COP28, the annual UN climate conference, starts tomorrow in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It’s easy to criticize the world’s efforts at reducing global Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). They over-emphasize intermittent solar and wind instead of going all in on nuclear and should replace coal with natural gas. China gets a free pass to […]

Media coverage of reliable energy tends to focus on oil and gas. Oil comes in hundreds of different grades of complex hydrocarbon molecules. Natural gas, methane, is the simplest hydrocarbon of them all with a molecular formula of CH4. In between methane and crude oil lie Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs) – successively more complex combinations […]

Next month VettaFi, which owns the Alerian indices, will announce a rebalancing of the Alerian MLP Infrastructure Index (AMZI). This will impact the Alerian MLP ETF (AMLP) which tracks AMZI. For an index fund it does a poor job of keeping up with its index – ALPS Advisors, who runs it, reports alpha of –3.03% […]

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) faces daunting Math. Mike Cembalest,  JPMorgan Asset Management’s Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy, publishes a well-researched and insightful annual energy paper. In the 13th edition last March, he provided the sobering CCS math that sequestering just 15% of the US’s annual CO2 output would involve the same volume as […]

Steven D King is not as famous as his namesake, but for an economist can still write a spine-tingling book. Prompted by the inflation that followed the pandemic, King walks us through past episodes of inflation and their causes, and offers some clues as to whether it’s persistent or transitory.   Moderate inflation of 2% or […]

Investors often ask what are the prospects for hydrogen as an energy source. In spite of Jeff Sommer’s conclusion that the market doesn’t think much about the future (see Priced For A Pragmatic Energy Transition) we think about it all the time. Hydrogen is appealing because when it burns it combines with oxygen to release […]

The other day a NYTimes columnist contrasted the relative outperformance of oil stocks with plunging solar and wind. He concluded that the stock market is oblivious to the threat of climate change whereas the UN and other scientists believe we must reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions to zero by 2050. The writer, Jeff Sommer, briefly […]

Targa Resources provided one of several bright spots among pipeline earnings last week with a 50% increase in their dividend planned for next year. Their cashflows are increasing strongly. JPMorgan projects a Distributable Cash Flow (DCF) yield of 14% for this year, rising to 16% in 2024 and almost 18% in 2025. The new $3 […]

“I want to go make that happen” was twenty-one-year-old Elon Musk’s thought in 1992 on California mandating a 10% market share by 2003 for Electric Vehicles (EVs). Or rejecting a job building videogames, which he loved, because “I wanted to have more impact.” As a young man he wanted to colonize Mars to ensure human […]

For our entire careers the US budget deficit has hung over markets like the sword of Damocles. It was a political issue in 1992 when Bill Clinton beat George Bush, a victory enabled by Ross Perot siphoning off Republican voters with his warnings of fiscal catastrophe. Under Clinton we briefly ran a budget surplus, part […]