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The Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest user of energy in the nation. DoD utilizes the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) to procure a large portion of its natural gas. In this study it will be determined if the current buying approach utilized by DESC or an alternative approach present a better method to reduce the pricing risks associated with market timing and volatility. In order to determine how market timing and volatility affect purchasing, historical data for actual monthly prices of the current program and data from market pricing indices for a statistical model were analyzed. The data for the current model and the statistical model were compared using averages prices and standard deviation to determine which model provided better overall results. The analysis proved that by entering the market to purchase natural gas more frequently and using firm fixed price contracts results in an overall lower average price with less variability than using the current method of purchasing. This study recommends that DESC consider a pilot program, beginning in the northeast region, where the current purchasing model produces the most volatility in pricing, to develop a procurement program which will support stabilized pricing for its DoD customers.

Hedonic pricing (HP) is an economic technique for placing monetary values upon costs or benefits which do not have market prices. This thesis applies the HP method to the valuation of road transport and visual disamenity impacts, as reflected in variations within property prices. In order to carry out such a study one has to determine not only the magnitude of the environmental impact at each property, but also structural, neighbourhood and accessibility variables characterising each property. These have to be controlled for before the portion of the property price attributable to the environmental variable can be observed. In the past all these variables have been calculated using labour intensive techniques such as house to house surveys. These led to high study costs and limited the scope of such research. This thesis circumvents these problems through the use of large scale digital data and a Geographical Information System (GIS). This study demonstrates how a GIS can significantly improve a HP study through the calculation of a wider range of more sophisticated variables. However the calculation of such a large number of variables causes difficulties when these data are modelled. This study illustrates how these problems can be overcome through a combination of Principal Components Analysis and a Multiple Regression. The final model had a higher degree of explanation and a lower incidence of collinearity than in previous research vindicating the use of GIS. Prices and values for a range of road transport and visual disamenity impacts are presented. The main limitations upon the research was the time and effort required to obtain data and to convert them into a GIS format. This took half of the research time. Various developments that might improve this situation in the future are presented, along with ways in which the study could be extended.

M.Com. / Please refer to full text to view abstract