2024-07-06 13:06

July 6 (Reuters) - South Africa's state power company Eskom is set to publish figures showing a 15 billion rand ($823 million) annual loss, the Financial Times reported on Saturday. The loss is largely due to Eskom spending 33 billion rand on buying diesel which is burnt in open-cycle gas turbines to keep the lights on, the report said. The utility, which recorded a full-year loss of 23.2 billion rand in 2023, will release financial results for the year-to-March later this year, the FT said. Chief executive Dan Marokane told the newspaper that an end to electricity blackouts meant Eskom could be profitable next year. "We saw record use of diesel last year, hence record losses," he said. "But we've really cut down on diesel, so we should see a substantial financial improvement this year. If we maintain our trajectory, there's no reason we shouldn't even see a profit." Eskom did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The company said on July 5 that it had achieved 100 consecutive days without loadshedding, adding that the last time South Africa had a period without load shedding was in late 2020. Marokane said last month that Eskom's priority was bringing an end to the power blackouts that have devastated the economy of Africa's most industrialised nation over the past few years. Eskom has paused the blackouts in the past few months due to better maintenance of its coal fleet and power generation from 5 gigawatts of private solar installations. ($1 = 18.2269 rand) Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/south-african-utility-eskom-facing-annual-loss-823-mln-ft-reports-2024-07-06/

2024-07-06 05:55

KYIV, July 6 (Reuters) - Russia launched an overnight drone attack across Ukraine on Saturday, hitting an energy facility in the Sumy region in the northeast of the country, officials said. Ukrainian mobile drone hunter groups and air defence units shot down 24 of the 27 Russian drones fired on 12 regions, the air force said. National grid operator Ukrenergo said the energy facility in the Sumy region was damaged, forcing emergency electricity shut-offs for industrial consumers in the city of Sumy. Repair teams were working to restore supplies, it said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or other damage details from the regions. Since March, Russian forces have intensified their bombardments of the Ukrainian power sector, knocking out the bulk of the thermal and hydropower generation and forcing long blackouts across the country. Ukrenergo planned scheduled cut-offs of electricity throughout the day across the country as domestic generation and electricity imports could not cover the deficit. Ukraine's energy system was already hobbled in the first year after Russia's invasion in February 2022. The power system lost about half of its available generation capacity due to the Russian missile and drone attacks in the past four months. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-drone-attack-ukraine-hits-energy-facility-sumy-region-2024-07-06/

2024-07-06 05:53

SHENZHEN, China, July 6 (Reuters) - Rescue personnel began sealing a breached dike at China's second-largest freshwater lake in the south of the country on Saturday afternoon after water levels stabilised on both side of the burst, Chinese state media said. A day earlier the 226-metre (740-foot) stretch of dike breached at Dongting Lake in Hunan province, with 5,700 residents relocated, China Central Television reported. More than 2,300 rescue personnel were working to build a second line of defence, with footage showing excavators piling boulders into barriers and being resupplied by trucks. No one had been harmed as of early Saturday, reports said. Earlier footage showed a wave of water surging through a breach in the dike past several overturned lorries, along with large stretches of half-submerged houses and fields in the surrounding area. On Saturday afternoon the Ministry of Water Resources said it would also inspect dikes on Poyang lake, China's largest freshwater lake, in southeastern China, as well as embankments along the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Heavy rainfall pounded parts Hunan province earlier this week, causing the Miluo River in Pingjiang county to swell to its highest in 70 years. Local authorities responded by activating the maximum emergency response level. State media showed large parts of towns waterlogged and stranded people being rescued on boats. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/residents-relocated-after-dam-breach-chinas-second-largest-freshwater-lake-2024-07-06/

2024-07-06 00:40

MEXICO CITY, July 5 (Reuters) - Grupo Carso, the Mexican holding company controlled by the family of Mexican mogul Carlos Slim, said on Friday that it has signed an exploration and extraction services contract with state oil firm Pemex for the stalled Lakach natural gas project. With the contract, Grupo Carso (GCARSOA1.MX) New Tab, opens new tab becomes Pemex's partner to develop the project after its prior partner, U.S. liquefied natural gas company New Fortress Energy (NFE.O) New Tab, opens new tab, pulled out last year. Grupo Carso said in a statement that its investment as "service provider" on the Lakach project will be over $1.2 billion, while Pemex will maintain ownership of the field and its gas reserves. In March, Reuters reported that Pemex and Slim were in talks over control and development of the project in the Gulf of Mexico. Grupo Carso said in the statement it will build an onshore station to "treat gas and condensates for disposal at sale conditions," adding that commercial production will start in about two and a half years. The Lakach field has been hailed as a potential gateway to a new deepwater Mexican gas frontier, and Pemex had for months made finding a new partner for the project a priority. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/slims-grupo-carso-inks-deal-partner-with-pemex-lakach-natural-gas-project-2024-07-06/

2024-07-06 00:32

MARIPOSA, Calif., July 5 (Reuters) - Dangerously hot conditions will dominate over the rest of the July Fourth holiday weekend in much of the U.S. West Coast, Southeast and Middle Atlantic seaboard, forecasters said on Friday, as California firefighters battled one of the first big wildfires of the season. Around 108 million Americans will spend the remainder of the weekend under excessive heat advisories, with record-breaking temperatures forecast for many spots in California, southern Oregon and the Southwest, the National Weather Service said. The West Coast will hover 15 to 30 degrees above average, reaching 110 Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) on Friday. "Expect only subtle changes to our daily high temperatures through the weekend," the National Weather Service in Flagstaff, Arizona, said on X. "Where did you go, monsoon? Hurry back," it said, referring to a recent bout of torrential rain in the area, which is usually bone-dry this time of year. Some of the hottest spots will include Phoenix where it will be 115 F (46 C), Washington D.C. where it is expected to climb to 100 F (38 C), and Palm Springs, California, where it will reach 119 F (48 C). That is almost three times as hot as it will be in Yellowstone National Park in Montana, where the forecast was for temperatures to dip to 37 F on Friday night. The weather service urged people to stay hydrated, out of the sunlight, and in buildings with sufficient air-conditioning. Stifling heat will also prevail from Mississippi to Florida, and north along the Eastern Seaboard to Pennsylvania, where temperatures will reach past 100 F (37 C). The National Weather Service warned that hot overnight conditions across the Mississippi Valley could lead to "a dangerous situation for those without access to adequate cooling". Hot, dry and windy conditions in the West were forcing fire officials and forecasters to issue warnings about the risk of wildfires. The so-called Thompson Fire in Butte County, California, about 65 miles (105 km) north of Sacramento, has scorched almost 6 square miles (16 square kilometers) of scrub and brush since it started on Tuesday. As of Friday morning, the fire was 46% contained after forcing some 13,000 households to evacuate. Most evacuation orders were lifted early on Friday morning as firefighters made progress controlling the blaze, which had damaged or destroyed about 30 structures, fire officials said. Some 225 miles (362 km) south, firefighters battled the French Fire that threatened Mariposa, a gateway to Yosemite National Park. The 800-acre (323-hectare) fire was 5% contained as winds calmed on Friday, helping firefighters make progress. Southern Texas faces a different sort of threat early next week when remnants of Hurricane Beryl are expected to dump heavy rains on the region. Beryl, the first hurricane of the season, made landfall in Mexico on Friday after killing 11 people as it carved a path of destruction across the Caribbean earlier this week. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/weekend-broiling-heat-expected-us-west-southeast-2024-07-05/

2024-07-05 23:16

NEW YORK, July 5 (Reuters) - Talen Energy (TLNE.PK) New Tab, opens new tab has asked U.S. regulators to reject a challenge to its recent Amazon (AMZN.O) New Tab, opens new tab data center deal, which is being opposed by a group of electric utilities that say the agreement could raise power bills for the public, according to a filing on Friday. Talen said the challenge, brought by utilities including American Electric Power (AEP.O) New Tab, opens new tab and Exelon (EXC.O) New Tab, opens new tab, was inaccurate and that its interconnection agreement for the Amazon data center site would not cause spiking power costs for utility customers or grid reliability problems. "It is an unlawful attempt to hijack this limited interconnection service agreement amendment proceeding that they have no stake in and turn it into an ad hoc national referendum on the future of data center load," Talen said in its filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Technology companies are in a race to access massive amounts of electricity supplies to power and cool the data centers, or giant computer warehouses, needed to roll out technologies like generative AI. Nuclear energy, which is virtually carbon free and provides around-the-clock power, has become a top pick for the data center industry. FERC's decision could set a precedent for deals like the one with Talen, where data centers are located on the site of the power plants that feed them, allowing the centers to power up quickly without toiling in interconnection queues that can take years to clear. Talen announced in March it had entered into an agreement to sell electricity and a data center campus located at its Pennsylvania nuclear power plant to Amazon Web Services. The deal would provide Amazon's computer warehouses with an electric capacity of up to 960 megawatts, or enough to power about a million homes. A handful of electric utilities, including American Electric Power and Exelon, last month asked FERC to hold a hearing to more deeply scrutinize Talen's interconnection agreement with Amazon or deny it outright. The group said the interconnection agreement for the data center could result in a $140 million per year cost shift to everyday ratepayers. Talen says if FERC allows the hearing, or rejects its plan, it would have a chilling effect on data center expansion and deter new power plants from getting built in a time of U.S. electricity demand growth not seen in decades. AEP and Exelon say if the deal is allowed, as is, it could saddle everyday ratepayers with the costs of power infrastructure that does not benefit them, or suddenly sap the grid of large loads of power when the plants that act as a direct energy source to the data centers have unexpected interruptions. It was unclear when FERC might issue a decision on the case. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/talen-asks-us-regulators-reject-challenge-amazon-data-center-deal-2024-07-05/