July was action-packed for LNG names. On July 11 Morgan Stanley raised their price target on NextDecade (NEXT) to $15, having last moved it to $10 in October 2022. The stock rose 18% to $10.77 on the news and added further gains during the month. Morgan Stanley’s upgrade was the only news of note, but […]

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen described the US-EU trade agreement as “huge”, demonstrating a helpful grasp of President’s Trump’s lexicon. The imposition of tariffs and the threat of punitive ones has gone remarkably smoothly. That may not always be so, but for now markets are buoyant and inflation only modestly higher. The White […]

PJM Interconnection announced the results of their capacity auction last week. This is where suppliers of electricity quote prices to provide surge capacity for periods of high demand (typically hot summer days). It used to be uneventful until last year, when the clearing price was 9X higher than before. This led to the price hikes […]

The revenue and earnings outlook for the energy sector has deteriorated this year. Alone among the S&P 500’s eleven sectors, FactSet shows declining revenues of –9.6% when companies report for the second quarter based on bottom-up analyst forecasts. 2025 opened with high expectations following Trump’s election victory. And while the White House has followed through […]

Kinder Morgan (KMI) kicked off pipeline earnings season last week, as they do every quarter. Their adjusted EBITDA came in a little ahead of expectations at $1.97BN vs $1.95BN. Management guidance was positive.   LNG exports and data center power needs are the two growth drivers for natural gas pipelines. KMI’s Trident Intrastate Pipeline secured […]

Morgan Stanley’s bullish report on US LNG stocks last week gave the sector a lift. The biggest impact was felt by NextDecade (NEXT), which was up 17%, bringing its market cap to $2.8BN. NEXT is still a small cap stock with no dividend, unusual for the midstream sector which is dominated by large-cap, investment grade […]

Last Wednesday PJM Interconnection began their Capacity Auction. PJM runs the largest electricity grid in the US, extending from the east coast as far west as Illinois. The auction sources commitments for surge capacity, to ensure that even during times of high demand the system can meet the need for power. Capacity auctions haven’t historically […]

The ending of many renewables subsidies in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) is being hailed as a win for the oil and gas industry. The WSJ wrote, The Moment the Clean-Energy Boom Ran Into ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’, suggesting that oil production will benefit. But in reality it’s about electricity generation, and oil produced just […]

Around this time of year, I’m often asked if we celebrate July 4th. Since it is the anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence, in Britain it receives scant attention. But I often note that had the war turned out differently I might not have emigrated to America in 1982. We have much to celebrate in […]

Our power infrastructure survived last week’s heatwave, which saw the PJM Interconnect system peak at an almost twenty year high of 160,560 Megawatts on June 23. Natural gas provided 44% of generation, with solar at 6%. The ISO-NE system that covers New England saw peak demand a day later. This was met 47% by natural […]