SL Advisors Talks Markets

Costa Rica, a central American country of five million, has a proud history of strong environmental policies. Their electricity comes almost entirely from renewable sources. Hydro is 73%, with geothermal providing most of the rest. Solar and wind are minor. Over the past decade they have reduced oil from 12% to virtually zero. Costa Rica’s […]

Energy Transfer (ET) is the pipeline company most often directly owned by the financial advisors we talk to. It seems perennially cheap, and that’s in part due to their controversial history of at times treating themselves better than their other unitholders. They’ve provided plenty of material for this blogger to note how management always seems […]

Earnings season for midstream energy infrastructure has been wonderfully devoid of excitement for many quarters. These companies just keep churning out more cash, typically within a few percent of expectations. The exception is Cheniere (CEI), where earnings often come in substantially ahead of sell-side estimates. 1Q reported EBITDA beat by 12.5%. The company spent $1.2BN […]

I traveled through Indiana last week. A day and a half of meetings in and around Indianapolis were followed by a drive south for an afternoon at Churchill Downs in Kentucky. If you’re lucky enough to be invited to a Jockey Club hospitality suite, a good time is guaranteed. Tye Uppinghouse, our Catalyst Mutual Funds […]

Last week my partner Henry Hoffman and I had the opportunity to chat with Peter Hill. Peter holds board seats or is on the advisory committee of several companies where he provides energy advice, including Edge Natural Resources, Jaguar Exploration and Citizen Energy LLC. His long career includes 22 years spent at BP in various […]

Last week the WSJ published an interesting chart, reproduced below. It was in an article ominously titled America’s Economy Is No. 1. That Means Trouble. The chart shows that US share of global GDP has been increasing for over a decade. We’ve gone from 21% in 2011 to 26% this year. It’s an amazing performance. […]

Progressives will maintain that the planet is on track to burn up, but realists will see an unfolding positive story. Transitioning our energy systems is incredibly expensive, slow and inflationary. JPMorgan just published research (The Energy Transition: Reality check needed) acknowledging this and calling for a reset. No big company says anything about energy without […]

As we sat down to lunch in London’s west end earlier this month, Richard told me his family had been good friends with Patrick Moore, presenter of BBC’s The Sky At Night from 1957 until his death in 2012. He was a passionate amateur astronomer who taught viewers what they were looking at in the […]

The Wall Street Journal called it “Biden’s Green-Energy Price Shock”, noting that electricity prices have increased by 21% since January 2021. That this has coincided with increased solar and wind output ought to surprise no-one. Thoughtful progressives should hail this as a positive development and argue that higher energy prices are an inevitable and worthwhile […]

Vaclav Smil is often described as a polymath. His website says he does interdisciplinary research in the fields of energy, environmental and population change, food production, history of technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. I first came across his books when Bill Gates described […]