Hints and tips:
...Two US utilities in the west, PG&E and Hawaiian Electric, have faced steep financial distress from wildfire liabilities in recent years....
...Buffett highlighted as examples of wildfire liabilities both PG&E and Hawaiian Electric, which has been sued in connection with last year’s devastating Maui inferno....
...While wildfires have been the cause of the most negative headlines in recent years involving PG&E, Blunt takes time to explore the group’s other failings, such as deadly explosions because of leaking gas...
...Happily, the Frelimo slogan did go on to say: “Victoria e Cerba!”....
...of $10bn in PG&E debt....
...One wild card is that the transmission mechanism of monetary policy has shifted over the past few years....
...The fires were eventually attributed to the power transmission equipment of the utility company PG&E....
...The California political class, which had initially supported PG&E’s recent rolling blackouts as a reasonable method to avoid more fires caused by the company’s ageing transmission system, is now calling...
...In the case of Californian utility Pacific Gas and Electric Corporation (PG&E), that could mean a complete change of owners....
...Serious fires in 2017 and 2018 were blamed on faulty PG&E transmission equipment, prompting it to take greater precautions when the fire danger is at its highest....
...You could re-bankrupt PG&E, again, and do the same for many other utilities. Then who could use renewable energy contracts with the utilities to finance wind or solar projects? Oh, federal guarantees?...
...Michael Lewis, PG&E’s senior vice-president of Electric Operations....
...The tragic fires of 2018, caused by PG&E’s transmission lines, cost at least 86 lives, destroyed about 18,000 buildings, pushed the utility into its second bankruptcy within 20 years and cost the chief executive...
...The immediate cause of PG&E’s filing on January 29 was the weight of its prospective liabilities for billions in wildfire damages allegedly caused by its transmission equipment....
...PG&E Corporation filed its Chapter 11 plan in early September having found itself with a $30bn liability after accidentally setting a lot of California on fire....
...PG&E and its subsidiary, Pacific Gas & Electric, already had their credit ratings downgraded by the three primary rating agencies in November....
...The Camp Fire of November 2018 was first seen near a tower on one of PG&E’s transmission lines, and the company said it had found a broken connector and a “flash mark” on that tower....
...PG&E said bankruptcy protection would enable it to maintain gas and electricity supplies for customers and work out its liabilities from the wildfires, which it has estimated at more than $30bn....
...That would require a utility (PG&E) whose transmission system covers two-thirds of the state to invest in better equipment, not damage settlements....
...Coverage for wildfire events is about $1.4bn for the year to July 2019, and a liability exceeding that “would be expected to have a material impact on PG&E Corporation’s and the utility’s financial condition...
...PG&E bonds also resumed their sell-off, with the 30-year note due in 2034 trading at 95 cents on the dollar, compared to 112 cents in early October....
...After the Camp fire broke out, PG&E disclosed in a filing with the PUC that it had detected an outage near the origin of the wildfire, and an aerial team observed damage to a transmission tower....
...PG&E shares were down as much as 32.6 per cent at $17.26 in the final 40 minutes of regular trading....
...Without a change in legislation, Pacific Gas and Electric Corporation (PG&E), faces liabilities it cannot afford. The final cost has yet to be tallied but could exceed the company’s annual revenue....
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