Morning Sankey

Good day, A reminder that we have Phillips 66 and Par Pacific back-to-back this Friday, January 13th 11AM Eastern Time Phillips 66 (PSX) – Mark Lashier – President and CEO & Kevin Mitchell – EVP CFO 12PM ET Par Pacific Holdings (PARR) – William Pate – President & CEO http://www.sankeyresearch.com/2023-refining-conference/ ~ Did a private wealth management breakfast presentation this morning, so late today and thematic, ending with a bunch of longs and shorts: The Energy …

Next Friday January 13th: REFINING CONFERENCE 2023 CONTINUES Phillips 66, 11am Zoom, CEO, CFO followed by Par Pacific CEO at noon. Still finalizing Valero and Neste, as well as niche player Vertex. Our best-read note of Q4 “The Inventory Underhang” (link below) in US oil reserves will continue to be a rolling mega-theme: yesterday Pioneer (featured in the note with Coterra) CEO Scott Sheffield again highlighted that marginal performance in the Basin is declining. He …

Today, we re-publish highlights of the IEA’s December 2022 Oil Market Report (2022, released this morning) at a time of huge uncertainty in oil markets. Skip to the paragraph below that starts “OMR Scrape”, if you want to jump the next few paragraphs of my meta-analysis on paying for research, particularly IEA research. ~ As someone who started his oil analysis career at the IEA, I have the affection and disaffection of a former employee. …

“He’s the Michael Jordan of Oil & Gas” emailed one trader who read yesterday’s note on Mike Wirth. Meetings in New York yesterday, closing out my “week of Wirth” were received, if not quite at that level, then certainly very warmly. Besides his low-key charisma, what gave Wirth this reputation? The transformation of Chevron, essentially one of capex control and free cashflow & returns generation over his tenure, first in his restructuring what was an …

Greetings! We had described this as a very busy week, yesterday having spent the day in Boston with Chevron Chairman and CEO Mike Wirth, who also hosted dinner for analysts on Tuesday night at the rather excellent Ocean Prime in Midtown Manhattan. Noted we also had lunch with two senior bankers Monday, comments here are mixed from those meetings. Notably, the big idea that there is major potential M&A (mergers and acquisitions) in Big Oil, …

In this note: most bullish on oil field service (OFS/OSX) in a decade. Sankey Research Special Event: post-OPEC dinner Vienna Sunday 4th December, Park Hyatt (location subject to confirmation). RSVP. Accepted: Kathleen Kelley, Jan Stuart, Major US hedge fund portfolio manager, invited: Helima Croft (RBC), Brian Sullivan (CNBC), Lionel Messi (invited by Instagram DM). Yep, yesterday a combination of the WSJ and Saudi official press agency got me. There is now sufficient controversy around the …

“This job is easy, all you have to do is forecast the oil price right.” In this note we argue that the most expensive group among the oils will run here, based on the recent market “Quantquake” that we outline in this note. What was the Quantquake? Last week saw an extraordinary move in markets. And from this we derive a trading recommendation into year end. There is more to short- and medium-term investing than […]

Tonight on Happy Hour, Ira Joseph, Senior Research Scholar, Center on Energy Policy, Columbia University. Former Head of Global Generating Fuels & Electric Power Pricing and Research at S&P Global Platts. Former Head of Global Gas and Power PIRA Energy Group. Former Editor in Chief Energy Intelligence. The man has 30 years form in energy expertise. Ira was recommended by Sankey Research friend Jay Saunders, long term natural resource Portfolio Manager at Jennison, and connoisseur […]

There was a collision yesterday in Tribeca between your experience-bitten, long-since cynical energy (oil) analyst, and the Schlumberger’s analyst meeting. Big oil clients have seen oily friends fired, exit Wall Street forever, been asked to cover extra sectors, been bullish when they should have been bearish, watched great companies humbled, seen clients lost to 1,000 yard stares. Schlumberger is a huge part of the arc of oil history, not least on Wall Street. We, the […]

Happy Hour Long BP Short Meta on ESG – BP’s is better, we explain why Propane problems, Long ET Short EQT We could not have a better-timed, more informed guest on Happy Hour tonight than Robert Raymond, a major player in private equity oil & gas investment, and our axe (US  translation: ax) on Antero, which reported last night. Strong views on EQT, which reported last night. Hey, strong views on everything that we follow. […]

Great guest tomorrow, especially as everyone is asking about natgas. Robert Raymond, private equity wizard, the man who gave us our Antero bull stance which he had when the stock was a toddler in 2020. Mr. Raymond is the founding member of RR Advisors LLC/ RCH Energy. He joined Crow Family Holdings in 1994 and subsequently built and managed their energy investment program from 1997-2004. Mr. Raymond oversees all aspects of RCH Energy investment platforms […]

US Natgas:cash price at Waha trading negative today. Boy is it good to be long natural gas supply in the USA. That mega-theme is probably under-appreciated. For example, it makes the US$ really strong. We went from zero LNG exports to largest LNG exporter globally from 2016 to 2022; production is booming. Note in the left chart below: zero LNG exports at start 2016. Incredible performace from the US oil & gas industry. $RRC: we opened […]

What can you do but write an earnings note during earnings? Well, we put out a theme note yesterday on East Med, which had good reviews, but question marks over the materiality to the big winner, Chevron. As the oil space, and its respective components, have settled into a sensible valuation structure and lack of differentiation between themes, the quest is on to look at Kosmos or offshore drillers for some excitement. And we will […]

With attention on a major oil announcement by President Biden today, widely leaked as a further Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) release that amounts to stuffing a leaking dam with non-sustainable paper towels, we have been highly critical of the Biden Administration’s Energy policy. We have also slammed the European Union and UK, notably starting with our 2021 thematic note “Britain & Germany vs the USA” that foresaw a European gas crisis far before Russia ever […]

Greetings from London, Noted, more buyback? Less capex? How about a stealth capex deal, Diamondback for “closely held private” Firebird. Diamondback’s addition of adjacent drilling locations in the Permian underlines that the US oil bonanza has turned from growth to productivity – world oil supply is structurally challenged, “even in the Permian”. The price looks reasonable, even in the context of Diamondback’s own stock price, the point being, where does this sit with their net […]

With markets in flames like something out of a Naked Gun movie, Central Bankers the inept cops, rioting traders burning and looting, we continue our post Labor Day theme of advising on fire prevention and avoiding arrest. So: it is sadly time for another negative earnings revision cycle.  We rolled up over 60 US-based energy companies covering upstream, midstream, downstream, integrateds, and oilfield service to see get the booking mugshot for the group. After chasing […]

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 […]

“I, Russia” Putin desperation rising Oil markets: would you rather have weak China demand with low oil product exports, or post lockdown China with high product exports? Yet another inventory release threat: China An inventory release threat, Iran, was highlighted by us as likely to go into instability given reports of the serious illness of the aging Supreme Leader. Say her name: “Mahsa Amini”. Protests raging, rightly. “Morality Police” murdering women. As the Fed raises, […]

Refining getting worse LNG export developer Tellurian whacked as it struggles to finance “by mid-2022”. It’s Q3 2022. As the share price falls, financing from the at the money issuance facility becomes even more problematic. Macro influencer Luke Gromen on Happy Hour Fedex profit warning Fiscal 2Q23 guide $2.75 vs cons $5.46 (!!!) Xi-Putin As we feared refining is getting worse. China export quotas as we highlighted yesterday have further pressured weak Asian margins that […]

PREMIUM EVENT TONIGHT Luke Gromen, high profile strategist, is on Happy Hour this week, Thursday 5pm. Big guest, big views, big themes, Main Event Gromen vs Sankey HH 53. Tonight Sep 15, 2022 05:00 PM ET Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMkcemrqDIvHtyqA85Av3APXBad-aTjuSBR Another great call from our Washington DC guru and Happy Hour regular Frank Kelly, who weeks ago said that he did not believe that a rail strike would be tolerable to the […]

Dollar vs oil correlation has moved back to inverted very recently. Right now, the oil price is winning, US$ weakening. For the first time in well over a year, media is stating the oil price is rising on a weakening US$. That’s a bit like saying the NY Giants are dominating the NFL – after winning their first  game of the season. WITH THAT SAID Luke Gromen, high profile strategist, is on Happy Hour this […]

Rest in Peace, Queen Elizabeth II. Long live the King! The rainbows were just amazing. One US media outlet described the Queen as the last human link to Great Britain, the Britain of Empire, such as it was when she became Queen in the 1950s. This resonated with me, the Queen with Churchill in photos, for example. Her passing bought back memories of my father, another link to Empire, who left this mortal coil last […]

Last call for the Sankey Research Party at the Hard Rock Penthouse tonight. If you are in NYC and around Times Square, we have a glittering panoply of oil market experts, CEOs, investors, and some hangers on, all welcome. Kathleen Kelley “OPEC whisperer” will comment on the symbolic cut, and we are highlighting the new CEO of refiner Delek USA Avigal Soreq. RSVP if you want to join, there is plenty of space and we […]

Observations on the “Inflation Reduction Act”: We read all 730 pages, with 198 being on healthcare, and conclude that, rather than calculate an “Excel told me” analysis, but rather, because of the surprise announcement of the Bill, the stock market provides an early indicator of the Bill’s likely impact: we show you key stock price performance since the Bill was shock-announced by Senators Manchin & Schumer on June 27th: We temper this market reaction. We […]

One of our favoured, relatively unmined seams of research, pertains to gas station companies, oil retail, helped by their eccentric reporting schedule. Under its frankly weird fiscal calendar, Alimentation Couche-Tard ($ATD) reported earnings at the close yesterday for fiscal 1Q23, a period ending July 12, 2022.  In a world of energy ignorance, it is widely perceived that high gasoline pump prices are prima facie evidence of gouging by gas station companies, which politicians somehow think […]

Happy Hour this week with Michael Lynch, absolutely tenured energy analyst. Michael can explain the last time California had an EV mandate and why it  bombed, he had a good article in Forbes this past week about it. Long time MIT, totally established energy expert. I will be chatting to him, and if the attendance is graveyard slot (this Thursday evening before Labor Day weekend) I will persuade him to return. Mike Lynch President at […]

Expecting a recession. Most market participants worry about a recession. No less than Goldman Sachs is clearly concerned: Bloomberg 8/29/22 Goldman Says Buy Commodities, ‘Worry About Recession Later’ •             Slowdown risks outside Europe seen ‘relatively low,’ bank says •             Equities could suffer as raw materials gain, analysts forecast We are all aware of the obvious mega-problems, that Putin is pushing Europe into a depression, China is straight-up missing in action, and the rapid expansion of […]

We have spoken about the structural shortage of US refining capacity repeatedly. We have warned that the US refining system has been running very hard, but has been unable to keep inventories from all time lows relative to demand, particularly for distillate. And we have underlined that distillate (think diesel for my newbie readers) is the default “convenience premium” fuel when natgas and coal get short. It is easier to transport, and generally directly substitutable. […]

It’s a time of year when the Wednesday 10:30am US government Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (DOE EIA) weekly oil data matters. We normally disdain trying to jerk our knee faster than the army of commodity analysts who jerk their knees as fast as possible to DOE print, some who go so far to send out the entire tables verbatim (thanks!) but this week, for fun, we are competing for the fast note reaction […]

“The Saudi Put is back” wrote a client yesterday Could well be related to softening in Iran negotiations Certainly, it implies that Saudi wants, enjoys, needs, $100/bbl+ Brent Part of their calculus is a belief in strong demand despite $100/bbl+ this summer, with winter coming That is, the Saudis optimal price is as high as demand can take, and not so high as to cause demand destruction. This summer’s demand strength strongly suggests that range […]

We like the long oil trade here, explained Europe is at war. Russian/EU gas expert Jim Henderson was stark on our call: Russia is waging full scale economic war on Europe. Winter is coming. Darling! I never knew you cared Bull trade in oils is back on, in our view. First, we contend that oil equities often predict the next move in oil, the commodity. As shown below, over the past five days E&Ps (and […]

Delighted to say that Dr James Henderson is on Happy Hour Strategy Session tonight, A PREMIUM EVENT. Jim is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, alongside his consultancy work and professorships. When: this evening, Aug 11, 2022 05:00 PM ET, Zoom, Register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0sd-CtpjsrGdVM0p-MsG1P4WU0dr3hBWq3 ~ One of my favourite concepts on Wall St (or should I say hated?), is the “pain trade.” I first heard of it 20 years ago and […]

We are looking for a big fat gasoline demand bounceback number this week in the DOE data, seeing as this morning my Deli guy told me the DOE gasoline numbers are understated. Thanking him, I noted that DINO management (HollyFrontier) confirmed on their results call yesterday that gasoline demand is at worst around 5% below 2019 (not 2020, as appears in the DOE) levels, and in some of their markets – and they have a […]

Tonight Happy Hour: Kathleen Kelley on OPEC. Frank Kelly (invited) on Washington DC – lots of action there. View share on results on what happens next. Today Thursday 4th August 5pm Eastern. Register for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkc-qvqjgrH9NWL5mVuMMR2AyR3q1cZrtm I was on Bloomberg TV bright and early this morning and… I used the “B” word. Just to note, we are long natgas over oil into the coming economic slowdown, and playing for winter. The announcement that Freeport […]

Tomorrow KelleyKelly Hour: Kathleen Kelley on OPEC. Frank Kelly on Washington DC – lots of action there. View share from clients on results and what they expect next. Tomorrow Thursday 4th August 5pm Eastern. Register for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkc-qvqjgrH9NWL5mVuMMR2AyR3q1cZrtm We increasingly think that we will favour buyback-heavy oils going into the second half, with our year starting, as always, day after Labor Day. What happens next? The Big Oils are all singing from the same […]

Signature stock: Diamondback strong results, high cash return Signature stock: Devon strong results, high cash return Pelosi to Taiwan: the Administration has strong foreign policy and is pushing China I spoke to a senior government official with knowledge of Foreign Policy yesterday. We first agreed, that we are suffering “lingering COVID” where our recovery from a bout in the past weeks has persisted with non-debilitating symptoms, fatigue, etc – I had a similar conversation with […]

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 […]

Sincere thanks to research partner Greg Bordelon, who has been firing company reports at me while I stumble across Mexico in the quest to Morelia. Sorry for the invconvience, but if you would just request the company-specific notes, that would save me doing a ton of cut-and-paste into what would be a monster drone of a note. So email me and I will forward, on these companies: Key points: will we get restructuring at Baker […]

Canada from the top rope with the 100bps interest rate rise. US with the 9.1% inflation print. Here’s US inflation since 1914. We argued that the 2020’s have nothing like the set up of the “Roaring 20’s”, in our note written in 2020 “The Cliché-Myth of the Roaring 2020s”. For one, the stock market to start the 1920s had been essentially in a bear market for 15 years, hammered by WWI and Spanish Flu. Not […]

Rampant inflation globally, underlined by today’s US CPI print has an extraordinary backdrop – China has been dis-inflationary. In certain key markets, notably crude oil and above all LNG, China demand has been negative at the margin in terms of demand growth, with significant roll-overs from previous rampant import growth. Assuming China works through its COVID issues and pursues its 2022 GDP growth plan, a re-acceleration in demand for key commodities seems certain, particularly in […]

“Happy” Hour yesterday evening, an oil investor self-help group Big week for oils next week with Nordstream 1 and CPC shutdown decisions coming; Biden visits MBS Buffett buying yet more Oxy – he might go… all… the… way Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway filed notice of acquisition of 12m shares Occidental costing about $698m this week, giving it an 18.7% stake. Buffett had also purchased 9.9m OXY shares last week. Total stake is 175.4m shares worth […]

Briefly noted: Gazprom shares plummet -25% as shareholders reject record dividend plan Uniper, largest German buyer of Russian gas, shares plummet -18% as it says it is receiving just 40% of volumes ordered from Gazprom After two weeks in the dark, with no weekly oil data published, the US Department of Energy released the backlog yesterday. The DOE was keen to stress the “systems outage” was not a hack. Better not be, DOE manages emergency […]

Good to see the oils stabilising and bouncing this week, with Brent crude prices holding the bottom of our $110-$150/bbl range for summer. It is clear that to get past the $130/bbl peak Ukraine fear price we hit in early March 2022, will more likely be a squeezing grind higher on strong demand and weak supply, than another spike shock, although these are always possible in oil. With that said, let’s face it, just about […]

How did we get murdered? Murdered? CHK took out 3.5% of their share count in just over a month.  Why am I in Paris, writing from St Germain des Pres? Where did it all go wrong? George Best used to tell the story of winning in a casino, while dating Miss World, and lying in a hotel room with her, empty champagne bottles spread across the room. The service guy entered, looked at the scene, […]

Action items: Every house in Morocco has a flat roof – but there all-but no visible solar. The projects here are mega; centralised. In Mexico you see a lot of panels. Our overall thought/dream has been that almost everything that uses energy should have a booster solar panel on it, attached to a battery. A “US Solar Buyer Consortium” is open-bidding $6bn for 7GW of US-built panels. Stalking horse to justify solar panel imports? Sure, […]

Off to Royal Ascot today, thoughts before we take the train, suited, booted, and in Patricia’s case, hatted. We are with the plebians for a variety of reasons. So, I do not need to dress as a penguin/full morning suit and topper (Royal Enclosure dress requirement; there are tiers of “enclosures” descending from Royal, down to Windsor, based on social class, or in America, you would say money (debt will do)). A suit, plain shirt, […]

Our main concern about the Freeport LNG export outage is that it inspires some “consumer hero” politician in Washington to justify an export ban on oil & gas. The price impact of a cut to gas exports was dramatic yesterday, -15% on spot Henry Hub; Freeport said it would be out for 90 days, end 2022 full resumption. It is imperative that Washington understands the importance of free trade and the role in US oil […]

Libya down by 1mb/d, maybe President Biden should visit? APA (Apache Oil) duster in Suriname is unfortunate for the marginal mega-bull case BP – like Shell, the non-alcoholic beer of big oils – sells out of Canadian Oil Sands but increases exposure to Western Canada offshore OKLAHOMA CITY, June 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Continental Resources, Inc. (NYSE: CLR) today announced that its board of directors (the “Board”) has received a non-binding proposal letter, dated June […]

January 6th 2021, my personal story, or how the best call of my career cost me a lifetime fortune. DINO, how HollyFrontier won a lifetime fortune Starting with DINO, we had “me old mucker” Rich Voliva, CFO on Strategy Session last evening. He has always been impressive, and we had to laugh about him writing a searing indictment of US ethanol policy, as part of our sellside refining team at Deutsche Bank, when it was […]

Just as I was muttering that there is not much happening, it all kicks off. Notably the fire and outage at Freeport LNG yesterday caused a sudden sell-off in natgas prices. “If it is burning live on TV, it moves the market”. Over/under on the outage is 3 weeks, which is very minor in the grand scheme of things, but a big deal at the margin when natgas prices are screaming at $9.50/mmbtu. Freeport LNG […]