What’s New: In brief (July 27, 2005)

CARSTAR Automotive Canada recently sponsored the solar-powered car dubbed Soleon engineered by students at the University of Calgary which will competed in the North American Solar Challenge race starting in Austin, Texas on July 17 and ending in Calgary on July 27. The Soleon is powered by 570 solar cells, has a five-horsepower motor and a top speed of about 140 km/h. It is 5m long and 1.8m wide, about the same dimensions as a family sedan. Roughly $300,000 and 12,000 hours of labor were devoted to the project. CARSTAR custom painted both the race vehicle and the prototype vehicle, which took part in the challenge defined as the world’s longest solar car race, covering 4,000km. The cars raced to speeds of about 100km/h, although the vehicles could reach speeds of up to 140 km/h. North American universities and colleges were represented by 28 student teams, raced their solar-powered cars.

NOVA Chemicals Corporation is working to mitigate the impact of the severe weather-related shutdown of six natural gas processing plants owned and operated by third parties at Empress, Alberta . The company has slowed down production at its Joffre, Alberta, Canada, manufacturing site as a result of reduced ethane availability and is operating at approximately 40% of capacity. Based on preliminary information supplied by the gas processing plant operators, NOVA Chemicals expects to build up to its full supply of ethane for production of ethylene, polyethylene and co-products at its Joffre facility before the end of the third quarter. The total earnings impact of the outage is expected to be in the range of $25 to $50 million pre-tax ($15 to $30 million after-tax). It is likely that impacts above this cost range will be covered by insurance.

Policyholders residing in the Yukon who purchased bogus insurance policies from a Whitehorse broker are seeing a return of some lost monies. Residents purchasing insurance from the local broker at Territories Insurance Solutions were recently warned by consumer services officials that the policies might be illegitimate. The office of the Yukon Superintendent of Insurance launched an investigation upon receiving numerous complaints. As a result, some of the claimants have been given cheques from the broker, while the owner of the company is telling other claimants to call for their refunds Insurance regulators confirm a few of Joanne Walker’s (the accused broker) estimated 40 clients have been refunded. Walker’s license to sell insurance has been suspended pending a report from an Alberta insurance investigator. RCMP say they are monitoring the situation.