Sunday, October 23, 2005

Am I missing something?

Taken off CNA website:

Singapore's electricity price the same despite sharp oil price hike
By S Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia


From Answers.Com


Competition in the electricity market and measures to enhance efficiency and reliability have paid off in Singapore's electricity industry.

One positive result is that the price of electricity has remained the same as that about five years ago.

This is according to the Energy Market Authority's (EMA) latest annual report.

The price of electricity and the amount chalked up are a closely-watched expense item in Singapore households.

The EMA report says that competition in the electricity market has led the price of electricity to fall by about 10%, had oil prices stayed the same.

Even so, with oil prices up by three times, the price of electricity is still about the same as that five years ago - due to greater efficiency.

The EMA also reports that it has learnt from the lessons of last year's major power outage on 29 June which had caused disruption to both homes and industries.

The EMA chairman said the incident was a reminder of the need to maintain a robust electricity system in Singapore.

In that incident, a disruption in the gas supply from West Natuna caused a two-hour power failure.

Conoco Phillips , which operates the gas receiving facility, has implemented 80 percent of the measures it identified to prevent another such incident.

Most gas generating companies have also since ensured that they can switch to a second source of gas if the first fails.

In the last five years, Singapore has become more reliant on natural gas.

It has replaced fuel oil to become the main source, generating 70 percent of total electricity
. - CNA/ir

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In my opinion, this article is pure eye candy to me.

Firstly, the first bold sentence said that electricity prices remain the SAME as of 5 years ago. Is it really THE SAME? i thought they had just raise electricity by a few cents a few weeks back? Give me figures and not quantitative crap and I'll believe.

However, the real shit is the following point:
The article claims that they have been more reliant on natural oil over the past 5 years. According to NaturalGas.org, the Department of Energy states that natural gas costs less than 30 percent of the cost of electricity, per Btu (British thermal unit). if Natural Gas is cheaper than oil and they have been using it over the last 5 years, not baring the recent increase in oil prices, then how come our electricity bill doesn't get any lower? WHERE have the cost savings gone to?

In summary, this article can only mean one thing. And it's not hard to guess what that is.

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