The Energy Shakeup: Why Coal’s Back and Solar’s Cracking – ENB Weekly Recap

The United States is experiencing an unprecedented surge in electricity demand, driven primarily by the rapid expansion of data centers. A recent forecast has boosted the U.S. power-usage outlook by a staggering 92% over previous […]

Highlights of the Podcast 

00:00 – DAVID BLACKMON: On Energy, China Knows What The Rest Of Us Must Re-Learn

02:34 – Coal is Crowned King Again by President Trump: Montana’s Bull Mountains Mine Expansion and Investment Opportunities

06:38 – Internal Rate of Return Is Misleading You!

09:33 – Solar Bankruptcies Show US Clean Energy Industry Is on the Edge of a Financial Cliff

12:22 – OPEC+ Falls Short on Output Promises: Implications for Oil Prices, U.S. Investors, and Global Energy Markets

14:58 – What Would Happen to the Oil Market if Israel Targeted Iran’s Nuclear Sites or Oil Export Infrastructure?

16:31 – Data Centers Surge U.S. Power Demand by 92%: Opportunities in Utilities, Grid Equipment, and Oil and Gas

19:10 – Outro

---

Follow Michael On LinkedIn and Twitter

ENB Top News

Energy Dashboard

ENB Podcast

ENB Substack

ENB Trading Desk

Oil & Gas Investing

---

– Get in Contact With The Show –

---

Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

---

Stuart Turley: [00:00:07] David Blackman on energy. China knows what the rest of us must relearn. Michael, this is huge. This article from David Blackmon is fantastic on the daily caller. We highly recommend following him there and on his substack. This is really important from Bloomberg. Bloomberg this week details the reality of energy transitioning isn’t happening and isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. This really is important when you consider, even with all the narratives, not to mention all the trillions of dollars in green energy subsidies enacted by governments around the world in recent years, all those bad old fossil fuels still supply about 80% of the world’s primary energy. Michael. So what is power security? The word used by Bloomberg. Power security. I love that. I want to, you start using that. Turley’s law is alive and well, Michael. And this article further goes around China’s cold binge is no surprise to anyone’s taking an honest view of things. [00:01:15][67.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:15] No, it’s, you’ve been on this from the beginning. The fact that the more, you know, the more renewables we use, the more oil and gas and fossil fuels will be used. We love a good turleys law. It truly is. And it goes to show that China, they don’t really want to play ball with us. They want to pay ball with. When it’s convenient for them and they will take advantage of us. I mean, I was listening to a podcast this morning on my run as we were talk as they were talking about how. You know, we’re the only country in the world that allows foreign nationals to buy land right next to our military bases. And people say, well, we are America. It’s a free country. You should be able to. Yeah, but you can’t go do that in China. So China has rules for the, but not for them. And so it goes right in here with the energy stuff. You know they’re going to create themselves a stable grid, clearly. I mean, they’re doing that with the coal. That’s what, you know, David Blackman bought this up. You know, they don’t seem to be throwing trillions at the green energy. Now, this is not to say that China is great. China is not great. We should be attempting to subvert them at every point. The issue is, what they’re doing is attempting to support us. I mean, I wouldn’t be shocked if it came out and find out they’re funding all this green energy stuff. [00:02:34][78.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:34] Energy news beat is really at the intersection of finance and energy. And when we take a look at this one, coal is crowned king again, by president Trump, Montana’s bull mountains, mine expansion and investment opportunities. I looked at what was going on in coal, the bull mountains coal expansion, a billion dollar bet on coal is operated by signal peak energy set to Unlock Michael. 60 million tons of coal over the next coming years with much of it destined to listen to this export to Japan and South Korea, hold it. Now that thought got me going on a, wait a minute, the Trump tariffs and chair and trade imbalances. This is tied to that. And Japan is going to be buying from the United States instead of Australia. This is huge. And it’s significant president Trump’s coal revival is rooted in a broader push for energy dominance after years of decline. Now, this is where I also added in and took a look companies specializing in power generation equipment, emissions control, electrical infrastructure and grid information and turbines. I’ve got stories and I’m reaching out to CEOs of all of these clean whole technology companies to learn more about it, Michael, this is huge because the failure of the Jap Japan bond market is having them reach out to us to work out trade deals. So. Cole is king again. It may only be a prince for a few years, but it’s a beautiful prince in waiting, man. This is cool. It’s all tied together. [00:04:23][108.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:04:24] Yeah, I think you’re the interesting part that you noted at the beginning of this article is the fact that the majority of this call is actually bound for Japan and South Korea, two countries with which have no onshore domestic energy that they can tap from. They’re not blessed like the United States. They’re, not blessed, like the Middle East and the Gulf States, who just have a tremendous amount of energy underneath their feet. So it’s not like a lot of this coal is necessarily going to be burnt here, but that then brings up the NIMBY argument. Not in my backyard. So people are much, people are fine with having this shipped overseas and used over there, as long as it’s not used here. I think you’re absolutely right. I think this is a temporary fix that I think more has to do with job creation in Montana than it does with this idea that I mean, coal is all of a sudden now in the United States going to come back. I mean I think the big, what, what this is showing is that there’s a need globally for energy. If coal is going to be the solution, well, that is going have a lot of implications. And the question is, why would we be shipping them coal when we should be shipping the LNG? The problem is, California can’t get themselves an LNG export terminal approved. Because I guarantee if there was an export terminal in California that could handle LNG to Japan and South Korea, that’s where we would be going. And we wouldn’t even have to worry about coal. Now, again, I’m not saying. Coal is bad. I mean, there’s downsides and trades off to everything. I’m very happy that there’s jobs moving into Montana, but I find it interesting that the overall, as you would say, it’s all interconnected. There’s no story that’s out there in isolation. And if you’re an investor and all of a sudden like, well, now do I need to shift into coal? Probably not. Probably not, this is probably a short term move that is mainly designed to have some job growth, which is great. I think the broader portion of where energy is going, it’s definitely, definitely natural gas and oil. [00:06:21][117.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:22] Can I make them, can I make a comment? I would say this is going to be highly critical to the Trump offset trade balance with Japan. And that is huge. So this could be a short-term boom for investors, not, not long-term. [00:06:37][15.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:38] So I want to touch on this final things to I just want to give a quick quick plug for our sub stack And we’ve start we’ve been writing a lot of great stuff. We appreciate all of our current subscribers there We just released the first article that we’re gonna be writing for our paid only subscribers specifically in our research thread And we dropped internal rate of return is misleading you why asset managers operators and capital allocators are focusing on the wrong underwriting metrics when choosing projects to add to their portfolio This was a, I had a great time, Stu, writing this piece. And really what it is designed to think about is as you, if you are putting together a, a, uh, a fund in the oil and gas space, if you are, putting together a project that you’re going to be raising money from non-sophisticated oil and gas investors. This is designed to show you that you need to think long and hard about the projects that go in your portfolio and blindly assuming the IRR of a single well is going to perform adequately when layered into your portfolio is a terrible assumption. I’m just going to give you the shebang here, okay? On a simple portfolio where you have a 2% management fee, 20% carried interest. We call this the traditional 2 in 20. A single well IRR of 55% when layered into that portfolio, Stu, drops to 8.3 percentage points, a whopping 147% difference. Whereas the discounted multiple on invested capital, or what we call discounted moik, goes from 1.59 to 1, or a 45% difference. So, what does that mean? Always, always, always underwrite your deals with multiple metrics. Do not blindly go off IRR. You probably want to consider discounted multiple uninvested capital, and you always, always, always want to net back your returns to you, the investor, and I’ll give you a little hint. If you don’t, If your sponsor that you’re thinking about investing in. DOESN’T? Tell you that and doesn’t tell you the returns net of fees? Woohoo, Stu, woohoo, Stu, you should be wary of them and you should always ask the questions what are the projects going to perform net of fees and net of your carry? Because if you don’t, you’re being played and let’s just be honest, let’s throw it out there. A lot of these oil and gas syndicators pray, and I’m going to use that word specifically, pray the fact that you don’t know anything about oil and gas and they use that to their advantage at your expense we don’t like that so we’re here to call it out it’s one of the reason we wrote why IRR is misleading and we will be writing much much more specifically for a paid sub [00:09:32][173.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:09:33] Solar Bankruptcies Show US Clean Energy is on the Edge of a Financial Cliff This is an amazing story when you sit back and think US clean energy sector once hailed as the future of sustainable growth is teetering on the brink of a financial precipice. A wave of high profile bankruptcies among solar companies in 2024 and 2025 is exposed problems in the industry driven by soaring interest rates. And you go through the Sanoba Energy, one of the largest residential solar providers, filed for Chapter 11 in June of 2025. 718 lay off 55% of its 718 employees. Sunpower, a solar industry pioneer since 1985, I filed for chapter 11 in August of 2024, grappling with 2.1% of the world’s population. Billion in debt holy smokes solar mosaic a leading lender in rooftop solar market filed for chapter 11 and early june 2025 halting new loans after failing to secure financing amid policy uncertainties i’ll tell you rooftop solar is fantastic for folks that are off the grid when you’re trying to do a grid, it is not necessarily what you want. Here’s another one. Lumbo Holdings and ISUN also sought bankruptcy in 2024, citing high interest rates. So here’s a couple reasons why they’re failing. High interest rates, policy shifts, over-leveraged business models, market pressure and competition, and operational mismanagement. I’ll tell you what. Whenever we take a look at businesses to either buy or sell or oil and gas as a drilling as an operation you got to have a look. At what your product costs what your expenses are then you got to take a. Look at the market how much demand is going to be there that’s why I like oil and. Gas because there’s a demand for it everything Governor Newsom has been doing has never cost. Demand. He’s always gone after the producers. This is the same thing. If you’re going to invest, make sure that the product is sound, good management, good numbers, and I don’t give investment advice. But if you do, take a look at the managers and make sure they’ve got a very good system. It looks like some of these were built off of subsidies and not on a regular OPEC falls short on output promises, implications for oil prices, US investors, and global energy markets. I’ll tell you what, this is really interesting is because I rely on industry leaders and I want to give Josh Young a shout out out there. OPEC Plus meeting their quota increase guidance was a major contributor in sending oil prices from $40 in November of 2020 to 130 in June of 2022. That makes me think, is this the same kind of thing? In May of 2025, OPEC announced plans to increase oil production by 411,000 barrels per day, signaling a gradual unwinding of voluntary production cuts to stabilize global oil markets. However, a recent study indicate that this promised output has not materialized with producers like Saudi Arabia and others showing the little sign of ramping up production. Is it because they can’t? Or they’ve stalled out or they’ve hit a wall? And that’s a big question. I don’t have an answer, but I’m looking for those answers. And so when we take a look, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman agreed to boost output by 411,000 barrels in May, nearly tripling the expected increase of 135,000. And the question remains, was this OPEC management trying to sit back and say, guys, go ahead and produce all you want and then allows us to get back into balance? I’m not sure, but I’ll tell you what, I’m watching it. We’ve got a great chart in here from OPEc on the Sandstone Asset Management and the group taking a look there. And then you take a look at josh young i put a second one in the article here from josh inflation adjusted oil and gas exploration has hit its lowest point since the post world war two era this is critical from jush you combine those two posts from jash young and you sit back and kind of look at i’m a bull and i need to go talk to my bull in the backyard but he’s going Buy a little stew. I’m telling you, as long as we have the China and India matching out for demand, you got to look at demand, supply, and you take a look at where that price is going to roll in. And these two posts from Josh Young are critical. [00:14:57][324.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:58] What Happened to the oil market if Israel targeted Iran’s nuclear sites, oil, oil export infrastructure? I mean, this is a pretty crazy, crazy article from the standpoint of Israel is is continuing to threaten Iran and what this article really talks about is the potential Consequent for Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear sites and or their oil export infrastructure We all know the big island Krog Island has an export capacity about 1.7 million barrels per day Which theoretically, according to analysts, could have prices. And if that was taken offline, prices would go all the way up to $90 a barrel. You know, theoretically OPEC plus could compensate for the loss. They claim to have scare spare capacity that exceeds export volume. Iran has also threatened to target energy infrastructure in Israel, other Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia’s Abaka facility, which was also attacked in 2019, this interesting tit for tat would just continue. To escalate until it’s a full-on war. If you’re an investor and you’re looking at what’s going on in the space, the loss of Iranian exports could at least drive things up by $5, bro. I think it’s much more. The production cuts for OPEC could come in and compensate. But point is, guys, oil prices would absolutely go insane if Israel decided to strike Iranian nuclear facilities or target specific oil export. That geopolitical risk that’s being baked in right now, I think is part of the reason why price movement has happened here. [00:16:31][93.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:31] Data center surges, U.S. Power demand, 92% increase opportunities in the grid equipment and oil and gas. This is very, very important. Hyperscale data centers operated by tech giants like Amazon web services, that yes, Microsoft Azure. Google Cloud and Meta. These are all big AI driven data centers and the rise of generative AI such as chat, GBT and other languages, Nvidia suppliers of eight chips are all indirectly driving data center growth. Edge data centers, smaller localized facilities supporting 5G, internet of things and real time applications are plating in urban areas to be adding to the grid load. This is also changing the dynamics of the grid to distributed management systems as well as micro grids. Very much as you’ve heard on the podcast, Stargate and Abilene is going to be a natural gas power plant made up of smaller natural gas power plants and turbines that are able to be quickly Once the data center is up and running and the larger natural gas turbines come online, those smaller ones will be a backup system. Not a bad plan. And when we take a look at what is good for investors in the data centers, renewable energy product data centers like Google and Microsoft have sustainability goals. I’m a little bit watching that and leery, but when you take a look at regional utilities and data centers, such as dominion in Virginia or center point CNP in Texas are driving grid upgrades in new capacity, I’m looking heavily at their stock portfolio and seeing how that, that rolls through. Oil and natural gas and again there’s several different ways as we do our day job and have a lot of fun at that is taking a look at whether or not it is a private company or a public company when we evaluate deals and is the deal a tax for a tax benefit investment or is it a just as strictly a stock transaction whether or we’re buying or selling oil or gas leases a lot to those having a lot of fun there. The data center boom is not going away anytime soon, but make sure you’re careful as what you’re looking for. And we’ve got more lists coming up in future episodes. [00:19:09][158.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:10] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy Newsbeat Daily Standup. This is the weekend edition. Saturday, buckle up. We got some great stories. We wanna give Steve Reese a shout out. He is Reese Energy Consulting. If you’re a data center and you want to uh, try to figure out where I’m going to put it in. You need to visit with Steve Reese cause they know how to do natural gas. They can move molecules from the Hanesville all the way to Germany, or they can figure out and say, Hey, I’ve got to put in a data center. You need Steve Reese today. [00:19:10][0.0][1137.1]