GLG News in Energy & Industrials

The impact of the credit crunch is expected to have limited impact on US shipbuilders. Strong demand for US built ships enabled for secured financing and contracts. Strength in construction is expected to remain through 2011.

Smaller-sized trucking companies make up 80% of the industry. As failures continue, it exposes the primary causes experienced by all, individual ones that contribute for the specific company, how different parties are affected, and how others’ benefit. It also brings to light the key issues facing transport companies looking to grow in the future - Freight (demand), Fuel (cost management), Financing...

The LNG terminal operators like Freeport LNG Development LNG have invested in their LNG import and regasification terminals to meet forecasted shortages of natural gas (NG) in the order of 10 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) by 2010.  However, the recent significant play by shale gas and the low NG prices in the US compared with Europe and Asia leave the LNG terminal operators with very little...

Drilling Editor Nina M. Rach reported in the August 18 issue of the Oil & Gas Journal that Shell Rocky Mountain Production Company is optimizing Pinedale field wells. Production will be increased and surface disturbances will be reduced. Shell will drill more than 90 wells this year. The 35 mile long Pinedale anticline produces from shales, siltstones and sandstones. The first well, drilled...

Despite trepidations over the lapsing of US federal incentives, the domestic photovoltaic market continues to consolidate to take advantage of better economy of scale.  Photovoltaic installations in the US now number over 10,000 a year, growth that will continue to increase once new federal incentives are in place in 2009.  This consolidation will continue with publicly held companies like...

The impact of the "credit crunch," while real for individual companies, is not a factor for the overall shipbuilding industry.  The few building slots that have been canceled by owner default have been readily resold at higher margins.  The drop-off in post-2010 orders has its roots in oversupply of new ships and shipbuilding capacity.

A proposed three-year agreement between the Teamsters union and the major unionized car-haulers has been voted down. No new talks have been scheduled. The Teamsters director of car-haul negotiations, Fred Zuckerman, said he hopes "to resolve this contract without going on strike." But Zuckerman himself is under fire from the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the dissident wing of the Teamsters, which...

Jad Mouawad in New York reported in the August 19 issue of the International Herald Tribune that all seven of the major oil companies were producing less oil than before. Politics plays a part. The terms of foreign concessions in Asia and South America have become more onerous with more oil to the state and less to the companies. Surging fuel prices are blamed on the oil companies. But the primary...

In just this year Cerberus' accountants may have inadvertently exposed the seamy side of cost cutting in the American OEM automtoive industry: 1. Overcharging by non-competitive politically correct suppliers, 2. Underbidding by suppliers desparate to keep their own factories open, and now 3. Short-weighting of exchange traded commodities. Doesn't this expose the corrupt core of OEM automotive...

John Westwood of Douglas-Westwood in Canterbury U.K. reported in the August 4 issue of the Oil & Gas Journal that Europe remains one of the largest offshore producing regions. But declining production and high costs have forced the oil majors to leave. Smaller operators now salvage what oil is left in the big fields and develop the remaining tiny ones. The most recent estimate showed that the...