Thursday 12 September 2019

Back in the Real World, part 247: Big Energy News

In amongst the constitutional carnage, I just thought we should register a couple of big goings-on in the energy world.

1.  Price-rises ahoy

The wholesale markets in gas and power have responded instantly (particularly in the forwards) to three big European news items of the last two days:
  • Admission by EDF they have discovered welding problems and other issues in the reactors of "several" of their French nukes.  My spies tell me it's 20 out of their total 58 in France.  If they have to fix this in short order - and the French nuclear regulator is surprisingly independent and stern - the price of electricity for the whole of Europe will rise steeply
  • Europe's original and biggest (by far) gas field of the modern era, Groningen in the Netherlands, is having its output severly reduced with premature closure altogether in 2022.  This is because of the increasingly damaging earthquakes being caused by the gigantic scale of operations there over 50 years.  Groningen is a true monster, even by global standards, and the bedrock of north European gas supply for half a century.  Impact on price is pretty obvious ...
  • On top of these two physical problems, a man-made issue: Poland has won a court case limiting Gazprom's access to an important gas pipeline, which in turn will limit their ability to utilise their Nord Stream 2 system which is designed to outflank their previous dependancy on Ukraine as an export route.  A bit involved, I know - but that, too, is causing prices to rise!   

2.  GE the new Enron?

GE is going under.  That's what someone thinks. “GE’s $38bn in accounting fraud amounts to over 40% of GE’s market capitalization, making it far more serious than either the Enron or WorldCom accounting frauds.” 

Oooh-errrr ...

ND

17 comments:

DJK said...

All interesting stuff, thanks.

I don't know if GE is the new Enron, although I would not be hugely surprised, given how much GE relied on financial services wizardry to generate the profits that its boring manufacturing businesses, or its takeover of Alstohm couldn't.

But surely, GE is TBTF, as unlike Enron, it actually employs large numbers of real voters in middle America.

Thud said...

I got out of GE with a small profit and count myself lucky, it will surely end in tears!

Nick Drew said...

DJK - Enron employed '000s in Middle America - it was founded on a pipeline / oil / gas business! (the trading etc was a later development)

but those sectors (P/L, O&G) were fairly modular and were floated off (or returned to the banks), along with several other asset-based businesses. EOG, in particular, subsequently thrived

sadly, the Teesside Power Station, once the wonder of the energy world, did not thrive at all in the hands of its imbecile new owners ...

http://www.cityunslicker.co.uk/2013/10/so-farewell-teesside-power.html

DJK said...

I suppose GE could be broken up. There are surely lots of viable businesses hiding in it, and some politically well-connected ones in aerospace and defence.

GE used to be a business case study in how to drive up earnings from a legacy business. I guess it will form a different type of case study in future.

hovis said...

GE have been divesting like mad the last few years - we have noticed that on the business side that deals with multiples of whate were GE enetities. Saw the thing about accounting, about to come to fruition or perhaps a little longer before a rapid collapse.

Nick Drew said...

(I am mildly interested that one of our esteemed visitors has checked this story as 'funny' ...)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for these updates, business insight is why I come here!

(You could dial down the Brexit as far as I'm concerned.)

Elby the Beserk said...

One might say it's all going awff
One might also say that it's FUBAR

Me? I'd say both are true.

What a todo.

GridBot said...

Thanks for the insight ND, had a chat with a source close to EDF, those dealing with the issue are very concerned about the safety implications: "If they break it will be like fukushima"

Every now and then the FT produces some insights - see here for high level view of restructuring proposed in EDF.

https://www.ft.com/content/c63ebe88-bcde-11e9-89e2-41e555e96722

We could be looking at the critical pivot point of a major accident, if the french government make a hash of re-organising EDF, and investment decisions become (more) politicized any delay in rectification either due to cost or electricity security of supply issues, could be catastrophic.

On the plus side... the problem would dwarf brexit shenanigans, perhaps just the type of external event needed for Europe to rally round...

CityUnslicker said...

gridbot - yeah Brexit is boring but don't really fancy a nuclear meltdown just over the channel thanks as a distraction from it!

Anon above - point well taken re Brexit

Nick Drew said...

Gridbot - good link, thanks. The closing section therein (below) reinforces a point I've been making here since the blog began, namely that France desperately needs to get Europe to pay its nuke decommisioning bill. Getting EDF into the UK's knickers has been part of that. It's not the only thing they'll be trying, as the years go by: you can bet they have a draft "Common Nuclear Policy" just waiting for the right moment to be slapped on the table in Brussels

FT piece ended ...
makes sense for France, French consumers, for EDF’s stakeholders and for France’s neighbours, particularly if the EU wants to reduce CO2 levels”, argued Vincent Ayral at JPMorgan. Mr Arie of UBS said: “The French nuclear fleet is strategically important in Europe. With Germany exiting nuclear altogether, and maybe Belgium too, we do think Europe needs a solution to keep the French fleet online.”

piss off, frogs! You've had all those electricity export revenues for 30 years.

and a nice weekend to everyone!

dearieme said...

I suspect that there's one entirely legit way to reduce decommissioning costs - adopt sensible rules on the dangers of radiation. The "linear no threshold" model almost certainly wildly overestimates the dangers of low doses or low dose rates.

On a somewhat similar track: there was a point when the same radiation dose that was ruled OK in the NHS was ruled horribly dangerous on nuclear power stations. Does this sort of inconsistency still exist?

Nick Drew said...

I suspect the radiation rules are rather like the Army's obsession with neatness and shiny boots. Not strictly necessary, but makes it infinitely less likely anyone's missing important pieces of kit / suffering from permanently wet footwear

i.e. it's a religion - and like many religious rules, they are ossified and uncomprehending versions of some principle that was very sound (once)

dearieme said...

But it was never very sound: it was a simple-to-use guess made in the absence of evidence.

rwendland said...

My guess is that ASN, the French nuclear regulator, will just stipulate a shorter life for the steam generators possibly with lower steam pressure/steam temperature restrictions, so there won't be a drastic immediate enormous capacity problem. Still expensive though for EDF having to replace them early - they are normally replaced about every 20 years though so a standard job.

If ASN required immediate closure and replacement that would be quite a capacity crunch for the steam generators manufacturers. Some of the French reactors would probably be offline for years waiting for new steam generators to be built - they are enormous things.

BTW here's a photo of a steam generator innards - looks a welder's nightmare to me - stopping the pipes vibrating too much is a problem with them:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nuclear_steam_generator.jpg

Anomalous Cowshed said...

Number 3?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/14/major-saudi-arabia-oil-facilities-hit-by-drone-strikes

Nick Drew said...

You said it, AC!

More anon

ND