LA Times On Warren Buffett's Energy Powerhouse -- No Concerns With Monopolies Or "Too Big To Fail" -- July 24, 2017

Headline story over at The Los Angeles Times: Buffett's Berkshir Hathaway amasses a Western energy force. From California to the Midwest, billionaire investor Warren Buffett is steadily building an energy powerhouse.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiary has gobbled up utilities and natural gas pipelines and tapped into clean energy production, including from Southern California’s abundant geothermal resources.

The latest move by Berkshire Hathaway Energy is the planned $9-billion purchase of Dallas-based Oncor, a regulated electricity service provider with 10 million customers and more than 3,700 employees. It’s one of the nation’s largest power transmission companies.

“Oncor is an excellent fit for Berkshire Hathaway, and we are pleased to make another long-term investment in Texas,” Buffett said in a statement announcing the deal, which is expected to close by the end of the year. ”When we invest in Texas, we invest big!”

Much, much information. With regard to natural gas and wind energy, it looks like Buffett is actually doing what T Boone Pickens advocated but was never able to put together -- mostly due to too many federal regulations and CAVE dwellers. Buffett took a different route: he let others do the "heavy work." Once that was done, he bought what they made. I suppose one could honestly say that Berkshire "did not build that" (perhaps in one case the former president was correct -- LOL).

By the way, an update on Pickens here.

And back to the Berkshire story, three graphics: