by Eric Wesoff

First Solar (FSLR) is on the minds of most everyone in the solar industry.

Vinod Khosla speaks of First Solar’s performance in his recent piece in GTM. The CEO of CIGS PV vendor MiaSolé, Joseph Laia, has a First Solar panel in a nearby office as a bit of competitive inspiration. The CEO of Abound Solar, Tom Tiller and Solexant’s CEO, Damoder Reddy, (both working with CdTe) also have First Solar in mind as a target. Even stealthy firms like Alta Devices have to keep abreast of where First Solar is headed.

Complete Story »

Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

Forty some years ago, American Express (AXP) went through a "BP" (BP) experience, and not surprisingly, Warren Buffett turned out to be a big winner.

AmEx, unfortunately, had a warehousing operation that was basically unrelated to its main business. Unless you consider that "warehousing" was a form of verification, just as paying off travelers checks.

Complete Story »

Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

I recently wrote how Smart Transport stocks may benefit from declining supply and increasing demand for oil. I call the application of information technology [IT] to transportation "Smart Transportation." Smart Transportation improves the function of the market for transportation services, just as the Smart Grid improves the market for electricity: by giving market participants better information and making the price of transportation better reflect the costs. Because reducing congestion also reduces fuel use at very little cost, Smart Transport stocks should benefit from peak oil.

Types of Smart Transport

Complete Story »

Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

When I first really started following natural gas prices I would always hear people talking about rig count and how much it would affect the production of natural gas. It made common sense to think that the more rigs that are out there the more wells will be drilled and therefore the more gas comes online. This was the conventional thinking when I was positive that gas withdrawals would fall off before the heating season of ‘09 and ’10. This however was not the case and the drop in rig count didn’t really play that big of factor into a significant production decline that was supposedly going to follow the decline in rigs.

From going over the numbers I believe it has come clear that throughout the history of the liberalized US natural gas market (’91, more or less, to present) the rig count has not dictated the amount of production that will flow into the market. As you can see below, it is the price of natural gas that actually looks to be the indicator of rig count and not rig count being a leading indicator of production. I’ll take this a step further and argue that the more rigs that are out there, the higher the price and the more marginal the wells that are coming online will be.

Complete Story »

Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha