Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P. (NYSE: KMP) has priced a public secondary offering of 4,500,000 common limited partner interests at $57.15 per common unit.  The underwriters, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Barclays, and others have a 30-day option to purchase up to 675,000 additional common units to cover over-allotments.  The company will be raising more than $250 million.  Shares, or LP interests, are down 2% at $57.09 on triple average volume.

Vanguard Natural Resources, LLC (NYSE: VNR) priced its public secondary offering of 2.25 million shares (common units representing limited liability company interests) at $18.00 per unit.  Vanguard said it expects to receive net proceeds of approximately $38.5 million and it intends to use the net proceeds to redeem 250,000 common units from one of its unitholders, Nami Capital Partners, LLC, and to repay debt.  Citi, Wells Fargo Securities and RBC Capital Markets are the joint book-running managers for the offering and they have been granted a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 337,500 common units.

Assured Guaranty Ltd. (NYSE: AGO) has announced an agreement to sell 23,924,000 common shares via a public secondary offering.  Assured Guaranty intends to use the net proceeds for general corporate purposes and to complete the external capital portion of the rating agency capital initiatives announced in November, but the company noted that it does not expect to complete the external reinsurance arrangement discussed then. UBS is the sole underwriter for the offering and it will have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 3,588,600 common shares to cover overallotments.  This will raise more than $500 million and shares are down 4.6% at $21.62 this morning.

U.S. Energy Corp. (NASDAQ: USEG) has announced a public secondary offering of 5,000,000 shares of common stock to fund its capital expenditure program through 2010, with specific emphasis on the expansion of its Williston Basin drilling program with Brigham Exploration Company and further drilling participation with PetroQuest Energy and Yuma Exploration.  SMH Capital Inc. is the sole book-running and lead manager and C.K. Cooper is co-manager, and these underwriters will have a 30-day option to purchase up to 750,000 additional shares of common stock to cover over-allotments.  This will raise approximately $30 million in gross funds and the stock is actually up 2.5% at $6.09.

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JON C. OGG

Let’s assume for a moment that we forget about the discussions leading to delays that have been perpetual.  Let’s for get about the political side of nuclear power.  Lets forget about killing land under mountains where we’ll bury the stuff in Nevada.  And let’s forget about the potential environmental catastrophe that can result if something goes horribly wrong.

There are many stock plays in the U.S. alone that will be huge beneficiaries of this if even one nuclear power plant approval goes through.  If there is one, why not the full dozen of them.  Here is the lot of companies:

Shaw Group (NYSE:SGR) is perhaps the most vertical of the engineering and construction firms.  Fluor (NYSE:FLR) is also in there.  And we can’t leave out the monster General Electric (NYSE:GE) for new reactors, nuclear fuel, reactor services and performance services.

Cameco (NYSE:CCJ) out of Canada is THE go-to behemoth in the stock market for Uranium miners and producers.  The much smaller company in the US is USEC (NYSE:USU), although its shares were hit exceptionally hard Friday after testing started.  Some more smaller and much more speculative stocks in the sector are Uranium Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:URRE), U.S. Energy Corp. (NASDAQ:USEG), Uranerz Energy Corp (AMEX:URZ), and even Canyon Resources Corporation (AMEX:CAU).  Mosaic (NYSE:MOS) and CF Industries (NYSE:CF) are stealth plays in the sector that can enrich uranium from phosphate, but you should know that prices have to be very high and have to be expected to remain very high for quite some time for those to be cost effective.

The Economist recent magazine cover also flaunted a comeback for nuclear power.It said America’s nuclear industry is about to embark on its biggestexpansion in more than a generation. This will influence energy policyin the rest of the world.  CNET today discussed the wave of coming applications for more nuclear power plantsthat are coming. Personally, I’m a believer in this.  No greenhousegases, no pollution, no icky air around the place.  But the dark sideis not Three Mile Island.  That was nothing.  The dark side isChernobyl and a vast area of land that won’t be habitable forgenerations and generations.  The other thing that might act as apossible lid on investors reviewing nuclear power stocks this timearound is that local gas prices for your car are far lower than earlier this year when energy prices were rising but not as high as the $80.00 seen this week.

No wonder Merrill Lynch got creditfor what seemed to be overly bullish analysis that ended up lookinglike they had a crystal ball for a few months.  They gave a huge safetynet for uranium prices. The Canadian National Post also gave some buyout picks in the sector based on Raymond James analysis.

Nuclear power plants are coming online more and more in China andIndia, and Japan and France are largely dependent upon the glowinggreen juice to power those nations.  Russia is showing it is expandingnuclear power use again and South Korea is expanding its program.  Noneof us in the Western hemisphere are going to be too excited about this,but the chances that we are going to have to deal with a nuclear-usingIran is getting larger instead of smaller.

Back in August an ETF was launched as the Market Vectors Nuclear EnergyETF that launched on the American Stock Exchange under the "NLR" ticker, but only a portion of these stocks in here are US-based and many names wont be familiar.  Here is the full list of the company stocks in the ETF.

Jon C. Ogg
September 14, 2007

Jon C. Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he produces the 24/7 Wall St. Special Situation Investing Newsletter and does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Uranium prices, and many of the underlying stocks that either mine it or explore it or are involved in the processing are way up from prior months.  This sector will get more interesting next week and it has been given very little exposure for something of this magnitude.

The New York Mercantile Exchange (NMX-NYSE) is going to start trading a URANIUM FUTURES CONTRACT on Monday.  You can visit the site and see the summary of details on the contracts that are available.  There were some details that the exchange made public on April 16 and it is worth a read.

It is quite odd that this has not been a US market yet, because as far as most of us know the price is basically set weekly.  What is a bit odd is that the terms are not quite the same as what the industry has used and many of the indications are that the major uranium players themselves are going to sit on the sidelines for a while.  That may or may not hold true in a few months but for now it seems like the speculators and trading firms are going to be the ones involved.

Some of the underlying shares were making major moves a few weeks ago, but some have slown down or stalled during the earnings flood over the last 3 weeks.  Most of these stocks are also either micro-cap companies with loose involvement in the grand scheme of things or they are smaller companies in Canada.  There are still at least some decent sized stocks that can be reviewed in the sector:

USEC (USU-NYSE) is the pure-play that most US investors use as a bogey.

Cameco Corp. (CCJ-NYSE) is far larger as the largest producer in the world and based in Canada.  They are holding a conference call to give an update to the two floods at the Cigar Lake uranium project in Saskatchewan.

Energy Metals (EMU-NYSE) was Jim Cramer’s play on the huge spike in the sector.  Cramer also came out with the two stealth plays in the sector. He also noted Mosaic (MOS-NYSE) and CF Industries (CF-NYSE) as stealth plays in the sector that can enrich uranium from phosphate, but you should know that prices have to be very high and have to be expected to remain very high for those to be cost effective. Here is what he said on these.

We had noted a safety net at the end of 2006 that uranium and nuclear energy investors could look at after Merrill Lynch made some incredibly strong calls for 2007 to 2008.

There were also many of these that were up huge in early April, and here is what was indicated at the time.

Uranium Resources (URRE-NASDAQ) $9.44; April 12 $9.68, DEC 11 $5.96.

U.S. Energy Corp. (USEG-NASDAQ) $6.54; April 12 $5.77; DEC 11 $5.58.

Uranerz Energy Corp (URZ-AMEX) $7.03; April 12 $6.38, DEC 11 $3.83.

There is even a note in the National Post in Canada showing that Raymond James has made some Canadian picks that could be buyouts in the sector.

It is hard to imagine that the contracts will gain a major foothold until the major producers and explorers to come into the actual exchange and participate in the liquidity.  These contracts may offer them some added hedging and liquidity, but it sounds like they are going to wait and see how this goes before they change the time old traditions of current uranium trading. 

Jon C. Ogg
May 4, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in any of the companies he covers.