British Energy returned to profit yesterday, causing some shareholders to spit tacks. £104 million paid to advisors with little real change apart from being asked to reduce exposure to power prices. This reduction took place over a year ago and so the net selling price to customers is £24.7/MWh and £31.8/MWh for next year. Perhaps if they had stayed with their previous strategy they would have even larger profits. The upshot of all of this is that BE are concentrating on being a generator and there is no doubt that they want reliability. Nuclears are reknowned for having long term breakdowns, and as such unplanned outages can last for months as opposed to a coal station which rarely has an unplanned outage lasting longer than two days. At the moment Heysham and Hartlepool are out of action and this puts some pressure on the prompt price if weather patterns go according to the Met office. The recent price rises are reflective of all this potential uncertaintity, if however the uncertaintity clears then watch the price fall back again. Gas continues to get weaker and this has meant a widening of the spark spread.