Profits Down, Dividend Up At Centrica
The owner of British Gas suffers, due to warm weather and rising wholesale gas prices.
It's been a bad week for Centrica ( LSE: CNA ), the owner of British Gas.
On Wednesday, energy regulator Ofgem fined British Gas £2.5 million for failing to handle customer complaints properly. Today, Centrica disappointed its shareholders with a lacklustre set of results.
As I write, Centrica shares have fallen 3% to 311p. Even so, I'd rather be a Centrica shareholder than one of its customers.
Hot weather melts profitsDespite the rising prices of oil and gas, Centrica's financial performance slid in the first half of 2011. Revenue fell 2% to £11.5 billion, while operating profit plunged 41% to £1.25 billion. Partly thanks to exceptional charges totalling £260 million, earnings per share fell by two-thirds (66%) to 9.1p.
The part of the business everyone is really interested in, of course, is the residential energy division, even though it only accounts for about a third of Centrica's sales. Its operating profit halved from the heights seen in 2010 and Centrica blamed this slump on a combination of the exceptionally warm weather (including the hottest April on record), which reduced domestic gas consumption by 18% and electricity usage by 3%, and a big rise in wholesale gas prices.
Centrica made a profit margin of just 6.5% in residential energy in the first half of this year, although admittedly the picture is muddied somewhat by the fact that it does generate some of its supplies itself these days.
Also, Centrica's effective tax rate rose from 37% to 43%, thanks to Chancellor George Osborne's higher tax rates on UK oil and gas production.
Sam Laidlaw, Centrica's CEO, told shareholders:
"Global events have resulted in a steep increase in commodity prices, with UK wholesale gas prices 30% higher than last winter. In this challenging market, the resilience of our integrated business model has enabled Centrica to continue to perform well. We are focused on reducing costs and ensuring disciplined deployment of capital, to maintain our competitive position and drive long-term shareholder returns."
Dividend and prices to riseDespite these weak results, the FTSE 100 firm rewarded its shareholders with a 12% increase in its interim dividend to 4.29p a share.
What's more, Centrica's second-half results are sure to be stronger than today's figures, thanks to the recent steep hikes in residential gas and electricity prices.
Gas Ratio Regulator - News
Noble Energy has sent abroad for special equipment to clean the sand caught in the pressure regulator. Twelve days after a problem brought a halt to work at Leviathan 3 offshore from Haifa to verify the size of the gas reserves there, drilling has yet
The owner of British Gas suffers, due to warm weather and rising wholesale gas prices. It's been a bad week for Centrica (LSE: CNA), the owner of British Gas. On Wednesday, energy regulator Ofgem fined British Gas £2.5 million for failing to handle
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Black Start, Chapter 7: The Fuel Regulator – A Turbine Blog
The first control system used on GE gas turbines in the late 1940s was manufactured by Young & Franklin (Y&F) of Liverpool, NY. It was called the Fuel Regulator, although fuel does not actually flow through the device. It is a mechanical-hydraulic control (MHC) device that has an electric governor and pneumatic temperature control element. It was quite sophisticated for its day, with nearly 1000 turbines shipped with this control in the 1950s and 1960s. Hundreds of gas turbines are still in operation today employing the device, some with over 300,000 operating hours. The fuel regulator in Fig. 7-1 is installed on a gas turbine in Williston, ND owned by Montana Dakota Utilities (MDU) circa 1953.The Y&F fuel regulator is a very sophisticated control device. It has a “minimum value gate” that protects the gas turbine from adverse operation. The MVG compares fuel limits, turbine speed and exhaust temperature on a continuous basis. The sub-system that “calls for” the least amount of fuel, as determined by variable control oil (VCO) output pressure, will be “in charge.” This is the internal decision maker that ultimately sends a signal VCO pressure to the fuel pump or gas control valve, as applicable, to regulate flow. Thus, the fuel regulator has a comparator and method of “calculating” the correct amount of fuel required by the gas turbine. The MVG is thus a computer with some variable inputs and one limit upper limit at any given time. See the chart below for typical values. In these early gas turbines, fuel flow was not measured directly by the control system; on the contrary, fuel flow was simply “limited” indirectly by measuring speed, exhaust temperature and rate of change of temperature.
Zero Fuel Chart 7-1: Several fuel regulator designs for various applications (data circa 1950)The person responsible for assembling these fuel regulators over the past 40 years has been a man known as Mr. Fuel Regulator, the late Bill Brooks of Y&F.
Over the first two decades when the fuel regulator was offered as a control system ending in 1969, many improvements were made without changing the basic functions of the device. Fig.4 shows a fuel regulator that was reconditioned to be reinstalled on a gas turbine still located in Pennsylvania (installation circa 1967). There are some obvious physical changes to the one in Fig. 1; however there are no functional differences.
Gas Ratio Regulator - Bookshelf
North American combustion handbook, a basic reference on the art and science of industrial heating with gaseous and liquid fuels
When burning gas, the ratio regulator is a device that duplicates the air pressure in the fuel line. It consists of a globe-type valve in which the plug is ...Firing ceramics
The mechanism for controlling the gas/air ratio in a proportional system is a gas ratio regulator in the gas line preferably at each burner which is cross ...Heat treating and surface engineering, proceedings of the 22nd Heat Treating Society Conference and the 2nd International Surface Engineering Congress : 15-17 September, 2003, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Because it depends on air pressure to open, the gas ratio regulator will also remain partially closed. At worst, the result is a loss of firing capacity. ...Gas age
The "Regulator Set Pressure" tables for the various pressure indexes indicate ... The adjusted delivered gas pressure to compensate for gear ratio error and ...Gas journal
The means given in the earlier patent (the pressure regulator) are not sufficient for keeping the supply of gas constant, since even when the apparatus ...Casual News Directory
AIR/GAS RATIO REGULATORS
7218 REGULATORS. accurately maintain a constant air/gas ratio over a wide range of fi ring rates in both nozzle-mix and premix gas burner systems. ...
FLOW BALANCE AIR/GAS RATIO CONTROL
7288 Regulators are used as fl ow balancing air/gas ratio control devices in air ... Differential pressure ratio regulators represent the least expensive method of ...
Ratio Regulators on B.D.C. Inc.
Browse Ratio Regulators in the B.D.C. Inc. catalog including Karl Dungs, Inc. ... Used in applications where gas to air proportional flow is required ...
GTI Engineering > Eclipse > Gas Shut-Off & Control Valves ...
Adjustable Orifice Gas Cocks. Blast Gates. Ratio Regulators. CR Valves ... ALO-r, ALO Valves. Adjustable Orifice Gas Cocks. Blast Gates. Ratio Regulators. CR Valves ...
AvconIndia
Air Gas Ratio Regulators, Type GG/GGB/GGO. DATA SHEET. GG_GGB_GGO ... be fitted upstream of Air Gas Ratio Regulator and in the direction of flow ...