Founder & CIO of Chronometer Partners — energy / power / industrials investor who has spent 18+ months modeling nearly every US natural-gas well, pipeline, and processing asset from the well level up. Not the Kpler oil-flows analyst of the same name (that Matt Smith has his own hub).
Primary nuclear supplier to the US Navy with "lots of dollar content in the AP1000s" — a picks-and-shovels beneficiary of the coming large-scale-nuclear cycle.
Owns 49% of Westinghouse (AP1000) — the large-scale-nuclear fix Smith sees as the only durable answer to the late-decade power crunch; the stake is "deeply undervalued" within Cameco and could come public.
Second utility-scale solar yield-co in the same PPA mark-to-market windfall as gas lifts the marginal power price; free, fixed-cost fuel = expanding margins.
Top pick — Expand Energy controls ~70% of remaining core Haynesville, trades ~4x EBITDA / low-to-mid-teens FCF yield, CEO-less and washed out; "far and away the biggest winner" of the 2028+ US gas deficit on a forward curve that doesn't believe it.
Highest-quality Appalachian gas upstream with room to grow production and returns — a mature, low-replacement-cost producer levered to the structural gas squeeze.
XPLR Infrastructure (fmr. NextEra Energy Partners)
Utility-scale solar yield-co (fmr NextEra Energy Partners) due a latter-decade windfall as it marks PPAs to market at higher prices set by expensive marginal gas — margin expansion for no capex.
Appalachian gas producer cited as the complacency tell — shutting in gas "because they think it'll be more valuable later" while no one invests; a mature, low-replacement-cost portfolio.
GE Vernova — maker of the large-scale combined-cycle gas turbines; every order "means more gas," but grouped in the turbine boom-bust caution as capacity is added into a possible late-decade order slowdown.
Cheniere Energy — the first US LNG exporter, origin of the 0→15 BCF/d export ramp (heading to 35 by 2030) that anchors the demand side of the deficit; referenced, not rated.
Bloom Energy fuel cells "won't get gas at 2 GW+ scale" amid the shortage — Smith treats them as backup-only; deploying as baseload just worsens the convex gas squeeze.
Doubling Solar Turbines genset capacity by end-2029 "at the exact wrong time" — an early-2000s-style boom/bust as buyers question deploying gas gensets into much higher gas prices.
In one line: The US is walking into a structural natural-gas deficit from 2028 — LNG exports scaling 15→35 BCF/d plus AI-compute gas demand outrun the ~20 BCF/d of new supply the system can physically add, so working storage breaks below all recorded history by 2029 and gas prices go "convex and unbounded," felt as electricity prices, with the US consumer the biggest loser.
The core call. After 18 months modeling nearly every US gas well, pipeline and processing asset from the well level up, Smith sees an historic gas deficit begin in 2028: the ~20 BCF/d of production the US can add is already spoken for by the permitted 15→35 BCF/d LNG-export ramp, so probability-weighted AI-compute demand (P50 ~5 BCF/d, P30/P0 12-15 BCF/d) has nowhere to come from but storage. Gas is >40% of US power and sets the marginal power price, so the pain shows up as electricity bills in 28-30.
The market is asleep. Gas sits at ~$3.50 with a flat forward curve out to the mid-2030s and a flat rig count — EQT is even shutting in gas. The back years (28+) are illiquid, so the curve won't move until utilities start hedging/buying 28 gas; then "a knife fight to secure natural gas physical" begins — six-plus months out, not two years. The complacent curve is the opportunity.
Winners. The best gas producers on trough multiples (Expand Energy — ~70% of core Haynesville, ~4x EBITDA, CEO-less; Range — top Appalachian upstream); free-fuel solar yield-cos that mark PPAs up as gas lifts power prices (XPLR / XIFR, Clearway / CWEN) plus residential solar as a consumer hedge; and the only durable late-decade fix, large-scale AP1000 nuclear (~2033-34) via Cameco (49% Westinghouse), Brookfield (51%) and BWXT (US Navy nuclear).
Losers. The gas-turbine / distributed-genset / fuel-cell makers adding capacity into the squeeze "at the exact wrong time" (Caterpillar Solar Turbines; Bloom Energy fuel cells that can't secure gas at scale) — an early-2000s-style boom/bust — and, above all, the US consumer. The one risk that would break the thesis is a step-function battery breakthrough.
Who he is. Founder & CIO of Chronometer Partners, a ~4-sector energy/power/industrials fund; 20 years in energy markets. The edge is granular, atomic-level asset modeling and probability-weighting demand, not macro narrative. (Not the Kpler oil-flows analyst of the same name.)
Transcripts
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