Today's ENERGY News
March 25, 2016
Despite oil’s decline, energy companies win with equity offerings
Persistent low oil prices have lead to slower business in much of North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields. The collapse of U.S. oil and gas investment could have… More than a dozen companies in the hard-hit exploration and production energy industry have announced new share offerings this year – and have generally been rewarded in the stock market for the strategy. Although it might seem that companies would upset their investor base by diluting earnings per share when they added more stock, most of the 15 companies that have done so have actually outperformed their peers. Their share prices have beaten an oil and gas producers index, on average, by about 3 percentage points since their respective offerings, and the outperformance is even stronger when compared with that...
The big bust in the oil fields
He’d borrowed from banks and investors and retirement funds, all in a frenzied mission to drill for oil and gas, and by the time Terry Swift realized he’d gone too far, this was his debt: $1.349 billion. His company, founded by his father almost 40 years earlier, had plunged into bankruptcy and laid off 25 percent of its staff. Its shares had been pulled from the New York Stock Exchange. And now Swift was in a company Chevrolet Tahoe, driving back to the flat and dusty place where his bets had gone bust. Swift was coming to this energy-rich strip of South Texas trying to grapple with how much blame he shouldered for the failure of his company. A low-key and historically cautious oil chief executive who eschews private...
Solar-Panel Installers Face Clouded Future
Many U.S. states are considering dialing back solar-power incentives amid growing pressure from local electric utilities, potentially dealing a blow to the companies that install home solar systems around the country. More than 900,000 homes across the U.S. are equipped with solar panels, with most of those homeowners able to sell any excess electricity their houses generate back to the utility, helping reduce the cost of home solar panels by up to 30%. But the price solar customers get paid for that extra renewable power through so-called net metering is starting to fall, as several states, including Nevada and Hawaii, have slashed their solar subsidies. Utilities in Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Utah and many other states are currently proposing measures that include changing their net metering programs or raising the monthly fees charged to home solar users for […]
Virginia gets head start with offshore wind
Approval of a wind-energy research plan in the federal waters off Virginia’s coast is a pathway to commercial sector development, the state’s governor said. The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced consent for the first-ever wind energy research facility offshore Virginia. The research plan envisions the installation of two 6-megawatt turbines, which could generate enough power to meet the annual demands of 3,000 homes. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said federal approval supports state plans to become the first in the nation to advance an offshore wind energy program. “This research project is the gateway to commercial development of offshore wind which will help diversify our Commonwealth’s energy...
Chinese researchers develop novel aluminum–graphite dual-ion battery
A team from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a novel, environmentally friendly low-cost battery. The new aluminum-graphite dual-ion battery (AGDIB) offers significantly reduced weight, volume, and fabrication cost, as well as higher energy density, in comparison with conventional LIBs. The battery shows a reversible capacity of ≈100 mAh g −1 and a capacity retention of 88% after 200 charge–discharge cycles. A packaged aluminum–graphite battery is estimated to deliver an energy density of ≈150 Wh kg −1 at a power density of ≈1200 W kg −1 —≈50% higher than most commercial lithium-ion batteries. A paper on the work is published in the journal Advanced […]
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