Title: A "Bridge to Nowhere" Fuel
Show: Haymaker Daily (Substack)
Author: David Hay (The Haymaker Team)
Date: 2026-08-11
URL: https://haymaker.substack.com/p/haymaker-daily-1e9
Note: Written post — no timestamps. Verbatim body captured via logged-in session; page chrome (like/share buttons) and the standard IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES boilerplate omitted.

Hello, Haymakers:

Natural gas has long been considered the bridge energy source, efficiently powering modern society until renewables are ready to absorb the lion's share of that essential burden. There is now, however, a growing awareness that wind and solar are unequal to the task of providing reliable baseload power at scale. This reality check has been reinforced by the breathtaking pace of data center installations, all of which require uninterrupted power to properly function. They can't operate in accordance with daylight hours and wind patterns.

As noted in prior Dailies, the U.S. already leads the world by far when it comes to installed data centers, boasting 10 times as many as are operating in China. Moreover, this is before Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and Google invest another $5.8 trillion by 2030, continuing their mad dash to construct gargantuan amounts of computing capacity. Yet, without electricity these facilities will be nothing but inert shells.

A rational observer might assume natural gas, which is America's #1 source of electricity generation (at 43% of the total, it is nearly double all renewables combined) would be highly valued by the investment community. Instead, bullishness on the blue fuel is close to the lowest it's been this decade, outside of Covid. It is also the most depressed it's been for the last two years.

(Our thanks to excellent energy analyst John Kemp for the next two charts)

In addition, its price in real (or inflation adjusted) terms is extremely subdued. In fact, it is in the 18th percentile going all the way back to 2010. Based on this investor apathy (bordering on antipathy) it's as though natural gas is being valued as little more than a scarcely used bridge to nowhere.

That's obviously inhibited the market performance of the largest U.S. natural gas producers, like Expand Energy, Range Resources, and EOG. Making matters worse, America's most productive oil basin, the Permian, has vaulted to become the country's second-biggest gas-producing region, as well as the fastest growing. This has been another source of profit suppression for U.S. producers due to the lack of pipeline capacity to transport this cornucopia of gas. As a result, it has often traded at negative prices, causing much of this valuable resource to be flared into the atmosphere.

Fortunately, America's vibrant mid-stream energy industry has been aggressively constructing added takeaway capacity out of the Permian. There are multiple new pipelines under construction to bring this long-stranded gas to a marketplace that will soon be in desperate need of it. These total some 15 billion cubic feet per day, about 12 1/2% of aggregate U.S. marketed gas output.

This should create a notable earnings kicker for companies with significant Permian gas production. EOG is likely to be one of the main beneficiaries of this extraordinary delivery surge. Its stock price appears to be on the verge of breaking out of what is nearly a five-year trading range.

Five-year Price Chart (overhead resistance displayed)

[Bloomberg chart: EOG five-year price chart with overhead resistance displayed]

The Haymaker Team