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.
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Quick, can MB send the editors at the Oz an abacus? Obviously an Olivetti adding machine is to advanced for them to work it.
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. 🙄
“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.
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.
Ha ha ha!
Nah mate they’ve just calculated the value of the transaction in our future currency i.e. Yuan
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.
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.
Good to see there are others as cynical as me! 🙂
Redacting a part of a comment is better than removing the whole comment.
Maybe they are factoring in saved decommissioning costs?
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
A coal investment to complement his black heart.
No doubt he has become best mates with the scumbag Koch brothers whilst he has been there.
$1.2b is (maybe) what it’s worth to Alinta!
Alinta was closely connected to financial engineers, Babcock & Brown, pre-GFC. Another canary whistle?
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.
Green protests against wind turbines?
I think you will find that wind turbines get installed in windy areas. If gas is cheaper in Adelaide/Vic than in NSW, it make sense to transmit electricity to NSW via the new interconnector – making the “buy Liddell” idea even more senseless.
Yes, elements (vocal) of the Green movement will protest about the installation of wind turbines.
I worked on one proposal on the East Coast which faced severe Green opposition.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/greens-complain-that-green-schemes-kill-birds/news-story/8d4c3250ee5c5a9a11df400b0109f5c2
http://www.watoday.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/where-climate-and-conservation-collide-20101213-18uxn#ixzz20qGIdKT7
A working brownfield industrial plot of land is VERY valuable. It takes ages for anything to be approved here in Australia, its much easier to build a combined cycle gas turbine or biomass power plant which will burn all that recyclable material China will no longer accept.
Solar farms have also faced opposition by local (fake) Australian Greens members – “its unsightly”
I dare say if somehow Toyota decided to reopen their Victorian Altona car factory they would face months if not a year or two of government reviews and community consultation processes.
The only thing Rupert would use a wind turbine for is to blow the residual coal ash over the surrounding suburbs to kill people slowly so his son can then build a bigger coal plant.
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.
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.