Oily E&P

Fun fact: Australia’s biggest export is boomerangs. It’s also their biggest import. What actor could never play Quasimodo? Humpfree Bogart Doctor: Your body ran out of magnesium. Me: 0mg. The urge to sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight is just a whim away. A client writes: Paul! One day doesn’t make a market, but your next letter can’t come soon enough. Is the run in oil done? Dear clients, Key bear triggers were twofold yesterday. First, […]

At the last in-person Shell analyst meeting at the NYSE, I raced the head of upstream in a life-sized side-by-side Pennzoil NASCAR simulator and then moved on to talk to CEO Ben van Buerden. One key message: sell the Permian. My argument was that Shell would never be recognized as a Permian player, would never get credit, even if they out-performed the industry, and valuations were riding high. Shell should be a mega-project player in […]

The note today is delayed by England vs Croatia, thankfully the currently ongoing Austria vs North Macedonia game is not imperative for me to watch.  There are some great slides in today’s presentation. For example on how solar projects do not deliver their IRR, on worrying Indian oil demand, on the global petchem balance by company, and our new mega-theme, of new young CEOs following through on our “Renaissance” theme of US E&Ps. This new […]

What do you call an Engineer who doesn’t know how to use a calculator? A project manager. What did the medieval knight say when he got caught doping? “I was just getting my lance arm strong.” What’s the worst thing about wild alligators? Their wild allegations. Did you hear about the guy who invented the knock-knock joke? He won the no bell prize. There were two big moments in the market yesterday, the inflation number, […]

I’ve just had my vaccine, but they administered it in my leg. My Pfizer hurting. I got my first shot. I’ll get my second one as soon as I get the bartender’s attention. Why do gay people have parades in June? Because Pride comes before the Fall. What do you call an Englishman at the Euro 2021 soccer final? Referee. Surgeon: “Don’t be nervous Jeff, you should be able to handle this operation easily.” Patient: […]

Last week, we highlighted Tellurian traction on Reddit Wallstbets. Today, they announced a further deal. Tonight we have Mark Viviano of activist Kimmeridge on Happy Hour (5pm ET) for a general discussion, such as pertains to a 3rd ExxonMobil board seat going to the activist slate (announced yesterday), views on the market dynamics that are occurring thanks to activism, etc. Mark has deep experience as a long-only investor at Wellington management. This is expressly NOT […]

The ostrich school of analysis would suggest that I resolutely defend my short term bear call on oil and oil stocks made only at lunchtime on Monday, but the fact is that no sooner had I hit send on the email to clients and website post, than the short term thesis caught fire and sank like Iran’s biggest warship just did: June 2, 2021, Associated Press: “The largest warship in the Iranian navy caught fire […]

OIL RISK HIGH. We have an OPEC meeting tomorrow, and the word is that Iran is pumping into storage on anticipation of successful negotiations with the Biden administration, which, for reasons I do not fully understand, is very keen to make a nuclear deal. This will allow Iran back into global oil markets. We understand that OPEC is warning Iran not to flood the market, and Iran is saying “we are going to flood the […]

Of course one of the most egregious aspects of Oxy’s deal for Anadarko was that a shareholder vote was deliberately avoided by CEO Vicki Hollub. This doubly bad because a preferred $10bn deal with Warren Buffett was the route taken to get a deal cash-rich enough to avoid a shareholder vote. Activist Carl Icahn took revenge by issuing warrants to all shareholders – but not to preferred Buffett – and effectively capped the Oxy share […]

We have Valero CEO Joe Gorder and team on Happy Hour this Thursday at 5pm. This is great timing, even if any time with Joe is good time spent. It is not so much that Memorial Day is imminent, the traditional start of driving season peak US demand, but also this week might be one of the most significant in the US oil history. We are referring to the release of the Ford F150 Lightning […]

Cimarex and Cabot to merge as equals, the new company will be called Cimmabon. No, Cabarrot. Only kidding, they have not announced the new name.  Call at 8:30am ET – imminently. Also we mention Tellurian, which is rising in the meme stock world – most mentioned on Reddit (see lists below). Overall, we love LNG plays, but US export competition is fierce, and our key play is Cheniere, $LNG. Years ago under Souki they snagged […]

Watching Iran, but 1mb/d of oil exports are already in the market. Huge week ahead for ExxonMobil, with the Shareholder Meeting and board vote on Wednesday this week. We wrote about it on Thursday, see the note on www.sankeyresearch.com or emailed. Noted that Halliburton shareholders rejected the company’s pay proposal last week, which is encouraging. The pay of oil executives relative to shareholder returns has been an abomination for years. Executives should try a few […]

Good day, The week ended with the guided announcement from Marathon Petroleum that its deal with Seven & i to sell the massive Speedway gasoline retail network had closed for $21bn cash, and upside guidance from Marathon Petroleum on an imminent Dutch Auction for $4bn of stock, within a $10bn open buyback authorization. It was uncertain how much debt would be paid down, but that was announced light at $2.5bn. MPLX, the 63% MPC-owned MLP, […]

*INVITATION * Today * 10am ET * – Happy Coffee with Li-Cycle CEO Ajay Kochhar. Ajay is extremely strong on all things to do with his business, of re-cycling lithium-ion batteries. By extension, he is extremely strong on batteries, EVs, and particularly Li-Ion factories. He is absolutely at ease with battery market dynamics. Join a conversation with Sankey + a few clients. Yesterday the company announced an agreement with Ultium Cells, a joint venture of […]

Noted: private equity selling down $PXD, and Antero $AR issuing. No sooner had we highlighted the Goldilocks oil market, with strong refining margins implying good demand, the potential for further upside in demand from COVID recovery especially in global jet fuel, and the “Saudi Put” back in effect since January, than a bunch of Russian hackers show up and spoil the fun. The issue is that major negative volatility events like this are negative – […]

Happy Mother’s Day! $AMTX – this small-cap generated way more response than my more-or-less throwaway comment on Friday ever intended, highlighting of a Twitter post. It was about related party transactions and we said it read poorly. Because it did. Apologies if your Friday was adversely affected, there is certainly hedge fund interest here. We have some strong bulls on the stock, who have done way more work than I have. The CEO is controversial, […]

A salesman knocks on a door, answered by a 12-year-old boy wearing slippers, an oversized silk dressing gown, smoking a fat cigar in one hand, a huge snifter of brandy in the other. Stunned, the salesman asks “Are your parents in?”  The boy replies “What the fk do you think?” Americans love T shirts. They have the constitutional right to bare arms. Wife: “You need to do more chores around the house.” Husband: “Can we […]

Some quick notes: Low Key Happy Hour tonight, tell me if you are interested. 5pm ET. Clashes with some results. Notably EOG and ET Energy Transfer. Market expects a huge beat from ET on Texas storms, after Kinder blew it out. On EOG, we have seen some market darlings such as XEC with mixed results. Expectations would be high that EOG management quality handled the storm well. There is low expectations for a Devon-style surprise […]

As we hoped, oils’ results are going great. The sector is powering higher, with the overall steady outperformance grind that has resumed in value over growth. The oil price for Q2 is tracking well ahead of these results, further boosting the EPS upgrade cycle. Huge result from Suncor; great commentary on cash return from COP, a surprise beat from Marathon Petroleum with major disposal and buyback coming… good results from head-to-head rivals Diamondback and Aramco, […]

All presentation today, see attached link, after the Sunny Saturday Sankey published yesterday and emailed to you, outlined the past week. The week ahead is extremely busy with results – you can see my diary in the attached presentation. The monster week of earnings is behind us, with impressive results from FMAGA – Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Alphabet. Week ahead also has Secretary of State Blinken travelling to Ukraine. “I can’t tell you that we […]

Winner winner chicken dinner: Hess this past week. ExxonMobil, we think won of the mega-oils. Hess is the “last great oil NAV play” on Guyana, the stock is worth $100/share+ if you believe $80/bbl is coming down the strip; Goldman clearly does, we get there too, with a weak US$ and not dissimilar balances – a demand boom is coming. Wildcards vs GS are Iran and India, alongside the potential for rising US interest rates […]

If you have the strength, Happy Hour Tonight 5pm Register Here:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84981726924 Let’s see who can be the most bullish on the call! Using $60/bbl long term we can get to a $90 net asset value for Hess, but that work is subject to a conversation with the company. At $70 long term oil we get to $100 NAV/share. It is not as crazy as the old Hess, which ostensibly was trading at a 50% […]

Monster week of earnings ahead, a clash in the titanic battle of growth vs value. The forces of growth over-ran us values, but we started a fightback that saw several battles won since the terrible relative lows of August 2020. In Q1 this year, value began to rampage against growth. April has seen a growth fightback, with the US$ holding and US interest rates even rallying. I asked a market player if he was bullish […]

Well, it’s feedback Friday! The age-old client meeting line gets used again: Client Q: “Paul, what is the most common question that clients are asking right now?” Paul A: “What is the most common question that clients are asking you right now?” True joke, but being Friday, we are not done – here they are: Newsflash: US customs have intercepted $2m of lumber being smuggled in shipments of cocaine What do you call an anti-vax […]

Comparative advantage in ideas. Under the fundamental trade principle of comparative advantage (Ricardo, 1817), if you have two goods, and I have two services, we trade; to have one good and service each, more efficiently produced for each. Under a theory of trade of ideas, If we have two ideas each, and we trade; we each have four ideas. THAT’S RIGHT FOLKS, HAPPY HOUR IS BACK, TONIGHT AT 5PM. Muttering to myself about the latest […]

Staring at the blinking red and green Bloomberg ticks, alone in a home office, bombarded with Bitcoin headlines, Gamestop headlines, etc etc, it had become very difficult to make out the wood from the trees regarding the oil and energy call. I went on a road trip. I’m back. As suspected, the oils and energy have been tricky – notably solar has been ugly for the past month and year to date, albeit off a […]

It seems pretty blatantly obvious that Putin is going to invade east Ukraine and join Russian rebel-held territory (see map in Sunday Sankey). He did it with Crimea. Not really a lot you can do, shall we ask Ukraine expert Hunter Biden for his take? There will be a domino effect, because the next question becomes what do you do if China invades Taiwan, given troop build-ups are as big in naval terms in the […]

This week I am heading to Oklahoma to meet Devon CEO Rick Muncrief and then Houston to bid farewell to outgoing ConocoPhillips COO Matt Fox. Opposite ends of the spectrum for me – never met Rick, have hung out many times over the years with Mr. Fox. The lowlight in professional terms with Matt was doing the first marketing trip for COP in NYC after the dividend cut in 2016. The highlight was Matt making […]

What’s Sisyphus’ least favorite band? The Rolling Stones We visited Japan for two weeks and did not see a single ninja. It was really impressive. “Officer, you can’t give me a ticket. I have to go run the marathon tomorrow.” Cop: “That’s not how you play the race card.” The Ketchup shortage this year was so predictable. Heinz sight is 2020. Happy Hour yesterday evening, we had a player whose firm had done a deep […]

BP announced the early achievement of its 35% debt target after the strength of Q1, and we think several unhedged oil companies will surprise with the strength of their profits after a $60/bbl quarter. We believe the overall market has lost track of just how profitable major oils are when oil prices are above $60/bbl, by which we mean the entire S&P500 upstream oil sector, with the major warning on levels of hedging exposure (see […]

Greetings on Easter Sunday, The oil market got excited at the end of the week with the OPEC decision, basically because the “Saudi Put” remains in place, with the tapering of OPEC and particularly Saudi cuts extended through July. While surprised at the scale of the bullish reaction, given that the market had anticipated a rollover of cuts, it has been notable that oil prices have held the $60/bbl range pretty firmly with a bouncing […]

Get ready for a dump of April Fool’s Day OPEC jokes as the Organisation meets formally this week, culminating on Thursday April 1st. Rollover is seen as the most likely outcome, which would be for April, Saudi extending its market control, with recent volatility in oil prices – ie downside moves – seen as the key concern. It’s a never-ending wonder trying to forecast oil markets, and now to be in new era. Here, we […]

Hello Happy Sunday, Calling oil has become very tricky in the short term. Never mind the wider market, where the steadily winning value-over-growth trade has found a new level and turned into a daily battleground. Recently growth has taken a stand, but we think it is doomed. Basically, every time you see 40x EBITDA+ multiples, it’s just a question of how long you can stay solvent vs market irrationality. There are maybe five stocks every […]

My wife and I were sitting in the living room enjoying a bottle of wine. Out of the blue she said, “I love you. ” Surprised, I asked, “Is that you or the wine talking?” “It’s me,” she said, “talking to the wine.” What do you call a rich Centipede? A Dollarpede A mushroom walks into a bar and the bartender welcomes him. He’s a fun guy. A Freudian slip is where you say one […]

As of writing about the Suez Canal yesterday, we were very early to show how the bulbous nose of the giant ship was buried in the shoreline. That went viral, along with the shape the ship drew on satnav maps before entering the canal. The former, the buried nose of massively heavy vessel wedged in the sand, seems to be a major problem, and there was feedback on my comment that “two dudes in hi-viz […]

The first slide considered at the Chevron virtual analyst meeting 2021 was pretty depressing. The company showed an adjusted ROCE of 2.9% and a plan to get this to 10% by 2025. On a day when Tesla had the biggest single move by any stock in history (20% up move added $140bn, or more than the entire value of TOTAL in one day) the investment merits of a major oil taking its ROCE from 3% […]

This past week saw the worst market for US crude since modern records begin in 1990. We saw the lowest US domestic crude oil demand in thirty years or more. Who would have known it from the oil price action and oil market mood? Right when the scale of the Texas crisis hit, in terms of lost power, I was writing to you and on Bloomberg TV saying that this is a full-scale national crisis, […]

One great business for sure is going to be lubricants for windmills. Guess who dominates the specialty oil lubes for windmills market? ExxonMobil. Guess who has their annual analyst day this week? ExxonMobil. March 3rd 9am Eastern, we get the latest iteration of The Big Unit’s story. Will they, like $EOG, get attracted like a moth to the flame of promising growth? We suspect ExxonMobil will, not that we have a problem with their Guyana […]

Field trip. Speaking to Devon yesterday after their results, I asked to visit the company in Oklahoma, which seemed somewhat ludicrous in the circumstances. There is an energy emergency in Texas and Oklahoma, in case you have been asleep all week. However a visit is okay to go, so if any clients wish to join me on a Oklahoma/Texas run in the week of March 15th, the plan will be to get through next week’s […]

The current energy crisis is much bigger than most people realize. This is a global crisis. The largest energy outage in US history. In the middle of a brutal winter, globally. Stay tuned, this crisis is just starting. An outage of this scale in Texas is world scale. The entire US and Atlantic Basin energy market is based on a core of Texas/US Gulf Coast. A lot of the debate currently is, as so often […]

Snowing again here in Brooklyn Heights. One thing that is very striking in this week’s charts is the 6-10 Day weather forecast for North America. It is freeeeezing. Bluest map I can remember publishing, and we publish it just about every week in mid-winter and high summer. As noted our Happy Hour this past week was very bullish oil, basically the call is that oil just went up 15% in a month and is rising […]

Max bullish oil here, buy oil leverage. That was the Happy Hour call last evening. By November last year we were saying “All in on the equities” and we ended the year with six investment grade oil stocks and six speculative oil stocks with the call: “buy both groups.” Key specifics: 2022 oil futures a bargain at $52/bbl, Oxy for operational (Brent) and financial (massive debt) leverage. MEG in Canada. Watch out for natgas exposure […]

Pondering the results and performance of Marathon Petroleum and ConocoPhillips, led me to thinking to what is really working for clients. The answer below is solar, but onwards! The issue is that Marathon Petroleum is mildly outperforming the XLE energy ETF, ConocoPhillips under-performing, so what? This is a swing for the fences market. Note we do have speculative stock picks, and investment stock picks every week in the Sunday Sankey, and these are both on […]

The feeling is that oil price action this past week was very bullish given that it is traditionally-weak January and it held up vs US$ up and market down moves. Major clients are highlighting SPACs. We see the SPAC route as a major outlet to address the market imbalance between investment $ seeking renewable energy opportunities, and lack of renewable energy market cap plays. In today’s Sunday Sankey we replicate several slides published by Houston […]

Yep! It’s Friday! I called the RobinHood helpline about Gamestop and they said “Please Hold”. Got it. I want to put my life savings into the stock – its called Gamespot Total Landscaping right? The Biden team is monitoring the Gamestop situation and will let the American people know when it is time to buy a Legend of Zelda chess set in a dented box. AMC is issuing a ton of stock, but Gamestop is […]

Quote of the day: SINGAPORE, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Shares in small Australian nickel and cobalt explorer GME Resources GME.AX jumped as much as 53% on Thursday, apparently driven by the similarity of its stock ticker code to U.S. retail investor darling GameStop GME.N. Looking forward to Happy Hour tonight! This should be a good one. As always 5pm – please register interest. Just ping me an email to join, it is a great client-only […]

Quote of the day: “Will the SEC step in to protect Wall St from aggressive Mom & Pop traders?” – Joe Weisenthal A client who was long a lot of Concho stock for many years, bitterly opposed the company selling itself. In the context of the decision by Concho management to sell at the bottom, completely against my client/Concho shareholder’s view of best shareholder interests, the payment by ConocoPhillips of around $10m to three top […]

“Does anybody in Washington care about the deficit? I mean 25% of all dollars ever printed were printed in 2020, and the total stimulus at $5trn, so far, exceeds the GDP of Germany… and Biden plans more…” I asked Frank Kelly, head of government affairs at DB, as we sat in Great Falls, just outside Washington DC, in a gastropub. We had driven past the preposterous mansions that line the road of this former farming […]

DC chat today, it’s Friday! Travelling to Atlanta via Washington and Durham today with son Max. I accidentally sprayed my son’s deodorant into my mouth this morning. Now when I talk I have this weird Axe scent. If you lose one of your senses, your other senses are heightened. That’s why people with no sense of humour have a heightened sense of self-importance. I told my wife I was making a bicycle out of spaghetti. […]

One of the great recent charts has been the index performance of unprofitable stocks shown below. It is notable that this index has basically doubled since the last quarterly reporting season. We expect the current reporting season to underline how insane valuations have become across non-profitable sections of the market. Furthermore, quarterly results will provide full year 2020 results and some kind of outlook for 2021. Equally, for the oils, what might be good results […]