24 May 2016, Renew Economy, Debt-ridden India energy group drops mention of Galilee Basin projects. India energy group GVK Power & Infrastructure last weekend reported its year-to-March 2016 results, detailing its fourth consecutive annual loss, but it’s most telling component is the information it did not provide. Its accounts make no mention of the Alpha, Alpha West and Kevin’s Corner coal mines and associated infrastructure proposal for the Galilee Basinin northern Australia —projects GVK has long been promoting, and which it bought its controlling share from the Hancock group. The company is in financial distress. Net debt increased US$435 million to a record high of US$3.5 billion. In contrast, shareholders equity shrank 30 percent year on year to US$202 million. Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) covered just 36 percent of the US$321m of net interest expense for 2015-16. Into its sixth year, the Alpha project has made no measurable progress, and financial close remains elusive and distant while the coal market is as structurally challenged as ever. With India Energy Minister Piyush Goyal remaining committed to the target for India to aggressively cut thermal coal imports, any strategic merit of this proposal for India has lapsed. Consistent with this, NTPC Ltd this month reiterated its plans to cease thermal coal imports in the current 2016-17 year. The slump in the book value of shareholders means net debt is 17 times equity, and that is before any impairment of the highly financially leveraged and stranded Alpha coal proposal in Queensland. The results make no mention of this off-balance-sheet US$1 billion-plus investment that is entirely debt funded. Read More here
Category Archives: The Mitigation Battle
6 May 2016, The Guardian, Greg Hunt: no definite link between coal from Adani mine and climate change. The federal environment minister has argued in court that coal from Australia’s largest coalmine would have no “substantial” impact on climate change and as a result he did not need to consider whether it would affect the Great Barrier Reef. The Australian Conservation Foundation challenged Greg Hunt’s approval ofAdani’s Carmichael mine, alleging he failed to consider the impacts the burning of the coal from the mine would have on climate change and hence on the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists have found the current mass bleaching event affecting 93% of the reefwas made 175 times more likely by climate change and would become a biennial event within 20 years. After that point, the continued existence of the reef would be in doubt. In federal court documents obtained by Guardian Australia, Hunt denied he failed to consider the impacts of coal on the reef. In the outline of submissions filed on behalf of the minister, the Australian government solicitor explains that the minister did not think the burning of the coal “would be a substantial cause of climate change effects” and would have “no impact on matters of national environmental significance”. Read More here
4 May 2016, The Guardian, The time has come to turn up the heat on those who are wrecking planet Earth – n interesting question is, what are you waiting for? Global warming is the biggest problem we’ve ever faced as a civilisation — certainly you want to act to slow it down, but perhaps you’ve been waiting for just the right moment. The moment when, oh, marine biologists across the Pacific begin weeping in their scuba masks as they dive on reefs bleached of life in a matter of days. The moment when drought in India gets deep enough that there are armed guards on dams to prevent the theft of water. The moment when we record the hottest month ever measured on the planet, and then smash that record the next month,and then smash that record the next month? The moment when scientists reassessing the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet have what one calls an ‘OMG moment’ and start talking about massive sea level rise in the next 30 years? Join the Guardian Sustainable Business Aus network for news and features on the social and environmental impact of business, as well as other exclusive benefits. That would be this moment – the moment when 135 children have drowned in Thailand trying to cool off from the worst heatwave on record there. The moment when, in a matter of months, we’ve recorded the highest windspeeds ever measured in the western and southern hemispheres. For years people have patiently and gently tried to nudge us on to a new path for dealing with our climate and energy troubles – we’ve had international conferences and countless symposia and lots and lots and lots of websites. And it’s sort of worked—the world met in Paris last December and announced it would like to hold temperature increases to 1.5C or less. Celebration ensued. But what also ensued was February, when the planet’s temperature first broke through that 1.5C barrier. And as people looked past the rhetoric, they saw that the promises made in Paris would add up to a world 3.5C warmer—an impossible world. The world we’re starting to see take shape around us. So there’s a need to push harder. Read More here
28 April 2016, Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming World of “Peak Oil Demand,” Not “Peak Oil”. In a Greater Middle East in which one country after another has been plunged into chaos and possible failed statehood, two rival nations, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been bedrock exceptions to the rule. Iran, at the moment, remains so, but the Saudi royals, increasingly unnerved, have been steering their country erratically into the region’s chaos. The kingdom is now led by a decrepit 80-year-old monarch who, in commonplace meetings, has to be fed his lines by teleprompter. Meanwhile, his 30-year-old son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has gained significant control over both the kingdom’s economic and military decision-making, launched a rash anti-Iranian war in Yemen, heavily dependent onair power. It is not only Washington-backed but distinctly in the American mode of these last years: brutal yet ineffective, never-ending, a boon to the spread of terror groups, and seeded with potential blowback. Meanwhile, in a cheap-oil, belt-tightening moment, in an increasingly edgy country, the royals are reining in budgets and undermining the good life they were previously financing for many of their citizens. The one thing they continue to do is pump oil — their only form of wealth — as if there were no tomorrow, while threatening further price-depressing rises in oil production in the near future. And that’s hardly been the end of their threats. Read More here