Natural gas converted to liquid form for storage or transport
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Guy Adami interviews Michael Kao (@UrbanKaoboy), discussing the historic moves in gold and silver, the debate over fiat debasement versus speculative positioning, and why charts showing central bank gold eclipsing Treasury holdings can be misleading because much of the change is price appreciation rather than new buying. Kao argues true de-dollarization is unlikely due to the lack of a rival fiat ecosystem with comparable liquidity and deep bond markets, and says a shift from Treasuries to gold as a reserve anchor would imply economic austerity and slower global GDP growth. They explore how geopolitics (including post-Ukraine reserve seizure fears) and Trump-related tariff and deficit narratives have fueled gold, while Kao outlines a contrarian view that Trump 2.0 policies plus AI could be deflationary and potentially restore productivity-driven disinflationary growth similar to the late 1990s; he also critiques CBO debt projections for assuming low productivity growth. The conversation covers AI's disruptive impact on industry moats and equity multiple compression versus immediate default risk, touches briefly on Japan's bond market and the yen carry trade, and examines the “sanctity” of large AI CapEx plans and whether AI expands total addressable markets or mainly drives cost cutting. Kao highlights his thesis from his piece on AI electrification: U.S. electricity demand may accelerate sharply after decades of flat growth, creating an energy bottleneck that increases reliance on natural gas (given limits to coal and nuclear), amplified by data center buildouts and LNG exports. He explains his preference for natural gas mineral strategies that distribute cash flow over trading commodities or owning E&P equities due to capital allocation risks, and notes recent oil spikes have often faded since 2022. Show Notes AI, Electrification, and the Hidden Energy Bottleneck | Michael Kao The Fourth Turning by Strauss & Howe —FOLLOW USYouTube: @RiskReversalMediaInstagram: @riskreversalmediaTwitter: @RiskReversalLinkedIn: RiskReversal Media
In this episode of the Planet MicroCap Podcast, I'm joined by Luis Sanchez, Founder of LVS Advisory, to discuss his firm's differentiated event-driven and global growth strategies, and why he sees compelling opportunities emerging outside the crowded large-cap tech trade. Luis walks us through his high-conviction “Power Thesis,” which identifies a massive structural shortage in U.S. electricity driven by AI and data center demand, and highlights key beneficiaries across nuclear, LNG, and energy infrastructure. We also explore why LVS is optimistic about merger arbitrage and corporate restructurings in 2026, how he's positioning around global dislocations and misunderstood compounders, and why today's concentrated market environment may be creating one of the most attractive opportunity sets for disciplined, catalyst-driven investors. We mention a number of companies and sectors during this conversation, and I'm not a shareholder in any of them. For more information about LVS Advisory, please visit: https://lvsadvisory.com/ Chapters: 00:00 Introduction and Background 02:45 Investment Strategies Overview 06:01 Event-Driven Investing Insights 09:10 Merger Arbitrage Opportunities 11:50 Market Outlook for 2026 15:11 Catalysts vs. Quality Businesses 18:02 Case Study: Talon Energy 20:54 Power Thesis and Macro Insights 24:08 Characteristics of Quality Investments 30:47 The Role of LNG in Global Energy Markets 39:05 Investing in Microcap Energy Companies 47:44 Exploring Nuclear Energy Opportunities 50:42 Future Trends in Housing and Media Investments Planet Microcap hosts the highest quality in-person microcap events in North America. The mission is to bring the best microcap investors, companies, and allocators together to gather, connect, and grow.; visit https://planetmicrocap.com/ to learn more about our Las Vegas and Toronto events. The purpose of this conversation is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as a recommendation to purchase or sell any security. Planet MicroCap Holdings LLC and MicroCapClub LLC are not registered investment advisors. Planet MicroCap Holdings LLC, MicroCapClub LLC, its partners, contractors, members, subscribers, guests, and affiliates may or may not hold positions in one or more of the securities mentioned on this program and may trade in such securities at any time. Do your own due diligence and seek counsel from a registered investment advisor before trading in any security.
We are excited to continue our NAPE COBT series with Scott Richardson, Global Head of Energy Investment Banking at RBC, and Craig Lande, Managing Director and Co-Head of RBC's Energy A&D practice, to explore what's driving today's asset markets. Scott is the former Co-Founder of Richardson Barr and has more than 40 years of energy investment banking experience across the sale of both public and private companies, private and public debt transactions, fairness opinions, general advisory and asset divestitures. Craig joined RBC Richardson Barr in 2005 and previously served as Vice President at Waterous & Co. He has over 25 years of broad experience in the U.S. A&D market, including the sale of assets and companies, fairness opinions, and general advisory. Mark Castiglione and Maynard were thrilled to host Scott and Craig. In our conversation, we explore the current asset market, with gas deals a much more significant share of the market amid a mix of new and returning buyers, including international capital (particularly Asia) pursuing Gulf Coast gas with LNG linkage. We discuss seller-friendly valuations driven by a scarcity premium and “four buckets” of demand (ABS-backed buyers, international buyers, strategics/publics, and private equity) competing for limited opportunities and fueling increasingly aggressive bid dynamics, including tighter bid rounds and more pre-emptive offers. We unpack ABS mechanics and their impact on PDP valuations, including the role of lower-cost capital and longer-dated hedging. We cover the disconnect between private-market asset valuations and public-market multiples, corporate M&A as a catalyst for future A&D supply, trading firms seeking physical commodity exposure, the return of commercial bank lending, and go-private considerations constrained by leverage. We examine how buyers are embedding inventory upside into valuations by assigning value to secondary and deeper zones, where pockets of new basin excitement remain (including the Rockies, Canada, and select international opportunities), how shifting regulatory dynamics have stimulated interest in New Mexico, and the evolving role of ABS financing and continuation vehicles. We also touch on whether AI is meaningfully changing transaction workflows, longer-term consolidation trends, the potential return of exploration capital domestically and abroad, and much more. It was a substantive and thought-provoking discussion. Many thanks to Scott and Craig for their time and thoughtful insights during a very busy week. Stay tuned for our final NAPE episode focused on exploration. Our best to you all!
NGI's Jamison Cocklin, managing editor of LNG, talks with Davenport Energy's Toby Copson, managing partner and portfolio manager, about where things stand in the Asian LNG market as winter nears an end and the restocking season approaches. Copson, an LNG trader, discusses why Asian LNG spot buying has been so sluggish and whether he expects that to change anytime soon. The conversation also covers other influences shaping the world's largest LNG market. Copson and Cocklin explore what role Asia will play in the years ahead as more supply from the United States and elsewhere comes online and global natural gas trading expands.
Questions to Ministers CAMERON BREWER to the Minister of Finance: What is the Treasury's recommended ceiling for New Zealand's net core Crown debt? Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government's statements and actions? Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i nga korero me nga mahi katoa a tona Kawanatanga? Does he stand by all of his Government's statements and actions? KATIE NIMON to the Minister for Infrastructure: What reports has he seen on New Zealand's infrastructure? Hon BARBARA EDMONDS to the Minister of Finance: Does she stand by her statement in July 2024 that "cost of living relief is on its way"; if so, have prices come down since then? TOM RUTHERFORD to the Minister of Justice: How is the Government committed to fixing the basics in law and order? Dr DAVID WILSON to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries: What actions has the Government taken to protect rock pools? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS to the Minister for Energy: What analysis, if any, shows that his LNG-levy model is cheaper over 20 years for households than a programme of wind, solar, storage, and demand-side management? DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government's statements and actions? CHLÖE SWARBRICK to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i nga korero me nga mahi katoa a tona Kawanatanga? Does he stand by all of his Government's statements and actions? Hon GINNY ANDERSEN to the Minister for Economic Growth: Does she stand by her statement, "I take responsibility for my decisions" in the context of the thousands more New Zealanders out of work under this Government? Dr CARLOS CHEUNG to the Minister for Tourism and Hospitality: What recent announcements has the Government made about supporting major events in New Zealand?
Energy Vista: A Podcast on Energy Issues, Professional and Personal Trajectories
In this special solo episode recorded on January 21, 2026, Leslie Palti-Guzman shares what truly keeps her up at night.She begins as a parent, reflecting on how history is taught, the disappearance of classical foundations, and the transformation of information consumption in the digital age.Then she pivots to her professional lens at the intersection of energy, trade, and geopolitics.Key themes include:• Why the US energy bonanza remains a strategic asset• The risks of undermining transatlantic energy relations• Europe's record LNG dependence on the US in 2025• Atlantic basin energy interdependence• What are the limits of geoeconomic leverageLeslie argues for data over rhetoric, for strong transatlantic alliances, and for diplomatic use of America's energy power.A reflective and strategic episode about markets, alliances, and energy leadership.
The Alliance Party officially launched its campaign for the 2026 General Election at its National Conference in Christchurch over the weekend. Members from across Aotearoa gathered at the Trade Union Centre to ratify the party's constitution, elect national officers, and confirm the policy platform for the upcoming election. The President of the Alliance Party is Victor Billot and he joins us tonight LIVE at 9pm.Dr Grant Duncan joins us tonight LIVE at 9.30 to talk about his latest Substack on David Seymour's "State of the Nation" speech when Duncan calls our Seymour's games of Libertarian "freedom" and, among other conclusions, writes "populist tactics worked for ACT only so long as National was weak. [Rodney] Hide was ACT Party leader from 2004 to 2011, overseeing their humiliating decline from nine seats to just two in 2005. He was dumped as party leader in April 2011, to be replaced by an even less competent politician: Don Brash. ACT then fell to 1% and below. The market had spoken."See Grant's Substack here https://grantduncanphd.substack.comAndrew Eagles from the New Zealand Green Building Council joined Q&A on Sunday with an exclusive new analysis that outlines why his organisation believes the LNG import terminal plan is a mistake, and why a different plan for massive uptake of solar and heat pump hot water systems would work better.++++++++++++++++++++Like us on Facebook.com/BigHairyNetwork Follow us on Twitter.com/@bighairynetworkFollowing us on TikTok.com/@bighairynetworkSupport us on Patreon www.patreon.com/c/BigHairyNewsCheck out our merch https://bhn.nz/shop/Donate to our work https://bhn.nz/shop/donation/
Brent råolie - Geopolitikken helt afgørende for lavere prisRuslands og Irans geopolitiske overlevelsesstrategi betyder, at olieprisen må handle med en overpris for leveranceusikkerhed. Og mens Kinas vedholdende køb til strategiske olielagre bremser stigningen i verdens olielagre, så bliver tidspunktet for aftagende geopolitiske skærmydsler bestemmende for, hvornår Brent indleder sit fundamentale prisfald mod 55 dollar.Diesel - Ufølsomme priser for levering i 2027Vi venter lavere priser i 2. halvår, så først på det tidspunkt aftager indkøbspresset i 2026. Indtil da må tidligere prissikring kompensere. Vi anbefaler fokus på sikringen af 2027. Vores ventede prisfald slår kun begrænset igennem på priserne for leverancer i 2027, og det betyder i praksis, at vi anbefaler at placere faste ordrer på DKK 3,20 for en CAL27 – en løbende prissikring af hele 2027.Naturgas - Europa hænger på neo-amerikansk LNGEuropas gaslagre slutter vinteren meget lave, og indfasningen af forbuddet mod russisk gas stiller store krav til, at nye amerikanske LNG-eksportterminaler tager over uden forsinkelser. Allerede i år mærker vi, hvor strategisk klogt det er at gå fra russisk til neo amerikansk gasafhængighed. Vi venter først lavere priser i sensommeren til en anbefalet 50 %-sikring af vinteren 2026/2027.Læs hele analysen her.Vigtig investorinformation.
This week on the Monday Wire... For our weekly catch-up with the ACT Party, News Director Castor spoke to MP Simon Court about Liquid Natural Gas imports and David Seymour's State of the Nation speech. They also spoke to Professor Emeritus at Massey University, Ralph Sims, about the sustainability of an LNG terminal. And they spoke to University of Auckland Professor of Electrical Engineering Nirmal Nair about how the LNG plans would benefit power companies. Producer Alex spoke to Professor Emeritus in Law at the University of Auckland, Jane Kelsey, about the ongoing rumblings around reforms within the World Trade Organisation, New Zealand's role, and what changes to the organisation would mean for us. He also spoke with Professor in Chemicals and Materials Engineering at the University of Auckland, and Deputy Director of the Green Energy Engineering Centre, Brent Young, about the governments LNG terminal proposal, and what it means in the context of our wider approach to fixing our energy woes.
The government's plans to construct a liquified natural gas import terminal have sparked a lot of conversation over the past week about the role of natural gas in our energy infrastructure, and what more we need. Producer Alex spoke with Professor in Chemical and Material Engineering at the University of Auckland, Brent Young, about how this proposal fits in to the issue it seeks to solve, and what more needs to be done within our energy infrastructure. Next, News Director Castor spoke to Professor Emeritus at Massey University, Ralph Sims, about the sustainability of Liquid Natural Gas and potential alternatives. Finally, they spoke to the University of Auckland's Professor of Electrical Engineering Nirmal Nair about how energy companies stand to benefit from the LNG changes.
This week on the Monday Wire... For our weekly catch-up with the ACT Party, News Director Castor spoke to MP Simon Court about Liquid Natural Gas imports and David Seymour's State of the Nation speech. They also spoke to Professor Emeritus at Massey University, Ralph Sims, about the sustainability of an LNG terminal. And they spoke to University of Auckland Professor of Electrical Engineering Nirmal Nair about how the LNG plans would benefit power companies. Producer Alex spoke to Professor Emeritus in Law at the University of Auckland, Jane Kelsey, about the ongoing rumblings around reforms within the World Trade Organisation, New Zealand's role, and what changes to the organisation would mean for us. He also spoke with Professor in Chemicals and Materials Engineering at the University of Auckland, and Deputy Director of the Green Energy Engineering Centre, Brent Young, about the governments LNG terminal proposal, and what it means in the context of our wider approach to fixing our energy woes.
The government's plans to construct a liquified natural gas import terminal have sparked a lot of conversation over the past week about the role of natural gas in our energy infrastructure, and what more we need. Producer Alex spoke with Professor in Chemical and Material Engineering at the University of Auckland, Brent Young, about how this proposal fits in to the issue it seeks to solve, and what more needs to be done within our energy infrastructure. Next, News Director Castor spoke to Professor Emeritus at Massey University, Ralph Sims, about the sustainability of Liquid Natural Gas and potential alternatives. Finally, they spoke to the University of Auckland's Professor of Electrical Engineering Nirmal Nair about how energy companies stand to benefit from the LNG changes.
We discuss the genocidal actions the US is taking against Cuba, the use of terrorism allegations to crush dissent in the west, buying citizenship in NZ and the importance of energy sovereignty in relation to the unfolding LNG scandal.This episode's co-hostsGinny, Josephine, KyleTimestamps0:00 Opening / Introductions2:20 Cuba Escalation19:09 Force Projection30:57 Palestine Action35:25 NZME38:54 Buying Citizenship47:33 False Claims for Elections54:36 Gas Supply 1:02:25 Final Thoughts / ClosingIntro/Outro by The Prophet MotiveSupport us here: https://www.patreon.com/1of200
Will government get India trade deal in the bag? Trade minister Todd McClay joins Q+A for an in-depth discussion of the free trade agreement with India, as Labour releases a letter outlining their conditions on what might be needed for them to consider voting for it. It comes amid tensions in the government over the deal, with NZ First leader Winston Peters raising concerns about what the deal will mean for migration. LNG or solar? What solves NZ's energy crisis debated Andrew Eagles from the New Zealand Green Building Council joins Q+A with an exclusive new analysis that outlines why his organisation believes the Liquefied Natural Gas import terminal plan is a mistake, and why a different plan for massive uptake of solar and heat pump hot water systems would work better. Insurance retreat: Where's the safest bet for cover? With insurance companies starting to pull out from offering new policies in severely flood or seismic vulnerable areas, which area has the lowest risk? And should the government step in when insurance companies step back? Rent controls, eviction protections: MP wants to change tenant rights Green MP Tamatha Paul explains her Member's Bill, which would impose rent controls, and make it harder to evict tenants. Join Jack Tame and the Q+A team and find the answers to the questions that matter. Made with the support of NZ on Air.
Po 2022 roku Europa w dużej mierze odeszła od rosyjskich surowców energetycznych. Zastąpiły je m. in. surowce z USA, w tym zwłaszcza amerykańskie LNG. Są tacy, którzy uważają, że zależność UE od LNG i ropy z USA jest zbyt duża. Czy rzeczywiście jest to realnym problemem? O tym mówi w podcast OSW Agata Łoskot-Strachota. Komentarz OSW: https://www.osw.waw.pl/pl/publikacje/komentarze-osw/2026-02-04/nadmierna-zaleznosc-rosnaca-rola-lng-i-ropy-z-usa-na-rynku
If energy is destiny and stockpiles signal intent, then this episode may completely change how you see oil, gold, China, Canada—and your portfolio. In this high-conviction macro deep dive, hosts Pierre Daillie and Mike Philbrick sit down with returning guest Doomberg to dismantle the comfortable narratives investors use to understand energy, geopolitics, and portfolio construction. Doomberg reframes the global order through a resource-first lens: energy is destiny, stockpiles signal intent, and technology is rewriting the rules of commodities. From Venezuela and Guyana to China's war rations, from shale's molecular revolution to Saskatchewan's overlooked strategic wealth, this episode challenges the assumptions underpinning the traditional 60/40 portfolio. If the last 50 years were defined by efficiency, globalization, and financialization, the next regime may be defined by resilience, reshoring, and resource leverage. This is not just a discussion about oil. It's about power.
The Government's LNG plan has triggered an explosive row over the difference between a tax and a levy, but the major question is whether it will keep the lights on Imported liquified natural gas could be a stopgap insurance policy against dry years - or an expensive, dirty fuel that will hit Kiwis in the pocketFind The Detail on Newsroom or RNZ Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details
March 6th is your day. This is the date that the changes to foreign buyers of expensive houses comes into play. This date, in a way, is like the LNG announcement. The idea of foreign buyers for houses isn't new. It's been part of the Government's plan ever since the Government became the Government. The LNG idea got floated in the winter of 2024, not long after the Government became the Government also. This proves one of two things - either it's hard work being in Government and things take longer than you think, or this lot aren't that flash at getting things done despite the rhetoric to the contrary. The foreign buyers rule is a righting of a horrible, myopic, narrow-minded wrong from the previous Government. House prices were never driven by Germans buying $15 million homes in Herne Bay, nor the Chinese buying $19 million homes in St Heliers. And Auckland is essentially where they were all bought. Queenstown has joined the party a bit lately. But the vast swathe of New Zealand never saw a mega purchase from a filthy, rich foreigner. Why it's important is we should see foreigners as good people who want to improve their lives, while improving ours via the improvement of the country. People who have money do things with it, like buy or build business, they invest, they grow, they employ and they pay tax. They bring knowledge and expertise and they, more often than not, fall in love with our piece of paradise and end up doing far more than they ever set out to do. I think a lot of Julian Robertson, an American who built lodges and golf courses here that bring in millions. He enhanced the place. And next time you're at the Auckland Art Gallery, go see one of his Picasso's. He gave them a fortune in art. What drives bans is envy, shallowness, fear and, often, stupidity. We have at last made it right. Yes, it will help the housing market, but more importantly it will help the country and this country needs to pull every trigger in its arsenal to fire it up. Nine years ago we were a place of pride and growth and global admiration. Labour 2017-23 destroyed that. March 6th is a small step back towards redemption and better days. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big-ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all. LNG: 7/10 An example of the times. A decent idea to help solve a genuine issue and yet too many miss the point and bitch about tax vs levy vs fee. Greg Foran: 7/10 Back where he belongs. There is a book there. What he thought it might be and what it was, is several chapters worth. OT and cultural leave: 2/10 When you promise something as this Government did, especially around emotive issues like this, you've got to deliver. The fact this is real and still exists speaks to the angst around the race issues this country battles with. The Covid review: 8/10 I don't care if it's political. It's good its political. We all need a reminder of the damage and pain that results from incompetence and arrogance. Super Bowl: 8/10 The second most watched TV event ever, only behind the most watched TV event ever, which was also the Super Bowl. Spot the sport going places. LISTEN ABOVE FOR MIKE HOSKING'S FULL WEEK IN REVIEWSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Infrastructure was passé…uncool. Difficult to get dollars from Private Equity and Growth funds, and almost impossible to get a VC fund interested. Now?! Now, it's cool. Infrastructure seems to be having a Renaissance, a full on Rebirth, not just fueled by commercial interests (e.g. advent of AI), but also by industrial policy and geopolitical considerations. In this episode of Tech Deciphered, we explore what's cool in the infrastructure spaces, including mega trends in semiconductors, energy, networking & connectivity, manufacturing Navigation: Intro We're back to building things Why now: the 5 forces behind the renaissance Semiconductors: compute is the new oil Networking & connectivity: digital highways get rebuilt Energy: rebuilding the power stack (not just renewables) Manufacturing: the return of “atoms + bits” Wrap: what it means for startups, incumbents, and investors Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Introduction Welcome to episode 73 of Tech Deciphered, Infrastructure, the Rebirth or Renaissance. Infrastructure was passé, it wasn’t cool, but all of a sudden now everyone’s talking about network, talking about compute and semiconductors, talking about logistics, talking about energy. What gives? What’s happened? It was impossible in the past to get any funds, venture capital, even, to be honest, some private equity funds or growth funds interested in some of these areas, but now all of a sudden everyone thinks it’s cool. The infrastructure seems to be having a renaissance, a full-on rebirth. In this episode, we will explore in which cool ways the infrastructure spaces are moving and what’s leading to it. We will deep dive into the forces that are leading us to this. We will deep dive into semiconductors, networking and connectivity, energy, manufacturing, and then we’ll wrap up. Bertrand, so infrastructure is cool now. Bertrand Schmitt We're back to building things Yes. I thought software was going to eat the world. I cannot believe it was then, maybe even 15 years ago, from Andreessen, that quote about software eating the world. I guess it’s an eternal balance. Sometimes you go ahead of yourself, you build a lot of software stack, and at some point, you need the hardware to run this software stack, and there is only so much the bits can do in a world of atoms. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Obviously, we’ve gone through some of this before. I think what we’re going through right now is AI is eating the world, and because AI is eating the world, it’s driving a lot of this infrastructure building that we need. We don’t have enough energy to be consumed by all these big data centers and hyperscalers. We need to be innovative around network as well because of the consumption in terms of network bandwidth that is linked to that consumption as well. In some ways, it’s not software eating the world, AI is eating the world. Because AI is eating the world, we need to rethink everything around infrastructure and infrastructure becoming cool again. Bertrand Schmitt There is something deeper in this. It’s that the past 10, even 15 years were all about SaaS before AI. SaaS, interestingly enough, was very energy-efficient. When I say SaaS, I mean cloud computing at large. What I mean by energy-efficient is that actually cloud computing help make energy use more efficient because instead of companies having their own separate data centers in many locations, sometimes poorly run from an industrial perspective, replace their own privately run data center with data center run by the super scalers, the hyperscalers of the world. These data centers were run much better in terms of how you manage the coolings, the energy efficiency, the rack density, all of this stuff. Actually, the cloud revolution didn’t increase the use of electricity. The cloud revolution was actually a replacement from your private data center to the hyperscaler data center, which was energy efficient. That’s why we didn’t, even if we are always talking about that growth of cloud computing, we were never feeling the pinch in term of electricity. As you say, we say it all changed because with AI, it was not a simple “Replacement” of locally run infrastructure to a hyperscaler run infrastructure. It was truly adding on top of an existing infrastructure, a new computing infrastructure in a way out of nowhere. Not just any computing infrastructure, an energy infrastructure that was really, really voracious in term of energy use. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro There was one other effect. Obviously, we’ve discussed before, we are in a bubble. We won’t go too much into that today. But the previous big bubble in tech, which is in the late ’90s, there was a lot of infrastructure built. We thought the internet was going to take over back then. It didn’t take over immediately, but there was a lot of network connectivity, bandwidth built back in the day. Companies imploded because of that as well, or had to restructure and go in their chapter 11. A lot of the big telco companies had their own issues back then, etc., but a lot of infrastructure was built back then for this advent of the internet, which would then take a long time to come. In some ways, to your point, there was a lot of latent supply that was built that was around that for a while wasn’t used, but then it was. Now it’s been used, and now we need new stuff. That’s why I feel now we’re having the new moment of infrastructure, new moment of moving forward, aligned a little bit with what you just said around cloud computing and the advent of SaaS, but also around the fact that we had a lot of buildup back in the late ’90s, early ’90s, which we’re now still reaping the benefits on in today’s world. Bertrand Schmitt Yeah, that’s actually a great point because what was built in the late ’90s, there was a lot of fibre that was built. Laying out the fibre either across countries, inside countries. This fibre, interestingly enough, you could just change the computing on both sides of the fibre, the routing, the modems, and upgrade the capacity of the fibre. But the fibre was the same in between. The big investment, CapEx investment, was really lying down that fibre, but then you could really upgrade easily. Even if both ends of the fibre were either using very old infrastructure from the ’90s or were actually dark and not being put to use, step by step, it was being put to use, equipment was replaced, and step by step, you could keep using more and more of this fibre. It was a very interesting development, as you say, because it could be expanded over the years, where if we talk about GPUs, use for AI, GPUs, the interesting part is actually it’s totally the opposite. After a few years, it’s useless. Some like Google, will argue that they can depreciate over 5, 6 years, even some GPUs. But at the end of the day, the difference in perf and energy efficiency of the GPUs means that if you are energy constrained, you just want to replace the old one even as young as three-year-old. You have to look at Nvidia increasing spec, generation after generation. It’s pretty insane. It’s usually at least 3X year over year in term of performance. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro At this moment in time, it’s very clear that it’s happening. Why now: the 5 forces behind the renaissance Maybe let’s deep dive into why it’s happening now. What are the key forces around this? We’ve identified, I think, five forces that are particularly vital that lead to the world we’re in right now. One we’ve already talked about, which is AI, the demand shock and everything that’s happened because of AI. Data centers drive power demand, drive grid upgrades, drive innovative ways of getting energy, drive chips, drive networking, drive cooling, drive manufacturing, drive all the things that we’re going to talk in just a bit. One second element that we could probably highlight in terms of the forces that are behind this is obviously where we are in terms of cost curves around technology. Obviously, a lot of things are becoming much cheaper. The simulation of physical behaviours has become a lot more cheap, which in itself, this becomes almost a vicious cycle in of itself, then drives the adoption of more and more AI and stuff. But anyway, the simulation is becoming more and more accessible, so you can do a lot of simulation with digital twins and other things off the real world before you go into the real world. Robotics itself is becoming, obviously, cheaper. Hardware, a lot of the hardware is becoming cheaper. Computer has become cheaper as well. Obviously, there’s a lot of cost curves that have aligned that, and that’s maybe the second force that I would highlight. Obviously, funds are catching up. We’ll leave that a little bit to the end. We’ll do a wrap-up and talk a little bit about the implications to investors. But there’s a lot of capital out there, some capital related to industrial policy, other capital related to private initiative, private equity, growth funds, even venture capital, to be honest, and a few other elements on that. That would be a third force that I would highlight. Bertrand Schmitt Yes. Interestingly enough, in terms of capital use, and we’ll talk more about this, but some firms, if we are talking about energy investment, it was very difficult to invest if you are not investing in green energy. Now I think more and more firms and banks are willing to invest or support different type of energy infrastructure, not just, “Green energy.” That’s an interesting development because at some point it became near impossible to invest more in gas development, in oil development in the US or in most Western countries. At least in the US, this is dramatically changing the framework. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Maybe to add the two last forces that I think we see behind the renaissance of what’s happening in infrastructure. They go hand in hand. One is the geopolitics of the world right now. Obviously, the world was global flat, and now it’s becoming increasingly siloed, so people are playing it to their own interests. There’s a lot of replication of infrastructure as well because people want to be autonomous, and they want to drive their own ability to serve end consumers, businesses, etc., in terms of data centers and everything else. That ability has led to things like, for example, chips shortage. The fact that there are semiconductors, there are shortages across the board, like memory shortages, where everything is packed up until 2027 of 2028. A lot of the memory that was being produced is already spoken for, which is shocking. There’s obviously generation of supply chain fragilities, obviously, some of it because of policies, for example, in the US with tariffs, etc, security of energy, etc. Then the last force directly linked to the geopolitics is the opposite of it, which is the policy as an accelerant, so to speak, as something that is accelerating development, where because of those silos, individual countries, as part their industrial policy, then want to put capital behind their local ecosystems, their local companies, so that their local companies and their local systems are for sure the winners, or at least, at the very least, serve their own local markets. I think that’s true of a lot of the things we’re seeing, for example, in the US with the Chips Act, for semiconductors, with IGA, IRA, and other elements of what we’ve seen in terms of practices, policies that have been implemented even in Europe, China, and other parts of the world. Bertrand Schmitt Talking about chips shortages, it’s pretty insane what has been happening with memory. Just the past few weeks, I have seen a close to 3X increase in price in memory prices in a matter of weeks. Apparently, it started with a huge order from OpenAI. Apparently, they have tried to corner the memory market. Interestingly enough, it has flat-footed the entire industry, and that includes Google, that includes Microsoft. There are rumours of their teams now having moved to South Korea, so they are closer to the action in terms of memory factories and memory decision-making. There are rumours of execs who got fired because they didn’t prepare for this type of eventuality or didn’t lock in some of the supply chain because that memory was initially for AI, but obviously, it impacts everything because factories making memories, you have to plan years in advance to build memories. You cannot open new lines of manufacturing like this. All factories that are going to open, we know when they are going to open because they’ve been built up for years. There is no extra capacity suddenly. At the very best, you can change a bit your line of production from one type of memory to another type. But that’s probably about it. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Just to be clear, all these transformations we’re seeing isn’t to say just hardware is back, right? It’s not just hardware. There’s physicality. The buildings are coming back, right? It’s full stack. Software is here. That’s why everything is happening. Policy is here. Finance is here. It’s a little bit like the name of the movie, right? Everything everywhere all at once. Everything’s happening. It was in some ways driven by the upper stacks, by the app layers, by the platform layers. But now we need new infrastructure. We need more infrastructure. We need it very, very quickly. We need it today. We’re already lacking in it. Semiconductors: compute is the new oil Maybe that’s a good segue into the first piece of the whole infrastructure thing that’s driving now the most valuable company in the world, NVIDIA, which is semiconductors. Semiconductors are driving compute. Semis are the foundation of infrastructure as a compute. Everyone needs it for every thing, for every activity, not just for compute, but even for sensors, for actuators, everything else. That’s the beginning of it all. Semiconductor is one of the key pieces around the infrastructure stack that’s being built at scale at this moment in time. Bertrand Schmitt Yes. What’s interesting is that if we look at the market gap of Semis versus software as a service, cloud companies, there has been a widening gap the past year. I forgot the exact numbers, but we were talking about plus 20, 25% for Semis in term of market gap and minus 5, minus 10 for SaaS companies. That’s another trend that’s happening. Why is this happening? One, because semiconductors are core to the AI build-up, you cannot go around without them. But two, it’s also raising a lot of questions about the durability of the SaaS, a software-as-a-service business model. Because if suddenly we have better AI, and that’s all everyone is talking about to justify the investment in AI, that it keeps getting better, and it keeps improving, and it’s going to replace your engineers, your software engineers. Then maybe all of this moat that software companies built up over the years or decades, sometimes, might unravel under the pressure of newly coded, newly built, cheaper alternatives built from the ground up with AI support. It’s not just that, yes, semiconductors are doing great. It’s also as a result of that AI underlying trend that software is doing worse right now. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro At the end of the day, this foundational piece of infrastructure, semiconductor, is obviously getting manifest to many things, fabrication, manufacturing, packaging, materials, equipment. Everything’s being driven, ASML, etc. There are all these different players around the world that are having skyrocket valuations now, it’s because they’re all part of the value chain. Just to be very, very clear, there’s two elements of this that I think are very important for us to remember at this point in time. One, it’s the entire value chains are being shifted. It’s not just the chips that basically lead to computing in the strict sense of it. It’s like chips, for example, that drive, for example, network switching. We’re going to talk about networking a bit, but you need chips to drive better network switching. That’s getting revolutionised as well. For example, we have an investment in that space, a company called the eridu.ai, and they’re revolutionising one of the pieces around that stack. Second part of the puzzle, so obviously, besides the holistic view of the world that’s changing in terms of value change, the second piece of the puzzle is, as we discussed before, there’s industrial policy. We already mentioned the CHIPS Act, which is something, for example, that has been done in the US, which I think is 52 billion in incentives across a variety of things, grants, loans, and other mechanisms to incentivise players to scale capacity quick and to scale capacity locally in the US. One of the effects of that now is obviously we had the TSMC, US expansion with a factory here in the US. We have other levels of expansion going on with Intel, Samsung, and others that are happening as we speak. Again, it’s this two by two. It’s market forces that drive the need for fundamental shifts in the value chain. On the other industrial policy and actual money put forward by states, by governments, by entities that want to revolutionise their own local markets. Bertrand Schmitt Yes. When you talk about networking, it makes me think about what NVIDIA did more than six years ago when they acquired Mellanox. At the time, it was largest acquisition for NVIDIA in 2019, and it was networking for the data center. Not networking across data center, but inside the data center, and basically making sure that your GPUs, the different computers, can talk as fast as possible between each of them. I think that’s one piece of the puzzle that a lot of companies are missing, by the way, about NVIDIA is that they are truly providing full systems. They are not just providing a GPU. Some of their competitors are just providing GPUs. But NVIDIA can provide you the full rack. Now, they move to liquid-cool computing as well. They design their systems with liquid cooling in mind. They have a very different approach in the industry. It’s a systematic system-level approach to how do you optimize your data center. Quite frankly, that’s a bit hard to beat. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro For those listening, you’d be like, this is all very different. Semiconductors, networking, energy, manufacturing, this is all different. Then all of a sudden, as Bertrand is saying, well, there are some players that are acting across the stack. Then you see in the same sentence, you’re talking about nuclear power in Microsoft or nuclear power in Google, and you’re like, what happened? Why are these guys in the same sentence? It’s like they’re tech companies. Why are they talking about energy? It’s the nature of that. These ecosystems need to go hand in hand. The value chains are very deep. For you to actually reap the benefits of more and more, for example, semiconductor availability, you have to have better and better networking connectivity, and you have to have more and more energy at lower and lower costs, and all of that. All these things are intrinsically linked. That’s why you see all these big tech companies working across stack, NVIDIA being a great example of that in trying to create truly a systems approach to the world, as Bertrand was mentioning. Networking & connectivity: digital highways get rebuilt On the networking and connectivity side, as we said, we had a lot of fibre that was put down, etc, but there’s still more build-out needs to be done. 5G in terms of its densification is still happening. We’re now starting to talk, obviously, about 6G. I’m not sure most telcos are very happy about that because they just have been doing all this CapEx and all this deployment into 5G, and now people already started talking about 6G and what’s next. Obviously, data center interconnect is quite important, and all the hubbing that needs to happen around data centers is very, very important. We are seeing a lot movements around connectivity that are particularly important. Network gear and the emergence of players like Broadcom in terms of the semiconductor side of the fence, obviously, Cisco, Juniper, Arista, and others that are very much present in this space. As I said, we made an investment on the semiconductor side of networking as well, realizing that there’s still a lot of bottlenecks happening there. But obviously, the networking and connectivity stack still needs to be built at all levels within the data centers, outside of the data centers in terms of last mile, across the board in terms of fibre. We’re seeing a lot of movements still around the space. It’s what connects everything. At the end of the day, if there’s too much latency in these systems, if the bandwidths are not high enough, then we’re going to have huge bottlenecks that are going to be put at the table by a networking providers. Obviously, that doesn’t help anyone. If there’s a button like anywhere, it doesn’t work. All of this doesn’t work. Bertrand Schmitt Yes. Interestingly enough, I know we said for this episode, we not talk too much about space, but when you talk about 6G, it make me think about, of course, Starlink. That’s really your last mile delivery that’s being built as well. It’s a massive investment. We’re talking about thousands of satellites that are interconnected between each other through laser system. This is changing dramatically how companies can operate, how individuals can operate. For companies, you can have great connectivity from anywhere in the world. For military, it’s the same. For individuals, suddenly, you won’t have dead space, wide zones. This is also a part of changing how we could do things. It’s quite important even in the development of AI because, yes, you can have AI at the edge, but that interconnect to the rest of the system is quite critical. Having that availability of a network link, high-quality network link from anywhere is a great combo. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Then you start seeing regions of the world that want to differentiate to attract digital nomads by saying, “We have submarine cables that come and hub through us, and therefore, our connectivity is amazing.” I was just in Madeira, and they were talking about that in Portugal. One of the islands of Portugal. We have some Marine cables. You have great connectivity. We’re getting into that discussion where people are like, I don’t care. I mean, I don’t know. I assume I have decent connectivity. People actually care about decent connectivity. This discussion is not just happening at corporate level, at enterprise level? Etc. Even consumers, even people that want to work remotely or be based somewhere else in the world. It’s like, This is important Where is there a great connectivity for me so that I can have access to the services I need? Etc. Everyone becomes aware of everything. We had a cloud flare mishap more recently that the CEO had to jump online and explain deeply, technically and deeply, what happened. Because we’re in their heads. If Cloudflare goes down, there’s a lot of websites that don’t work. All of this, I think, is now becoming du jour rather than just an afterthought. Maybe we’ll think about that in the future. Bertrand Schmitt Totally. I think your life is being changed for network connectivity, so life of individuals, companies. I mean, everything. Look at airlines and ships and cruise ships. Now is the advent of satellite connectivity. It’s dramatically changing our experience. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Indeed. Energy: rebuilding the power stack (not just renewables) Moving maybe to energy. We’ve talked about energy quite a bit in the past. Maybe we start with the one that we didn’t talk as much, although we did mention it, which was, let’s call it the fossil infrastructure, what’s happening around there. Everyone was saying, it’s all going to be renewables and green. We’ve had a shift of power, geopolitics. Honestly, I the writing was on the wall that we needed a lot more energy creation. It wasn’t either or. We needed other sources to be as efficient as possible. Obviously, we see a lot of work happening around there that many would have thought, Well, all this infrastructure doesn’t matter anymore. Now we’re seeing LNG terminals, pipelines, petrochemical capacity being pushed up, a lot of stuff happening around markets in terms of export, and not only around export, but also around overall distribution and increases and improvements so that there’s less leakage, distribution of energy, etc. In some ways, people say, it’s controversial, but it’s like we don’t have enough energy to spare. We’re already behind, so we need as much as we can. We need to figure out the way to really extract as much as we can from even natural resources, which In many people’s mind, it’s almost like blasphemous to talk about, but it is where we are. Obviously, there’s a lot of renaissance also happening on the fossil infrastructure basis, so to speak. Bertrand Schmitt Personally, I’m ecstatic that there is a renaissance going regarding what is called fossil infrastructure. Oil and gas, it’s critical to humanity well-being. You never had growth of countries without energy growth and nothing else can come close. Nuclear could come close, but it takes decades to deploy. I think it’s great. It’s great for developed economies so that they do better, they can expand faster. It’s great for third-world countries who have no realistic other choice. I really don’t know what happened the past 10, 15 years and why this was suddenly blasphemous. But I’m glad that, strangely, thanks to AI, we are back to a more rational mindset about energy and making sure we get efficient energy where we can. Obviously, nuclear is getting a second act. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro I know you would be. We’ve been talking about for a long time, and you’ve been talking about it in particular for a very long time. Bertrand Schmitt Yes, definitely. It’s been one area of interest of mine for 25 years. I don’t know. I’ve been shocked about what happened in Europe, that willingness destruction of energy infrastructure, especially in Germany. Just a few months ago, they keep destroying on live TV some nuclear station in perfect working condition and replacing them with coal. I’m not sure there is a better definition of insanity at this stage. It looks like it’s only the Germans going that hardcore for some reason, but at least the French have stopped their program of decommissioning. America, it seems to be doing the same, so it’s great. On top of it, there are new generations that could be put to use. The Chinese are building up a very large nuclear reactor program, more than 100 reactors in construction for the next 10 years. I think everybody has to catch up because at some point, this is the most efficient energy solution. Especially if you don’t build crazy constraints around the construction of these nuclear reactors. If we are rational about permits, about energy, about safety, there are great things we could be doing with nuclear. That might be one of the only solution if we want to be competitive, because when energy prices go down like crazy, like in China, they will do once they have reach delivery of their significant build-up of nuclear reactors, we better be ready to have similar options from a cost perspective. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro From the outside, at the very least, nuclear seems to be probably in the energy one of the areas that’s more being innovated at this moment in time. You have startups in the space, you have a lot really money going into it, not just your classic industrial development. That’s very exciting. Moving maybe to the carbonization and what’s happening. The CCUS, and for those who don’t know what it is, carbon capture, utilization, and storage. There’s a lot of stuff happening around that space. That’s the area that deals with the ability to capture CO₂ emissions from industrial sources and/or the atmosphere and preventing their release. There’s a lot of things happening in that space. There’s also a lot of things happening around hydrogen and geothermal and really creating the ability to storage or to store, rather, energy that then can be put back into the grids at the right time. There’s a lot of interesting pieces happening around this. There’s some startup movement in the space. It’s been a long time coming, the reuse of a lot of these industrial sources. Not sure it’s as much on the news as nuclear, and oil and gas, but certainly there’s a lot of exciting things happening there. Bertrand Schmitt I’m a bit more dubious here, but I think geothermal makes sense if it’s available at reasonable price. I don’t think hydrogen technology has proven its value. Concerning carbon capture, I’m not sure how much it’s really going to provide in terms of energy needs, but why not? Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Fuels niche, again, from the outside, we’re not energy experts, but certainly, there are movements in the space. We’ll see what’s happening. One area where there’s definitely a lot of movement is this notion of grid and storage. On the one hand, that transmission needs to be built out. It needs to be better. We’ve had issues of blackouts in the US. We’ve had issues of blackouts all around the world, almost. Portugal as well, for a significant part of the time. The ability to work around transmission lines, transformers, substations, the modernization of some of this infrastructure, and the move forward of it is pretty critical. But at the other end, there’s the edge. Then, on the edge, you have the ability to store. We should have, better mechanisms to store energy that are less leaky in terms of energy storage. Obviously, there’s a lot of movement around that. Some of it driven just by commercial stuff, like Tesla a lot with their storage stuff, etc. Some of it really driven at scale by energy players that have the interest that, for example, some of the storage starts happening closer to the consumption as well. But there’s a lot of exciting things happening in that space, and that is a transformative space. In some ways, the bottleneck of energy is also around transmission and then ultimately the access to energy by homes, by businesses, by industries, etc. Bertrand Schmitt I would say some of the blackout are truly man-made. If I pick on California, for instance. That’s the logical conclusion of the regulatory system in place in California. On one side, you limit price that energy supplier can sell. The utility company can sell, too. On the other side, you force them to decommission the most energy-efficient and least expensive energy source. That means you cap the revenues, you make the cost increase. What is the result? The result is you cannot invest anymore to support a grid and to support transmission. That’s 100% obvious. That’s what happened, at least in many places. The solution is stop crazy regulations that makes no economic sense whatsoever. Then, strangely enough, you can invest again in transmission, in maintenance, and all I love this stuff. Maybe another piece, if we pick in California, if you authorize building construction in areas where fires are easy, that’s also a very costly to support from utility perspective, because then you are creating more risk. You are forced buy the state to connect these new constructions to the grid. You have more maintenance. If it fails, you can create fire. If you create fire, you have to pay billions of fees. I just want to highlight that some of this is not a technological issue, is not per se an investment issue, but it’s simply the result of very bad regulations. I hope that some will learn, and some change will be made so that utilities can do their job better. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Then last, but not the least, on the energy side, energy is becoming more and more digitally defined in some ways. It’s like the analogy to networks that they’ve become more, and more software defined, where you have, at the edge is things like smart meters. There’s a lot of things you can do around the key elements of the business model, like dynamic pricing and other elements. Demand response, one of the areas that I invested in, I invest in a company called Omconnect that’s now merged with what used to be Google Nest. Where to deploy that ability to do demand response and also pass it to consumers so that consumers can reduce their consumption at times where is the least price effective or the less green or the less good for the energy companies to produce energy. We have other things that are happening, which are interesting. Obviously, we have a lot more electric vehicles in cars, etc. These are also elements of storage. They don’t look like elements of storage, but the car has electricity in it once you charge it. Once it’s charged, what do you do with it? Could you do something else? Like the whole reverse charging piece that we also see now today in mobile devices and other edge devices, so to speak. That also changes the architecture of what we’re seeing around the space. With AI, there’s a lot of elements that change around the value chain. The ability to do forecasting, the ability to have, for example, virtual power plans because of just designated storage out there, etc. Interesting times happening. Not sure all utilities around the world, all energy providers around the world are innovating at the same pace and in the same way. But certainly just looking at the industry and talking to a lot of players that are CEOs of some of these companies. That are leading innovation for some of these companies, there’s definitely a lot more happening now in the last few years than maybe over the last few decades. Very exciting times. Bertrand Schmitt I think there are two interesting points in what you say. Talking about EVs, for instance, a Cybertruck is able to send electricity back to your home if your home is able to receive electricity from that source. Usually, you have some changes to make to the meter system, to your panel. That’s one great way to potentially use your car battery. Another piece of the puzzle is that, strangely enough, most strangely enough, there has been a big push to EV, but at the same time, there has not been a push to provide more electricity. But if you replace cars that use gasoline by electric vehicles that use electricity, you need to deliver more electricity. It doesn’t require a PhD to get that. But, strangely enough, nothing was done. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Apparently, it does. Bertrand Schmitt I remember that study in France where they say that, if people were all to switch to EV, we will need 10 more nuclear reactors just on the way from Paris to Nice to the Côte d’Azur, the French Rivière, in order to provide electricity to the cars going there during the summer vacation. But I mean, guess what? No nuclear plant is being built along the way. Good luck charging your vehicles. I think that’s another limit that has been happening to the grid is more electric vehicles that require charging when the related infrastructure has not been upgraded to support more. Actually, it has quite the opposite. In many cases, we had situation of nuclear reactors closing down, so other facilities closing down. Obviously, the end result is an increase in price of electricity, at least in some states and countries that have not sold that fully out. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Manufacturing: the return of “atoms + bits” Moving to manufacturing and what’s happening around manufacturing, manufacturing technology. There’s maybe the case to be made that manufacturing is getting replatformed, right? It’s getting redefined. Some of it is very obvious, and it’s already been ongoing for a couple of decades, which is the advent of and more and more either robotic augmented factories or just fully roboticized factories, where there’s very little presence of human beings. There’s elements of that. There’s the element of software definition on top of it, like simulation. A lot of automation is going on. A lot of AI has been applied to some lines in terms of vision, safety. We have an investment in a company called Sauter Analytics that is very focused on that from the perspective of employees and when they’re still humans in the loop, so to speak, and the ability to really figure out when people are at risk and other elements of what’s happening occurring from that. But there’s more than that. There’s a little bit of a renaissance in and of itself. Factories are, initially, if we go back a couple of decades ago, factories were, and manufacturing was very much defined from the setup. Now it’s difficult to innovate, it’s difficult to shift the line, it’s difficult to change how things are done in the line. With the advent of new factories that have less legacy, that have more flexible systems, not only in terms of software, but also in terms of hardware and robotics, it allows us to, for example, change and shift lines much more easily to different functions, which will hopefully, over time, not only reduce dramatically the cost of production. But also increase dramatically the yield, it increases dramatically the production itself. A lot of cool stuff happening in that space. Bertrand Schmitt It’s exciting to see that. One thing this current administration in the US has been betting on is not just hoping for construction renaissance. Especially on the factory side, up of factories, but their mindset was two things. One, should I force more companies to build locally because it would be cheaper? Two, increase output and supply of energy so that running factories here in the US would be cheaper than anywhere else. Maybe not cheaper than China, but certainly we get is cheaper than Europe. But three, it’s also the belief that thanks to AI, we will be able to have more efficient factories. There is always that question, do Americans to still keep making clothes, for instance, in factories. That used to be the case maybe 50 years ago, but this move to China, this move to Bangladesh, this move to different places. That’s not the goal. But it can make sense that indeed there is ability, thanks to robots and AI, to have more automated factories, and these factories could be run more efficiently, and as a result, it would be priced-competitive, even if run in the US. When you want to think about it, that has been, for instance, the South Korean playbook. More automated factories, robotics, all of this, because that was the only way to compete against China, which has a near infinite or used to have a near infinite supply of cheaper labour. I think that all of this combined can make a lot of sense. In a way, it’s probably creating a perfect storm. Maybe another piece of the puzzle this administration has been working on pretty hard is simplifying all the permitting process. Because a big chunk of the problem is that if your permitting is very complex, very expensive, what take two years to build become four years, five years, 10 years. The investment mass is not the same in that situation. I think that’s a very important part of the puzzle. It’s use this opportunity to reduce regulatory state, make sure that things are more efficient. Also, things are less at risk of bribery and fraud because all these regulations, there might be ways around. I think it’s quite critical to really be careful about this. Maybe last piece of the puzzle is the way accounting works. There are new rules now in 2026 in the US where you can fully depreciate your CapEx much faster than before. That’s a big win for manufacturing in the US. Suddenly, you can depreciate much faster some of your CapEx investment in manufacturing. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Just going back to a point you made and then moving it forward, even China, with being now probably the country in the world with the highest rate of innovation and take up of industrial robots. Because of demographic issues a little bit what led Japan the first place to be one of the real big innovators around robots in general. The fact that demographics, you’re having an aging population, less and less children. How are you going to replace all these people? Moving that into big winners, who becomes a big winner in a space where manufacturing is fundamentally changing? Obviously, there’s the big four of robots, which is ABB, FANUC, KUKA, and Yaskawa. Epson, I think, is now in there, although it’s not considered one of the big four. Kawasaki, Denso, Universal Robots. There’s a really big robotics, industrial robotic companies in the space from different origins, FANUC and Yaskawa, and Epson from Japan, KUKA from Germany, ABB from Switzerland, Sweden. A lot of now emerging companies from China, and what’s happening in that space is quite interesting. On the other hand, also, other winners will include players that will be integrators that will build some of the rest of the infrastructure that goes into manufacturing, the Siemens of the world, the Schneider’s, the Rockwell’s that will lead to fundamental industrial automation. Some big winners in there that whose names are well known, so probably not a huge amount of surprises there. There’s movements. As I said, we’re still going to see the big Chinese players emerging in the world. There are startups that are innovating around a lot of the edges that are significant in this space. We’ll see if this is a space that will just be continued to be dominated by the big foreign robotics and by a couple of others and by the big integrators or not. Bertrand Schmitt I think you are right to remind about China because China has been moving very fast in robotics. Some Chinese companies are world-class in their use of robotics. You have this strange mix of some older industries where robotics might not be so much put to use and typically state-owned, versus some private companies, typically some tech companies that are reconverting into hardware in some situation. That went all in terms of robotics use and their demonstrations, an example of what’s happening in China. Definitely, the Chinese are not resting. Everyone smart enough is playing that game from the Americans, the Chinese, Japanese, the South Koreans. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Exciting things are manufacturing, and maybe to bring it all together, what does it mean for all the big players out there? If we talk with startups and talk about startups, we didn’t mention a ton of startups today, right? Maybe incumbent wind across the board. But on a more serious note, we did mention a few. For example, in nuclear energy, there’s a lot of startups that have been, some of them, incredibly well-funded at this moment in time. Wrap: what it means for startups, incumbents, and investors There might be some big disruptions that will come out of startups, for example, in that space. On the chipset side, we talked about the big gorillas, the NVIDIAs, AMDs, Intel, etc., of the world. But we didn’t quite talk about the fact that there’s a lot of innovation, again, happening on the edges with new players going after very large niches, be it in networking and switching. Be it in compute and other areas that will need different, more specialized solutions. Potentially in terms of compute or in terms of semiconductor deployments. I think there’s still some opportunities there, maybe not to be the winner takes all thing, but certainly around a lot of very significant niches that might grow very fast. Manufacturing, we mentioned the same. Some of the incumbents seem to be in the driving seat. We’ll see what happens if some startups will come in and take some of the momentum there, probably less likely. There are spaces where the value chains are very tightly built around the OEMs and then the suppliers overall, classically the tier one suppliers across value chains. Maybe there is some startup investment play. We certainly have played in the couple of the spaces. I mentioned already some of them today, but this is maybe where the incumbents have it all to lose. It’s more for them to lose rather than for the startups to win just because of the scale of what needs to be done and what needs to be deployed. Bertrand Schmitt I know. That’s interesting point. I think some players in energy production, for instance, are moving very fast and behaving not only like startups. Usually, it’s independent energy suppliers who are not kept by too much regulations that get moved faster. Utility companies, as we just discussed, have more constraints. I would like to say that if you take semiconductor space, there has been quite a lot of startup activities way more than usual, and there have been some incredible success. Just a few weeks ago, Rock got more or less acquired. Now, you have to play games. It’s not an outright acquisition, but $20 billion for an IP licensing agreement that’s close to an acquisition. That’s an incredible success for a company. Started maybe 10 years ago. You have another Cerebras, one of the competitor valued, I believe, quite a lot in similar range. I think there is definitely some activity. It’s definitely a different game compared to your software startup in terms of investment. But as we have seen with AI in general, the need for investment might be larger these days. Yes, it might be either traditional players if they can move fast enough, to be frank, because some of them, when you have decades of being run as a slow-moving company, it’s hard to change things. At the same time, it looks like VCs are getting bigger. Wall Street is getting more ready to finance some of these companies. I think there will be opportunities for startups, but definitely different types of startups in terms of profile. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Exactly. From an investor standpoint, I think on the VC side, at least our core belief is that it’s more niche. It’s more around big niches that need to be fundamentally disrupted or solutions that require fundamental interoperability and integration where the incumbents have no motivation to do it. Things that are a little bit more either packaging on the semiconductor side or other elements of actual interoperability. Even at the software layer side that feeds into infrastructure. If you’re a growth investor, a private equity investor, there’s other plays that are available to you. A lot of these projects need to be funded and need to be scaled. Now we’re seeing projects being funded even for a very large, we mentioned it in one of the previous episodes, for a very large tech companies. When Meta, for example, is going to the market to get funding for data centers, etc. There’s projects to be funded there because just the quantum and scale of some of these projects, either because of financial interest for specifically the tech companies or for other reasons, but they need to be funded by the market. There’s other place right now, certainly if you’re a larger private equity growth investor, and you want to come into the market and do projects. Even public-private financing is now available for a lot of things. Definitely, there’s a lot of things emanating that require a lot of funding, even for large-scale projects. Which means the advent of some of these projects and where realization is hopefully more of a given than in other circumstances, because there’s actual commercial capital behind it and private capital behind it to fuel it as well, not just industrial policy and money from governments. Bertrand Schmitt There was this quite incredible stat. I guess everyone heard about that incredible growth in GDP in Q3 in the US at 4.4%. Apparently, half of that growth, so around 2.2% point, has been coming from AI and related infrastructure investment. That’s pretty massive. Half of your GDP growth coming from something that was not there three years ago or there, but not at this intensity of investment. That’s the numbers we are talking about. I’m hearing that there is a good chance that in 2026, we’re talking about five, even potentially 6% GDP growth. Again, half of it potentially coming from AI and all the related infrastructure growth that’s coming with AI. As a conclusion for this episode on infrastructure, as we just said, it’s not just AI, it’s a whole stack, and it’s manufacturing in general as well. Definitely in the US, in China, there is a lot going on. As we have seen, computing needs connectivity, networks, need power, energy and grid, and all of this needs production capacity and manufacturing. Manufacturing can benefit from AI as well. That way the loop is fully going back on itself. Infrastructure is the next big thing. It’s an opportunity, probably more for incumbents, but certainly, as usual, with such big growth opportunities for startups as well. Thank you, Nuno. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Thank you, Bertrand.
Documents show a proposed LNG terminal will need to bypass even the fast-track process in order to be built in time for winter next year. Climate Change Correspondent Kate Newton has been looking through the cabinet papers and spoke to Ingrid Hipkiss.
I don't blame Chris Hipkins and Co. for a moment, calling it a gas tax. That's politics when you are in Opposition, especially when you have no policies yourself. What I despair about is yet another chapter of myopic nonsense around dumb words for cheap points. The truth is comparatively simple and most of it is indisputable: we need more power supply than we have. We need more reliable power supply than we have. We got caught dangerously short in the winter of 2024. Labour, in turning off the gas, wrecked the industry and caused untold damage. The Huntly coal deal is part of the solution. An LNG importation facility is another part. We need a power supply tap because hydro, wind, and solar isn't it. Even if it's the bulk of supply, it's reliant on things we can't control. So far so good, we all agree. The cost of LNG is a billion-ish. Someone has to pay. The Government could pay by borrowing more but, wisely, they choose not to. The industry could pay through a levy. That is what we have chosen. Will they pass it on? Yes, why wouldn't they? Do you like that? No, why would you? But at all times we come back to the basic issue: do you want heating in winter, every winter, like a first world country? Do you want business to be able to operate at full capacity like a first world country? So it isn't a tax. A tax is a forced payment by Government, that's not what this is. It's an increased power bill to eventually get a power bill that wouldn't have been as high if we hadn't built a back stop for supply. It's the cost of rectifying an embarrassing wrong. You might want to remember that when you vote. Fixing broken stuff costs money. It's human to want others to pay for stuff but that's not how life works. If you want a spot price of $800 in the dead of winter, the highest price in the world, then doing nothing will work well. We need more emphasis on the future, and on improvement, and less on the petty and the political point-scoring. I wouldn't have thought any of that is complicated. You might not be thrilled, but it's not complicated. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Join Wallace for New Zealand's most explosive 30 minutes of politics. He is joined by panellists Lillian Hanly, Guyon Espiner and former labour MP Poto Williams. On the show today: Is it a levy or a tax? Has the Government got the messaging right about the plan to build a 1-billion-dollar LNG import facility? Then, the retail crime advisory group has had its plug pulled after three of its five members walked away. Was it a folly or did it get the job done? And finally, The Post journalist Andrea Vance has suggested MPs who use X are engaged in a form of tacit endorsement in the sharing of child sex abuse material. Is she right?
You're listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for February 9, 2026. You're listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for February 9, 2026. 0:30 Chicago’s murder rate is plunging—but the political fight over why is just getting started. We break down the stunning drop in homicides and violent crime in Chicago, including a nearly 30% decline and the lowest murder total in decades. While even Mayor Brandon Johnson is forced to acknowledge the numbers, the real debate centers on what caused the turnaround: tougher enforcement, consequences for criminals, and the impact of President Trump’s National Guard deployments. From Chicago to Washington, D.C., the data is colliding head-on with the narrative, raising an uncomfortable question for Democrats—do results matter more than politics? 9:30 Plus, we cover the Top 3 Things You Need to Know. A federal appeals court has backed the Trump Administration on detaining illegal immigrants without bond. A Georgia man was sentenced to three years and five months in prison for threatening to kill President Trump. Teachers in San Francisco left students stranded today as they went on strike in the middle of the school year. 12:30 Get Prodovite Plus from Victory Nutrition International for 20% off. Go to vni.life/agr and use the promo code AGR20. 13:00 The NFL’s Super Bowl halftime show sparked backlash after sidelining its majority English-speaking audience, despite those same fans driving ratings, advertising revenue, and the league’s bottom line. While advertisers spent millions on English-language commercials to reach the Super Bowl audience, the halftime performance was entirely in Spanish—raising questions about who the NFL is actually trying to reach. The controversy has shifted attention away from the game itself and onto concerns about brand dilution, misplaced priorities, and a league that appears more focused on symbolism than delivering the best possible football experience. 16:30 We got a question in for our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson: Why are so many young women out rioting against the police in Minnesota? We discuss the idea that women are biologically wired to nurture and protect the vulnerable—and what happens when that instinct has nowhere traditional to go. As motherhood and family life are increasingly discouraged, that protective drive is redirected toward political causes, activist movements, and protest culture. The discussion looks at how this “mama bear” instinct hasn’t disappeared, but has been repurposed, helping explain why modern progressive activism is often dominated by young women fiercely fighting for causes they believe are under threat. If you'd like to ask our American Mamas a question, go to our website, AmericanGroundRadio.com/mamas and click on the Ask the Mamas button. 23:00 As sports become increasingly wrapped in spectacle and political messaging, a rare voice cuts through with an old-fashioned reminder of what competition is actually for. Drawing on a message released at the opening of the Winter Olympics, the Pope emphasizes discipline, sacrifice, humility, and the lessons learned in both victory and defeat. Winning isn’t about outperforming others—it’s about the journey, the grind, and shared commitment. Losing isn’t failure, but a teacher. Against the backdrop of a Super Bowl dominated by controversy rather than the game itself, this moment highlights what sports are meant to be: a shared human endeavor that builds character, not a branding exercise or political platform. 26:30 Winning the Super Bowl in California can actually leave NFL players poorer than when they started. Because of California’s aggressive “jock tax,” players are taxed not just on their Super Bowl bonus, but on a prorated share of their entire season’s income based on the days they spent in the state. The result: some players owed California tens of thousands of dollars more than they earned from the game—even after winning it. We break down how state tax policy dramatically affects player earnings, why teams in no-income-tax states have a built-in financial advantage, and how the same tax logic is now being used to chase businesses and high-income earners who leave states like California and New York. 32:00 Get Performlyte from Victory Nutrition International for 20% off. Go to vni.life/agr and use the promo code AGR20. 32:30 The Super Bowl halftime show is under fire after translations revealed sexually explicit lyrics broadcast to a national audience—hidden behind a language most viewers don’t speak. Critics argue the content crossed the line into obscene and pornographic material, violating FCC indecency standards that apply regardless of language. A U.S. congressman is now calling for formal action against the NFL, the network, and the performer, saying content that would never be allowed in English was effectively smuggled onto broadcast television in Spanish. The controversy raises serious questions about double standards, broadcast decency laws, and whether the NFL knowingly exposed families to explicit sexual content during America’s biggest sporting event. 36:00 U.S. liquefied natural gas exports are surging to record highs, marking a major reversal from the export restrictions that held the energy sector back in recent years. With LNG shipments climbing and new global buyers emerging, American energy is once again displacing Russian gas in Europe and beyond—cutting off funding for hostile regimes while strengthening U.S. leverage on the world stage. The boom is also fueling jobs at home, from drillers and welders to shipbuilders and landowners, while delivering cleaner energy with lower emissions. Rising LNG exports aren’t just an energy story—they’re about national security, economic growth, and America reclaiming its role as a global energy powerhouse. 39:30 Weight loss and self-improvement are supposed to strengthen relationships—but new data suggests the opposite is happening for many couples. A growing number of people using GLP-1 weight-loss drugs report breakups triggered by jealousy and insecurity from their partners after major physical changes. When one person improves and the other can’t—or won’t—celebrate that success, relationships begin to crack. The discussion highlights a deeper issue about modern relationships: whether couples are truly built on mutual support, or only comfortable as long as neither person grows beyond the other. 41:30 And we finish off today's show with llamas who help police catch a criminal. Articles Appeals court affirms Trump policy of jailing immigrants without bond Georgia man accused of threatening Trump sentenced to prison Blue City’s Teachers Go AWOL, Leave Kids With Empty Schools To Demand Better Pay Super Bowl Jock Tax Calculator The Tax Advantage of Playing in the AFC South U.S. LNG exports hit new high as Turkey buys big TMZ's Halftime Show Poll Isn't Going the Way They Hoped Andrew Kovet X Post: "The All-American Halftime Show pulled in OVER 25 MILLION views" Amid rampant AI and social media, Gen Z is turning to religion | Opinion Follow us: americangroundradio.com Facebook: facebook.com / AmericanGroundRadio Instagram: instagram.com/americangroundradioSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Energy Minister Simon Watts announced a contract for a billion dollar LNG import terminal in Taranaki is expected to be signed by the middle of the year, with construction finishing next year or early 2028. Mercury Energy chief executive Stew Hamilton spoke to Corin Dann.
Questions to Ministers DAN BIDOIS to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has she seen on the economy? Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government's statements and actions? DAVID MacLEOD to the Minister for Energy: What recent announcement has he made on procuring an importation terminal for liquefied natural gas? CHLÖE SWARBRICK to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i nga korero me nga mahi katoa a tona Kawanatanga? Does he stand by all of his Government's statements and actions? Hon BARBARA EDMONDS to the Minister of Finance: Is a 10-year high in unemployment a sign that people will "see increased opportunity"? CATHERINE WEDD to the Minister for Infrastructure: What recent milestones has the Government's fast-track approvals scheme celebrated? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS to the Minister for Energy: Does he agree with the Government-commissioned Frontier Economics report that "It would make no economic sense to develop an LNG import terminal to meet just dry year risk as the large fixed costs would be spread over a relatively small amount of output"; if not, why not? RAWIRI WAITITI to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government's statements and actions? TODD STEPHENSON to the Minister for Food Safety: What recent feedback, if any, has he received from food businesses about the challenges they are facing? Hon GINNY ANDERSEN to the Minister for Economic Growth: Does she agree with the Minister of Finance that Budget 2025 "forecasts declining unemployment"; if so, why are there 32,000 fewer people in work since the Government took office? Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON to the Prime Minister: E tautoko ana ia i nga korero me nga mahi katoa a tona Kawanatanga? Does he stand by all of his Government's statements and actions? KATIE NIMON to the Minister of Education: What recent announcement has she made regarding changes to assessment and reporting?
Political tensions are flaring over the fate of the Government's retail crime advisory group. The Government's scrapping its Ministerial Advisory Group several months early after three members resigned last month, leaving just two. Labour's Ginny Anderson told Mike Hosking it's been a disaster since day one with zero outcomes, lead by the group chair Sunny Kaushal. She says he was a political appointment that backfired. But National's Mark Mitchell says they wanted to make sure New Zealand's small and medium businesses had a strong voice, which Kaushal has been. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast for Wednesday 11th of February, Trade Minister Todd McClay puts to bed once and for all what rights Indian students will have as part of the FTA. Zoi Sadowski-Synnott discusses the success New Zealand is having at this year's Winter Olympics, and her Big Air silver medal. Mark Mitchell and Ginny Andersen talk the success, or not, of the Retail Advisory Group, the LNG facility and whether it's a fee or levy, and the latest in the House on Politics Wednesday. Get the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast every weekday morning on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Energy Minister is clearing up some misconceptions after yesterday's newly announced LNG import facility sparked backlash. The Government yesterday announced plans for the storage site in order to maintain energy supply, and a levy will be used to fund infrastructure costs. Simon Watts says the Huntly Power Station isn't cutting it anymore and New Zealand needs more gas. "We need gas and we need those molecules, and that's the problem we're facing. And importation will allow us to get that gas." LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On the Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive Full Show Podcast for Tuesday, 10 February, 2026, Todd McClay on the student controversy surrounding the India free trade agreement. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith on why a retail crime advisory group's been disbanded months earlier than intended. We hear about plans for a gold mining operation in the West Coast town of Reefton. And on The Huddle, Jordan Williams and Ali Jones try to make sense of a levy for an LNG import facility - or is it a tax? Get the Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive Full Show Podcast every weekday evening on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Parliament's wading into debate whether a levy the Government announced yesterday is indeed a levy, or in fact a tax. The so-called 'levy on electricity' will fund building an LNG import terminal. Labour was quick to label this a 'gas tax', but Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Energy Minister Simon Watts maintained this project would bring down people's power bills. Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper unpacked today's discussions in Parliament. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast for Tuesday 10th of February, Energy Minister Simon Watts provides some more details regarding a new LNG import facility. Are we worried enough about the peach “dumping” from China? And does it extend beyond peaches? Forensic science specialist Tom Coyle discusses his 37 years in the job and working some of New Zealand's top cases. Get the Mike Hosking Breakfast Full Show Podcast every weekday morning on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
There's confidence a new gas importing facility will deliver benefits that outweigh the costs. The Government's confirmed it will build a liquefied natural gas import facility in Taranaki, with a contract expected by mid-year. It says the project will save the country about $265 million annually – roughly $50 per household. Energy Minister Simon Watts told Mike Hosking that Huntly Power Station only covers 50% of the energy problem, and while they have gas generation capacity out there, they don't have the fuel to run it during dry years. He says it's why they need that certainty of volume and certainty of supply. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A proposed multi-million dollar liquefied natural gas import facility is winning support from electricity companies. The terminal will be housed in Taranaki, with the Government aiming to have a "build" contract locked down mid-year. It expects it will save each household about $50 a year once up and running – from late next year at the earliest. Contact Energy's Mike Fuge told Mike Hosking it removes the drama of the system. He says when suppliers and gas users can't get gas, everyone gets very uptight, and this brings a rationality to the market, so we aren't worrying about tomorrow. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The global ship recycling market saw another sharp shift this week as the U.S. dollar weakened across nearly all recycling destinations, providing fresh support to buyer sentiment across the sub-continent. Steel fundamentals also strengthened significantly, with India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh reporting notable weekly jumps in local steel plate prices. In this week's ship recycling market podcast, Ingrid and Henning break down the latest movements in the Baltic Dry Index, oil prices falling below sixty-two U.S. dollars per barrel, and how improving domestic fundamentals are reshaping pricing expectations across the Indian sub-continent. Pakistan continues to lead the market, supported by firm steel levels, improving currency performance, and renewed demand for dry bulk candidates. Bangladesh re-enters the spotlight as Chattogram activity increases, though uncertainty remains high with national elections approaching mid-February. India shows stronger footing as steel prices rebound and the Indian Rupee strengthens, while Turkey remains subdued, with Aliaga activity limited and the Turkish Lira continuing its gradual decline. This episode also highlights the ongoing shortage of recycling candidates, increased interest in older handy bulkers and LNG units, and the evolving balance of supply and demand shaping demolition pricing into early 2026. Designed for shipowners, cash buyers, recyclers, brokers, financiers, and maritime professionals tracking global demolition markets, this weekly discussion covers pricing direction, market sentiment, HKC compliance developments, and the key risks and opportunities currently shaping the ship recycling landscape.
Energy Vista: A Podcast on Energy Issues, Professional and Personal Trajectories
In this new episode of the Energy Vista Podcast, Leslie Palti-Guzman sits down with Bob McNally, Founder and President of Rapidan Energy Group and former White House energy advisor, for an insightful and candid conversation on today's oil market, great-power rivalry, and geopolitical risk.We explore why the long-dominant “peak demand” narrative is unraveling, what chronic underinvestment means for future supply, and where the world may be heading next in the boom-bust oil cycle.Key themes include: Venezuela's return to the oil map and what the US intervention really means for global supply Why energy security and affordability have displaced rapid decarbonization as top political priorities Whether US shale has reached a plateau and what that means for exports and diplomacy Growing anxiety among allies about the reliability of US LNG trade Iran risk scenarios, the vulnerability of Hormuz, and markets' complacency The politicization of energy data and why objective forecasting matters more than ever
We were honored this week to welcome Ali Moshiri, CEO and President of Amos Global Energy, for a Special Edition COBT focused on Venezuela. Ali is the former President of Chevron Africa-Latin America and spent nearly 40 years at Chevron. He joined the company in 1978 as a petroleum engineer and went on to hold a wide range of senior technical, strategic, and leadership roles, ultimately overseeing Chevron's upstream operations across Africa and Latin America, including key positions in Venezuela and the broader region. Since retiring from Chevron in 2017, Ali has served as an advisor to Chevron and is currently President and CEO of Amos Global Energy, a Houston-based upstream independent focused on building a diversified portfolio across Latin America (with selective investments in the U.S. and Africa) through an integrated direct investment model. With deep operational, geopolitical, and strategic experience across global energy markets, Ali brings a unique and long-term perspective to today's discussion. In our conversation, Ali describes the on-the-ground conditions based on frequent travel to Venezuela and argues there is widespread misunderstanding of the country driven by years of narrative focus on migration, crime, and deportation rather than fundamentals. He details Venezuela's fundamentals including resource size and accessibility, proximity to the U.S., and the historical role of Gulf Coast heavy-oil refinery conversions and the light/heavy differential in making Venezuela barrels attractive. We discuss where development is likely to concentrate, the production ramp and capital needs, why in his mind the clearest lever for Venezuelan recovery is increasing oil output, workforce and execution constraints, the role of service companies, and who is most likely to invest first. Ali notes the key to mobilizing capital is a credible public-private partnership structure that can be written into a term sheet, alongside securing a lead private investor. He explains China's presence as largely commercial and loan driven, and Russia's as more geopolitical, and he doesn't expect either to materially expand or compete for incremental assets. We explore why prioritizing stability through a managed transition (including Venezuela's Vice President, and now Acting President, Delcy Rodríguez's role) is essential to convert investor interest into commitment, and he frames the recent vote more as a referendum than a fully competitive election, with a later phase needed for a truly democratic process. We touch on OPEC's incentives to keep Venezuela “inside the tent,” where near-term investment should concentrate, why midstream is less attractive today, the longer-term upside in gas and LNG, and much more. We ended by asking Ali for his ten-year outlook on global oil demand and the sources of future supply. As mentioned, details about Venezuela's reform of the Organic Law on Hydrocarbons are linked here. We greatly appreciate Ali for sharing his candid insights into a complex situation. The Veriten team shared a few quick comments to kick off the show. Mike Bradley flagged two themes: commodities volatility has dominated the year so far, with oil and gas prices swinging sharply due to geopolitical issues, while metals and Bitcoin have hit highs and then pulled back. He also noted that during recent Q4 earnings calls, oil majors and early-reporting service companies have faced many questions about Venezuela, but few have clear answers, making the discussion with Ali very timely. Arjun Murti added that global oil demand continues to grow, and while U.S. shale should hold a long-term plateau, it's unlikely to repeat its outsized contribution to global supply growth, raising the question of what comes after shale. He pointed to Venezuela's long-term potential, recalling the suc
The U.S. midstream sector experienced a massive infrastructure buildout in the 2010s, followed by a sharp pullback after 2020, and then a new era of financial discipline and deleveraging. Now, AI-propelled power load growth and a wave of LNG export expansion are pushing midstream capex higher again.
Transmission is getting a glow up and we want to hear from you what we can improve. Help us by filling in this short survey. https://form.typeform.com/to/kCdj85iK?typeform-source=www.linkedin.comGas prices spiked over 25% in a week as cold weather and short squeezes created chaos across European and US markets in January 2026.Ed Porter speaks with Seb Kennedy, founder of Energy Flux, about the recent gas market crisis. Kennedy explains the short squeeze mechanics in European markets, US production freeze-offs, Trump's LNG policies, Venezuela's gas flaring tragedy, and Pakistan's solar boom versus LNG commitments.You can watch or listen to new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.Transmission is a Modo Energy production. Your host is Ed Porter - VP of Insights.Modo Energy helps the owners, operators, builders, and financiers of battery energy storage understand the market — and make the most out of their assets. Want all the latest power market news? Sign up for our free Weekly Dispatch newsletterChapters:00:00 - Introduction and January 2026 gas spike01:44 - Seb Kennedy's dual role journalist analyst04:26 - Understanding TTF and Henry Hub hubs05:37 - Investment fund positioning and short squeeze09:05 - Weather patterns driving European gas demand12:13 - Nuclear outages worsening European gas crisis14:44 - US gas price spike explained16:53 - Freeze-offs and US production challenges21:13 - LNG export constraints at Freeport facility25:20 - Trump administration's impact on LNG markets29:20 - Panama Canal and geopolitical LNG considerations30:47 - Venezuela's political upheaval and oil situation32:40 - Venezuela's massive gas flaring crisis35:20 - Pakistan's renewable boom versus LNG commitments42:53 - Key themes to watch in 202644:25 - Contrarian view on import dependence
Transmission is getting a glow up and we want to hear from you what we can improve. Help us by filling in this short survey. https://form.typeform.com/to/kCdj85iK?typeform-source=www.linkedin.comGas prices spiked over 25% in a week as cold weather and short squeezes created chaos across European and US markets in January 2026.Ed Porter speaks with Seb Kennedy, founder of Energy Flux, about the recent gas market crisis. Kennedy explains the short squeeze mechanics in European markets, US production freeze-offs, Trump's LNG policies, Venezuela's gas flaring tragedy, and Pakistan's solar boom versus LNG commitments.You can watch or listen to new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.Transmission is a Modo Energy production. Your host is Ed Porter - VP of Insights.Modo Energy helps the owners, operators, builders, and financiers of battery energy storage understand the market — and make the most out of their assets. Want all the latest power market news? Sign up for our free Weekly Dispatch newsletterChapters:00:00 - Introduction and January 2026 gas spike01:44 - Seb Kennedy's dual role journalist analyst04:26 - Understanding TTF and Henry Hub hubs05:37 - Investment fund positioning and short squeeze09:05 - Weather patterns driving European gas demand12:13 - Nuclear outages worsening European gas crisis14:44 - US gas price spike explained16:53 - Freeze-offs and US production challenges21:13 - LNG export constraints at Freeport facility25:20 - Trump administration's impact on LNG markets29:20 - Panama Canal and geopolitical LNG considerations30:47 - Venezuela's political upheaval and oil situation32:40 - Venezuela's massive gas flaring crisis35:20 - Pakistan's renewable boom versus LNG commitments42:53 - Key themes to watch in 202644:25 - Contrarian view on import dependence
The next four years will reshape the future of North America's natural gas market. LNG exports are set to surge as new terminals across the U.S., Canada and Mexico come online, causing ripple effects through global energy trade and fueling new demand from Europe and Asia.
By popular demand (and thanks to Dominic's singing schedule), our silly, brilliant Luxembourger-in-chief Nina Lamparski is back in the hosting chair – and she's brought her longstanding grudge against Elon Musk with her. Musk has made a real dog's breakfast of that app we all used to like, and his AI assistant, Grok, seems designed for maximum awfulness. Can the European-made social media platform “W” provide an ethical alternative to X? We break it down. Plus: 10 European countries have committed to building a power grid in the North Sea that would become the world's largest reservoir of clean energy, an ambitious move that happens to come on the back of some annoying comments from the American president at Davos. Next time someone calls you a loser, just give ‘em the windmill. Our guest this week is Katja Diehl, Hamburg-based mobility activist, author, and host of the German-language podcast She Drives Mobility. If you, too, believe that you should have the right to a life without cars, you'll enjoy hearing from her just as much as we did. SEND US YOUR Qs! WE'LL GIVE YOU OUR As! Next week we're recording a special episode of The Europeans, and we're seeking listener questions. Got something you're dying to know about? Drop us a line – or better yet, a voice memo – at hello@europeanspodcast.com. LISTENER SURVEY: Are you the sort of person who listens to podcasts and thinks, “I have notes”? Now's your time to shine! Fill out our survey and give us the performance review we've been waiting for! (It really won't take long, and we'll be very grateful.) This week's Inspiration Station recommendations are That Glasgow Witch and the song “Qanoruna isigivinga?" by Greenlandic singer-songwriter Tûtu. Resources for this episode: “EU risks new energy dependence as US could supply 80% of its LNG imports by 2030” – Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, 19 January 2026 International Energy Agency overview of Europe's natural gas supply “European Electricity Review 2026” – Ember, 22 January 2026 This podcast was brought to you in cooperation with Euranet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news. But it's contributions from listeners that truly make it all possible—we could not continue to make the show without you! If you like what we do, you can chip in to help us cover our production costs at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (in many different currencies), or you can gift a donation to a superfan. We'd also love it if you could tell two friends about this podcast. We think two feels like a reasonable number. Produced by Katz Laszlo and Morgan Childs Mixing and mastering by Wojciech Oleksiak Music by Jim Barne and Mariska Martina YouTube | Bluesky | Instagram | Mastodon | Substack | hello@europeanspodcast.com
Der Tag in 2 Minuten – vom 29.1.
Amid geopolitical friction, economic uncertainty, and rapid technological disruption, the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos convenes global leaders around a "spirit of dialogue." In this episode of the Look Forward Podcast, host Molly sits down with S&P Global Ratings Chief Global Economist Paul Gruenwald and S&P Global Energy Chief Strategist Atul Arya, fresh to Switzerland, to unpack what mattered most—and what it signals for 2026. Together, they explore how AI is "moving the macro needle" through a data-center investment boom, and whether the next phase will deliver the productivity gains markets are already pricing in. They also dig into AI's less-discussed constraint: power—from turbine shortages and transmission bottlenecks to rising electricity prices and the collision between hyperscalers' speed and the power sector's slower build cycle. The conversation covers to energy markets and geopolitics, including why recent shocks haven't yet upended oil pricing, why the debate has shifted from energy transition to energy expansion, and how LNG and trade balances are becoming increasingly intertwined. Additionally, the interview covers how Davos attendees expressed attention to the erosion of trust in the global world order and why a more fragmented approach may become the status quo. For more Look Forward content, please visit the Look Forward homepage. More From Paul and Atul: Look Forward Journal: Data Center Frontiers The CERAWeek Podcast with Atul Arya Subscribe to Paul Gruenwald's "Essential Economics Newsletter" on Linkedin
South Korea's LNG market in December 2025 was shaped by fluctuating demand signals, short-lived weather-driven buying, strategic LNG cargo diversions, and strong momentum in the LNG shipbuilding sector. Market participants continued to weigh inventory levels, fuel-switching economics, and rising import costs amid geopolitical and currency pressures.
This week on the podcast, Jackie and Peter are joined by Marcus Rocque, Vice President of Research at the ARC Energy Research Institute. This episode focuses on Canadian federal carbon policy, including a discussion of the carbon pricing policy for large industrial emitters and the recently finalized methane regulations, which target a 75% reduction by 2030 (relative to 2012). The discussion centers on how these policies affect competitiveness, investment, and infrastructure development in Canada's natural gas and oil sector. They start by discussing Prime Minister Carney's recent speech at Davos. Next, they review recent developments in Canadian carbon policy, including the Canada–Alberta Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed on November 27, 2025, in which both governments agreed to work toward an oil pipeline to reach Asian markets. The MOU also outlines a plan to develop a revised industrial carbon pricing policy and methane regulations by April 1, 2026. Not long after the MOU was signed, in December 2025, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), a federal agency, issued final methane regulations that conflict with the MOU, with one requiring an end date of 2030 and the other 2035. Further to this, ECCC released a discussion paper in December titled “Driving Effective Carbon Markets in Canada”, asking for feedback by January 30, 2026, on potential changes to Canada's carbon markets, which are also being modified as part of the Canada-Alberta MOU by April 1. Jackie, Peter, and Marcus discuss what “carbon competitiveness” means and how Canadians should think about it in a changing global energy landscape. They also share concerns about the carbon market discussion paper and new methane regulations. Content referenced on this podcast:Discussion Paper: Driving Effective Carbon Markets in Canada. Send your feedback to ECCC before January 30, 2026, by emailing: tarificationducarbone-carbonpricing@ec.gc.ca Final Methane Regulations: Canada Gazette, Part II, Volume 159, Number 27 Please review our disclaimer at: https://www.arcenergyinstitute.com/disclaimer/ Check us out on social media: X (Twitter): @arcenergyinstLinkedIn: @ARC Energy Research Institute Subscribe to ARC Energy Ideas PodcastApple PodcastsAmazon MusicSpotify
Haynesville natural gas production is heading back to record levels thanks to growing LNG demand and new pipelines designed to move gas from north to south in Louisiana. In today's RBN blog, we'll preview some of the topics RBN will be covering regularly in the new NATGAS Haynesville report.
Energy Vista: A Podcast on Energy Issues, Professional and Personal Trajectories
At a moment of growing tension across the Atlantic, Europe is quietly questioning one of its most critical assumptions: can it rely on the United States as a long-term energy partner?In this timely episode of Energy Vista, Leslie Palti-Guzman sits down with Marco Margheri, Chairman of the World Energy Council Italy and affiliated with ENI in Washington, DC, to unpack Europe's deepening energy anxiety and what it reveals about a rapidly shifting global order.This conversation goes beyond gas molecules. Leslie and Marco dig into: Why Europe's post-war assumptions about codependence with Russia, China, and the U.S. are no longer viable The emerging role of oil and gas companies as strategic actors in an era of geopolitical volatility Why Italy's energy diversification strategy offers lessons for the rest of Europe How the U.S.–China AI and energy race is reordering global priorities, faster than Europe may realizeCandid, thoughtful, and unscripted, this episode is a must-listen for anyone trying to understand where European energy security is heading and whether the transatlantic relationship can adapt.
What drives global natural gas prices more: power politics or supply and demand? In this episode, we discuss the geo-politicization of natural gas and the challenge that presents to traders and investors alike. Why was 2025 such a difficult year for traders? And what are the most consequential stories in natural gas for 2026? H Returning to the show is Anne-Sophie Corbeau, Global Research Scholar at the Center for Global Energy Policy.
It was an honor to welcome David MacNaughton, Strategic Advisor at CIBC and former Canadian Ambassador to the United States. David joined CIBC earlier in January (press release linked here) and will provide insights to senior business leaders across public policy, regulatory developments, global trade, and stakeholder relations. David served as Canada's Ambassador to the U.S. from 2016 to 2019, a pivotal period that included the renegotiation of NAFTA. Earlier in his career, David served as Chairman of StrategyCorp and as a Senior Advisor to CIBC Capital Markets, and he previously served as President of Palantir Canada. He is a seasoned entrepreneur and political strategist, having founded and built multiple public affairs and advisory firms. We were thrilled to host David ahead of CIBC's Annual Institutional Investor Conference taking place this week in Whistler and to hear his perspective on the evolving dynamics shaping the U.S.-Canada relationship. In our conversation, we discuss David's experience spanning business and government, the highly dynamic geopolitical environment, the need for renewed public-private collaboration, and why politics feel increasingly interventionist today, with populist pressure pushing governments toward protectionism and isolationism. We explore the implications of AI-driven white-collar job disruption, why businesses must treat geopolitics and public policy as core risk drivers, Canada's role in AI innovation and adoption, and how Canada is rebalancing its resource economy amid global energy and trade shifts. David shares his perspective on Canada's prior reluctance to embrace LNG exports and its renewed push to be an “energy superpower,” how to interpret volatility from the Trump Administration, and how tariffs have strained, but not broken, the U.S.-Canada relationship, highlighting the importance of the integrated North American energy system and the need for Canada to diversify markets. We discuss how David's Strategic Advisor role will help clients think about using government support appropriately, his cautious optimism on recent geopolitical shifts, and why maintaining dialogue among allies matters, as misinterpretation and retreating into corners can quickly spiral into escalation. It was a broad-based discussion and we're thankful to David for sharing his time and unique insights. Mike Bradley opened the show by noting that the 10-year U.S. bond yield had spiked to ~4.3% amid concerns that Europeans could sell U.S. Treasuries in response to President Trump's Greenland overtures, as well as growing questions about what a spike in Japanese bond yields might mean for global bond yields. Consensus appears firmly in the camp that the Fed will not cut interest rates at the January 28 FOMC meeting. In the broader equity market, the S&P 500 was down modestly (~0.5%) over the last week, with cyclical sectors (Energy and Industrials) leading and Financials lagging. In energy commodities, WTI price appears to have stabilized at ~$60/bbl. U.S. natural gas price recently spiked ~$0.80/MMBtu (to ~$4.00/MMBtu) due to an Arctic blast forecast in the weeks ahead. On the energy news front, Q4 earnings season begins this week with Halliburton and SLB reporting. Discussion on those calls is likely to be dominated by 1H26 international oil spending trends. Mike also noted Mitsubishi Corp's $5.2 billion deal to acquire Aethon Energy, and his expectation for many more deals across the energy value chain in 2026. He ended by highlighting that President Trump, along with a handful of Northeast governors, are asking PJM Interconnection to hold an emergency energy auction that would allow Big Tech companies to bid on 15-year contracts to supply ~$15 billion of new power plants. IPP equities were the most negatively impacted by this proposal late last week.
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