Last week the Alerian MLP ETF (AMLP) announced a reduced quarterly distribution. Regular readers know that AMLP has been a rich source of material for this blog. Launched in 2010 when MLPs were synonymous with pipelines, it was designed to offer exposure to midstream energy infrastructure without the K1s that so many investors and their accountants dislike.  

Today MLPs represent about a third of the sector’s market cap. The narrow base of potential buyers has persuaded many former MLPs to convert to conventional c-corps, so as to be attractive to a much wider investor base. It also didn’t help that MLPs cut their dividends in half from 2015-20 – not the way to treat the traditional holders who were high net worth US taxpayers seeking stable income.  

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AMLP’s recent 3.5% distribution cut is especially odd because it’s against the prevailing trend. Dividend hikes are becoming the norm, including at: Magellan Midstream (1%), Oneok (2.1%), Enterprise Products Partners (5.3%), Williams Companies (5.4%), Cheniere (19.7%), Targa Resources (42.9%) and Energy Transfer (54%). 

Since its 2010 launch through the end of June, AMLP has returned 2.61% versus its benchmark of 5.02%, a big underperformance for a passive ETF. Taxes are a big reason why. Alps, the fund’s advisor, has had to make two downward revisions to its NAV in the past year, both the result of recalculating the fund’s tax liability. AMLP is a corporate taxpayer, at least when it has unrealized gains on its portfolio. This unusual concession is necessary to jam MLPs into a ‘40 Act fund, which makes it a non-RIC compliant ETF.  

Because MLPs represent a declining share of the pipeline sector, AMLP’s number of holdings has been shrinking. They’re down to 14, and if Oneok’s acquisition of Magellan Midstream goes through that’ll knock them down to 13. They have an overweight to petroleum products – crude oil pipeline operator Plains All American is their biggest holding. They are underweight natural gas names, because most of them converted to c-corps. We prefer natural gas exposure over crude oil because it has a more robust growth outlook. Oil is primarily used in transportation.  

AMLP is also overweight smaller names, because there are so few MLPs to choose from. Crestwood (CEQP) is a 5.3% position, whereas it’s only 0.42% of the market as defined by the American Energy Independence Index. AMLP, ostensibly a passive ETF, has a 12X market weight position in CEQP because it has so few choices. 

Although global crude oil demand recently touched a record 103 million barrels per day, it is in the crosshairs of governments around the world adopting policies to reduce CO2 emissions. Natural gas is America’s biggest source of electricity generation at almost 40% and is used in many areas that solar and wind can’t serve, such as petrochemicals and fertilizer production. AMLP holders are unwittingly concentrating their exposure in the riskier part of the sector, because that’s where MLPs are.   

AMLP investors don’t just endure the drag of corporate taxes on the fund’s NAV versus its benchmark; they also face the uncertainty that those taxes have been calculated correctly. Last November (see AMLP Trips Up On Tax Complexity) and then again three months ago (see AMLP Has Yet More Tax Problems), Alps suffered the ignominy of disclosing a reduced NAV because of tax complexity. The two adjustments taken together wiped out the last three quarterly distributions.  

It’s unclear why AMLP’s distribution has dropped. Perhaps they have discovered yet more errors in their tax calculations. It remains the biggest ETF in the sector at $6.7BN, evidence that lethargy outweighs critical analysis among its holders. The characterization of its distributions as largely a return of capital used to appeal – this is common among MLPs because the tax code allows them to depreciate their assets even though their ability to generate earnings is growing. In effect MLP investors pay taxes on their distributions when they sell, at which point there’s a deferred income tax recapture. AMLP has in the past incorporated this appealing feature. 

However, this year its distributions have all been classified as income, meaning that taxable accounts have a tax liability this year. The changed nature of AMLP’s distributions coincides with the two NAV restatements, so it’s possible the tax analysis Alps has carried out is responsible. So AMLP now offers declining distributions wrapped in a vehicle that is taxed as a corporation, has restated its NAV twice in a year and no longer offers tax deferred distributions. If your financial advisor still holds AMLP in your account, you might want to see how much of this he really understands.  

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We have three funds that seek to profit from this environment:

Energy Mutual Fund

Energy ETF

Real Assets Fund

Midstream earnings are in, and generally met expectations as has been the case for the past several quarters. Williams Companies (WMB) enjoyed record natural gas gathering volumes of 18 Billion Cubic Feet per Day (BCF/D). This drove 2Q23 adjusted EBITDA of $1,611MM, versus analyst expectations of $1,568MM.

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exporter Cheniere continued a run of positive surprises with a 13% beat of sell-side expectations and once more raised full year EBITDA guidance. Their success contrasts poignantly with the declining fortunes of founder and former CEO Charif Souki, forced out by activist Carl Icahn in 2015. The following year Cheniere began shipping LNG, and today their 6 BCF/D in volumes represents around half of US LNG exports.

Souki went on to found Tellurian (TELL), best described as a “Cheniere wannabe”. Tellurian has been trying for years to sign up customers and raise the capital required to build Driftwood LNG, an export terminal along Louisiana’s Calcasieu River. Souki is either a visionary who was early to recognize the export potential of US natural gas, or an entrepreneur with excessive risk tolerance always looking to enrich himself first. He’s probably a bit of both. When you invest with Souki, you know he’ll make money; you just don’t know if you will. Some have speculated that TELL would have more success raising capital with a new CEO.

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We noted Souki’s proclivity for excessive upfront compensation early this year when he negotiated $20 million in annual compensation even though Tellurian is years away from shipping any LNG (see Tellurian Pays For Performance in Advance). Developing Driftwood still looks like a long shot.

Souki routinely borrows against his own stock holdings. In early 2020 when TELL was plunging along with the rest of the energy sector, a margin call forced him to dump shares he owned. More recently, weakness in TELL led UBS to seize Souki’s 30-meter carbon fiber hull yacht Tango, pledged as security.

Every midstream company has something to say about their energy transition opportunities. Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) increased the tax credits available for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). At its most generous, the Federal government will pay $180 per metric tonne for CO2 that is extracted out of the ambient air and permanently buried underground.

Even though a generation of young people is growing up mortally afraid that rising CO2 levels represent an existential threat, at around 412 parts per million (0.04%) it’s thinly dispersed in the air around us, and therefore expensive to extract. Nonetheless, Occidental (OXY) is building the world’s biggest CCS facility in Texas. In a few years expect to read that IRA tax credits are offsetting OXY’s tax liability on its conventional oil and gas business.

Sometimes the right geologic formation to permanently hold CO2 is the same one from which natural gas (CH4) was originally extracted. There’s an appealing symmetry in sending the carbon atoms back home after they’ve been separated from the four hydrogen atoms they arrived with while generating a useful chemical reaction that’s left them bonded with two oxygen atoms instead.

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EnLink (ENLC) is better positioned than most to do this, since they provide natural gas to a number of petrochemical facilities along the Mississippi River corridor. The emissions from these facilities have far higher concentrations of CO2. 50% or more isn’t uncommon. ENLC is exploring opportunities to capture some of this CO2 and send it in dedicated CO2 pipelines back towards the region that provided the natural gas whose combustion created it. They estimate that they can earn an EBITDA return of around 20% on invested capital. Midstream energy infrastructure long since stopped being threatened by the energy transition and is instead becoming vital to it.

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Magellan Midstream (MMP) and Oneok (OKE) reported good earnings as investors in both companies vote on their proposed merger. MMP’s adjusted EBITDA was 8% ahead of expectations and they raised their standalone EBITDA guidance for this year by 2%. OKE 2Q EBITDA beat expectations by just under 4%, and matched MMP’s full year increase in EBITDA guidance of 2%. One might ask why they need to combine when business seems to be going so well.

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Votes on the merger are being counted this week, and the market-implied odds of its passage remain finely balanced. We estimate that $3.1BN in value has been destroyed since the announcement in May. Both companies have scheduled a special meeting of shareholders for September 21, at which point the result will be announced. It looks like being a nailbiter.

We have three funds that seek to profit from this environment:

Energy Mutual Fund

Energy ETF

Real Assets Fund

Midstream earnings have been reported for the most part and generally came in at or close to expectations. Cheniere once again surprised to the upside, with 2Q EBITDA of $1.86BN versus market expectations of $1.62BN. They modestly increased full year guidance, carried out planned maintenance on their Sabine Pass facility on schedule and for the first time spent more cash repurchasing stock than on retiring debt.  

Magellan Midstream reported better than expected earnings and raised full year guidance at the same time as proxies were distributed to MMP and Oneok (OKE) investors to vote on the proposed merger. We estimate the market assigns “more likely than not” odds of shareholder approval. But it’s only a little over 50%, well short of the ringing endorsement both management teams would have liked.  

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We’re unhappy about the tax liability which should have been deferred at the investor’s option but will now become due this year if the deal closes (see Oneok Does A Deal Nobody Needs). We voted no twice – once for each company since we own both. We estimate that $3BN in equity value has been destroyed since the merger announcement. That’s derived from the aggregate market cap underperformance of both stocks versus the American Energy Independence Index (AEITR).  

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Canadian pipeline companies have long enjoyed a reputation for being conservatively run – at times reflecting poorly on their American peers. This was especially true five years ago when it seemed that the only management teams not pursuing growth at any price were north of the border (see Send in the Canadians! and Canadians Reward Their Energy Investors).  

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This year all three big Canadian firms (Enbridge, TC Energy and Pembina) have significantly lagged the sector. TC Energy (TRP) decided to unlock unrecognized value in their liquids business by announcing its spin-off. This announcement came a couple of days after they sold a minority interest in their Columbia Gas pipeline network to Global Infrastructure Partners at a lower multiple than many analysts had assumed it was worth. The expected 5X Debt:EBITDA leverage on the stand-alone liquids business raised eyebrows, and the market has even started to question the security of TRP’s dividend.  

A yield approaching 8% reflects skepticism that TRP will manage its substantial growth capex program and execute needed asset sales flawlessly. We’ve maintained an underweight exposure for the last couple of years, and we’re not yet increasing.  

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A chart from the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) recent Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO) prompted us to examine capacity utilization by power source more carefully. Over the past decade the increase in electricity generation from natural gas power plants is greater than the additional output from solar and wind, although you’ll see few headlines on the topic.  

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Increases in solar and wind capacity draw attention. But because they’re weather-dependent and it’s not always sunny or windy, they generate power less frequently and unpredictably.  

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Among carbon-free sources of power, nuclear operates at by far the highest capacity utilization. It’s always on and represents important baseload where it’s used. Hydropower is seasonal, generally best in the spring when snowmelt swells our rivers. Solar is barely over 20%. Offshore windpower tends to be more productive than onshore, but is more expensive too. 

With dispatchable power, coal and natural gas are moving in opposite directions. Coal plants run less efficiently when their output is stopped and then restarted. Power generation from natural gas plants can be ramped up and down more easily. A decade ago coal provided 28% of our electricity compared with 15% today. Coal capacity hasn’t fallen as quickly, hence its reduced capacity utilization.   

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By contrast, the utilization of natural gas power plants has increased, in part because of their greater flexibility in altering their output up and down – either because extreme hot or cold weather raises demand, but also because increased renewables penetration has made flexible, on call power more valuable. Natural gas power plants are a natural complement to renewables, because they provide responsiveness and reliability, qualities not found in solar or wind.  

When you look across the entire US power grid, capacity utilization has fallen from 41% to 36% over the past decade. This is because we’re using more solar and wind. Poorly informed advocates for renewables promote their apparently low cost per unit of power capacity. Sometimes they implausibly criticize utilities for willfully avoiding the cheapest source of power generation. But as our falling capacity utilization shows, this is a flawed measure of the true cost. The cost of dispatchable power or battery back-up needs to be included. Power prices in America are going up as unreliable energy sources gain market share. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, and yet we’re far better off than Germany and some other EU members with their dysfunctional energy policies (see Germany Pays Dearly For Failed Energy Policy).  

China emits the most greenhouse gases and these emissions continue to grow every year. So our climate will be set in Beijing, not Washington DC.  

We have three funds that seek to profit from this environment:

Energy Mutual Fund

Energy ETF

Real Assets Fund

It doesn’t look like a bull market, but July was crude’s best month in more than a year with the Brent benchmark closing up almost $11 per barrel at over $84. After peaking in spring of last year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, crude oil has been sliding irregularly lower. Russia has found ways to get its product to market, to the quiet relief of western Europe’s governments whose application of sanctions has been constrained by a desire to avoid causing a price spike. China’s long Covid lockdown further depressed demand.

OPEC wants stable, high prices and regularly tweaks output to that end. Traders now expect Saudi Arabia to extend their voluntary production cuts of one Million Barrels per day (MMB/D) into September. The US is also replenishing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve following the Administration’s blatantly political release of reserves in the run up to last year’s mid-term elections.

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Recession fears are also receding, helped by last week’s US 2Q GDP report. Goldman Sachs recently increased their forecast for global oil demand but stuck to their one year forecast of $93 for Brent. For now, the Fed has confounded the skeptics who believed monetary tightening would cause a recession (see Jay Powell’s Victory Lap)

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Peak oil is still out there somewhere, but for now demand keeps growing. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) calculates that the second quarter saw record global liquids consumption of 100.96 MMB/D, marginally above the prior record of 3Q18 (100.91 MMB/D). For 2024 the EIA is forecasting 102.80 MMB/D, up from 101.15 MMB/D this year.

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The hot weather we’ve recently experienced in the US has boosted energy demand. But above average temperatures haven’t been the norm throughout the northern hemisphere. In any case, your blogger finds 90+ degrees less distressing than most following a childhood in the UK where the climate is euphemistically referred to as “temperate”, thanks to the moderating effect of the gulf stream. Damp and cool might be more accurate, as the current forecast shows. Britain’s efforts at lowering CO2 emissions are especially selfless, because they could surely benefit from an extra couple of degrees.

Record natural gas consumption for power generation has helped keep Americans cool over the past few days, with an estimated 52.9 Billion Cubic Feet (BCF) burned last Friday. That compares with an average daily consumption forecast for this year by the EIA of 34.5 BCF, which is up 1.3 BCF/Day from 2022.

Union Pacific expects railroad shipments of coal to receive a warm weather boost, as coal-burning power plants ramp out consumption to meet increased demand for air conditioning. However, coal is rapidly losing its share of power generation at 15%, down from 28% five years ago. Natural gas remains America’s favorite source of power at 41% this year, up from 39% last year. Solar is at 4% and wind 11%, both flat year-on-year.

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TC Energy (TRP) announced they’d be splitting the company into two last week on Thursday, 27th. Usually such announcements boost a company’s stock because it’s assumed each new entity will benefit from more focused management attention. Oddly, TRP sank on the news.

Three days earlier TRP had announced the sale of 40% of their Columbia pipeline system to Global Infrastructure Partners. The 10.5X EBITDA multiple was below what some analysts had valued the business at in their sum-of-the-parts analysis. This was followed by the spin-off announcement, and the relatively high projected 5.0X Debt:EBITDA leverage of the new stand-alone liquids business is high relative to peers.

After the price drop, TRP now yields over 8%. Canadian pipeline companies have a more robust history of maintaining dividends than their southern counterparts. A sustainable dividend at this level is likely to find value-oriented buyers.

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Finally, the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia began commercial operations recently. It’s the first new nuclear power plant in the US since 2016 and only the second since 1996. The long hiatus since the early 1990s reflects public skepticism about nuclear safety along with the successful use of legal challenges by opponents to impede development. Nuclear power is expensive because our broken permitting process allows opponents to use the courts to insert unpredictable delays. This boosts the cost, thereby depressing the IRR. The same techniques have been used to delay needed pipeline infrastructure.

The Mountain Valley pipeline is an example – even though Congress recently fast-tracked its approval under the Fiscal Responsibility Act that headed off a debt ceiling crisis, a DC court still saw fit to impose a stay on resumed construction. It took an emergency ruling from the US Supreme Court (a “stay of the stay”) to allow construction to begin again. Long distance high power transmission lines and the related infrastructure in support of solar and wind will face similar headwinds. Reform of infrastructure permitting is an issue that both ends of the political divide should agree is well overdue.

We have three funds that seek to profit from this environment:

Energy Mutual Fund

Energy ETF

Real Assets Fund

Criticizing the Fed is a self-indulgence afforded the rest of us unburdened with the need to actually set monetary policy. The FOMC usually provides a target-rich environment. The last couple of years have offered a sumptuous feast of mis-steps. 

Start with synchronization of accommodative monetary policy with Biden’s uber-stimulus following his inauguration in early 2021. Quantitative Easing (QE) was promoted from a one-off solution to the 2008 great financial crisis to just another part of the Fed’s toolkit. Over the past fifteen years their balance sheet has taken a series of steps higher, from $1TN to $8TN, with only brief episodes of contraction. They don’t seem to know how to shrink it, so the partial monetization of our debt continues. 

Monetary policy has adopted its own vocabulary, repurposing words such as hawk and dove. Transitory has become a pejorative word since it more accurately described the seeming permanence of high inflation. One imagines a freshman Economics class at Harvard where a self-appointed member of the monetary policy cognoscenti derides a fellow student’s poor grades as transitory.  

Your blogger has taken regular shots at the Fed with irrational exuberance (see Time For Powell To Go). It’s just so easy. 

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So Fed chair Jay Powell might have permitted himself a small victory lap in the green room last Wednesday out of sight of the cameras following his press conference. He’d just announced another hike in the Fed Funds target range, to 5.25-5.5%. As recently as May SOFR futures had been priced for a summer’s end rate of 4.7% with imminent easing. Since then, the June ‘24 futures yield has risen almost 2%, conceding to the Fed. Powell said it’s unlikely they’ll cut rates this year. 

Inflation has been falling – not yet to the Fed’s 2% target but heading that way. JPMorgan is forecasting CPI inflation of 2.4% by next spring. The FOMC is projecting their preferred inflation measure using the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) deflator to average 2.5% next year. PCE tends to be 0.2-0.4% below CPI because its weights adjust dynamically (CPI weights are updated biennially). So the FOMC inflation forecast is more conservative than JPMorgan’s. They expect PCE inflation to reach 2.1% by 2025.  

For months economists have been warning of a recession. JPMorgan projects that 4Q23 and 1Q24 GDP will each be –0.5%, meeting the technical definition of a recession which is two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction. But the day after the Fed raised rates second quarter GDP came in at 2.4%, ahead of expectations as consumption remained strong. Powell has maintained for months that a recession could be avoided, and he reiterated that view at his Wednesday press conference.  

One way to think about the Fed’s dual mandate of seeking maximum employment consistent with stable prices is that they focus on whichever of these two metrics is most off target. Hence in 2020 with inflation stubbornly low they said they’d tolerate higher inflation than in the past in order to achieve higher employment. That reinterpretation of their goals was as transitory as the higher inflation that followed.  

Older readers will remember Ronald Reagan citing the “Misery Index” (Inflation + Unemployment Rate) under President Jimmy Carter as reason to vote him out. If FOMC policymakers ran for office rather than being political appointees, Powell would be running ads proclaiming the Utopian Index (think of it as the Misery Index when it’s low) was looking as good as ever on his watch.  

Full employment is probably still somewhere above 4%, since the time it’s been below 4% has coincided with inflationary wage growth. Both JPMorgan and the FOMC are projecting unemployment next year of around 4.5% and inflation of around 2.5%. If things turn out that way, it will represent a deft monetary policy navigation that seemed implausible just a few months ago.  

Even hyper-active Jim Cramer, ever sensitive to the market’s zeitgeist, asserted on Thursday morning that he had always been a supporter of Fed chair Powell. He proclaimed himself a “Jay fan” — and even a “Jay Hawk.” 

Therefore, we must be at Peak Powell. The Fed’s critics have been relentlessly disarmed by empirical data that suited the Fed’s narrative more than theirs. Recession fears are receding. Inflation has not resisted downward pressure too stubbornly. Partial debt monetization via QE has not led to a collapse of the dollar or hyperinflation. The stock market has remained buoyant, unbowed by the improving returns offered by fixed income. Events have hewed more closely to what Powell told us to expect than the naysayers.  

Jay Powell should gratefully accept whatever accolades come his way. Popularity for a Fed chair is ephemeral. The economy is a fickle mistress. He is, for now, on top.  

We have three funds that seek to profit from this environment:

Energy Mutual Fund

Energy ETF

Real Assets Fund

The market currently assigns barely 50/50 odds of the Oneok-Magellan (OKE-MMP) merger receiving shareholder approval from both companies. When the deal was announced in May approval was judged to be highly likely, but it soon receded as analysts offered only lukewarm approval. We offered our view (see Oneok Does A Deal Nobody Needs) within a few days. In mid-June Jim Murchie of Energy Income Partners (EIP) wrote an open letter criticizing the transaction as not good for MMP unitholders, especially long-term investors whose recapture on deferred taxes will exceed the $25 per MMP unit being offered in the transaction.

EIP released a second open letter on July 17 which reinforced their reasons for remaining opposed to the merger. They contrast MMP’s current fear that electric vehicle adoption will threaten their refined products pipeline volumes with recent previously expressed confidence in their outlook. They calculate that the deal premium is inadequate to compensate MMP unitholders for the tax payments they’ll have to make. EIP correctly argues that while MMP unitholders already had the deferred tax liability that will come due if the deal closes, they currently have some control over when to realize that liability. The OKE-MMP transaction will make those deferred taxes due now. Control over the timing of one’s tax bill has value, which this transaction fails to acknowledge.

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The deal’s odds of success bottomed out in mid-June with EIP’s first letter. They subsequently recovered but have dipped again over the past week with the second letter. The market has already offered its opinion on the transaction, and it is value-destroying.

The 22% premium promised with the initial press release quickly evaporated as OKE stock sank, reducing its value as partial payment for MMP units. From the day preceding the deal announcement, MMP is today up 9% compared with its sector, defined as the American Energy Independence Index (AEITR).  OKE has lagged the AEITR by 4%. Because OKE’s market cap is around 2.3X MMP’s, an investor holding a market weight position in both companies is worse off than if she had simply held the AEITR. In aggregate, OKE and MMP investors together are $2.5BN worse off than if they had been invested in diversified midstream energy infrastructure. It’s therefore fair to say that even the modest likelihood of the deal’s approval has already destroyed $2.5BN in value. If the deal closes, investor losses will be even greater.

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We remain unconvinced of the deal’s merits and solidly opposed, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to vote NO twice – once on our OKE holding and again on our MMP holding.

Sometimes the most profitable capital allocation decisions are to divest assets rather than acquire them. This is the case with Kinder Morgan (KMI) and their sale of the Transmountain Pipeline expansion project (TMX) to Canada’s federal government in 2018. KMI had found themselves caught in the middle of a political dispute between oil-producing Alberta who wanted the added capacity to transport its crude to the Pacific coast, and liberal British Columbia who opposed it. Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau led the Canadian government’s acquisition of TMX for C$4.5BN, arguing its completion was in the national interest.

Five years later TMX is less than a year from completion and the cost looks like C$30.9BN, around 4X what KMI estimated when they began the project in 2016. As recently as February 2020 the Canadian government, which was by then the owner, estimated C$12.6BN. Then Covid forced a suspension of activity. Ongoing legal challenges from environmentalists and flooding added delays. Other drivers of higher costs cited include: “general construction industry and materials cost inflation, supply chain challenges, labor shortages, preservation of indigenous archaeological discoveries along the pipeline’s route, and low contractor productivity.”

Because the Canadian government wants to recoup its investment, the ballooning cost of TMX will be reflected in higher tariffs for shippers using the pipeline. Precise charges depend on the amount of capacity a shipper has committed to use and the term of the agreement. But RBN Energy, who recently published a detailed analysis of TMX, estimates that some customers could wind up paying more than C$10 per barrel.

To illustrate how expensive this is, Enbridge’s Canadian Mainline pipeline, which runs from Edmonton to the US midwest where it connects to pipelines to the US gulf coast, offers similar pricing. So Canadian Mainline will be competitive with TMX for access to crude oil export terminals even though it covers almost 3X the distance.

The outcome vindicates KMI’s decision to sell TMX. At the time the company said they would shut down the project if they couldn’t sell it. Had KMI retained TMX and continued construction throughout its tumultuous last five years, the spiraling cost would have weighed significantly on its stock price. Asset sales don’t come with a post-disposition IRR, but this might be the best capital allocation decision KMI has made in a very long time.

We have three funds that seek to profit from this environment:

Energy Mutual Fund

Energy ETF

Real Assets Fund

Exxon Mobil (XOM) is not typically associated with Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) but they are planning to double the volumes they handle by 2030, to 40 million tonnes pa. This would be equivalent to around 5.3 Billion Cubic Feet per Day (BCF/D). The US currently exports around 12 BCF/D although that will grow as new LNG export capacity is developed. XOM is a JV partner in the Golden Pass LNG Terminal in Sabine Pass, LA along with Qatar Energy. They have ownership stakes in LNG infrastructure around the world including in Qatar, Papua New Guinea and Wales. They plan to partner with Qatar Energy to build liquefaction facilities in Texas and Qatar.

From natural gas production to liquefaction, marketing and regassification, XOM is planning to play a role throughout the value chain. Like us, they expect strong long term demand growth. Asia has historically been the leading destination for LNG trade, but Russia’s invasion has created new demand from Europe.

XOM sponsors a cool interactive map that shows where all the world’s LNG infrastructure is located and provides information about ownership, volumes etc.

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The US is largely an LNG exporter. The red stars on the US map are operating liquefaction terminals. Yellow and orange are at various stages of planning or construction. The US does import LNG, most famously in Boston (see two adjacent green stars) to compensate for the impediments they’ve imposed on natural gas pipelines (see Why Liberal States Pay Up For Energy).

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The map of China and Japan shows an extensive network of regassification facilities (green stars). The red stars and other colors in this chart are, confusingly, import terminals under construction not LNG export terminals as on the US map. If you examine the maps very closely you’ll see that five-pointed stars denote LNG export and a Star of David denotes import, regassification. But the overall picture is that Japan can import LNG at many points along its coast. China has well over a dozen import terminals under construction. China is likely to displace Japan this year as the world’s biggest LNG importer.

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The map of Europe shows that most of the LNG import terminals are in southern Europe. Germany wasn’t able to rely on these to replace Russian imports because Europe hasn’t invested in pipelines to move natural gas north. France has long opposed building a pipeline across the Pyrenees. European energy policy was never concerned with energy security and always assumed natural gas demand would drop. Germany quickly set about building regassification facilities on its north coast and has several more planned. European gas demand has been falling, but that’s partly because manufacturing businesses are transferring production to countries that can provide energy that’s reliable and cheap. Dutch fertilizer company OCI is investing $1BN in a Texas ammonia plant that will access cheap local natural gas, and then earn Inflation Reduction Act tax credits by sequestering the CO2 by-product underground (see Sending More Carbon Back Underground).

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America’s per capita GDP has steadily pulled away from Germany’s and other advanced countries, most notably over the past decade or so (see Celebrating The 4th of July). We can all find much to criticize about our politicians, but at least government gets in the way less here than in other countries.

Cheniere exports around half of America’s LNG. They’re considering adding a new pipeline in Louisiana to add supply flexibility to their export terminal. Natural gas is a cleaner substitute for coal, and China’s growing LNG imports offer the hope that they will at some point reduce their industrial use of coal. Ship owners are also investing substantial sums to use LNG. In most cases this is replacing bunker fuel which is highly pollutive and is being phased out via global environmental regulations.

New windpower continues to face spiraling costs. The UK has made good use of the blustery North Sea, but Sweden’s Vattenfall recent halted work on a project intended to power 1.5 million UK homes because the cost has risen 40%. “What we see today, it simply doesn’t make sense to continue this project,” said Vattenfall chief executive Anna Borg.

Vattenfall took an impairment charge of $537MM. Evidently the UK government declined to adjust the terms of the contract to allow work to continue. By contrast, NJ governor Phil Murphy when faced with a similar problem recently redirected Federal tax credits worth up to $1BN to Danish firm Orsted so they can continue to build wind turbines along the NJ coastline (see Environmentalists Opposed To Windpower).

When contemplating the prospects of LNG versus windmills, we always take the former.

We have three funds that seek to profit from this environment:

Energy Mutual Fund

Energy ETF

Real Assets Fund

Life after Climate Change: Better than you think by Bjorn Lomberg was recently published in the National Review. Lomberg has published several books arguing that climate change isn’t the existential disaster often portrayed in the media. His most recent is False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. He offers a thoughtful counter to that wretched young woman Greta who lectured us from the UN in 2019 (“How dare you?”). Her star has been falling ever since, with occasional news coverage only when her protests lead to an arrest.

The National Review article and two other pieces were brought to my attention by a long-time client and friend as examples of unconventional thinking that deserve more widespread dissemination. Lomberg harnesses facts to present a future unlikely to be catastrophic. He notes that global hurricanes last year were the second weakest batch since 1980 when satellites began capturing data. The UN Climate Panel expects strong hurricanes to increase by 10-20%. Annually, they cause damage worth 0.04% of GDP, a figure expected to continue falling. A richer world will have more property to damage but will also be better able to afford resiliency to protect lives and assets.

Heat deaths have been rising, but globally 8X as many people die from cold, which makes blood vessels constrict to maintain warmth for internal organs, driving up blood pressure. It’ll sound flippant, but I spend much more money and effort avoiding cold weather, by spending most of the winter in Florida. I like 90 degrees. If we faced global cooling I would be far more agitated. The prospect of glaciers returning to New Jersey would be a deterioration in quality of life hard to pin on the state’s Democrats.

Lomberg goes on to note that the % of land burned in forest fires has been falling from around 4.2% in the early 1900s. And that improving living standards will reduce malnutrition. Higher energy prices and reduced access to fossil fuels will directly impede this process. For good measure he adds criticisms of solar and wind that will be familiar to regular readers (intermittency; low energy density; heavy reliance on steel and concrete). Lomberg doesn’t dispute that rising CO2 levels will cause warming, but he advocates assessing the costs and benefits of different policies, something rarely heard from climate extremists.

The UN advocates for energy policies that will constrain planetary warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above 1850. Today we’re only 0.4 degrees away from that theoretical threshold at which disaster becomes unavoidable. Modelling the climate is complicated and precise forecasts aren’t credible. We should address the risk but human lives are at stake from impetuous liberal energy policies too.

Mark Levin’s American Marxism includes text from AOC’s Green New Deal to remind how far left policies on climate would lead to Federal control of vast parts of the economy via an army of new bureaucrats spending $TNs. The Green New Deal’s preamble asserted disproportionate harm to “indigenous communities, communities of color…women”. For more detail of its shortcomings, see The Green New Deal’s Denial of Science and The Bovine Green Dream.

Bjorn Lomberg cites a study showing that cheap US natural gas had allowed poorer households to be better heated, saving an estimated 11,000 lives each year.

A monthly newsletter by Stephen Leeb (The Complete Investor) was the third piece shared by my friend. Leeb makes the case for higher long term crude oil prices, arguing that global demand will inevitably keep rising because of emerging economies led by China, and that current prices imply unrealistic assumptions about future supply growth.

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Research from Goldman Sachs shows that the increased costs of developing large new oil reserves has reduced capex and average reserve life while also driving up break-evens. The industry’s investment has been in a down cycle for almost a decade. US shale led to lower prices and convinced companies to curb spending. The ESG movement made big public companies sensitive about supplying what amounts to 80% of the world’s energy. The consequent increase in free cash flow has been good for shareholders. Hug a climate protester.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made the EU consider energy security for the first time in living memory. Renewables have delivered hype but not yet made a meaningful dent in the global energy mix. Today even European companies like Shell are increasing their investments in reliable energy, following their American peers in the hope of recouping recent stock underperformance.

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The views expressed in the writings shared by my friend have always represented pragmatic realism. As they become more mainstream we’ll all benefit from more balanced climate policies that consider cost-benefit tradeoffs. The tiresome Greta is becoming an anachronism, reflecting all that is bad about the extreme climate movement.

We have three funds that seek to profit from this environment:

Energy Mutual Fund

Energy ETF

Real Assets Fund

Climate extremists have a well deserved reputation for a simplistic approach to solving the complex problem of curbing CO2 emissions without impoverishing us all. However, poorly informed objectives doesn’t mean they have a co-ordinated approach. The growth in solar and wind power is setting environmental extremists against one another. 

Take New Jersey, a state whose politics have lurched expensively left in recent years. Governor Phil Murphy and the Democrat legislature are pursuing an ambitious plan to develop offshore windpower. Danish firm Orsted plans enough wind turbines to power a million NJ homes. The project was expected to cost $1.6BN four years ago, but last week the company won approval from NJ to keep tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act that were originally intended to benefit electricity customers.  

The bailout will surprise few. But NJ Democrats probably weren’t expecting to face growing opposition to hundreds of offshore wind turbines from environmentalists. Nonetheless, ProtectOurCoastNJ is showing rare intellectual deftness in opposing “the industrialization of the oceans” while also arguing in favor of efforts to reduce global greenhouse gases. They offer a coherent view that is uncommon among their peers.  

There are many arguments against windpower. It’s not renewable because the turbines have a useful life of around twenty years. They’re made of steel and concrete, whose manufacture relies on fossil fuels. The worn out blades typically end up in special landfills. Wind is intermittent, although offshore wind produces power more reliably than onshore. Increased penetration of weather-dependent electricity on a grid raises the need for reliable back-up, often from natural gas power plants. Therefore, renewables raise prices, a wholly understandable result that advocates should embrace as worth the cost. Instead, they claim the opposite, ignoring the examples of Germany which ranks among the world’s priciest electricity. And California, which vies for this title and goes one better with unreliability to boot.  

ProtectOurCoastNJ opposes offshore windpower because of the threat to wildlife, including whales. They cite the noise from construction, arguing that, “Vibrations from driving 36’ diameter steel piles 150’ into the sea floor will radiate for miles.” They argue that the nutrient-rich cold pool of water which sits near the surface will be disrupted by the turbine blades. The electro-magnetic field from the high-voltage cables will disorient fish. They worry about nautical navigation around the turbines, leaking oil and other hazardous chemicals, the increased cost of electricity and the view. The wind turbines will be clearly visible from the beaches of the Jersey shore. 

Britain relies heavily on offshore windpower. There are turbines in the English Channel. I’ve seen them when visiting friends who live on the southeast coast. They are visible, but I must confess that they look as far off as a passing cargo ship and are about as objectionable.  

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However, the simulated photos of what the NJ offshore turbines will look like does portray them as more visible than the UK version.  

ProtectOurCoastNJ goes on to list many more sensible power sources to reduce emissions. These include switching from coal to natural gas, greater use of nuclear power and carbon capture. They sound as if they are subscribers to this blog.  

The point is that environmentalists are far from a homogenous group. There will always be a group opposing just about any construction. Unusually, ProtectOurCoastNJ has a pragmatic outlook and offers sensible alternatives for the windpower they oppose. Mountain Valley Pipeline isn’t the only energy infrastructure project to struggle with opposition from activists.  

In other news, NextDecade (NEXT) announced their long-awaited Final Investment Decision (FID) to go ahead with their Rio Grande LNG export project, and the stock fell sharply. This was because NEXT’s share of the cashflows of Stage 1 turned out to be lower than their prior guidance – 20.8%, whereas investors were expecting around a third.  

This was disappointing, and the consequent sell-off in our opinion leaves the stock priced just for Stage 1 (Trains 1-3) with no added value for Stage 2 (Trains 4-5). NEXT is guiding for much better economics on Stage 2 assuming it ultimately goes ahead. Although Stage 2 isn’t reflected in the price, we think on a per share basis it could be worth 2-3X Stage 1. They also have Next Carbon Solutions which is focused on helping industrial companies capture and store CO2. Some people at NEXT think there’s as much value in this as the LNG business, although the stock price ascribes no value to it. 

NEXT is a multi-year story. We still like the stock.  

We have three funds that seek to profit from this environment:

Energy Mutual Fund

Energy ETF

Real Assets Fund

Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) raised the tax credit for CO2 that’s permanently buried underground. Some CO2 is used in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) to help push crude out of mature, low pressure wells. It can then be pumped back into the well for permanent storage. This is Carbon Capture, Use and Sequestration (CCUS). The IRA tax credit for CCUS via EOR is $60 per metric tonne. There are still some sources of naturally occurring CO2 that are tapped for EOR, a counterintuitive process that IRA tax credits will likely cause to be phased out.

Burying CO2 without using it to produce fossil fuels is more in keeping with the spirit of climate change, and so Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) draws larger credits than CCUS. The biggest credit goes to CCS that extracts CO2 out of the ambient air, called Direct Air Capture (DAC). CO2 exists at about 412 parts per million and is fairly evenly distributed. DAC is expensive, but the IRA’s $180 per tonne credit is enough to justify private sector investment. Extraction facilities can be placed wherever is convenient – such as above a geological formation that used to hold hydrocarbons.

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There’s a beautiful symmetry here, in that carbon atoms are first extracted as hydrocarbon molecules. For example, natural gas (methane) is CH4. Their combustion causes the carbon atom to break from its hydrogen atoms and recombine with oxygen, forming the CO2 atoms whose increasing presence is a main driver of concern about global warming. Some of the best places to permanently store CO2 molecules are where CH4 molecules and other hydrocarbons were originally found deep underground.

The map is unfortunately a little grainy, but nonetheless makes clear that CCUS projects are either linked to old oil/gas wells by CO2 pipelines or sit directly above them.

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Energy infrastructure investors should care about this for two reasons. One is that carbon capture offers a new revenue source, since the pipelines and other hardware required are owned and will be built by existing midstream businesses. Enlink is especially well positioned, since they have a significant presence in Louisiana moving natural gas to the state’s petrochemical industry. Providing transport for the CO2 byproduct back to the geological formations that sourced the hydrocarbons is a good fit.

The second reason is that increased use of carbon capture enhances the benefits of traditional, reliable energy versus solar and wind. In all of human history we’ve never transitioned to a form of energy that  is less reliable and takes up far more space than what we’re already using. Solar panels and windmills are a regressive step in many ways.

Cheap natural gas and IRA tax credits are a potent combination that is drawing industries to the US. OCI, a Dutch fertilizer company, is building a $1BN ammonia plant in Texas that will capture 95% of the emissions generated by its process. Ammonia is widely used to produce fertilizer, one of Vaclav Smil’s four pillars of civilization (along with steel, cement and plastic).

The “blue” ammonia OCI will produce costs $119 per metric tonne more than conventionally produced ammonia. But they estimate that the IRA tax credits will be worth $145 per tonne. It’s a perfect example of why European businesses are being drawn to America.

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German politicians have drawn comfort from the drop in industrial energy use following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some credited conservation measures by energy-intensive manufacturers, but the data shows that a drop in output is the real explanation. America’s energy policies unlocked cheap oil and gas. European companies such as OCI are investing here because of that. German energy policies led to enormous investment in windpower and neglected natural gas because they thought Russia would maintain supply until it was no longer needed. They have the world’s most expensive electricity as a result, with any reduction in CO2 emissions swamped by China’s consumption of half the world’s coal. German energy policies are a catastrophe.

Berkshire Hathaway continues to lean into the wind by increasing its traditional energy investments. Most recently Buffett invested $3.3BN for 50% of the Cove Point LNG plant, adding to the 25% already owned via Berkshire Hathaway Energy. He obviously sees a bright future for exports of US natural gas.

Lastly, the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) saga took another turn with the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s decision to halt construction in response to a lawsuit filed by the Wilderness Society. The suit concerns a 3.5 mile construction corridor through the Jefferson National Forest. Even an act of Congress specifically approving MVP has been insufficient to break through the legal obstacles. Infrastructure permitting in the US is a mess.

We have three funds that seek to profit from this environment:

Energy Mutual Fund

Energy ETF

Real Assets Fund