Now that we’re more than six months into Trump 2.0, comparisons with Trump 1.0 are spreading. For energy investors, Trump’s first term was a huge disappointment compared with the high expectations held by many when he took office. A year ago, as investors pondered the impact of a Kamala Harris presidency, we were often asked […]
Most LNG export terminals are built when three quarters or more of their liquefaction capacity has been pre-sold to customers. This ensures that the project will generate cash needed to repay its financiers, since there’s not much else you can do with it other than export natural gas. Buyers have to pay the agreed liquefaction […]
The other day I listened to an interview with the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, on an Economist magazine podcast. Anthropic is in AI safety and research. They write large language models for sectors including healthcare and financial services. Many people think AI will create such fundamental change that it will eliminate jobs across large […]
On Wednesday Energy Transfer (ET) announced plans to extend its Transwestern Pipeline from Waha in the Permian Basin in west Texas to Phoenix. The Desert Southwest expansion project will improve the egress of natural gas from a region where it’s often produced along with crude oil, which is generally more desirable. The pipeline will support […]
July was action-packed for LNG names. On July 11 Morgan Stanley raised their price target on NextDecade (NEXT) to $15, having last moved it to $10 in October 2022. The stock rose 18% to $10.77 on the news and added further gains during the month. Morgan Stanley’s upgrade was the only news of note, but […]
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen described the US-EU trade agreement as “huge”, demonstrating a helpful grasp of President’s Trump’s lexicon. The imposition of tariffs and the threat of punitive ones has gone remarkably smoothly. That may not always be so, but for now markets are buoyant and inflation only modestly higher. The White […]
PJM Interconnection announced the results of their capacity auction last week. This is where suppliers of electricity quote prices to provide surge capacity for periods of high demand (typically hot summer days). It used to be uneventful until last year, when the clearing price was 9X higher than before. This led to the price hikes […]
The revenue and earnings outlook for the energy sector has deteriorated this year. Alone among the S&P 500’s eleven sectors, FactSet shows declining revenues of –9.6% when companies report for the second quarter based on bottom-up analyst forecasts. 2025 opened with high expectations following Trump’s election victory. And while the White House has followed through […]
Kinder Morgan (KMI) kicked off pipeline earnings season last week, as they do every quarter. Their adjusted EBITDA came in a little ahead of expectations at $1.97BN vs $1.95BN. Management guidance was positive. LNG exports and data center power needs are the two growth drivers for natural gas pipelines. KMI’s Trident Intrastate Pipeline secured […]
Morgan Stanley’s bullish report on US LNG stocks last week gave the sector a lift. The biggest impact was felt by NextDecade (NEXT), which was up 17%, bringing its market cap to $2.8BN. NEXT is still a small cap stock with no dividend, unusual for the midstream sector which is dominated by large-cap, investment grade […]
