KEPCO Surges on China News

Our KEPCO position has surged 1.45% today.

The likely reason? The company's sudden move into China's power market... in a big way. Here's the story from AP:

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"SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- State-run Korea Electric Power Corp. said Thursday it will take a 34 percent stake in a $1.34 billion Chinese joint venture that will develop coal mines and buy and build power plants over the next five decades.

"Kepco will "acquire 15 power plants, build nine power plants and develop nine coal mines in Shanxi, China," as part of the joint venture, the state utility said.

"Other partners in the Gemeng International Energy Co. joint venture will be China's state-run Shanxi International Electricity Group with 47 percent and Deutsche Bank with 19 percent.
Gemeng received Chinese government approval for its projects in April this year.

"The 24 power plants will have a combined capacity of 9.33 million kilowatts and the nine coal mines are expected to produce 60 million metric tons of coal a year."

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I'll be watching this story closely. This is really good news for shareholders, long term.

But depending on the nature of these coal plants, we might exit KEPCO. If the plants are dirty and not in line with Kyoto, we'll drop this position from our portfolio.

They might be perfectly fine, clean-coal facilities for all I know. Need to research this move further.

More to come,

James