Natural gas storage — the scarce link (new) Structurally scarce ▲ — unreplicable, and the insurance premium is the part compounding

2026-SEP-10 (Toby McKenna, CEO Rockpoint Gas Storage): the four-part barrier to entry — geology (common: Alberta has "another dozen" comparable reservoirs), location, pipeline cost (overruns "at a high pace" for 5–8 years), and the one nobody models: all the pipeline white space is spoken for, so a new facility cannot guarantee it can get gas onto or off the system, no proponent will backstop that risk, and no board sanctions the spend. The only greenfield being built is small bespoke salt cavern in the southern US, serving a different (high-deliverability) need — "none of that storage expansion is changing the dynamic of the current supply demand economics for the incumbent users." Value is splitting in two: intrinsic value (the summer/winter spread) is the visible half, but insurance / non-intrinsic value — the value of the call and the value of the put — "is the part that's growing at a bigger pace… higher than it was for the past two to three decades." Read alongside the operator's own conflict: he runs the only listed pure-play, so the tests are built to prove his asset unreplicable.