Murdoch throws $950m into Alinta Liddell bid

By in Australian LNG, Carbon Economy

| 21 comments

AGL has received a pretty worthless bid for Liddell Power station this afternoon, via ASX:

But over at The Australian, which values coal a little more highly than does Alinta, the bid is 1.2bn:

Energy retailer Alinta has made a $1.2 billion bid for the Liddell power station in NSW in a move that will ramp up public pressure on AGL to either sell or reverse its controversial decision to shut down the coal-fired power station by 2022.

One can only conclude that Rupert himself has generously made up the balance.

I’m not sure why AGL would take up the offer, adding a competitor and reducing its own future market share to boot.

Houses and Holes
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Comments

  1. Mow Y

    Quick, can MB send the editors at the Oz an abacus? Obviously an Olivetti adding machine is to advanced for them to work it.

    • Jacob

      I heard that schools in the Middle East still teach the abacus.

      Schools in AUS still teach the strange language of Shakespeare instead of teaching how preferential voting is supposed to work. 🙄

    • Philly Slim

      “One can only conclude that Rupert himself has generously made up the balance.”

      I think one can conclude that there is a difference between the “cash consideration payable to AGL” and what other enhancements Alinta is calculating in its offer which is probably a mix of investments it would make and spend it will claim AGL will avoid.

      Anyone with any financial background should be able to pick that up pretty quick.

      • BrentonMEMBER

        Answering conjecture with even more conjecture. All we know is that there has been a public disclosure to the tune of $250 million, but for reasons unknown, a Murdoch journalist chooses to use the billion dollar figure previously touted by Alinta as being required to purchase the plant AND make it operational beyond 2022; ie $250 mil to buy it, $950 mil to rejuvenate the plant.

  3. lignje

    Nah mate they’ve just calculated the value of the transaction in our future currency i.e. Yuan

  4. Timmeh

    I honestly think Murdoch is the devil incarnate.

    Edit: hey guys, if you don’t like my comments, fine delete them. Don’t edit them. Bit like how you whinge about the ABC doing it to your interviews.

    • Nathan

      Gotta keep the comments free of any overt Murdoch hate, mate. After all, they don’t want to spoil the chance that the Dirty Digger will buy up Macrobusiness one of these days. That will make them rich, as rich as Alan Kohler.

  6. nyleta

    Thank our lucky stars that we never had a nuclear power industry or we would be going through the same thing with 40-50 year old nuclear plants like a lot of other countries are doing………….the downside there is much greater

    • Timmeh

      No doubt he has become best mates with the scumbag Koch brothers whilst he has been there.

  8. oliver47

    $1.2b is (maybe) what it’s worth to Alinta!
    Alinta was closely connected to financial engineers, Babcock & Brown, pre-GFC. Another canary whistle?

  9. Thallus

    Its not the power plant which is worth $250million, its the site.
    Much easier in planning approvals to get an existing operating brownfield power plant to build a new combined cycle gas turbine, supercritical steam turbine, wind turbine or even nuclear, than to start afresh somewhere new (greenfield site) and face years of planning reviews, resident action groups, green protests, court action etc.

    The key is to capture the land for a new working power plant to build before the existing one is shut down.

  10. Michael

    Interesting from Alinta, I doubt AGL will sell but they will at least be forced to admit that shutting down Liddel is all about increasing elec prices rather than the green fig leaf they have been hiding behind. Hazlewoods and Northern shut downs have already been very profitable for the encumbent generators.

    Don’t get me wrong shutting down coal needs to happen if we are to reduce emissions, but there is money in making the shutdowns as poorly timed as possible.

  11. AngryMan

    I don’t know if it means much but andrew bolts regurgitation of MB arguments to cut immigration seem to have resulted in 3 whole letters in today’s west paper calling for immigration cuts. May not seem like much but I honestly can’t recall the paper publishing any such letters . So well done to MB for keeping up the fight. It’s just a shame they got it from Bolt’s columns instead of here.