Title: EP227: Fall Progress Report on our Big Themes for 2026 (subtitle: Navigating The Energy Macro) Show: Super-Spiked videocast (EP227) Guest: Arjun Murti (solo) Date: 2026-09-12 (published) URL: https://arjunmurti.substack.com/p/ep227-fall-progress-report-on-our Length: 25:20 (1520s) Note: From the Substack-hosted video's machine caption track (en.vtt, cue times kept as (mm:ss) at the start of each grouped paragraph — times are offsets into the Substack video; no YouTube id is published in the post, so the cues are not deep-linkable). Verbal fillers (um/uh, "you know" as interjection) and stutters removed; wording otherwise verbatim. Caption manglings corrected to the real entities/terms: Veriten (not "Veriton"), Super Vol (not "Supervol"/"super-ball"/"Super Bowl"), "Up and to the Right" (not "Run"), IEA (not "IAEA"), IRA (not "higher"), Roger Pielke Jr. (not "Pilkey"), oil services (not "all services"), touted (not "tatted"), FDNY (not "NYFD"). Silent gaps in the caption track (slide transitions) at ~2:55-3:02, 8:58-9:02, 11:51-12:02, 12:50-13:03, 20:07-20:28. A moderately edited PDF transcript + slide deck are attached to the post (not saved here). Post section markers: 0:00 Introduction; 0:43 Mega Themes; 2:33 2026 Specific Themes; 8:20 Energy Scenario Normalization; 11:31 Markets, Technology and M&A; 15:58 What We Didn't Sufficiently Emphasize; 23:07 On A Personal Note: 25 Years.
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(00:08) Hi, it's Arjun. We are back after a two-week end of summer hiatus. Hope everyone had a great end of their summer. And to kick off the fall, we're going to do a check-in on our first post of 2026. It was titled, Big Themes for 2026, Up and to the Right. And we're going to take a look at both the mega themes as well as the 2026 specific themes that we had.
(00:29) I'm going to say the punchline is overall, I think we feel better about how we've done on highlighting some of the most important narratives out there and themes and so forth. There's definitely some room for improvement and we will go through and get into that in the video here.
(00:43) So we had three mega themes that we've been highlighting. Everyone on Earth deserves to be energy rich. Power surge and AI and energy and technology convergence. I think we've spent a lot of time talking about this. That first one, it is the idea of energy's natural hierarchy of needs, that CO2 is no one's organizing principle and that you have to get right abundantly. Substance and availability first and foremost, followed closely by affordability, geopolitical security is the overlay, and then we get to some of the environmental considerations.
(01:14) There's the lucky one billion of us. There's the other seven billion people on Earth. I think all of you know our perspectives on that. In terms of super cycles, we've talked about power. I think that's been... Correct both in terms of it's been a supercycle, but at the same time, we didn't highlight oil in a whole bunch of different things. There's one I think we forgot, and we're going to get to it in our self-critiques, but in terms of really emphasizing power, feel like we've done a good job there.
(01:39) The sort of AI and energy convergence. We see it very much in our business at Veriten where there's interests and synergy across all these different suppliers, sources, consumers and users of energy, whether that's industrials, technology, clearly traditional energy, new energy, everything in between. That convergence theme we feel very good about.
(02:04) We talked about Super Vol and we talked about geopolitics. It was in April where we combined these into a singular theme called geopolitical Super Vol, which we now call our fourth mega theme. So when we look back, I think the three mega themes we'd been highlighting, we feel very good about. I think we've been prominent and regular in terms of discussing all that goes into them. And I do think our geopolitical Super Vol is sort of the fourth mega theme. Again, generally feel good about how we did on this front.
(02:33) Let's get into some of the 2026 specific themes now. And the first was to highlight for 2026 deaths that we thought had been greatly exaggerated. People had written off China concerned about demographics and weak I'm going to say I think we made the right call in terms of China's relevance and the idea that China's death had been greatly exaggerated.
(03:02) We've commented consistently, coal demand only continues to grow. Another area whose death had been greatly exaggerated. I think everybody knows our oil demand view. We don't see how anyone could know what decade, let alone year, oil demand is ever going to peak. And I think that's the third one. I think we're three for three on that.
(03:22) And last year we highlighted And this came after sort of a year of the Trump administration taking away a lot of the IRA tax credits and policies. And many people have predicted this could be the demise of renewables and electric vehicles. And while it is true that in the United States, electric vehicle sales had slowed, our comment was both of these areas, renewables and EVs are going to continue to grow, especially globally.
(03:46) I feel like we are four for four on these themes and sort of the over-interpretation Especially for newer tech, in terms of this policy component, that comes from the net zero mindset, something we push back on, that somehow you have to have a strongly stated policy in order to get people to use new technologies. That is absolute nonsense. I think there's a huge case to be made.
(04:09) In our lucky one billion versus other seven billion framing, our energy's natural hierarchy of needs, there's a huge role to be played for new technologies. And in fact, that net zero and climate action type of mentality, I think, did a disservice to a lot of the new technologies. And I feel like that is really shining through in a very favorable way this year. I think we feel good on these four specific themes that we highlighted.
(04:35) We talked about fading 2025 narratives. Remember, at the end of 2025, people were really beared up on oil, talking about something like 2 to 4 million barrels a day of oversupply for 2026. Now, we can say the Iran War happened. We didn't expect it. It was unexpected by just about everybody. And that's why we don't have an oil glut. But I'm going to actually give myself the benefit of the doubt here. Our comment at the end of 2025 and early 2026 is people are way too bearish on oil.
(05:04) And there is a value opportunity here in terms of the psychology and sentiment around oil. I think we feel good that oil glut did not play out. There are now some people saying that whenever Strait of Hormuz is reconciled, again, we think maybe there's no such thing as that. But let's just say there are significantly greater flows That we're going to have an even worse oil glut in 2027. We look forward to pushing back on the ridiculousness of the 2027 four to six million barrels a day of oil glut oversupply that some prominent agencies and analysts out there are touting.
(05:39) Oil glut, bunch of nonsense, feel good about having pushed back on it. The other narrative we've consistently pushed back on is the idea that using one energy source or technology is in lieu of another one, that sort of substitution Again, it all stems from that really awful, net zero, climate crisis kind of mindset that people had in the early 2020s, but they did the substitution. Absolute nonsense. 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. And everything in between, no such thing as a substitution phase.
(06:15) Fading the 2025 narratives, again, I apologize if this sounds like I'm patting myself on the back too much, but we feel good about what we've been calling for, at least in these first two buckets of 2026 specific themes.
(06:29) The third theme was geopolitics, and we talked about China's manufacturing glut being a huge issue out there, issues with European industrial competitiveness, and we had a sort of very positive view of Middle East economics. I think you could say that I think certainly the China manufacturing glut is truly a major theme. I stick by the idea that the Middle East is rising, but clearly with all that's happened in Iran, we didn't have geopolitical turmoil.
(07:01) Oil as a major theme. So we're going to critique ourselves. People say it's hard to forecast war, but we have highlighted Russia, Ukraine as being in year five and US had struck Iran earlier in the prior June. It was obviously an aerial bombing. Didn't anticipate this war, but I think this phrasing, it probably wasn't big picture enough in terms of what's obviously happening. So we're going to give ourselves maybe partial credit on the geopolitics point.
(07:30) In terms of markets, technology, and M&A, we have two slides coming up where we're gonna go through that in more detail and we'll come back to it. And then this last one on the environment, a little bit like the geopolitics point, we talked about the European CBAM, the Carbon Border Adjustment, We talked about the opportunities for U.S. coal exports to displace coal production in developing countries. And we talked about water, methane, and orphan wells as being important issues.
(07:58) I think on a micro level, these were in fact important issues, but again, maybe similar to the geopolitics point. I think we weren't big picture enough. And we're going to come back to it in our critiques of our themes in a couple slides. But I think we were too small picture on the environment. And we'll give you our big picture takeaway in a moment here.
(08:20) So I've got a couple slides now on what was that fourth bucket. Let me just go back to it. Markets, technology, and M&A. And the first in that fourth bucket was energy scenario normalization. If there's anything that motivated the start of Super-Spiked about four Actually, I'm sorry, this November will be five years of publishing Super-Spiked. It was all of those net zero frameworks. They were all ridiculous. They all ignored, essentially, energy's natural hierarchy of needs, that it is abundance and availability and reliability that drives energy usage. It's core to everything we do as a society and as a population.
(09:02) And I think we feel good that we continue to see real signs of normalization in these energy scenarios. You just don't hear the net zero scenarios touted out there anymore. Goodbye and good riddance to those views. They weren't as bad as the net zero views, but a lot of the base case views, what the IEA used to call stated policies, others had these views where, yeah, maybe net zero is too pessimistic on oil and natural gas demand, but even the base case outlooks, We're also way too pessimistic in terms of what energy usage was going to look like over the next 25 years.
(09:37) And by the way, it's not just the old stuff, oil, natural gas, and coal that people have been too pessimistic on. It's actually been the new stuff as well when you think about how modest the expectations have been for the next 25 years of primary energy consumption. And so we're in the process of having the scenarios normalize, of having better outlooks out there, or by better we mean more realistic, more sensible, more what the world's actually gonna look like. There's still some room to go, but I think, again, we said this would be A theme for 2026, these scenarios normalize in a favorable way. And I think we're on track for it.
(10:14) And we talked about getting rid of the net zero mindset. I think the final point that I know we emphasize a lot, and I think we gave the example of a virtuous cycle where using renewables and EVs leads to more oil demand and vice versa. And our example had been China selling at a very low cost. You can call it dumping. You can call it what you want. Renewables, in particular solar, into various African countries was also leading to more diesel and gasoline consumption very clearly. One was good for the other.
(10:43) I think during this Strait of Hormuz-Iran war crisis situation, the use of electric vehicles in places like China have also been positive for oil demand in the sense that we didn't need to go to those very draconian and very bad demand destruction prices, that you had at least a little bit more flexibility in the system than what was anticipated.
(11:04) Again, these things are not at odds with each other. I previously mentioned that idea of substitution where you're using EVs instead of ICE vehicles or using solar instead of coal or whatever it is. Those are just, they're false binaries, if that's the correct use of that phrasing. Well, using more of one has been good for using more of the other and vice versa. It is a virtuous cycle. These things are not in competition with each other. They actually complement each other.
(11:31) The second bucket under markets, technology, and M&A was opportunities within specific sources and technologies. We talked about power being a momentum opportunity. We also talked about it having gone from, again, it's my old colleague, Brian Singer, We also, and I think we feel good about this, we highlighted the oil value chain as a value chain.
(12:02) Again, go back to the end of 2025, early 2026, everyone was in oil glut mode and anything in the oil value chain, the risk reward looked very favorable. I think these two things We talked about global gas joining sort of the Super Vol commodity language. Now, we didn't push back on the notion of an LNG glut, and I think that's a self-critique. That has gone away with the Strait of Hormuz
(12:33) We did not push back as hard on LNG glut as we did on oil glut. I think calling global gas pricing is sort of in that Super Vol commodity bucket. I think that is a good call. Maybe we still need more passage of time to declare that. I just spent a second talking about it, continued to feel good about it.
(13:03) We actually punted on nuclear in the original post. We said we're going to come back to it. We still haven't. Maybe we're still doing some thinking there on nuclear. So we're going to give ourselves an incomplete because we never actually came back and talked More about nuclear.
(13:18) And then the last point we talked about in terms of specific sources and opportunities was that all these new technologies, autonomous driving, robotics, industrial AI applications, et cetera, and so forth. And I think on the one hand, I think we were correct to highlight these as important themes for 2026. But again, I think to critique ourselves, we could spend more time Flushing this out to a greater degree, the impact on the economy, the impact on productivity, the impact on energy demand and so forth, and what it all means.
(13:50) So we're going to put it as a challenge to ourselves to, it's not so much, it's not about analyzing say the Mag Seven or tech sectors. It's really about the usage of these things in traditional companies and industrial manufacturing companies. We've highlighted it, we've highlighted it a few times, but I'm not sure we've quite done maybe the deep dive or elevated it In the same way we've evaluated lucky one billion versus the other seven billion in some of those mega themes. So we're going to say we directionally are correct on this, but maybe a little bit of an incomplete on this bucket.
(14:21) In terms of the final area under this 2026 specific themes, market technology and M&A, it was a corporate strategy and M&A was kind of the third topic we had highlighted in that beginning of the year post. And we said in traditional energy upstream, This would be the year of business development as being more important than high-profile M&A. And I think so far, this has been a correct call. It doesn't mean there'll be no high-profile M&A deals, but it wasn't going to be the dominant narrative. And in fact, companies securing concessions and such things in a variety of different places, I think that's been a far more important thing. I think we feel good about having called that.
(15:00) We said for global gas, the coming Super Vol environment would suggest growing potential for M&A as winners and losers emerge and markets evolve. That, frankly, natural gas is a really important theme, as we're going to mention in a moment. But I think this sort of M&A angle, it's either... Undecided or certainly hasn't happened yet. So we'll give ourselves maybe an incomplete on that one.
(15:22) And then lastly, we talked about the oil services stocks as having opportunities in these distributed power generation, broader power value chain. I think that has been an important theme of For various companies, we see it more on the oil services side, some select midstream companies. We don't really see it on the upstream side, maybe a little bit amongst some of the integrated oils. This idea of what are the logical adjacencies, what are some different business models you can pursue to take advantage of the mega themes of AI and power surge and so forth. We highlighted oil services being at the forefront of that. I think that has proven to have been correct.
(15:58) So the final slide we want to go through is what didn't we emphasize sufficiently? What do we sort of either get wrong or we should have been louder about? And I suppose I just mentioned this, which is the ramp in technology, and I'm going to call it advanced compute and all that that implies. It is just an overarching theme. And we're not trying to turn ourselves into tech sector analysts. That's not the point of what I'm saying, but is the application of this stuff?
(16:28) So if you go to our natural hierarchy of energy needs, one of the things we talk about from a policy standpoint is how do you do more with existing assets and how do you do more domestic supply? Technology plays a huge role in that, whether it's robotics, whether it's technology, Advanced compute on real-time fracking as an example. They're just sort of an infinite number of examples. I think we need to, again, figure out how we're going to discuss this because there's some really exciting opportunities in that area, both in terms of what it means for the macro, but also what it means for individual companies.
(17:05) I think we mentioned this in our last post just before. The second thing that I think we didn't emphasize enough was natural gas is a through theme. Again, I think we mentioned it in that final post before the end of summer break. But we talked about power surge. We've talked about everyone on Earth deserves to be energy rich. We talk about AI and energy tech convergence. And we now talk about geopolitical Super Vol.
(17:29) Natural gas has really become One of those super fuels, if we can call it that. It's got a variety of different uses. We are blessed in the United States, so is Canada, to having just a massive and abundant and low cost resource. And whether it's base load power generation, whether it's selectively on the Whether it's LNG trucks, whether it's an economically diversifying fuel for various countries, clearly industrial heat and so forth, there is, it just comes up in every meeting we have is the role of natural gas.
(18:01) And again, I wanna emphasize I think given my background, please don't presume I'm speaking just about shale gas producers. In many respects, it's been one of the least exciting ways to play natural gas. It has been a huge opportunity in midstream space and in downstream space, whether it's LNG, whether it's on the pipeline. So, natural gas as a super theme, a mega theme, I think that's something we just haven't sufficiently addressed at Super-Spiked.
(18:32) The peak global gas demand call has been as bad as the peak oil demand call. It's even, frankly, more ridiculous. I can, to some degree, understand what debate existed on oil. How was there any debate? How was there any notion that we're going to have peak global gas demand anytime soon? I think we could have done a better job really identifying natural gas as kind of a dominant superfuel earlier than we have. And so we'll critique ourselves for that.
(18:59) The final area that I think we could have done a much better job of addressing, we're going to try to do it going forward. And we've made a couple attempts at reframing the sustainability discussion. You know that we push back on net zero. You know that we push back on the climate crisis mindset. Everyone deserves to be energy rich like you want to be. And all that kind of stuff has been pushing back on the sustainability discussion. But I think there's an even sharper and clearer point that we would now like to make. And we want to be clear.
(19:27) We're not referring to climate activists or extremists or anything of that nature, but really those of you who consider yourself somewhere in the center, maybe it's in moderates, maybe it's in a moderate left or totally center, maybe even a little bit center right, who will say that climate is I think this is a really important issue and that we shouldn't de-emphasize it just because it's out of vogue right now. I'm talking to all of you who would purport to have pragmatic and reasonable views of this, but perhaps a higher emphasis on it than, say, I do. I've said it before.
(19:57) Those two folks, Chris Wright, Roger Pielke, that's where I come at. But for those of you who feel much more strongly about the issue than that, this is who I'm talking to right now, okay? The idea of climate action,
(20:28) As it was instituted over the last three years has been bad for the climate, okay? Climate action that many of you supported including things like the IRA and all that goes with it has been bad actually for the climate. If all we do is de facto Shut in or shut down our own industry and all those jobs and all those factories go to China. That is a bad trade for the climate.
(20:56) What is the equivalent? Restaurants will talk about farm to table. What is the equivalent on manufacturing? We should be mining for copper, rare earths, critical minerals in our country. We should be doing that not so clean processing, refining of it in our own country. And we should absolutely be focused on new technologies. And many of you say, well, yeah, that's what the IRA was about. It was about incentivizing new technologies. Yeah, I agree. We should be focused on a country of developing new technologies.
(21:25) But there was a lot of talk about restricting and shutting in pipelines and oil fields, and that we all have to be realistic. That natural gas infrastructure, boy, it might last 30 or 40 years, so we should not support it in the United States. Wrong, wrong, wrong. When people talked about individual oil fields and individual LNG projects in the 2020 to 2023 projects as being carbon bombs, wrong view. Where were the op-eds pushing back on that? From those of you that purport to care about climate action.
(21:57) Climate action that leads to be shutting in of domestic production, whether it's oil, gas, coal, critical minerals, rare earths, or copper, is bad for the climate because that stuff is then happening in other parts of the world with significantly worse emissions profiles, significantly worse environmental and labor standards. It is a bad trade for the environment. It's a bad trade for climate. It's a bad trade for all those justice causes you all purport to support.
(22:26) And so we need to reframe the sustainability discussion. That supports maximum, maximum crude oil, natural gas, coal exports, copper, critical minerals, rare earths, mining, refining and processing within our country and within countries that we should be friends with, which would be a critique of the current administration. We do need friends, including especially Canada, Australia, a bunch of different places. Could be very powerful.
(22:56) This whole sustainability discussion. If you really care about climate action, it cannot mean we ship all our jobs and manufacturing over to China. That is bad for the climate.
(23:08) So we'll end this video on a personal note. This video is being published on September 12th, day after September 11th. It is I can't believe it has been 25 years since that terrible day on a Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. And we do want to just take a moment to remember All of those who did not make it out of the towers, people who were just commuting into work, the first responders, the NYPD, the FDNY, and other first responders who went into the towers as others were leaving. I worked downtown at one New York [caption garbled] just a few blocks away. I was, fortunate for me, far enough away from ground zero, but not far enough where we didn't see a lot of stuff, unfortunately, too firsthand.
(23:52) I do want to remember a meeting that I had two weeks before 9-11. It was August 27, 2001. I actually still have my World Trade Center ID card. It was with Fred Alger. There was a young energy analyst. Her name was Jennifer. I did look it up. She was in her mid-20s, essentially about the same age as my college graduate children are now. She started Fred Alger, an investment management firm. And because she was on the younger side and they were a growth firm, She was asked to cover the oil sector, which would have been a value sector.
(24:25) In those days, it's a little bit better today. Not too many female analysts covering energy, so that stood out. But also meeting with a growth investor, when you meet with value investors, all a bunch of curmudgeons. But here we had a growth investor, naturally glass half full, and then she had a very vibrant and positive personality. I did come to find out that she did not make it out of the tower. And I'm sorry for that. So we'd like to remember Jennifer, Fred Alger. We'd like to remember everyone that didn't make it out. And I do hope, I don't think, and I do hope people just haven't forgotten that day. It's been 25 years. I really can't believe it. Anyway, but we'll see you next week. Thanks.