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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Archie Meeties who wrote (84798)	1/19/2001 6:46:26 PM
From: Mark Adams	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95453

Thanks for your comments. I wasn't aware of the US role in the global picture until reading your comments and visiting this site fertilizer.org The darker side of Higher Energy costs continues to raise it's ugly head. I don't see a short term solution to high NatGas prices. I do see even more signs of recessionary pressure. Montana's Industries Pinched By High-Flying Power Prices By CHRISTINA CHEDDAR Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK -- Montana's economic fate may be more tied to California than it ever would have imagined. In Montana's deregulated energy market, industrial customers are being jarred by the same soaring power costs that have caused financial troubles at California utilities Edison International (EIX) and PG&E Corp. (PCG). As a result, factories, refineries and mining companies are shutting their doors, and hundreds are losing their jobs, said Bob Anderson, a commissioner at the Montana Public Service Commission. Under the state's deregulation law, electricity rates for residential customers are frozen until July 2002, but industrial customers have the option of locking into long-term contracts with energy suppliers or buying power in the open market since last year. The costs have already forced Columbia Falls Aluminum Co., Smurfit-Stone Container Corp.'s (SSCC) Missoula plant and Exxon Mobil Corp.'s (XOM) Billings refinery to scale back production, and Montana Resources Inc., a mining firm, abandoned plans to reopen its copper and molybdenum mine in Butte, citing higher energy costs. According to a survey conducted by the University of Montana's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, energy-related layoffs at Montana's manufacturing firms have already exceeded 500 workers. There are about 30,000 manufacturing workers in Montana. If electricity rates continue to skyrocket, the effects will spread, said Charles Keegan, one of the researchers who conducted the survey, which will be released next week. Higher electricity rates will force more than half of Montana's largest manufacturers to make major business changes in the upcoming year, Keegan and his colleague Krista Gebert discovered in their research. The changes include cutting production, altering production schedules, and renegotiating electricity supply contracts. The researchers mailed the survey to 193 of the state's largest manufacturers by mail, and had an 85% response rate. Nineteen of the firms responding to the survey said they would curtail production in the upcoming year due to the higher rates, and 50 firms will modify production processes. Forty of the firms surveyed will renegotiate their electricity supply contracts in 2001, and eight firms will generate their own power. Montana Public Service Commissioner Anderson said the state's legislature is considering the impact of the higher costs on the state's economy, and may consider putting industrial customers back on a tariffed rate. "Low-cost power was one of our economic advantages, and now it's gone," Anderson said. Montana's has surplus power generation capacity, which had previously kept prices low. Since the summer, electricity rates in Montana have increased tenfold.