Enterprise

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 […]

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 […]

Hate to keep going with our infuriating “bearish short term, bullish long term” call (eg refining. We had a conversation with Battery Guru Steve Levine today about how badly future electric vehicle sales are going to fail to meet expectations over the coming years, and he is confirmed on Happy Hour for next week, 29th September, 5pm ET save the date. This week: Jay Saunders, Senior Co-Portfolio Manager, Jennison (Natural Resources). Jay has been running […]

The two weeks, mid-earnings, when we pull together company results transcript comments, are not a science, they are an impressionistic art; a colour to our themes. Basically these are comments that caught our eye over the past week. Like sellside analysts, the companies tend to all present the same more-or-less generic message, but occasionally, as we strive with Sankey Research, a comment stands out, is differentiated, or so wild that it is worthy of note. […]

Quick read today as you got a longer note yesterday on LNG, and I am running late. Just pictures today, and Betsey asked to be on the cover of the Sunday Sankey so it’s a presentation. All the fun favourite charts. Key slides: next week’s earnings highlights starting with Valero. Relative performance, oils performance, high free cashflow yields, and a cash return chart that will be updated on a rolling basis through earnings. Earnings calendar […]

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 week, a three page thematic overview, followed by supporting charts. First the text, then the charts. ~ Noted refinery explosion last evening, no deaths reported, at ExxonMobil’s small (“only” 60kb/d) Billings Montana niche refinery that is important for local balances. Would drive margins higher for Midcon players such as HollyFrontier, Coffeyville, Delek, and West Coast PBF, and might accelerate ExxonMobil’s long standing attempts to sell the plant (price always said to be too high). […]

Thinking about the year ahead, one of my favourite Twitter follows @Raisingthebar47 published the following deliberately non-consensus list of things that will happen energy in 2022. The list is interesting, notably for natgas theorists, but also because it represents what could be considered a list of unexpected events for the year; it was just a quick checklist of things to consider: Natgas back to <$2.50/mcf MVP cancelled/pushed to ’23 (Mountain Valley Pipeline) Oil hits <$50/bbl […]

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 […]

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; […]

OPEC Meeting live debating: who is Brandon? Continental shareholders overwhelmingly love the $3.3bn deal for marginal acreage in a new basin Meanwhile at seller Pioneer $1bn more than the asking price for non-core acreage; $3.02 special Final natgas injection number of the week (withdrawls start next week for winter)? The Biden Administration does not seem to understand oil, and more particularly how much spare capacity there is in OPEC. Here’s a quick lesson in global […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

All presentation today, see attached link, after the Sunny Saturday Sankey published yesterday and emailed to you, outlined the past week. The week ahead is extremely busy with results – you can see my diary in the attached presentation. The monster week of earnings is behind us, with impressive results from FMAGA – Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Alphabet. Week ahead also has Secretary of State Blinken travelling to Ukraine. “I can’t tell you that we […]

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 […]

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 […]

Trying to get up this morning, I was pondering whether the US military could split and part go renegade. However we continue to believe the US constitution will prevail. Rather a negative start to the day, but I moved on to put together the Sunday Sankey for you, with energy, be it alternative, or regular oil and gas, starting the year very well. We continue to be obsessive about the US$ impact on oil prices, […]

Good morning, The first working week in January is always a crazy week for this analyst, and by Monday afternoon, having run five 1×1 fireside chats with five refining CEOs, I was already joking that I was ready for my year end vacation. Then, from nowhere, Saudi unilaterally cut production on Tuesday 5th January at the now-monthly OPEC+ meeting, the afternoon as we rounded out the conference with a 1×1 with Valero management that morning. […]

Today we note who benefits from low natural gas prices, especially with propane prices ripping higher, and take a look at a key theme for Phillips 66 at our refining conference, the Dakota Access Pipeline. We will cover other themes for the big refiners this week as we run into our refining conference next Monday January 4th. Basically, a forgotten winner from low natgas prices is refining. Also Canadian heavy oil producers, like refiners, have […]

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 […]

New mega-theme: Big Doctor is watching you. See below. Note also that for all the words in this letter, the attached presentation is all pictures. We know you are busy and need the key ideas fast. Thanks for reading. Sankey Research subsists entirely by taking Excel, Word, Powerpoint, a Bloomberg Terminal, leading journal subscriptions, and the internet, and writing research from scratch, for sharing ideas. Please support me, aka PAY. Otherwise you are stealing my […]

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 […]

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 […]

It is Friday in Fall, a great time of year in the US. The guy who stole my diary has died. My thoughts are with his family. My wife is kicking me out because she’s fed up with my South American animal puns… ‘OK,’ I said, ‘Alpaca my bags.’ I once met someone who refused to talk to people unless the conversation was about fashion. He was very clothed-minded. Happy hour yesterday evening we were […]

Yet another bull point on propane. The Morning Sankey goes down the rabbit hole. New York City has made outdoor dining permanent, and the City has lifted the post-911 ban on propane canisters in Manhattan (welders were excepted). With indoor dining limited to 25% capacity, operating restaurants are dependent on outdoor dining, and there has been a scramble to buy propane heaters. My neighbour manages three restaurants and said he was about to buy 15 […]

Good day! A chill September wind is blowing across Brooklyn Heights, as summer officially ends and fall very much starts. The market is feeling chills too, with COVID continuing to present a major challenge to policy-makers globally. We remain extremely frustrated by the excessive lock down requirements in New York despite effectively zero COVID. With massive testing, less than 1% positives are being found, and essentially no deaths (statistically speaking). This past week we quoted […]

“One thing I know for sure, In the battle between humans and the environment, the environment will win.” This has been one of my standard lines for more than a decade. It sits alongside “environmentalism is a luxury” in terms of the parameters for considering the subject of alternative energy. Another an old line: “the only barrier of entry to being an oil analyst is units.” In this edition of the Sunday Sankey we lay […]

Good day, welcome to the week of summer shut down on Wall Street, The usual variety of great slides in the  Sunday Sankey this week, and an entreaty to “play the game” this week of taking vacation. If we all do it, we can overcome. The personal story is a lot longer this week, because as regular clients will remember, “the only person who talks more than me, is my mother.” After I noted that […]

A photographer was killed in a freak accident today. When trying to take a group photo, a giant wheel of cheddar rolled down behind him and crushed him. Witnesses said people did try to warn him. Sherlock Holmes was reading when Watson came in looking confused. “I say Holmes! Why have you painted our front door bright yellow?” “Lemon entry, my dear Watson,” “Knock knock” ‘Get a warrant’ A couple of thoughts to end the […]