Takashi Saka Joins Skipping Stone Japan as Senior Consultant

Takashi SakaTokyo, Japan – November 8, 2022 – Skipping Stone, a global energy markets strategy consulting and implementation services firm, announced today that Takashi Saka has joined the firm as Senior Consultant, Skipping Stone Japan. Saka will be responsible for leading the company’s Japan risk management services, trading, and wholesale client engagements for ETRM technologies initiatives.

During his 39 years of experience in global commodities trading and risk management, Saka has developed extensive relationships in the Southeast Asia, Singapore, and other global commodity trading hubs. In his early days he served as a head of London Metal Exchange trading business and NYMEX, ICE Oil Futures broking business.

Concurrent with the deregulation of Japan’s power market, Saka moved to Bloomberg as a commodity specialist. His understanding of Energy Trading Risk Management (ETRM) has been enhanced through working with NDFS, FIS Japan and PwC in an energy advisory capacity.

“Japanese energy companies have become much more active trading Japan’s power and gas markets, and retailers are beginning to utilize forward markets for hedging end use loads. Saka’s dual experience in trading and hedging and his ETRM experience is rare in Japan and will be invaluable to our clients,” said Peter Weigand, Chairman and CEO of Skipping Stone.

“I’m very happy to welcome an industry veteran as well as (in Japanese) my “Senpai” in the physical and financial commodity trading world where I came from,” added Hiroshi Okuyama, President of Skipping Stone Japan. “His expertise, skills and experience will undoubtedly bridge customers’ needs for power business risk management solutions and the most advanced and affordable technologies. I’m very excited to work with Mr. Saka.”

Hiroshi Okuyama promoted to President of Skipping Stone Japan

Hiroshi Okuyama image

Tokyo, Japan – November 1, 2022 – Skipping Stone, a global energy markets strategy consulting and implementation services firm, today announced the promotion of Hiroshi Okuyama as President of Skipping Stone Japan. Prior to the promotion, Okuyama was the Executive Vice President leading the company’s risk management services and wholesale markets practice areas where he has successfully engaged with both Japanese and International companies in the areas of commodity trading, futures, risk management business practices and the related growth strategies.

Skipping Stone Japan’s former President, Shuichi Kishida, has resigned and decided to move to a position that utilizes his years of experience developing energy asset projects.

Mr. Okuyama’s extensive experience in global commodities trading and risk management has included positions of increasing responsibility from trading on the commodity exchange floor in New York to ultimately the presidency of a subsidiary of a Japanese futures trading company in New York and US-Japan joint venture proprietary trading firms with trading operations in New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan as well as its operations consulting firm.

As president of the futures trading company in New York, Mr. Okuyama led the company in changing and adapting their strategies and risk management practices to fit the evolving commodities markets. Upon his return to Japan in multiple leadership roles with a securities company, he helped develop their international business and corporate strategies.

In his new role as president, Mr. Okuyama will continue to leverage Skipping Stone’s global experiences to bring best practices to the Japan market, as well as to leverage his extensive knowledge and relationships in Japan to assist international trading clients entering the Japan energy markets.

“Hiroshi’s promotion to President after two years with Skipping Stone is a natural fit and aligns with our shifting strategic focus toward trading and risk management,” said Peter Weigand, Chairman and CEO of Skipping Stone’s global companies.

Media Contact:
Skipping Stone Japan
+81 3-5521-1070

ranakayama@skippingstone.com

Skipping Stone Global
nyoung@skippingstone.com

Skipping Stone Receives Energy Consulting Award Two Years in a Row

Los Angeles, CA – August 6, 2021 –Skipping Stone has been recognized as the Best Specialist Energy Consulting Firm – USA, a Global Excellence Award, for the second year in a row by Acquisition International magazine.

The magazine hand picks Global Excellence recipients each year based on the comprehensive analysis and research undertaken by the group. According to AI, “our proven approach ensures that selection of candidates is purely on merit – not popularity – thus recognizing and rewarding the very best in the business that are succeeding in their endeavors, innovating, growing, and improving.”

Skipping Stone’s business model is unique because in addition to traditional professional services engagements, the company will also undertake new product launches, startups, and global expansion projects on a shared risk and reward basis.  The Skipping Stone team is unlike most others as it is comprised of former CEO’s, entrepreneurs, and energy industry veterans. This team and business model have resulted in thousands of successful projects in over 50 countries.

“While our focus is on client successes, it’s always a pleasure to be recognized by the press for what we do,” said Peter Weigand, Skipping Stone Chairman and CEO.

Covid-19 one year later – energy market impact study released

Boston, Massachusetts – June 2, 2021 – Skipping Stone, a global energy consulting and market services firm, released today the results of their follow-up study on coronavirus impacts on energy markets. The original study conducted in March 2020, when Covid-19 was new, measured what companies planned to do in response to stay-at-home orders and other societal changes.  A year later, in April 2021, a follow-up survey to the same companies measures the differences between what was planned and what happened.

One of the largest business impacts of COVID-19 has been the shift to a home-based work environment. By the end of March 2020, 72% of energy workers were already working from home. In April 2021, only 10% of that same workforce has returned to working at the company facilities. Post pandemic energy technology-related companies anticipate over half their workers will remain at home, and even utilities expect as many as 24% of their workforce will be working from home.

In March 2020, 76% thought the pandemic would be over by the end of 2020. Obviously, that did not happen. In the current survey, 28% believe things are back to normal, while 42% believe normalcy will occur by the end of 2021 and 19% predict it will be sometime in 2022.

A variety of cost-cutting measures were planned in March 2020, such as layoffs, cutting or delaying projects, and others as companies anticipated severe financial impacts. Fortunately, the number of companies executing these plans was less than expected. Results are more positive as 23% of those surveyed are back to hiring and 30% have reinstated or started delayed projects.

For a complimentary copy of the study results, click here.

Capacity Center Releases 2020 Pipeline Capacity Market Year in Review Report

Boston, Mass – April 12, 2021 – Capacity Center, a Skipping Stone subsidiary, released the 2020 Pipeline Capacity Market Year in Review report today. In 2020, 768 separate entities completed more than 61,000 capacity release trades on over 100 pipelines.

“Notably 90% of capacity release trades are in the spot market with terms of less than a year,” said Skipping Stone President Greg Lander. “While the Top 5 trading firms are the same firms as last year, there was a good bit of jockeying in the rest of the Top 20. The two biggest movers were NRG, which jumped from number 12 to number 6, and Vitol who jumped from number 25 to number 12.”

The report is packed with charts and analysis for 2020, including:

  • Top 20 Pipeline Capacity Traders
  • Top 20 Capacity Pipelines and Release Percentages
  • Top 10 Producer-Marketers Holding Firm Capacity
  • Top 10 LDCs Holding Firm Capacity
  • Trading Partner Diversity Rankings… and much more

For your complimentary report click here.

For more information about the rankings and analysis, contact inquiry1@capacitycenter.com or (978) 717-6144.
For an editable press copy contact nyoung@skippingstone.com.

About Capacity Center

Capacity Center is owned and operated by the energy markets consulting firm, Skipping Stone LLC. Its automated services monitor capacity release offers, system notices and deal award information, and provide available transactions and their details as they occur to its customers via email for trading, risk and regulatory compliance, and for deal origination and valuation purposes. Please visit CapacityCenter.com for more information.

Skipping Stone Adds Hiroshi Okuyama as New Executive Vice President in Japan

Tokyo, Japan – October 12, 2020 – Skipping Stone, a global energy markets consulting and technology services firm, has appointed Hiroshi Okuyama as Executive Vice President to lead the company’s growing risk management services and wholesale markets practice areas. He will be engaged with both Japanese and International companies in the areas of commodity trading, futures, risk management business practices and the related growth strategies.

Mr. Okuyama has extensive experience in global commodities trading and risk management. He has held positions of increasing responsibility from trading on the commodity exchange floor in New York to ultimately the Presidency of Unicom International and US Japan joint venture proprietary trading firms with trading operations in New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.

As President of Unicom International, Mr. Okuyama led the company in changing and adapting their strategies and risk management practices to fit the evolving commodities markets. Upon his return to Japan in multiple leadership roles with Nissan Securities, he helped develop their international business and corporate strategies.

Working closely with John Brown, Skipping Stone’s Partner in charge of global risk management services, ETRM systems and energy technologies, Mr. Okuyama will leverage the company’s global experiences to bring best practices to the Japan market.  He will also leverage his extensive knowledge and relationships in Japan to assist Skipping Stone’s international trading clients entering the Japan energy markets.

“I’m honored that Hiroshi has agreed to join our company,” said Peter Weigand, Chairman and CEO of Skipping Stone.  “Hiroshi fits extremely well with our leadership team of former executives with global experience.”

Shuichi Kishida, Skipping Stone Japan President commented, “Adding Hiroshi’s deep experience in wholesale markets, international commodities trading and risk management to our Japan team, will reinforce our ability to serve our clients’ expanding requirements in the liberalized power and gas markets.”

Media Contact:
Skipping Stone Japan
+81 3-5521-1070

Skipping Stone US
nyoung@skippingstone.com

Skipping Stone Receives Energy Consulting Award

Los Angeles, CA – July 1, 2020 – Acquisition International magazine recently named Skipping Stone Best Specialist Energy Consulting Firm 2020-USA.

2020 Global Excellence recipients are handpicked by Acquisition International (AI) magazine based on the comprehensive analysis and research undertaken by the group. According to AI, “our proven approach ensures that selection of candidates are purely on merit – not popularity – thus recognizing and rewarding the very best in the business that are succeeding in their endeavors, innovating, growing, and improving.”

Skipping Stone’s model for over 20 years has utilized industry veterans with a variety of skills led by seasoned energy executives. This model and its practice of measuring each engagement based on client success metrics have led to thousands of energy consulting projects in over 50 countries.

“It’s always nice to be recognized for what we do by the press,” said Peter Weigand, Skipping Stone Chairman and CEO. “We’ve been fortunate enough to collect a number of awards over the years; however, the truest measure of appreciation for us will always come from our clients’ opinion of our efforts.”

Learn more here: International Services and here: Japan Services

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Skipping Stone Releases Energy Industry Coronavirus Impact Study Results

Boston, Massachusetts – April 9, 2020 – Skipping Stone, a global energy markets consulting and technology services firm released today the results of their coronavirus impact study of the energy industry. The study was performed in March and focused on anticipated business and operational impacts as well as electricity demand destruction.

The study measured management viewpoints from three energy sectors, gas and electric utilities, wholesale and retail energy gas and electric marketers and energy services and technology companies. March was chosen as awareness of the crisis in the U.S. was early, the federal and state governments had just begun to react, and the infected and mortality counts were just starting to grow. As such, in March the impacts on business were just becoming evident with the future unknown.

Some results were consistent across the three types of energy market participants. For example, 80% of all the companies had already ramped up customer communications in March. All three sectors were equally uncertain how long coronavirus would impact business operations with answers evenly spread across 30–60 days, 61-90 days, and more than 90 days. Only 10% believe the impacts will last longer than 6 months. The three sectors generally agreed on the financial impacts with 22% responding they expect a significant negative impact on revenue and profits, 52% anticipating some impact, and 25% indicating they don’t expect any financial impact.

Other results highlight different viewpoints among the three sectors studied. For example, the challenges from the huge shift to home-based workers was viewed differently. All sectors anticipate reduced productivity; however, the wholesale/retailer sector scored this concern much higher. Utilities indicated more challenges with IT issues and getting decisions made than the other two sectors.

Plans to cut costs varied widely between the sectors. 36% of utilities had no specific plans to cut costs, while only 4% of energy services and technology companies indicated no plans for cost cutting. 28% of wholesale and retailers anticipate either layoffs or salary reductions and 34% of the services and technology sector plan to do the same. Only 8% of utilities indicated plans for either layoffs or salary reductions.

For demand destruction assessment, Skipping Stone enlisted Scoville Risk Partners who has been utilizing its proprietary analytics software and databases to measure week-over-week demand reductions in wholesale power markets in key U.S. population centers due specifically to the coronavirus.

Electricity demand decreased in correlation to either a rise in coronavirus cases or state government stay at home orders. New York City, a coronavirus hot spot experienced demand decline in the first week of March of 1.41% and by the last week demand had declined by 14.87%. In California demand decline correlates to Governor Newsome’s March 19th stay at home order. In the period prior to the 19th, electricity demand for the utility SCE, serving southern California, was normal. The week after the stay at home order, SCE demand fell by 8.29% with a further drop to a demand reduction of 12.89% the last week of March.

“We hope that this study can be used by the energy industry to benchmark early assumptions against actual outcomes for emergency response planning for crises such as the coronavirus,” said Skipping Stone Chairman and CEO Peter Weigand. “While it would be nice if this were a once in a lifetime crisis, my sense is the frequency of regional and global events is only going to grow going forward. Although it seems we can’t prevent them, we can be better prepared.”

For a complimentary copy of the study results, visit https://skippingstone.com. For continuous updates on electricity demand destruction, visit www.ScovillerRiskPartners.com

Capacity Center Releases 2019 Top 20 Pipeline Capacity Traders Report

Tenaska Ranked #1 Again at 4.8 Bcfd Traded

Boston, Mass – February 25, 2020 – Skipping Stone, a global energy markets consulting and technology services firm, announced that their affiliate, Capacity Center, has released its 12th annual Top 20 Pipeline Capacity Traders Report. In addition to the Top 20 Traders, this report lists Top 20 Pipelines traded on, together with an analysis that reveals trends in the natural gas trading market, including the numbers, duration, and quantities of deals entered into during the entire 12 months of 2019.

Capacity Center has analyzed all the pipeline capacity release transactions on every pipeline for 2019. Only trades occurring within the calendar year of 2019 were counted in the analysis and for the rankings. Only the first year of capacity rights were counted for multi-year deals to give an apples-to-apples comparison of equivalent annualized capacity on a Dth per day basis.

This past year’s trade count represents a 2.7% increase over calendar 2018. In 2019, 445 distinct trading partner company groups traded 58.8 Bcfd of Annualized Transportation Capacity on 78 pipelines – a 7.3% decrease in Annualized volume from 2018’s 63.4 Bcfd.

For 2019, Tenaska was again the top Capacity Trader. Direct Energy came in second with with BP third, Sequent fourth, and Emera Non-Regulated, fifth.

The report provides the Top 20 rankings by utilizing the 2019 entries to Capacity Center’s database of all the transportation capacity release deals on 104 tracked interstate pipelines. Rankings were determined based on annualized capacity acquired through capacity release trades excluding volumes done due to acquisitions and between related affiliates. Methodology details are described in the report.

The annual report also provides:

  1. A table with the full list of Top Twenty Pipeline Capacity Traders, their count of 2019 deals done, multi-year annualized traded capacity and changes from full year 2018 capacity trading statistics
  2. A table of the Top Twenty pipelines with their annualized and total multi-year annualized traded capacity
  3. Observations on market participation and a discussion of the size and number of capacity traders in the forward market relative to all capacity traded in the pipeline capacity market

The full report is available at CapacityCenter.com.

For more information about the rankings or about Capacity Center, contact inquiry1@capacitycenter.com or (978) 717-6144.

About CapacityCenter.com

CapacityCenter.com operates the only 24/7/365 natural gas interstate pipeline data center covering all the US pipelines. Its automated services monitor capacity release offers, system notices and deal award information, and streams available transactions and their details as they occur to its customers via email for trading, risk and regulatory compliance, as well as deal origination and valuation purposes. www.capacitycenter.com

CapacityCenter.com is owned and operated by the energy consulting firm, Skipping Stone LLC.

Microgrid Innovations in Large Scale Implementation of EV Charging

February 18, 2020 – Atlanta, GA – Accommodating the coming expansion of EV charging and ensuring the evolving electric grid delivers benefits to all stakeholders is a growing concern for utilities in the U.S.

To help energy providers understand this challenge, a special panel session led by Skipping Stone at the Microgrid Global Innovation Forum – North America next month will focus on innovations in EV charging infrastructure which are bringing about market transformation.  Drivers behind the dramatic growth of the industry will be discussed, as well as integration of EV charging infrastructure into microgrids and the new industry being created around the reuse of EV batteries into grid-scale energy storage systems.

Speakers on the panel are:

  • Ross Malme, Partner, Skipping Stone
  • Desmond Wheatley, CEO and Chairman, Envision Solar
  • Lee Krevat, CEO, Krevat Energy Innovations
  • Alden Hathaway, Senior Vice President, Sterling Energy Assets
  • Mark Bailey, Chief Commercial Officer, Connected Energy

“Large-scale implementation of EV charging is coming, and utilities need to understand their options,” says Daniel Coran, Editor of Smart Grid Observer and program manager for the Forum. “Hybrid renewable energy microgrids will be an increasingly important tool in the utility toolbox as we move to further decarbonize the network.”

The panel session just is one of several at this year’s MGIF – North America, March 10-11 in Chicago.  The annual conference brings together key thought leaders, utilities, energy providers, and other stakeholders to examine the latest developments and lessons learned in the North America microgrid sector.

“As in previous years, this is a tremendous opportunity to interact directly with companies at the cutting-edge of microgrid deployment,” says Coran, “Top industry experts will be speaking who are pushing the envelope in terms of leveraging microgrids for grid resiliency, service flexibility, and DER integration.”

Panelist Ross Malme goes on to add, “This conference is packed with thought leaders on both the eV charging and microgrid technology fronts. For electrification of transportation to happen at scale, integration with microgrids and storage are an absolute necessity.”

The conference zeros in on refining the value proposition and business case for microgrids in North America, integration with the larger grid, and case studies of grid-tied and off-grid projects and pilots to date. Special sessions on Day 2 will focus on the closely related topic of next-gen Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) and their emerging role in orchestrating and integrating distributed renewable energy resources into the energy mix.

“North America is a key market for microgrid growth,” Coran notes. “Attendees will hear directly from industry practitioners who have real world lessons to share and who will be discussing success strategies in this market going forward.”

The Forum will be held at the Chicago Conference Center, 205 W. Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago. A Southeast Asia edition will be held next month, on April 22-23 in Bangkok.

For full information and to register for the conference, visit www.microgridinnovation.com.  Attendees who enter the special discount code SGO20 when registering will receive 20% off the standard rates.

For further information, contact Daniel R. Coran, Editor, Smart Grid Observer at
+1-815-310-3343 or dcoran@smartgridobserver.com

About SGO
SGO is an online information resource and weekly e-newsletter serving the global smart energy and green-tech sectors. SGO delivers the latest industry news on a daily basis concerning key technology developments, deployment updates, standards work, business issues, and market trends. SGO organizes several conferences each year on topics such as microgrids, grid modernization, smart cities, demand response, IoT, distributed energy resources, and more.​ For a free subscription, visit www.smartgridobserver.com

About Skipping Stone
Skipping Stone is a consulting and technology services firm that helps natural gas and electricity utilities, market participants and solution providing clients globally to navigate market changes, capitalize on opportunities and manage business risks. From innovation through strategy development, market research and assessment to implementation of business plans and technologies, the firm provides a wide array of services. Skipping Stone’s model of deploying energy industry veterans has delivered measurable bottom-line results for over 270 clients globally. Headquartered in Boston, the firm has offices in Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Singapore and London. For more information, visit www.SkippingStone.com or www.SkippingStone.co.jp.

Media Contact:
Nancy Young
nyoung@skippingstone.com