Ducks, Datacenters, and Waves: CVX-MSFT

By Paul Sankey Published on June 23, 2026 at 12:39 PM

Hola, It was a relief to start the week as we hoped, with some non-Hormuz corporate newsflow, and in this note we talk about the Chevron vs Microsoft Permian mega-data center announcement. Relief, because my Sunday note on the geopolitics of the nation players in the Hormuz talks was exhausting to write, and sure enough the weekend talks yielded a framework for more talks, or something. Talks about talks for talks. The point of the …

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Sunday Cold Digits, Digital Heat

By Paul Sankey Published on January 25, 2026 at 4:27 PM

Greetings, Presumably you have power, if you are reading this. Good for you. I bought an emergency power pack yesterday: “Anker Portable Power Station SOLIX C300, 288Wh LiFePO4 Battery, 300W (600W Surge) 140W Two-Way Fast Charging, for Outdoor Camping, Traveling, and Emergencies (Solar Panel Optional)” so we should avoid an outage. Or get a three day outage that renders that wee power block absurdly under-sized. It cannot run a heater, for example, you need 1,000W …

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Understanding PJM: Political Storms

By Paul Sankey Published on January 24, 2026 at 1:56 PM

We wrote to you regarding the world’s largest traded power market covering the world’s biggest data center cluster, Pennsylvania-Jersey-Maryland (PJM) capacity auction in mid-2025. Unsurprisingly, although sidelined by mega-headlines such as Venezuela, Iran, Greenland and Davos, there has been more controversy. And this massive ice storm is likely to further escalate the sense of crisis that is growing regarding PJM. Basically we forecast a PJM slow motion trainwreck, that will require crisis management. We predicted …

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