Dear Reader,

Seven hundred acres of cleared land in Northern Virginia. Four years of planning. Over $100 billion in committed capital. The world was supposed to have its largest data center campus right there, between a Civil War battlefield and a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Last week, Blackstone pulled the plug. So did Brookfield, two months earlier.

The official story blames a newspaper-notice technicality and local opposition. The real story is simpler: the grid could not feed it. America does not have the power to run the AI economy it is trying to build. And the energy plays that solve that problem are about to become the most important real assets of the decade.

Here is what I am watching this week.

THE WIRE

• THE BARREL: OPEC+ approved its third straight output hike. WTI is back near $68. The mainstream says the Iran war is over and cheap oil is back. Ships near Hormuz are routing through Iran-approved lanes. The chokepoint still belongs to Tehran.

• THE GRID: Blackstone killed a $100 billion data center project in Northern Virginia. Not because the economics failed. Because the power grid could not support it. Every dollar of AI investment is now a bet on whether this country can build transmission capacity fast enough.

• THE POLICY DESK: Trump declared victory over Iran at the July 4th celebration. Ships near Hormuz kept routing through Iran-approved lanes. The gap between the speech and the map is the real energy risk premium nobody is pricing.

• THE PLAY: When the AI data center boom hits a hard power wall, the winners are not the builders. They are the toll collectors: utilities, pipeline operators, and grid-hardening infrastructure companies. That is where the money goes next.

• Oxford Club: How one private account structure turned $450K into up to $100M, tax-free.

THE BARREL

WTI crude closed at $68.78 on Saturday. Brent at $72.12. Both are back near pre-war levels.

On the surface, that looks like resolution. Iran is weakened. OPEC+ is adding 188,000 barrels per day starting in August. The supply fear is gone.

Except for one detail. Ships near the Strait of Hormuz are not going back to normal routing. They are going through Iran-approved lanes. That is not a free market. That is a tollbooth with a new sign on it.

Every barrel that flows through Hormuz is a transaction in the dollar system. When Iran controls that routing, even informally, it controls a fraction of every one of those transactions. The geopolitical risk premium did not disappear after the U.S.-Israeli strike. It moved underground.

The IEA is releasing strategic reserves. Non-OPEC supply is rising. Chinese imports are soft. Every variable says $68 oil or lower. The only variable nobody is pricing: what happens the next time Tehran decides a ship cannot pass without permission.

Natural gas was up 1.53% to $3.245 per MMBtu. Data center power demand runs on gas peakers. Every hour of AI compute has a BTU cost most analysts are not modeling correctly.

Hold that thought. I want to show you a number that changes the whole picture.

Blackstone committed over $100 billion to the world's largest planned data center in Northern Virginia. Last week they walked away. And here is why that changes everything for energy investors.

THE GRID

The Prince William Digital Gateway was going to be the largest planned data center campus on earth. 2,100 acres. Over $100 billion in projected investment.

Blackstone pulled out last week. Brookfield pulled out in May. The official story blames a newspaper-notice technicality and local opposition from people who live near Manassas National Battlefield and do not want transformer stations next to Civil War graves.

The real killer was the grid. Northern Virginia already hosts the highest concentration of data centers in the world. The Dominion Energy grid in that region is at capacity. New large-load customers face multi-year interconnection queues. The power was not there. It could not be built fast enough.

A survey from the Data Center Coalition found that 70% of Americans oppose data centers near their homes. Zoning fights are live from Texas to Georgia to Oregon. Meanwhile, AI compute demand doubles roughly every 18 months. This is not short-term friction. This is structural.

Samsung is preparing a 20% DRAM price hike. Luke Gromen is flagging fresh water access as the next site-selection constraint after power. The AI buildout has hard resource limits the market has not priced fully.

The winners here are not the hyperscalers spending the capital. The winners are the companies that own the infrastructure those hyperscalers cannot build fast enough to secure.

THE POLICY DESK

America turned 250 on July 4th. Trump gave a speech on the National Mall and declared he had "wiped out Iran's military." Ships near Hormuz kept routing through Iran-approved lanes.

This is an energy markets point, not a political one. If Iran still controls routing through its own chokepoint, the war did not end the geopolitical risk premium on oil. It moved it underground. That matters for any infrastructure thesis built on Middle East stability.

The U.S. is warning NATO allies that Russia is planning a provocation against Poland to test alliance resolve. For energy investors, the NATO tension matters in one clear way. U.S. LNG export capacity from the Gulf Coast is the structural story of this decade. European buyers locked into long-term contracts make U.S. LNG terminals a reliable cash flow regardless of where the geopolitical headlines land.

The June jobs report came in at 57,000. Half of what economists expected. The Dow hit a record 52,900 because weak jobs means the Fed will not hike in July. Rate hike odds fell to 20%. Lower rates are a tailwind for capital-intensive energy infrastructure. The power grid buildout that AI companies need is funded with long-duration debt. Cheaper capital helps every project in the queue.

The debt ceiling was raised to $41.1 trillion last year. The government has already burned through $2.9 trillion of that $5 trillion raise in under twelve months. That pace is inflationary. Inflation is a tailwind for hard assets with pricing power. Energy infrastructure is at the top of that list.

THE PLAY

The AI buildout is real. The demand for compute is real. The constraint is power and the assets that deliver it.

When Blackstone walks away from $100 billion in Northern Virginia, it does not mean AI infrastructure investment is over. It means the capital is going somewhere it can actually get built. States with available grid capacity, fast interconnection queues, water access, and cooperative zoning. Texas. Georgia. Ohio. Arizona. The Southeast.

The framework I use asks one question: who collects the toll regardless of who wins?

Not the AI companies. They compete on models and margins. Not the data center builders. They fight zoning boards and interconnection queues. The toll collectors are the utilities that own the wires. The pipeline operators who move gas to the peaker plants. The transmission infrastructure companies paid every time a watt flows from generation to load. And increasingly, the small modular reactor developers positioning right now to be the dedicated power source for the next generation of data center campuses.

Oil at $68 is not a crisis for energy infrastructure operators. It is a floor. OPEC+ keeps hiking. Iran still controls Hormuz routing. The structural demand from AI compute does not disappear because Blackstone lost a zoning fight.

The grid is where the money flows. Find the toll collectors.

Stay empowered.

P.S. The power grid story is the biggest infrastructure trade of the next decade. Our research is tracking the exact companies positioned to own the wires, the gas lines, and the SMR contracts that AI companies cannot build fast enough to secure. To see the full thesis and the specific names, click here.

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