(The following appeared on the Lincoln Journal Star website on May 7, 2011.)
LINCOLN, Neb. — Lincoln Electric System’s chief financial officer, Laura made the pilgrimage to Omaha bearing a question for Warren Buffett at his company’s annual gathering last weekend.
It never made it past three of Buffett’s favored news reporters, who screened the questions for those they thought were most interesting.
Kapustka’s question asked: Should BNSF Railway’s captive freight customers have to pay higher rates so Berkshire can recover the premium it paid to acquire the railroad?
LES customers have a big stake in the answer.
That premium is $7.3 billion Buffett agreed to pay above and beyond BNSF’s book value at the time the deal was made.
That’s a lot of beans, a lot of corn and a lot of ethanol. And it’s a lot of coal coming from the Powder River Basin mines served by a regionally dominant railroad with captive customers like LES and its partners in the coal-fired Laramie River Station, which produces about 11 percent of LES’s electricity.
LES doesn’t want its electric ratepayers, nor others who depend on BNSF shipping, to have to pay the premium for Berkshire’s acquisition of the railway.
Full story: Lincoln Journal Star