In short
Odd Lots Podcast Summary
Episode Title: War in Iran Is Redrawing the Map for Natural Gas Hosts: Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway Guest: Bob Brackett, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Bernstein & Co. Air Date: March 17, 2023
Episode Overview In this episode, the hosts discuss how the war in Iran is affecting global natural gas markets, particularly in light of Qatar's significant role as a major gas supplier. They examine the disruption caused by the conflict, the infrastructure damage, and the implications for U.S. natural gas exports, amidst a shifting natural gas landscape.
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Key Discussions
- Impact of War on Natural Gas Supply
- The conflict in Iran is primarily seen as an oil shock, but it significantly affects natural gas.
- Qatar's natural gas supply is currently cut off from global markets due to the war.
- Damage to infrastructure poses a long-term challenge for gas supply recovery.
- U.S. Natural Gas Export Dynamics
- The U.S. is becoming a prominent natural gas exporter, with significant increases in export volumes since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
- Bob Brackett highlights that U.S. natural gas prices (e.g., Henry Hub) are undervalued amidst rising demand.
- Geopolitical Context
- The importance of natural gas has increased due to geopolitical tensions and previous crises (e.g., the Ukraine conflict).
- Countries like Pakistan, heavily reliant on gas imports, face shortages and urgent supply concerns.
- Market Mechanisms and Pricing
- Unlike oil, natural gas pricing is fragmented—there is no single global price due to the high costs associated with transportation and liquefaction.
- Bob Brackett explains the distinctions between global LNG markets and how shifting dynamics can affect various regions.
- Infrastructure Limitations
- Infrastructure damage can create prolonged supply disruptions, with potential impacts on global LNG market stability.
- The challenges associated with rebuilding damaged infrastructure can lead to significant delays in restoring supply.
- Natural Gas and Commodity Correlations
- The discussion touches upon the correlations between natural gas prices and other commodities, such as coal, which may be utilized as substitutes during gas shortages.
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Key Takeaways
- Natural Gas as the "Forgotten Molecule": Bob Brackett refers to U.S. natural gas as "the forgotten molecule," indicating its current lack of attention despite underlying demand drivers.
- Supply Chain Dynamics: The war in Iran and the geopolitical context require significant rethinking of global supply chains, especially regarding energy resources.
- U.S. LNG Export Growth: The rapid growth in U.S. LNG exports is reshaping global energy dynamics, with potential implications for prices and resource availability domestically and abroad.
- Future Projections: Looking forward, the episode concludes that natural gas markets are likely to experience volatility, driven by geopolitical tensions and infrastructure challenges.
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Conclusion This episode of Odd Lots provides a detailed analysis of the implications of the war in Iran on natural gas markets, illustrating the complexity of geopolitical influences and market dynamics in the global energy landscape. Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway, alongside Bob Brackett, delve into the nuances of natural gas pricing, supply disruptions, and the growing importance of U.S. exports in the wake of international tensions.
For more insights from this episode, visit [Odd Lots on Bloomberg](http://bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOUnderstanding the Impact of War on Commodities
2:25 to 3:03
Discussing how the war in Iran affects not just oil but also natural gas and other commodities.
“That's the number that most people are paying attention to.”
Supply Chain Dynamics in the Current Crisis
3:03 to 4:00
Exploring the implications of supply chain disruptions due to war, focusing on the Strait of Hormuz.
“But one of the big headlines today is that Iran has just struck one of the big gas fields in the UAE, which is the Shaw Field in the sort of empty quarter area.”
Natural Gas Geopolitics and Market Dynamics
4:00 to 5:00
Analyzing the geopolitical implications and pricing dynamics of natural gas markets.
“And I think NatGas in particular had these sort of geopolitical connotations even before the war with Iran.”
The Forgotten Molecule: Natural Gas Today
5:00 to 6:12
Bob Brackett discusses the current state and future prospects of natural gas.
“And so it turns out that now is the perfect time for the perfect guest.”
Understanding Gas Pricing Structures
6:12 to 7:40
Explaining the complexities of gas pricing compared to oil and the global market situation.
“But just broadly, though, you were pretty spot on when it came to Nat Gas.”
Iran's Role in the Global Gas Market
7:40 to 8:45
Examining Iran's position in the global gas market and its impact on supply chains.
“I was sort of thinking about this on the way in.”
Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) Market Insights
8:45 to 9:45
Discussing the dynamics of the LNG market and competition among major players.
“Then it's a couple bucks to get it to market, Henry Hub, through pipelines.”
Current Trends in European Gas Pricing
9:45 to 14:00
Analyzing current trends and pricing in the European gas market post-Russia invasion.
“largest gas field on the planet, and the Qataris call it Northfield, and that extends into Iranian territory where it's kind of parsed.”
Understanding European Gas Prices
14:02 to 14:47
Explore the factors affecting European gas prices and seasonal trends.
“Some of that is, it always felt, I remember in the end of 2021, people were wondering why Europe gas prices were so high.”
The Rise of LNG Exports in the U.S.
14:48 to 16:37
Learn about the growth of LNG exports from the U.S. and its implications.
“has been the rise of LNG exports, obviously the export terminals.”
Show all 24 chapters
Challenges in LNG Production
16:38 to 18:07
Understand the logistics and timeframes involved in ramping up LNG production.
“In a situation like this, what's your gut check on how fast LNG producers can really ramp things up, both logistically and then just in terms of their sheer willingness and, I guess, in the face of their shareholders?”
Impact of LNG Exports on Domestic Prices
21:43 to 23:23
Discuss the effects of increasing LNG exports on domestic gas prices.
“See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures.”
Demand Elasticity in Natural Gas
23:24 to 25:30
Examine how demand for natural gas reacts to price changes and market conditions.
“your shale oil inventory five to 10 years from now looks pretty lean.”
Qatari Production and Infrastructure Resilience
25:31 to 26:52
Analyze the resilience of Qatari LNG production amidst geopolitical tensions.
“in the beginning, setting aside the Strait of Hormuz, just pure infrastructure destruction.”
Geopolitical Implications for Global Gas Markets
26:53 to 28:00
Understand the implications of geopolitics on global gas market trends.
“You have decades of experience in this space.”
Geopolitical Impacts on Natural Gas Pricing
28:00 to 29:22
Explore the influence of geopolitics on global natural gas pricing and market dynamics.
“And these things are moving by the minute.”
The Role of LNG and Diversity of Supply
29:22 to 31:31
Discover how LNG market dynamics and diversity of supply strategies affect global energy security.
“They can look east and they can look west.”
Challenges in LNG Distribution and Strategic Choices
31:31 to 32:58
Understand the challenges in LNG distribution and the strategic choices utilities face.
“And so the challenge is there is probably there are two tons of demand for every LNG cargo, right?”
Exploring the Sulfur Market
36:49 to 40:24
An analysis of the sulfur market and its significance in various industries.
“In the grand tradition of us interviewing Bob, I'm just going to throw out a random commodity.”
Current Trends in Commodity Prices
40:24 to 42:05
Examine the surge in prices of various commodities influenced by geopolitical events.
“It's pretty abundant and there will be sources and there are lots and lots of copper smelters that can help convert it.”
Impact of Middle Eastern Energy on Global Markets
42:05 to 42:55
Learn how the Middle East's energy sources affect global pricing and infrastructure.
“Zinc smelters are similar, not quite as energy intensive.”
U.S. Energy Policies and Tariffs
42:55 to 45:26
Explore the effect of tariffs and policy decisions on the U.S. energy sector.
“We were at a little manufacturer of oil country tubular goods, and they were talking about, you know, the fluctuating price of steel and how this was creating all kinds of issues.”
Globalization vs. Resource Sovereignty
45:26 to 47:58
Examine how recent geopolitical events reshape global resource allocation and sovereignty.
“So the question is, how do you get somebody to drill more in Texas?”
The Intersection of Oil Prices and U.S. Politics
47:58 to 49:44
Understand the political implications of fluctuating oil prices on domestic energy producers.
“Or if a geopolitician convinces you of that, then there's going to be a lot of asset investment in the physical economy.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Tracy Alloway:Running a business means dealing with a lot of overly complicated software, and most CRMs tend to follow the same pattern. They're packed with endless features you'll never use, interfaces that feel clunky, and teams end up spending way too much time just trying to find basic information. Today's sponsor, Pipedrive, is a simple CRM tool designed for small and medium businesses. Pipedrive brings you entire sales processes into one dashboard, giving you a crystal clear, complete view of sales processes and customer information designed to help teams stay in control and close more deals faster. It all centers around the visual sales pipeline, where you can see every deal, what stage it's in, and what needs to happen next.
0:35Tracy Alloway:Since everything is in one platform, PipeDrive is designed to unite your team, keep track of sales tasks, and stay on top of your leads. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople, for salespeople, and join the over 100 ,000 companies already using PipeDrive. Right now, you'll get a 30-day free trial. No credit card or payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com slash simpleCRM to get started. That's pipedrive.com slash simpleCRM. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need.
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2:03Tracy Alloway:Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News.
2:18Tracy Alloway:Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal. And I'm Tracy Alloway. So Tracy, you know, the war in Iran is primarily, at least from a commodity standpoint, being understood as like an oil shock. That's the number that most people are paying attention to. That is the headline, sure. But as we know from multiple episodes we've already done, it's not just an oil region. And of course, we've been talking about fertilizer in one of our episodes. We did the episode on other sort of dryball commodity shipping that's affected by the closure or the almost closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
2:51Tracy Alloway:There's plenty there. It's not just an oil story. Yeah, the one silver lining of all of this, I guess, is that we're all becoming commodities, supply chain commodities experts and petrochemicals as well. I should just say we're recording this on March 17th because who knows what's going to happen by the time this episode comes out. But one of the big headlines today is that Iran has just struck one of the big gas fields in the UAE, which is the Shaw Field in the sort of empty quarter area. And it's on fire. So pretty dramatic footage, which definitely does tend to concentrate your mind on one particular commodity, which is gas.
3:29Tracy Alloway:Well, there's sort of like two dimensions of the supply chain disruption, isn't there? Because there is the fact that for the most part, there are very few vessels going through the Strait of Hormuz. and people are sort of wondering when will that open again, right? But then there's the other question of, as you just mentioned, there's a lot of damage to core infrastructure of various sorts. And so setting aside when the strait opens, how badly will the production infrastructure be impaired and how long will that go on? That's a sort of separate dimension besides just the passing of the ships.
4:00Tracy Alloway:Right. And I think NatGas in particular had these sort of geopolitical connotations even before the war with Iran. And we're all used to thinking about, you know, big strategic pipelines and thinking about potential disruptions to those. Back when Russia invaded Ukraine, there was obviously a European gas crisis. And so everyone's kind of worried about Europe once again. Yes. There's a lot to discuss. Totally. I saw a headline today also on the train here talking about how like Pakistan is very serious. It's like they have like a month of NAD gas right now, and they're heavily dependent on gas from the region.
4:35Tracy Alloway:Of course, the fertilizer story, as we learned, urea downstream from NAD gas, et cetera. Anyway, last year, we did our live episode with one of our favorite commodities guests, Bob Brackett. And I recall as we were walking out of the theater, I was like, Bob, we got to have you back on just for like an episode. Let's pick a commodity. and he said, let's talk about next time I'm on, let's talk about node gas. I was like, all right. And so it turns out that now is the perfect time for the perfect guest. The perfect time for the perfect guest. We are going to be speaking with Bob Brackett, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst covering North American oil and gas exploration and production and global metals and mining at Bernstein Research.
5:17Tracy Alloway:So Bob, thank you so much for coming back on AdLoss. Thanks for having me, Joe. Thanks for having me, Tracy. When I said we should do an episode on one commodity, at that time, why did your mind immediately go to net gas? Was that the big story in your mind? So one, and I've told clients this, I am most useful when I am least loved. And the problem with being a cyclical commodity analyst is everyone will ask me about whatever is the highest on the screen. That's the thing that's going to mean revert lower. The money has already been made there. And therefore, you should be looking at the things that no one's really talking about.
5:53So I would argue today, Henry Hubb, U.S. natural gas, not the LNG stuff that's shut in, not other commodities. Henry Hubb is unloved, sitting at$3 an MCF while we have all of these underlying demand drivers in the U.S. So it's the forgotten molecule today. The forgotten molecule. I like that.
6:13Tracy Alloway:But just broadly, though, you were pretty spot on when it came to Nat Gas. because I remember last year you turned bullish after like 15 years of being bearish, something like that. So I know you're too modest to say that you got that call correct, but directionally things seem to be going your way. Yeah. So I've been at Bernstein covering the energy space, yeah, nigh on 15, 16 years. And for most of that time, we've had these giant disruptions. First, we had shale gas where the entire oil and gas complex was drilling and learning curves of how do you frack gas? How do you get it out? We drove the cost of shale gas down to$3.50 at MCF.
6:53And then shale oil comes along the way and just hands out, gives away the associated gas from oil-directed drilling. And so you've had a big chunk of the cost curve that doesn't really care what the price of gas is. It's a byproduct. Waha gas prices go negative at time to time. It doesn't slow down the oil drilling. And then finally, you're starting to see the light where in the same way that the shale oil industry became well-behaved kind of in 2018, the shale gas industry, and especially the Haynesville shale sitting down there on the border of Louisiana and Texas, starts to behave itself. And in a world where you have these really strong structural demand drivers to the upside and you have discipline on the supply side, that's a nice time to come into a sector.
7:38Amazing.
7:39Tracy Alloway:Perfect setup. One more sort of setup question. I was sort of thinking about this on the way in. When I think about oil, there's various grades of oil and there's various prices, but basically there's one global price of oil and everything trades at a little bit of a spread to that, depending a little bit on geography and depending a little bit on grade and light sweet and heavy sour, whatever it is. My impression, and tell me if I'm wrong, is that with gas, the story is like there's one type of gas, but there is absolutely not one global market because the exact flip side of oil, the supply chain is just so radically fractured.
8:16Yeah, if you think about it, a VLCC, very large crude carrier, holds 2 million barrels of oil. And oil today is 100 bucks a barrel. I couldn't have said that three, four weeks ago. And the movement, the cost of moving that halfway across the world, a few bucks a barrel. So for a couple percent, I can take my product, deliver it to you wherever you want. Anywhere. You go to LNG, the cost of getting shale gas out of the Marcellus from two miles down and two miles out through the fractures is less than a dollar. Then it's a couple bucks to get it to market, Henry Hub, through pipelines. If I want to ship it, it costs me two and a half bucks to liquefy it, another buck and a half to put it on a vessel, send it somewhere, and then regas it.
9:03And so 80, 90 % of the cost of gas is in the movement. Wow. And so in that world, all right, you've got a law of one price for oil, right? Because the relative value of the cargo versus the shipping is trivial. With gas, it's all a game of distance and markets, and therefore there is no one price.
9:21Tracy Alloway:So can you maybe just situate us on Iran's place in the sort of, I guess, gas complex of the world? Because, you know, we think about it as a commodities player, but a sort of unreliable commodities player in some respects, you never know what's going to get sanctioned. And nat gas, as we all know, tends to be kind of volatile in and of itself. So what exactly is Iran's role in this particular complex? So we're looking at the largest gas field on the planet, and the Qataris call it Northfield, and that extends into Iranian territory where it's kind of parsed. But you've got something that the numbers get huge, but we think about a TCF of gas is a huge amount of gas.
10:02What's TCF again? So think of a LNG vessel can hold somewhere. The big ones, the Q max is coming out of Qatar could be six BCF, billion cubic feet. A medium one would be four BCF. Got it. And so a TCF would be 250 vessels.
10:19Tracy Alloway:Don't you think four BCF would be a really good boy band name? Yeah. Four BCF, yes. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. I interrupted. I wouldn't have gone there, but yes, 4 BCF. My daughter might be into that. A good Haynesville well, a good Marcellus well might produce over its life 20 BCF. It could load four or five cargoes of LNG. So take that times 1 ,000, and that's the scale of the field, of Northfield. Wow. And it's a gas field. It also produces a lot of condensate associated. And so it's a massive moneymaker. It sits west of the Strait of Hormuz, right? And so all of the LNG coming out of the Gulf, except Oman, is sort of trapped west of the Strait of Hormuz.
11:03Tracy Alloway:Wait, just to be clear, that field is Qatar and Iran? It goes into both? It's a giant structure, largest gas structure on the planet. Okay. And it's shared. Geologically, it's shared. Operationally, it's absolutely not shared. But yes. Operationally, it's all... Operationally, the Northfield, what the Qataris have called Northfield, comes back to Qatar, gets liquefied there, loaded, ships east out through the Strait of Hormuz, typically goes to Asia. This is what I was going to ask. So again, because it's so fractured, is it all Asia? Where's that gas going and who's it competing with? What's that market?
11:37So the global LNG market's about 500 million tons per annum. And the units will kill you. We're going to be converting between Asia of a million. The minute it gets on a vessel, it becomes a ton for whatever reason. And so out of that, Qatar, the three powerhouses of LNG are Qatar, the US, and Australia. The Qataris have the lowest cost fields. The condensate pays for the fields. They're never going to. They could give away the gas and they sign these really long-term contracts around the world, but a lot into Asia. The US is the other powerhouse. It doesn't sign long-term contracts. So if you went back in time and let's say you're a Japanese utility and you're sitting on an island and you need something to burn to spin a turbine and generate electricity, you're sort of indifferent.
12:27I got to bring a vessel in. I could bring a cargo of crude, fuel oil, some diesel or gas. And so I'm sort of indifferent. I'll pay roughly the same price for all of those. And so for half a century, we've always had oil linked contracts for LNG. So when we think about JKM, they're often linked to a crude cocktail price in Japan. The US comes along and breaks that and says, you know what? Just pay me TTF. I'll take Henry Hub. I'll buy Henry Hub off of this flooded market in the US. Yeah. Liquefy it on the Gulf Coast mostly. I'll send it to where you want. And a bunch of merchants will capture that arb.
13:07And so it's a completely different pricing. It's much more of a spot market than these big, heavily contracted Qatari volumes. And so now Asia is running around saying, I got force majeure out of Qatar. I don't have this. I got to go burn something else. And maybe I'll burn somebody else's LNG. But if not, I'll burn coal. I'll burn fuel oil, diesel. I need electrons.
13:31Tracy Alloway:So speaking of arbing the price, so with so many different pricing benchmarks and now this dislocation, are you seeing any weird price movements that people are starting to look at and take advantage of? We're still well under what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine. So certainly Europe prices, and we could call them another alphabet soup, TTF or NBP, but TTF, so a price into the Netherlands, has not gotten to nearly the levels it did to Russia, Ukraine. Some of that is, it always felt, I remember in the end of 2021, people were wondering why Europe gas prices were so high. And they're like, oh, those Russians are terrible.
14:12They don't know how to maintain production. In fact, they were just sort of slowly dialing down the gas in order to tighten the market. And then you invade in winter, February, peak demand. Now we're entering the shoulder season in the spring and in the fall. It's beautiful outside in the Northern Hemisphere, and people don't need that same amount of gas. And so shoulder season is normally a terrible price for gas. So that sort of helps. And what also helps is, you know, to a certain degree, Europe has weaned itself off Russian gas and it feels like it has more options. We'll see how the things turn when we get toward the summer.
14:47Tracy Alloway:Let's talk about, you know, one of the stories in the U.S. has been the rise of LNG exports, obviously the export terminals. Like how much has that scaled up? Today in 2026, how much more are we exporting versus what we were in, say, 2016 or 2021 prior to the invasion of Ukraine? And how much capacity is going to come online in the coming years? Yeah. So if we wound back the clock, there's an interesting historic anecdote that's coming soon. So right now, Qatar is not selling LNG. However, there is an LNG terminal called Golden Pass. It's 30 % Exxon, 70 % Qatar. It sits in Texas. It's loading now.
15:33And so in March, it might be that the next cargo that Qatar sells is a Texas cargo, not a Qatari cargo. And that's because this Golden Pass terminal was an import terminal, right? So if you go back far enough, before shale gas, the strategy in the US was the US is going to run out of gas. It's going to get priced off of the price of diesel, right? I'm going to run out of gas. I'm going to have to need electricity. I'm going to go burn diesel. And so everyone had their favorite strategy. I'm going to build an import terminal and I'll bring in Qatari gas or choose your favorite gas. And that'll save my energy bill.
16:13And then shale gas completely destroyed that strategy. But along the way, ExxonMobil and Qatar had this import terminal They just flipped the switch and said, well, instead of being a regas terminal, let's make it an LNG terminal. And so that is loading as we speak. It'll start to sell cargos as early as this month. And right now that's Qatar gas is only source of revenue until things get fixed in the Middle East.
16:37Tracy Alloway:So speaking of shale, one of the legacies of the shale boom is that a lot of energy companies got very nervous about overexpansion and ramping up supply. In a situation like this, what's your gut check on how fast LNG producers can really ramp things up, both logistically and then just in terms of their sheer willingness and, I guess, in the face of their shareholders? So the gestation period of a shale gas well, if you're super quick, might be two, three quarters, realistically. The gestational period, and of course these aren't gestational periods, of an LNG facility is four years. Wow. So if we anniversary, what happened four years ago?
17:18Russia invades Ukraine. What was the theme that started this year? Oh, there's going to be an LNG glut in 2026 and 2027. And many an incorrect analyst, hand raised, has written about the approaching LNG glut. This event has changed that logic. And so the reason there was a glut this year is because four years ago, everyone ran out and said, I need LNG. I need the cavalry. Quick, call the cavalry. How long is it going to take? Right? Four years. And so the answer is LNG facilities once built run full, right? There's an ability to de-bottleneck and run above nameplate. But basically, there is no spare capacity.
17:58To a certain degree, we had OPEC with a bit of spare capacity that they released in the first, second week of the war. There is no equivalent on LNG. Every cargo would have gotten delivered anyway. So there's no flex in the system, and the system takes more years to fix.
18:29Tracy Alloway:Running a business means dealing with a lot of overly complicated software, and most CRMs tend to follow the same pattern. They're packed with endless features you'll never use, interfaces that feel clunky, and teams end up spending way too much time just trying to find basic information. Today's sponsor, PipeDrive, is a simple CRM tool designed for small and medium businesses. PipeDrive brings you entire sales processes into one dashboard, giving you a crystal clear, complete view of sales processes and customer information designed to help teams stay in control and close more deals faster. It all centers around the visual sales pipeline, where you can see every deal, what stage it's in, and what needs to happen next.
19:05Tracy Alloway:Since everything is in one platform, PipeDrive is designed to unite your team, keep track of sales tasks, and stay on top of your leads. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople, for salespeople, and join the over 100 ,000 companies already using PipeDrive. Right now, you'll get a 30-day free trial, no credit card or payment needed. Just head to Pipedrive.com slash SimpleCRM to get started. That's Pipedrive.com slash SimpleCRM. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business?
19:46Tracy Alloway:My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today with the goal of being 70 % more productive. Yeah. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We're happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology.
20:32It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.
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21:23Tracy Alloway:Go to public.com slash market and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash market. Add paid for by Public Holdings. Brokered services by Public Investing, member FINRA SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, SEC Registered Advisor. Crypto services by ZeroHash. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. So one of the stories that after Russia's invasion of Ukraine was that, well, this is going to be a boon to U.S. gas and we're going to ship them. Are we shipping a lot more LNG to Europe than we were?
21:57And so we go back to this phase where Golden Pass was an import terminal. Yeah. And then we got to about, and so think of U.S. overall gas supply demand is about 120 BCF a day. A couple of years ago, 10 % of that would have been LNG exports. Okay. today, we're getting close to 20 B. It'll be 20%. And so over the next, out to 2030, we'll just be adding multiple BCF a day. And so it is the fastest growing part of US gas demand.
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22:26Tracy Alloway:One of the controversies with export terminals, as you mentioned, not that long ago, we're absolutely swimming in free gas. And there was this concern that, well, if you start exporting it, it raises the domestic price because then you don't have these gluts anymore. Has the rise of LNG exports meaningfully raised the price of domestic gas consumption? I wish. As an E &P investor, that's the dream of all E &P investors. We're sitting here entering the shoulder season in Henry Hub's$3. It got to$5. It got to$6 during the winter where the seasonal demand was the highest. There is no strong evidence that that extra 10 going to 20 % of the demand wedge has changed price, right?
23:08What changes price is where supply equals demand. And up until now, the supply side has been perfectly willing to hand the market as much gas as the world wants, as the US wants at 350. We think that's changed. I think that's changed. I think ultimately, certainly on shale oil, we're approaching a world where oil, your shale oil inventory five to 10 years from now looks pretty lean. You're starting to see oil and gas companies say, well, what do we do in a post shale world, shale oil world? Now, what can we do? We can go international, right? So you've got, you can go to the Middle East and certainly there are people there looking for shale oil and or conventional oil, like the Shaw gas field today.
23:51People are looking at M &A, I'll just acquire my partners. Some people are looking at gas. But yeah, there is a sense that it's always been a finite resource. It had been a growing resource and one where this learning curve had taken cost out every year. You know, that chapter has kind of passed. And now it's a world, if you're in a planning cycle of five to 10 years and you look out five to 10 years, you got to go replace that stuff.
24:15Tracy Alloway:How elastic is demand for something like NatGas? Because I'm used to thinking about it as someone with a house in the Northeast and something that I have to buy every year unless I actually get really good at chopping firewood or something like that. But I imagine there must be some marginal source of demand that actually depends on the price. So there's the demand for that which gas gives you, which electricity, and so there's substitution. So one thing to watch is bubbling behind the scenes, global thermal coal prices are starting to take off. They're up 30 % year to date. What happened when Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe bought every LNG cargo they could, sucked it all the way into Europe.
24:58Asia was left saying, well, we're short electricity. Let's go burn some more coal. Let's consume more. And so thermal coal prices back in Russia, Ukraine, 300 bucks a ton. Started the year at 100 bucks a ton, we're up to 130. And so there's always going to be, there's some demand destruction, but people really like electricity and air conditioning and the things that it gives. And so the answer is you'll start to look for, certainly coal is an obvious place. And then eventually some demand destruction, but that's at kind of much higher levels.
25:30Tracy Alloway:Do you have a read on, Tracy mentioned in the beginning, setting aside the Strait of Hormuz, just pure infrastructure destruction. Do you have a read on like how much sort of Qatari production is going to be impaired in the medium the long term here? So we know LNG terminals have a bit of momentum associated with them. And we've got pretty good experience in the Gulf Coast where hurricanes come through, you bring down your LNG facility, and you bring it back up. Same with oil platforms in the Gulf of America, Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane comes through, you shut in, you come back. And so in general, oil and gas assets are built.
26:06They're built for turnarounds, right? They're built to go down and come back up, especially when you can plan ahead. So you'll get whipsaws on the order of weeks. And so if this is over in weeks, we'll kind of have a big wedge of a month of chaos that'll filter through the economy. And if it goes on for months and months, it's something like if we talk about the big three LNG, the US, Qatar, and Australia, they're kind of each a fifth, a fifth, a fifth of global supply. So something like 20 % of the LNG would be knocked out. And that needs a lot of coal to replace or a lot of demand destruction.
26:43Tracy Alloway:So just on this point, I think commodity markets in particular are very used to fading Middle East flare-ups very quickly. Is there any reason to believe that this time is going to be different? You have decades of experience in this space. Does it feel different to you? As a geologist and not a geopolitician, I'm not sure I'm the perfect guest for that answer. What the market is saying is that we're returning to normal. And so is the market right or wrong? I have a few signposts. And so one of the ones, I'll use oil as an example. When you take the price of oil and you add in the crack spread, which is effectively what does the consumer pay for diesel, for gasoline, et cetera.
27:28When the cost of that gets to 7 % of global GDP, the world says that's too much and you stop using it. And that's where we got in 2022. Today, that'd be about$120 crude, call it about a$60 crack spread. So on my screen, I can show you oil never works a year forward when the cost of oil is 6 % of GDP. And so that's kind of that. Wait, where are we right now? So today we're 100 plus 40. So crack spreads are around 40. And these things are moving by the minute. But yeah, call it about 140. So we're not quite there. But there would be an exit alarm ringing if we did get to kind of 180 crude plus crack spreads.
28:15And then you'd say, I don't need to be a geopolitician. I just know every time this has happened, the global economy has gone blah. Geopolitics is a fake field, isn't it?
28:25Tracy Alloway:No, I don't know about that. But geology feels, sorry, I think geology is more of a science than geopolitics, right? Anyone can fake being a geopolitical expert. Geology doesn't change when you talk about it, but geopolitics changes when you talk about it. So the experimenter influences the experiment. You know, here's something I've wondered about, you know, again, Ned Gass, there's not a global market. But with the rise of LNG, have global markets become somewhat more correlated over time? Are we trending towards a global price of gas? Yes. And in fact, if you think of the role that Saudi Aramco plays when they're setting their official selling prices, they will look east and they'll look west.
29:11And they'll see what are Atlantic Basin prices for oil and what are Pacific Basin. And they're not going to let anybody arb them away, right? So kind of they help set a law of one price. The Qataris that not only are sort of a fifth of LNG today, but growing, right, serve two markets. They can look east and they can look west. And so the idea would be we used to have J-Cam and you'd have LNG market over here and you'd have TTF over here. The Qataris role in the market is to say, no one's going to arm me. We're smarter. We've got more customers than anybody. and they were going to kind of link the price of LNG in Europe to the one in Asia.
29:47So we have kind of the law of one seaborne price of gas. And then you can compete against that. And then I can say, okay, if I build an import terminal here and the shipping is this much and the liquefaction to regas is this much, I can do this project.
30:01Tracy Alloway:What's actually going on with Russian LNG in Europe? Because you hear these very different stories. One is they're phasing out Russian imports. And And then the other story is, well, Russian imports are at a record high. If Russian crude is getting a free pass on this conflict, then Russian LNG will likely get a free pass. And so, yeah, the answer is the longer this conflict takes. If you are a buyer, and who are the big buyers of LNG? Think about Europe, and they're buying it for electricity. Think about Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China. And one of the strategies is diversity of supply is security of supply.
30:40That's kind of been a mantra when you look at the various utilities. And that's been proven absolutely correct. If anyone said, well, the Qataris are giving me the best deal, I'm going to be 100 % linked to them. That was a terrible, in hindsight, choice. And so diversity of supply means Russia has boatloads of gas. They've got pipe loads of gas now. They've got a customer that they're not friendly with anymore. And so their ability to build LNG and eventually, right? The problem with the pipeline is it goes from point A to point B. And so it is a marriage between the person putting stuff in one end of the pipe and the person taking stuff out of the other end.
31:22You can't move that pipe. The beauty of LNG is you don't have to get married. You can kind of have lots of customers with benefits.
31:30Tracy Alloway:You mentioned that, and I remember these stories after the invasion of Ukraine and Europe going around and trying to buy every LNG tanker that it could on the market and that there were poorer countries that essentially just got shut out. What was the next chapter there? What happened? What did they do? Yeah. And so the challenge is there is probably there are two tons of demand for every LNG cargo, right? So there are twice as many tons of regas as there are liquefaction. And the way to think about that is a liquefaction terminal costs$1 ,000 a ton. And the ones in the Gulf Coast are big, 10 million tons.
32:11So you're spending$10 billion for this terminal. Regas terminals are a tenth of that cost. So you invest in liquefaction as a business. Liquefaction is the way out. Yep, exactly.
32:23Tracy Alloway:And regas is the way in. Exactly. So the supplier does the liquefaction. Yep. The buyer does the regas. So you can build regas terminals as an option, right? And therefore, there are twice as many options. And so when the market is tight, you can have two people fighting for every cargo, which brings us back to the person that pays the most gets it. And then the answer is you need another form of source of electricity. And it's developing economies are generally going to have access to coal, right? They'll have coal and power plants, and that's going to be their choice. That's right. So, yeah, the second place in fighting for an LNG cargo is to go buy coal.
33:18Tracy Alloway:Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today, with the goal of being 70 % more productive.
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36:24Tracy Alloway:With that guidance and your determination, you can take your business farther and help build a brighter future for your community. Learn more at chase.com slash business. Chase for business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026. JPMorgan Chase and Company. I'm going to change the subject slightly. In the grand tradition of us interviewing Bob, I'm just going to throw out a random commodity. So anyone who came to our live show last year will know we had a segment with Bob where we just had the audience basically throw out random things and ask him to talk knowledgeably on each of them for five minutes.
37:07Tracy Alloway:So I'm going to do the same right now with sulfur and sulfuric acid. And the reason I ask is because, you know, I was in Abu Dhabi for a while and I remember Adnok, the big energy giant over there, striking some offtake deals for its sulfur. And I was very used to thinking of sulfur as a byproduct of crude oil, like this thing that is kind of useless. But to my surprise, it turns out it is in fact very useful because you can make sulfuric acid out of it. And sulfuric acid is needed for things like etching of microchips. So I'm very curious what's happening to sulfur right now. Yeah. So the craziest thing happening to sulfur right now is this Shaw gas field in UAE is on fire.
37:50That gas field, 25 % of the gas is H2S. They call it a sour gas field. In the old days, if you ever went out to a well site that was H2S, Joe would have to shave. Because the equipment to cover, you need protective gear. You would have to shave too, right? I'd have to shave too. This is the whole oil will kill you thing. It would take you longer to shave than me. And so you could always see the folks coming back from a sour gas field because they'd gone clean shaven. And so here we have one of the largest sources of H2S, and also it's about 10 % CO2. Hopefully it's controlled, but that's an environmental huge safety risk, right?
38:32So that's worrying. Now, sulfur in general is not scarce at all. We got sulfur all over the place. This field produces sulfur. You can see if you ever go to Western Kazakhstan, the big Tengiz chevrolet field, big piles of sulfur. Also, every copper smelter in the world generates sulfur because you'll take a mineral, you'll take something like a chalcopyrite, kind of the copper version of fool's gold, and it's a copper sulfide. And so if you ever visited a smelter, you've got this big tower where you're in the old days, you just burn off the sulfur dioxide. You make the tower tall enough so that that acid rain spreads across a large area.
39:12Or you can capture the sulfur. So around the world today, copper smelters lose money. You don't make money running a copper smelter. They call them treatment charges, refining charges. They're kind of zero and they're sometimes negative. So a copper smelter will ring me up as a copper miner and say, I want your copper concentrate. You can take that copper concentrate and normally you'll get the precious metals out of it. So I'll squeeze all the gold out of your copper ore and I'll make some money or I'll get an efficiency uplift. I'll pay for 95 % conversion and I'll squeeze some out. The other product I get is sulfuric acid.
39:47So right now, copper smelters are looking and saying, hey, we're getting a revenue stream off of sulfuric acid. Most sulfur is going to go into agriculture. So ammonium sulfate, for example, is an explosive, but it's also a great fertilizer. And so, for example, in Kazakhstan, the leading producer of uranium uses sulfuric acid in the operations. They compete with agriculture. And so when the market is tight sulfuric acid, you might say, hey, I got to let the people making food win. So you can have areas where you're short sulfuric acid. We're taking sulfur off of the market. It's pretty abundant and there will be sources and there are lots and lots of copper smelters that can help convert it.
40:33So we'll find a way. So it's not clear to me that we've run out of sulfur. I think it's the fifth most abundant element in the crust.
40:39Tracy Alloway:I love asking Bob just like random things. Let's just do this. I know you basically know all commodities, but you're not a soft sky, right? Didn't you like caveat that? So you're not a... Things that were once... Yeah. If it comes from the earth, I'm more comfortable than if it was... Right, the things that are grown. Yes. From the earth. Got it. When we think about particularly the war right now, and we've obviously oil and gas and sulfur, are there any... What else should we be watching? Any other weird... I think I saw there was a good headline in Bloomberg about zinc prices have surged, but anything else going up and to the right these days?
41:12Yeah. So if you think about aluminum is one. So if you went back to when Russia invaded Ukraine, everyone went and said, okay, what portion of which element does Russia produce? And at the time, a lot of nickel out of Russia, a lot of PGMs, platinum group metals and palladium. And so people were like, oh, we're going to run out of those things. This time around the Middle East, from a mining perspective, doesn't mine a lot west of the Straits of Hormuz, but they process a lot. So smelters are basically an aluminum. People talk about aluminum as solid electricity. Most of the cost to make aluminum is the electricity to make it in the smelter.
41:52And so therefore you put aluminum smelters where you have cheap energy. And so we have some of the, Certainly in Bahrain, we've got these very large aluminum smelters running off cheap local feedstock, natural gas. And you've seen aluminum price take off as a result. Zinc smelters are similar, not quite as energy intensive. And so to the extent that the Middle East was both a local and a global source of cheap energy. And so those that invested locally are seeing some of those consequences.
42:23Tracy Alloway:All those zinc bar tops in danger. Why did that become a thing? Zinc bar top? Yeah. Is this not a thing in America? In London, it used to be like if a bar had a zinc bar top, it was like a thing. Oh, it was like a nice? Classy. Yeah. Yeah. And I never really understood why people were really into zinc bar tops, but maybe we can start ripping them out and converting them now. Yeah, they probably will. Yeah. You know, whether we're talking about domestic American gas or whether we're talking about oil, et cetera, I'm curious, like over the last year since Liberation Day, one of the stories, Tracy and I were up in Alaska.
42:57Tracy Alloway:We were at a little manufacturer of oil country tubular goods, and they were talking about, you know, the fluctuating price of steel and how this was creating all kinds of issues. What has been the effect in terms of domestic energy infrastructure from the tariffs and just the sheer cost of, you know, building out the infrastructure? For the most part, energy has been somewhat exempt from the tariffs. The metal. So what did we have? We had aluminum tariffs in the US and we'd steel tariffs. We've had this threat of copper tariffs that I think is distorting copper price. The oil patch, the gas patch, the energy patch, mostly been left alone.
43:33So that flow through of things like the domestic content of steel, that's shown up. But yeah, to first order, if you think about how the oil industry set their budgets this year, it wasn't based on tariffs. It wasn't a big factor. It was based on what was the price of oil on their screen when we started the year.
43:51Tracy Alloway:Actually, related to this, one of the things we heard from the Trump administration coming in was that they were going to be very energy friendly, you know, friendly to all the molecules, whether it's coal or gas or whatever. Have we actually seen policies that have helped those industries? Do people feel good about it right now? I would argue bombing Iran is a pro-oil price policy. Fair, fair. That took a year and a bit. Okay, but ex-war, domestic policies, I guess. there's this tension between the fact that one of Trump's mantras seems to be low oil price, low gasoline price. He's extremely sensitive to that.
44:31And at the same time, he's sort of pro the oil industry. That's a very narrow path to tread. The oil industry makes money when oil prices are reasonable. Now, I would argue that a good mid-cycle price of oil,$75,$80, right? And that's where marginal producers can earn a return. We haven't really had that, right? And undisturbed, we haven't had that since Trump took office or much before. We've been bouncing below 75. We've had a glut. The shale industry has been remarkably resilient amidst$60 oil. We haven't seen shale oil give up very much. And OPEC has been adding barrels to the market amidst kind of tepid demand.
45:14So we've kind of been under mid-cycle prices for oil through most of the Trump administration, Biden post the solution in Russia, Ukraine. So yeah, there is no policy. So the question is, how do you get somebody to drill more in Texas? And first and foremost, it's the returns, right? So clarity of policy, permitting has improved. You'll hear folks in the oil patch say, right, some of the time you would spend to get things approved, permitted has improved. But that hasn't changed the input, which is how many rigs are running, how many horizontal rigs, how many frack spreads are out there.
45:52Tracy Alloway:One of the big themes of the last several years, kind of since we've been doing the podcast, but really since COVID, has been one thing after another that encourages basically every country in the world to think about sovereignty, resource security, and so forth. And so, obviously, COVID, major impetus to make sure you have stuff. then the trade war, then Ukraine, now that war in Iran, et cetera. Like big structurally, when you think about, I guess, the last six years now, are we going to be living with the ramifications of this six-year period for years in terms of global commodity markets? So if you went back to the first world, second world, you had the West and you had the Soviet Union, and you had sort of two complete supply chains of all the commodities, right?
46:37There were Soviet smelters and there were Western smelters. And there was just a lot of redundant capacity. Yeah. Then you sort of got into the 90s and you had the collapse of the Soviet Union. And you had, at the same time that China rose, you were lucky enough. So the China super cycle, the China demand super cycle came at a point in time where you had all of this excess capacity under managed, right? So all you needed was a bit of capitalism applied to Soviet assets and that was sort of the only reason China could feed on consuming half of the world's copper and half of the world's steel and half of the world's et cetera.
47:16Now we're almost flipping that and we'll say, well, you know what? China has a bunch of rare earth processing, but now Japan and Malaysia will have it. Now the US is going to have it. And tariffs on copper, well, the US needs to be self-sufficient in copper. So we're entering sort of this long cycle of globalization where are we going to recapitalize the end of globalization? Are we going to go out and build two smelters or five or however we're going to divide the planet? It's very capital intensive. It's inefficient. It would be powerful for... It's inflationary. And then someday in the next cycle, we release it all.
47:54So that's, again, a geopolitician's view. Is globalization over? Or if a geopolitician convinces you of that, then there's going to be a lot of asset investment in the physical economy.
48:07Tracy Alloway:All right, I have one tiny question. Trace is going to love it. Do you watch Landman? I have watched. I tend to binge watch when I get a chance. So I binge watched the first season. I have not binge watched the second. Does it feel realistic to you? Is that a real? My lived experience has very little. Okay. Yeah, versus Landman. I would just like to say a significant portion of my life right now is listening to Joe talk about Landman. I'm obsessed with the show. I love Landman so much. Anyway. Bob Brackett. Landman is the Moby Dick of our times. Bob Brackett, thank you so much for coming back on OpBot.
48:45Tracy Alloway:It's always a true, true pleasure. Thank you so much, Joe. Thanks, Tracy. Thanks so much, Bob. That was great, as always. Yeah.
49:04Tracy Alloway:God, I love talking to Bob so much. One thing with a lot of energy episodes is that, and I've mentioned it, we both mentioned it, energy math is not intuitive to me. You know, like I have a very hard time conceptualizing, like, what is a billion cubic feet or whatever? But in that gas, especially with all the conversions that happen between the liquefaction, it's like, I find it really difficult. It's really hard. No, I sympathize. I was one of those like toddlers that was trying to stick like triangle pieces into round holes. I've always struggled to sort of visualize shapes and sizes. So absolutely.
49:40Tracy Alloway:We're word cells and we're not shape rotators. Yeah, that's exactly it. But there is a bunch of stuff that stood out from that episode. One thing I should just clarify, because I don't mean to make light of, you know, I asked about the Trump administration being energy friendly to domestic U.S. energy producers. and Bob was like, well, the war is very friendly. And I kind of waved it off. Like, it is a huge giveaway to U.S. energy. And, you know, Isabella Weber, another great Odd Lots guest, had a paper about, like, where the value of these higher oil prices actually flows to. And it's all the U.S.
50:16Tracy Alloway:energy companies. Trump said it himself. Yeah, no, absolutely. He said it in one of his Truth Social posts, something like that. He's like, we're actually going to make more money. Yeah. You know, because most people are not, oil producers. Most people are oil consumers. And so people are not happy that gas prices, but he like sort of spun it. He's like, oh, look, we're going to make a lot of money because we're a net oil exporter and energy exporter now between LNG and crude. So yes, clearly domestic energy has benefited, obviously benefiting, you know, quite a wave that it's riding because obviously the demand for LNG after the invasion of Ukraine, that's a very big story.
50:58Tracy Alloway:Yeah. And I also think this brings us back to the episode we recorded on the impact of the Strait of Hormuz closure on China's economy. And this idea that, well, the more disruptions to commodity supply you have like this, the more you have governments sort of worried about choke points materializing, the more you're going to see a hastened shift to renewables that might be more immune from these types of disruptions. I hadn't appreciated at all until Bob said it at the very end that, you know, like when we think of the early 2000s, you know, the commodity super cycle driven by China, but that for the first several years of Chinese opening up, they really benefited from the fact that there was just a glut of capacity, that the combining of global, which I hadn't really thought about at all.
51:48Tracy Alloway:That is like from an economic perspective, there was a lot of capacity to supply China with raw commodities, particularly in the mid 90s, simply due to the fact that, you know, as he said, apply a little bit of capitalism to those Soviet assets. And suddenly you have a lot of production brought online. The 90s were a special time. Everything was just working out. Peak humanity. Peak humanity. I really believe so. All right. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal.
52:20Tracy Alloway:You can follow me at The Stalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at CarmenArmond, Dashiell Bennett at Dashbot, and Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks. And for more Odd Thoughts content, go to Bloomberg.com slash OddLots. We have a daily newsletter on all of our episodes. And you can chat about all of these topics 24-7 in our Discord, discord.gg slash OddLots. And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we get Bob Brackett on to answer random commodity questions, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free.
52:55Tracy Alloway:All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
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From the publisher
Mostly, the world has been watching the price of oil skyrocket amid the war in Iran and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But there's more than just oil that comes out of the region. Qatar is home to the world's largest natural gas field, and for now, it's been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world. Not only has Gulf gas supply been cut off, there's also damage to the core infrastructure, which will take time to repair. Meanwhile, the US is rapidly becoming a natural gas export powerhouse, with volumes having surged since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So, all in all, the world's natural gas map is rapidly being redrawn. On this episode, we turn to the one and only Bob Brackett, managing director and senior research analyst at Bernstein & Co. He explains the impact of the war on global prices, the prospect for further US exports, how the world will adjust to the loss of Gulf supply, as well as the other commodities that are getting squeezed right now.
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