For my friend Tiny...

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-G...l-And-Gas.html

For my friend Tiny.


https://safehaven.com/



https://oilprice.com/contributors/Alex-Kimani

Alex Kimani is a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer and researcher for Safehaven.com.

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I just had to. WTF has seen it.



I love his line "well, I wish you were. I certainly am."

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-G...l-And-Gas.html Originally Posted by WTF

I don't see it WTF. The level of investment by private equity in E&P is a fraction of what it was before COVID. And that's despite oil and gas prices being a lot higher now than they were then.

I pulled capital expenditure (capex) data for the S&P Oil & Gas Exploration and Production Index. Here's capex by year for the last few years. The index btw is at 5687.

2017 1587.39
2018 1864.40
2019 1509.30
2020 427.10
2021 493.36
2022 778.19 (estimate; analyst consensus)
2023 980.08 (estimate; analyst consensus)

The price of oil is currently around $85 a barrel and NYMEX gas is about $5.00/MMBTU. And those numbers are down from levels not long ago. And based on what's happening with OPEC and natural gas in Europe, they may go up again.

The average priced of WTI oil from 2017 to 2019 was $57.61/barrel and average price of gas was 2.871/MMBTU

So despite oil and gas prices, and oil and gas price expectations, being up a lot, capex is way down.

And yes, as you've noted, some of that can be attributed to investors getting fed up with production growth for the sake of production growth, and the companies never producing free cash flow. But I and others attribute part of the problem to Democratic Party's existential threat to the industry. Sounding like a broken record, Biden promised during his campaign to end drilling on federal leases, and put the country on a path to zero net carbon emissions way too fast. While Warren and Sanders said they'd use executive orders to ban fracking when they took office.

It's rich hearing Biden talk about how his administration is responsible for the recent fall in gasoline prices. I guess you can give him some credit for drawing down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But at what cost to our energy security?

I just had to. WTF has seen it.

I love his line "well, I wish you were. I certainly am." Originally Posted by eccieuser9500

As you know eccieuser, I love Reagan. If I were a heterosexual female instead of a heterosexual male, I'd probably drag out my vibrator and put on the youtube video of his "Bring down that wall Mr. Gorbachev" speech whenever I wanted to get off.

But everyone has a dark side or a skeleton in the closet. Reagan's was Iran/Contra.

For my friend tiny

I don't see it WTF. The level of investment by private equity in E&P is a fraction of what it was before COVID. And that's despite oil and gas prices being a lot higher now than they were then.

I pulled capital expenditure (capex) data for the S&P Oil & Gas Exploration and Production Index. Here's capex by year for the last few years. The index btw is at 5687.

2017 1587.39
2018 1864.40
2019 1509.30
2020 427.10
2021 493.36
2022 778.19 (estimate; analyst consensus)
2023 980.08 (estimate; analyst consensus)

The price of oil is currently around $85 a barrel and NYMEX gas is about $5.00/MMBTU. And those numbers are down from levels not long ago. And based on what's happening with OPEC and natural gas in Europe, they may go up again.

The average priced of WTI oil from 2017 to 2019 was $57.61/barrel and average price of gas was 2.871/MMBTU

So despite oil and gas prices, and oil and gas price expectations, being up a lot, capex is way down.

And yes, as you've noted, some of that can be attributed to investors getting fed up with production growth for the sake of production growth, and the companies never producing free cash flow. But I and others attribute part of the problem to Democratic Party's existential threat to the industry. Sounding like a broken record, Biden promised during his campaign to end drilling on federal leases, and put the country on a path to zero net carbon emissions way too fast. While Warren and Sanders said they'd use executive orders to ban fracking when they took office.

It's rich hearing Biden talk about how his administration is responsible for the recent fall in gasoline prices. I guess you can give him some credit for drawing down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But at what cost to our energy security?


Great analysis. I think. I read the whole thing, but still:

As you know eccieuser, I love Reagan. If I were a heterosexual female instead of a heterosexual male, I'd probably drag out my vibrator and put on the youtube video of his "Bring down that wall Mr. Gorbachev" speech whenever I wanted to get off.

But everyone has a dark side or a skeleton in the closet. Reagan's was Iran/Contra. Originally Posted by Tiny

As you know, my "issues" with Reagan are societal. Not economic. And, out of respect to you, my friend, I will not link the AP video.

As you know, my "issues" with Reagan are societal. Not economic. And, out of respect to you, my friend, I will not link the AP video. Originally Posted by eccieuser9500

such as?

As you know, my "issues" with Reagan are societal. Not economic. And, out of respect to you, my friend, I will not link the AP video. Originally Posted by eccieuser9500

Hi Eccieuser, If memory serves me correctly, it was Reagan's failure to acknowledge AIDS as a big problem that was perhaps the biggest issue?

There's a movie out called the Butler, about a black man who becomes a butler in the White House, and serves from the Eisenhower administration on through to Reagan's presidency. He lives to see Obama elected.

Anyway, the white staff in the White House historically was paid more than blacks. The butler tried a number of times to receive pay commensurate with what his white colleagues received, from Kennedy's time in office on forward. Finally his boss tells him he's had enough of his complaining, and fires him. Reagan goes to bat for the Butler, and he's reinstated, and his salary is increased to what he deserves. The Butler and his wife are invited to a formal White House function, with diplomats and politicians and the like. So at that point you have a very favorable view of Reagan. Then Reagan refuses to support sanctions against South Africa for apartheid. And the Butler resigns.

That may be 100% fiction for all I know. But I guess there's good and evil in all of us -- hopefully more good than bad.

Feel free to link the AP video. It sounds interesting.

For my friend tiny

Originally Posted by Redhot1960

That's one for someone smarter than me, maybe Lusty Lad or Texas Contrarian. But if that's representative of what's going on throughout the the USA, maybe it's the start of the transition from inflation to recession that TC has been expecting.

such as? Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

Hi Eccieuser, If memory serves me correctly, it was Reagan's failure to acknowledge AIDS as a big problem that was perhaps the biggest issue?

There's a movie out called the Butler, about a black man who becomes a butler in the White House, and serves from the Eisenhower administration on through to Reagan's presidency. He lives to see Obama elected.

Anyway, the white staff in the White House historically was paid more than blacks. The butler tried a number of times to receive pay commensurate with what his white colleagues received, from Kennedy's time in office on forward. Finally his boss tells him he's had enough of his complaining, and fires him. Reagan goes to bat for the Butler, and he's reinstated, and his salary is increased to what he deserves. The Butler and his wife are invited to a formal White House function, with diplomats and politicians and the like. So at that point you have a very favorable view of Reagan. Then Reagan refuses to support sanctions against South Africa for apartheid. And the Butler resigns.

That may be 100% fiction for all I know. But I guess there's good and evil in all of us -- hopefully more good than bad.

Feel free to link the AP video. It sounds interesting. Originally Posted by Tiny

First, to the last point: I will not because it's the AP video where he is shot. Used to be I could post the video. Not just the link. Now, I will be big-headed and say because of me that changed. Either here, or at YouTube.


To the previous point, there is a movie that is not fiction. It's a docudrama called And the Band Played On.




Just to somewhat stay on topic, I can remember watching TV many years ago where an oil executive had a miniature oil tanker truck or truck and trailer on his desk or window sill behind him that had on it "Don't worry, the price of oil will always go up." Some things just stick in your head and stay there forever.

First, to the last point: I will not because it's the AP video where he is shot. Used to be I could post the video. Not just the link. Now, I will be big-headed and say because of me that changed. Either here, or at YouTube.


To the previous point, there is a movie that is not fiction. It's a docudrama called And the Band Played On.

Just to somewhat stay on topic, I can remember watching TV many years ago where an oil executive had a miniature oil tanker truck or truck and trailer on his desk or window sill behind him that had on it "Don't worry, the price of oil will always go up." Some things just stick in your head and stay there forever.

Originally Posted by eccieuser9500

That's a powerful clip from And the Band Played On. Thanks for that, I'm going to watch the movie the next time I'm able to record it.

And as to the last point, to stay on topic, people with significant time in the industry don't believe that. Instead the motto is "Lord, Grant Me One More Oil Boom and I Promise Not to Screw It Up."

Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, is a Democrat and a Neoconservative. His latest column is about countering Russia's "energy war."

Anyway, I thought the following was astute, and sums up our dilemma,

When it comes to energy, we want five things at once that are incompatible — and Putin is onto us:

1. We want to decarbonize our economy as fast as we can to mitigate the very real dangers of climate change.

2. We want the cheapest possible gasoline and heating oil prices so we can drive our cars as fast and as much as we want — and never have to put on a sweater indoors or do anything to conserve energy.

3. We want to tell the petrodictators in Iran, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to take a hike.

4. We want to be able to treat U.S. oil and gas companies as pariahs and dinosaurs that should pump us out of this current oil crisis and then go off in the woods and die and let solar and wind take over.

5. Oh, and we don’t want any new oil and gas pipelines or wind and solar transmission lines to spoil our backyards.

Then he goes on to explain how Biden's withdrawals of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve play into Putin's hands,

Here’s what I think is his (Putin's) strategy: It starts with getting the United States to draw down its Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It is a huge stock of crude oil stored in giant caverns that we can draw on in an emergency to offset any cutoff in our domestic production or imports. Last Wednesday, President Biden announced the release of 15 million more barrels from the reserve in December, completing a plan he laid out earlier to release a total of 180 million barrels in an effort to keep gasoline prices at the pump as low as possible — in advance of the midterm elections. (He didn’t say the last part. He didn’t need to.)

According to a report in The Washington Post, the reserve contained “405.1 million barrels as of Oct. 14. That’s about 57 percent of its maximum authorized storage capacity of 714 million barrels.”

I sympathize with the president. People were really hurting from $5- and $6-a-gallon gasoline. But using the reserve — which was designed to cushion us in the face of a sudden shut-off in domestic or global production — to shave a dime or a quarter off a gallon of gasoline before elections is a dicey business, even if the president has a plan for refilling it in the coming months.

Putin wants America to use up as much of its Strategic Petroleum Reserve cushion now — just like the way the Germans gave up on nuclear energy and he got them addicted to Russia’s cheap natural gas. Then, when Russian gas was cut off because of the Ukraine war, German homes and factories had to frantically cut back and scramble for more expensive alternatives.

I'd argue that the Biden Administration's energy policies have been a mess. At one time or another it's tried to achieve all the five goals that Friedman lists. That's impossible, of course. They're incompatible. And it has drawn down our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, for political reasons, at a time when we need oil stockpiles for national security.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/o...as-prices.html

Our strategic oil reserves came about in the 1970's after the Arab oil embargo.

I'd argue it is hardly relative now. Might as well sell it and if we must replenish it, do it when the price drops.

What Biden wants and reality are two different things. I suggest you invest on the reality side of the equation!

The reality is that alternative energy will slowly cut into world wide oil production through innovation...they ain't there yet. Not even close.

I don't see it WTF. The level of investment by private equity in E&P is a fraction of what it was before COVID. And that's despite oil and gas prices being a lot higher now than they were then.

I pulled capital expenditure (capex) data for the S&P Oil & Gas Exploration and Production Index... Originally Posted by Tiny

Tiny - I think you're comparing apples and oranges. Private equity investments in the oil & gas industry are stock or portfolio investments. They merely reflect a change of ownership from public to private hands, whereas industry Capex is actual spending by energy firms to develop their oil & gas properties. PE investments are going up in part because "going private" usually allows management to spend less time dealing with ESG demands/climate activists. Despite the surge in global oil & gas prices since 2020, industry Capex is lagging behind pre-pandemic levels for a host of strategic and regulatory reasons unrelated to the broader ownership trends. But that could soon change, if the authors of this WSJ op-ed are correct.


Why We’re Bullish on Energy Stocks

The ESG bubble has begun deflating, and high interest rates make technology companies less attractive.

By Vivek Ramaswamy and David Sokol
Oct. 24, 2022 2:18 pm ET


Some investments are suitable for the fearful, others for the greedy. U.S. energy stocks may be a rare fit for both. The sector is an inflation hedge and also has home-run growth potential if liberated from shareholder-imposed mandates to abide by environmental, social and governance constraints. Energy stocks should continue to outperform as capital rotates from technology to energy.

Record low interest rates from 2009 through 2021 led investors to embrace risk by valuing uncertain cash flows in the distant future relative to low-yielding cash in the bank. That fueled a 12-fold appreciation in U.S. technology stocks, as the sector’s average price-earnings ratio rose to 34 from 13. (The S&P 500 index increased fourfold and multiples expanded from 14 to 25.) Pandemic policies in 2020-21 supercharged this trend. Unprecedented fiscal stimulus left consumers and states flush with cash that fueled even greater risk-taking, while lockdowns and remote work favored tech.

U.S. energy stocks charted a different course. Low interest rates encouraged oil companies to overleverage and overinvest in low-returning projects. In late 2014, the Organization for the Petroleum Exporting Countries Plus boosted production, leading to a supply glut that caused oil prices to collapse by 70% and energy stocks to plummet.

Poor returns made it easy for dividend-hungry short-term investors to embrace ESG mandates for reduced fossil-fuel production and net-zero emissions targets. Long-term investors usually serve as a check against short-termism, but the ESG movement applied a veneer of prudence and moral virtue.

Thus over the same period that investors ascribed rich value to uncertain future profits in tech stocks, they abandoned their willingness to do so for energy stocks. As their cost of capital declined, tech companies were free to invest in valuable long-term projects if it meant trading off short-term profitability, while energy companies were under pressure to do the opposite. Merrill Lynch aptly declared energy “arguably... the biggest loser of a rise in ESG investing.”

Three things changed this year. Soaring inflation provided a tailwind for U.S. energy stocks that benefit from higher oil and gas prices. Rising interest rates reduced investors’ risk appetite, which disfavored tech stocks. Most important, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exacerbated oil and gas shortages and highlighted the long-run risks of underinvestment in energy. These factors show that a global transition from fossil fuels won’t happen on the time horizon implied by the prevailing ESG investment consensus.

U.S. energy is positioned for growth. It still trades at historically depressed valuations: Since June 2018, it has underperformed the market even as profits have overperformed. From June 2018 through June 2022, earnings per share for the energy sector rose 93%. Stock prices dipped 3%. In the tech sector, earnings rose only 73%, yet stock prices rose 82%. U.S. energy stocks would have to appreciate 3.5 times to achieve their historical relative value versus technology stocks since 1990. Add potential for increased earnings by meeting supply shortages, and the potential for P/E expansion as investors ascribe greater terminal value to fossil-fuel producers, and there is still ample room to run.

U.S. energy indexes have already caught the beginnings, appreciating 58% year to date, but stocks haven’t yet priced in the potential scale of a looming supply-demand imbalance for oil and gas. Global demand has been artificially suppressed by China’s zero-Covid policies and the Biden administration’s tapping the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, now at its lowest inventory since 1984. The European Union’s ban on Russian oil is due to take effect in December, creating the potential for a global supply shock. OPEC producers have already signaled they are producing oil at near-maximum capacity, presenting an opportunity for U.S. energy to fill the vacuum.

Some investors may be deterred by regulatory headwinds, but policy changes are quietly shifting in favor of the sector. In June the Supreme Court held in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that the EPA exceeded its statutory authority in forcing coal and gas producers to subsidize renewables, a decision that could neuter broader regulations on oil and gas. The Biden administration appears to be loosening restrictions and softening its posture on drilling permits in response to political pressure.

A key obstacle: ESG-linked asset managers remain the largest shareholders of publicly traded U.S. energy companies. They have imposed scope 3 emissions caps (Chevron) and climate-change strategies (Exxon) that constrain U.S. energy companies from making necessary investments in fossil-fuel production. JP Morgan estimates by 2030 oil and gas companies will require an additional $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion in capital expenditures to meet demand. Chronic underinvestment in production now leaves the world at risk of sustained oil and gas shortages. In the name of minimizing negative externalities, these ESG investors have created externalities of their own by encouraging decarbonization in the absence of feasible alternatives.

If post-ESG investors deliver a different shareholder mandate—to invest in greater production and meet long-run demand—U.S. energy companies can outperform. Warren Buffett, who last year criticized BlackRock-backed ESG mandates at Berkshire Hathaway as “asinine,” has quietly amassed U.S. energy exposure, going from no reported publicly traded holdings at the start of this year to a 20.9% stake in at least one large publicly traded U.S. energy company as of late September. One of us (Mr. Sokol) served as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, with an equity value of approximately $90 billion today and widely regarded as one of Mr. Buffett’s best acquisitions. The other founded a new asset manager that mandates energy companies to focus exclusively on long-run profitability over ESG factors.

If other market participants defect from the ESG-driven consensus, that will drive energy-sector outperformance. Trends already point in that direction: May 2022 marked the first month in three years that ESG funds saw their inflows decline. As Mr. Buffett wrote during the early stages of U.S. stock-price recovery after the 2008 crisis, “if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.”

As the season of the tech giants fades to winter, the resurgence of energy may bound into spring—especially if investors sow the seeds by delivering a new shareholder mandate to the sector. Four of the five largest companies in the world by market capitalization are U.S. tech companies (the fifth is an oil company, Saudi Aramco). Only one U.S. energy company, Exxon Mobil, cracks the top 10. As recently as 2013, Exxon was the largest company in the world. It could be again.

Mr. Ramaswamy is executive chairman of Strive Asset Management and author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam” and “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.” Mr. Sokol is chairman and CEO of Teton Capital and a co-author of “America in Perspective: Defending the American Dream for the Next Generation.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bullish...tt-11666611839

As you know eccieuser, I love Reagan. If I were a heterosexual female instead of a heterosexual male, I'd probably drag out my vibrator and put on the youtube video of his "Bring down that wall Mr. Gorbachev" speech whenever I wanted to get off. Originally Posted by Tiny

Daayyumm, tiny. That's too much information! I'm beginning to wonder about you. Are you trying to curry favor with the OP by hinting you have gender-fluid fantasies about Ronnie? There's really no need for you to change your gender identity.

WTF has long had homo-erotic Reagan fantasies of his own, involving the stimulation of his elusive "sweet spot". He gets all hot and excited every time he gazes at a Laffer Curve. Its shape reminds him of his preferred sex organ. His kinky imagination even visualizes it as part of Ronnie's anatomy, if you catch my drift.