BP

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. […]

Fed decision this week. TINA is dead. Nothing big in earnings this week, Fedex reporting Friday has warned, in case you totally missed last week; if you did, you missed the largest stock market move on an economic data point, in history Rules of Wall St series: Always short the new CEO of a highly rated stock. Not in the news: Iran’s Supreme Leader said to be gravely ill – watch for upheaval ~ Fed […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

Big week for what should be terrific oil earnings this week. Watching Iraq Highlight charts – market rebounding, oils catching a bid ~ Week ahead: It’s good to see that oil earnings have worked back onto generalist earnings calendars, as shown from “Earnings Whispers” below. Devon aftermarket Monday sure, BP, Marathon Petroleum and Oxy Tuesday, etc, but believe me, a year ago Berry and Callon did not make these lists (see Wednesday below). Marathon 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 […]

Tomorrow Zoom Strategy Session: Rich Voliva, CFO HollyFrontier. Thursday Jun 9, 2022 05:00 PM ET Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0kduyprj4uHNTcVO53YRKHbhYSRWHUiIX1 Tonight, quick meeting with Uzi, and Blake, CEO and IR of Delek. I had texted about the story in Tradewinds that they were getting into Jones Act shipping. Apparently they bought a couple of barges that are “not material, especially not in the context of today’s margins”. Lucked into a quick catch up […]

Wednesday already! Tomorrow we have the legendary Mr Bob McNally on Strategy Session. Author of Crude Volatility, a terrific history of global oil prices, Bob is one of the most experienced, thoughtful, connected, entertaining, and outspoken oil analysts of the past 20 years that we have known him. Register in advance for this Premium Event, tomorrow, Thursday, 5pm ET 6/2/22: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUud-iopzIjHtwxZSBacic_3OqJmo5vAzQj ~ The news that Tullow and Capricorn (formerly Cairn) are to merge brings together […]

Tonight, in conversation, the CEO of Tourmaline, Mike Rose, carrying an extremely high reputation. Also CFO Brian Robinson, and Scott Kirker Chief Legal Officer. We also really like IR Jamie Heard, who clearly gets it. 5/26, 5PM EST – Sankey Strategy Session: Tourmaline Oil (TOU) CEO, CFO, CLO, IR Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAtd-qgrTgiGt1U3rdbkLIZZZRt5VcpfcKR 6/2, 5PM EST – Sankey Strategy Session Bob McNally, President, Rapidan Group Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUud-iopzIjHtwxZSBacic_3OqJmo5vAzQj […]

Happy May Day Sunday, Today in partnership with Greg Bordelon of Isentropic Capital, we publish a note on natural gas markets by way of thesis overview to a theme that we will continue to pursue. The note is long graphics, and particularly interesting on US markets. If you only want to read half, read the second US half. It is as noted graphic intense. European gas markets are fundamentally far more un-analysable than US right […]

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. […]

This LNG round up with Gordon Shearer (Poten & Partners guru) from Thursday night took longer to write and I got tangled in the SLB results, which came in okay – readers will know I am not pushing service companies but love oils… “to 10% of S&P500!” Chatting to a client with Midstream expertise before Gordon Shearer, LNG expert, came on Strategy Session Thursday evening, the view was that Kinder Morgan results were decent owing […]

This note starts with some near term Iraq production and export analysis, and works backwards through the short term political history, and long term political history, of the country, in the context of oil. Bottom line, Iraqi political instability continues, but oil production has steadily risen over the past 15 years to around 4.3mb/d – an all-time historic high for Iraq – and can likely rise a few more 100kb/ds, certainly in the medium term. […]

Tonight PBF management on Strategy Session, 5pm for a tight hour. RSVP. I was at the Knicks vs Nets game last night with a global oil executive; combined with conversations with ConocoPhillips management Tuesday, some brief points. First, Shell profit warning this morning. Break it up. We would like to see a global LNG & gas and power trading powerhouse, a downstream “high carbon” operation with refining, chemicals and retail, a deepwater company. We don’t […]

This Thursday 7th April, Strategy Session with PBF Senior Management 5pm – RSVP Tonight – ConocoPhillips senior management in town for informal sellside drinks Tomorrow, DC hearing, House Energy and Commerce “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.” In oil, the excitement this morning is New York jet fuel prices going off the scale, part of the theme we talked about over the past couple of weeks, especially after […]

Strategy Session Tonight, Mark Viviano & Megan Hays of activist Kimmeridge. A former Portfolio Manager at mega-player Wellington Management, Mark leads the first public/private active funds at Kimmeridge, one of the top activist managers in the oil space. Megan Hays has joined Kimmeridge after 15 years of IR experience including Concho and Cimarex, and even allowing for that length of experience, still recently rated as one of Hart Energy’s “40 under 40.” Please click this […]

Extraordinary times: In the great energy regression that has massively further regressed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was somewhat surreal to watch Chevron’s Colin Parfitt (VP Midstream) conclude at the company’s analyst meeting yesterday at the NYSE, that we need more export capacity in the US, particularly for natural gas, and for the company then to confirm $10bn of spending on New Energy Ventures over the next decade, on hydrogen, carbon capture, and […]

We have a big Renewable Diesel note coming later today, so in recognition of your Sunday time, just a couple of points on next week. Valero management are in New York City Monday/Tuesday. See what we are doing here? Our Renewable Diesel note is not published tonight by happy accident, it is a cunning plan. One Valero event is a Mark Mills presentation, presumably he of the Manhattan Institute and steely-eyed critic of the energy […]

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 […]

Saturday: there’s an unrelenting element to being a stock analyst. “You are only as good as your last note.” The need to constantly publish is relentless. With that in mind, it has been my intention to write an oil book. Something that can sit on a shelf. One of my favourite oil books is Anthony Sampson’s “The Seven Sisters”, which provides a brilliant, and concise, history of the seven major oil companies that formed the […]

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 […]

Huge week for earnings on deck this week, just about 50% of the market cap of the S&P500 reports,  and to celebrate, the traditional Sunday Sankey is back with a full presentation attached. Sample slide: Bloomberg lists Kuwait’s oil production capacity as 3.08mb/d. In the slide shown in the Sunday Sankey presentation today from the authoritative MEES, Kuwait’s production capacity has dropped by more than 500,000 b/d over the past three years to just 2.63mn […]

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 […]

Tonight: Gordon Shearer, world LNG expert, on Happy Hour 5pm ET. Email me for link [email protected] Gordon fits brilliantly with the world energy crisis, discussed at length by Putin yesterday. This morning I took the time – and it took a good while, given simultaneous translation, etc – to transcribe what President Putin said at the Russia Energy Week Summit yesterday. This early morning effort was made: Because Putin is seen as holding a major […]

We are moving into earnings season, with financials reporting this week, starting with JPM and BlackRock on Wednesday, rounded out Friday by Goldman Sachs. These are dynamic times in global geopolitics. This month, as oils report earnings, we finish the month with: G20 30th October in Rome, we noted to watch Xi-Biden, but Xi continues to stay home Right after, 1st November the climate summit COP26 takes place in Glasgow. We are in a new […]

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 […]

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, […]

In this note: the analyst who simply thanked Pioneer, with Devon, Oxy, and ConocoPhillips all cheering battered oil investors, and really strong macro news for Big Integrated Oils (ExxonMobil etc) with their lagging exposure to soaring global natgas prices that are pushing up refining margins. Global demand strength is also bullish for the oils, regardless of the market’s deep reluctance to capitalize OPEC market management. First, Tellurian offers shares: 35,000,000 shares of its common stock […]

Overview: we hosted Tellurian Chairman Charif Souki on Happy Hour. Key conclusion: we are, like Souki, past and future mega-bulls on long-term LNG demand and US LNG supply. As such, Tellurian provides an excellent high-risk/return play on the mega-theme. However there are major risks regarding contracts (2 are signed, 5 are needed), project capital cost and execution (the claimed $550/tonne of gasification capacity cost needs to be sealed), and financing/level of shareholder dilution. Compared to […]

Tonight 5pm June 24th on Happy Hour we have Charif Souki, Chairman and co-founder of Tellurian, the integrated Haynesville gas-to Driftwood LNG export project play. Should be a great chat! Register here Charif Souki on Sankey Happy Hour Next week, on Thursday July 1st, please attend the Sankey Research 1st anniversary party in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Email me for details on this informal get-together in one of the great destinations in NYC. Guess who is talking […]

At the last in-person Shell analyst meeting at the NYSE, I raced the head of upstream in a life-sized side-by-side Pennzoil NASCAR simulator and then moved on to talk to CEO Ben van Buerden. One key message: sell the Permian. My argument was that Shell would never be recognized as a Permian player, would never get credit, even if they out-performed the industry, and valuations were riding high. Shell should be a mega-project player in […]

I’ve just had my vaccine, but they administered it in my leg. My Pfizer hurting. I got my first shot. I’ll get my second one as soon as I get the bartender’s attention. Why do gay people have parades in June? Because Pride comes before the Fall. What do you call an Englishman at the Euro 2021 soccer final? Referee. Surgeon: “Don’t be nervous Jeff, you should be able to handle this operation easily.” Patient: […]

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 […]

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 […]

One thing you get from looking at the BP and Tesla results side-by-side: BP could learn a lot from Tesla about fonts. I find the BP “rich-kindergarten-teacher” font irritating. Tesla results are beautifully presented, to my eye, distressed alloy on black. In this note, we consider Tesla decline rates briefly. That theme will be a long-term one for us, much as we have highlight decline rates in wind and solar.   Even with my begrudging […]

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 […]

Shell’s results are like a box of chocolates: you never know what you are going to get. This cashflow and earnings volatility, of course, is bad for the multiple. At the simplest EV/EBITDA level, Shell trades in the bottom decile of 40 major oil companies, between Southwestern and Ovintiv, a remarkable indictment of market uncertainty over earnings… strategy… management. Based on the company’s Q1 2021 earnings guidance, the stock just got more expensive, as the […]

BP announced the early achievement of its 35% debt target after the strength of Q1, and we think several unhedged oil companies will surprise with the strength of their profits after a $60/bbl quarter. We believe the overall market has lost track of just how profitable major oils are when oil prices are above $60/bbl, by which we mean the entire S&P500 upstream oil sector, with the major warning on levels of hedging exposure (see […]

The first slide considered at the Chevron virtual analyst meeting 2021 was pretty depressing. The company showed an adjusted ROCE of 2.9% and a plan to get this to 10% by 2025. On a day when Tesla had the biggest single move by any stock in history (20% up move added $140bn, or more than the entire value of TOTAL in one day) the investment merits of a major oil taking its ROCE from 3% […]

Chevron has its annual analyst meeting today, in virtual form.  The meeting starts at 10am ET. There’s no question that over the past year, Chevron enjoyed a major moment in its corporate history, when its market cap exceeded that of ExxonMobil. Of course, the circumstances were unfortunate, but the reality is that CVX surpassing XOM in value was a very long road and a major achievement for the company. In fact, since the 2001 tech […]

Straw poll direct to major investors yesterday “Views on XOM? I am loosening up for analyst meeting preview (meeting is tomorrow Wednesday 3rd March). Faber on CNBC breaking on new board members Ubben and Michael Angelakis, CEO of the investment company Atairos and a former senior Comcast; Faber says both supported by activist DE Shaw”. Summary of the results/thoughts out of 100 market players would be as follows: of 100 investors, responses 9/10 bullish XOM, […]

Hi, We had legendary global gas expert Gordon Shearer on our Happy Hour – every Thursday at 5pm – this week. Writing up the notes for Friday sent me down a couple of rabbit holes, and so I put together a note with graphics on LNG, which is attached. Selected nuggets, there are more within: Natural gas as the key energy transition fuel is logical and imperative. Those that bucket natural gas, oil and coal […]

Noted: Chesapeake to emerge from bankruptcy and trade as CHK tomorrow. The #EFT (energy finance twitter) hordes are ready to Gamestop this one. The problem was always the debt/financial structure, not the assets. In fact, if you need to know one thing about this oil tape, it is that pretty much the best major oil company is the worst performing stock this year. In share price terms. We are speaking of course of TOTAL, or […]

This was the best ExxonMobil earnings call for a decade, which is incredible to say given the company reported a $20bn loss, and its first ever annual loss. Our major frustration was not to be polled for a question, given it was worth asking about the shattered core principle of Exxon – return on capital employed (ROCE) – and the massive $19bn write-down that we finally got, more than a decade after the XTO takeover. […]

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 […]

Really strong relative day for oils yesterday, in fact all energy is running as the Biden administration battles its way to the inauguration. I’m driving my son Max to Emory for college on 21th January, through Washington, and one plan was to drop in and see the action on Inauguration Day, a moment in history and all, but DC has been declared a Federal Emergency Zone for the event and we figure that two mysterious […]

Client feedback to Sunday Sankey: 1) Did you see exactly what the stratospheric warming event was?  It’s a fast 100 degree warming…. All the way up there.  100 DEGREES… it’s bananas.  Happens once every couple years. 2) Check out this chart…. Nothing to see here.. just super high intraday correlation of TSLA and Bitcoin!  It’s insane.  TSLA should be $780 based on this… and XBT… well… See below for the chart. Inflation? A current boiling […]

Yesterday was tricky to publish a worthy note, until conference calls were complete. So this is the Friday Sankey on a Saturday. Happy Halloween! If life gives you melons you may be dyslexic What’s Sherlock Holmes’ favourite tree? A lemon tree Daddy, do all fairy tales start with “Once upon a time”? “No kid, there’s a whole series of fairly tales that start with “If elected, I promise…”” There were two key takeaways from ExxonMobil’s […]