Speaking Energy

It seems likely the year ahead will see only a modest rebound in mergers & acquisitions (M&A) activity. Among the challenges that remain for 2024, one challenge to further deal activity is the potential shortage of attractive assets coming to market. Another hindrance to the depth of the M&A markets is the ongoing—and widening—valuation gap between the big energy giants and the smaller producers that is now reaching historic levels.

The past year has been broadly characterized as one of limited public market activity and rising interest rates putting a dampener on access to capital. For the oil & gas industry, the volume of debt & equity offerings remained at historically low levels. With bank lenders and some institutional investors also continuing to retreat from the market, it has been a year in which alternative sources of capital have come to the fore.

At least 78 new US carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects were announced between 2021 and 2022, signifying a historic inflection point for CCS projects.

The following is a summary of some notable projects in development in the US:

We are pleased to share a recording of Akin Gump’s mid-year energy briefing that recently took place, along with the presentation materials.

(Houston) – Akin Gump is pleased to announce it has released its “2020 Energy Year in Review,” which examines the current state of the global energy market and highlights the energy matters with which the firm was involved last year across the following areas:

• Mergers, Acquisitions & Strategic Transactions
• Capital Markets
• Financing
• Project Development
• Financial Restructuring
• Energy Litigation.

In the wake of Winter Storm Uri, the dominating question remains: how could the power outages that impacted much of Texas have been prevented? One simple answer – keep power to the natural gas generators. While natural gas is considered a critical infrastructure element in Texas, many gas production facilities have not, and were not at the time of Uri, identified as critical infrastructure. Being designated “critical” with ERCOT can prevent gas producers from being subject to power outages in emergency situations.

On August 6, 2020, the D.C. Public Service Commission (PSC) amended the D.C. Municipal Regulations to allow “net energy metering (‘NEM’) systems for individual behind-the-meter generators to go beyond 100 percent of the customer’s historical usage and customer payment for excess generation.”¹ Specifically, effective upon publication of the Order in the D.C. Register, eligible NEM “customer-generators”² in D.C. “can increase the generation threshold by 20% annually, starting in 2020 until the generation threshold reaches 200% in 2024.”³ Covered energy systems include those not larger than 1,000 kW powered by “renewable resources, cogeneration, fuel cells, or microturbines.”⁴ The change will allow eligible customer-generators to design and build larger behind-the-meter renewable energy systems (up to 1,000 kW) to help satisfy increases in demand for applications such as electric vehicle charging, as well as to increase their net metering compensation.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently upheld the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC or “Commission”) Order No. 841, a 2018 rulemaking addressing electric storage resources. The purpose of Order no 841—discussed previously on Speaking Energy here and here—was to remove barriers to the participation of electric storage resources in the wholesale markets operated by regional transmission organizations and independent system operators (RTOs/ISOs). FERC required each RTO/ISO to revise its tariff to ensure, among other things, that storage resources can provide all of the energy, capacity and ancillary services they are capable of providing.