Energy Roundup: Oil markets are once again reacting to renewed uncertainty in the Middle East as the Strait of Hormuz remains operating well below pre-war shipping levels and no formal peace agreement has been reached. 🔹 Brent crude has climbed sharply over the past week as prolonged supply disruptions and ceasefire instability continue to pressure global energy markets 🔹 Several US E&P operators are now cautiously increasing drilling activity and 2026 capital spending plans in response to expectations for higher-for-longer oil prices 🔹 The upcoming Louisiana Energy Conference will feature extensive discussions around energy transition, LNG, carbon capture, power generation, nuclear, infrastructure, and future energy investment themes Read Richard Tullis's full report for all the details! #Energy# #Oil# #NaturalGas# #OilandGas# #MiddleEast# #EnergyMarkets# #LNG# #Infrastructure# #Investing# #WaterTowerResearch#

Natural gas prices are at one of their cheapest levels in history relative to oil prices. Historically, those dislocations don’t persist when demand is accelerating. And right now, the demand side story for natural gas is quietly becoming one of the strongest in decades.

Australia has approved a natural gas project off the coast of Victoria state, as the major exporter of the fuel looks to offset anticipated domestic shortfalls in the more populated southeast

"We're continuing to ramp up U.S. natural gas exports," says @SecretaryWright in Louisiana. "It will be a record again this year. It was a record last year. We're up to about 20 Bcf/day of natural gas that we export, which is roughly double the 2nd and 3rd largest exporters."

Across 26 years, Berkshire Hathaway has invested $11.3 billion of capital directly into Berkshire Hathaway Energy, by acquiring MidAmerican Energy, Northern Natural Gas, Kern River Gas Transmission, PacifiCorp, and NV Energy. It has also continued to re-invest all of BHE's earnings back into the business -- that's another $50+ billion. These investments have produced have produced zero cash dividends for Berkshire. Not a nickel. And, in 2024, the value of these assets were written down by more than $40 billion when the estate of Walter Scott sold its interests. Today the entire remaining carrying value of the subsidiary is gravely at risk from a potential $50 billion wildfire liability. But, that's not the biggest risk. The biggest risk is the company's enormous (~$40 billion) investment into wind generation. Buffett and Munger believed in Peak Oil. They committed a massive amount of Berkshire’s capital over the past quarter-century to a strategy that was rational only if Peak Oil was correct. The strategy emphasized wind and solar generation, transmission build-out across western timber and rangeland states, and the gradual replacement of hydrocarbon-fired generation in service territories where customers would, the thesis assumed, increasingly pay premium rates for non-hydrocarbon electricity in a world of structurally rising oil and gas prices. But the Peak Oil was bunk, as any rational economist could have predicted it would be. Since 2005, U.S. liquid hydrocarbon production has increased 4x. The structural oil and gas price level fell, on a real basis, by approximately 50% over the period of the strategy’s implementation. The customer base that was supposed to pay premium rates for renewable electricity in a hydrocarbon-scarce world is, instead, demanding lower rates in a hydrocarbon-abundant one, and the regulators who set those rates have responded. Munger died in November 2023 still on the record believing oil and gas was “absolutely certain to be incredibly short and very high priced.” His Peak Oil thesis had been falsified, by an order of magnitude, in real time, in his own country, for a decade. The financial press, which has spent fifteen years celebrating Buffett’s late-life evolution into a clean-energy visionary (cue the Kumbaya music), has not, to my knowledge, published a single feature article questioning why BHE's carrying value was marked down by $40+ billion -- the largest capital loss in Buffett's entire career. The story is sitting in the open. I do not know why nobody else is telling it.

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