Fall Progress Report on our Big Themes for 2026

00:08The punchline — generally decent, room to improve

• A fall check-in on the January post "Big Themes for 2026: Up and to the Right." Overall he feels good about highlighting the most important narratives, with "definitely some room for improvement."

00:43The mega themes held up — and a fourth was added

• Everyone on Earth deserves to be energy rich — energy's natural hierarchy of needs: abundance and availability first, affordability next, geopolitical security as the overlay, then environmental considerations; "CO2 is no one's organizing principle."
• Power Surge has been a supercycle, though he didn't highlight oil and "one we forgot" (natural gas, below). AI/energy convergence is visible across Veriten's business — industrials, tech, traditional and new energy.
• In April he merged Super Vol and geopolitics into Geopolitical Super Vol, now the fourth mega theme.

02:33"Deaths greatly exaggerated" — four for four

• China (written off on demographics) — right call on its relevance. Coal demand "only continues to grow." Oil demand — nobody can know what decade, let alone year, it peaks.
• Renewables and EVs — despite the Trump administration stripping IRA credits and slower US EV sales, both keep growing globally. The idea that new tech needs a strongly stated policy to be adopted "is absolute nonsense"; the net-zero mentality "did a disservice to a lot of the new technologies."

04:35Fading the 2025 narratives — the oil glut

• End-2025 consensus expected 2–4 mb/d of 2026 oversupply. The Iran war (unexpected "by just about everybody") is why there's no glut — but his call was already that people were "way too bearish" and there was a sentiment value opportunity.
• Now some say reconciliation in the Strait of Hormuz brings an even worse glut in 2027: he looks forward to "pushing back on the ridiculousness" of the 4–6 mb/d 2027 oversupply touted by prominent agencies and analysts.
• No substitution phase: "We're going to need the old stuff. We're going to need the new stuff. We're going to need stuff that hasn't been invented."

06:29Geopolitics and environment — partial credit, "not big picture enough"

• China's manufacturing glut is "truly a major theme"; he sticks by a rising Middle East. But despite flagging Russia–Ukraine (year five) and the prior June's US strike on Iran, he didn't anticipate the war — partial credit.
• Environment: CBAM, US coal exports displacing dirtier developing-country production, water/methane/orphan wells were right on a micro level but "too small picture."

08:20Energy scenario normalization — on track

• Net-zero frameworks motivated Super-Spiked's founding (five years this November). "You just don't hear the net zero scenarios touted out there anymore. Goodbye and good riddance."
• Even base cases (the IEA's stated-policies-style outlooks) were too pessimistic on 25-year energy use — for oil, gas and coal and for the new stuff. Scenarios are normalizing toward realism, "still some room to go."

10:14The virtuous cycle, not substitution

• Cheap Chinese solar into African countries also raised diesel and gasoline use; during the Hormuz crisis, China's EV fleet gave the system flexibility so oil didn't need "draconian" demand-destruction prices.
• EVs vs ICE, solar vs coal are "false binaries" — more of one has been good for more of the other.

11:31Sources & technologies — power momentum, oil value chain, the LNG miss

• Power as a momentum opportunity; the oil value chain as a value opportunity when everyone was in oil-glut mode at end-2025 — risk/reward "looked very favorable."
• Global gas joining the Super Vol commodity bucket is a good call — but self-critique: "we did not push back as hard on LNG glut as we did on oil glut," a glut that went away with the Strait of Hormuz.
• Nuclear: incomplete — punted in January, still hasn't come back to it.
• Autonomous driving, robotics, industrial AI: directionally right, but under-explored — the challenge is their use in traditional and industrial companies, not analyzing the Mag Seven.

14:21Corporate strategy & M&A

• Upstream: "business development more important than high-profile M&A" — correct so far; securing concessions in various places mattered more.
• Gas M&A in a Super Vol environment: incomplete — hasn't happened yet.
• Oil services as the leaders in distributed power generation / the broader power value chain has proven correct — also some select midstream companies, a little among integrated oils, but not upstream.

15:58Miss #1 — advanced compute's application to energy

• The ramp in "advanced compute and all that that implies" is an overarching theme. Not tech-sector analysis — its application: doing more with existing assets and more domestic supply (robotics, real-time fracking), with opportunities for the macro and individual companies.

17:05Miss #2 — natural gas as a super fuel

• Gas runs through every mega theme; the US and Canada have a massive, abundant, low-cost resource for baseload power, LNG trucks, diversifying economies and industrial heat — "it just comes up in every meeting we have."
• Not a shale-producer call: producers have been "one of the least exciting ways to play natural gas"; the huge opportunity has been midstream and downstream — LNG and pipelines.
• "The peak global gas demand call has been as bad as the peak oil demand call. It's even, frankly, more ridiculous."

18:59Miss #3 — reframing sustainability for the center

• Addressed to self-described pragmatic centrists who still weight climate highly (he sides with Chris Wright and Roger Pielke Jr.): climate action as instituted, including the IRA, "has been bad for the climate" when it shuts in domestic industry and sends jobs and factories to China.
• The manufacturing "farm to table": mine copper, rare earths and critical minerals and do the "not so clean" refining/processing at home, and support new technologies — while opposing shut-ins of pipelines, oil fields and LNG ("carbon bombs": "wrong view").
• Maximum crude, gas, coal exports, copper, critical minerals and refining at home and with friends — "a critique of the current administration. We do need friends, including especially Canada, Australia."

23:08Personal note — 25 years since 9/11

• Remembers a meeting on August 27, 2001 with Jennifer, a young Fred Alger energy analyst who did not make it out of the towers, and the first responders; he worked downtown a few blocks away.