...and Why Not Invest in Oil Companies?

Tom Konrad CFA

The purpose of this series on peak oil investments has been to highlight companies outside the oil sector that are likely to benefit from increasing oil prices.  This article explains why we should expect oil prices to rise.

What is Peak Oil?

There are many definitions for peak oil.  In its most basic form, Peak Oil is the moment of highest production.  World oil supplies are finite, and so we cannot continue to produce oil in increasing quantities forever.  It's a mathematical certainty that at some point the supply (the annual total production) of oil will stop increasing and begin declining.  Theoretically, peak production could be the result of declining oil demand, or it could arise from declining oil supply.  With rising economic activity and car ownership in much of the third world, there is little prospect of declining demand, so nearly all observers focus on supply. 

If demand continues to follow its current rising trend, even stable oil supplies will lead to rising oil prices.  How quickly oil prices rise in response to increasing demand will depend on how responsive oil supply is to changes in the oil price.

Oil Price Volatility

Historically, increases in volatility in the price of oil has been associated with disruption of supply. Consider this price chart from InflationData.com (click for full size image.)  Before 1973, the oil price was remarkably stable.  In 1973, 1979, and 1990, we see sharp jumps in the price of oil caused by the Arab oil embargoes and the first Gulf War.  But in addition to the immediate increase in the price of oil, we also see that each of these price spikes is also associated with more volatility in the price of oil (the graph becomes more jagged.



After 2002, the recent rising trend in the oil price has been accompanied by a further increase in oil price volatility.  Economics says that the price adjusts to bring supply and demand into balance.  We know that demand for oil has been increasing for most of this period, and supply has been increasing to keep up.  This can account for the observed increases in the oil price.  But what accounts for the increasing oil price volatility?

Is it Speculation?

Many have been quick to point the finger at speculation as the cause of increasing volatility in the oil price.  Multiple studies have looked for but have not found any link between oil speculation and oil price volatility [pdf].

In addition to the lack of evidence that speculation increases price volatility, blaming speculation for increased volatility demonstrates a naivete about how speculators make money.  As anyone who has ever traded anything from baseball cards to exotic derivatives knows that, in order to make money, a speculator needs to buy low and sell high. When speculators buy oil, they are acting to increase demand (the aggregate desire to buy), and so are increasing the oil price.  When speculators sell oil, they are acting to increase supply (the aggregate desire to sell), and so are decreasing the oil price.

In order to increase price volatility, a trader would need to buy when prices are high (raising prices further) and sell when prices are low (causing them to drop further.)  Any speculator who consistently buys high and sells low will also consistently lose money, and will soon stop speculating because of lack of funds. In contrast, a speculator who buys low and sells high will not only make money, but will reduce overall volatility.  Selling when prices are high will moderate price spikes, while buying when prices are low will moderate price falls: both have the effect of reducing price volatility. 

In other words, speculators who increase volatility will soon run out of money and stop speculating, while speculators who reduce volatility will make money and likely continue speculating unless laws are changed to prevent them from doing so.  Attempts to ban or limit oil speculation are likely to have the perverse effect of increasing, rather than reducing future oil price volatility.

The End of Easy Oil

If increased volatility is not the result of speculation, it probably has to do with other changes in the structure of the oil market.

Except for geopolitical events such as the wars and oil embargoes mentioned above, the supply of oil tends not to be volatile.  Demand fluctuates with changes in economic activity, and so the demand for oil will be more volatile when economic activity is more volatile.  Hence, the price volatility associated with the large spike in oil prices leading up to 2008, along with the subsequent rapid decline and recovery may be attributable to changes in oil demand.  However, the years from 2002 to 2007 were characterized by remarkably steady economic growth.  Hernce the high oil price volatility during 2002-07 must indicate that the ability of the oil supply to respond to changing demand had decreased compared to earlier periods.

I conclude that the most likely source for increased oil price volatility is a reduction in the ability of oil supply to adjust to changes in price.  This agrees with another formulation of the Peak Oil thesis:  Peak Oil is not the end of oil, but the end of "easy" oil.  We still have an oil supply, and it may or may not be declining, but extracting enough oil to meet demand is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive.  We pay the increased cost of extracting the more difficult oil reserves in higher and more volatile prices at the pump, and in environmental disasters such as the blow-out of BP's Macando well.

Implications of the End of Easy Oil

As world oil demand continues to rise, and extracting oil becomes increasingly expensive and more dangerous, several trends are likely to continue.

1. Oil prices will rise in order to compensate oil companies for the increased costs and risks of finding oil.
2. Oil companies will become less able to quickly adjust supplies to changes in the oil price, further increasing price volatility.
   
3. Increased drilling risks will cause more frequent oil spills.  Increased political risks as oil firms increasingly search for oil in places controlled by less stable political regimes will lead to more frequent expropriation of oil firms' assets by those same unsavory regimes, as we have seen in Venezuela.
4. Increased oil prices will lead to adjustments in our oil use that decrease demand.

Why not Just Invest in Oil Companies?

The increased geological and political risks of oil exploration and production are why investing in oil companies is probably not the best way to benefit from increases in the oil price.  BP's price decline in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is a graphic reminder of the risks of investing in oil companies in the hope of profiting from rising oil prices.



Investing In Reducing Oil Demand

Not wanting to take on the increased risks inherent in oil companies, I have focused this series on the companies and technologies that help reduce demand for oil.  These include substitutes for oil, such as Biofuels, Hydrogen, Electricity, Natural Gas, Synthetic Fuels, and Algae.  I also probed the barriers that limit adoption of alternative fuels, and the constraints that limit alternative fuel deployment and profitability, which I brought together in a comparison of the short and long-term viability of all these alternative fuels.

Shifting gears a little, I took a look at what reducing oil demand will mean for the economy going forward, and concluded that technologies and strategies for reducing oil use in transportation have better prospects than most options for replacing oil.  I looked at increasing vehicle efficiency, and ways to use IT to reduce congestion and driving, including GPS navigation, and Mass Transit stocks.  Delving into AltEnergyStocks' Peak Oil Stock lists, I brought you Ten EV and HEV stocks, and then Six More HEV and EV stocks from reader suggestions.  I also looked at four bicycle and moped stocks, as well as four individual stocks that caught my attention along the way: CVTech Goup, Telvent GIT SA, Shimano, and Great Lakes Dredge and Dock.

Coming Up

This is the twenty-second article in a series that has expanded to a breadth and depth that I never anticipated when I began it in March.  (You can find a complete index here.)  I have a few more individual stocks to write about, after which I plan to cap the series with a short list of companies best positioned to profit from a long-term rise in the price of oil.  I've learned a lot in the writing of this series, and my picks today are not the same as they would have been when I started, and that is in large part due to your comments and suggestions along the way.  I hope you all have learned at least as much as I have.

DISCLOSURE: None.

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 04:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bill Paul

Will shares of the oil companies that are major players in Canada’s tar sands region rise or fall?

Logically, shares should rise in the wake of the deepwater drilling moratorium ordered by President Obama following the BP (BP) oil spill, as Wall Street begins to reflect on the fact that Alberta’s tar sands region is the second biggest crude-oil deposit in the world. Even before the spill, a report from IHS CERA had concluded that Canadian tar sands would be the single biggest source of US crude imports in 2010.

Just as logically, however, shares should fall, given that the environmental disaster in the Gulf likely will focus increased political and media attention on the extensive environmental damage caused by tar-sands extraction. It would seem to be just a matter of time before some reporter asks Canadian officials how they feel about the US basically outsourcing the environmental destruction caused by the US’s insatiable thirst for oil.

One Canadian newspaper – the Prince Albert Daily Herald – has already reported that the CEO of oil-sands firm Cenovus Energy (CVE) doesn’t think such a catastrophe could occur in the tar sands region, a conclusion environmentalists no doubt will disagree with.

That BP is as big in Canadian tar sands extraction as it is in Gulf of Mexico oil drilling only adds to the likelihood of an attention-grabbing front-page story in, say, the New York Times.

In addition to Cenovus, several companies’ shares stand to be impacted, among them: EnCana (ECA), Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ), Suncor (SU) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A).

Disclosure: No positions

Disclaimer: This is a news article.  Please read terms and policy.

Bill Paul is Managing Editor of EnergyTechStocks.com.

Posted by Bill Paul at 12:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tom Konrad CFA

Four new stock lists for different approaches to profit from peak oil.
 
As I've researched and written this series on ways to invest in companies that will profit from peak oil, I've been greatly expanding the number of stocks in our old "Clean Transportation" stock list, at the same time I've been doing a lot of thinking about how these companies will fare.  Because of this, I've decided to split Clean Transportation into four groups of similar companies, depending on how they are working to reduce our dependence on oil.

The new stock categories are:

• Efficient Vehicle Stocks - Companies that help increase the fuel efficiency of vehicles, including hybrid electric and electric vehicles. I wrote about efficient vehicle stocks in Part X.
• Alternative Transportation - Transportation options that use less fuel per passenger-mile or freight-mile than traditional options.  Includes mass transit (both rail and bus), bicycles, and two wheel vehicles.) I plan to look into several types of alternative transport in future articles in this series.
• Smart Transportation - Companies that help the transportation system operate more efficiently with the use of information technology, including smart traffic control systems, road pricing, and satellite navigation. Part XIII will be an overview of Smart Transportation and Smart Transportation stocks, and I intend to look into these companies more deeply in future articles.
• Natural Gas Vehicles - Companies helping transition to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). I looked at Natural Gas Vehicle stocks in part III.

In addition to these four new categories, we have several other stock lists that are relevant to peak oil, many of which have been expanded as I researched this ongoing series.

• Biofuel Stocks (see Parts I and V)
• Ethanol Stocks
  
• Biodiesel Stocks
  
• Biomass Stocks (see Parts I and IV)
• Coal-To-Liquids Stocks (see Part IV )
• Battery Stocks (see Part  II)
• Hydrogen Stocks (see Part II)

If you know of exchange-listed companies that aren't on these lists, but should be, please let me know in the comments.  It's a constant endeavor to keep these lists up to date. 

An index to the "Best Peak Oil Investments" series is available here.

DISCLOSURE: No positions.
DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eamon Keane

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its Annual Energy Outlook 2010 (AEO 2010) last week, with projections out to 2035. It makes for interesting reading. Most notable was its take on peak oil, natural gas vehicles and on converting natural gas to liquids (GTL).

An otherwise reasonable report was marred by the presumption of oil plenty. Figure 1 shows a graph presented (.pdf) by Glen Sweetnam, director of the EIA's International, Economic and Greenhouse Gas division, in April 2009. Although it mentions the source as being the AEO 2009, this data does not appear in the AEO 2009. It presumably is data from the modeling system which isn't publicly released.



The large gap of some 52 million barrels per day (mb/d) is quite stark. Fortunately we can all breath a sigh of relief, because the AEO 2010 has found this phantom oil, and then some. Figure 2 shows data from Table C6 (page 180) for the sources of oil supply the EIA forsees in its reference scenario. I added in the yellow line to illustrate oil that will have to be brought online.



I used the reference scenario showing 2035 oil supply of 112mb/d to save you spitting your coffee at the low oil price scenario. The low oil price scenario has 2035 oil at $50/bbl and supply at 127mb/d. Seriously. The reference scenario assumes an average price of about $120/bbl and the high oil price scenario has average oil at about $180/bbl, with 2035 supply at 91mb/d.

These numbers are artifacts of the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) used by the EIA. It has cost curves for all the oil producers in the world, and the three oil scenarios make different assumptions about 'economic access' to these oil supplies. For instance the low oil price scenario assumes that "greater competition and international cooperation will guide the development of political and fiscal regimes in both consuming and producing nations, facilitating coordination and cooperation among them". Whatever that means. The EIA also accept the fantastic notion that OPEC has 940Gb of reserves, and that the world has 1,340Gb. You will notice that the area under the total conventional crude curve is some 900Gb, with no peak in sight. This is either geological illiteracy or assumes we'll suddenly find a few Ghawars under the couch.

The AEO goes on to spend several pages discussing the Pickens Plan. Overall, their analysis is quite cool to the potential for Heavy Duty Natural Gas Vehicles (HDNGVs). They say:

"The Department of Transportation’s Vehicle Inventory and Use Survey (VIUS), last completed in 2002, suggests a wide range for the intensity of heavy truck use. Notably, in the 2002 VIUS, trucks reporting a primary range of operation that extended more than 500 miles from their base averaged 91,000 vehicle-miles traveled (VMT), or more than 5 times the average of 17,000 VMT for trucks reporting a primary range of operation range within 100 miles of their base.

Although long-distance trucking offers a potentially faster payback of the incremental capital costs for HDNGVs, their penetration and acceptance in the long-distance freight market faces two significant barriers: limited driving range without refueling and a lack of available fueling infrastructure. A diesel truck with one 150-gallon diesel tank and a fuel economy of 6 to 7 mpg can drive approximately 1,000 miles without refueling, which can be extended readily with an auxiliary fuel tank. In contrast, a CNG-fueled truck with a frame-rail-mounted storage tank can drive only about 150 miles without refueling, while one with a back-of-cab frame-mounted storage tank can drive about 400 miles without refueling, similar to an LNG-fueled truck with frame-rail-mounted tanks. In addition, regardless of fuel type, long-distance trucks are less likely to be fueled at central bases, which makes them more dependent on fueling infrastructure that is open to the public.

In addition to concerns about driving range and refueling, the residual value of HDNGVs in the secondary market is likely to be an important consideration for buyers. Also, purchase decisions can be influenced by other factors, such as weight limits on highways and bridges, which can make the considerable additional weight of CNG or LNG tanks a significant drawback in some market segments."

Even assuming that long haul trucks adopt natgas, and assuming that incremental HDNGV purchase costs over diesel costs are neutralized with tax credits and $100k subsidy per new NGV station (Pickens Plan), they arrive at about a 40% freight market share in 2035, with approximately 0.67mb/d of oil being abated. That's about 4% of current annual US oil consumption. Figure 3 shows the cost of tax credits versus the cost of fuel saved. By the AEO's estimates, the tax subsidy is larger than the reduction in fuel costs. This does not account for the benefit in balance of payments or energy security, however. Figure 3 assumes 0.67mb/d is achieved and with subsidies until 2027, per Pickens Plan.



The AEO also discusses the potential for converting natural gas to liquids. They produced break even curves based on high and low estimates for GTL plants. Figure 4 shows an adapted version of Figure 28 (page 49). Below the line is the feasible region. The AEO assumptions are a 10% hurdle rate and a 10 year operating period.



This is interesting, and based on your projections of future oil prices, you can see what natural gas price is tolerable. For instance at $150/bbl, if GTL plants turn out to be very expensive (only a couple are in operation so costs aren't really known), only $2/MMBtu would be tolerable. On the other hand at the low end of the range $11/MMbtu would still allow for a 10% return. It should be noted that 43% of the energy in natural gas is lost in the conversion process, not the best idea in an energy constrained world.

Regarding Coal to Liquids (CTL), the EIA says "although advances in coal liquefaction technology have made it commercially available in other countries, including South Africa, China, and Germany, the technical and financial risks of building what would be essentially a first-of-a-kind facility in the United States have discouraged significant investment thus far. In addition, the possibility of new legislation aimed at reducing U.S. GHG emissions creates further uncertainty for future investment in CTL." CTL involves a loss of 55% of the energy in coal (page 137 of the AEO's assumptions document).

The EIA gives a big shout out to shale gas also. In the High Shale Gas scenario, the EIA sees shale output increasing to 8 tcf by 2025 and 10tcf by 2035. This assumes a Henry Hub price of about $7/MMbtu, although the full-cycle profitability of shale gas at such levels is disputed. In all the EIA's natural gas scenarios, natural gas production never goes above 27tcf, which is 3tcf higher than 2008's 24tcf.

The AEO 2010 is a very useful document but its highly improbable forecast of oil supply means if you're looking for peak oil leadership from the EIA, you'll have to dream on.

Eamon Keane is an Energy Systems Engineering masters student at University College Dublin with an interest in electric cars, rare earth metals and energy.  He is looking for a job in the energy sector anytime after August 2010.

Posted by Eamon Keane at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tom Konrad CFA

Part	Subject / Description	Stocks mentioned
I	Biofuels Overview	WM
II	Hydrogen Vehicles and Vehicle Electrification
III	Natural Gas Vehicles	WPRT, CLNE, and one I missed: FSYS
IV	Synthetic fuels: Gas-to-Liquids, Coal-to-Liquids, and Biomass-to-Liquids	SSL, SYNM, RTK
V	Biofuel from Algae	GSPI.PK, OOIL.OB, PALG.OB, PSUD.PK
VI	Barriers to Alternative Fuels
VII	Constraints on Alternative Fuels
VIII	Alternative Fuels Compared
IX	What Peak Oil Means for the Economy and Stock Market: The Methadone Economy
X	Vehicle Efficiency	CDTI, CVT.TO, UQM
XI	CVTech Goup	CVT.TO
XII	Peak Oil Stock Lists
XIII	Smart Transportation: Using IT to reduce congestion	ACM,CUB,GRMN, TLVT,TOM2.AS, TFC.L,TNAV, TRMB,GOOG
XIV	GPS Navigation stocks	GRMN,TOM2.AS, TFC.L,TNAV, TRMB,GOOG
XV	Telvent GIT SA: Smart Transport Meets Smart Grid	ACM,CUB,TLVT
XVI	Great Lakes Dredge and Dock: Alternative Transport and Oil Spill Cleanup	GLDD
XVII	Nine Mass Transit Stocks	ALO.PA,BDRBF.PK, NFYIF.PK,VOS.DE, FGP.L,CUB,FSTR, PRPX,WAB
XVIII	Ten EV and HEV Stocks	TSLA,LMCO.OB,RZ, ZAAP.OB,ZNNMF.PK BLQN.OB,UQM,NEM.TO, CPSH.OB,BYDDY.PK
XIX	Six More EV and HEV Stocks	ROG,CPST,ABAT, TM,NSANY.PK,ENA
XX	Bicycle and Moped Stocks	DIIBF.PK,GTMUF.PK, PIAGF.PK,ABAT
XXI	Shimano: Bicycle Components	SHMDF.PK
XXII	Why Invest For Peak Oil?
XXIII	PTRP - The Powershares Global Progressive Transport Portfolio	PTRP
XXIV	Three Mass Transit Operators	FGP.L,SGC.L,NEX.L

If you are one of the readers who have been asking for a single link to the articles in my popular "Best Peak Oil Investments" series, link to this post.

I intend to add to this index as I publish more articles.

DISCLOSURE: Long NFYIF, PRPX (as of 9/1/10).

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 08:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tom Konrad CFA

No alternative fuel or combination of alternative fuels will allow our transportation system to operate the way it does today on oil.  As oil becomes increasingly scarce and expensive, the way we get our transportation needs met will have to change.  Understanding what the future of transportation may look like is key to making good investments in transportation.

If the measure of success for alternative fuels is the ability to continue to live in suburbs and commute in multi-ton boxes of metal on congested freeways for hours each day, then alternative fuels will fail.  No alternative fuel has the existing infrastructure, supply potential, energy density, and low environmental impact that we would need to replace oil without changing our unsustainable lifestyle.

Peak oil may mean the end of bigger and bigger cars driven farther and farther on more and more congested roads.  Peak oil may mean the end of suburban life as we know it.  Yet life as we don't know it does need not be a vision out of Mad Max.  Peak oil will mean changes, some for the better, some for the worse. 

The surest change peak oil will bring is less driving, in fewer vehicles that are filled closer to capacity.  Those vehicles will use less oil (or alternative fuels) per person-mile.  We'll also find ways to satisfy the desires and needs that we currently satisfy with travel without traveling.

Alternative Fuels

The first eight parts of this series looked into alternative fuels.  I concluded that no alternative fuel listed could replace oil as we use it today fast enough to replace dwindling oil supplies.  Conventional biofuels cannot be produced in enough quantity, and making hydrogen is an inefficient use of electricity or natural gas.  Electric vehicles are too expensive or have too little range.  There is not enough natural gas and there is too little fueling infrastructure to make natural gas vehicles practical on a large scale.  Gas-to-liquids makes sense for stranded natural gas, but there are too many other high value uses for natural gas to make a large dent in declining oil supplies.  Coal to liquids does too much environmental harm, and algae needs too much more technological development to achieve its promise in time.

The biggest problem with alternative fueled vehicles, however, is not the alternative fuels, the problem is the vehicles and how we use them. 

Oil was a one-time bonanza of a readily available, easily transportable, durable, energy-dense liquid.  With oil, humanity won a natural resources lottery ticket.  Like a lottery winner who blows cash that could have lasted a lifetime in a few months, we now need to realize that we've spent most of our winnings.  It's unreasonable to expect that we're going to win another such jackpot before we have to start watching our fuel budget again.  The main question is how soon and how deliberately we will make the necessary adjustment.  Will we act like the lottery winner who uses his last hundred thousand to tide him over while he looks for a job?  Will we keep partying to the bitter end, until one day we wake up, hung over in the gutter?  Will it be something in between?

The Methadone Economy

Switching to a drug analogy, most alternative fuels are the methadone to treat our petroleum/heroin addiction.  Methadone is given to heroin addicts in treatment because it mitigates withdrawal symptoms and can block the euphoric effects of heroin, morphine, and similar drugs, reducing the urge to use.

Alternative fuels can be sufficient to allow our society to function, but we're not going to feel the highs we felt when the oil was flowing freely.  Alternative fuels cannot take us back to a "normal" pre-peak oil state because our use of petroleum over the last few decades as been far from "normal:" it has been one long, fossil-fueled high.  We will eventually kick the petroleum habit with the help of alternative fuels not because alternative fuels are better than petroleum and can bring us something that petroleum cannot, but because our supplier will be getting smaller shipments over time, while the number of fellow junkies knocking on his door will keep going up with big increases in petroleum demand from emerging economies.

There are several competing visions of a future powered by alternative fuels, ranging from wildly optimistic to gloom-and-doom, with variations depending on how effectively the prognosticator thinks we can replace fossil fuels with alternatives. 

A high-technology optimistic vision includes smoothly running efficient pods in mass transit systems powered by renewable energy.  High speed bullet trains network the land, making overland air travel unnecessary.  The low-technology optimistic vision involves a peaceful return to local economies where food is grown locally, and increasing local interdependence fosters strong local community ties, and people grow happier as they become more connected to the land and each other.  The low-technology pessimistic vision is a free-for-all scramble for dwindling resources like the vision out of Mad Max referenced above.

I'm long on optimism about technology, but short on optimism about our will to make the necessary sacrifices to implement that technology quickly or efficiently.  I'm betting on a pessimistic, high-technology future.  In this future, we manage to cobble together a hodge-podge of last-minute, jerry-rigged solutions to keep the economy functioning at a basic level, but not at all smoothly or evenly. In it, we lurch from a crisis caused by financial melt-down, to a crisis caused by peak-oil to one caused by climate change.  We'll tackle each crisis with incredible ingenuity, staving off total chaos, but at the cost of mis-allocated resources and a deteriorating standard of living.  We hold out in the belief that after just this one more fix, the world will be back to normal and we can stop worrying.  But that day will never come. 

Forward thinking planners in some municipalities and communities will work on implementing true, long-term solutions.  But they will not have enough money or resources to do more than ameliorate the next crisis.  The large-scale, system wide solutions of better mass transit, algae biofuels, and continent-wide electricity transmission of the high-technology optimistic vision will be implemented too slowly, on too small a scale to achieve the economic stability the techno-optimists hope for.  But these half-built systems will still bring considerable benefit, and keep the succession of crises from being the complete disaster that would come with a complete lack of planning.

This is the Methadone Economy.  Alternative-fuel oil replacement therapy is necessary because oil supply will not keep pace with demand; we must replace oil or do without.  But alternative fuels are not oil, and will require more effort devoted to energy production to produce the same effect.  The Methadone economy will function, but it won't give us the highs we got from the cheap, concentrated, easily accessible energy of oil.

A future characterized by thoughtful, long-range planning seems unlikely to arise from the same political class and voting public that has not meaningfully prepared for anything but good times in decades.  The first IPCC report was released in 1990, and it made clear that human activities were substantially increasing levels of greenhouse gasses which would warm the planet.  Two decades later, greenhouse gas emissions are still rising.  We had the first warnings about peak oil in the 1970s oil crises, but only now are we starting to put serious political and economic capital into searching for solutions.  When the pre-2008 global debt bubble was on, NINJA (No Income No Job no Assets) loans were welcomed by politicians praising financial innovation and its ability to bring home ownership to people who could not previously afford it.

The Methadone Economy may sound gloomy, but I see it as the most optimistic vision possible given the political reality we see around us.  More pessimistic visions abound, but if you expect them, you're probably better off investing in guns and physical gold than you are investing in the stock market.

Conclusion

I see three major investment themes in the Methadone Economy.

First, there is the knowledge that long-term solutions will be implemented, although not completely and at insufficient scale.  Investors in contractors who specialize in mass transit and high-speed rail should do well, as should the longer-term alternative fuel solutions discussed in earlier articles of this series.  Vehicle efficiency improvements will find rapidly growing markets as fuel becomes more expensive.

Second, band-aid solutions will thrive.  Bike lanes, electric scooters, buses, and any other transportation solution which can be implemented with only small changes to existing infrastructure.  Road pricing schemes and the software technology to help people coordinate ride sharing.  The clever use of a few resources will always win over grand schemes when there are few resources to spare.

Finally, the Methadone Economy is an economy where we cannot expect long term growth.  More likely, we will see periods of anemic (and occasionally robust) growth punctuated by periodic crisis-driven declines.  This will be mirrored in the stock market, and so investors in the above two solutions should do well to hedge their overall exposure to the market.  My Green Energy Investing for Experts series and Ten Green Energy Gambles for 2010 provide several hedging ideas.

The next few articles in this series will look at more specific investments in the long-term and band-aid solutions to peak oil mentioned above.

DISCLOSURE: None.

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tom Konrad CFA

There are two types of solution to the liquid fuels scarcity caused by stagnating (and eventually falling) oil supplies combined with growing demand in emerging economies.  The most obvious is to find a substitute to replace oil.  Each potential substitute has barriers to its use which stand in the way of it from becoming a complete substitute for petroleum based fuel.  Understanding those barriers also leads us to the investment opportunities that arise from these substitutes. 

In the last two articles of this series, I looked at barriers to adoption for alternative fuels, and the limits and constraints that will likely prevent most of them from reaching sufficient scale to replace our current oil use. 

The first barrier was the last of existing infrastructure for many fuels: the lack of a fueling infrastructure that would allow drivers to fuel their vehicles when and where they need to at competitive prices, while the lack of a distribution infrastructure can keep the fuel from getting to the regions of the country where it is needed.  The second barrier is energy density: in order to deliver the range that people expect from their vehicles, an alternative fuel and the tank or battery that holds it works best if it is both light and compact.

The constraints were the total available supply (current and long term), alternative uses which might divert that supply to more economic purposes than fuel, and the damage producing and using the fuel does to the climate and environment.

To be a success, an alternative fuel must be able to overcome both barriers, and not have such severe constraints that there is little fuel available.  The barriers put limits on the short term profitability of the technology.  The constraints limit the short-term or long-term size of the market for the fuel, and the economics of the fuel.

Investment Opportunities

The table below summarizes the discussion in parts VI and VII.  I've rated the barriers and constraints for each fuel from A to F, with F being the least favorable to the adoption of the alternative fuel, and A being the most favorable.

Barriers	Biofuels	Electricity	H2	NGV	GTL	CTL
Fueling Infrastructure	A	C	F	F	A	A
Distribution Infrastructure	D	A	D	A	A	A
Density	A	F	C	C	A	A
Overall Barriers	B	C	D	C	A	A
Constraints	Biofuels	Electricity	H2	NGV	GTL	CTL
Current Supply	C	B	F	B	B	B
Long Term Supply	B	A	A	F	F	F
Alternative Uses	C	C	D	C	C	C
Climate/Environment	C	A	A	D	D	F
Overall Constraints	C+	B+	C+	C-	C-	D+

H2= hydrogen; NGV = Natural Gas Vehicles; GTL=Gas to Liquids; CTL= Coal to Liquids.

Hydrogen (Barriers D / Constraints C+)
If you agree with my assessments in the previous articles and as laid out in the above chart, it seems clear that hydrogen is a non-starter as an alternative fuel: the barriers are much worse for hydrogen than any of the other alternatives, and while hydrogen does have the long term advantages of potentially unlimited supply with minimal environmental impact, electricity has these same advantages, but has fewer barriers to overcome.

Natural Gas Vehicles (Barriers C / Constraints C-)
Natural Gas Vehicles are questionable as a peak oil mitigation strategy as well.  Natural gas is usually touted as a transitional fuel as we move away from oil and towards renewables.  But with the barriers to vehicle electrification no worse than the barriers to NGVs, a direct transition to electric vehicles seems a better choice. 

Biofuels (B/C+) and Gas to Liquids (A/C-)
  Biofuels and Gas to Liquids will likely have roles to play, but these roles will be limited by supply constraints.  Companies that can solve some of the problems for these two alternatives (such as land and water use for biofuels) may be profitable investments.  Algae is one possible way to overcome the supply constraints and environmental degradation caused by biofuels, but as I discussed in Part V, the publicly traded algae companies and technology is still too early stage to make attractive investments.  Biofuel feedstocks grown in salt water also have good long term potential.

The big questions lie with Vehicle Electrification and Coal to Liquids (CTL). 

Coal to Liquids (A/D+)
CTL would have a lot of potential as a short-term peak oil mitigation strategy if either 1) we choose to ignore the associated climate impact, or 2) we find and develop an economical way to sequester the associated carbon emissions.  I personally don't think that carbon sequestration is likely to be economical except in special (and small scale) situations such as enhanced oil recovery, but if a company manages to crack this nut, it is likely to be an excellent investment opportunity.

Likewise, so long as the true costs of greenhouse gas emissions are not paid by the polluters, high oil prices may make coal to liquids plants quite profitable in the short term given the ease with which synthetic diesel can be used in the current distribution and retail infrastructure.  However, such plants would be subject to potentially bankrupting regulatory risks because of the real chance that regulators may decide to price these externalities at a later date.  These risks mean that many lenders will be unlikely to finance Coal to Liquids plants.  We have seen a similar trend with many banks deciding not to finance new coal-fired electricity generation because of regulatory risk.  This trend is not all one-way, however, as some lenders (like the World Bank) are less subject to market forces, and may continue to fund environmentally harmful projects if they feel such projects are in line with other goals, such as development.

Vehicle Electrification (C/B+)

Where the prospects for Coal to Liquids are all short-term, the prospects for vehicle electrification are all long-term.  Energy density and the cost of batteries present serious near-term barriers to vehicle electrification.  In contrast, the long term prospects for vehicle electrification are much brighter than for any other alternative fuel.  The potential to deliver clean renewable electricity from wind and solar is sufficient to power all the worlds current electricity and transportation needs hundreds of times over.  Electric vehicles have the added advantage that they can smooth the natural variability of these most abundant renewable electricity sources by charging when the wind blows and the sun shines.

But the prospects for vehicle electrification come with a huge caveat: Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) and pure Electric Vehicles (EVs) are far from cost-effective ways to displace oil because of the huge cost, weight, and volume requirements of batteries.  Batteries are getting better, and many governments are pouring in the funding dollars, but for now only the mild vehicle electrification available with conventional hybrids uses batteries cost-effectively enough to make economic sense, even with a doubling or tripling of gas prices.  PHEVs and EVs can make sense as niche vehicles where performance (sports cars), silence (golf carts), or environmental sensitivity is at a premium.  They may also make sense for some fleet vehicles that follow predictable routes and can benefit from multiple battery swaps or charging sessions per day (mass transit, postal vehicles) but the cost-benefit analysis of such applications will be very sensitive to the application.  Smaller vehicles such as electric bikes and scooters also have great potential because their lower power and range requirements are easier to meet with current commercial battery technology.

Even these more limited applications for vehicle electrification are large compared to the current battery market.  As I wrote in part II, battery companies, especially those making progress with chemistries not currently the subject of intense investor interest, are compelling investment prospects.

Conclusion: The Best Peak Oil Investments

There is no perfect substitute for fossil fuels.  In the end, we are going to have to find ways to address the reality of peak oil that go farther than simply replacing one fuel with another: we are going to have to reduce our usage.  Fortunately, a number of strategies for reducing fuel use exist.  Not only is there considerable potential to increase vehicle efficiency, but there are also many ways to encourage conservation which can have net economic benefits for society.  For investors, these strategies also hold promise, although it is not always obvious how companies can turn a profit from helping consumers consume less.  

The "Best Peak Oil Investments" are not be the substitutes I have been talking about so far.  The best peak oil investments are the technologies that allow us to use less oil and still get our transportation needs met.  Future articles in this series on peak oil investment strategies will attempt to tease out the investment opportunities that arise from reducing our use of oil, not just finding substitutes for it.

Here are links to the previous articles in this series:

1. Biofuels
2. Hydrogen and Vehicle Electrification
3. Natural Gas Vehicles
4. GTL and CTL
5. Algae
6. Barriers to Substitution
7. Substitution Constraints
   

DISCLOSURE: None.

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 06:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tom Konrad CFA

There are two types of solutions to the liquid fuels scarcity caused by stagnating (and eventually falling) oil supplies combined with growing demand in emerging economies.  The most obvious is to find a substitute to replace oil.  Supply constraints limit the full replacement of oil by most potential substitutes.  Understanding those constraints leads us to the investment opportunities that arise from these substitutes. 

Increasing demand and constrained supply of oil is fueling the search for oil substitutes to use in its place.  Unfortunately, almost all of these potential substitutes also have limited supply.  This article looks at the factors that limit the supply of (or demand for) potential substitutes.  The next article, Part VIII will combine the insights about the barriers to adoption discussed in part VI and the constraints discussed here to highlight the investment opportunities which arise from these barriers and constraints.

Constraint 1: Conversion Efficiency / Alternatives

All alternative fuels require significant resources.  Conventional biofuels require agricultural land, fertilizer, pesticides, water, enzymes, and heat in fermentation.  Gas to liquids uses natural gas. 

To understand if a particular alternative fuel will ever be economic, it helps to consider what else might be done with these inputs.  If the alternative uses for these inputs have more economic value, then making fuel from them will never be an economic proposition.

With conventional biofuels, there is a trade off between one group of people driving, and another group eating (the food-vs.-fuel debate) and also the effects of land use change because of biofuels' tendency to increase the area used for crop land.  These trade offs are typically complex, and often difficult to calculate precisely, but in a few cases, the results are quite clear and enlightening.

Stranded Natural Gas is gas co-produced with oil far from transportation infrastructure.  Such gas is essentially a waste stream which would be burned to prevent it from venting into the atmosphere, so if the gas could be economically transported to market, either as liquefied natural gas or a Gas to liquids (GTL) product that can be shipped out with the oil, there will be a net gain, no matter how much of the gas is lost in the conversion process.  In contrast, pipeline natural gas has many alternative uses, and so its value as a transportation fuel must compete with power generation, domestic, and industrial uses.  Further, the direct use of natural gas as a transportation fuel in vehicles is in direct competition with GTL technologies.  Because much of the energy content is lost in the GTL process, it is unlikely that GTL will be viable for pipeline gas, even though it may make sense for stranded natural gas. 

A useful tool for making these sorts of comparisons is Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI), which is the ratio of the energy put into a process to the energy embodied in the products.  ERoEI is useful in large part because there is a fairly extensive body of ERoEI analysis for various fuels.  In general, if two processes use the same feedstock, the one with the higher ERoEI is likely to be the most economic.  This comes with many caveats, however, since it does not take into account the different qualities of the fuels (can you really compare high-grade energy such as electricity to low grade energy such as heat?)  Further, ERoEI does not take into account the timing of the energy flows.  A process with an ERoEI of 1.1 may be better than a process with an ERoEI of 2, if the first process takes only a day and can be repeated every day, and the latter process takes a year.  I looked at a way to account for the timing of energy flows with a measure I call EIRR here and here.

Many companies are considering ways to use Municipal Solids Waste (MSW) and industrial waste streams to make various alternative fuels.  Purer waste streams with higher energy content have the most alternative uses, and the use with the highest economic value is likely to render most of the other uses uneconomic.  For instance, waste paper can be recycled, burned to produce electricity, or converted into liquid fuels by a variety of enzymatic, chemical, and thermochemical processes.  There is also economic value in reducing the amount of recycled paper at the source, by printing double-sided or moving to paperless processes.  In the case of waste paper, I do not expect it to ever be converted into fuels on a large scale, because of the potential for recycling.  If a ton of waste paper were turned into fuel, that would be a ton of paper which could not be recycled, leading to an additional ton of paper which would need to be made from virgin wood.  This is economically similar to growing the wood for biofuel, and skipping the intermediary paper step.

Another use for MSW with high energy content is to convert it into electricity via incineration.  It can also be used to make ethanol or other liquid fuels with a biomass to liquids process.  Much can also be recycled or composted.  Which one of these processes will be used for any particular waste stream will depend on the nature of the waste itself, as well as the local market for each fuel.  It also depends on the value of carbon credits, since while producing electricity tends to be the most effective way to reduce carbon emissions, electricity is difficult to store or use as a transportation fuel. 

One relatively easy comparison arises from Hydrogen.  Hydrogen currently is made by either reforming natural gas or using electricity to electrolyze water.  In both processes, some energy is lost, and the original natural gas or electricity are better fuels on several measures than the hydrogen itself.  I don't expect the hydrogen economy to progress beyond the demonstration stage unless we first find much more efficient ways of creating hydrogen and cheaper ways of storing it and using it in vehicles.

Constraint 2: Total Supply

The reason we're concerned with peak oil investments is because the total supply of oil is finite.  When total supply over time is finite, the amount pumped in any given year is also limited, and so must have a maximum, or peak.  The timing of the peak is less important than the elasticity of supply.  Elasticity of supply is a measure of how much the price of a commodity has to change in order to increase or decrease the amount supplied in response to changes in demand.  If a small change in demand requires a large change in price in order to bring supply into balance, then the supply of the commodity is inelastic.  If a large change in demand requires only a small change in price to bring supply into balance, then the supply of the commodity is elastic.  The elasticity of demand is the same, with regards to changes in price in response to changes in supply.

Sometime near the peak, oil supplies will become inelastic.  Increasing demand will produce higher prices, but the higher prices will not be able to stimulate supply to match the increased demand.  Instead, oil prices will stay high enough for reduced demand (demand destruction) to bring supply and demand back into balance.

Although we may not have reached "Peak Oil" in the sense of maximum annual production, I believe that the wild swings in the price of oil since 2007 demonstrate that we've reached peak oil in the sense of inelastic supply, as described in the preceding paragraph.  Although worldwide oil production was slightly higher in 2008 than 2005, overall production was basically flat for the whole period since 2005, despite rapidly rising prices.  The increased price volatility combined with tiny changes in market volume are strong signs of decreased elasticity or supply or demand.  I see no reason for demand to have become significantly less elastic in recent years, so I assume the observed decreased elasticity is elasticity of supply.



Biofuels can be produced in relatively small quantities without much impact to the food supply and agricultural system.  Yet as we scale them up to replace a significant fraction of our oil use, they impact farmland and require the conversion of natural ecosystems to farmland.  Intensive biofuel production can also degrade existing farmland.

Only electricity has no real constraints on total supply, with wind and solar resources sufficient to supply all our energy needs hundreds of times over, so long as we build the wind and solar farms. 

Constraint 3: Climate/Environment

How we account for environmental externalities will also have a large influence on which alternative fuels thrive and which ones become historical footnotes.  Because of the fairly large supplies of relatively inaccessible coal, Coal-to-Liquids (CTL) technology compares favorably to all the other alternatives I've discussed until you consider the carbon emissions, disposal of the waste, and the impacts of coal mining that it entails.  All fossil fuels, even coal, are finite, and so using alternative fossil fuels at best delays the impact of peak oil.  Renewable options, in contrast, are steps towards a long-term solution.

Nevertheless, CTL stocks may turn out to be good investments despite the environmental harm.  After all, environmental harm is an externality, and so long as the local government chooses not to make the CTL producer pay the real costs of production, high oil prices could make CTL plants very profitable.  On the other hand, large unpriced externalities represent a significant risk to the companies creating them: new regulation may put a price on Greenhouse Gas emissions or take other regulatory steps which make the process unprofitable at the stroke of a pen.

Conclusion

Failing to take into account all constraints on a technology is a simple and common mistake.  Unfortunately, this common mistake leads investors to overly optimistic conclusions, often followed by overly optimistic investments.  Since overly optimistic investments are one of the surest ways to lose money, investors will be wise to keep these constraints on potential oil substitutes in mind when considering investments.

One reader of part VI made just this mistake.  He made the case that the supply of conventional gas (Constraint 2: Total Supply) might not limit the use of natural gas vehicles because of the potential for biomethane from cattle.  What he failed to consider is that while biomethane can be used as a fuel for natural gas vehicles, it can also be used for anything else that natural gas is currently used for (Constraint 1:Alternatives.)  Because Biomethane and natural gas are essentially interchangeable, it is more informative to consider the potential contribution of Biomethane to total natural gas supply than to calculate how many vehicles could potentially be fueled by biomethane.  I was not able to find a national resource assessment for biomethane, but I did find an assessment for California.  In California, the technically feasible biomethane resource (including biomethane from livestock) was less than 1% of California's natural gas usage.  Hence, fluctuations in natural gas supply are likely to swamp any increases in biomethane production.

If we want to understand the amount of natural gas available for natural gas vehicles, we need only consider the supply of fossil natural gas.  Biomethane is only a rounding error in the overall calculation.  Hence, while biomethane may make some investors rich by growing rapidly from a small base, it will have a negligible difference to the success of natural gas vehicles.  If you believe biomethane will take off, the best way to invest based on that belief would be to invest in dairy farms, not in natural gas vehicles.

In part VIII, I'll bring together these ideas about constraints with my thoughts about barriers from part VI, and highlight the investments that should benefit from both.

Previous articles in this series are available here:

1. Biofuels
2. Hydrogen and Vehicle Electrification
3. Natural Gas Vehicles
4. GTL and CTL
5. Algae
6. Barriers to Substitution
   

DISCLOSURE: None.

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here

Posted by Tom Konrad at 06:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Tom Konrad CFA

There are two types of solution to the liquid fuels scarcity caused by stagnating (and eventually falling) oil supplies combined with growing demand in emerging economies.  The most obvious is to find a substitute to replace oil.  These substitute have barriers to their use as a replacment petroleum based fuel.  Understanding those barriers also leads us to the investment opportunities that arise from these substitutes. 

As I wrote the first five parts of this series, looking into potential substitutes for gasoline and diesel, it was clear that many potential substitutes would need to overcome barriers to its adoption.  This article and the next will look at these barriers, and what they say about the potential for investments in substitutes for liquid fuels from petroleum.  Part VII will look at factors which constrain the supply of these substitutes.  Part VIII will combine the resulting understanding of these barriers and constraints to highlight the investment opportunities arising from them.

Barrier: Infrastructure

One great advantage gasoline and diesel have over most of the proposed alternatives is an extensive infrastructure.  In addition to an extensive pipeline network, we also have a large number of competing fueling stations.  If a new fuel requires new fueling stations, like natural gas and hydrogen, or charging points and (potentially) battery swapping stations (electricity) it may not be enough to make sure that enough filling stations exist for would-be drivers to make long trips.  If there is only one national network of filling stations, drivers will likely become concerned that the lack of competition will mean that they overpay for fuel.

Among the possible substitutes, the synthetic fuels discussed in part IV, as well as biogasoline are the best placed in that they can use existing infrastructure. 

In terms of having a nationwide transportation network, the best placed substitutes are natural gas and electricity.  In terms of point of sale delivery, electricity has an advantage in that it's safe and relatively cheap to place charging infrastructure in parking lots, and most homes already have the capability of charging an electric vehicle, although it takes a long time from the 120V outlets in most garages.  Most homes do not have natural gas in the garage, and even when they do, a compressor is necessary. 

Conventional biodiesel and ethanol can be dispensed from the same pumps used for fossil fuels, but both present some difficulties in transport and storage.  Biodiesel cannot be allowed to get too cold, because it begins to congeal, so in colder climates, storage tanks as well as transport tankers must be insulated and even heated.  Ethanol cannot be shipped through pipelines that are also used for gasoline, because it absorbs too much water.  Hence ethanol and biodiesel are mostly shipped in tanker trucks and rail cars.  But both can be blended with conventional fuels, meaning that little new dispensing infrastructure is needed.  The importance of a competitive fueling infrastructure can be seen in in this November 2009 statement from the Trucking industry to the US Senate [pdf] about the conversion of trucking from diesel to natural gas.  They say,

It is not sufficient to have a single LNG vendor with stations built at strategic locations along key freight corridors. Absent a competitive refueling infrastructure, trucking companies could face unreasonably high prices at individual retail LNG stations that have no competition in a particular geographic area. While competition exists in the natural gas industry, the high barriers to entry for retail LNG refueling stations may slow the development of a competitive refueling infrastructure. A competitive LNG refueling model would require the presence of multiple entities selling LNG in the same geographic area.

This objection applies to any potential alternative vehicle which locks the user into one fuel, and includes Electric Vehicles (EVs) such as the Nissan Leaf and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles, but not to flex fuel vehicles (E85 ethanol) or biodiesel (which can be used in any diesel engine.)  It also does not apply to Plug-in Hybrid Electric vehicles, such as the Chevy Volt, because while charging points and battery swapping stations may be limited, the existing fueling infrastructure provides supply competition.

The fuel with the weakest infrastructure is hydrogen.  Like natural gas, it needs specialized filling stations, but hydrogen lacks a national pipeline network.

Incomplete infrastructure can be either a barrier or an opportunity.  If a potential fuel is compelling for other reasons, firms well placed to provide the necessary infrastructure should be able to profit handsomely.  If, on the other hand, a fuel lacks an existing infrastructure and also faces significant other barriers, it will be unlikely to become a significant transportation fuel, and infrastructure investors are likely to lose their shirts along with everyone else interested in the fuel.

Barriers: Energy Density

When talking about energy density, it's important to consider not only the fuel, but the tank.  Both volume and weight are important.  Few fuels are as energy-dense as gasoline and diesel, both of which can be stored in simple, unpressurized fuel tanks.  In contrast, the fuel tank for electric vehicles is the battery, and batteries are not only large and heavy for the amount of energy they store, they are also extremely expensive and degrade over time.  Although the cost of driving an electric vehicle are very low compared to gas or diesel, the large up-front investment in batteries makes the total cost of owning an eelctric vehicle higher except for drivers who use the vehicle for frequent, short trips with time to recharge in between. 

The big winners for energy density are synthetic fuels, as well as conventional biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.  Although ethanol has been criticized because it only contains about 2/3 of the energy of the same volume of gasoline, it's close enough that people using ethanol don't have to completely change their behavior in order to use it in a conventional vehicle.  In contrast, electric vehicle manufacturers find that the range of their vehicles is constrained not only by the cost of batteries, but also by their size and weight.  Weight is particularly important, because as a vehicle gets heavier, more of the energy is used to move the vehicle rather than the occupants, which in turn requires even more batteries.

In between energy-dense biofuels and bulky batteries lie gaseous fuels: natural gas and hydrogen, which have good energy per gram, but require heavy pressurized tanks to pack them into a space small enough to fit in a vehicle.  Hydrogen requires a pressurized tank that takes up a lot of space, even if it is not very heavy.  Natural gas can either be used as Compressed natural gas (CNG) or Liquid Natural Gas (LNG.)  CNG is similar to hydrogen, although it is a little more energy dense.  LNG has the same energy density as diesel, but requires considerable energy to compress into that form, and is not available from a home fueling station.  Hence, natural gas vehicles present a tradeoff between energy density and fueling infrastructure.

Conclusion

Considering just the barriers of energy density and infrastructure, it is clear why the conventional biofuels ethanol and biodiesel gained an early lead over alternatives such as electricity and hydrogen.  The big questions about biofuels arise from constraints in their total supply, and the harm that many forms of biofuel agriculture do to the environment.  Synthetic fuels made from natural gas and coal (GTL and CTL) can also have excellent energy density and can take advantage of existing infrastructure and vehicle fleets, but so far have not been adopted in a large way becasue they have had to compete with cheap oil.  As oil prices rise, we will probably also see the rise of synthetic fuels, but, like biofuels, their long term prospects will be limited by total supply and possibly by concern about the environmental harm they do. 

Such supply constraints and environmental concerns will be the subject of Part VII.  Previous articles have been:

1. Biofuels
2. Hydrogen and Vehicle Eletrification
3. Natural Gas Vehicles
4. Synthetic fuels: GTL and CTL
5. Algae
   

DISCLOSURE: None.

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Eamon Keane

"So much for peak demand - try 134mb/d by 2030."  That was the startling conclusion dispatched from the ivory tower recently by Joyce Dargay, a British transport econometrics professor, and Dermot Gately, an American economics professor. I'll present their conclusions and then discuss the implications.

Their report is available here (pdf). The main conclusion is that the low hanging oil fruit has already been picked after the 1970's oil shocks. From 1978-85 OECD fuel oil consumption dropped by 7mb/d and then from 2003-2008 by another 2mb/d. The share of fuel oil in OECD consumption has fallen from 44% to 16% today, so there is not much left to cut. The authors estimate the price and income elasticities of different components of oil consumption in the OECD and other blocs.

The OECD oil demand response to higher incomes over the last 40 years is shown in Figure 1. The equi-proportional growth lines indicate the slope oil demand should have if it is proportional to income growth. It can be seen that fuel oil dramatically drops off, however per capita transport & other oil remained reasonably correlated with income growth.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that transport oil consumption goes up with income. For example, Figure 2 shows a very high correlation between Irish transport energy and GDP:

The authors then estimated the price and income elasticities of oil in different blocks: China, Oil Exporters, Income Growers, and other countries. They combined these segments into a "rest of the world" umbrella. They then contrasted their 2030 oil demand projections with the various scenarios of the DOE, IEA & OPEC. For example, the DOE's projections are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 4 shows the authors' projections, in per capita daily oil consumption:

Can you spot the difference? The OECD and FSU (Former Soviet Union) projections are reasonably close. It's the rest of the world line that is much different in the DOE's projections. The DOE suggest that China, India, OPEC etc will grow at one fifth of their historic oil demand rate, despite higher income growth. Instead of the DOE's 0.56% growth rate, the authors' projections finds close agreement with the historical growth rate of 2.54%. It's not exactly unreasonable to expect the rest of the world to (attempt to) raise their consumption of oil from 1 liter per day to 2 liters per day, especially if their income is rising. The OECD slurps over 6 liters per day, after all.

The difference between the DOE's and the authors' projections is some 20mb/d, or two Saudi Arabias. So in 2030, a plausible buisness as usual scenario suggests world demand at 134mb/d. As for supply, well Figure 5 shows the IEA's flying pigs 105mb/d projection:



You can add in your favourite technology if you want: biofuels (currently 1.5mb/d), Coal-to-liquids (currently 0.15mb/d), Natural gas to liquids (currently 0.08mb/d), oil shale (0 mb/d), and sundry other technologies. They might give you several mb/d by 2030. The UK Peak Oil Task Force outlined future oil production as an undulating plateau at about 90mb/d (until 2020, at least). This leaves an approximately 40mb/d shortfall (134-90). How that 90mb/d gets allocated will be interesting. The authors don't give an explicit breakdown by region, but Figure 6 shows roughly how an unconstrained scenario would look, with the dashed line indicating a possible supply cap:



The OECD and FSU remain flat, but the rest of the world tries to get to 2 liters per capita per day. How will the 40mb/d supply-demand burden be shared? Will the new Chinese middle class buy an EV instead of a car? Perhaps. US passenger cars and light trucks consume about 9mb/d, and the fleet turns over every 20 years of so. If they were replaced with super efficient small cars (assuming folks can get credit), you might get the same number of miles with 6mb/d. We already drive small cars in Europe, but there is still some scope for higher efficiency in vehicles, and high prices should hold the Jevons Paradox at bay.

The authors show that the price elasticity of oil exporters is very low, obviously enough, since they heavily subsidise domestic consumption. In Saudi Arabia, over half of electricity generation is from oil. Courtesy of Royal Decree M/56, utilities purchase oil for $3/barrel, or 7c/gallon. Not surprisingly the grid is at break point from the demand. They plan to double installed capacity from 30GW to 60GW by 2020, although some of that will be gas-fired.

Another kicker is that in the Middle East, peak water has arrived. Saudi Arabia in 2009 cancelled their plans for agricultural self sufficiency due to lack of water. Their aquifer is depleting at 7 times the rate it recharges. Hence they are turning oil into water by desalination. Were they to replace the annual depletion (700bcf/yr) with desalinated water, that would require 0.3mb/d per year. By World Bank estimates desalination demand could rise to 1mb/d in coming years.

These anecdotes just reinforce what anyone who's followed oil knows - an export crisis is coming. Oil exporters will serve their citizens subsidised oil before exporting - it's part of the unwritten petropact.

The marginal utility of a barrel of oil is greater in India or China than in the OECD. People still dream of owning a car in Asia. Figure 7 shows Chinese car sales:


This suggests that the burden of adjustment will fall heavily on the OECD. Our ability to invest in solutions depends on the economy tolerating the high oil price. You can read a 70 page paper on this subject by economics professor James Hamilton here (pdf). His conclusion was:

"the evidence to me is persuasive that, had there been no oil shock, we would have described the U.S. economy in 2007:Q4-2008:Q3 as growing slowly, but not in a recession."

So triple digit oil prices are likely to hamper growth. This was also one scenario posited by the authors of the original study when they stated:

"Hence this imbalance [40mb/d] would have to be rectified by some combination of higher real oil prices, much more rapid and aggressive penetration of alternative technologies for producing liquids, much tighter oil-saving policies and standards adopted by multiple countries, and slower world economic growth."

It would be helpful if some governments actually recognised this reality. For now the response can be summed up as:



Eamon Keane is an Energy Systems Engineering masters student at University College Dublin with an interest in electric cars, rare earth metals and energy.  He is looking for a job in the energy sector anytime after August 2010.

Posted by Eamon Keane at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

David Gold

With all the complexities of cleantech policy and technologies, there is only one simple thing needed for an explosion of competitive clean technologies – increased price of fossil fuels.

The amount of R&D expenditures that will need to be invested in clean technology in order for it to hurdle the bar into competitiveness is much greater with low fossil fuel prices. And, the lower those prices, the less appetite the private sector has for making such investments. This leaves a much-increased burden on the back of government through grants and subsidies– a back that is close to being broken from debt. While clean technology development is absolutely necessary, technology development takes time and, often, a long time. And technology development is fraught with uncertainty…nobody ever knows a priori whether such efforts will be successful and how long they will take. Believe me…every venture fund in the world would love to be able to know that! But they don’t. However, virtually every venture fund and researcher will tell you that significant advances usually take much more time and more money than expected. In an environment of relatively low fossil fuel prices with high price volatility, grants and subsidies for an amount of time and at a level that will make any permanent and meaningful difference are simply unsustainable. So, for all the focus on “cleantech stimulus” the most important thing that government can do is to affect change in the cost of the fossil fuel alternatives.

If we had higher fossil fuel prices or even just clearer visibility and certainty about future increases, the free market would make dramatic increases in investment in clean technology. When the free market sees an opportunity to make a profit, it moves extremely fast. Government actions that put in motion increases in the cost of fossil fuel alternatives, even if those increases are phased in over many years, can have an enormous impact on the money invested by the private sector in alternatives (and a corresponding decrease in need for government subsidies and grants). This, in turn, will further accelerate technology advances, leading to a more rapid convergence of the time when various technologies can competitively reach the mass market.

Given the reality that fossil fuels are a finite resource, it is a fait accompli that eventually alternative energy and energy efficiency technologies will become so compelling that they will dominate the market. But the future of fossil fuel prices in the relatively near term (e.g., the next decade or two) is far from certain as both general economic conditions and new discoveries such as those in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt play a roll. If we didn’t care about global warming, national security or economic security, there would be little need to do anything but let the market take its course. Unfortunately, irrespective of your personal policy hot button, most of us would agree that we do not have the luxury of the amount of time that this transition would likely take on its own.

The government has a role to ensure that externalities that are important to the public are accounted for in the market. But the government cannot subsidize our way there nor simply mandate that the market use a specific technology. Should it be surprising that the U.S. government “mandated” that 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol be produced this year and the EPA estimates that only 6.5 million will be produced? The government sank $150M into Range Fuels’ cellulosic ethanol plant expecting it to produce over 10 million gallons, but Range will only produce about 2.5 million gallons this year. How silly is it to try to “mandate” use of biofuels – did we not learn anything from the economic demise of the Soviet Union about government controlled economies? If oil had remained at over $100/barrel since 2008, I would suggest to you that biofuels production would be much higher this year without any government mandate.

The government does need to take action and do so in a way that does not crush our economy. There are important societal externalities associated with continued use of fossil fuels that are not accurately reflected in the price of the commodities in the market. Cap and trade is the right debate to be having… albeit likely the wrong solution. More on that in my next post.

David Gold is an entrepreneur and engineer with national public policy experience who heads up cleantech investments for Access Venture Partners (www.accessvp.com). This article was first published on his blog, www.greengoldblog.com.

Posted by David Gold at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

John Petersen

Generation specific cultural references can be treacherous ground for bloggers because the flashback effect is usually limited to readers with long and vivid memories. In this case, however, the lessons of history are so relevant that I'll accept the risk and offer some context for younger readers.

In my youth a war wrapped in the liberal ideology of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and fueled by an underlying concern over who would control oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Tonkin was fought in the jungles of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. By current standards, the toll of 47,424 battle deaths was staggering. By the late '60s opposition to the War was widespread and a galvanizing force behind the antiwar movement was music, including an iconic folksong from Pete Seeger, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.



While my use of an antiwar anthem to make a point about plug-in vehicles is certain to draw howls of outrage from advocates and true believers, I think the analogy is apt because the ideologically inspired road to disaster we trod during the late '60s is frighteningly similar to the path we're on today with plug-in vehicles where the prevailing attitude seems to be "damn the facts, push on."

Our fundamental energy problems are easy to identify – increasing oil prices and increasing reliance on imports. Both numbers have been climbing steadily for decades and consumers have been stubbornly reluctant to change their behavior in response to prices. The burden on the economy becomes heavier with each passing year and if you're willing to extend the current price channel out for another decade, oil price expectations in the $150 to $180 per barrel range don't seem all that far fetched.



For as long as automakers have been proposing plug-in electric vehicles, skeptics like me have been noting that fuel savings are unlikely to give consumers a cash-on-cash payback of their incremental cost over the life of the vehicle, much less the three to five year window that consumers typically expect. There are countless vague promises about  economies of scale driving down costs as the industry matures, but at least in the battery sector where raw materials and plant automation are the primary cost drivers and labor is almost a rounding error, I have a hard time banking on a fairy godmother to restrain commodity prices and equipment costs. While the following graph of long-term industrial and precious metal prices from Credit Suisse is a little dated, it certainly has the same general shape and slope as the most recent decade on the oil price chart.



"We were knee deep in the Big Muddy, the big fool said to push on."

For several years realists like Vinod Khosla and others have noted that since the U.S. gets roughly 50% of its electricity from coal and will likely do so for decades to come, the environmental benefits of plugging an electric vehicle into a lump of coal will be few and far between. Last week, I offered a simple comparison of plug-in vehicles with conventional HEV technology (without plugs) that proves plug-ins are about one-quarter as effective at reducing oil imports as cheaper HEVs that can point to a decade of performance under real world conditions.

"We were waist deep in the Big Muddy, the big fool said to push on."

The real flies in the ointment are that plug-in vehicles don't significantly change the energy balance, they're far too resource constrained to make a dent in oil imports, and the fundamental economic premise only works if you are willing to assume that historically moderate trends in retail electricity prices will continue forever.

From an overall energy balance perspective, plug-ins don't change the amount of energy needed to move a vehicle down the road. Instead, they merely move the conversion of fuel to energy from under the hood to a local power station while increasing vehicle cost by 50% to 100%.

Likewise, the batteries that will be used in plug-ins are made from raw materials that are orders of magnitude less abundant than oil. The resource constraint issues go far beyond lithium availability and extend to every component in batteries and battery packs. Those materials all have alternative uses in high value products and from a resource availability standpoint, using batteries to conserve oil is a lot like using gold to conserve copper.

Finally, it's almost impossible to find a newspaper or magazine that doesn't have several articles on the evolution of the electric grid. We're seeing massive investments in wind and solar power installations and the estimated cost of the coming smart grid runs to trillions of dollars. Since the one certainty is that private capital will not finance alternative energy or the smart grid without expecting both a return of capital and a return on capital, it's patently absurd to believe that electricity price increases will remain as benign in the future as they have been in the past.

"We were neck deep in the Big Muddy, the big fool said to push on."

When I was but a lad one of my mother's favorite quips was "use your head for something besides a hat rack." It was her way of teaching me to look beyond my immediate circumstances, consider the factors that led me to a decision-point and reflect carefully on the likely consequences of my actions. When it comes to plug-in vehicles, investors and the general public have been little more than hat racks for too long. Instead of thinking things through and questioning assumptions, they've been placated by "wouldn't it be great if ...?" sound bites. Instead of asking whether crossing the big muddy is possible or the effort worthwhile, they've allowed themselves to be led down the garden path by politicians and activists who vainly promise gain without pain and reward without risk.

If it weren't so damned expensive, I'd describe vehicle electrification beyond the HEV stage as a zero sum game. Given the immense costs that are becoming increasingly clear with each passing day, I'd characterize it as a game where we can't reasonably hope to break even.

Disclosure: No stocks mentioned because we all know who they are.

Posted by John Petersen at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Green Energy Investing For Experts, Part V

Tom Konrad, CFA

A global climate deal in Copenhagen would have been bad for coal miners, and coal companies have been rallying as the economy recovers, but it may not be clear skies for the black rock.

In the battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, coal is enemy number one.  The global disarray in Copenhagen can only be good for coal mining companies, and they duly rallied when the climate talks ended with little to show for it. 

Yet carbon emissions are not the only black mark on the coal industry's record, and investor relief may be premature.  

• The EPA's endangerment finding means that the administration may tackle greenhouse gas emissions with regulation rather than cap and trade.
• Economic coal reserves may fall far short of widely accepted estimates.
• While "Climategate" may not make some scientists look good, it's mostly hot air.
• The risks of coal fired power are not limited to climate.  A repeat of 2008's Tennessee coal ash flood or other coal related environmental disaster could quickly knock the wind out of the industry.
• Opposition continues to mount against the destructive mining practices such as mountain top removal.
• Carbon Capture and Storage ("Clean Coal") is likely to be uneconomic, even if the technical challenges are overcome.
• Climate change is real, and plans to reduce carbon emissions have to address coal to be effective.  The longer we delay, the more drastic the action will have to be.

None of this is to say that coal mining stocks have to fall anytime soon.  Rather, I'm pointing out that there are large and significant risks that coal investors ignore at their peril.  The polarization of climate debate is such that many conservatives seem unable to see these risks because of their preconceived notions.  Climate deniers may crow in anticipation about their impending victory in the climate change debate, but this is a debate they cannot win because the facts simply do not support their case, no matter how many careless emails they are able to dredge up.  

Investors usually have to operate in a realm of uncertainty.  We don't know what next years earnings of any company will be, we only hope that our estimate is better than the rest of the crowd.  The climate debate, on the other hand, is a rare opportunity where we know the outcome with near certainty, and yet there is a large contingent of climate deniers willing to put their money down on the other side of the bet.

Today, with recent polls showing fewer Americans supporting action on climate change than last year, it's easy to become discouraged about the chances of real action to confront climate change.  As an investor, it is dark moments like these when courageous investors put their money down and are rewarded when the pendulum swings back, as it always does.  

Betting Against Coal: A Green Lottery Ticket

I'm not one of those courageous investors.  I prefer to take small risks that still have the potential for large rewards.  Since I don't know if the pendulum of public opinion on climate change will begin to swing back today or ten years from now, I'm not ready to start shorting coal companies.  However, I am ready to make a few small bets that change might be sudden and soon.  I've bought a couple cheap, long-dated puts on coal companies.

The Market Vectors Coal ETF (NYSE:KOL) has exchange traded options, but only with expiration dates going out six months.  In contrast, many of the large coal mining companies have exchange traded options that go out two years.  This situation is similar to the one I ran into when shorting the Mexico ETF and shorting airline stocks.  In particular, I chose to buy January 2012 $30 puts on Consol Energy (CNX) and January 2011 $25 puts on Peabody Energy (BTU.)  I chose these two because, as with airlines, they are the top two holdings of KOL.  Furthermore, both of these came near the bottom of Newsweek's Green Rankings, and BTU scores badly on quantitative valuation measures.

To be sure, these are long-shot gambles.  Coal will be with us for decades to come, and coal companies have an annoying habit of getting politicians to do their bidding.  On the other hand, these bets could pay off even if there is no real action on climate change, because of another stock market collapse (both of my puts would have been in the money at March 2009 lows,) or from some company-specific problem.

Where else are you going to buy a lottery ticket that is so environmentally sensitive?

DISCLOSURE: Short BTU, CNX.

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here and in the comments are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 08:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Green Energy Investing For Experts, Part III

Tom Konrad, CFA

Controversy continues to grow about the economic viability of shale gas.  Investors who doubt the companies' claims should consider buying puts.

The Case for Gas

From the perspective of a green energy investor, natural gas is the most benign fossil fuel.  Natural gas emits less carbon than other fossil fuels (slightly more than half as much as coal, when used for electricity generation.)  Natural gas turbines also can quickly compensate for fluctuating supply and demand from other sources of electricity.  This quick response makes them a natural complement to variable electricity supply from wind and solar (along with better transmission, electricity storage, and demand response.)  Finally, natural gas will be key in making the transition away from fossil fuels, because building relatively cheap gas turbines can provide a bridge to an electric grid dominated by renewable energy, which has a high up-front cost in terms of both dollars and embedded energy.

The Case Against Shale Gas

With all this going for it, why is natural gas part of this series about sectors green investors should consider shorting? (See Part I, which made the case for shorting, and Part II, which looked at shorting Mexico country funds.)

The reasons are twofold:

1. I think it would be unwise to short the natural gas industry as a whole... all the reasons laid out above will continue to be strong drivers for natural gas consumption.  This article is very specifically about shale gas players.
2. There is a good chance (but not a certainty) that shale gas has been oversold.  
3. The extensive use of fresh water in shale gas development makes shale gas development more environmentally damaging than the less-than benign conventional gas industry.

I wrote a short piece on Art Berman, the leading shale gas critic in October, outlining his views on why decline rates in shale gas wells are likely to be much faster than much of the industry says.  I'm no expert on gas, so here are some more authoritative sources for an overview of this controversy: The Financial Times, Art Berman himself, and industry defenders.

Sentiment

Most of this controversy is outside my area of competence.  However, that does not mean that it cannot be part of the investment decision process.  When making an investment decision, the key question to ask is: Are other investors more likely too optimistic, or too pessimistic about this company or industry?

The shale gas story, which I summarize: "New drilling techniques and discoveries have vastly expanded the available recoverable natural gas, expanding reserves so much that we no longer have to worry about running out, and we will even be able to increase sustainable production over the long term."  In other words, it sounds to good to be true.  In fact, it sounds like another version of the perennial paean, "Technology will save us," or, in another less pithy variant, "Technology will allow us to continue doing things the way we've always done them."

Technology may indeed save us from peaking fossil fuel supplies and climate change, in the sense that it may allow our society to adapt the quick loss of this massively energy intense resource that we've been completely reliant on for the last 150 years.  However, it is wishful thinking to hope that technology will allow us to keep on doing things the way we've been doing them for the last few decades.

Wishful thinking is very seductive, because it allows us to avoid confronting the present reality of our problems today.  As such, it's intensely popular, and I nearly always expect that a large number of investors, spurred on by happy-talk media, will buy it, both figuratively and literally in the form of shale gas company stock (and solar stocks for that matter.)

So, if there is a chance that shale gas companies are over hyping the potential and playing down the risks and costs of their technology, the herd of investors and analysts is most likely underestimating the probability of this chance.  I don't know what the probability is, but I do know that if I can buy insurance against the chance Art Berman is right, the premium for that insurance will probably be low enough to make the deal attractive.

Insurance for Shale Gas

In the stock market, puts are insurance against the chance that the underlying stock will fall below the strike price.  If shale gas has been over hyped, the most exposed shale gas players will see large falls in their stock prices when the truth becomes accepted wisdom.  If shale gas actually holds as much promise as the companies are saying, such puts will expire worthless, but investor losses will be limited to the price (or "premium") paid for those puts.

In Mexico, I felt a traditional short was the best way to play the country's exposure to peak oil.  Mexico is exposed to a nearly inevitable decline in oil production, which will take a continuing and growing toll on the economy.  The only real question with Mexico is how much and how quickly declining oil production will have its effect on the Mexican economy.   In contrast, shale gas companies are facing an unknown chance of a catastrophic risk to their entire business model. The question here is not "how much and how fast" but "will it happen and how soon?"  In such a case, choosing an out-of the money put is the best way to place a bet.  If the chance that shale gas companies' business models are fatally flawed and will be recognized fairly quickly is higher than is currently implied by market prices, then it makes sense to buy the put.

Which Companies are Most Exposed?

I have not decided if a bet against shale gas is for me, so I have not done an analysis of which companies are most exposed.  Here are the factors to consider if you care to do your own analysis:

1. Which companies have the largest exposure to shale gas as a percentage of their business?
2. Are there exchange traded puts (LEAPS) available on the company's stock that expire in 2011 or 2012?
3. How liquid are these puts?  
4. What is the Put/Call ratio of the stock?

We only want to buy puts on companies that have nearly 100% of their business in shale gas.  Otherwise, good news in other parts of the company's business might overwhelm the damage done by bad economics in shale gas plays, and we might not profit even if shale gas turns out to be over hyped.

We also want to make sure that we can buy long term puts, because it often takes longer than skeptics expect for bad news to be recognized in the market.

Most exchange traded options are rather illiquid, meaning that you are either going to pay a high transaction cost in the form of the spread, or you will need to use a limit order and hope that the market moves to you.  I tend to prefer the latter tactic, but it means that not all of my intended trades ever execute.  A quick measure of liquidity is the spread between the bid and the ask as a percentage of the option price.  The smaller the spread, the better.

The Put/Call ratio is a rough measure of the relative demand for downside insurance (puts) compared to upside speculative interest (calls.)  Generally, the higher the Put/Call ratio, the more demand there is for downside insurance.  Since we are contemplating an essentially contrarian downside bet, we are more likely to be find puts at reasonable prices when the put/call ratio is low, indicating that there is relatively little interest from other investors in buying protection against declines in the stock price.

Company Response

A final sign that a shale gas company may be overstating its reserves is the strength of management's response to Dr. Berman's criticism.  I feel that a company with little to lose if Dr. Berman is correct will have little incentive to dispute his findings.  A company with a lot to lose is more likely to take an active approach to refuting his claims, possibly even taking legal action in the attempt to silence him.

Berman's top detractors are Devon Energy Corp. (DVN) and Chesapeake (CHK), so those two would also be at the top of my list when considering possible puts.

DISCLOSURE: None.

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here and in the comments are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 02:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Green Energy Investing for Experts, Part II

Tom Konrad, CFA

The next Tequila Crisis will be a peak oil crisis.  Mexico's government is dependant on revenues from declining oil fields.  The prospects for replacing these revenues look slim.  Shorting Mexico Country ETFs looks like a good way to hedge market exposure.

In Green Energy Investing For Experts, Part I, I discussed why it makes sense to use companies and sectors that may be hurt by peak oil or climate change as a hedge against the market exposure in a green portfolio.  In Mexico, peak oil is already a reality.  Production has already declined , but, because most investors do not understand the irreversible nature of declines in oil output, the Mexican stock market had not yet discounted the damage that peaking oil production is likely to do to the Mexican economy.

Below is a quote from the Oil Drum about Mexican oil production:

The President just changed the head of Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) as the revenues that the state gets from sale of its oil (making up nearly 40% of the federal budget) dropped 30% in the first half of the year. Current Mexican Government predictions that overall Mexican production will stabilize at 2.5 mbd over next year don’t reflect the collapse of Cantarell, and also fail to recognize that the promised increases in production from other fields are not reaching the goals set. It is only a few days since the production at Chicontepec was “evaluated” after falling some 12,000 bd short of target. This field is still in development, with ultimate production targeted at 550,000 to 700,000 bd by 2017, but as it is already 16% behind the mark that does not augur well for that future.

As Euan Mearns pointed out the fields at Ku-Maloob-Zaap (KMZ) which lie adjacent to Cantarell are being produced in the same way as Cantarell, and thus production has recently risen dramatically.

That means the Mexican Federal revenues dropped 12% in the first half of 2009 because of falling oil production.  This is not a one-time hit to the budget, but part of an ongoing decline.  That means that Mexican government revenues are permanently 12% lower, and likely to decline further as oil production declines further.  

I can't think of any good way to make up for the large and growing budget gap.  Raising taxes would flatten an economy already hurting from the financial crisis.  Cutting spending would do the same.  Cutting funding to museums is painful but insufficient.  Debt  is currently at 44% of GNP, a high level, but possibly manageable if the decline in revenues were cyclical, rather than permanent and ongoing.  With declining revenues, default and/or devaluation seems almost inevitable.  No option would be good for Mexican companies.  

Shorting Mexico

If the Mexican Governments' fiscal situation is so dire, it makes sense to short Mexican companies, especially if the short is part of a hedge against exposure to world financial markets.  With a hedge, the investor only needs to be confident that things are liable to get worse in Mexico more rapidly than elsewhere, or not get better as quickly.

That seems like a very good bet to me, so I looked for Mexican Country ETFs or closed-end funds to short.  I found 

• The Mexico Equity and Income fund (MXE)
• The Mexico Fund (MXF) and
• The iShares MSCI Mexico Index Fund (EWW)

The first two are closed-end funds with limited liquidity.  The iShares ETF, however, is widely traded and liquid.  It also has a good number of exchange traded options with decent liquidity, including long term LEAPS with maturities of over a year.

In terms of the hedging strategies I discussed in Part I, I prefer buying puts when I am anticipating a not-very-likely but potentially drastic event to affect the security.  As I discussed above, in Mexico's case we are dealing with a harmful event (declining oil revenues) that is already underway, and is likely to have harmful, if not disastrous effects.  

Because the effects of declining oil production could be disastrous for Mexican stocks, I would prefer to short EWW, rather than selling an in-the-money call.  An in-the-money call will cease producing gains once EWW has declined to its strike price; a short can be used to take advantage of declines all the way to zero.  

To protect against unforeseen positive events, I usually combine such a short with a long dated out-of-the-money call, or with an in-the-money short call.  In addition to liquidity, the availability of EWW LEAPS makes the ETF particularly attractive for this sort of hedging.

Unfortunately, as with many specialty ETFs, I found that shares of EWW were not available for shorting.  Because of this lack, I chose to use a short call spread instead of a short position combined with a long call.  This means that I will only be able to take advantage of large drops in the ETF by selling new with lower strike prices when the EWW share price falls below the strike price of my short call, which increases the cost of the overall transaction.

Conclusion

The profitability of this short position depends on either

1. A general world stock market decline or
2. The decline in Mexico's oil revenues being more drastic than most investors are anticipating.

I personally expect both, but if I'm wrong about one, there's a good chance the other will work in my favor.  There's always a chance I'm wrong about both, and that's why I buy the calls.  This series will continue with more short ideas that may benefit from peak oil or climate change regulation: Diversification makes a much sense on the short side as it does on the long side.

DISCLOSURE: Short EWW.

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here and in the comments are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Tom Konrad CFA

Dr. Arthur Berman, of Labyrinth Consulting Services has taken a hard look at actual production data from  Barnett Shale in 2007.  What he found should worry anyone expecting this abundant, relatively clean, domestic energy resource to be cheap.  It should especially worry investors in shale gas companies, such as CHK, DVN, and XTO.

In a panel entitled "Natural Gas Game Changers?" at the 2009 International Peak Oil Conference, Dr. Breman presented some results from his research into the actual production from the nearly 2000 horizontal gas wells drilled in the Barnett Shale in 2007.  The Oil Drum has some interesting background and comments here.  Here are a few of my take-aways from his presentation:

• The average well he studied will produce 0.95 Billion cubic feet (Bcf) of gas during its productive lifetime, yet he average production expected by Chesapeake (CHK), Devon Energy (DVN), and XTO Energy (XTO) is 2.65 Bcf, 2.2 Bcf, and 3.3 Bcf respectively.
• The gas companies are assuming a hyperbolic decline curve based on a very limited data set from a few wells, while Dr. Berman found, after studying far more wells, that an exponential decline is the best model for horizontal gas wells in the Barnett Shale.
• A $7-$8 price per million BTU is required for these companies to break even on a well that produces as much as 1.5 Bcf.
• Shale gas companies are funding drilling with debt and asset sales.
• There is not enough data on the later shale plays  such as the Haynesville.   Nevertheless, there is no early indication that recoveries will be higher in these new plays.
• Operators often state that the average well life will be 40+ years, but Dr Berman has found that the average commercial life is 7.5 years, with the most common well life being only four years.
• From a hallway conversation, Schlumberger (SLB) has a more effective fracking technology which could produce better results, but Schlumberger has not been able to find a shale gas player willing to try this technology.  The problem is that Schlumberger's technology produces lower initial flow rates, and the shale gas players are relying on high initial flow rates for their high well production projections.  They rely on these projections for their reserves estimates.  These estimates are essential to their ability to tap the financial markets for funding.
• US Geological Survey estimates for shale gas reserves are approximately three times too high.

Too good to be True?

I don't analyze the gas market, so I have no personal expertise to evaluate Dr. Berman's analysis.  However, they have the ring of truth.  Put simply, when something sounds too good to be true, investors are usually wise to assume that it is not true.  

Peter Dea, of Cirque Resources LP made the optimistic case.  He called shale gas the solution to his "three E's:" Energy Security, the Environment, and the Economy.   That sounds great to me, and he was quite convincing.  Towards the end of his talk, I was thinking about investments in natural gas pipeline companies with pipelines leading from the biggest concentrations of North American shale plays in the Rocky Mountains to areas of potential increasing demand, especially the Northeast US.  The Northeast would likely increasingly substitute natural gas for heating oil under a peak oil, abundant natural gas scenario.

I'm no longer considering gas pipeline investments.  If natural gas infrastructure is overbuilt in the expectation of abundant natural gas supplies, it is not only exploration and production companies with overly optimistic estimates that are likely to suffer.

DISCLOSURE: None.
DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Charles Morand

Last week, I conducted an analysis showing the lack of evidence supporting claims that oil and alt energy returns are strongly correlated (claims that sometimes come from outfits as reputable as Bank of America Merrill Lynch).    

I don't want to belabor this topic but I thought I would post the results of another, similar analysis I conducted following comments I received on how to improve the first one. In a nutshell, the comments suggested I do the following:

1) Look at daily correlations or even smaller periods, as "common knowledge" market movements can often dominate over the real relationship in the short and very short run

2) Look at absolute (price) correlations as well as relative (return) correlations (my first analysis looked only at relative movements)

3) Look at directionality (i.e. what % of the time do assets X and Y move in the same direction regardless of the size of the move)

4) Extent your analysis to five years or greater

New Analysis, Same Difference

The three sets of tables below show daily return correlation coefficients, daily price correlation coefficients and daily directionality statistics (% of days that the assets close Up, Down or No Movement together) for oil, nat gas, the S&P 500 and alt energy stocks.

The time periods have been extended from three to five years or since inception. The oldest alt energy ETF available is PBW that was listed on March 03, 2005 - not quite 5 years but a decent chunk of time nonetheless. The other 3 ETFs (sector specific) were all listed in the 2^nd half of 2008.









The first set of tables show that returns on oil are not particularly useful at explaining returns on alt energy stocks on a daily basis (let's say that we enter useful territory at 0.5 and above), although the results for PBW show the relationship strengthening somewhat in the last year (which has been anything but a normal year for the markets). These results are in line with those from my previous analysis which looked at weekly returns.

As far as absolute prices go (the second set of tables), correlation coefficients for oil and alt energy are high, but they are just as high if not higher for alt energy and the S&P 500. PBW shows the relationship strengthening over time, but it strengthened even more between oil and the S&P 500, something Tom opined might be the case a few months ago.

I don't find absolute price correlations all that useful. In the medium and long terms, returns matter far more than absolute prices. If a $1 movement in oil consistently results in a $1 movement in an alt energy ETF over the long run, the high coefficient could obscure a divergence trend between the returns on both assets as their prices rise.

Finally, the directionality tables (note that assets appear in a different order) show a fair bit of co-directionality between oil and alt energy (with the exception of PTRP [alternative transportation], something Tom and I discussed last week). But here again, the S&P 500 emerges as the stronger predictor.

Conclusion

I did not go any more granular than daily data: anything beyond that becomes relevant only to traders.

Once again, the general conclusion that emerges from this analysis is that oil - whether in terms of returns, prices or directionality - is not a particularly useful indicator to go by when investing in alt energy stocks, especially when compared to equity markets in general (i.e. the S&P 500).

The implication for investors is that they should not invest in alt energy as a hedge against or a play on rising oil prices. If anything, what little relationship does exist will probably tend to disappear overtime as alt energy and cleantech stocks respond more to core business fundamentals than to seemingly logical yet unproven narratives about external drivers.  

DISCLOSURE: None

Posted by Charles Morand at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Charles Morand

The relationship - or lack thereof - between oil prices and the performance of alt energy stocks has been a long-time interest of mine. I discussed it last in late March when I looked at correlations between the daily returns of alt energy and fossil energy ETFs. At the time, I found that only a weak relationship existed between the two and that if someone wanted to make a thematic investment play on Peak Oil, alt energy ETFs were not an ideal way to do so. 

Seeing as the popular press and countless "experts" continue to claim, whenever they get a chance, that the fortunes of alternative energy stocks are closely tied to the price of oil, I figured I would revisit the topic.

Fossil & Alternative Energy: The Relationship That Isn't There

This time around, I took a slightly different approach for my analysis: I correlated the weekly returns for US oil and US natural gas directly (as opposed to through an ETF) with returns for the S&P 500 and four alt energy ETFs. For US Oil and Nat Gas, I used price data provided by the Energy Information Administration here (Spot Price FOB Weighted by Estimated Export Volume) and here (Contract 1), respectively. I got ETF and S&P 500 price and index value data from Google Finance.

For the ETFs, I picked the Claymore/Mac Global Solar Index ETF (TAN) as the solar sector representative, because I took a position in it in March (which I liquidated last week even though I initially claimed I would hang on to it for 18 to 24 months. I have now grown more worried about downside risk than I am optimistic about upside prospects over that time horizon, so I took my money out).     

The other ETFs were: the First Trust Global Wind Energy Index (FAN) for wind, because it represents a more direct play on the sector than the alternative; the PowerShares Clean Energy (PBW) ETF for alt energy other than solar and wind, as an analysis I conducted earlier this year indicated it is the best way to access other sectors; and the Powershares Global Progressive Transport (PTRP) ETF, as it provides the only proxy I know of for returns on a basket of stocks with exposure to alternative modes of transportation.          

The graph below displays returns for all four ETFs, Oil, Nat Gas and the S&P 500 between Jan. 1, 2007 and Sep. 25, 2009 (click on the image for a large view).             



The table below shows returns and volatility for all seven assets over the same time interval but broken down into sub-periods. Seeing as 2009 and the post-Lehman collapse period have been eventful times to say the least, I thought it would make sense to create a few distinct sub-periods for analytical purposes.

What jumped out at me from this table is the relatively strong performance of the Powershares Global Progressive Transport (PTRP) ETF, even after adjusting for volatility. As the correlation analysis below demonstrates, this performance is not due to a rise in oil prices.

My going theory is that there is a Green Stimulus Effect at work given how much of global stimulus dollars have gone to transportation programs. This would be something worth exploring further but it certainly seems in line, at least on the surface, with a prediction I made nearly one year ago. 



The following three tables contain the real meat of my analysis. They are fairly self-explanatory: they show correlation coefficients between US Oil, US Nat Gas and the S&P 500 with all other assets. The correlations are for the periods outlined in the tables or since inception in the case of PTRP (Sep. 19, 2008), TAN (Apr. 18, 2008) and FAN (Jun. 20, 2008). The correlation coefficients above 0.5 are highlighted.




These results are, once again, in line with my expectations: there is little reason to believe that there is a strong relationship between changes in the price of oil and the performance of alt energy stocks. Even for natural gas, where one could expect a correlation with wind and solar given that all three fuels are used in power generation (or load abatement), there does not seem to be a strong relationship.

TAN and FAN have not yet been around for long enough to analyze returns going very far back into the past, but PBW has. Although the correlation between PBW's returns and oil's returns seems to have strengthened somewhat in the past year, it certainly does not qualify as strong.

I must admit that I was fairly surprised to find such a low correlation between the returns on oil and those on the PTRP ETF. My guess is that this ETF hasn't been around long enough, and that a relationship might emerge under an extreme Peak Oil scenario. That said, spending on public transportation is heavily dependent on the fiscal health of various levels of government, and we've just been moved from the emergency room to the critical care unit.    

On the other hand, I was not particularly surprised to see that returns for all four alt energy ETFs are strongly correlated with returns for the S&P 500 - that seems intuitive enough given that they all belong to the same asset class. 

Conclusion

It doesn't really matter how one slices and dices the data: there just does not appear to be a strong relationship between returns on oil and returns on alt energy stocks, including alternative modes of transportation.

That's not going to matter to a great many commentators who will continue to claim in newspaper and magazine articles, on blogs and on TV that the success of alt energy stocks is closely tied to the price of crude, even though that's mostly untrue.

Those who invest in alt energy should, however, pay close attention. These results suggest that there are far more important factors than oil prices, most notably returns in equity markets in general and regulatory incentives by governments.

There is a good chance that equity returns and returns on oil will diverge in the next couple of years as oil prices climb and equities stagnate or decline. If such a scenario materializes, those who have the relationship backwards could be in for unpleasant surprises.   
  
DISCLOSURE: None

Posted by Charles Morand at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Charles Morand

Peak Oil is a term that has become common currency in energy debates in last three years, due in large part to the spectacular rise in the price of crude between 2005 and the end of 2008. But what does Peak Oil actually mean and, more importantly, what do I mean when I use it in my articles?

In the purest and original sense of the term, Peak Oil refers to the point in time at which the rate of oil production (as measured, for instance, in barrels per day) peaks. This peak, according to the original theory, is then followed by a rapid and irreversible decline as attempts to extract more oil out of the ground run into the absolute geological limits of the resource. Wikipedia, as always, does a great job of explaining the theory of Peak Oil and provides a wealth of resources for those who would like to expand their knowledge further.

I do, on occasion, refer to Peak Oil in my articles, including one I wrote last week where I claimed that Peak Oil would be a powerful driver of gasoline prices in the next few years. Given how contentious this theory is, I wanted to clarify where I stood on it and how readers should interpret what I mean when they see those two words side-by-side in my posts.

Are we about to run into the absolute geological limits of oil in a way that won't allow us to increase production going forward? I don't know and I have nowhere near the appropriate level of knowledge to truly judge the data I see on this weekly. And frankly I don't particularly care; humanity will hit that peak at one point or another and the exact timing is of very little relevance to me.

What is far more relevant is the price point (and time) at which we hit the economic - rather than the geological - peak: let's call that Effective Peak Oil (EPO). EPO occurs where the marginal barrel of oil, which sets the price for all barrels of oil in the market, is so expensive that: (1) it triggers a process whereby governments, people and firms search for and find substitutes in a way that alters the structure of the economy and demand for oil forever and; (2) in the process, it also triggers a substantial economic shock. Does EPO look like a nice, smooth bell-shaped curve? Probably not, or at least not when plotted on a timescale relevant to most human beings (i.e. 60 to 90 years).

In the following interview he gave on CNBC last week (thanks to the Infectious Greed blog), Jeff Rubin, former Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets and author of the new book Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller, sums up my thinking on this issue better than I ever could. His most memorable quote: "What we are running out of is oil we can afford to burn."



DISCLOSURE: None

Posted by Charles Morand at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Charles Morand

Last Friday, the WSJ's Environmental Capital blog noted how, according to HSBC, growing government efforts to de-carbonize the electricity supply across the developed world would hurt makers of power generation technology with high exposure to coal.

Yesterday, the EIA released its Electric Power Monthly report for April 2009. In it, the agency notes the following:

The drop in coal-fired generation was the largest absolute fuel-specific decline from April 2008 to April 2009 as it fell by 20,551 thousand megawatthours, or 13.9 percent [...] The April decline was the third consecutive month of historically large drops in coal-fired generation from the same month in the prior year  [...]

Coal's drop is larger than the national decline at 5% between April 2008 and April 2009, and that of all other fuel sources but petroleum liquid:

Generation from conventional hydroelectric sources was the largest absolute increase in April 2009 as it was up by 3,918 thousand megawatthours, or 18.4 percent from April 2008. [...] Nuclear generation was up 3.1 percent. Generation from natural gas-fired plants was down by 1.5 percent. Net generation from wind sources was 34.8 percent higher. [...] Petroleum liquid-fired generation was down by 26.5 percent compared to a year ago [...]

The main culprit for the fall overall fall in generation is the significant decline industrial production:

 For April 2009, sales in the residential and commercial sectors both decreased by 0.7 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively, while sales in the industrial sector decreased by 13.6 percent, as compared to April 2008.

Yet coal remains the single most widely-used fuel in power generation in the US, accounting for more than nuclear, gas and renewables combined:

Year-to-date, coal-fired plants contributed 46.1 percent of the Nation’s electric power. Nuclear plants contributed 21.0 percent, while 20.5 percent was generated at natural gas-fired plants. Of the 1.2 percent generated by petroleum-fired plants, petroleum liquids represented 0.9 percent, with the remainder from petroleum coke. Conventional hydroelectric power provided 7.0 percent of the total, while other renewables (biomass, geothermal, solar, and wind) and other miscellaneous energy sources generated the remaining 4.1 percent of electric power [...]

Coal is indeed public enemy number 1 in the fight to de-carbonize the electricity supply and, as noted in the HSBC report, the elusive (I think illusive is actually more appropriate here) quest for carbon capture and storage is unlikely to change that.

The next two years are going to be interesting as a number of currents converge: (1) a price will be placed on carbon across America; (2) billions of dollars in subsidy money for environmental industries are going to trigger a significant amount of activity both in alternative energy and in energy efficiency; and (3) an economic recovery will eventually get underway and industrial production will rebound, raising the demand for electricity.

Are we truly witnessing the beginning of the end or is King Coal set to rebound with a vengeance as soon as demand picks up again? If coal declines in the U.S. abd Europe, will that make any difference at all given China's love affair with the black stuff?         

Power generation, transmission, distribution and management in North America offer very attractive investment opportunities for investors, and something tells me that the age of coal will end here before the world runs out of it, much like the stone age ended with plenty of stones left.

Posted by Charles Morand at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

John Petersen

On August 27th, we'll celebrate the 150th anniversary of Colonel Edwin Drake's completion of the world's first successful oil well near Titusville, Pennsylvania. That discovery and the many that followed planted the seeds of an industrial, economic and cultural revolution that transformed America from an agrarian backwater into a global superpower. For the next 114 years, oil was cheap, plentiful and the solid bedrock of the American Dream. Since the early '70s, however, the dream has gradually become a nightmare as domestic and global oil production began an irreversible decline.

My first graph comes from the Energy Information Administration and shows the annual U.S. production of crude oil over the last 150 years.



My second graph comes from Wikipedia and shows both nominal and constant dollar oil prices over the last 150 years (click on the graph for an expanded view).



The most interesting feature of the two long-term graphs is the general shape of the constant dollar oil price curve. If you smooth out the price shocks of the '70s and '80s, the graph shows a pronounced albeit elongated U-shape. While there are many theories about where oil prices will stabilize when the global economy begins to recover, it seems safe to assume that the price won't be $20 or even $40 per barrel.

My third graph takes historical oil price data I downloaded from the Energy Information Administration, adds a price channel overlay on the ten-year trend and shows why I believe oil prices will stabilize around $80 per barrel later this year and continue to move upward in the price channel over time.



Barring unexpected major new discoveries, there's only one way for oil prices to go over the long term.

It doesn't take much reflection to see that oil production, consumption and pricing have become major problems that can only get worse as six billion people in emerging economies strive to attain the lifestyle that 600 million Americans and Europeans have enjoyed for decades. The harsh but undeniable reality is that oil cannot sustain global economic growth for the next 20 years, much less the next 150. This reality is the driving force behind a concerted global effort to identify and harness alternative energy resources that can offer relevant scale solutions to a looming global shortage. Unfortunately, many alternative technologies are even less sustainable than oil because they depend on a smaller natural resource base.

There are only four unlimited energy sources known to man. The first is the internal heat of the earth itself. The second is the movement of the hydrosphere. The third is the movement of the atmosphere. The fourth is the sun. Where the Ancient Greeks taught that earth, water, air and fire were the classical elements, the new science of alternative energy teaches that earth, water, wind and sun are the true classics. When it comes to harnessing that energy, however, the only thing that matters in the long run is the mineral wealth of the earth's crust and oceans.

Many alternative energy technologies including windmills, PV solar cells, fuel cells, advanced batteries, and advanced electric motors depend on exotic metals that were pretty scarce to begin with. Like oil, each of these exotic metals will have a U-shaped price curve and while they're relatively cheap and relatively available for the time being, each will eventually hit an inflection point where they'll no longer be cheap or available. According to experts like Jack Lifton, many critical natural resources will reach their price inflection points within a few years, rather than decades or centuries. So far, the only alternative energy technologies I've identified that do not face daunting mineral scarcity risks are concentrated solar power, or CSP, and geothermal power.

Historically, investors have not had to worry about how natural resource constraints might impair their portfolio companies because the required raw materials have always been available for a price. As we enter the Age of Cleantech, the sixth industrial revolution, those rules will be re-written in ways that many will find shocking. I've previously described how raw materials shortages will impact the battery and hybrid electric vehicle markets. Over the next few weeks I hope to expand my focus to consider the principal raw materials that are critical to the development of a truly sustainable alternative energy infrastructure. Unlike this article, future installments will identify companies that enjoy specific natural resource advantages or suffer from specific natural resource risks, and hopefully help investors identify the likely winners and losers.

Given the long-standing animus between environmentalists who see themselves as protectors of the planet and miners who see themselves as simple providers of essential raw materials, I'm not optimistic that humanity will be able to solve its energy problems without catastrophic conflict and horrific environmental consequences. If we are to have any chance at all, the environmentalists must come to grips with the fact that a clean energy future depends on the robust and responsible development and use of all the earth's resources.

Readers that want to develop a deeper understanding of the issues and opportunities in the energy storage sector may want to join me in San Diego for Infocast's Storage Week on July 13th through 16th. The speaker's list includes more than 80 thought leaders from the battery industry, the government, the utility and automotive industries, and the research and development sector. I'll be participating in three panel discussions and hope to return home with new investable insights that I can share with readers in future articles. If something important happens while I'm on the road I'll try to cobble a quick blog entry together. Otherwise, you can look for my next article in a couple weeks.

Posted by John Petersen at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Two months ago, Tom told us how he'd dipped a toe into the black stuff (i.e. bought the OIL etf) on grounds that current supply destruction related to the depressed price of crude oil would eventually lead to the same kind of supply-demand crunch that led oil to spike during the 2004 to mid-2008 period.

If you need evidence that the current price of crude is wreaking havoc in the world of oil & gas exploration, look no further than Alberta and its oil sands. The oil sands contain the second largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia, but more importantly will account for the lion's share of incremental supply as conventional oil production continues to decline. The province's economy, which had been growing at a breakneck pace for the past five years, has come to a grinding halt: employment insurance claims grew by twice the Canadian average over the past year; personal bankruptcies jumped by 61%; and home foreclosures are on the rise. This is the result of significant project cancellations that will no-doubt limit Alberta's ability to ramp-up output once prices climb back again.

It is thus no surprise that Cambridge Energy Research Associates and others are warning about the economic hazards of curtailing investments into conventional and alternative energy.  

Alt Energy & Fossil Energy

Oil being the most followed of the energy commodities, it is no surprise that it is receiving most of the media attention. Arguably, natural gas and coal prices should matter more to alt energy investors than oil prices: according to REN21, of the $71 billion invested in renewable energy in 2007, 47% went into wind and 30% into solar PV. Both technologies are used for power generation (investments into transportation alternatives are comparatively small) and, in the US, coal and natural gas are the dominant fuels in power production. The relentless focus of the popular press and other pundits on the the economic case for alternative energy being closely tied to the price of crude oil is thus mostly misplaced.

Case in point, last November, a reader wrote me with a correlation analysis conducted over a 5-year period (or, where there wasn't five years' worth of data, since inception). The correlation coefficients between the returns on crude oil and those on alt energy securities were as follows: GEX, 0.19; PBW, 0.14; TAN, 0.18; and the index underlying FAN, 0.19. These are, by most measures, pretty low correlation coefficients. Given the reader's reputation, I trusted the numbers. 

Nevertheless, in alt energy investing as in life, perception is often reality. Given the many signs pointing toward a rapid escalation in crude prices - demand can and will rebound far quicker than supply - I decided to re-explore the relationship between fossil and alt energies. If a strong positive correlation can be found between alt energy investments and crude oil, natural gas and coal investments, there may not be a need to dip a toe into the black (or colorless) stuff at all - one can focus on alt energy alone and still enjoy the ride up.

In order to verify this, I ran a basic correlation analysis with the daily returns on the KOL (coal), OIL (crude) and UNG (nat gas) ETFs/ETN on the one end, and the daily returns on the alt energy ETFs on the other. I got the return data from Yahoo Finance using the Adjusted Close prices that include dividends and splits. Given the results above from our reader's analysis, I only went back six months to see if the (lack of a) relationship still held.   

OIL and UNG track the prices of futures contracts in the underlying commodities, so they are pretty decent securities to use to estimate the returns on crude and nat gas investments. KOL, on the other hand, tracks a basket of coal company stocks. It's the closest thing I could find but it's not ideal as stock returns don't necessarily track commodity returns. For instance, large mining firms will often sell a high proportion of their output through fixed-price contracts, preventing them from benefiting from sudden surges in spot prices. 

The boxes delineate general alt energy ETFs (ICLN to GEX), the solar ETFs (TAN, KWT) and the wind ETFs (FAN, PWND). There aren't any notable differences between the ETF categories, with the most significant differences being between the fossil fuel ETFs/ETN and the alt energy ETFs.   

The relationship between alt energy stocks and coal stocks appears relatively strong. However, in the absence of return data on coal, it's hard to tell whether investing in alt energy stocks (or coal stocks for that matter) is an optimal way of playing increasing coal prices. Given the structure of the coal market, with significantly less involvement by purely financial actors than in oil or natural gas markets, this is a hard one to play for retail investors, although data appears to suggest there is a play.

Though the correlation appears to have strengthened somewhat between crude oil and alt energy investments in the last six months, it remains weak enough that if someone wants to play a return to expensive oil they are still better off dipping a toe (or even an entire foot!) in the black stuff. The same holds for nat gas.

This quick and dirty analysis wouldn't withstand close methodological scrutiny. My only intent here was to see whether these relationships were worth exploring further - they are not. If you want to benefit from crude oil and nat gas price increases and have no ethical qualms about it, invest in them directly!

DISCLOSURE: Charles Morand has a long position in TAN.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a registered investment advisor. The information and trades that I provide here are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Charles Morand at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

by Tom Konrad, Ph.D.  

A couple years ago, I began to see reports that coal supplies might not last the 200+ years we've all been lead to believe, so I wrote an article about what you could do to prepare your portfolio for Peak Coal.

Now two years have passed, and Peak Coal is undeniably 2 years closer.  (Did you ever wonder why people who have been saying that we have 200 years of coal for 20 years aren't now talking about 180 years of coal?)  But more than being 2 years closer, the evidence continues to mount.  Caltech Professor David Rutledge, has been spreading the peak coal word for most of the time since.  I recommend the video of his 2007 lecture on the subject.

It's great that the NY Times is asking "Is America Ready to Quit Coal?" but the real question may be "Will we have any choice?"

On February 12th, Clean Energy Action released a report on Powder River Basin coal supplies, based in part on a 2008 USGS report.  The Powder River Basin matters because Western coal has been the only source of new coal production in the US for the last two decades.  Appalachian and Interior coal production has been declining, despite mostly increasing prices, and uniformly increasing prices since 2003.  Northern Appalachian coal production having peaked in the middle of the last century, while Interior coal production peaked at the start of this decade.  When production declines in the face of rising prices, constraints other than economics must be coming into play.  Future increases in production in these regions seems unlikely.

Of the top 6 coal producing states in the US, only Wyoming and Montana are still increasing production.  West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Texas all peaked in the 1900s.  With existing Wyoming mines, which dominate current production, all having less than 20 years of reserves remaining, only Montana will remain... and we simply don't know much about the geology to know how much can be recovered.  Jim Hansen, author of the Master Resource Report, tells me that available rail supply lines out of Montana are likely to be another critical limiting factor on that state's production.

The 2007 report from Energy Watch Group (which triggered my earlier article), David Rutledge, and Clean Energy Action all found that what we don't know about our coal reserves far outweighs what we do know.   What we do know should be very worrying to anyone who hopes that we might be able to replace our current coal fired electricity generation with any sort of "Clean Coal."  Any attempt to sequester CO2 by pumping it underground or to the bottom of the sea would require considerably more energy than simply releasing it into the atmosphere, as we do now.  That energy would come at a cost of less net energy from what will likely prove to be very limited coal supplies.

Peak Coal Accounting

If "Clean Coal" can be made to work, and we are able to replace part of our electricity supply with this technology, it seems increasingly unlikely that we will be able to supply as much electricity from coal 30 years from now as we do today.  Coal plants are intended as 50 to 60 year investments, and part of the reason they are considered so "cheap" is that the construction costs are depreciated over more than half a century of payments.  If, in reality, those construction costs must be paid over a shorter period, the effective cost of coal fired electricity will be considerably higher... even if the accounts do not yet show it.

Transitioning away from coal now makes sense both from an economic and climactic standpoint.  If new coal plants will have shorter than expected useful lives simply because of the limited supply of coal, an honest accounting cannot spread construction costs 60 years, as has been done in the past.  A shorter useful life means significantly raising the accounting cost of coal power per kWh, even before we place any price on carbon emissions or other environmental damage.

Carbon Capture and Storage

That is not to say that improving Carbon Capture and Sequestration technology will not be useful.  Even without building new coal plants, we have a massive fleet of existing coal plants which are already spewing carbon into the atmosphere.  According to a recent Inside Renewable Energy podcast, French utility EON puts current carbon capture technology costs about $40 per ton of CO2, and they hope to get the cost down to $20.  This does not include the cost of pressurizing the gas and injecting it into some form of permanent storage.  (Even permanent storage may not be so permanent.) Capturing CO2 for industrial uses can make economic sense today, and the economics will only get better when we begin to have reasonable prices for carbon emission.  However, cleaning up the emissions of currently built fossil-fueled generation is not the same as investing new money in generation which we hope to clean up later.

We have the technologies today to begin this transition, and other promising technologies at least as near to development as "Clean Coal."  Wind power is nearly as cheap as coal with current accounting.  If we reassess the useful lives of prospective new coal plants, and put a price on carbon emissions, it will be much cheaper.

Building out the Smart Grid and additional Transmission capacity will allow us to integrate much more wind than skeptics currently think is possible.  A recent report from the researchers at the Rocky Mountain Institute and the University of Colorado Boulder found that optimized diversified portfolios in the Midwest of wind and solar generation were 55% more reliable (measured by the variability of output) than the average individual site used in the study. For large scale baseload and dispatchable generation, Concentrating Solar Power needs only continued price improvement which will come from mass deployment, and a more robust national grid.   For large-scale clean baseload power anywhere in the US, Enhanced Geothermal Systems are likely to be easier and cheaper to develop than "Clean Coal."

All of these are the right investments for the country, but they are also likely to be good moves for investors.  We may still have 30 years before coal production in the US peaks.  The stock market reaction will not wait until the actual peak... the stock market reaction will happen when sufficiently many investors realize it's coming. 

How many more reports will that take, I wonder?

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here and in the comments are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 03:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I was tempted by greed, and I succumbed.

Last week, I bought the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN (OIL), at $19.75 a share.  

The Temptation

I made the trade as a simple speculation.  I watch oil because the oil price is one of the key drivers of investor interest in alternative energy, although oil is only a true competitor for biofuel companies, not producers of wind turbines (at least until there are a significant number of plug-in electric vehicles.)

With crude trading below $40/barrel, oil producers are cutting back on new drilling.  This is compounded by the extremely difficult financing environment.  Even oil-rich Dubai wants to sell recently acquired luxury retailer Barney's to raise cash.  Many OPEC nations cannot finance their budgets with crude at $60 a barrel, let alone below $40, so they will have to cut spending, even if they cheat on their quotas.  In Texas, the number of active oil rigs has declined 20% since August.

All of this is against a backdrop of relentless depletion and declining production from existing wells.  In 2007 and 2008, with oil prices at record levels, and drillers going all-out, total liquid fuels production increased only slightly, and all of that increase was attributable to OPEC and biofuels.  As noted above, most OPEC nations need $60 oil to fund their budgets, while many biofuels are not competitive below $50 a barrel, although plunging grain prices may help this... but only be reducing farmers' incentives to plant.  I conclude that no significant new supply will come on until crude is again in the $50-$75 range.  

I have little doubt that demand can continue to fall from current levels, but the longer the price stays below the $50 level, the faster declines at existing fields will cause overall production declines to accelerate.  Even if world oil demand falls in 2009, supply is likely to fall faster, eating into current record oil stocks.  With underlying decline rates from existing fields as high as 11% (Mexico), supply will fall faster than demand unless higher prices encourage new supplies.

Moral Qualms

My colleague Bill Paul calls me "Pure Green" because I normally will not touch fossil fuel investments.  I firmly believe that our investing should be guided by moral principles, even if it means making less money.  So why am I going against my belief that we must shift away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible by buying a proxy for that poster child of cheap, polluting energy, crude oil?

Excuses

1. I can tell myself that the money I make today will be invested in fixing the problem tomorrow.  Although this may sound like a fatal moral compromise, it is similar to the compromise made by buyers of solar panels.  The high embodied energy of solar panels almost certainly comes from fossil fuels, and the buyer believes that after a few years to pay back the fossil energy cost [pdf], the extra energy produced later justifies the initial cost.  This argument only works if I am likely to make money on my speculation.  If I lose money, then not only may I encourage the drilling for oil, but I've lost opportunities to encourage clean alternatives. 
2. I plan to sell when oil hits $60 (which should give me about a 60% gain.  I'd be happy with 60% even if it takes 3-5 years.)  As I discussed above, I don't believe that oil prices below $60 will encourage new drilling.  Low prices are also hurting clean alternatives, while encouraging people to use more oil today.

Do these excuses justify my speculation?  I believe they do, but if you are considering doing likewise, you may find a different balance.  I think it's more important that we ask ourselves and those who manage our money about the moral aspects of our investments, not just about how much money we're likely to make (or lose.)  Many former Madoff investors will now agree.  If I lose money on this speculation, I will not only feel the loss financially, I will also have lost the opportunity to make the world an ever-so-slightly better place.  That will hurt much more, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, than what I lost on VRB Power or Electro Energy last year.

A Note On Oil Speculation

I've joined the ranks of oil speculators, who were widely blamed for the run-up in oil prices last year (although, unsurprisingly, they received no credit for the decline.)  Some of these "speculators" were mere hedgers, such as United Airlines (UAL), who have recently lost a great deal of money in the decline.  The oil market does not ask if an investor is buying to hedge an underlying risk, or just to make money.  The size of the purchase moves the market, not the motivation for the purchase.

How can an airline be hurt by both rising and falling prices?  They weren't: UAL was hurt by poor planning.  By not hedging when prices were low, and then hedging when they were high, they lost money in both directions.  Most speculators suffer the same fate: If more speculators are buying when prices are high (they must be, or they would not be "causing" the rise,) then more speculators will lose money, simply because they are buying high, and must inevitably sell low.  In other words, attempts to ban speculation are disguised attempts to ban foolishness.  Good luck on that.

I hope that my speculation is of the rarer, and volatility-decreasing "buy low, sell high" variety.  I'm quite confident that we'll see $60 oil again, although I don't know when.  But the sooner it happens, the better, because the longer it takes, the harder it will be to increase oil supplies in response, and the sharper the next price spike will be.

Tom Konrad, Ph.D.

DISCLOSURE: Tom Konrad owns OIL.

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here and in the comments are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The recent slump in the price of energy commodities that has accompanied slumps in the rest of the market has reignited an old debate: to what extent is the performance of alt energy companies (and their stock prices) linked to fossil energy prices? People who argue that the two are closely connected implicitly believe that policy-makers and other important economic actors view alt energy mainly as a hedge against high energy prices, and therefore believe that a drop in fossil energy costs will result in a fall from grace for alt energy (there is evidence that at least some firms view renewable energy as such, providing credence to this argument). Those who, like myself, believe that the fundamental performance of firms in the sector is not connected to the price of fossil energy (considerations of input costs aside), argue that the policy commitment behind the growth of much of renewable energy for the past few years has had more to do with political positioning on the increasingly-salient environment file.  

In a simpler follow-up to an article I wrote in July, I decided to put together a chart looking at the performances of a few ETFs since early July, when the commodity bubble burst. I included the following: (a) the S&P 500, as a general benchmark of performance for equity markets; (b) the USO ETF, which tracks the price of crude oil; (c) the UNG ETF, which tracks the price of natural gas; (d) the PWND ETF, which I believe provides more direct exposure to the wind sector than does the other wind ETF, FAN; and (e) the KWT ETF for solar, for no particular reason. Tom wrote a useful article on alternative energy and cleantech ETFs and mutual funds in July, for those who missed it. I apologize for the quality and look of the graph - I picked the background that made it easiest to see the lines, and BigCharts doesn't exactly allow you to produce nice, clean charts.

 

If we accept that current stock prices reflect expectations of future firm performance, looking at this chart certainly seems to indicate that investors believe the outlook for the wind and solar sectors is grim. Indeed, not only have wind and solar stocks fallen much further than the market as a whole (>30% for solar!), but investors have discounted them beyond the fundamental risk they see in falling fossil energy prices. This outcome is broadly in line with the efficient market hypothesis - alt energy outperformed the market as a whole over the past couple of years because alt energy investors took greater risks.   

For the solar sector, this drop can be explained by concerns over a perfect storm brewing over the industry in 2009, coupled with uncertainty over the sustainability of very generous subsidy regimes in key markets like Spain and Germany. For wind, which relies for its deployment on project finance-type of arrangements with high gearing ratios, concerns over rising debt costs have added to anxiety about declining natural gas prices, wind's main economic competitor in the US.

In light of this, what's the answer to the main question posed initially about the relations to fossil energy prices? It's not clear. It is still too early to draw conclusions about any clear relationship between the performance of solar and wind firms and the prices of oil and natural gas. It is also impossible at this stage to disentangle all of the headwinds facing solar and wind and assert that energy prices play a larger role than other factors. In my view, if policy commitments to alternative energy are strengthened rather than weakened during this crisis, which looks like it might be the case, it would represent the clearest evidence yet that policy-makers pay little to no attention to energy prices in deciding on support measures for the sector. In any event, what policy-makers believe may not matter much of the IEA is right about global oil supplies. In either case, alt energy investors win.

DISCLOSURE: Charles Morand does not have a position in any of the securities listed here.

Posted by Charles Morand at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A couple of interesting items in the news yesterday on topics dear to alt energy investors' hearts.

Firstly, a new report (PDF document) by CIBC World Markets arguing that globalization could be reversed by high oil prices. The folks at CIBC WM contend that growing shipping costs driven by higher prices for transportation fuels could erase the Asian labor cost advantage, driving a renaissance in North America's manufacturing sector. What's the main culprit? Peak Oil, albeit not called directly Peak Oil. I watched an interview with Jeff Rubin, CIBC WM's Chief Economist, on Bloomberg's In Focus yesterday, and he pin-pointed supply problems as underlying what he saw as a secular upward trend in oil prices. Mr. Rubin certainly didn't appear to be of the opinion that major new supply would come on-stream in the foreseeable future, and believed that the solution to this energy crunch rested with demand-side management. He was therefore opposed to lowering taxes on fuel on grounds that that would do nothing to curtail demand.

The second thing that caught my attention yesterday was an article in the WSJ (subscription required to view the full version) discussing new research by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) showing a marked increase in the cost of building power plants. Last Thursday, I wrote an article discussing the potential for energy efficiency. As noted in the WSJ article, certain utilities are turning to efficiency measures like smart metering as a way not to have to build new generation capacity because of growing costs. See the WSJ Environmental Capital blog's summary of the article.

Taken together, these two pieces of information are in line with my belief that a significant push toward efficiency and demand-side management across energy-intensive sectors is about to get underway, as it already has in the airline industry.

Posted by Charles Morand at 07:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The most recent issue of Fortune has an excellent interview with Jim Rogers, of Investment Biker and Adventure Capitalist fame, as well as an excerpt from is new book, A Bull in China.  Jim saw the start of the current commodities supercycle early (peak oil is just one driving force for this cycle), but it still has a long way to run, in my opinion, as well as Jim's.   Almost everything has some dependence on energy prices, because of either the embodied energy, or because if the embodied energy of substitutes.   As Jim says in the interview,

Cotton is a good way to buy oil-- hear me out.  Much apparel has been made from synthetics.  Synthetics come from oil.  So many textile makers are converting back to natural fibers because oil is at an all-time high.  So if you want to buy oil, buy sugar [because it is easy to turn into ethanol], or buy cotton.  What I'm buying right now is agriculture.

I hadn't thought of this cotton-oil connection before, and it's drawing these connections before others do that makes a great investor.  Incidentally, cotton and oil are also connected more directly via the use of oil to make pesticides and fertilizer, and indirectly when land formerly used to grow cotton is shifted to grain production because of rising ethanol prices, but I think the substitution effect Jim talks about is likely to be strongest.

Tomorrow I'll share with you one of Jim's stock picks that I think fits well into an Alternative Energy portfolio.

Posted by Tom Konrad at 03:56 PM | Permalink

Last week, we alerted you to a report from Germany's Energy Watch Group called “Coal: Resources and Future Production,��? which predicts peak coal by 2025.  Readers of AltEnergyStocks are doubtless familiar with peak oil, the inevitable fact that as we consume a finite resource (oil reserves) at some point the rate of that consumption must peak, and taper off.  Serious arguments about peak oil center around "when" oil production (and consumption) will peak, not "if."  

The same it true for other finite natural resources, such as natural gas, uranium, and even coal.  The difference with coal is the received wisdom: that the US has two centuries of remaining coal reserves, with the (often unspoken) implication that there is no need to worry about it in our lifetimes.  Other reports have drawn attention to peaking coal supplies before this, and I have no doubt that more will follow.  

How to beat the market

As an advisor seeking superior returns for my clients, I take reports like this seriously.  Dismissing them out of hand because it disagrees with the consensus view is not only close-minded, but a massive missed opportunity.  That's because, in order to achieve superior returns, I must accomplish four things:

1. Have hypotheses that differ from the consensus view.
2. Act (i.e. make investment decisions based) on those hypotheses.
3. Be correct as often as not.
4. Have a mechanism for testing the hypotheses, to enable a change of tactic when a hypothesis is proven wrong.

The first two are easy... but without  numbers 3 and 4, I'd be just another whack-job in the blogosphere losing my own and my client's money.  Here's how my hypothesis looks for peak coal:

1. A hypothesis.  The consensus is too complacent about the supply of coal.  Note that I don't need to pin down a precise date for the peak in coal production (worldwide or in the US), I simply have to identify something I believe the majority of investors have gotten wrong and the direction of the error.  My hypotheses are normally of this form: how the consensus view is incorrect.

2. See "How to prepare your portfolio for Peak Coal" below.

3. You don't have to be right all the time.  One of the great benefits of diversification is that it allows an investor to make mistakes.  None of us is right all the time.  For example, I've been bearish on the market as a whole since 1998... which means I was wrong in 1998 and 1999, right in 2000, 2001, and 2002, and wrong since then.  However, despite the fact that I was wrong about the market for six out of the last nine years, over that time period, I put a large chunk of the money which I otherwise might have allocated to US stocks into foreign currency denominated bonds mostly through close-end funds such as the Aberdeen Global Income Fund (AMEX: FCO), because I expected a general decline in the dollar. Note that is is a vast oversimplification of one choice taken within my managed portfolios over the period, and should be considered educational, not taken as an example of past returns.  Looking at this chart comparing SPY and FCO (I'm using SPY as a simple proxy for the US stock market as a whole) for the last nine years,  you will note that SPY outperformed FCO over the period by about 25%.  However, over that time SPY has had an average yield of around 1.5%, while the yield on FCO has averaged around 7%, over 9 years, that difference amounts to a 35-50% advantage for FCO (depending on the investor's tax rate), for an advantage in total returns for FCO of between 10% and 25%, or 1 to 2% compounded annually.  

Also note that risk (measured in terms of volatility) for FCO has been much lower than that of the market over that time period.  So while I was wrong about the market 2/3 of the time over that period, I was correct about the general decline in the dollar a bit more than half of the time, and the extra income I earned with my risk adverse strategy of investing in bonds rather than stocks left me with a slight advantage over the period.   Through these slight advantages, amounting to only 1-2% per year, a successful investor can dramatically increase his returns over the long term.  Once again, these returns are only an example, showing the long term advantage of acting on the hypothesis that both the US market and the dollar would under perform over the last 9 years.  I still believe both these to be true, and as a result, I and my clients continue to be over-allocated to foreign bonds, and under-allocated to US Stocks (with the exception of alternative energy.)  Nevertheless, past returns are no guarantee of future results, which is why it's important to...

4. Quickly recongnize when you're wrong. Thinking again about my hypothesis the market is overly complacent about coal supplies, how can I know when it is incorrect, either because I was wrong to begin with, or because conditions have changed?  That could happen because coal will continue to be as easy to mine as most investors think, or because they become as worried about coal supplies as the situation warrants.  China, where the most rapid coal depletion is taking place, may indeed recognize the severity of coming shortages, but my hypothesis is primarily about investor in US markets.  Until recently, the Chinese have mostly confined themselves to buying huge chucks of our Treasury and other agency debt, but we see them rushing to secure long term coal contracts in Africa and elsewhere.  Since China is a net coal importer, it is much harder for them to be as complacent about coal reserves as we are in the US.  At the moment, I don't see any worrying at all about coal reserves in the popular press, and reporters typically accept the "200 years of coal" line without question.  When that changes, it will be time to re-evaluate.  As to my simply being wrong in my pessimism, even the normally Pollyanna-ish EIA estimates, coal production in the US will peak in 2060, which implies a peak in world production much sooner, because the US has the lion's share of remaining reserves.  I don't believe that a world peak in coal production even as late as 2050 has yet been acknowledged.  When it is, it will again be time to reevaluate this hypothesis.

What to expect from Peak Coal. 

While I usually only make investments that I expect to pay off in 5-10 years time, and even the earliest predicted peak for world coal production is still 18 years off, the precise date of the peak is not at all important for the purposes of investing.  What is important is when we will see unexpected price rises as demand adjusts to constrained supply.  As an example, the first effects of peak oil are not happening today; instead they happened in the early 70's, when United States production peaked, and Texas could no longer act as the swing producer of oil, leading to a shift of production in the Middle East.  Because of the new investment required, that shift took a number of years, during which time oil stayed at historically high levels, until new production caught up with demand.

Could something similar happen with coal?  If any country is likely to be a driving force for world demand, sending prices up for everyone, that country is likely to be China, which is by far the largest producer of coal, but has only half the reserves of the US (according to the EWG report.)  How many times have we heard that the US is the "Saudi Arabia of Coal"?  If it is, the China is the "United States of Coal."  I think a price spike in coal available for worldwide trade is the most likely investable event for peak coal in the near future.

Here are some effects I would expect from such a price spike.

1. Coal prices in current coal importers would skyrocket.
2. Coal prices in areas with easy access to ports would also rise dramatically.
3. Transportation links such as rail from coal producing regions to ports, ports, and bulk shipping would also benefit.
4. The price of electricity in regions relying on coal fired power (other than mine-mouth plants) would increase several cents per kWh.

How to prepare your portfolio for Peak Coal.

1. Companies owning or discovering new coal reserves in coal importing regions will benefit dramatically.  (I'm far from an expert on coal companies, so I have no specific recommendations here.  I also avoid investment in coal because of the effects of mountaintop removal and global warming.)
2. Coal mining companies with easy access to ports will also benefit dramatically. 
3. Rail lines with connections to large port facilities would benefit, as well as the port operators.  (Again, I'm no expert.)
4. Construction companies able to quickly build rail lines and expand port facilities will also benefit. (I don't know much, do I?)
5. Shipping companies who own large ore/coal carriers will benefit.  Shipyards which produce these ships likewise. 
6. Companies that use coal for purposes other than electricity generation will be hurt.  Avoid coal-to-liquids companies such as Sasol [NYSE:SSL], Rentech [NYSE:RTK] and Syntroleum [NASDAQ:SYNM].  I wouldn't advise shorting these, unless you are a lot better than I am at anticipating price changes in energy markets: they'll all profit from Peak Oil, perhaps long before they are clobbered by Peak Coal.
7. Alternatives to coal based electricity will also benefit.  Because coal plants supply base-load power, the first beneficiaries will be Nuclear power and Geothermal, both of which are also inherently base-load power sources.  The easiest way to invest in Nuclear today is by buying uranium miners an processors.  I'm personally not a big fan of this approach, but you'll find a lot of other people's uranium picks over at Seeking Alpha.  Warning: there is a lot of talk about Peak Uranium as well.  Since I have decided to stay away from Nuclear because of the proliferation and hazardous waste effects, I have not made an attempt to figure out how serious this will be for miners.  This brings up another general point about investing: you don't have to have a hypothesis about everything... nor should you.  It is much better to have a few good ideas than a stack of half-thought out ideas.
8. Geothermal is an under-appreciated renewable form of electricity generation.  Ormat Technologies (NYSE:ORA) is the premier geothermal company, and should be the centerpiece of a geothermal portfolio.
9. Concentrating Solar Power CSP can be combined with thermal storage to produce base load power (or even peaking power.)  North American companies are only now starting to discover CSP, wit the exception of FPL (NYSE:FPL), which owns most of the original CSP plants built in the United States in the 1970s and '80s.  European Conergy AG (an engineering firm) and Iberdrola SA (a utility) are actively pursuing CSP.   I'm also watching an Australian company called Enviromission (EVOMY.PK), which is developing Solar Chimney projects, which can easily be a source of base load power, and are remarkably low-tech (which leads to very low running costs.)
10. Biomass, such as wood waste and trash incineration  is a good source of small amounts of base load power.  Boralex (TSX: BLX)) and The Boralex Power Income Fund (TSX: BPT.UN) have experience with biomass.  Another option I like are forestry and paper companies, especially ones committed to sustainability such as Catalyst (TSX: CTL) and Domtar (NYSE:UFS.)  Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE: WMI) has a variety of power generation projects fueled by the trash it collects.
11. Power storage technologies such as Compressed Air Energy Storage and Flow Batteries which can allow intermittent sources of energy such as wind to meet base load power needs. One flow battery company I like is VRB Power (Toronto Venture: VRB.)
12. Hydropower based utilities, such as Idacorp (NYSE:IDA) will increase their cost advantage over coal, and their dispatchable nature will become even more valuable as a balance for intermittent wind.  Some may also have valuable opportunities to take advantage of pumped hydro power storage.

Given the uncertainties about the timing and effects of the early stages of peak coal, I find it fortunate that a lot of the things I'm doing to prepare my managed portfolios for carbon regulation are the precise things I should be doing to prepare for rising coal prices.  I have little doubt that serious regulation of CO₂ emissions is on its way, and quite likely sooner and much more comprehensively than most investors are prepared for.  But that's a hypothesis for another day.

Links:

Energy Watch Group report

Discussion at The Oil Drum

EIA Coal data

Discussion of the EIA's most recent Energy Outlook at The Cost of Energy

DISCLOSURE: Tom Konrad and/or his clients have positions in FCO, ORA, FPL, Iberdrola, BPT.UN, CTL, UFS, WMI, VRB, and IDA.

DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.

 

Posted by Tom Konrad at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)