America Just Became the World's Gas Dealer

Dear Reader,

Markets were closed yesterday. Memorial Day. I used the break to read through a stack of energy reports I had been sitting on.

One number kept coming up. The U.S. is now the largest LNG seller on Earth. We passed Qatar. We passed Australia. We did it in less than a decade.

That is a big deal. Europe needs our gas. Asia needs our gas. They are locking in long-term deals to get it. And the companies that move that gas through pipes and export docks get paid from day one of the contract. Not when the ship arrives. Day one.

Here is what I am watching as the market wakes up today.

THE WIRE

What I’m tracking this morning

• THE BARREL: The U.S. is now the top gas seller on Earth. Two big new Gulf Coast export projects are still waiting on permits. Here is why that permit decision is worth more to you than any OPEC press release.

• THE GRID: Four of the five biggest tech firms signed nuclear power deals in the past year. The number buried in the filings tells you how desperate they are for real power.

• THE POLICY DESK: Trump’s new permit rules cut review time from six years to eighteen months. One sector wins more than any other. It is not the one most people are watching.

• THE PLAY: There is a class of energy company that gets paid a fixed fee no matter where gas trades. The contracts just repriced. I am watching this closely. It is the closest thing to universal basic income that exists in America. The next payout is days away.

THE BARREL

Oil, Gas & Commodities

The U.S. crossed a line last year that almost no one saw coming. We became the world’s top LNG seller. Not top three. Number one.

Our export docks are now running near full. Sabine Pass. Freeport. Corpus Christi. Calcasieu Pass. All shipping near their limits. Europe is buying on long contracts. Twenty years in some cases.

The next wave is what I am watching. Two more Gulf Coast projects are in the permit queue. Venture Global’s CP2 and Port Arthur LNG. Together, they would add about 40 million tons per year of new export capacity. That is a lot of pipe, a lot of compressors, and a lot of dock work. The firms building that gear get paid from day one. Not from first gas. Day one.

Crude oil held near recent support going into the long weekend. The short-term price story is mixed. The ten-year supply story is not.

THE GRID

Nuclear, SMR & Power

Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta all signed long-term nuclear power deals in the past year. Four of the five biggest tech firms. That is not a trend. That is a signal.

The signal is this: the grid can not power the AI build on solar and wind alone. Not at the scale they need. A single large data center can use 200 to 500 megawatts of power around the clock. It needs power that works when the sun is down and the wind is still.

Constellation brought Three Mile Island back online under a 20-year deal with Microsoft. The NRC approved it. Think about what Microsoft paid to make that happen. They paid a big premium for one thing: power that never shuts off. That premium is not going away.

Small reactors are still a few years out from full scale. But the deals are being signed now. TerraPower’s Natrium plant in Wyoming is the one I track most. When it goes live, the math changes for every SMR firm behind it.

THE POLICY DESK

Washington & Regulation

The Trump team’s new permit rules are moving faster than most investors thought. The new plan cuts review time for key energy projects from four to six years down to twelve to eighteen months. That is not a tweak. That is a new game.

The sector that wins most is not oil and gas drilling. It is midstream. Pipe networks, compressor stations, export feed lines. These projects have clear cash flow models and steady returns. But they have been stuck for years by delays that made it hard to get deals done.

The LNG export decision at the Energy Department is the other piece. A good ruling on long-term export rights would free up capital on several stalled projects. The decision is due before the end of Q2. That is now. Watch for it.

Also worth noting: a FERC market ruling last month raised capacity payments for firm, on-demand power in several regional grids. Natural gas plants are the main winners. Most retail investors have not priced this in yet.

There is one class of energy asset that I keep coming back to. It is not a producer. It is not a driller. It does not care if oil trades at $50 or $90.

And the fee model it runs on was quietly repriced last quarter in a way I do not think the market has caught up with yet.

The full breakdown is below, after a word from our partners.

THE PLAY

Where I’m Watching the Energy Dollar

The asset I keep coming back to is midstream. The firms that move and store natural gas on fixed-fee contracts. Not the drillers. The toll roads.

Here is why the fee model matters. A midstream firm signs a deal with a gas producer. The producer pays a set rate for every unit of gas that moves through the pipe or the plant. That rate does not move with gas prices. The firm collects the fee whether gas is at $2 or $8.

What changed last quarter is the contract cycle. Many of the 10 to 15 year deals signed during the shale boom are now rolling off. The new deals are being written at much higher rates. Same pipe. Same plant. No new cost. Just higher fees.

I want you to look at the midstream names with high exposure to the Permian basin and Gulf Coast export lines. Those two routes have locked-in growth for the next decade no matter what happens to oil prices or world events. Volume times fee equals revenue. The fee just went up. The volume is not going down.

That is the trade I am sitting with this week. Not a quarter play. A decade play.

Stay empowered

P.S. The midstream fee story is one piece of what I am watching right now. If you want to see the full list of energy plays I think have the best setup heading into the second half of 2026, click here to see what I am watching.