reliant our way of life is on them.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id...ehind_the_Frack

[triage]

I notice an article has appeared on the ABC news page which leads off with this line:

One-fifth of the "spineless creatures that rule the world" may be at risk of extinction, according to a new study.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-31/spin...at-risk/4237464

Good to know that the BoF is not losing any sleep over it though...

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell has shrugged off poor opinion poll results, saying he's more interested in what he's doing for the state.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1686697...ewspoll-results

(and yes I did notice the typo in the SBS article. That line of course should read that "...he's more interested in what he's doing to the state".)

[nipper]

In Reply To: triage's post @ Aug 20 2012, 07:30 PM

and these scenarios will be more and more likely:-

Chancellor Angela Merkel's government says RWE AG's new power plant that can supply 3.4 million homes aids her plan to exit nuclear energy and switch to cleaner forms of generation. It's fired with coal. The startup of the 2,200-megawatt station near Cologne last week shows how Europe's largest economy is relying more on the most-polluting fuel. Coal consumption has risen 4.9 percent since Merkel announced a plan to start shutting the country's atomic reactors after last year's Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Germany's largest utilities RWE and EON are shunning cleaner-burning natural gas because it's more costly, while the collapsing cost of carbon permits means there's little penalty for burning coal. Wind and solar projects, central to Germany's plans to reduce nuclear energy and cut the release of heat-trapping gases, can't produce electricity around the clock. "Merkel's policy has created an incentive structure which has the effect of partially replacing nuclear with coal, the dirtiest fuel that's responsible for much of the growth in the world's greenhouse-gas emissions since 1990," Dieter Helm, an energy policy professor at the University of Oxford, said by phone Aug. 17. Building new coal stations means "locking them in for the next 30 years" as a type of generation, Helm said.

Germany's increasing coal consumption is part of a global return to the fossil fuel that's cheaper than most alternatives. The amount of coal burned worldwide rose 5.4 percent to account for 30 percent of total energy use last year, the highest proportion since 1969, according to BP data....

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-19/m...oal-energy.html

[triage]

As is pretty much always the case in policy formulation, when it comes to the condundrum of fracking regulation of it will win hands-down over its prohibtion imo. The whackos from the extreme left - and I strongly suspect that Lock the Gate is at heart a front for some fairly fixed-minded idealogues - don't seem to get it that the alternative to fracking and coal seam gas and shale gas is not flower power or geothermal but more and more coal. The brutal reality is that society is using more and more energy so we either go all-out with coal or we keep chipping away with the lesser evil of gas until such time that the geothermal sector (or other emerging technology) manage to get their act together (imo).

Here is a link to some wise words from the head honcho for the International Energy Agency, which is an analytical agency set up by the major energy consuming economies.

Environmental concerns about hydraulic fracturing are legitimate, but banning the technique thwarts efforts to wean the world off dirtier fuels, the head of the International Energy Agency told a Rice University audience Friday.

The agency's executive director, Maria van der Hoeven, called on natural gas producers to improve transparency around hydraulic fracturing and its impact on aquifers and greenhouse gas emissions. Lingering questions about the natural gas production technique
sometimes called "fracking" are fueling opposition worldwide and could increase global dependency on coal, she said.

"Companies have to realize that they need to be transparent about what they are doing and they need to take the people's concerns seriously," van der Hoeven said, speaking at the university's Baker Institute Energy Forum. "There's a very real possibility that public
opposition to drilling for shale gas will halt the unconventional gas revolution and fracking in its tracks."...

...Natural gas has been promoted as a cleaner alternative to coal that could bridge the world's transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Without the shale gas boom, the world's largest energy consumers - the United States, China and Europe - would rely increasingly on imports from Russia and the Middle East, van der Hoeven said. And coal would replace 75 percent of the shale gas lost, she added.

http://www.chron.com/business/article/Ener...lic-3797370.php

[triage]

Nu South Wales apparently is not the only jurisdiction about to bow to the reality that energy is an essential resource needed now and that on balance fracking can be carried out for the net benefit of the community. I see that the State of Nu York in the US is also about to give a conditional go-ahead for the practice.

The method of extracting natural gas from deep in the earth known as "fracking" has dramatically changed the U.S. energy industry, but as more wells are drilled, protests have continued.

The latest flashpoint is New York State, which has been a fracking holdout. CBS News has learned that New York is about to okay fracking, and will issue guidelines after Labor Day.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-5749...allow-fracking/

(Their labo(u)r day is held on the first Monday of each September).