The real option management of commodity conversion assets gives rise to intractable Markov decision processes (MDPs), in part due to the use of high dimensional models of commodity forward curve evolution, as commonly done in practice. Focusing on commodity storage, we identify a deficiency of...

Merchant energy trading companies manage conversion assets to exploit price differences across time, space, and sources of energy in the face of energy futures term structure risk. Financial hedging of this risk is standard practice. Market incompleteness, such as limited futures liquidity,...

Approximate linear programs (ALPs) are well-known models based on value function approximations (VFAs) to obtain policies and lower bounds on the optimal policy cost of discounted-cost Markov decision processes (MDPs). Formulating an ALP requires (i) basis functions, the linear combination of...