NUCLEAR ENERGY
Plant issue disputed
The Japanese company that built corrosion-plagued steam tubes for California’s San Onofre nuclear power plant says it will fight allegations of wrongdoing by the plant’s operator.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries sent a reply Thursday to a letter from Southern California Edison that accused the company of “gross negligence.” Edison argues that Mitsubishi is liable for costs that could run millions or even billions of dollars.
Mitsubishi’s reply calls the contentions “factually incorrect, legally unsound and inappropriate.” The company says it will defend itself through a dispute resolution process.
Premature wear on the steam tubes shut down the coastal power plant last year and Edison announced last month that it won’t reopen.
EARNINGS
Tablets hurt Microsoft
Microsoft issued a quarterly financial report showing results were hurt by a $900 million writedown of Surface tablet inventory, shaving 7 cents a share from earnings. Excluding that, profit was 66 cents a share, Microsoft said, trailing analysts’ 75-cent prediction.
Stung by a Surface device that few consumers want, the company faces a shift by consumers to mobile gadgets that offer many of the same features as laptops and desktops at lower prices. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer’s effort to focus the company on devices and services may reduce profit as both areas carry thinner margins than traditional software.
“PCs were just uglier than people thought they would be, and people also had more Surface sales in there than there were,” said Mark Moerdler, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York, who rates Microsoft shares outperform.
Huntington sees dip
Huntington Bancshares’ second-quarter profit edged lower even as the bank continues to gain more customers.
Yesterday, the company reported profit of $150.7 million for the quarter that ended on June 30, down about $2 million from the year-ago period. Huntington made 17 cents per share for both periods.
The results for the most-recent quarter beat analysts’ estimates by a penny.
Revenue dropped to $680.2 million for the period compared with $688.5 million from the same quarter a year ago as both interest income and noninterest income fell.
SHALE
Tax change in Britain
The U.K. government plans the world’s “most generous” tax system for shale gas to encourage development of a resource that may meet national demand for almost five decades.
Britain proposed a tax rate on shale production income of 30 percent, compared with the current 62 percent rate on oil and gas extraction, the Treasury said Fridayin a statement.
“Shale gas is a resource with huge potential to broaden the U.K.’s energy mix,” Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said. “This new tax regime, which I want to make the most generous for shale in the world, will contribute to that.”
Water not contaminated
A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told the Associated Press.
After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said.
Although the results are preliminary — the study is still ongoing — they are the first independent look at whether the potentially toxic chemicals pose a threat to people during normal drilling operations. But DOE researchers view the study as just one part of ongoing efforts to examine the impacts of a recent boom in oil and gas exploration, not a final answer about the risks.
Drilling fluids tagged with unique markers were injected more than 8,000 feet below the surface at the gas well bore but weren’t detected in a monitoring zone at a depth of 5,000 feet. The researchers also tracked the maximum extent of the man-made fractures, and all were at least 6,000 feet below the surface.
That means the potentially dangerous substances stayed about a mile away from surface drinking water supplies, which are usually at depths of less than 500 feet.
“This is good news,” said Duke University scientist Rob Jackson, who was not involved with the study.
He cautioned that the single study doesn’t prove that fracking can’t pollute, since geology and industry practices vary widely in Pennsylvania and across the nation.
Compiled from staff and wire reports