I put a small amount into STAR because north sea gas is in decline & the Zebrugge to Bacton import pipeline may not be able to cope with peak demand.

So I started looking around for companies in the gas storeage business & I found STAR.

I bought them expecting them to gradually rise but they haven't moved so far.

The Humbly Grove storeage project is on budget and on schedule to start commercial operations in October 2005

The next storeage project is in Lincolnshire.

They are also pumping oil from small UK wells so the current OIL price is great for profits.

I don't buy many AIM shares but this one is an exception.

Another RNS Click below
21/07/05 11:06 Petronas Int Corp SAR 3 - Star Energy Group RNS

A trickle of buys is steadily turning into a constant stream. Is there something afoot or is the upward movement in the SP simply a vindication of the managements proposed purchase of Pentax ?

Starting to get interesting ................

Heading north again ........ up 14.5% today. Looks as if the MMs are steadily running out of stock.

Looking very good, click below

03/08/05 11:34 Artemis Investmt Man SAR 3 - Star Energy Group RNS

Things are getting interesting

18/08/05 - 14:17 Holding(s) in Company RNS
18/08/05 - 13:17 Holding(s) in Company RNS
16/08/05 - 14:13 Holding(s) in Company RNS
11/08/05 - 13:13 Holding(s) in Company RNS
11/08/05 - 13:12 Holding(s) in Company RNS
11/08/05 - 13:08 Holding(s) in Company RNS
11/08/05 - 13:05 Holding(s) in Company RNS
11/08/05 - 13:03 Holding(s) in Company RNS
10/08/05 - 14:33 Star Energy says Petronas' interest in co raised AFX
10/08/05 - 13:54 Holding(s) in Company RNS

05/08/05 10:25 Star Energy Group (STAR) Result of EGM RNS
04/08/05 10:17 CONOCOPHILLIPS (COC) Indonesia govt awards 9 oil/gas concessions to local/foreign cos AFX

the oil price is rising again, good close in NY friday, may see the nex leg up commencing soon...


oil stocks are due a good week if this continues towards the $70 target price...

05/09/05 - 10:24 Star Energy H1 pretax losses narrow; Humbly Grove AFX

06/10/05 - 08:28 Star Energy to start Humbly Grove ops by end-Oct AFX

Hi apple, well done for your persistance etc, we both thought this would be a good long term one.

Having said that like the moron I am at times bought in and got shot quickly.

Never mind. I can see this stock as a real pension provider.

Safe I feel and plenty of upside leading to a nice divi.
Growth is obviously there.

Still in coal?


cheers GF.

http://www.interconnector.com/Enhancement/CapacityDemand.htm

cheers GF.

Interesting stuff - Star gets a mention (sp up today I notice).


Pressure is building for more gas storage
By Thomas Catan
Published: October 25 2005 03:00 | Last updated: October 25 2005 03:00

In a humming control room 18 miles off north-east England, two technicians are busy pumping gas into the earth.


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The process is going well, one says, pointing to a bank of flashing screens. Several hundred feet below the offshore platform, the gas reservoir is fast approaching capacity.

If Britain suffers an unusually cold winter, the giant gas storage facility at Rough, near Hull, will assume a critical importance to the country. In an emergency, it can provide more than 10 per cent of the UK's peak gas demand for 77 days.

The company that operates it is investing 38m to make sure it works flawlessly. "We've prepared well for this winter," says GlennSibbick, operations director at Centrica Storage, surveying recent work on the platform.

So far this year, Rough has worked 99.9 per cent of the time, a big improvement on patchy performance under previous owners.

Ministers and businessmen alike are hoping it maintains that record throughout this critical winter. The last time it broke down, in January 2004, the price of gas soared from 37p a therm to 1.60 in a matter of hours.

"If Rough went down this winter, all hell would break loose," says Niall Trimble, chief executive of the Energy Contract Company, a consultancy. "It would be much worse than before."

Several factors have combined to make this winter's gas supply one of the tightest in living memory. Production from the North Sea is declining faster than many people had expected, but gas demand keeps rising. A third of Britain's electricity is generated using gas, and Britons use it far more than people in other countries to heat their homes.

As a result, Britain last year turned from a net exporter of gas into a net importer. But multi-billion pound infrastructure projects that will bring foreign gas to these shores will not be ready for two years or more.

Britain has enough gas to meet demand in an average winter. If it is much colder, however, National Grid, the pipeline operator, has said it would probably have to cut supplies to heavy industrial users and gas-fired power stations.

With prices surging, it is hoped some industrial users would voluntarily close their factories, preferring to sell the gas back into the market. Equally, some gas-fired power stations may temporarily be able switch to alternatives such as fuel oil.

But if the cold weather persisted, Britain would have few spare supplies to draw on. Heavy users may have to close until the cold weather ends.

Part of the problem is that Britain has very few facilities like Rough to draw on, which accounts for three-quarter of the country's total storage capacity. France has about 90 days of its average gas demand in storage, Germany 76 days and Italy 60. By comparison, the UK has only 13 days of gas in storage, or seven days of peak demand.

Continental European countries have always been highly dependent on foreign imports of natural gas, and so have worried about supply interruptions. By contrast, Britain had large amounts of readily available North Sea gas, which it was able to produce in higher or lower quantities to match variations in demand.

But as Britain's gas supplies have fallen, so has its capacity to vary its production. According to Wood Mackenzie, the oil consultancy, UK "swing production" has fallen from about 150 per cent in the middle of the last decade to about 125 per cent today.

Imported gas does not have the same flexibility as the UK production it is replacing. Unlike some of the old gas fields, new pipelines are not built to provide double the capacity that is needed for most of the year, says Frank Harris, gas analyst at Wood Mackenzie. Several terminals being built to receive shipments of liquefied natural gas are also unlikely to have any significant spare capacity during periods of peak demand, he says.

"Our traditional flexibility has been steadily declining for years," says Mr Trimble. "We are starting to look a lot more like Europe but without the storage capacity."

There is certainly money to be made in gas storage. Taking advantage of seasonal swings, utilities and energy traders like to buy gas when its cheap in the summer, store it, and sell it in winter, when prices are high. In the past three years, the spread between summer and winter gas prices has ballooned from as little as 6.5p a therm to more than 45p.

That has boosted the value of storage. Before Centrica bought Rough in 2002, the price of a standard bundled unit of storage at the facility was about 10p. The average price of storage this year was 37p a unit, while the price quoted for next year is more than 70p, at times rising to more than 1.

Centrica Storage, a unit of British Gas's owner Centrica, made almost as much profits in the first half of this year as it did for the whole of 2004. Next year also promises to be a bumper year for the company.

Other companies are keen to enter the storage market, although nothing on the scale of Rough, which was converted in 1983 with taxpayer money. However, they face big hurdles.

Star Energy, which owns onshore oil and gas fields in the UK, wants to turn some of them into gas storage sites. It expects to open a 65m facility at Humbly Grove in Hampshire with a capacity of 10bn cubic feet of gas by the beginning of next month.

The company wants to build a further 80bn cubic feet of storage in the next five years but many of its projects have been stalled by local opposition. Star's storage facility at Welton, Lincolnshire, could have started by 2007 but its planning process has stretched on for nearly two years.

"It's like one of those bad dreams where you just can't catch that bus that's moving away," says Roland Wessel, Star's chief executive.

Canatxx, a privately-held company, also has a storage project bogged down in a long planning inquiry. Local residents say its plan to fill a salt cavern in Lancashire with gas is unsafe.

"There is a tremendous amount of local opposition," says Ian Mulroy, a resident who is spearheading the resistance. "Gas migration, followed by explosion, is the main fear."

Canatxx and other industry voices insist that underground storage is safe and says the government must act urgently if the UK is to get the storage it needs.

"There are companies willing and able to build gas storage facilities," says Adrian Fernando, head of business development at Star Energy. "We'd like to see a more streamlined planning and consenting process so we can do that."

Star Energy says Humbly Grove gas storage facility to start ops Nov 4
AFX


LONDON (AFX) - UK-based energy company, Star Energy Group PLC said its Humbly Grove gas storage facility is undergoing final system checks and operations are expected to start on Nov 4.

The company also announced the appointment of Roger Pearson as operations director.

newsdesk@afxnews.com

cheers GF.

This has appeared on Bloomberg today - adds some flesh to the bones......

Star Energy May Expand Its First U.K. Gas-Storage Facility

By Renee Lawrence
Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Star Energy Group Plc, a U.K. oil producer and builder of natural-gas storage sites, may expand its first storage facility to take advantage of growing demand for stored gas because of falling production at home.

London-based Star Energy will start offering storage services Nov.4 at the Humbly Grove field in Hampshire, the company said yesterday in a statement. Star may expand the facility, the U.K.'s third-biggest gas-storage unit, because Britain's gas demand is projected to rise in the next 10 years and dependence on imports is forecast to approach 50 percent by 2010.

"There is upside potential," Roland Wessel, Star Energy's chief executive said in a phone interview in London today. "We are bullish about gas storage because of the combination of a lack of storage in the U.K. and decline in North Sea gas."

Natural-gas shippers in the U.K., the European Union's largest market for the fuel, are relying more on stored gas as domestic production declines. Humbly accounts for about 8 percent of the U.K.'s gas storage and is key to Britain's supply-and-demand balance during the winter, when cold weather may drive up prices.

Star is planning to open two more storage units in the U.K.
Vitol Group, the world's biggest closely held oil-trading company, will supply gas into Humbly, the chief executive said. Star said it will take 45 days to fill the storage facility.

Gazprom

Gazexport, the export arm of the world's largest gas company Gazprom, announced in July it has signed a deal with Vitol for 143 million cubic metres of capacity at Humbly Grove, the Russian company said on its Web site.

The five-year deal gives Gazprom access to approximately half of the facility's total storage capacity. The capacity will be managed by Gazprom Marketing & Trading, the U.K. gas and power network manager.

Star Energy expects Humbly to generate revenue of 12 million pounds ($21 million) in its first year of operations. Star Energy invested 65 million pounds in building the facility, the company said in its annual report

Shares of Star Energy were unchanged at 241.5 pence as of 10 a.m. in London. The stock has risen 29 percent this year, according to Bloomberg Data.

--Editor: King

The amount of buying over the past week and especially this morning must be leaving the MMs a bit short by now ......... SP must be due an upward revision from its current 262.5p level