Origin Energy

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Origin Energy ASX: ORG is an Australian gas and electricity company headquartered in Sydney. Prior to a demerger in February 2000 the company was known as Boral Limited. The demerger of Boral Limited, a conglomerate comprising energy as well as building and construction materials interests, involved spinning off the building materials business and renaming Boral Limited to Origin Energy Limited. The building materials business then became a new company called Boral Limited.

Origin has four core business units:

Exploration and Production - Origin has reserves in the Cooper Basin, Queensland coalbed methane fields and other places including Bass Strait in Australia and the Taranaki Basin in New Zealand
Retail - about 2 million retail customers of gas or electricity in Australia, New Zealand and the south Pacific. It has since aquired the 1.2m customers of Energex Retail in QLD in Nov 2006.
Generation - generating electricity from natural gas including Osborne and Ladbroke Grove in South Australia, Mt Stuart Power Station in Townsville and Roma Power Station. Origin does not own any coal-fired power stations. However, its retail division sources a large quantity of power from environmentally unfriendly brown coal-fired sources.
Networks - Origin has significant shareholdings in Envestra Limited, SEA Gas pipeline and Coliban Water.

Origin is active in the renewable energy arena. It has spent a number of years attempting to develop:

Wind farms in South Australia
A solar cell business using technology invented by a team led by Prof Andrew Blakers at The Australian National University.
Geothermal power, a technology based on the conversion of heat sourced from deep, hot rocks into electricity. Origin's geothermal investment is via a minority shareholding stake in Geodynamics.

None of these projects have as yet achieved commercial success.

Key Executives include:

Grant King (Managing Director) - Appointed at the company's formation in February 2000
Karen Moses (Chief Operating Officer, Australia)
Robb Willink (Executive General Manager, Exploration)
Frank Calabria (Chief Financial Officer)

The above executives reside in Sydney, with the exception of Mr Willink who is a Brisbane resident.

The Board Chairman is Kevin McCann

[edit] External links

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