OIL PRICES BOOST KENTZ BUSINESS - The Clonmel-headquartered engineering group Kentz Corporation has published its first results this morning as a quoted company. Kentz - which has its fingers in pies around the world in oil, gas, petrochemicals and mining - saw its pre-tax profits increase 37% to $34.3m in 2007, while revenues were up 47% to $545m.
Kentz chief executive Hugh O'Donnell said 80% of the company's business was generated in the Middle East, as the big international energy companies were continuing to develop projects.
Mr O'Donnell said the rise in oil prices had lifted the amount of business in the Middle East, as the costs of producing the oil were lower there.
He said Kentz's backlog of work had grown significantly, with $2.5 billion of work in the pipeline.
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'EARTH HOUR' SAVED 60 TONNES IN CO2 - Saturday evening between 8pm and 9pm saw Earth Hour, a 60-minute exercise in saving energy when we were asked to switch off for an hour. How much did we save?
Director of operations at Eirgrid, Fintan Slye, said the project had been 'very successful', with a 50 megawatt reduction in electricity demand across the evening. This was the equivalent of 30,000 to 35,000 households and saved 60 tonnes of carbon emissions. Mr Slye said there were plans ot have this exercise annually.
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NEWS AND CURRENCIES - Shareholders in Scottish & Newcastle will meet today to sell the UK's biggest brewer to Heineken and Carlsberg. What that means in Ireland is that Netherlands-based Heineken will take ownership of Beamish & Crawford in Cork, which is owned by Scottish & Newcastle.
The euro is worth $1.5775 and 79.4p sterling.
