While recent months have shown an uptick in shipping activity, we still find ourselvesabout 20% behind last year at this point. Unfortunately, that is not all the bad news in our mind,as we are not expecting a big surge in activity to allow us to surpass, or even keep on par with,last year’s volume.In this issue we are going to focus on the power sector demand component of pressuretubing. Power plant project momentum has slowed as there is no regulatory pressure at themoment to retire coal-fired plants. In addition, a slowing economy doesn’t present a demandcurve for power that suggests a need to build new facilities outside of replacements. Combinethose facts with the typical delays inherent in these projects, and the fact that a slowingeconomy may generate lower interest rates which may make new facilities cheaper, and its nosurprise where we are at. On the retirement front, while the EIA is saying that coal-firedgeneration will continue to decline, much of that is happoening in switchable facilities facilitieswhere gas is the favored input. Since 2002 there have been 289 coal-fired plant retirements.There were two more added to that list just earlier this month. Despite that, the pace ofretirements has left us both surprised and disappointed. Not that we have anything againstcoal, we just believe gas is a better alternative.
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