Energy and the Environment: Latest Financial Topics from Forbes Magazine

Citigroup’s 28% Plunge In Profits Is A Worrying Sign On The State Of Emerging Markets
Citigroup reported net income of $3.5 billion, or $1.10 a share on revenues of $17.6 billion, slightly surpassing analysts estimates.

Don’t Expect Any Real Oil Production Freezes From Doha
When the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meet in Doha, Qatar on Sunday along with Russia, Mexico and five other non-OPEC producers, financial markets will look for any signs of an oil production freeze deal. However, that cast of characters won’t agree on the shape of the table, never mind on a hard production freeze.

What To Expect At The Doha Oil Freeze Talks
Despite the conflicting signals from Moscow and Riyadh, the range of likely outcomes from the Doha meeting has not fundamentally narrowed. A comprehensive deal that includes Iran is not to be expected. It is also unlikely that the meeting in Doha will end with a complete breakdown in talks. However, a substantive “agreement in principle” that commits the participants to continued negotiations could provide the market with a roadmap and potentially create the time and space to eventually bring Iran to the table.

U.S. To Send Fighter Jets To Philippines, Tensions In South China Sea Mount
Events in the turbulent South China Sea are developing so quickly that it’s becoming easy to miss them , even for those of us based in the region. However, in that realization is a hidden danger, many Americans are getting used to news about the troubled water-way and fail to see just how dangerous the region has become.

The World’s Biggest Public Energy Companies 2016

An Oil-Price Recovery? We’re Not There Yet
Oil prices have increased 60% since late January. Is this an oil-price recovery?

Ongoing Fight Between Hardliners And Reformers Threatens The Future Of Iranian Oil
Iranian President Rouhani’s supporters emerged victorious from Iran’s recent parliamentary elections but the country’s oil industry remains caught in the crosshairs of a political battle between hardline conservatives and moderate reformers.

The Burgeoning Trend of Corporate Climate Policy Support
As the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules limiting carbon emissions from power plants come under a final attack before moving to a crucial legal test in the U.S. Court of Appeals in June, a stark pattern has emerged among companies lining up to support or oppose these reasonable, urgently-needed standards.

Institutional Investors Were Too Late To The Shale Game. Will They Ever Learn?
Few things bother institutional investors more than having to explain to their clients why they are sitting out the latest hot thing. There is no better example than their piling into shale oil in late 2013 and all through 2014 after all the warning signs pointed to the exits.

Clinton Says Blankenship Got Off Easy And Vows To Stiffen Penalties For Workplace Safety Violations
It’s a topic once largely confined to the hollers of Appalachia. But now coal mining is part of the national dialogue. And for better or worse, it’s becoming a political issue that is part of both the presidential debates and those taking place at the state level where coal has long-powered local economies.

Stock Performance Under Every Federal Reserve Chairman

Is The Market’s Rally Real Or Ephemeral?
Now that the stock market has again demonstrated grit and determination to surprise with the Dow industrials racing up to its highest level since November, the usual investor question emerges: Is the rally real — or ephemeral?

Wells Fargo’s Oil Misfire Pushes Profits Below $1 A Share, But No Cause For Alarm
The quarterly earnings of Wells Fargo, the nation’s third largest bank by assets, are often seen as a barometer for the U.S. economy given the lender’s heavy domestic exposure and its expansive operations in consumer facing businesses like mortgage and retail banking. Recently, however, bank investors have taken a close eye on Wells Fargo’s lending to the oil and gas industry, where it has some $42 billion in exposure, mostly to sub-investment grade rated corporations.

Foreclosures Of The Rich And Famous

Peabody Bankruptcy Offers Stark Warning To Oil And Gas Groups Of Risks Of Ignoring Climate Change
The announcement that Peabody, the world’s largest private sector coal miner, has filed for bankruptcy has sent shockwaves through the fossil fuel industry and it acts as a warning to oil and gas companies – and their investors – about how quickly things can change.

Retrofits Are Key to an Energy Efficient Building Stock
By Benjamin Freas

Market Chatter Before Oil Producers’ Doha Talks Keeping Crude Futures Above $40/bbl
The OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers’ meeting in Doha, Qatar on 17 April is being billed in some quarters to a magnitude that it might not live up to. The very notion of the oil producers’ cartel colluding with other producers outside its fold to put a cap on production sound fanciful. However, in wake of the prolonged oil price slump caused by oversupply, the possibility of stranger things happening risen.

The 93 Global Billionaires In Oil And Energy, 2016

Direct Energy: Giving Customers More Insight Into Their Electricity Bills
Direct Energy can now help customers see electricity costs in real time and answer the question “it’s 10 PM – how much is your refrigerator costing you?”

What America’s 25 Most Profitable Companies Pay In Taxes

Billionaires Will Need One Heckuva Giant Space Laser For Their Probe To Alpha Centauri
Laser array would need the energy of 2,800 tons of TNT to accelerate tiny space probes to 134 million miles per hour. Earth’s most powerful lasers aren’t even close.

Peabody Energy, Citing ‘Unprecedented Industry Downturn,’ Files Ch. 11, With $800M DIP Loan
Peabody Energy today filed for Chapter 11 in bankruptcy court in St. Louis, Mo., the company announced, citing an “unprecedented industry downturn.”

Is Huawei The New Samsung?
Where will Huawei go next?

What America’s 25 Most Profitable Companies Pay In Taxes

Fair Share Or Not? Here’s What America’s 25 Most Profitable Companies Pay In Taxes
At No. 1, Apple paid $13 billion in income taxes last year on profits of nearly $70 billion. But it’s also got $100 billion stashed overseas that it’s avoiding paying taxes on. Should it be pushed to bring that money home, or is it a sign that the system is broken?

Cheap Oil Prompts Fitch To Slash Saudi Arabia’s Credit Rating
The plunge in oil prices is having “major negative implications” for Saudi Arabia’s financial situation.

“Honey, It’s Time To Shrink The LNG Project”
No-one actually said that at the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas conference which started in the west coast Australian city of Perth earlier today but at least one keynote speaker came awfully close, and others warned that high cost “mega” projects were hurting the LNG industry.

Indian Families Climb Energy Ladder To Achieve Middle Class
Amrita Sen and Anupama Sen with the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies have published an insightful paper entitled “India’s Oil Demand: On the Verge of ‘Take-Off’”. The authors argue that India could be on the verge of a rapid burst in crude oil demand growth equivalent to what China experienced in the late 1990s.

Where America Gets Its Oil: The Top 10 Foreign Suppliers Of Crude To The U.S.
U.S. oil production has surged over the past decade, which has meant a big decrease in U.S. crude oil imports. Nevertheless, we do still import significant quantities of oil, although the list of our Top 10 suppliers has shifted.

Top 10 Sources Of U.S. Crude Oil Imports In 2015

The U.S. Should Follow China And Spain’s Lead And Build More ‘Connectivity’ Infrastructure
The financial crisis has given investment-led growth a bad reputation. Here’s why more investment in roads, railways, electricity grids and Internet cables is the best hope for getting the debt-soaked world economy on a synchronized upward track again.

Global Investment In Solar Slips, Venture Capital Shifts Focus To Downstream
Venture capital firms invested $406 million in the solar sector during the first quarter of this year, according to Mercom Capital Group, a clean energy research company based in Austin, Texas.

Joint G-7 Statement Won’t Alter Beijing’s Reckless South China Sea Push
This won’t exactly please China but with so much at stake in the South China Sea and with China undisputedly playing the role of the bully against its much smaller neighbors, the envelope needs to be pushed, arguably late, but better late than never.

Low Gas Prices Expose Flaw In U.S. Fuel Economy Standards, As Gains Fall Short Of Expectations
New federal fuel standards finalized in 2010 and 2011 were projected to nearly double the efficiency of the cars and trucks sold in the United States between 2012 and 2025, and cut U.S. gas consumption by 33%. As regulators begin a review of the program, it’s running well short of projections because of one big flaw: it was designed on the assumption that high fuel prices would make buyers gravitate toward smaller cars. But there are ways to get the program back on track.

ThyssenKrupp Finds Cross-Industry Innovation
About three years ago, industrial giant thyssenkrupp announced it would focus on collaboration across its business areas to help achieve new targets for sustainable innovation. What it didn’t announce was how personal that initiative would be for its employees, starting with two chemical engineers who visited the company’s steel plant in Duisburg, Germany in 2013. “We’re less locked into old processes and habits now, so our people can be creative, take risks and even run ‘startups’ within our company,” explained Reinhold Achatz, Chief Technology Officer at thyssenkrupp. “It’s a cultural thing.” “We’re allowed to think outside the box,” said Ralph Kleinschmidt, Head of the Technology Development Department at thyssenkrupp. “For instance, when someone in a project group questioned why we weren’t using 100 year-old chemistry to reuse gases emitted by our steel plants, he brought it up.” “We studied it and were impressed that it made sense,” Kleinschmidt added. This began a 15-year project, named Carbon2Chem®, that will involve several thyssenkrupp business areas, and a number of Germany’s most important companies in association with the Max Planck Institute CEC and Fraunhofer Institute Umsicht. Its goal is to devise processes to turn that gas into ammonia, methanol and other base chemicals that can be used as platform for a variety of products, while significantly reducing carbon emissions. Plans call also for using excess renewable energy to do it, thereby improving the stability and efficacy of the electrical grid. The eventual tech could impact not only the company’s steel mills, but be made available to dozens of similarly configured installations worldwide.

Oil Bust 2016: Journey To $26

Russia’s Bullish Bet On Oil Freeze
Moscow has invested perceptible political capital in the oil freeze talks, positioning itself as an intermediary between Tehran and Riyadh—political rivals within OPEC and geopolitical rivals across the Middle East. Failure to close a deal could have a chilling effect on future Russia-OPEC cooperation and weaken regional perceptions of Russian influence. More importantly, from Moscow’s perspective, the inability to deliver as an intermediary between Tehran and Riyadh would be a setback in the Kremlin’s aspirations to become a regional mediator and dealmaker as Putin seeks to take advantage of a perceived decline in U.S. regional leadership and commitment.

The Blankenship Case: Did Justice Prevail And Did The Process Work?
The sentencing this week of coal baron Don Blankenship to a year in prison has many people questioning whether justice was done and whether the lives of American capitalists are worth more than 29 coal miners who perished in an underground explosion.