SL Advisors Talks Markets

Among Winston Churchill’s many memorable quotes is, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” This applies to some European countries’ posture towards Russia. The Economist recently asked, Will Europe return to Putin’s gas? Could they return to their reliance on Russian energy? The question has been buffeting LNG […]

On Thursday morning Williams Companies released their earnings without the rumored announcement of a Behind The Meter (BTM) deal. The stock briefly dipped as algos reacted to the news release but was soon rallying because the broad outlook for natural gas demand remains strong. It’s turning into a global high tech arms race. Proliferation of […]

On Monday Energy Transfer announced the first Behind The Meter (BTM) agreement of the AI era. They’ll provide up to 450 Million Cubic Feet per Day of natural gas to a data center being built by CloudBurst Data Centers in central Texas. This represents 0.45 Billion Cubic Feet per Day (BCF/D), almost 0.5% of US […]

On Friday both the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times ran stories about planned capex on data centers by the big US tech companies. The DeepSeek news of two weeks ago hasn’t resulted in any discernible change. The case for increased power generation remains intact. On Wednesday Williams Companies will report their quarterly earnings. […]

Although the US is energy independent and a net exporter of petroleum products, we still import certain blends of crude. Canadian tar sands oil is the heavy type for which American refineries are configured as is Mexican oil. Shale oil is lighter. So we buy what we are set up to handle and sell what […]

Following Monday’s “sputnik moment” for AI the market has had a few days to consider the ramifications of DeepSeek’s apparent breakthrough. Mark Zuckerberg reaffirmed Meta’s plans to spend $60-65BN on data centers. They have embraced an open-source approach to AI, believing that sharing code freely will drive penetration. Since DeepSeek also published their code any […]

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen called it, ”AI’s sputnik moment.” The news that Chinese start-up Deepseek may have leapt ahead of the US in AI caused an unpleasant start to the week. In 1957 Sputnik’s orbit led to the creation of NASA and fears that Russian satellites could attack the US from space. While Americans have […]

One source of recent volatility in midstream has come from a stock that wasn’t even listed – Venture Global (VG), the LNG exporter whose IPO priced on Thursday. The fundamentals could not be more positive. Trump has reversed the LNG export pause, wants US energy dominance and asked our trading partners to buy more American […]

I was chatting with an investor the other day, and he remarked that there are three powerful legs to the midstream story. They are demand growth for natural gas; attractive valuation; the incoming administration’s support for traditional energy. He felt that there’s too little appreciation of the underlying support from these three elements. Last year […]

Last week the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released their Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO). People are often surprised to learn that US power demand has remained the same for the past couple of decades – at around 4,000 Terrawatt Hours (TwHs). The economy and population keep growing but offsetting this is improving energy efficiency. Electricity […]