Dear Reader,
Brent crude hit $110 a barrel this week. The Strait of Hormuz is still shut. And most investors are staring at the oil price.
I am watching something else.
Four days ago, NextEra Energy wrote a $66.8 billion check. They bought Dominion Energy. That deal just told you where the real money sees the next ten years going.
Dominion sits on top of Northern Virginia. Northern Virginia is where most of the world's AI data centers live. Those data centers need more power than the grid can give them. NextEra just bought the land under the pipe.
Today I am watching three stories. Oil. The grid. Washington. All three point to the same trade.
THE WIRE
Four signals worth your attention this Friday
• THE BARREL: Brent is at $110. The US rig count is flat. We are now the world's main LNG supplier. What the rig count tells you about the next move in crude.
• THE GRID: NextEra paid $66.8 billion for Dominion Energy. The reason has nothing to do with power and everything to do with AI. Who just bought the keys to America's grid.
• THE POLICY DESK: Trump's drilling permits are up 55%. A big tax credit deadline hits July 4. Russia's oil waiver got another 30-day pass. Here is what each move means for your money.
• THE PLAY: Oil at $110 will not last. But someone gets paid on every barrel, every kilowatt, and every cubic foot of gas no matter the price. I am looking at three names that own the pipe.
• Elon Musk's New $1 Quadrillion Opportunity — Brownstone Research found a back door into Elon’s next big bet. Click to see what they found.
THE BARREL
Oil, natural gas, and the commodity picture
Brent crude is at $110 this morning. WTI is near $97 on the near contract. That is $45 a barrel above where we started the year.
The Strait of Hormuz is still shut. About 20 million barrels a day flow through that channel. Iran is pushing a toll plan on ship traffic. Secretary Rubio called it “unacceptable.” Pakistan is flying envoys into Tehran right now.
Baker Hughes released the rig count this morning. Oil rigs: 415. Same as last week. US producers are not rushing to drill at $100 crude. They are printing cash and sitting on it.
US natural gas is at $3.27 per unit. Europe pays four to five times that. Asia pays more. The US is now the main gap-filler for the LNG that Qatar can no longer ship. Cheniere Energy and Venture Global are minting money right now.
THE GRID
Nuclear, power plants, the grid, and the AI power war
The biggest energy deal of the decade just happened. Most of the press missed it.
NextEra Energy agreed to buy Dominion Energy for $66.8 billion. The combined company will be the largest electric utility on earth. Market value: about $249 billion.
Why Dominion? Northern Virginia. That is where Data Center Alley sits. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta — they all run big AI compute there. They need far more power than the grid can give them today. NextEra just bought the rights to that demand.
Also this week: Utah hosted a national nuclear summit today. The NRC chairman was the lead speaker. X-energy went public and raised over $1 billion — the biggest nuclear IPO ever. NERC, the grid watchdog, issued its highest-level alert about data centers cutting power without warning. Duke Energy locked in 2.7 gigawatts of new data center deals in the first three months of this year alone.
The grid cannot keep up. That is the whole trade.
THE POLICY DESK
Washington, rules, and what they mean for energy investors
Three moves out of Washington this week.
First: the White House approved 6,000 drilling permits on federal land. That is a 55% jump from a year ago. The permits are moving. The question is whether the oil companies will use them.
Second: a clean energy tax credit deadline hits July 4. Wind and solar projects need to break ground before then to keep full federal tax credits. After that date, the credits go away. There is a rush to pour concrete right now.
Third: Treasury Secretary Bessent gave Russia’s oil trade another 30-day pass. Russian crude keeps flowing to India at cut-rate prices. The pass is narrow in scope, but the signal matters.
I have been watching one number all week. It is not the crude price. It is not the rig count. It is buried in the fine print of the NextEra deal. And it tells you exactly where the next decade of energy money is going.
SPONSORED: BROWNSTONE RESEARCH
Elon Musk's New $1 Quadrillion Opportunity
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Elon Musk is about to take SpaceX public as part of his plan to unlock the full power of artificial intelligence.
Elon is predicting this will help unleash a $1 quadrillion new wealth wave.
That would be enough to send a check for $2.8 million to every single man, woman, and child in America.
That's how big this opportunity is.
Click here to get the details and I'll show you how to claim your stake… starting with just $500.
That number is $249 billion.
The world’s largest electric utility. Built around the most valuable real estate in AI.
Here is the B-quadrant lesson. When everyone fights over whether crude goes up or down, the smart money buys the pipe the crude flows through. Grid owners get paid at $70 oil and at $120 oil. Nuclear plants get paid whether gas is cheap or dear. LNG export terminals get paid as long as Europe and Asia need gas.
The question is never whether they need energy. The question is who owns the pipe.
Right now I am watching three areas. LNG export names for the Hormuz premium. Grid owners in AI data center zones for the power demand wave. And nuclear plants with long-term contracts signed by the big tech firms.
Constellation Energy has a 20-year deal with Microsoft at Three Mile Island. Meta just locked in 1,100 megawatts from Constellation through 2044. Amazon has 1.9 gigawatts tied to Susquehanna through 2042. These are not bets. These are signed deals paying fixed tolls for decades.
Oil at $110 draws the headlines. But the real money this week is in who just paid $66.8 billion for the right to charge the toll.
Stay empowered
P.S. Elon Musk has been saying the same thing for almost a decade:
“Universal basic income is coming.” It's not a question of if — it's when.
And he's right.
AI is already displacing millions of jobs. One report says 40% of all jobs could be automated within the next decade.
When that happens, the government will have no choice but to pay people. The money will come from the companies profiting from AI — through robot taxes, automation fees, or it could even come from a sovereign wealth fund like Alaska has with oil.
That's how Universal Income will get funded. That's how it will become real.
But here's the problem: Washington moves at a snail's pace. This could take 20 years.
So while Musk tweets and Congress holds hearings, what are you supposed to do? Wait?
I don't think so.
The way I see it, universal income already exists.
It's not funded by robots or AI. It's funded by America's oil and gas infrastructure — and it pays 10% a year, 42 times a year, to everyone who holds units.
I call it the Patriot Income Plan. It's made up of 14 partnerships — and it's already paying out.In 2020, it paid out $28.8 billion. This year, it’s expected to pay out $53 billion.
Think of it as your own personal sovereign wealth fund. Funded by American energy. Paying you like clockwork. One investor collects $4,800 a month. Another pulls in over $25,000.
Elon is right. UBI is coming. But you don't have to wait.