SL Advisors Talks Energy

When conflict occurs that might disrupt global oil supplies, portfolios that include an allocation to midstream energy infrastructure usually enjoy some modest protection. Crude traded up 14% on Thursday night as the Israeli attack unfolded. Some opportunistic hedging by producers trimmed those gains during the day. Energy stocks as usual responded positively. The effect on […]

All over the world plastics are manufactured using derivatives of crude oil. Along with cement, steel and fertilizer these are what Vaclav Smil refers to as the four pillars of civilization. Modern life couldn't exist without them. Renewables are largely irrelevant to their production. Anybody who studies how we use hydrocarbons must conclude, as we […]

Venture Global (VG) continued its post-IPO recovery last week. Back in January price talk was above $50 which would have valued the company at double market leader Cheniere. Pushback from institutional investors reduced the IPO price to $25, but it quickly sank below this (see Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained). VG has earned a reputation for […]

Macro issues are driving the market even more than usual. Pipeline earnings came with barely a ripple as companies once again generally hit or modestly exceeded guidance. Crude oil rose on Monday on news that OPEC+ was planning a smaller than expected increase in output. This coincided with Ukraine's spectacular attack on four Russian air […]

In conversations with investors the Shale Revolution is acknowledged as driving US hydrocarbon production up. What is less appreciated is how much this has been a US phenomenon, with no equal anywhere else in the world. The technologies of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and horizontal drilling were developed sufficiently that they allowed access to enormous reserves […]

The mood was reportedly upbeat at the 22nd Annual Energy Infrastructure CEO & Investor Conference (known as the EIC) in Aventura, FL last week. Performance has been good. The American Energy Independence Index, which reflects the overall industry, has a five year trailing return of 27% pa, easily beating the S&P500's 16%. Management teams provided […]

My partner Henry Hoffman attended the 22nd Annual Energy Infrastructure CEO & Investor Conference in Aventura, FL last week. Below are Henry's notes from presentations and meetings. The mood at this year's conference was upbeat, with natural gas demand driven by data center power requirements and the next wave of LNG projects taking center stage. […]

In early April JPMorgan reacted to Liberation Day by forecasting a recession in the second half of the year. They assumed the tariffs would cause a drop in business investment. They also raised their inflation forecast. They didn't reckon on the President's tariff flexibility, and so dropped their recession call following the 90 day moratorium […]

New Jersey, where your blogger resides when temperatures allow, had a good story to tell  on energy until recently. Power generation relies heavily on natural gas and nuclear (38% and 56% respectively in February). Residential electricity prices are 19.7 cents per Kilowatt Hour (KwH), above the US average of 16.4 cents but well below neighboring […]

Following Sunday night's 90-day agreement on tariffs between the US and China, the S&P500 sailed back above its pre-Liberation Day levels. All is right with the world. Sentiment seems weaker than data, so one will correct. After Liberation Day JPMorgan called for a 2H25 recession. Following the tariff news they dropped that forecast. Fed Funds […]

Americans visiting Europe know that Republican presidents are generally less popular than Democrat ones, since Europe's political center of gravity is left of ours. This is especially true of President Trump, which didn't surprise us on a recent trip with friends to the UK and Belgium. Trade policy is largely how Europeans experience US presidential […]

Supplies of crude oil were already set to increase by 2.6 Million Barrels per day (MMB/D) year-on-year before the OPEC+ announcement on Monday. Demand is growing in emerging economies across Asia, Africa and South America, but not fast enough. This has led to forecasts of stocks increasing by 2 MMB/D this year. Last year we […]

On Friday the market achieved a welcome milestone in that the S&P500 rose above its pre-Liberation Day level. The unemployment report suggested that we're not yet falling into a recession. Signs that trade negotiations with China may start was encouraging. Midstream earnings have been coming in with little discernible impact from the tariff trauma. Worth […]

It's too early to say what caused the loss of power across Spain and parts of Portugal, but early signs are that it was linked to a disruption in solar supply. Some will soon blame it on global warming. But reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) requires increased electrification of energy systems. European governments are pushing […]

Midstream energy infrastructure is offering solid defense during a period when Presidential ruminations on tariffs or Jay Powell's career prospects regularly cause 2% daily market moves. Operating a pipeline business is dull by comparison. These companies are largely immune to trade wars. They just keep generating cash and raising dividends. Last week Energy Transfer (ET) […]

Tariff turmoil and the market's gyrations have elicited more than normal feedback on recent blog posts. Politically, our readers and investors tend to be Republican so many are inclined to look for positives in Liberation Day and the subsequent policy switches. Some echo Trump's claim that foreign countries have been exploiting the US for years. […]

On Wednesday during Q&A following Jay Powell's speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, he warned that the near-term impact of tariffs is likely to be rising unemployment and rising inflation. The Fed's twin mandate is one of maximum employment consistent with price stability. Powell said, “I believe that for the remainder of this year, we […]

Last week President Trump said the EU should close its trade surplus with the US by buying $350BN of US energy. The Administration's spontaneous policy switches on tariffs have been unpleasant for investors. But at least for those exposed to the energy sector, there's a gratifying consistency in that oil and gas are invariably part […]

Dimitri Alperovitch co-founded CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm whose faulty software update on the Windows operating system last year led to worldwide IT failures. Alperovitch was no longer with the company, having left four years earlier to launch a nonprofit called the Silverado Policy Accelerator. In April 2024 he published World on the Brink: How America […]

Last year luxury car sales in Singapore collapsed. Sales of new Bentley, Ferrari, Jaguar and Rolls Royce models were down by as much as three quarters compared with 2023. This wasn't caused by an economic slowdown. Singapore's government clamped down on money laundering. Most buyers of such cars are Chinese nationals. Car dealers are required […]

A new administration took office determined to change the economy's direction with overhauled policies. The leader and key advisers huddled, drawing up their plans in relative secrecy. Once ready, they were unveiled with great fanfare, heralding a new dawn in economic stewardship. Markets, caught by surprise without having had the opportunity to assess them via […]

Americans did vote for tariffs when we elected Donald Trump. Many perhaps thought they'd be implemented with a clearer strategic purpose. I had hoped we'd use them to open up foreign markets such as the EU, reducing our trade deficit by exporting more not by importing less. And most voters probably weren't voting for a […]

Which is a more important measure of an investment manager's skill – the return on the first dollar invested at inception, or the return on the average dollar? Return since inception is widely used because it covers the longest period. If performance is reasonably consistent, both methods should tell the same story. That this is […]

$1.4TN is a huge sum by any standard. It's more than Spain's entire stock market capitalization and just behind Switzerland's. It's more than Indonesia's GDP and not far below South Korea's. This is the sum that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has committed to invest in America over the next decade. It's probably the best […]

In recent years climate extremists have become adept at weaponizing the legal system in pursuit of their dystopian aims. The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which was built to move natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia, faced extensive delays with only a few miles left, because climate activists were able to persuade a judge to […]

There are few parts of America redder than Naples, FL.  Kamala Harris signs were nowhere to be seen last year. Florida has shifted from purple to red in recent years. A friend once received hostile comments from a local who noticed his Connecticut license plate, demanding that he not relocate but should keep his liberal […]

I spent a few days last week at the Catalyst Funds National Sales Conference in Puerto Rico. Catalyst is our mutual fund partner. It is about ten degrees warmer than Naples, FL where we've spent most of the winter, and the conference was once again thoughtfully located at the Royal Sonesta Hotel on the beach […]

On Monday the market dipped back below its pre-election level. The proximate cause was Trump's ambiguous response when asked if there will be a recession. He has warned that the tariffs will likely cause “a little disturbance.” To this observer, the problem is more the rapid unpredictability with which new import taxes are announced and […]

Midstream companies are generally unaffected by the current round of daily tariff updates. Their stock prices may gyrate with the rest of the market, but nobody is revising guidance. It's worth remembering that these are toll businesses, focused on volumes not commodity prices. Consumption of petroleum products is remarkably stable. It's been between 20 and […]

Last week I gave a lunchtime presentation to a local investment club organized by Elliot Miller, a friend and long-time investor in midstream energy. Afterwards one of the participants came up to me and, disclosing that he used to work as a nuclear physicist, asked me what I thought of the prospects for Small Modular […]

Daniel Yergin is right to call it the Energy Addition. In an essay in Foreign Affairs called The Troubled Energy Transition, he notes that since 1990 hydrocarbons have dropped from 85% of primary energy to around 80% today. That can hardly be called a transition. Since 2000 global energy consumption has increased from 397 Exajoules […]

Suppose for a moment that the Sierra Club was a political party, with candidates running and elected officials in government. They might look like Germany's Green Party, which has drawn support from idealistic German voters since the 1980s. They are politically left, view everything through the narrow prism of environmentalism and have a history of […]

It seems a lifetime ago, but in the latter stages of the capital bust that was the shale revolution, capex plans were often poorly received. In late 2018 Targa Resources (TRGP) drew the ire of investors when then-CEO Joe Bob Perkins dismissed criticism by calling their spending plans “capital blessings” (see 4Q18 Energy Infrastructure Earnings […]

Among Winston Churchill's many memorable quotes is, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” This applies to some European countries' posture towards Russia. The Economist recently asked, Will Europe return to Putin's gas? Could they return to their reliance on Russian energy? The question has been buffeting LNG […]

On Thursday morning Williams Companies released their earnings without the rumored announcement of a Behind The Meter (BTM) deal. The stock briefly dipped as algos reacted to the news release but was soon rallying because the broad outlook for natural gas demand remains strong. It's turning into a global high tech arms race. Proliferation of […]

On Monday Energy Transfer announced the first Behind The Meter (BTM) agreement of the AI era. They'll provide up to 450 Million Cubic Feet per Day of natural gas to a data center being built by CloudBurst Data Centers in central Texas. This represents 0.45 Billion Cubic Feet per Day (BCF/D), almost 0.5% of US […]

On Friday both the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times ran stories about planned capex on data centers by the big US tech companies. The DeepSeek news of two weeks ago hasn't resulted in any discernible change. The case for increased power generation remains intact. On Wednesday Williams Companies will report their quarterly earnings. […]

Although the US is energy independent and a net exporter of petroleum products, we still import certain blends of crude. Canadian tar sands oil is the heavy type for which American refineries are configured as is Mexican oil. Shale oil is lighter. So we buy what we are set up to handle and sell what […]

Following Monday's “sputnik moment” for AI the market has had a few days to consider the ramifications of DeepSeek's apparent breakthrough. Mark Zuckerberg reaffirmed Meta's plans to spend $60-65BN on data centers. They have embraced an open-source approach to AI, believing that sharing code freely will drive penetration. Since DeepSeek also published their code any […]

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen called it, ”AI's sputnik moment.” The news that Chinese start-up Deepseek may have leapt ahead of the US in AI caused an unpleasant start to the week. In 1957 Sputnik's orbit led to the creation of NASA and fears that Russian satellites could attack the US from space. While Americans have […]

One source of recent volatility in midstream has come from a stock that wasn't even listed – Venture Global (VG), the LNG exporter whose IPO priced on Thursday. The fundamentals could not be more positive. Trump has reversed the LNG export pause, wants US energy dominance and asked our trading partners to buy more American […]

I was chatting with an investor the other day, and he remarked that there are three powerful legs to the midstream story. They are demand growth for natural gas; attractive valuation; the incoming administration's support for traditional energy. He felt that there's too little appreciation of the underlying support from these three elements. Last year […]

Last week the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released their Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO). People are often surprised to learn that US power demand has remained the same for the past couple of decades – at around 4,000 Terrawatt Hours (TwHs). The economy and population keep growing but offsetting this is improving energy efficiency. Electricity […]

It's now less than a week until Donald Trump takes over in the White House. The past couple of months have caused many to wonder why there's such a long gap between the election and the inauguration. It's a holdover from the eighteenth century when the time was required to allow messengers to travel to […]

Wells Fargo has recently suggested that the market may start paying more attention to the P/E ratios of midstream stocks. The sector has historically been valued using Free Cash Flow or Distributable Cash Flow (DCF), which is FCF less the maintenance capex necessary to preserve the value of existing assets. P/E hasn't been used much […]

Data center demand for natural gas was the big energy story last year.  Wells Fargo referred to “a momentous year for midstream” with this as the biggest driver. It's been consistently cited by JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley. Wells Fargo calculated that C-corps outperformed MLPs by 23%. This was a substantial difference and means that the […]

We enjoy the feedback from our blog readers, which along with the pageviews inform future topics. Looking back over last year's posts, natural gas growth, the challenges facing renewables and obstructionist climate extremists were among the themes that resonated most. The most popular post was The Inflationary Energy Transition, which reviewed how US electricity prices […]

The other day I read a tweet complaining that since 1971 household family income had increased 5.5X (from $10K to $55K) while the median cost of a new car has gone up by 12X ($4K to $48K). It's not quite correct. Median family income has risen to $101K, so has almost kept up. But it […]

Over the years I've developed a few soundbites to help investors remember why they should invest in midstream energy infrastructure. Once it became clear that climate extremists’ efforts to impede new pipeline construction were boosting free cash flow, I proclaimed that we should all hug our local climate protester and drive them to their next […]

Around this time of year, I've often indulged myself in writing about Christmas pudding (for more, watch this video). This English dessert is a rich, dark fruit cake best enjoyed heated with heavy cream. It is an acquired taste, and our children were each offered one brief opportunity to develop a taste for it. While […]

For years the center of gravity for global LNG trade was in Asia. China, India, Japan and South Korea were routinely over 60% of global LNG imports. Asia-Pacific was often over 70%, reaching a high of 75% in 2018. Australia and Qatar were geographically better suited than the US to meet this demand, and our […]