(EnergyAsia, May 14 2012, Monday) — Australia’s Whitehaven Coal has offered to acquire the remaining 82.7% of coal explorer Coalworks that it does not own for A$1 per share, valuing the company at A$172 million. (US$1=A$0.99). The offer represented a 16.96% premium to Coalworks shares’ price of A$0.855 on the ASX when it was announced. (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 14 2012, Monday)  — US industrial giant GE said it and China’s Shenhua Group have started up their equal joint venture GE Shenhua Gasification Technology Company Ltd to develop and deploy “cleaner coal” technology solutions in China. Based in Shanghai, the new company combines GE’s expertise in industrial gasification technologies with Shenhua’s expertise (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 11 2012, Friday) — Unable to pass on costs to customers in a regulated industry, US power company AES Corp said it will sell most of its businesses in China for a total of US$134 million. The NYSE-listed company expects to complete the sale of the assets with a total capacity of 2,727 (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 11 2012, Friday) — NAES Corporation, a US-based provider of services to the energy industry, said it has secured an operations and maintenance (O&M) agreement from Singapore’s Hyflux Ltd for a 400-megawatt (MW) combined cycle power plant under construction in western Singapore Hyflux’s wholly owned subsidiary, Tuaspring Pte Ltd, is building the plant (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 10 2012, Thursday) — Australia’s Linc Energy said its CEO Peter Bond has begun a 4,272-km test flight across the country powered by the synthetic jet A1 fuel produced from converting underground coal using its proprietary technology. Linc Energy said it used the underground coal gasification (UCG)-to-gas-to-liquid (GTL) process at its Chinchilla demonstration (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 10 2012, Thursday) — US engineering company Fluor Corporation said it has been selected by India’s Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) to provide project management services for the expansion of its world-scale Jamnagar refining and petrochemical complex in Gujarat state. Flour said it will work on Reliance’s petroleum coke gasification units, refinery off-gas cracker (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 10 2012, Thursday) — Having invested more than C$30 million to expand and upgrade its Mongolian Ulaan Ovoo mine in just over a year, Toronto Stock Exchange-listed Prophecy Coal said it has become the largest independent supplier of coal to the country’s power plants. (US$1=C$1). Supported by new and expanded roads, bridges, mining (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 9 2012, Wednesday) — China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Corporation (CGNPC) has begun construction of an integrated biomass-solar power generation plant in Singapore at the same time that it has started up a wholly-owned subsidiary CGNPC Solar-Biofuel Power (Singapore) Pte Ltd to operate its regional clean energy activities. As the first overseas project (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 9 2012, Wednesday) — Australia’s mining giant BHP Billiton said it has appointed Ian Maxwell as president of its Sydney-based coal unit to succeed Jimmy Wilson who has taken over as president of its iron ore unit. Mr Maxwell, who joined BHP Billiton in 2004 as president of minerals exploration, was previously managing (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 9 2012, Wednesday) — Coal mining firm SouthGobi Resources Ltd has attributed the sharp fall in its share price in the stock exchanges of Canada and Hong Kong to a near three-year low to events in Mongolia. SouthGobi, which is fully exposed in the resource-rich Asian country, said yesterday its share price tumbled (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 8 2012, Tuesday) — Singapore Exchange said it cleared a record volume of 590 lots on its OTC coal swaps contracts last month, exceeding the previous high set last October by more than 19%. It noted the clearance of 120 lots, representing a total of 120,000 metric tonnes, on April 20. Each lot (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 8 2012, Tuesday) — IEV Holdings Limited, a Singapore-based provider of engineering and clean energy solutions, said its subsidiary, PT IEV GAS, has received a letter of award for a two-year contract from PT Unilever Indonesia Tbk to supply compressed natural gas (CNG) to its manufacturing plant in West Java. While an agreement (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 8 2012, Tuesday) — Australian upstream company Woodside Petroleum said it has sold a 14.7% stake in the proposed Browse liquefied natural gas (LNG) project to Japan Australia LNG, also known as MIMI Browse Pty Ltd, for US$2 billion. As part of the deal backdated to January 1 2012, Woodside also said MIMI (more…)

(EnergyAsia, June 8 2012, Tuesday) — Asia will purchase nearly 382 million two-wheel vehicles including scooters, motorcycles and bicycles in China, India and Southeast Asia nations between 2012 and 2018, according to a new report from US consultant Pike Research. Nearly 92% of these vehicles will be sold in China, where annual sales will reach (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 7 2012, Monday) — Singapore’s Rotary Engineering Limited said its first quarter net profit fell 41% to S$3.16 million on rising construction costs at a project in Saudi Arabia and foreign exchange losses. (US$1=S$1.24). Revenue for the January-March period rose 2% to S$133.4 million while orders on its book stood at S$596.9 million. (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 7 2012, Monday) — Australia’s Gloucester Coal Ltd said it more than tripled third quarter production to 1.276 million tonnes from 342,000 tonnes in the same January-March period last year. The bulk of the increase came from the relatively new Donaldson (497,000 tonnes) and Middlemount (173,000 tonnes) mines while the main Gloucester Basin (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 7 2012, Monday) — Rebuffed in its attempt to acquire a Mongolian coal miner, Aluminum Corp of China Ltd (Chalco) expects to complete its proposed buy-out of a 29.9% stake in Hong Kong-listed Winsway Coking Coal Holdings Ltd for HK$2.39 billion. (US$1=HK$7.77). Winsway shareholders are expected to accept Chalco’s offer to pay HK$2.12 a (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 7 2012, Monday) — Mechel OAO, a leading Russian mining and metals company, said subsidiary Southern Kuzbass Coal Company OAO has resumed production at its Sibirginsk mine. Southern Kuzbass suspended operations at the open-pit mine near the town of Irkutsk in central Siberia last June due to coal self-heating in the mined-out area. (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 4 2012, Friday) — Adaro Energy, Indonesia’s second largest coal producer, said rising coal prices helped raise first quarter net income by 11.8% to US$122 million. In a filing to the Indonesia Stock Exchange, the company said revenue surged 21% to US$916 million, thanks to a combination of rising coal prices, production and (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 4 2012, Friday) — Coal India Limited, one of the world’s largest coal mining companies, has appointed S. Narsing Rao as chairman from last month. Mr Rao, previously chairman of Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) in Andhra Pradesh state, succeeded Zohra Chatterji, who had held the post in addition to her position as (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 4 2012, Friday) — US power companies will switch to using cheaper natural gas to generate electricity, causing nation’s coal consumption to fall well below 900 million short tons for this and next year, said the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Henry Hub natural gas prices recently fell to a 10-year low below US$2 (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 4 2012, Friday) — The following is an edited version of a commentary published by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). Though a non-Arctic state without geographical or historical ties to the region or legal basis to contest existing sovereignty claims, China has ambitions to be a major player in the (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 3 2012, Thursday) — Asia’s economic growth  is expected to pick up this year after slowing in the last quarter of 2011, but its leaders must undertake the “difficult task of adjusting policies to support stable, non-inflationary growth”, said the International Monetary Finance (IMF). At its regular outlook briefing for the region in (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 3 2012, Thursday) — In a belated move to contain the political fall-out in Mongolia over their proposed trade of a major coal mining firm, Aluminum Corporation of China Limited (Chalco) and Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines Ltd said they will cooperate with the government and consider issues related to tax and fair pricing involving (more…)

(EnergyAsia, May 3 2012, Thursday) — The Qatar Asset Management Company (QAMC) and Barclays Natural Resource Investments (BNRI), a division of Barclays Bank PLC, have jointly announced that they have formed a strategic partnership to invest in natural resources projects. QAMC is jointly owned by the Qatar Financial Centre Authority (QFC Authority) and the Qatar (more…)