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Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory, November 2018
The United States has more than 2,500 utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity generating facilities. Most of these power plants are relatively small and collectively account for 2.5% of utility-scale electric generating capacity and 1.7% of annual electricity generation, based on data through November 2018.
EIA considers utility-scale generating facilities to be those where total generation capacity is one megawatt (MW) or greater. However, some utility-scale sites use more than one generating technology. At utility-scale facilities where PV is one of several technologies in use, the PV capacity itself may be less than one megawatt, but this is relatively rare: based on EIA’s latest data, only 20 sites with a total combined capacity of 10 MW were in this category.
The growth in small utility-scale facilities is driven by several factors, many of which are tied to state-level policies and practices. For example, North Carolina used the Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to allow utilities to set long-term purchase agreements with solar facilities, enabling solar developers to secure project funding more easily and spurring growth.
Currently, North Carolina has 433 utility-scale PV facilities with capacities no greater than 5 MW, the most of any state, and accounting for nearly a quarter of all utility-scale PV facilities in the country between 1 MW and 5 MW. These facilities collectively account for 1,803 MW of capacity, or 35% of the total U.S. PV capacity located at facilities with 1 MW to 5 MW of installed capacity.
In other states, the growth of small utility-scale PV capacity is encouraged by strategies that include, for example, community solar facilities. Community solar facilities offer a share of their solar capacity for sale to off-site customers who may not necessarily have access to solar generation. In these programs, customers may subscribe to a designated community solar facility and receive monthly credits on their electric bills for the energy generated by the share of solar capacity they purchase. The average community solar facility has a capacity of 2.0 MW.
Growth in small utility-scale facilities is expected to continue through 2020. EIA’s Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory for October 2018 reports that most of the 216 solar PV facilities that will come online by the end of 2020 will have capacities of five megawatts or less.
Solar PV facilities with less than one megawatt in capacity are not included in EIA’s surveys of electricity generators, but their aggregate capacities are included in the EIA’s survey of electric power sales, revenue, and energy efficiency and are represented in EIA’s Electric Power Monthly. EIA estimates small-scale solar PV capacity to be about 40% of total solar capacity connected to the grid as of November 2018.
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Now that Occidental Petroleum has beaten Chevron to the acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum – and the strategic assets it holds in the prolific Permian Basin – one would think that the deal is cut-and-dry. Not so. The fallout of the massive US$57 billion deal has begun, and it pits one legendary billionaire against another legendary billionaire.
The Occidental purchase of Anadarko had all the signs of a classic takeover battle, swooping in after Chevron and Anadarko’s boards had approved their own US$48 billion deal. It was made only possible by Oxy CEO Vicki Hollub making a quick private plane trip that resulted in a last-minute US$10 billion capital injection from Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway that was contingent on the Anadarko purchase working. It did. And with the US Federal Trade Commission approving the deal, Anadarko will become part of Occidental by the end of 2019.
But not everyone is happy about the situation. Some investors and shareholders of Occidental believe that it badly overpaid for Anadarko, and were rankled by the deal bypassing a shareholder vote on the matter. The chief critic of this is activist Carl Icahn, who owns a US$1.6 billion stake in Occidental, who slammed it as ‘misguided’ with the CEO and Board ‘betting the company to serve their own agendas’. Icahn has already filed a lawsuit demanding access to Occidental’s books and records, and has just take the fight to a new level.
Last week, Icahn filed regulatory paperwork to call for a special shareholder meeting where he hopes to oust four of Occidental directors and modify the company’s charter through stockholder consent from ever engineering a similar takeover. Icahn wants Spencer Abraham, Eugene Batchelder, Margaret Foran and Avedick Poladian out from the Board, holding them responsible for the ‘fiasco’. He has, of course, nominated his own preferred replacements, including one of his portfolio manager’s Nicholas Graziano, his general counsel Andrew Langham, former Jarden finance chief Alan LeFevre and former president of Shell John Hofmeister. While Icahn has publicly acknowledge that the Anadarko takeover will probably go ahead, his aim is for the new Board to oversee ‘future extraordinary transactions to ensure that they are not consummated without shareholder approval where approval.’
Will it work? Before the proxy fight can go ahead, Icahn must get at least 20% of shareholders to agree to a meeting. That’s a tall order, given that the current crop of directors and Boards were re-elected at the May annual meeting, although with lower support. But there is certainly some appetite, given that Occidental’s stock has dropped nearly 17% since the initial April hostile takeover, reflecting market mood that it had bitten off more than it could chew.
All of this is playing out against a backdrop of pessimism in the Permian. Although the shale revolution had brought American crude production to record highs and sent its crude exports to a new record of 3.3 mmb/d in June, there are now cracks showing. With limited infrastructure, low prices and over-exploitation, the Permian boom is slowing down. Once an investor’s darling, financing has now become far tougher for Permian players, as the high production fall off rate means that companies have to spend more and more money to just maintain production. It’s a situation that is particularly negative for the small, nimble players that powered the initial shale revolution who lack the deep pockets to optimise shale assets over a longer production period. All across the Permian, independent players have lost between 50-100% of their market value, making them ripe for acquisition by majors and supermajors. Deals like the Anadarko one make sense in this context, but with the financial risk increasing, these blockbuster deals may never lead to blockbuster returns. Carl Icahn may not be able win his battle for the Occidental board, but he is certainly making a serious – and very valid - point.
The Occidental-Anadarko deal:
According to the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Nigeria has the world’s 9th largest natural gas reserves (192 TCF of gas reserves). As at 2018, Nigeria exported over 1tcf of gas as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to several countries. However domestically, we produce less than 4,000MW of power for over 180million people.
Think about this – imagine every Nigerian holding a 20W light bulb, that’s how much power we generate in Nigeria. In comparison, South Africa generates 42,000MW of power for a population of 57 million. We have the capacity to produce over 2 million Metric Tonnes of fertilizer (primarily urea) per year but we still import fertilizer. The Federal Government’s initiative to rejuvenate the agriculture sector is definitely the right thing to do for our economy, but fertilizer must be readily available to support the industry. Why do we import fertilizer when we have so much gas?
I could go on and on with these statistics, but you can see where I’m going with this so I won’t belabor the point. I will leave you with this mental image: imagine a man that lives with his family on the banks of a river that has fresh, clean water. Rather than collect and use this water directly from the river, he treks over 20km each day to buy bottled water from a company that collects the same water, bottles it and sells to him at a profit. This is the tragedy on Nigeria and it should make us all very sad.
Several indigenous companies like Nestoil were born and grown by the opportunities created by the local and international oil majors – NNPC and its subsidiaries – NGC, NAPIMS, Shell, Mobil, Agip, NDPHC. Nestoil’s main focus is the Engineering Procurement Construction and Commissioning of oil and gas pipelines and flowstations, essentially, infrastructure that supports upstream companies to produce and transport oil and natural gas, as well as and downstream companies to store and move their product. In our 28 years of doing business, we have built over 300km of pipelines of various sizes through the harshest terrain, ranging from dry land to seasonal swamp, to pure swamps, as well as some of the toughest and most volatile and hostile communities in Nigeria. I would be remiss if I do not use this opportunity to say a big thank you to those companies that gave us the opportunity to serve you. The over 2,000 direct staff and over 50,000 indirect staff we employ thank you. We are very grateful for the past opportunities given to us, and look forward to future opportunities that we can get.
Market Watch
Headline crude prices for the week beginning 15 July 2019 – Brent: US$66/b; WTI: US$59/b
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