EP226: End of Summer Macro Thoughts

And then number six, how will any country overcome China's overwhelming manufacturing dominance in so many areas? So let me start with the natural gas, which has really been a through theme for all aspects of where we are in energy and power.

And it's come up in almost every meeting or interaction or event I attended.

That includes a broad range of companies and constituents.

Many of you may know me from my history covering more of the traditional oil and gas side of the world, which would be EMPs and maybe some midstreams, but there's obviously a huge LNG space now.

at Veriton and through other affiliations, I have the great opportunity to interact with utilities and power producers and power infrastructure names, people across the power generation value chain, different technologies that they're using.

It's not just US, it's Canada, it's Europe, it's Asia, it's around the world and all these different groups.

from different geographies and different sub-sectors within energy, power, technology, and industrials, there is a common question that, in essence, they're all asking, which is, do we, do I, does Veriton, does myself as publisher, Super Spike, do we believe in the outlook for natural gas? And I think that question of, do we have confidence in demand, I think it stems from really still the reaction and the scars left from that very crazy 2020 to 2023 net zero climate crisis, ESG type environment where people cast doubt on whether natural gas had a future role.

And I think that worldview we've pushed back on enough times now that you all are going to be tired of me saying it.

But I think there are a lot of issues that you all know, and it especially applies to natural gas.

I think I've specifically been very vocal on our obliterating peak oil demand view.

I believe that view, I believe we've been right on that for the last three years and will continue to be right.

We have mentioned it, we've written about it, but we have not been as vocal on the similar view of obliterating peak natural gas demand.

And believe it or not, the IEA in their net zero reports, you know, the oil view got a lot of attention, but they also had a view that natural gas demand was peaking.

And it wasn't just the IEA.

You can see it in other respectable organizations like the Oxford Energy Institute had various versions of peak natural gas demand.

There's been many different calls calling to question post 2030 global natural gas demand.

And we push back as hard, if not harder on that view that we do on the Wall of View, but I think is the remnants of those reports and those outlooks that have caused so many people to wonder, what does the growth outlook look like? I think the other thing that's getting confused here a little bit is I think everyone knows that power demand, especially in the OECD and especially in the United States and Canada, was generally pretty flat over the last 10 to 20 years and has only recently inflected positively and now looks like it's going to grow at a healthy or decent clip going forward.

That is very different than natural gas, which never stopped growing.

We've had substantial natural gas growth over the last 10 years of which power has actually been a piece.

So natural gas has gained share in general.

most obviously relative to coal in the power generation stack, but the biggest growth driver in the US has been LNG exports, and then other sources of natural gas demand has also generally increased.

When we look back at the last decade of growth in natural gas demand, our forecast for the decade ahead are not that different to be honest.

There's going to be a huge chunk from LNG.

There's going to be some industrial demand growth.

And power, we think, does continue to grow.