Featured Articles
| Wednesday Sep 13, 2017 | |
| Flipping through the news feed yesterday my jaw dropped as images of Irma’s destruction began to roll in. Early in the afternoon yesterday, CNN had a graphic on the front page indicating that roughly 5.4 Million Floridians and another 1.1 million in the surrounding states were without power as the devastation had down powerlines across the southeastern US. » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 12, 2017 | |
| This has been a big year for pipeline maintenance in the Pacific Northwest. Spectra Pipeline, which runs from British Columbia down into Washington State and the NGTL system which gathers and distributes gas in Alberta have seen a summer full of capacity cuts limiting the amount of shipped gas on their systems. This has reduced the amount of imports to the United States ... » read more | |
| Monday Sep 11, 2017 | |
| As the weekend approached last Friday all our thoughts and prayers were will the state of Florida as the second Category 4 or higher hurricane was barreling down on Cuba and headed for the southern tip of Florida. Most of the storm trackers has the eye of the storm pointed to Miami or the eastern side of the state. After a little westward adjustment on Saturday ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 8, 2017 | |
| The “spread trade” is the life blood of energy markets. It is simple in concept – you purchase one instrument and sell another one against it – betting that the value of the two instruments will come together (sell the spread) or increase (buy the spread). In most cases, a spread trade is lower risk than buying or selling something outright because it ... » read more | |
| Thursday Sep 7, 2017 | |
| If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you are well aware of the Eagle Creek fire that caught ablaze this past Saturday and by Tuesday not only spread ashes all over Portland but with the east winds picking up allowed the fire to jump the Columbia River and start burning on the Washington side as well. Prior to the fire, the entire West was heating up as Portland saw ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Sep 6, 2017 | |
| Conditions have snapped back to normal in California this week after the CAISO saw record breaking demand last Friday. Cooler temperatures across the West coast has chopped nearly 9 GWs off the evening peak load forecasts for Wednesday compared to last Friday. Figure 1 | DA CAISO Cleared Demand – 9/6 vs 9/1 ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Sep 5, 2017 | |
| This is the third and final installment in a series about the Northwest aluminum industry. In the first segment we described the link between aluminum markets and electricity pricing. In the second segment we described the rise and then precipitous fall of the Northwest aluminum industry. Today we describe the struggles of the small number of smelters who attempted to ... » read more | |
| Friday Sep 1, 2017 | |
| This is the second segment in a three-part series which describes the history of the aluminum industry. In yesterday's newsletter we provided the basic foundation that links aluminum smelting to the electricity industry. In today's segment we describe the evolution of the Northwest aluminum industry from its start in the 1940's through the Western electricity crisis of ... » read more | |
| Thursday Aug 31, 2017 | |
| in late April, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross initiated two investigations to determine the effects of imported steel and aluminum on national security pursuant to section 232(b)(1)(A) of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. The Commerce Department invited any party interested in the steel investigation to submit written comments by May 31, 2017; comments related to the aluminum ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Aug 30, 2017 | |
| Hurricane Harvey continues to ravage Texas resulting in catastrophic flooding in Houston and the surrounding area. As of noon on the 27th Harvey had already reportedly dropped 9 trillion gallons of water across South Texas and remarkably seems to have more steam left. Harvey is expected to continue to rage through the week and move inland as the storm center ... » read more | |