New energy deals add $3 billion to GE's coffers

If there’s any doubt that energy — clean or otherwise — is big business and big money, GE Energy’s announcement that it’s recently inked $3 billion in new deals should lay that to rest.

The global organization’s new customer agreements indicate that, contrary to the currently popular mainstream media meme, the green-energy economy is real and continues to grow. That doesn’t mean, though, that fossil fuel power is suffering.

GE Energy’s latest customer deals include:

• More than $800 million in new commitments for wind and gas turbines for projects in Brazil targeted to produce 1.4 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, including at least 378 megawatts (MW) of wind power and more than 1 GW of power from natural-gas-driven, combined-cycle technology.
• Potential contracts of up to $230 million to provide subsea and surface oil and gas development equipment to Brazil’s OGX Petróleo e Gás Ltda.
• Two contracts valued at $300 million for gas-turbine equipment for two new combined-cycle power plants near Cairo. The projects are expected to add 2,250 MW — 10 percent of Egypt’s total capacity — to the country’s power grid.
• An agreement to provide Australia with technology for what’s expected to be the world’s largest floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) platform.The project brings to $1 billion the total value of LNG contracts awarded globally to GE by different companies in the first nine months of 2011.
• More than $1.5 billion in new commitments for GE’s 1.6-100 wind turbine, with 750 new turbines headed for wind farms in North and South America over the next two years.
• A first-ever agreement in the food and beverage sector. Under its new partnership with global brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev, GE will help to develop manufacturing solutions for energy efficiency and water savings in more than 35 existing and “greenfield” Anheuser-Busch InBev facilities across China.
• A $40 million deal to provide technology for enhanced oil recovery operations to increase production in BP Iraq-N.V.-British Petroleum’s Rumaila oil field of southern Iraq.
• A multi-year agreement to help Mass Global Investment Company maintain the performance of 18 GE gas turbines at power plants in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.
• A deal to provide on-site power and water treatment solutions for Queensland Gas Company’s Australian coal seam gas-to-LNG project. Queensland Gas is developing the world’s first LNG project based on gas from coal seams.
• An agreement to install advanced gas-turbine technology at a new power plant in Indonesia.
• A $50 project to provide gas engines and waste heat recovery technology to Gruppo AB, which aims to provide a packaged solution in Europe based on biogas from manure, corn and other crops.
• A 25,000-smart-meter installation in Ecuador.
• An evaporative technology deal to treat and recycle wastewater at Grizzly Oil Sands ULC’s Algar Lake project near Fort McMurray, Alberta, in Canada.

“Energy technologies — from exploration to power generation — are in high demand by our customers, particularly in emerging markets,” said GE Vice Chairman John Krenicki. “Our investments in technology development and recent acquisitions are enabling us to bring advanced products to help our customers improve their energy-intensive processes.”