Hess

There was plenty of client interest in a comment we made a while ago now, say Q1 2022, that US exploration and production (E&P) companies have become homogenized in terms of what they offer shareholders, as basically all corporate strategies now have, thankfully: Focused on returns and so capital discipline, and Reduced growth to the benefit of market supply & demand balance. Those that cannot resist growth are private or have gone private (Continental Resources) […]

Greetings from Texas, The world’s biggest mangrove company kindly invited Paty & me to the Austin Formula One Grand Prix (F1). Cars running E10 are screaming behind me on four source power trains; (V6 1.8 liter, one electric exhaust powered, one electric latent braking powered, and a turbocharger). The world’s biggest mangrove company is Aramco, F1 primary sponsors for this race. I think the sponsorship is genius in increasing the popularity of the world’s greatest […]

Brooklyn Cop at 844th Precinct accuses innocent Sankey of being “weird-looking” “They” got caught speeding yesterday: fast unwind of long natgas / short refining trade Terrific Happy Hour with Jay Saunders and a couple of other hitters last night; introducing Scope 4 Jennison portfolio manager (PM) Jay Saunders is very popular in the market, you can tell that by the players that dialled in to participate in his call yesterday. He co-runs the Jennison Natural […]

This note outlines the mega-themes that are emerging mid-way through oils’ reporting season. We listened to a lot of calls, read A LOT of transcripts, and distill it here, for your Saturday afternoon reading by the pool on your yacht. Last evening I reflected that this weekend I was as likely to bit hit by a massive piece of falling Chinese space debris, as to win the mega-millions and get my own yacht with pool. […]

Hess came in on the money, for EPS this quarter, with some noise, but the long term value of Guyana just keeps getting bigger, and this is a remarkable play on the oil age pressing through 2030. Call today. The way things are shaping up in Europe, oil & gas resource in the Americas is severely under-valued. Guyana value is staggering, we have talked about Hess as a $200 stock long term. Besides the chronic […]

Greetings fellow earthlings, (Dow Jones WSJ 7/17/22) — Investors hoping a strong start to earnings season would jolt the stock market from its slump haven’t gotten much satisfaction. Early reports from U.S. companies have refocused attention on some of the biggest challenges facing businesses, from the threat of an economic slowdown to the pressure that rising costs are putting on corporate profits. JPMorgan Chase, Delta Air Lines and industrial supplier Fastenal are among those last […]

Greetings from Hyde Park, We are back in London, Paris was controversial; Patricia considers it the greatest most wonderful place on earth, I get into arguments with Parisians, Selloff dynamics Hess reminder Phillips 66 Comments Morocco? Algeria It’s only rock ‘n’ and I’m 80 On the selloff: To me, the charts are not broken, but we nibbled 5% of the S&P500, then collapsed back to just over 4.1%. It is actually barely visible on the […]

Greetings from La Villa des Orangers, Medina (Old Town), Marrakesh, Today – are the big E&Ps cheap? Antero LNG exports – 70mmcfd or 1bcf/d? Postcard from Morocco They say if you want a question answered on the internet, don’t ask the question, but rather post a bold false statement, and you will be flooded with corrections. It is an interesting point on human psychology. Earlier this week we said that Antero was exporting 1bcf/d of […]

First quarter reporting season is always a crazy flurry, and this one is no different. To add to the excitement, just as I sat back yesterday having published on Antero, news broke that Elliott Associates had gone activist on Suncor. We had Hess IR Jay Wilson on Strategy Session. Hess could be worth $200/share on a five year view, at $100/bbl oil. For sure, Guyana is just about the only major global oil supply growth. […]

Huge shock. Particularly to major European clients that had stated their house view: no invasion. Their view was weeks of noise, no invasion. What will happen to this extraordinary chart? We see demand destruction at $120/bbl, and think oil prices will continue to go to that level of demand destruction if US demand remains as strong as it currently is. Lagging US economic strength and upcoming summer speak to ongoing demand strength, even if it […]

Strategy Session this week: Doomberg 2/17, 4:30PM EST –  Click Here to register A bull market climbs a wall of fear, a bear market descends a slope of hope. With oil prices in the $90s, for oil investors traumatized by a decade of descending a slope of hope, are now climbing a wall of fear. The thinking goes like this: “Brent is at $90/bbl on a Ukraine invasion story that is de-escalating, sell quick, lock […]

Hi I am just checking in to assure you I survived the Houston NAPE conference, landmen and all, but am still on the road, headed to New Orleans. This week has been discombobulated – my initial flight on Tuesday was cancelled by United, I rushed to Newark, made the 2pm, just made dinner in Houston, made the NAPE conference yesterday, made dinner with a Nebraska CEO, went to the after party rave and here I […]

Strategy Session this Thursday 4:30pm with Joe Gorder, Valero Chairman & CEO; Lane Riggs President & COO; Jason Fraser, EVP, CFO; Homer Bhullar, VP IR & Finance. Joe has overseen enormous success as CEO of Valero overseeing a cumulative return since he started in 2014 of 94% for Valero stockholders. Not only does Joe lead the world’s largest independent refiner, he has also built the largest producer of renewable fuels in the US. All the […]

My friend Hunter has gone vegan. Now we call him Gatherer. Where does Putin keep his armies? In his sleevies. Why does the Norwegian navy have barcodes on the side of their ships? So when they arrive back at port they can Scandinavian. A man rushes into the Doctor’s office “Doctor, I am shrinking!” Doctor: “Can’t you just be a little patient?” Think you are good at English? Try this: Why do British people love […]

Tonight, Strategy Session with Jay Wilson, Vice President, Hess Corporation. 5pm RSVP. You are not going to believe this: Valero beats. That would be the 17th straight quarter that Valero has beaten analysts’ estimates. Kudos to IR! It does beg the question of why would any company ever miss estimates? After all, Valero earnings since 2017 have hardly been a cake walk. This period includes COVID and the worst possible environment for a refiner. They […]

Super bullish charts today, see below, especially with Hess beating. Are returns up in oils? Well, Hess just reported 85c for the quarter compared to -32c a year ago. They should put it in the growth index <wink>. But first, as the market melted down this week, somebody responded as to why, that the Fed was raising rates and World War 3 was about to start. But I just can’t get past my gut feeling […]

Clients! We have a great schedule lined up for our Thursday Strategy Sessions, starting this week: 1/27 Jay Wilson, Vice President, Hess. 5pm. Delighted that right after Hess reports full year results for 2021, we have one of the most tenured oil executives on Wall Street joining us this week. Jay’s name came up recently in the history notes we have been writing – he was notably widely quoted in the press applauding Oxy’s deals […]

Strategy Session last night with William Su of Blackrock, a tenured oil analyst & investor. My first question was whether we would see a positive gamma squeeze in oil given the rapid increase in open call interest. The charts below show: 1) the price of a 3-year at-the-money (ATM) WTI call, going up and up and up, and alongside it to the right 2) the scale of open interest in $100/bbl call options for June […]

A couple of stories over the past week have highlighted the precarious nature of global oil supply Outage in Libya 300kb/d Force majeure declared in Ecuador, cutting exports by at least 200kb/d Upstream Online 20th December 2021 Production from four Libyan oilfields has been shut in, causing NOC, the state oil company, to declare force majeure on crude exports from two ports the Zawia and Mellitah terminals. NOC said in a statement on Monday that […]

Not talking about COVID, just to say I am feeling 100% fine. This Omicron will hopefully be the largest and fast mass vaccination programme in history, whether by God or Government. Nice chart this morning from Greg Wachsteter, who kindly said I could publish. No more comment on COVID, I think the conclusion here is pretty obvious; this chart is therefore bullish S&P Energy. Sankey-Laffer curves. The presentation attached today, made me think what a […]

Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train… ExxonMobil has called a historic snap analyst meeting for this Wednesday 1st December. The first meeting under a new, externally appointed, CFO, former Diageo executive, Kathryn Mikells. She is now in charge of finance, strategy, communication, and investor relations (IR). Kathy already refreshed her first earnings call, Q3 2021, interjecting, freely commenting, communicating; the company also gave clear guidance over what to expect from this update […]

Big upcoming events for us: Happy Hour this week with former FERC Chairman Neal Chatterjee, along with Aaron Cutler, both now partners at major DC law firm Hogan Lovells. Aaron at 5pm, Neal at 5:30pm. Both have deep multi-decade Washington energy experience at the highest level – Neal was former Chief of Staff for Senator McConnell, Senate Republican Leader. It is obviously vital to understand the shifting energy landscape in Washington. These are the experts […]

Ezra’s first quarter as EOG CEO and he lofts it out of the park – massive increase in regular dividend, big special, buyback, he is in NYC next week, take a victory lap Pioneer wanes yesterday after weak buyback guidance Apache on fire We like Denbury on CO2 negative oil, and encourage Oxy carbon ventures Sunrun – we expected either a crashing miss or wild beat and massive stock reaction; we got neutral Delek beats; […]

Hess results look in line. We argue that as the market prices oil terminal value back in, on the failing energy transition, Hess’ Guyana position will re-value higher. Structurally bullish Hess. Range $RRC increases 2022 hedges d’oh. “Wake me up at the end of 2022 on this one”. Negative. Short Neste and long Equinor, both reported – two companies at opposite ends of the valuation spectrum Well, for a highly anticipated week of quarterly results, […]

Key points: Clients are focused on OPEC spare capacity and demand growth, but also, rightly, North American supply growth, which is the most price elastic component of global oil supply. Halliburton results yesterday naturally raise questions over US production growth; the company stated that it sees 20% rise next year in North American revenues, which includes “solid pricing gains”. This would imply Halliburton expects US E&P capex to be ~10% higher next year; not a […]

Enjoy the last weekend of summer, beautiful day here in London, readying ourselves for next week with a slew of oil corporate oil & energy newsflow in “conference season” starting with this week’s traditional “Lehman Conference”, as we oil old schoolers know it. For my entire career, the Lehman conference has occupied the oil/energy week after Labor Day. Post-Labor Day, for me, as a research analyst, opens the Wall Street year, back when it culminated […]

Welcome to mid-August, I am taking it easy for a couple of weeks. Good week ahead for fishing offshore Ixtapa on the Pacific. Really nothing on the calendar next week for oil analysts unless we stretch to retail such as Walmart, Home Depot, and Target, all reporting. Roblox is an interesting company. A call last week from the White House for OPEC+ to produce more oil and for the FTC to investigate high pump prices […]

OIL RISK HIGH. We have an OPEC meeting tomorrow, and the word is that Iran is pumping into storage on anticipation of successful negotiations with the Biden administration, which, for reasons I do not fully understand, is very keen to make a nuclear deal. This will allow Iran back into global oil markets. We understand that OPEC is warning Iran not to flood the market, and Iran is saying “we are going to flood the […]

*INVITATION * Today * 10am ET * – Happy Coffee with Li-Cycle CEO Ajay Kochhar. Ajay is extremely strong on all things to do with his business, of re-cycling lithium-ion batteries. By extension, he is extremely strong on batteries, EVs, and particularly Li-Ion factories. He is absolutely at ease with battery market dynamics. Join a conversation with Sankey + a few clients. Yesterday the company announced an agreement with Ultium Cells, a joint venture of […]

Winner winner chicken dinner: Hess this past week. ExxonMobil, we think won of the mega-oils. Hess is the “last great oil NAV play” on Guyana, the stock is worth $100/share+ if you believe $80/bbl is coming down the strip; Goldman clearly does, we get there too, with a weak US$ and not dissimilar balances – a demand boom is coming. Wildcards vs GS are Iran and India, alongside the potential for rising US interest rates […]

If you have the strength, Happy Hour Tonight 5pm Register Here:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84981726924 Let’s see who can be the most bullish on the call! Using $60/bbl long term we can get to a $90 net asset value for Hess, but that work is subject to a conversation with the company. At $70 long term oil we get to $100 NAV/share. It is not as crazy as the old Hess, which ostensibly was trading at a 50% […]

Monster week of earnings ahead, a clash in the titanic battle of growth vs value. The forces of growth over-ran us values, but we started a fightback that saw several battles won since the terrible relative lows of August 2020. In Q1 this year, value began to rampage against growth. April has seen a growth fightback, with the US$ holding and US interest rates even rallying. I asked a market player if he was bullish […]

My wife and I were sitting in the living room enjoying a bottle of wine. Out of the blue she said, “I love you. ” Surprised, I asked, “Is that you or the wine talking?” “It’s me,” she said, “talking to the wine.” What do you call a rich Centipede? A Dollarpede A mushroom walks into a bar and the bartender welcomes him. He’s a fun guy. A Freudian slip is where you say one […]

The feeling is that oil price action this past week was very bullish given that it is traditionally-weak January and it held up vs US$ up and market down moves. Major clients are highlighting SPACs. We see the SPAC route as a major outlet to address the market imbalance between investment $ seeking renewable energy opportunities, and lack of renewable energy market cap plays. In today’s Sunday Sankey we replicate several slides published by Houston […]

Quote of the day: SINGAPORE, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Shares in small Australian nickel and cobalt explorer GME Resources GME.AX jumped as much as 53% on Thursday, apparently driven by the similarity of its stock ticker code to U.S. retail investor darling GameStop GME.N. Looking forward to Happy Hour tonight! This should be a good one. As always 5pm – please register interest. Just ping me an email to join, it is a great client-only […]

DC chat today, it’s Friday! Travelling to Atlanta via Washington and Durham today with son Max. I accidentally sprayed my son’s deodorant into my mouth this morning. Now when I talk I have this weird Axe scent. If you lose one of your senses, your other senses are heightened. That’s why people with no sense of humour have a heightened sense of self-importance. I told my wife I was making a bicycle out of spaghetti. […]

Yesterday was one of those thematic days. “You don’t buy a cheap oil stocks, you buy good management.” We started with an activist getting aggressive on Ovintiv, had a great conversation with the CEO of Northern Oil & Gas, had another activist letter to Delek USA from Carl Icahn’s CVI Refining, and rounded out with Happy Hour. But first, it’s Friday, and that means we start with… What do you call a mythical beast that […]

Special Sunday Sankey featuring the legendary oil’s share of the S&P500 vs oil’s share of the S&P500 earnings charts! Sadly, it was not worth running them all year, given the horrendous earnings of the sector in what will be the worst year in the history of oil relative to expectations. Now, as we look directly into 2021, the charts are beginning to make sense. More inside this note but a couple of starters for you, […]

Call to start 2021: our refining conference features all six independent refiners at CEO level. Sankey fireside chats back to back. Please join, you will start 2021 with a great understanding of markets, notable oil and and renewable diesel, but much more besides. I’ve got a case of Corona and I am not going to work today. I’m not sick, I’m just taking the day off to drink the whole case. Customer at a farmer’s […]

There are lots of interesting stories out there to consider, hoping to publish on Iran later this week, a sort of primer. Also in this note: UK Energy Policy, Bitcoin, Non-OPEC Guyana & Norway. As tweeted yesterday on my Sankey Research Twitter @crudegusher it only takes a 10% rotation OUT of Tesla into oils, to generate $36bn of buying pressure on this emasculated S&P Energy sector with a $694bn market cap. Energy (S&P ex utilities) […]

Deciding what the rumour has priced into the market price, then watching the actual news hit, always tends to be a surprise, in that the market ripped yesterday on a second vaccine announcement from Moderna, even though it felt like vaccine news was all whispered all over the market just prior to the election, so prior to both announcements. As with these markets, you buy the rumour and buy the news, (you don’t fight the […]

SHANGHAI, Oct 29 (Reuters) – China’s major state-owned banks have been swapping U.S. dollars for yuan this week, traders said on Thursday, suggesting monetary authorities are trying to rein in the sharply appreciating currency. Those operations in the onshore currency swap market have caused the value of the yuan to fall in the forwards market, tamping expectations that it will appreciate further and simultaneously making it more expensive for investors to borrow yuan. Two other […]

Iran – clients are asking, naturally worried that 1mb/d+ of oil exports will be added to glutted markets in the case of a Biden win. Comments on Foreign Policy under Biden below. Noted Enterprise posts good results. $EPD has been one of our few recommendations these past months. We have particularly highlighted the units to investors questioning ExxonMobil’s 10% yield, that $EPD offers a higher yield, with a more focused, secular-bull business model (see our […]

Breaking news: WSJ October 18th 2020 Pioneer Natural Resources is in talks to buy Parsley Energy, according to people familiar with the matter, as a wave of consolidation takes hold in the beleaguered oil patch. Word from the oil field is the deal was due to be announced last week and got sidelined by COP-CXO. (Twitter). M&A stories in the WSJ are considered the most reliable of any business new source. Last week they were […]

$EOG was the name most speculated about as likely to MAKE a takeover in the wake of the Conoco-Concho story yesterday; the stock that reacted most was $XEC, perceived as the most likely next TAKE over company. Continental CLR is seen as needing to deal, $MRO too, $OVV potentially to offer a blizzard of stock, $FANG and Parsley $PE potentially to join the consolidation fray one way or the other; $CDEV is due to be […]

A client pointed out that DOW stock has been on a bit of a tear recently, while XOM cannot catch a bid. This is a reasonable point, and the same could be said of Phillips 66 PSX, which has also been languishing, despite its chemicals exposure. That stock shrugged off a bad 2019 for chemicals margins, which then got truly abysmal with COVID. Subsequently controversy/risk around the Dakota Access Pipeline has ailed PSX, with the […]

News and debate around Oxy and Hess today, has us pondering NAV, especially in Guyana, but also in UAE and Algeria. Global Oils, we got ’em. Continue reading