Private equity backing out of green sector
Just as private equity houses are found to be ramping up their interest in the oil and gas sector, they are at the same time backing out of green energy and cleantech, worried about the possibility of a green bubble forming.
A survey by Rothstein Kass showed 24 per cent of more than 200 PE fund managers highlighting the green sector as the most likely to produce the next investment bubble.
By David O’Byrne of business new europe
With his party expected to win its third overall majority in general elections on June 12, Tayyip Erdogan, Turky’s prime minister, seems set on establishing his own legacy with his long-promised “crazy project” finally unveiled this week: a 50-kilometre long, 120-metre wide canal that his government plans to construct 100 km west of Istanbul between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara.
Wide and deep enough for supertankers of up to 300,000 deadweight tonnage – bigger than the biggest tankers in use today – the canal will have no locks and will use passing places and a mooring basin midway to allow simultaneous traffic in both directions – in contrast to the dangerously overcrowded Bosphorus strait, which must be closed in both directions to allow the largest tankers through.
Environmentalists should refine arguments against oil sands
Controversy about importing fuel from Canada’s vast oil sands has been swirling for some time. It is an issue environmentalists seized on with great hope when President Barack Obama came into office, given his pledges to work to reduce the country’s carbon footprint and the fact that oil from tar sands, as environmentalists refer to it, has a higher carbon intensity than that from traditional crude.
But the weakness in the US economy, high unemployment and rising petrol prices have combined to give the oil industry the edge. Indeed, even back in 2009, the Obama administration approved a pipeline to carry oil-sands fuel from Canada into the US, saying its action was designed to send “a positive economic signal in a difficult economic period”. The Keystone pipeline also was approved.
Energy headlines: BP tries to salvage Arctic plans amid competition
- BP offers fresh proposals to Rosneft – FT
- BP, Rosneft still in talks – WSJ
- Rosneft to talk with other oil groups – FT
- BP’s rivals form Arctic queue – The Times
- Medvedev blames BP for Rosneft deal failure – FT
- Oil rallies as US refineries crank up operating rates – FT
- Republican plan to expand US offshore drilling blocked – Bloomberg
- Iran sets stage for tense Opec meeting – FT
- Alberta urges US to back oil pipeline – FT
- Demanding Hillary Clinton’s email – NY Times Green blog
- EU ministers call for aviation, shipping carbon price – Argus
- Doubt over meltdown dispelled – FT
- Control issues cloud nuclear power – WSJ
- Japan’s nuclear embrace is looser but not broken – FT
- US warned on vents before Japanese failure – NY Times
- UK’s nuclear reactors ‘won’t need major changes’ – The Telegraph
- Fukushima spurs scrutiny of plant design – FT
- Nuclear inspector accused of complacency – The Guardian
- EU nuclear safety talks break down: sources – Reuters
- Toshiba agrees to buy Landis+Gyr – WSJ
- Green-tech bubble worry for private equity – Reuters
- EIA finds wind growth trails natural gas and coal – Argus
- Kazakhs threaten to halt BG gas field – The Telegraph
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