Dear Reader,
Oil just dropped 3 percent in one session. The reason? Peace talks. Markets bolted the moment they heard it.
I want you to notice something. The same week oil fell on peace hopes, NERC issued its highest grid alert in modern history. Data centers are crashing the power grid. A thousand megawatts dropping offline in seconds. That is not a footnote. That is a failure of planning.
My rich dad used to say: the crises that clear out the speculators are the same ones that build wealth for the people paying attention.
Right now, the energy sector is being repriced. Today I want to walk you through what that means for B-quadrant investors.
THE WIRE
What I'm watching this morning
• THE BARREL: Oil slides nearly 3 percent as Iran peace signals spook the bulls. WTI is at $92.99. Before you celebrate, read what Goldman Sachs said about diesel margins for Q4.
• THE GRID: NERC just issued a Level 3 alert. Data centers are dropping 1,000-megawatt loads in seconds and breaking the Eastern grid. The August deadline is real. The response is not.
• THE POLICY DESK: Secretary Wright launched the Trump Peace Pipelines plan this week in Croatia. Central Europe wants American LNG. The pipes to deliver it are barely started.
• THE PLAY: When oil falls on peace talk noise, the toll collectors do not get cheaper. They go on sale. Here is where the value sits right now.
THE BARREL
Oil, gas, and commodities
WTI crude closed at $92.99 Thursday. It was $119 in March. The drop is not about supply. The world is still missing 4 million barrels per day of refined products because of Hormuz. The reason is peace talk noise. Markets are pricing in an Iran deal that has not happened.
The EIA confirmed it this week: crude stocks fell by nearly 8 million barrels in the week ending May 29. Goldman Sachs says diesel margins hit $50 per barrel in the United States by Q4. Two to three times the old norm. Gulf refiners are running at 97 percent of capacity right now.
At the same time, Canada and Alberta signed a pipeline deal framework this week. The formal plan is due to Prime Minister Carney by July 1. Energy Transfer is putting $5.5 billion into new gas lines this year. The build-out is not slowing. The speculators are. Those are two very different things.
THE GRID
Nuclear, SMRs, and power demand
NERC issued a Level 3 Essential Actions Alert last month. That is the top level of urgency in their system. The cause: data centers dropping more than 1,000 megawatts off the grid in seconds. Frequency problems. Voltage swings. Every grid operator in the country must respond by August 3.
This is not a future problem. PJM capacity prices cleared at $269.92 per megawatt-day this year. That is 833 percent above where they were two years ago. Sixteen billion dollars in new capacity costs are being billed to consumers right now. Data centers drove 63 percent of that jump.
The nuclear answer is being built. TerraPower broke ground at Kemmerer, Wyoming after the NRC issued the first non-light-water reactor permit in 40 years. Kairos Power is under construction in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. X-energy filed for UK licensing this week. The DOE wants 400 gigawatts of nuclear by 2050. The U.S. has 100 today.
THE POLICY DESK
Washington, world events, and rules
Energy Secretary Chris Wright flew to Dubrovnik this week and launched the Trump Peace Pipelines plan at the Three Seas Initiative Summit. The goal: grow American LNG sales to Central and Eastern Europe. Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states want out of Russian gas. American LNG is the only real option.
FERC moved on gas pipeline permits the same week, fast-tracking approvals for routine pipe work. Global natural gas spending is tracking toward $330 billion this year. A ten-year high.
The OPEC+ meeting is Sunday. Seven members are expected to vote to raise the July quota by 188,000 barrels per day. It is largely a paper move. The UAE quit the cartel in April. And Gulf producers cannot physically move the barrels while Hormuz is cut. What Sunday tells us is that the cartel is breaking apart under pressure.
Here is the number I keep returning to. U.S. LNG exports rose 25 percent year-over-year in the first two months of 2026. The Kinder Morgan backlog alone is $9.1 billion. The world needs American energy. The question is whether the pipe capacity can keep up.
There is one structure in energy that collects a fee on every molecule of gas that moves, no matter what Iran does next. Most investors are chasing the oil price. They are looking at the wrong thing. But before I show you exactly where that toll money flows...
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THE PLAY
The investment angle
...here is who gets paid no matter which way oil moves from here.
The toll collectors. Pipeline operators, LNG terminal owners, midstream companies. They do not care if WTI is $70 or $120. They charge a fee for every cubic foot of gas that flows through their pipe. They charge a fee for every LNG cargo that loads at their dock. The commodity price is noise. The volume is what matters. And volume is going up.
The NERC Level 3 alert tells you something. The grid cannot keep pace with power demand. That means two things for energy investors. First: gas pipes feeding power plants are going to see years of steady growth. Second: the price of reliable baseload power is rising. Nuclear and gas are the only options that work at scale.
Energy Transfer is deploying $5.5 billion in new capacity this year. Kinder Morgan projects U.S. gas demand hits 150 billion cubic feet per day by 2031. That is almost double current levels. The gap between supply and demand is an investment thesis.
My rich dad taught me one question before every investment: who gets paid regardless of who wins? In energy right now, the answer is the midstream operator who owns the pipe between the producer and the power plant. Oil prices will swing. World events will keep the traders guessing. The gas still has to move.
Stay empowered,
P.S. The grid crisis is not a tech problem. It is a pipe gap. The Kiyosaki Letter covers the midstream and nuclear names set to fill that gap before the market catches on. See the full briefing here.