Morning Happiness is Ice and Orchids

By Paul Sankey Published on February 18, 2025 at 9:08 AM

Greetings! It’s a whippy 21°F here in Brooklyn Heights, -6°C. This is the windiest street n New York City, running parallel to the promenade along the exposed hill over looking the grey-icy Atlantic in New York Harbor, with 30mph ice blasts taking wind chill to -7°F, -17°C. This morning at 6:15am at Clark Street, at The Drip coffee kiosk at 6.15am my voice wavered, and cracked, as I asked for my daily “large, ah, iced …

Read More

Valero: Valentine’s Day Resurrection

By Paul Sankey Published on January 24, 2025 at 9:31 AM

Valero! Today we look at the company’s latest indicator margins and go deeper on the one chart that looks positive. Renewable diesel margins <crowd groans>. Valero! We are delighted as always to host CEO Lane Riggs and full crew by Zoom on 13th February – Thursday morning. As tradition dictates, we can commemorate my rookie season as a US refining analyst in 2005 and the note “The Valentine’s Day Massacre”. It remains the best worst …

Read More

Refining Day 1: Hi ho, hi ho, …

By Paul Sankey Published on January 7, 2025 at 5:03 PM

Refining Conference Notes 1/6/25 The five independent refiner managements on our conference virtual chats were surprisingly upbeat given the abysmal refining margin back drop and upcoming challenging Q4 2024 results reports, that will follow on from challenged Q3s. Source: Bloomberg, Sankey Research Conclusion? These are all good managements with defensible strategies. Assuming they all remain safely run, and that’s a big assumption, but one that has been holding, they will tend to trade as a …

Read More