Hints and tips:
...Berkshire’s BNSF Railway, which runs from California to Illinois, reported a decline in shipping revenues and said consumer and industry demand had fallen....
...Abel said the effort was focused on Berkshire Hathaway Energy, where the company is investing in solar and wind projects, and BNSF....
...The company has struggled recently to find what Mr Buffett calls “elephants”, the so-called mammoth deals such as BNSF, the railway, or NV Energy, the electric utility, that formed the core of present-day...
...Mr Wan will surely approve of my winner, a BNSF railway executive who told a conference: “We move stuff from one place to another.”...
...mini-conglomerate Marmon, utility group Berkshire Hathaway Energy and the BNSF railway — until Monday, his largest acquisition....
...railways and a string of US power companies....
...BNSF, the railway, and Berkshire Hathaway Energy publish quarterly earnings reports of their own but analysts say other divisions report substantially fewer details than competitor companies....
...BNSF, the company’s railway subsidiary, which has been plagued by backlogs that first built up during last winter’s harsh weather, has lost market share, the company warned....
...While Mr Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has benefited from the oil boom through its BNSF railway and its tanker business, it has steered clear of taking large stakes in shale production companies....
...As the price differential between inland and coastal oil markets narrows, railways and logistics companies are reporting falling traffic on the lines connecting oilfields to refineries....
...Kleinman cites Warren Buffett’s BNSF railway as another example of substitution; that’s indeed a big company that uses a lot of diesel. Yet its move to natural gas is nowhere near certain....
...BNSF Railway, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, and one of the biggest users of diesel fuel in the US, earlier this year said it would test using natural gas to power its locomotives....
...(Bloomberg) - Berkshire’s BNSF Railway considers switch to natgas. (Wall Street Journal) - China seeks to apply some of US shale success at home....
...Some railways expect the change to be permanent....
...Rick Webb, chief executive of Watco, owner of several shortlines, said the company was “blessed” to own energy-linked operations including the Yellowstone Valley railway in the Bakken region....
...Shares in both companies rose as investors considered the implications of what would be Japan’s largest industrial merger, with the potential to reshape sectors from energy to railways to shipbuilding....
...That would leave CNR and CSR with enormous spare capacity and a merger of the two would allow the companies to focus their energies on competing globally....
...Both companies suffered from falling demand for coal, a key cargo for the US’s large railways....
...Any GE move into electric traction could increase competition for Germany’s Siemens and Canada’s Bombardier Transportation, which dominate Europe’s electric locomotive market....
...Positive sentiment was boosted by news that state-owned railway operator Deutsche Bahn had signed on Sunday one of Germany’s biggest ever international deals – to build Qatar a railway system, as the Gulf...
...Both the export drive and introduction of the new, more energy-hungry technology will need to overcome formidable hurdles....
...In the energy sector it is hard to see how Germany’s leading power companies could entertain establishing close ties with their French counterparts as long as the French government remains a core shareholder...
...However, Hans-Joerg Grundmann, chief executive of Siemens’ mobility division, admits his company was until recently working with 120 platforms – too many, in most observers’ view, for the idea of a platform...
...Their railways were nearly all narrow gauge, with tracks less than the worldwide standard 1,435mm apart....
...Even Moscow’s grand investment ambitions in nuclear energy and railway infrastructure must be taken with a pinch of salt, especially in these times of tight money....
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