Joe Romm | ThinkProgress

Joe Romm | ThinkProgress

ThinkProgress

Joe Romm is a Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress, which New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called "the indispensable blog" 
and Time magazine named one of the 25 “Best Blogs of 2010.″ 
In 2009, Rolling Stone put Romm #88 on its list of 100 “people who are reinventing America.”  
Time named him a “Hero of the Environment″ and “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger.” 


Romm was acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy in 1997, where he oversaw $1 billion in R&D, demonstration, and deployment of low-carbon technology. He is a Senior Fellow at American Progress and holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT.

Posts by Joe Romm

Climate Progress

Bombshell Study: High Methane Emissions Measured Over Gas Field “May Offset Climate Benefits of Natural Gas”

Feb 8, 2012 at 6:29 pm

Bombshell Study: May Offset Climate Benefits of Natural Gas"

Bombshell Study: High Methane Emissions Measured Over Gas Field "May Offset Climate Benefits of Natural Gas" | ThinkProgress

“May Offset Climate Benefits of Natural Gas”

By Joe Romm on Feb 8, 2012

Air sampling by NOAA over Colorado Finds 4% Methane Leakage, More Than Double Industry Claims

Natural-gas operations could release far more methane into the atmosphere than previously thought. [Source: Nature]

How much methane leaks during the entire lifecycle of unconventional gas has emerged as a key question in the fracking debate. 

Natural gas is mostly methane (CH4). 

And methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than (CO2), which is released when any hydrocarbon, like natural gas, is burned.

Even without a high-leakage rate for shale gas, we know that “Absent a Serious Price for Global Warming Pollution, Natural Gas Is A Bridge To Nowhere.”

But the leakage rate does matter. A major 2011 study by Tom Wigley of the Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) concluded:

The most important result, however, in accord with the above authors, is that, unless leakage rates for new methane can be kept below 2%, substituting gas for coal is not an effective means for reducing the magnitude of future climate change.

The industry has kept most of the data secret while downplaying the leakage issue. Yet I know of no independent analysis that finds a rate below 2%, including one by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, the DOE’s premier fossil fuel lab.

Now, as the journal Nature reports, we finally have some actual air sampling measurements, and they appear to confirm the higher estimates put forward by Cornell professor Robert Howarth:

When US government scientists began sampling the air from a tower north of Denver, Colorado, they expected urban smog — but not strong whiffs of what looked like natural gas.

They eventually linked the mysterious pollution to a nearby natural-gas field, and their investigation has now produced the first hard evidence that the cleanest-burning fossil fuel might not be much better than coal when it comes to climate change.
Led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado, Boulder, the study estimates that natural-gas producers in an area known as the Denver-Julesburg Basin are losing about 4% of their gas to the atmosphere — not including additional losses in the pipeline and distribution system. This is more than double the official inventory, but roughly in line with estimates made in 2011 that have been challenged by industry.

And because methane is some 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, releases of that magnitude could effectively offset the environmental edge that natural gas is said to enjoy over other fossil fuels.

Methane is 25 times more efficient than CO2 trapping heat over 100 year — but it is 100 times more efficient than CO2 trapping heat over two decades.

“If we want natural gas to be the cleanest fossil fuel source, methane emissions have to be reduced,” says Gabrielle Pétron, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA and at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and first author on the study, currently in press at the Journal of Geophysical Research. Emissions will vary depending on the site, but Pétron sees no reason to think that this particular basin is unique. “I think we seriously need to look at natural-gas operations on the national scale.”

UPDATE: The 30-author study, led by NOAA researchers, “Hydrocarbon emissions characterization in the Colorado Front Range – A pilot study” is online here (subs. req’d).

Natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as coal per unit of energy when burned, but separate teams at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded last year that methane emissions from shale gas are much larger than previously thought. The industry and some academics branded those findings as exaggerated, but the debate has been marked by a scarcity of hard data.
“It’s great to get some actual numbers from the field,” says Robert Howarth, a Cornell researcher whose team raised concerns about methane emissions from shale-gas drilling in a pair of papers, one published in April last year and another last month (R. W. Howarth et al. Clim. Change Lett. 106, 679–690; 2011; R. W. Howarth et al. Clim. Change in the press). “I’m not looking for vindication here, but [the NOAA] numbers are coming in very close to ours, maybe a little higher,” he says.

Natural gas might still have an advantage over coal when burned to create electricity, because gas-fired power plants tend to be newer and far more efficient than older facilities that provide the bulk of the country’s coal-fired generation. But only 30% of US gas is used to produce electricity, Howarth says, with much of the rest being used for heating, for which there is no such advantage.

Late last year, some of the leading (center-right) economists in the country — Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus — concluded in a top economic journal that the total damages from natural gas generation exceed its value-added at a low-ball carbon price of $27 per ton! At a price of $65 a ton of carbon, the total damages from natural gas are more than double its value-added!
For the record, stabilizing at 550 ppm atmospheric concentrations of CO2, which would likely still be catastrophic for humanity, would require a price of $330 a metric ton of carbon in 2030, the International Energy Agency (IEA) noted back in 2008. So even leak-free, new gas generation isn’t a good investment if avoiding catastrophic warming is your goal.
Back in April, I wrote about Howarth’s controversial paper, “New study questions shale gas as a bridge fuel,” arguing:

This is a potentially game-unchanging conclusion for one of the seminal energy policy choices of this decade — how hard to push shale gas here and around the world. And yet, as the lead author Cornell Prof. Robert Howarth explained to me in an interview, it is based upon very limited data. And that’s in part because the industry has fought efforts to get more data. Prof. Howarth agreed with my suggestion that this would be a very ripe topic for the National Academy of Sciences to review.

Howarth’s analysis does in fact appear to be vindicated by these real-world observations. I asked him for comment. He writes of the Nature piece:

As they point out, our estimates seem to be a little on the low side. That’s not surprising, as we were pretty conservative in our published analysis. This new paper has the first actual measurements at the landscape scale, which is exactly what has been needed (as we concluded in our first and second papers).
In truth, it would not have surprised me if their numbers had come out either considerably higher than or considerably lower than ours, but it is quite gratifying to see that they basically confirm our estimates, and suggest in fact that the greenhouse gas emissions are even somewhat worse than we had concluded. This is bad news for the planet, but good news for our credibility.

He directed me to an online version of his new 2012 paper, which concludes:

We reiterate our conclusion from our April 2011 paper that shale gas is not a suitable bridge fuel for the 21st Century.

The fact that natural gas is a bridge fuel to nowhere was also demonstrated by the International Energy Agency in its big June 2011 report on gas — see IEA’s “Golden Age of Gas Scenario” Leads to More Than 6°F Warming and Out-of-Control Climate Change. That study — which had both coal and oil consumption peaking in 2020 — made abundantly clear that if we want to avoid catastrophic warming, we need to start getting off of all fossil fuels ASAP.

Background detail on the study from Nature:

.

Most of the wells in the basin are drilled into ‘tight sand’ formations that require the same fracking technology being used in shale formations. This process involves injecting a slurry of water, chemicals and sand into wells at high pressure to fracture the rock and create veins that can carry trapped gas to the well. Afterwards, companies need to pump out the fracking fluids, releasing bubbles of dissolved gas as well as burps of early gas production. Companies typically vent these early gases into the atmosphere for up to a month or more until the well hits its full stride, at which point it is hooked up to a pipeline.

Capturing and storing gases that are being vented during the fracking process is feasible, but industry says that these measures are too costly to adopt. An EPA rule that is due out as early as April would promote such changes by regulating emissions from the gas fields.

Officials with America’s Natural Gas Alliance, based in Washington DC, say that the study is difficult to evaluate based on a preliminary review, but in a statement to Nature they add that “the findings raise questions and warrant a closer examination by the scientific community”.

...questions about the “dash to gas,” are more than reason enough to slow down any major investment in natural gas infrastructure.

Filling up existing underutilized natural gas power plants to generate electricity that displaces coal remains a reasonable near-term idea. But building a significant number of new natural gas fired power plants — or building a major infrastructure for natural gas vehicles, which don’t even have the efficiency benefits of gas power plants — remains a counterproductive lock-in of scarce resources needed elsewhere to avert catastrophic global warming.

Blogger Response 

T.Boone Pickens is probably very annoyed at all this since he spent $50 million of his own cash to promote the "dash to gas".

 

Global AgInvesting(SM) Welcomes Jim Rogers, Internationally-Renowned Economist, As Keynote Speaker - MarketWatch

Global AgInvesting(SM) Welcomes Jim Rogers, Internationally-Renowned Economist, As Keynote Speaker - MarketWatch

Global AgInvesting will offer a comprehensive overview of agriculture investment opportunities, risks and return profiles, and strategies for diversified ag portfolios, bringing together more ag investors than any conference in the world.

Rogers has been a source for investment advice and financial strategy for decades and is frequently featured in The New York Times, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and other prominent news outlets, and also has been a regular commentator and columnist in various media. He will present "How I See the World Today and What I Am Doing About It," on April 24 and remain at the conference that day, providing an unparalleled opportunity for networking with this investment expert.

"Global AgInvesting draws more senior-level decision makers than any agriculture investment series in the world, providing the perfect audience to receive Rogers' thought and action-provoking messages about the future of agricultural investment," said Greg Mellinger, CEO of HighQuest Partners, host of the event. "Access to the vision from this global investment authority is another way we are providing our partners with the most current, cutting-edge knowledge in the industry and unrivaled networking opportunities in the sector."

Rogers, who graduated from Yale and Oxford Universities, co-founded his first global-investment partnership, Quantum Fund, in 1973, which was so successful that he was able to retire at age 37. His newest index fund, The Rogers Global Resource Equity Index, focuses on the top companies in agriculture, mining, metals and energy sectors and those in the alternative energy space.

"The trend of investing in agriculture has already started. I can foresee that more and more farmers will become rich and agricultural commodity prices will continue to rise in the long-term," said Rogers. "I think ag will be a great place for the next 10-20 years. This conference is a reflection of the real money at work in the space, as well as the increased interest from new allocators."

For more information about Global AgInvesting in N.Y., Singapore and London, visit www.globalaginvesting.com . Learn more about the strategic advisory firm HighQuest Partners at www.highquestpartners.com .

Frances Pratt, 978-887-8800fpratt@highquestpartners.com

SOURCE HighQuest Partners

US Charges Chinese State-Owned Firm For Corporate Espionage | Economy Watch

US Charges Chinese State-Owned Firm For Corporate Espionage | Economy Watch

February 2012

Prosecutors from the US Justice Department indicted a Chinese state-owned company, along with several other conspirators, on Wednesday, for an espionage scheme aimed at stealing industrial secrets from chemical giant DuPont.

The indictment alleged that Pangang Group, a state-owned steel manufacturer in Sichuan province, had planned to steal secrets on how to manufacture titanium dioxide – a chemical used to whiten products from paint to toothpaste – from DuPont; and had enlisted the help of several of its subsidies along with a California businessman in order to do so.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the businessman....

Last month, DuPont reported earned nearly $2 billion in quarterly revenue for the unit that made the compound. Pangang apparently wanted to use the obtained information to create a rival 100,000-ton titanium dioxide plant at Chongqing, China.

This is just part of a "long-running effort to obtain US trade secrets for the benefit of companies controlled by the government of the People's Republic of China," said a statement by the Justice Department, as quoted by AFP, on Thursday.

”The theft of America’s trade secrets for the benefit of China and other nations poses a substantial and continuing threat to our economic and national security,” added US Assistant Attorney Lisa General Monaco, as reported by ABC News.

Exclusive: China buys up Saudi, Russian oil to squeeze Iran

Exclusive: China buys up Saudi, Russian oil to squeeze Iran | Reuters:

BEIJING/LONDON | Tue Feb 7, 2012

(Reuters) - China is scouring the world for alternative oil supplies to replace a fall in its imports from Iran, as it seeks to negotiate lower prices from Tehran, and has been drawing heavily on Saudi Arabia.
Industry sources told Reuters that Beijing had bought the bulk of an increase in crude oil supplies from top oil exporter Saudi Arabia in the last few months.

The world's second-largest oil consumer is also importing more cargoes from West Africa, Russia and Australia to replace reduced supplies from Iran.

China is the top buyer of Iranian oil, taking around 20 percent of its total exports, but since January it has cut purchases by around 285,000 barrels per day (bpd), or just over half of the total daily amount it imported in 2011.

Saudi Arabian output reached 9.76 million barrels per day (bpd) in December, up 360,000 bpd from October, OPEC data show, and has remained near that level in January, according to a Reuters survey. Several sources in the oil industry said China has bought a good part of the extra oil.

Official Chinese data also show an increase in crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia in the last few months, but on a smaller scale than the rise given by the industry sources.

A Reuters survey of oil flows from West Africa on Monday suggested Asia's imports of crude from the region are at a record high.

Even so, China still needs Iranian oil and even Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries do not have the capacity to replace it.

With production believed to be around 9.75 million bpd in January, Saudi Arabia holds about 2.75 million bpd of idle production capacity to meet any sudden shortages - less than Iran's output of 3.5 million bpd. Saudi holds the world's only significant unused capacity.
 (Additional reporting by Nidhi Verma in New Delhi, Chen Aizhu in Beijing, Francis Kan in Singapore and Peg Mackey in London; Editing by Anthony Barker)

Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd (STG.V) Key Developments | Reuters.com

Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd (STG.V) Key Developments | Reuters.com:


Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd. announced that Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures ("Doughty Hanson") has committed to provide up to $1.5 million in new equity (the "Equity Commitment") as needed to meet working capital needs and to fund a potential European initiative currently under negotiation. The equity will be provided by the purchase of First Preferred Shares ("Series 11 Shares"), which are redeemable at the option of the Company if the common shares trade at a price of $0.60 per share for more than 30 days and will be convertible into Common Shares of Sustainable Energy at a price that is equal to the market price determined at the time of the notice of each drawdown by the Company. The Equity Commitment is intended to provide short term working capital as needed and the equity support needed by the Company to secure an initiative currently in negotiation in Europe. The Equity Commitment is irrevocable as to the first $1.0 million with the balance subject to Doughty Hanson being satisfied on certain financial and performance benchmarks. Sustainable Energy will draw $500,000 in exchange for 50,000 Series 11 Shares convertible into Common Shares at $0.115 per share on Closing for gross proceeds of $500,000.

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Sustainable Energy Releases Audited Financial Statements and MDA and Update

Sustainable Energy Releases Audited Financial Statements and MDA and Update:

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Jan. 31, 2012) - Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd (TSX VENTURE:STG) ("Sustainable Energy") has filed its Audited Consolidated Financial Statements for the year ending September 30, 2011 along with Management's Discussion and Analysis thereof. 

The Company has also filed an updated Annual Information Form. The Consolidated Financial Statements, the Management Discussion and Analysis thereof and the updated Annual Information Form are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on our website at www.sustainableenergy.com.

Highlights:

Operational Results:

Product sales revenues for the year ended September 30, 2011 increased 81% to $3,867,910 compared to $2,120,346 for 2010.

Revenues for the three months ended September 30, 2011 were $1,004,425 compared to $737,968 in revenues for the same period in 2010. 

Product sales revenues were negatively impacted in Q3 and Q4 by a number of politically driven factors in the Ontario market which was core to the Company's strategy for 2011. 

The Company has successfully demonstrated market acceptance of its products, which are reporting 99.7% reliability. 

In Ontario, the company took a 15% share of its target market during the 1st half. In the US, it secured a 23 MW long term OEM supply contract, and is building relationships with several of the leading national distributors for US distribution in 2012, as a low cost alternative to micro-inverters. 

The Company is meeting its manufactured cost targets. Inverter product margins averaged 26% over the year in low volumes and will be above 36% at current market prices by the end of this year. 

The Company has materially reduced its fixed operating costs. Quarterly costs for Q1, 2012 are less than 50% of Q1, 2011 levels, with further efficiencies targeted for the first half 2012. 

During Q1, 2012 the Company expanded its product portfolio to include DC side peripherals which have the potential to materially increase revenues per sale on sales to system integrators. 

Core technology development is now complete. 

The base platform has been certified for grid connection in all the major European and North American markets. 

The completion of a downsized 3kW product later this year will enable customers to service a full array of system designs and nameplate capacities with very high granularity.

"We achieved all the main operational goals set for the Company in 2011 at this time last year," said Michael Carten, CEO of Sustainable Energy.

 "We are meeting our manufactured cost targets and averaging very respectable 26% average margins on the core inverter product. 

We have also cut fixed operating cost 50%, materially lowering our breakeven point."

"We have been building distribution channels in the US market and we are gaining traction in that market with leading systems integrators. 

Power optimization products, especially micro-inverters, are quickly changing the solar landscape in the US, but encountering resistance on larger projects due to higher installed costs and concerns about long term serviceability. 

We are the beneficiary of this resistance since we deliver the same value propositions as micro-inverters but with the lower cost and easy serviceability of conventional inverters."

We are especially excited about the grid -tie energy storage potential which may prove to be our greatest value creator," commented Carten. 

"We have a material efficiency advantage with grid-connected battery systems, as well as a patented control topology, which efficiently integrates batteries with solar PV to increase the value of solar to the power grid.

According to IMS Research, more than 5% of all solar inverters shipped in 2015 will be equipped with energy storage - approximately 2.25 GW."

2012 Priorities and Outlook

Sustainable Energy's two main priorities for 2012 are to build sales volumes in the Ontario and US markets that will take the Company to positive cash flow; and to build long term strategic partnerships that have the potential to unlock the Company's core technology value in solar PV and energy storage.

In the US, the Company is gaining traction with national distributors and mid-market system aggregators by positioning the PARALEX inverter as a low-cost easily serviceable alternative to micro-inverters for residential and small commercial rooftop systems; and as a safer alternative for smaller ground based systems in agricultural, institutional and residential settings. 

The Company is also targeting one or more private label or OEM style partnerships with companies which have the ability to scale volumes for the PARALEX product.

Based on market data from IMS Research, the Company estimates the U.S. addressable market for inverters in its market segments at 1.2 Gigawatts in calendar 2012; and growing to 1.9 Gigawatts in 2014 with more than 70% for systems between 10kW and 100kW. 

Assuming an average factory gate prices of US$0.38 per watt, this represents an annual market value in the US alone of approximately US$450 million in 2012; and US$750 million in 2014. 

The Company is cautiously optimistic about the recovery of the Ontario micro-FIT market, which had stalled during Q3 and Q4 2011 due to political uncertainty about the future of the Program and grid connectivity issues in rural areas. 

The market is beginning to move slowly and is expected to pick up sharply following conclusion of a pricing review by the Government to reflect reduced PV module pricing expected in the current Quarter. 

The Company believes that the addressable market for its products in Ontario should range between 60 - 80 MW in 2012.

 It noted that there is significant potential on the upside when connectivity issues in rural areas are resolved since there is a 282 MW backlog of micro-FIT projects which are entitled to higher pre-review pricing.

The Company is executing on its longer term strategy to lever its technology into strategic partnerships where its product advantage is value added to the partner's ability market position and/or technology enabling the partner to drive higher sales volumes. 

The Company's partnership with tenKsolar, a unique solar concentrator using patented reflector technology is the first of several such partnerships. 

The Company is optimistic about demand from tenKsolar which has a strong Asian partner and is gaining traction in the US and Europe.

During 2012, the Company expects to enter into strategic partnerships which will enable a substantially lower cost and more reliable "AC module" for rooftops and building facades using crystalline or high efficiency thin film modules; as well as a low cost utility dispatchable "smart grid AC battery" which enables load shifting to increase the value of solar energy and allows utilities to balance local load fluctuations.

Significantly, these developments use the current inverter platform putting the company on a business development path with no new product development needed. 

The Company warned that it is still very resource constrained due to the collapse of the Ontario market and its need to pay down legacy payables for component inventory committed to prior to the Ontario market collapse. 

Based on its conservative case demand forecasts, working capital needed to reach breakeven is relatively modest, but the Company will require a modest amount of additional capital which it is working to meet through increased sales and/or structured transactions. 

Doughty Hanson has invested $1 million out of a previously announced $1.5 million standby equity commitment.

About Sustainable Energy:

Sustainable Energy (www.SustainableEnergy.com) is a Canadian solar inverter company which supplies Canada, the U.S. and Europe. 

The Company's patented inverter technologies are a breakthrough in power inverter design and capabilities for all forms of distributed generation and smart grid applications.


Contact InformationSustainable Energy Technologies Ltd
Michael Carten, Chief Executive Officer
www.SustainableEnergy.com




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Compiling 'Sustainability Statistics' is a new area of value analysis.

Sustainability is the Moneyball of the Global Economy - Bloomberg

Moneyball tells the story of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, who two decades ago threw aside commonly held assumptions about how to build a team roster. He proved that deep statistical measurement and analysis are more useful than conventional wisdom, sending the A's to the World Series on one of the lowest budgets in baseball.

Sustainability is an area that requires statistics to measure performance: statistics that are not currently available and deciding what are the relevant things to measure... relevant statistics to record.

Investors are pushing for new kinds of sustainability “stats” to measure an investment's prospects. 

The people who want the 'stats' are the prescient fund manager or company executive. Instead of restricting his understanding of a company's value to traditional financial metrics, these investors are looking at environment, social and governance data (ESG).


Sustainability are focusing on who is consistently moving forward. ESG disclosure scores. There are dozens of possible ESG metrics. Topics are as universal as greenhouse gas emissions, water use, employee sustainability training or percentage of board members that are women. Measures are also sector-specific, such as number of spills, which are monitored in extractive industries.


Corporate sustainability reporting is still missing the uniformity and ubiquity of traditional financial reporting. Movements are afoot on some stock exchanges to encourage sustainability reporting, including initiatives at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and Brazil’s Bovespa.

Despite much progress at collecting ESG data, now measured by financial data companies including Bloomberg and Reuters, the current backlog of five years of aggregate data is insufficient to quantify the value of pursuing sustainability. 


Do sustainability efforts drive better stock performance? What are the best ways for investors to weigh a company's sustainability? 



The Alberta Tar Sands Mega-project is constantly in the press worldwide decrying its environmental impact. Some call it an environmental disaster in the making.  Hard data is continually being gathered and analyzed.  What does an investor consider to be relevant statistical information to measure the value of the companies involved in the project.  Good Corporate Citizenship or potential lawsuits over desecrated water, land and atmosphere are points to be considered.

Alberta Tar Sands

Canada

See also: Athabasca Oil Sands and History of the petroleum industry in Canada (oil sands and heavy oil)

Syncrude's Mildred Lake mine site and plant near Fort McMurray, Alberta

Canada is the largest supplier of crude oil and refined products to the United States.

bonds abort

bonds

http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/home

The Bond King Kicks Off 2012 With A Bang - MarketBeat - WSJ

The Bond King Kicks Off 2012 With A Bang - MarketBeat - WSJ:

King back?

Renowned fund manager Bill Gross stemmed a spate of outflows from the world’s largest bond fund in January and then rewarded his new investors with a market-beating performance that could erase memories of his ill-timed bets against Treasury bonds last year.

The $250.5 billion Total Return Fund (PTTRX) that Gross manages at Pacific Investment Management Co. posted a net inflow of $230.6 million last month. That was the first monthly positive cash flow result in four months, according to data provided Monday by Syl Flood, product manager at mutual fund tracker Morningstar. It followed a $5 billion redemption in 2011, the first calendar year net outflow for the Total Return fund since its inception in 1987.

Meanwhile, Morningstar data also show that the fund handed investors a return of 2.44% this year through Feb. 3, beating the 0.45% on the Barclays Capital US Aggregate Bond Index. Over the past three months, the fund has handed investors a return of 3.16%, beating the benchmark index’s 1.18% and placing the fund in the top 3% among its peers.

In 2011, the fund posted a return of 4.16%, far below the 7.84% result for the benchmark index.

The fund has one of the most impressive long-term track records within the fund management community, as seen in the fact that it beats its benchmark over three-year, five-year, 10-year and 15-year periods. It had a return of 7.37% over the past 15 years, compared to 6.31% on the benchmark, data from Morningstar showed.

There are still 11 months to go for Gross, but the fund’s recovery does support a common view that 2011′s lackluster ride was a temporary blip for a fund manager that many perceive as the Warren Buffett of the bond market.

“He made some bad bets on Treasurys and he fixed it,” said Tom Roseen, research analyst at Lipper. “He certainly is turning the ship around. Now his Treasury position is properly placed and he has been very nimble in picking high-quality emerging market and corporate bond debt.”

Gross didn’t immediately respond to questions Monday on the fund’s flow and performances.

Gross recently had a change of heart toward the Treasury bond market, switching to positions that pay off if the Federal Reserve’s easy monetary policy keeps bond yields relatively low, even if it doesn’t push them down. Bond yields move inversely to their price.

“Recent central bank behavior, including that of the U.S. Fed, provides assurances that short and intermediate yields will not change, and therefore bond prices are not likely threatened on the downside,” said Gross in his February investment outlook.

Gross has been loading up Treasury bonds in recent months and the latest data showed that the share of Treasury bonds in the fund has risen to 30% in December, up from 23% in November and 19% in October.

Gross also lifted holdings of mortgage-backed securities to 48% from 43% in November and 38% in both October and September, a bet on potentially more stimulus from the central bank via MBS purchases.

• Bill Gross,
• Bonds,
• Mutual Funds,
• Pimco,
• Treasurys

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