We are excited to continue our NAPE COBT series with Scott Richardson, Global Head of Energy Investment Banking at RBC, and Craig Lande, Managing Director and Co-Head of RBC’s Energy A&D practice, to explore what’s driving today’s asset markets. Scott is the former Co-Founder of Richardson Barr and has more than 40 years of energy investment banking experience across the sale of both public and private companies, private and public debt transactions, fairness opinions, general advisory and asset divestitures. Craig joined RBC Richardson Barr in 2005 and previously served as Vice President at Waterous & Co. He has over 25 years of broad experience in the U.S. A&D market, including the sale of assets and companies, fairness opinions, and general advisory. Mark Castiglione and Maynard were thrilled to host Scott and Craig.
 
In our conversation, we explore the current asset market, with gas deals a much more significant share of the market amid a mix of new and returning buyers, including international capital (particularly Asia) pursuing Gulf Coast gas with LNG linkage. We discuss seller-friendly valuations driven by a scarcity premium and “four buckets” of demand (ABS-backed buyers, international buyers, strategics/publics, and private equity) competing for limited opportunities and fueling increasingly aggressive bid dynamics, including tighter bid rounds and more pre-emptive offers. We unpack ABS mechanics and their impact on PDP valuations, including the role of lower-cost capital and longer-dated hedging. We cover the disconnect between private-market asset valuations and public-market multiples, corporate M&A as a catalyst for future A&D supply, trading firms seeking physical commodity exposure, the return of commercial bank lending, and go-private considerations constrained by leverage. We examine how buyers are embedding inventory upside into valuations by assigning value to secondary and deeper zones, where pockets of new basin excitement remain (including the Rockies, Canada, and select international opportunities), how shifting regulatory dynamics have stimulated interest in New Mexico, and the evolving role of ABS financing and continuation vehicles. We also touch on whether AI is meaningfully changing transaction workflows, longer-term consolidation trends, the potential return of exploration capital domestically and abroad, and much more. It was a substantive and thought-provoking discussion.
 
Many thanks to Scott and Craig for their time and thoughtful insights during a very busy week. Stay tuned for our final NAPE episode focused on exploration. Our best to you all!

In recognition of NAPE week in Houston, we are delighted to welcome back David Bat, President of Kimberlite Research, to explore the latest OFS activity, trends, and technologies. David brings more than 30 years of experience spanning upstream, power, and oilfield research. Prior to joining Kimberlite in 2015, he served as VP and General Manager of Constellation New Energy, President of Welling & Company, and President of Stream-Flo USA. He began his career as a geologist with Chevron. Kimberlite is an international oilfield research firm that draws on insights from more than 20,000 hours of annual interviews with industry professionals to analyze market trends and benchmark performance for oilfield equipment and service providers. We were excited to hear David’s perspective and latest insights.
 
In our conversation, we cover Kimberlite’s research model, the data it captures from operators, and how the firm uses AI as an enabling tool. David shares Kimberlite’s 2026 operator sentiment and activity outlook and highlights regional hot spots for expansion (including Latin America, the Middle East, Norway, and West Africa) and discusses key technologies improving recovery and efficiency, as well as the runway for further gains. We compare international versus North American market structure, noting that the “Big Four” hold roughly 80% share across much of the international/offshore oilfield services market, while North America is highly fragmented with many specialty providers. We touch on the Permian as a global incubator for innovation, the Haynesville as a proving ground for high-temperature tools, David’s longer-term outlook for the Lower 48 Tier 1 runway, operator-to-operator differences in service outcomes, and supplier performance dispersion and benchmarking, with performance and fit varying by basin. We explore upstream digital transformation strategies, why domain expertise matters for applying AI, hydraulic fracturing digital dynamics, and where digital value is expected to emerge, especially in production optimization. We also cover why consolidation is viewed as desperately needed in oilfield services yet hard to execute, Canada’s market dynamics, and the strong demand for qualified personnel and quality equipment in international and offshore markets. David shares his exploration outlook, potential drivers of improved recoveries, newer tech players, and Kimberlite’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) work, which he says correlates strongly with future financial performance and competitive strength; fewer than 10% of the OFS companies Kimberlite tracks exhibit truly distinguishing, scalable, "elite" customer-focused characteristics. A few select slides from David’s presentation are linked here. It was a wide-ranging discussion and we’re grateful to David for sharing his expertise with us all.
 
Mike Bradley kicked off the discussion by noting that the 10-year U.S. bond yield appears to have stabilized in the 4.0% to 4.10% range after plunging last week on a cooler-than-expected January CPI report. In crude markets, WTI price has been stuck over the last several weeks between $60-$65/bbl and inched a little lower to start this week (~$62/bbl) following reports that Iran and the U.S. have a “general agreement” on the basis for a potential nuclear deal, which could eventually lead to an ease in Iranian sanctions. An agreement in the next couple of weeks could lead to an additional pullback in oil prices if the oil market narrative shifts away from a modest “war premium” towards the IEA’s 2026 global “oil glut” (~3.7mmbpd) narrative. On the natural gas front, he highlighted that the recent Arctic-driven winter premium for prompt gas price (~$3.00/MMBtu) and 12-month strip (~$3.50/MMBtu) have been completely u

Today we had the exciting opportunity to host Bill Anderson, Senior Managing Director at Evercore and Global Head of the firm’s Activism/Raid Defense team and Strategic M&A Advisory practice. Bill is a pioneer in activism defense and has advised more than 500 companies facing activists or strategic raids, including many of the largest proxy fights and defense situations of the past two decades. Prior to joining Evercore in 2016, Bill spent more than 15 years at Goldman Sachs as an M&A partner and leader of its defense team. Earlier in his career, he was an M&A attorney at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett, clerked on the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, worked as a CPA at Coopers & Lybrand, and served as a Captain in the U.S. Army Reserves. It was our pleasure to hear Bill’s perspectives on the latest M&A activity, activism and hostile preparedness, board composition and alignment, and the evolving dynamics between companies, shareholders, and capital markets.
 
In our conversation, we explore Bill’s career path from classic M&A work into defense and special committees as markets changed, and how activism became a major driver of M&A. Bill shares his top takeaways from 2025 activity, noting the wide range of deal types and attributing the acceleration in deal flow to greater antitrust optimism, liquid financing, and strong buyer stock performance. We discuss why activism has become a core risk-management issue for public companies, how activists can build positions via derivatives and broker-dealer exposure with limited disclosure (and why 13F filings can be an important early-warning signal), and how shareholder bases have evolved with index funds now a dominant ownership block alongside the continued influence of ISS and Glass Lewis. We cover the difficulty of mobilizing retail votes and related regulatory/state-law considerations, the deal approval environment under Trump versus Biden (including CFIUS as a wildcard), why companies are more careful describing synergies, the impact of universal proxy, and the importance of diversity, tenure, and sector expertise in board refreshment. We touch on the drivers of positive acquirer stock reactions, how companies communicate value at deal announcement, activist dynamics in M&A and when activism becomes contentious, the importance of board alignment and cohesion, increased spin-off activity, and much more. We ended by asking Bill for his thoughts on how companies can attract long-only capital. Throughout the discussion, we reference several elements of Evercore’s “2025 Year in Review Report.” It was a fascinating discussion and we appreciate Bill for sharing his time and insights.
 
Mike Bradley kicked us off by noting that the 10-year U.S. bond yield plunged this week following an unexpectedly soft December Retail Sales report. Bond volatility could remain elevated with January CPI set for release on Friday. On the crude oil market front, WTI price appears to have temporarily settled into a $60-$65/bbl trading range, given there have been no major new geopolitical surprises over the past week. In natural gas, prompt natural gas price has completely roundtripped since the Arctic blast started and is now trading back at ~$3.15/MMBtu. U.S. gas storage is back near normal levels (around the 5-year average) and winter weather from here through the end of withdrawal season will determine how constructive the setup is for summer gas price. On the broader equity market front, the DJIA has been one of the real winners this past week (up ~2.5-3.0%), especially versus the S&P 500 (up ~0.5%). Cyclical sectors (Energy, Industrials, and Materials) continue to be the market leaders, while Tech/Telecom continue to lag. In energy equities, most large-caps (Oil Majors, Oil Services, and Refiners) have already reported Q4 results, and the next few weeks will be dominated by E&Ps reporting. E&P commentary will likely be do

We were honored this week to welcome Ali Moshiri, CEO and President of Amos Global Energy, for a Special Edition COBT focused on Venezuela. Ali is the former President of Chevron Africa-Latin America and spent nearly 40 years at Chevron. He joined the company in 1978 as a petroleum engineer and went on to hold a wide range of senior technical, strategic, and leadership roles, ultimately overseeing Chevron’s upstream operations across Africa and Latin America, including key positions in Venezuela and the broader region. Since retiring from Chevron in 2017, Ali has served as an advisor to Chevron and is currently President and CEO of Amos Global Energy, a Houston-based upstream independent focused on building a diversified portfolio across Latin America (with selective investments in the U.S. and Africa) through an integrated direct investment model. With deep operational, geopolitical, and strategic experience across global energy markets, Ali brings a unique and long-term perspective to today’s discussion.
 
In our conversation, Ali describes the on-the-ground conditions based on frequent travel to Venezuela and argues there is widespread misunderstanding of the country driven by years of narrative focus on migration, crime, and deportation rather than fundamentals. He details Venezuela’s fundamentals including resource size and accessibility, proximity to the U.S., and the historical role of Gulf Coast heavy-oil refinery conversions and the light/heavy differential in making Venezuela barrels attractive. We discuss where development is likely to concentrate, the production ramp and capital needs, why in his mind the clearest lever for Venezuelan recovery is increasing oil output, workforce and execution constraints, the role of service companies, and who is most likely to invest first. Ali notes the key to mobilizing capital is a credible public-private partnership structure that can be written into a term sheet, alongside securing a lead private investor. He explains China’s presence as largely commercial and loan driven, and Russia’s as more geopolitical, and he doesn’t expect either to materially expand or compete for incremental assets. We explore why prioritizing stability through a managed transition (including Venezuela’s Vice President, and now Acting President, Delcy Rodríguez’s role) is essential to convert investor interest into commitment, and he frames the recent vote more as a referendum than a fully competitive election, with a later phase needed for a truly democratic process. We touch on OPEC’s incentives to keep Venezuela “inside the tent,” where near-term investment should concentrate, why midstream is less attractive today, the longer-term upside in gas and LNG, and much more. We ended by asking Ali for his ten-year outlook on global oil demand and the sources of future supply. As mentioned, details about Venezuela’s reform of the Organic Law on Hydrocarbons are linked here. We greatly appreciate Ali for sharing his candid insights into a complex situation.
 
The Veriten team shared a few quick comments to kick off the show. Mike Bradley flagged two themes: commodities volatility has dominated the year so far, with oil and gas prices swinging sharply due to geopolitical issues, while metals and Bitcoin have hit highs and then pulled back. He also noted that during recent Q4 earnings calls, oil majors and early-reporting service companies have faced many questions about Venezuela, but few have clear answers, making the discussion with Ali very timely. Arjun Murti added that global oil demand continues to grow, and while U.S. shale should hold a long-term plateau, it’s unlikely to repeat its outsized contribution to global supply growth, raising the question of what comes after shale. He pointed to Venezuela’s long-term potential, recalling the suc

Today we were delighted to welcome Jim Murchie, Co-Founder, Co-Portfolio Manager, and CEO of Energy Income Partners (EIP). Prior to co-founding EIP, Jim’s career in power and electricity included establishing Lawhill Capital, serving as a Managing Director at Tiger Management focused primarily on energy, commodities, and related equities, and working as a Principal at Sanford C. Bernstein, where he was a top-ranked energy analyst. He began his career at British Petroleum and holds an MA in Energy Planning from Harvard University. We were thrilled to connect with Jim for an insightful discussion on the power landscape.
 
We covered a lot of ground in our conversation, starting with how EIP navigates macro and market volatility by focusing on regulated monopolies and pipelines with stable, cost-plus earnings, Jim’s career path and research philosophy, and how EIP’s focus on utilities and pipelines emerged from investor demand for real assets and dividends. Jim provides a history lesson on power markets and how deregulated wholesale markets evolved, Enron-era manipulation, and the early-2000s gas plant buildout that ultimately led to overcapacity and merchant distress. We dig into the three-bucket framework for customer bills (generation, transmission, and distribution/other) and why the public debate often overemphasizes generation, while the biggest driver of residential bill increases has been distribution/other costs (bucket three). Jim explains that the third bucket on power bills often acts as a catch-all for costs that are neither generation nor transmission, even when they aren’t distribution in the literal last-mile sense, and that greater billing and policy transparency can clarify what’s exogenous versus what’s controllable. He describes how the impact of data centers can differ between vertically integrated cost-plus states and deregulated commodity-market states, and unpacks behind-the-meter realities, including how hyperscalers often prefer a grid connection for reliability but still deploy backup generation. We discuss the administration’s push for hyperscalers to sign long-term contracts to enable new generation build, policymakers’ heightened focus on avoiding blackouts, and why this is often a peaking problem more than a supply problem. Jim emphasizes how incentives, rather than intent, drive investment behavior in regulated versus deregulated markets, challenges the narrative that data centers are inherently driving higher power prices, and highlights the economic value of reliability investments and peak-load management in shaping long-term system costs. It was a wide-ranging discussion, and we look forward to continuing the dialogue with Jim in a future episode.
 
As you will hear, we reference a few items in the discussion. Please find the links below:
Energy Income Partners Report: “Power Struggle I – How False Political Narratives Cloud the Drivers of Higher Residential Electricity Prices” (linked here)
Energy Income Partners Report: “Power Struggle II – How Market Structure Affects Wholesale Power Price Increases” (linked here)
Veriten’s COBT episode featuring Thomas Popik, Foundation for Resilient Societies (linked here)

Mike Bradley opened the discussion by noting that the 10-year U.S. bond yield looks to be the least volatile asset class at this juncture, with the 10-year bond yield trading very rangebound (around 4.25%). The dominant market theme this week, and for much of the year, has been extreme volatility across commodities (Bitcoin, Energy, and Metals). On the crude oil market front, WTI price is trading at ~$63/bbl, with volatility elevated over t

Today we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Mike Laufer, Co-Founder and CEO of Kairos Power, for a robust nuclear-focused discussion. Kairos recently marked its nine-year anniversary and has grown to 500+ employees across its headquarters in Alameda, CA, its manufacturing development campus in Albuquerque, NM, and its Hermes Demonstration Reactor Campus in Oak Ridge, TN. Kairos is developing its fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR), which pairs TRISO pebble fuel with a low-pressure molten-salt coolant (“Flibe”) and is designed for modular deployment, including a two-reactor/one-turbine configuration delivering up to ~150 MWe. The company’s Oak Ridge program includes Hermes 1, the first non-water-cooled reactor to receive an NRC construction permit, and Hermes 2, a commercial-scale demonstration plant intended to supply electricity to the grid. Mike earned his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. His research included work in reactor safety, design, licensing, and code validation for advanced non-light water reactors. We were thrilled to visit with Mike.
 
In our conversation, Mike shares the early vision behind Kairos, the company’s focus on U.S. electricity markets and building a reactor that can compete on cost, and their strategy centered on iterative hardware demonstrations and vertical integration. We discuss system-level parallelization, developing upstream/downstream “balance-of-plant” elements alongside reactor work to compress timelines and de-risk full-system integration, NRC engagement dating back to 2018, safety case fundamentals, sizing and product configuration, and how the Google partnership supports a sequence of deployments toward ~500 MW by 2035 (Google announcement linked here). Mike offers a realistic view of the nuclear learning curve and what it takes to drive down cost and schedule uncertainty over successive projects, how Kairos structured the Google deployment pathway, and the importance of setting achievable targets. We touch on how SMR winners and losers will be determined by project execution and delivery, not announcements, and Mike highlights common pitfalls in the conventional U.S. nuclear project model, including fragmented roles and misaligned incentives. We discuss Kairos’s centralized “hub” model with clear decision-making authority, its approach to validating partners and execution steps at smaller scale before taking on multi-billion-dollar FOAK risk, and how the organization maintains efficiency by balancing multiple deliverables and hiring “wildly competent” people comfortable with ambiguity. We also cover how commodity inflation and supply-chain depth affect planning, Kairos’s focus on strategic supplier partnerships, particularly in steel, concrete, and precast concrete, the importance of public trust and earning long-term community support, how non-nuclear test systems build real operating capability and flexible operating models, how AI may eventually improve execution and reliability, and much more. We’re very grateful to Mike for sharing his time and expertise with us.
 
Mike Bradley kicked off the show by noting that the 10-year U.S. bond yield appears to have temporarily stabilized around 4.2% and is awaiting Wednesday’s FOMC rate decision. Most expect the Fed to leave interest rates unchanged, though volatility could ensue if they don’t! On the crude oil front, WTI price has inched up to $62/bbl amid continued bearishness in financial contract length and recent severe winter weather. There’s speculation that this Polar Vortex (which we’ve dubbed the “Polar Pig”) has reduced U.S. oil production by ~1.5mmbpd. On the natural gas front, the Polar Pig has spiked prompt U.S. natural gas price to ~$6/MM

While at CIBC’s Annual Institutional Investor Conference in Whistler, we had the exciting opportunity to host Grant Isaac of Cameco for this Special Edition COBT. Grant serves as President and Chief Operating Officer of Cameco and has held several roles over his 16-plus years with the company, including EVP & CFO and SVP of Corporate Services. In his current role, he is responsible for all Cameco operations, exploration, and corporate development, as well as the company’s commercial and financial strategy. Grant earned a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and previously served as a business professor at the University of Saskatchewan. We were delighted to sit down with Grant to explore the latest developments in nuclear energy.
 
In our discussion, Grant outlines Cameco’s integrated nuclear platform and strategy, with vertical integration as a way to help “build their own demand,” as each reactor build creates 80-100 years of downstream recurring fuel and services demand. We explore how nuclear has shifted from “maybe/what if” to “must do it now,” what drives ordering momentum, and the industry’s push to turn nuclear from a project into a product through standardization, sequencing, and simplification. Grant discusses how investors are increasingly underwriting Cameco as a “nuclear super-major” with scarce, strategic assets, and how the Westinghouse acquisition and partnership with Brookfield broadened the shareholder base and improved visibility into future demand. We touch on supply-chain pinch points across mining, conversion, enrichment, and fabrication, the post-Russia fuel-cycle reset, and why uranium is uniquely constrained by geology and can’t be “fixed” with industrial policy. Grant explains the Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) project, the role of public-private partnerships in capital-intensive nuclear projects, and Ontario as a positive case study for government involvement. Grant also shares why traditional NPV frameworks tend to undervalue nuclear assets, noting that governments and sponsors instead focus on payback math over 80–100-year asset lives, the significant economic multipliers from large-scale nuclear builds, and the “cluster effects” that attract long-term industry, jobs, and investment, making the case for nuclear as a generational, nation-building infrastructure investment. We also cover evolving investor frameworks and valuation metrics, expectations for consolidation in the nuclear sector, his outlook for 2026, the future of uranium supply, and more. It was an insightful conversation.
 
In other nuclear news, the World Nuclear Association published a World Nuclear Outlook Report on Tuesday, January 20 (linked here), which provides the most comprehensive assessment to date of global nuclear energy development, assessing national targets for nuclear capacity against the global goal to triple nuclear capacity by 2050.
 
We hope you enjoy the discussion with Grant as much as we did. Our best to you all!

It was an honor to welcome David MacNaughton, Strategic Advisor at CIBC and former Canadian Ambassador to the United States. David joined CIBC earlier in January (press release linked here) and will provide insights to senior business leaders across public policy, regulatory developments, global trade, and stakeholder relations. David served as Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S. from 2016 to 2019, a pivotal period that included the renegotiation of NAFTA. Earlier in his career, David served as Chairman of StrategyCorp and as a Senior Advisor to CIBC Capital Markets, and he previously served as President of Palantir Canada. He is a seasoned entrepreneur and political strategist, having founded and built multiple public affairs and advisory firms. We were thrilled to host David ahead of CIBC’s Annual Institutional Investor Conference taking place this week in Whistler and to hear his perspective on the evolving dynamics shaping the U.S.-Canada relationship.
 
In our conversation, we discuss David’s experience spanning business and government, the highly dynamic geopolitical environment, the need for renewed public-private collaboration, and why politics feel increasingly interventionist today, with populist pressure pushing governments toward protectionism and isolationism. We explore the implications of AI-driven white-collar job disruption, why businesses must treat geopolitics and public policy as core risk drivers, Canada’s role in AI innovation and adoption, and how Canada is rebalancing its resource economy amid global energy and trade shifts. David shares his perspective on Canada’s prior reluctance to embrace LNG exports and its renewed push to be an “energy superpower,” how to interpret volatility from the Trump Administration, and how tariffs have strained, but not broken, the U.S.-Canada relationship, highlighting the importance of the integrated North American energy system and the need for Canada to diversify markets. We discuss how David’s Strategic Advisor role will help clients think about using government support appropriately, his cautious optimism on recent geopolitical shifts, and why maintaining dialogue among allies matters, as misinterpretation and retreating into corners can quickly spiral into escalation. It was a broad-based discussion and we’re thankful to David for sharing his time and unique insights.
 
Mike Bradley opened the show by noting that the 10-year U.S. bond yield had spiked to ~4.3% amid concerns that Europeans could sell U.S. Treasuries in response to President Trump’s Greenland overtures, as well as growing questions about what a spike in Japanese bond yields might mean for global bond yields. Consensus appears firmly in the camp that the Fed will not cut interest rates at the January 28 FOMC meeting. In the broader equity market, the S&P 500 was down modestly (~0.5%) over the last week, with cyclical sectors (Energy and Industrials) leading and Financials lagging. In energy commodities, WTI price appears to have stabilized at ~$60/bbl. U.S. natural gas price recently spiked ~$0.80/MMBtu (to ~$4.00/MMBtu) due to an Arctic blast forecast in the weeks ahead. On the energy news front, Q4 earnings season begins this week with Halliburton and SLB reporting. Discussion on those calls is likely to be dominated by 1H26 international oil spending trends. Mike also noted Mitsubishi Corp’s $5.2 billion deal to acquire Aethon Energy, and his expectation for many more deals across the energy value chain in 2026. He ended by highlighting that President Trump, along with a handful of Northeast governors, are asking PJM Interconnection to hold an emergency energy auction that would allow Big Tech companies to bid on 15-year contracts to supply ~$15 billion of new power plants. IPP equities were the most negatively impacted by this proposal late last week.

Over the years, we have really enjoyed hosting the Goldman Sachs Research Team, and today we are thrilled to share this Special Edition featuring Neil Mehta (Managing Director and Head of North American Natural Resources Equity Research), Carly Davenport (Vice President, Equity Research), and Brian Singer (Managing Director and Global Head, GS SUSTAIN for Global Investment Research). Neil joined Goldman in 2008 and oversees research coverage across oil and gas, utilities, midstream, metals and mining, and clean technology, while also leading coverage for large-cap energy equities. Carly joined Goldman in 2016 and covers U.S. utilities. She previously covered SMID-cap refiners and was a member of the integrated oils & refiners team. Brian joined the firm as an analyst in 1998 and has covered energy companies based in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Russia, South Africa, and the U.S.
 
As many of you likely know, Goldman recently hosted its annual Energy, CleanTech & Utilities Conference. Jeff Tillery, Arjun Murti, and Maynard were thrilled to welcome the team back to discuss key takeaways and the broader energy landscape. As you will hear, it was a wide-ranging and substantive discussion, thanks to Neil, Carly, and Brian, whose coverage and breadth of knowledge made for a fascinating conversation.
 
In our discussion, Neil walks us through how Goldman’s Energy, CleanTech & Utilities Conference has broadened its coverage over time and how the Maduro/Venezuela developments shaped conversations, especially the market’s tendency to trade geopolitical headlines to extremes before recalibrating. Brian explains how sustainability in 2026 is increasingly about risk mitigation and reliability (power, water, supply chains), and why the power buildout is a “yes-and” environment rather than an either/or fuel debate. Carly discusses how the market is shifting from “own-the-theme” to a more stock-picker setup as 2025 plans translate into concrete PPA announcements and load-growth rationalization, with an all-of-the-above sourcing outlook across coal, gas, renewables, and longer-dated nuclear. We cover oil and gas risk-taking, M&A, and why consolidation may be necessary, but not sufficient, especially for U.S.-focused shale players. We explore lessons from shale on cost position and diversification, investor “permission” for expansion via Brian’s CARE checklist, how to “get outside your lane” without losing credibility, and the guardrails utilities face in avoiding volatility and merchant exposure. Brian outlines investor behavior in a demand-driven upcycle, scale as a differentiator in power, and his energy policy STARS lens: Supply Transition, Affordability, Reliability, and Security, along with supply-chain depth and labor as a binding constraint. Carly also shares underappreciated themes including grid maintenance and resilience investment needs and potential ROE and affordability pressure. Neil highlights economic re-acceleration as a potentially underappreciated upside driver for energy equities and contrasts strategic priorities for refiners versus midstream. We close by asking what’s next for the team as they look ahead to next year’s conference. We greatly appreciate Neil, Carly, and Brian for sharing their time and perspectives.
 
We hope you find today’s discussion as insightful and interesting as we did. Our best to you all and Happy MLK Day!

Today we were thrilled to welcome Governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma. Governor Stitt was first elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022. Before entering politics, he was a successful entrepreneur. His company, Gateway, grew into a nationwide mortgage company and, through a merger, became Gateway First Bank, now one of Oklahoma’s ten largest banks. In 2018, he received more votes than any gubernatorial candidate in Oklahoma history in his first bid for elected office. As Governor, he has prioritized delivering more value for taxpayers, and his fiscally conservative approach has helped Oklahoma build its largest savings balance in state history. Governor Stitt also serves as Chair of the National Governors Association, which was founded in 1908 to advance bipartisan dialogue, policy innovation, and information-sharing among the nation’s governors. It was an honor to host the Governor for an insightful conversation on permitting reform, power affordability, and the policy bottlenecks shaping the U.S. energy and infrastructure buildout.
 
In our conversation, we explore why states, through the bipartisan work of the National Governors Association, are central to unlocking U.S. competitiveness and fixing bottlenecks that Washington has struggled to address. Governor Stitt lays out a practical, pro-business, free-market philosophy to build more of everything, remove obstacles, and let innovation and capital do the work, shaped by his background as a business leader turned governor. We discuss Oklahoma’s behind-the-meter power policy that allows large users to self-supply, the broader affordability and power price debate, and the need to better educate the public on where electricity comes from. We dig into what’s broken in today’s policy framework, including the lack of a single accountable federal regulator, and how short-term politics and pendulum swings can stall long-term, common-sense reforms. We also touch on the added complexity of tribal sovereignty and federal involvement in energy infrastructure development. As mentioned, the National Governors Association’s permitting proposal, “NGA Letter on Energy Permitting Priorities” (published in October 2025) is linked here. We greatly enjoyed the discussion and appreciate Governor Stitt for his time.
 
Mike Bradley noted the 10-year bond yield (~4.18%) has traded sideways to start the year. December CPI printed in line with expectations, with PPI due tomorrow. If economic reports continue to print in line, bond yields will likely remain rangebound until the January 28 FOMC meeting. On the oil market front, WTI is up ~$3.50/bbl (~$61/bbl) this year despite 2026 surplus concerns. Oil markets have quickly shifted from 1H26 oversupply and Venezuelan oil production increases to rising Iran-related risk, with the potential for a sharper spike if tensions escalate, especially given that institutional investors are currently bearish (Goldman Sachs Oil Sentiment survey) and very short oil contract “financial” length. In equities, the S&P 500 is up ~2% YTD with the biggest sector winners being cyclicals (Energy, Industrials, and Materials). Materials is the best performing S&P sector this year (up ~7%) due to growing optimism that global GDP growth will be headed higher in 2026. The Russell 2000 is up ~6%, which is far outpacing the S&P 500 & Big AI/Tech stocks, and could be an early sign that market breadth is widening. Energy is up ~5% this year with Oil Services up ~12%, Refiners up ~8% and U.S. Oil Majors up ~6% on hopes that they’ll all be beneficiaries of future Venezuelan infrastructure investment and a quick redirection of heavy oil barrels to Gulf Coast refiners. He closed with takeaways from the Goldman Sachs Energy, Clean Tech & Utilities Conference last week including a real sense of optimism despite investors still being most