Suncor

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 […]

Yo, Noted, French refining strike seems to be drawing to a close, with ExxonMobil’s Fos returning to normal. Continued issues with the most extreme of the unions, the CGT, for TotalEnergies. Around 30% of French gas stations reported short of product. We perceive the refining workers strike in Iran to be a domestic issue – for now. History of the Iranian Revolution was driven by strikes by Iranian oil workers. The 1979 Iran revolution directly […]

Gossip from dinner with my London lawyer friend who is familiar with, let’s say, “emerging markets law”: Russia’s power rests between the Oligarchs who have the money, vs the military, that have the weapons. The single crossover oligarch, who controls the military, is Putin alone. Can the oligarch class form an ex-Putin alliance with the military? Difficult. Rational analysis of Nordstream pipeline explosions, which logically would conclude that Poland done it, with NATO deep state […]

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. […]

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 […]

Good Day! You only get so many summers in life – a beautiful Sunday in mid-July, we should be at the beach or pondering the Wimbledon final. Hopefully you are on a yacht or at a swim-up bar as you read this. Here in Brooklyn Heights/Brooklyn Bridge Park they have recreated The Hill at Wimbledon with a big screen to watch tennis. Packed today. Tourists are returning en masse to New York. Week past: the […]

Few, As they say on the internet. Today we have a PORTFOLIO MANAGER SPECIAL in the presentation, which includes a full glorious ppt on the largest stocks in the market, and for bonus, a Sankey Recommendation on each stock. The oils look great on these charts. The recommendations on names like Google (BUY) or Disney (SELL) are purely quanatitive interpretation of charts, we do not cover non-energy related stocks fundamentally. So this is quantitative analysis, […]

What’s going on the market? The Intelligent Investor is back from extended sabbatical and he/she/they is furious. Key current trading ideas: Long Shell into results tomorrow. Long Suncor into results tonight. Stock has lagged CNQ badly, one month, three months, six months, one year. We had strong downstream chat from Suncor’s EVP of downstream Kris Smith on our refining conference, which continues tomorrow with Joe Gorder’s Valero, RSVP. SU has key differentiation from CNQ in […]

In the war of the market, we have reached a crucial battleground: the 200-day moving average on the S&P500. Do we hold, do we bounce, do we break? That is pretty simple; we broke the 200 last week. Re-gaining it will be a battle. And by the way, we broke the 200-day on the Nasdaq like throwing a crystal decanter against a brick wall. The market went through the NASDAQ 200 like a falling chain […]

There was a funny Tweet about Joe Biden’s shut-eye at COP26 yesterday: “It’s not nodding off if you say “Amen” when you open your eyes again”. Two major developments caught our attention yesterday. First, Canadian PM Trudeau promises to reduce emissions from the oil & gas sector to net-zero by 2050. Second, with major implications for the US E&P industry, the WSJ reports that the EPA is greatly increasing its methane limits, a move which […]

Jolly Halloween, Halloween is one of America’s greatest stealth exports. Now huge in UK, for example. In today’s presentation – Suncor strong Q4 to date in big catch up trade; oils outperform during inflation per Fidelity; growth won the past couple of weeks over value, even after Amazon and Apple missed; Big Oils have the highest free cashflow yields and dividend yields of the S&P500 Titans – by far; massive week of oil earnings ahead, […]

Bearish DOE and dodgy Q3 oil results, with a Shell miss and disaster at EQT, not helping the sector Horrendous results from EQT as expected – increases quarterly loss from 2020 Q3, to $1.98bn? Abysmal… AR re-iterating the client bull’s $35/share target Shell miss might mean bad news for XOM tomorrow, but results are irrelevant: a Shell rant Note Big Oil CEOs in DC today for a roast. One suggestion to the executives: if they […]

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 […]

The headlines from yesterday’s OPEC meeting were “oil jumps to its highest level since 2014”. We finally made it back, and goodness me, it was a long road. Of course, the WTI price we have attained today with a super-bullish backdrop is completely different from what we faced in October/November 2014. At the time, we had peaked at $107/bbl in mid-2014, after a sustained period 2010-2014 when oil traded in a range with $80/bbl as […]

Jolly Sunday to you, Global energy crisis: Having written at length about this eight days ago in the note “Germany & UK vs the USA”, all week I have been reading about the global energy crisis led by the UK and Germany. Everyone makes the same points, last year cold global winter leading to low natgas storage, lack of wind in Europe, nuclear shutdowns, Asia squeeze, Russia squeeze etc. The one I talked about in […]

Comment to my sister yesterday on life in London with my mother: “Nothing’s burning, apart from the stock market.” Oil behaved great especially as the US$ strengthened. Noted oil laggards like $EQT flat on the day. Bullish action for us “energy tranistion” folks. Regular readers will recall it is not two weeks ago we had a China expert, Ryan Haas, Brookings Institute, on Happy Hour. I checked in with Ryan yesterday, and his call. He […]

August is upon us, with results effectively over, I am back in Brooklyn having dropped Harry for pre-season college soccer in Boston, trip review from a gasoline perspective closes this note. Speaking on sons and August, yesterday Max, who is yet to go back to college in Atlanta, was on CNBC. That is him ludicrously stationed in shot in the background of my Fast Money segment, pretending to work. You can see the clip here. […]

With EOG rounding out oils’ earning season after the market yesterday, we had the final disappointment as oil prices test downside support levels breaking $70/bbl (Brent, WTI already broke into the upper $60s.) Expectations of an excess cash return special or splashy buyback announcement by EOG were dashed. Nothing. Just good free cashflow in a $70/bbl+ tape and the promise to pay down more debt by 2023. This is not the first disappointing Q2 earnings, […]

We found ourselves standing on the North Slope, Alaska, above the Arctic Circle, surveying the endless flat tundra. There there is no sunlight from October to early March; total darkness over half the year. For the rest of the year, the sun does not go down – no darkness. That place, my friend, is Far North. The nearest city is Anchorage, 1,000 miles south, itself as distant as Perth Australia; palpably remote; strange and distant […]

Greetings, It is all about the presentation this week; please click on the attached file for a look at what is in store for the week ahead – earnings; OPEC chat; what to buy when US natgas prices hit $4/mmbtu, which they did this past week; factor performance disconnection; and our only solution since we wrote The Renaissance Thesis of US E&P in 2017, namely hard cash return to shareholders. These oils have to bribe […]

Fun fact: Australia’s biggest export is boomerangs. It’s also their biggest import. What actor could never play Quasimodo? Humpfree Bogart Doctor: Your body ran out of magnesium. Me: 0mg. The urge to sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight is just a whim away. A client writes: Paul! One day doesn’t make a market, but your next letter can’t come soon enough. Is the run in oil done? Dear clients, Key bear triggers were twofold yesterday. First, […]

Welcome to summer, hope you are enjoying breaking out your white pants after Memorial Day. Time to drop $250 on new sunglasses. Get in quick before they are $400.   There is no presentation today as I am working on an oil company Board Presentation for Tuesday in Texas. Ramp spending by increasing debt… might actually be the call, or at least the outside-the-box option, notably to make an acquisition. This week I learned what […]

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 […]

Of course one of the most egregious aspects of Oxy’s deal for Anadarko was that a shareholder vote was deliberately avoided by CEO Vicki Hollub. This doubly bad because a preferred $10bn deal with Warren Buffett was the route taken to get a deal cash-rich enough to avoid a shareholder vote. Activist Carl Icahn took revenge by issuing warrants to all shareholders – but not to preferred Buffett – and effectively capped the Oxy share […]

Watching Iran, but 1mb/d of oil exports are already in the market. Huge week ahead for ExxonMobil, with the Shareholder Meeting and board vote on Wednesday this week. We wrote about it on Thursday, see the note on www.sankeyresearch.com or emailed. Noted that Halliburton shareholders rejected the company’s pay proposal last week, which is encouraging. The pay of oil executives relative to shareholder returns has been an abomination for years. Executives should try a few […]

Quick note to highlight that Delek CEO Uzi Yemin will be on Happy Hour this week, Thursday at 5pm ET. SAVE THE DATE: Sankey Research 1st Anniversary Party for July 4th Weekend celebrating independence. July 1st in Dumbo, Brooklyn, 6pm. Please RSVP – this is a great area of New York, terrific place to visit to refresh your New York experience, right under the Brooklyn Bridge in the stunning park from which many Sankey Research […]

As we hoped, oils’ results are going great. The sector is powering higher, with the overall steady outperformance grind that has resumed in value over growth. The oil price for Q2 is tracking well ahead of these results, further boosting the EPS upgrade cycle. Huge result from Suncor; great commentary on cash return from COP, a surprise beat from Marathon Petroleum with major disposal and buyback coming… good results from head-to-head rivals Diamondback and Aramco, […]

Well, it’s feedback Friday! The age-old client meeting line gets used again: Client Q: “Paul, what is the most common question that clients are asking right now?” Paul A: “What is the most common question that clients are asking you right now?” True joke, but being Friday, we are not done – here they are: Newsflash: US customs have intercepted $2m of lumber being smuggled in shipments of cocaine What do you call an anti-vax […]

The current energy crisis is much bigger than most people realize. This is a global crisis. The largest energy outage in US history. In the middle of a brutal winter, globally. Stay tuned, this crisis is just starting. An outage of this scale in Texas is world scale. The entire US and Atlantic Basin energy market is based on a core of Texas/US Gulf Coast. A lot of the debate currently is, as so often […]

Snowing again here in Brooklyn Heights. One thing that is very striking in this week’s charts is the 6-10 Day weather forecast for North America. It is freeeeezing. Bluest map I can remember publishing, and we publish it just about every week in mid-winter and high summer. As noted our Happy Hour this past week was very bullish oil, basically the call is that oil just went up 15% in a month and is rising […]

Max bullish oil here, buy oil leverage. That was the Happy Hour call last evening. By November last year we were saying “All in on the equities” and we ended the year with six investment grade oil stocks and six speculative oil stocks with the call: “buy both groups.” Key specifics: 2022 oil futures a bargain at $52/bbl, Oxy for operational (Brent) and financial (massive debt) leverage. MEG in Canada. Watch out for natgas exposure […]

A scoop by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) over the long weekend regarding the Biden Administration’s plan to rescind the Keystone XL pipeline permit got everyone excited… except me, who groaned. The issue is symptomatic of the worst of US energy policy. New pipelines are environmentally friendly. They serve to replace old pipelines and/or train transport that is less efficient and environmentally damaging. While opposing specific pipelines has become the heroic battle of the environmentalist, […]

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, […]