The east coast gas cartel is gouging happily on with prices far above any rational return on investment:
Electricity prices have started to rise in response:
But are still being held in check by unusually low volumes of gas usage thanks to mushrooming wild and solar:
Power futures are still nearly double as the market prices more exiting coal and therefore more gas-firming power usage:
Meanwhile, the unseemly bidding war to get a seat at the great Australian gas gouge rolls on:
AustralianSuper has rejected Brookfield and EIG’s revised takeover offer for Origin Energy, leaving the near $20bn deal for Australia’s largest electricity and gas retail company hanging on a knife’s edge.
Brookfield and EIG on Thursday increased their bid for Origin Energy to $9.53 a share, with what it described as its “best and final offer” of $19.9bn.
The revised offer was initially seen as sufficient to win wholesale support, but in a blow to Brookfield and EIG – AustralianSuper said it will reject the offer and moved late on Thursday to increase its own stake in Origin by an extra 1 per cent.
Recall that the only material change to ORG’s outlook since the deal was first agreed upon is the prospect that the Eraring coal-fired power station will be kept open via lavish public subsidies.
This is necessary because ORG is denuding NSW of gas, sending it all to China instead.
Origin’s gas squeeze has transformed the stranded Eraring asset into a cash cow as NSW is forced to use coal to support the phase-out of…coal.
It is also taking a monopoly position in LNG import terminals to prevent them from interfering with its gouging.
This incredible violation of public policy, market dynamics, sense and sovereignty is as bad as the infamous Enron scandals of the Millennium.
Yet all the iMSM covers is the ORG bid price.
