Dennis,
I did notice that there are a number of new ships coming on the market and enjoyed reading about a possible bubble in the making there.
Thanks for the link.
The natural-gas rally hasn't passed you by
moneycentral.msn.com
"LNG plays
If you cool down natural gas to around minus 260 degrees, it turns into a liquid known as liquefied natural gas, or LNG. Importantly, the cooling shrinks the volume of the substance by about 600 times. That’s key, because it means LNG can be shipped more easily (inside large tanks that are essentially thermos bottles to keep it cool).
Since there’s so much natural gas around the world, in places ranging from Trinidad and Russia to Algeria and Indonesia, importing LNG seems like a great way to help solve the current shortage.
Problem is, we don’t have enough LNG-receiving terminals; these are the sites where the stuff can be offloaded, processed and shipped to users. That’s one of the problems Fed chief Greenspan was referring to last week when he told Congress to act to encourage the building of more receiving terminals.
Given the outlook for sustained higher natural gas prices, it now makes sense financially for private companies to line up financing to build natural gas receiving terminals. All they need is the cooperation of regulators -- to approve the projects -- and those approvals are likely to start sailing through.
If so, at least two companies stand to benefit. First, the engineering and construction company Chicago Bridge and Iron builds and repairs LNG terminals and storage tanks.
Next, the little-known Cheniere Energy has been hard at work trying to line up government approval to build terminals. That helps explain why the company’s shares moved to $5.50 from $4 June 11, the day Greenspan told Congress it needs to make importing LNG easier.
The shares have since retreated back under $4, but the company plans to have several terminals up and running a few years from now. “We’d like to be involved with three or four of them,” says Chief Financial Officer Don Turkleson.
He thinks his company should get approval by the middle of next year to put in three terminals. They will take about 2½ years to build. Cheniere will swap about two-thirds of the overall capacity in financing deals. But it will operate the rest at what are likely to be healthy profit margins. If so, anyone who bought at the peak of the frenzy Greenspan created in Cheniere shares last week should see healthy gains -- even despite a pullback of 25% in the stock since then."
I am just new to Golar myself and do not own any shares presently.
len |
