Thursday, May 14, 2026
Dear Reader,
I watched Trump land in Beijing this morning.
The summit agenda is packed. Rare earths. Tariffs. Iran. And buried in the middle of it: energy exports. LNG. Ethane. The hydrocarbons China needs and America has in abundance.
Most people are watching the headlines. I am watching the infrastructure those hydrocarbons flow through.
The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. The ceasefire is on what Trump himself called massive life support. Oil is at $101 a barrel. And two nuclear reactors broke ground this week -- the first time in American history that has happened in a single week.
There is a toll-collector play at the intersection of every one of those stories. Let me show you where I am looking.
THE WIRE
What is moving, what it means, and where I am watching
• THE BARREL: WTI sits at $101 with Hormuz still closed -- and the one number in the futures market that tells me this trade has further to run.
• THE GRID: Two nuclear construction starts in one week. One historic FERC warning. And a data center demand number that just jumped 36% from the forecast issued seven months ago.
• THE POLICY DESK: Trump landed in Beijing this morning. The summit agenda item that could unlock a dormant U.S. energy export channel most investors are not watching.
• THE PLAY: Three toll roads. Three infrastructure categories. One catalyst from Washington that just upgraded all of them.
• Trump's 250th Anniversary "gift" to patriots — Jim Rickards explains what's coming
THE BARREL
Oil, gas, and the commodity infrastructure play
WTI crude: $101.14. Brent: $105.76. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed.
Trump described the Iran ceasefire as on massive life support last Sunday. The EIA revised its forecast on May 12 and now assumes the strait stays shut through the end of May. Ten million barrels a day locked out. Possibly longer.
Here is the number I watch: the futures curve. WTI for June is at $103. WTI for February 2027 is at $79.60. That backwardation tells you the market believes this ends. It also tells you the market is pricing in months of disruption, not days.
Meanwhile, Golden Pass LNG shipped its first cargo on April 22 -- America's 9th export terminal. U.S. production sits at 13.5 million barrels per day, just 289,000 below the all-time record, on 548 rigs. Producers are running lean. The system has no slack.
The play is not the commodity. Crude will whipsaw when Hormuz reopens. The play is the infrastructure it flows through. Every barrel in, every barrel out -- someone collects a toll.
THE GRID
Nuclear, SMRs, electricity, and the data center arms race
Two nuclear construction starts in one week. America has never seen that before.
TerraPower broke ground in Kemmerer, Wyoming. A 345 megawatt sodium-cooled Natrium reactor. The NRC issued the construction permit in March -- the first non-light-water reactor permit in 40 years. Bill Gates is the lead investor. The plant comes online in 2030.
Kairos Power broke ground in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. A 50 megawatt fluoride-salt reactor. Google is buying all the power through TVA. The NRC completed its review ahead of schedule.
Here is the grid math most people are missing. Data center power demand is projected at 106 gigawatts by 2035. That is a 36% jump from the forecast issued just seven months ago. NERC issued its highest-ever emergency alert this week warning that grid operators cannot manage the pace of load growth.
And FERC chair Laura Swett said publicly that PJM -- the grid serving 65 million people -- may be too big to adequately function.
That is not a warning. That is a buying signal for anyone who understands what happens when infrastructure cannot keep pace with demand.
THE POLICY DESK
Washington, geopolitics, and the regulatory moves that shape the trade
Trump is in Beijing right now.
The agenda is heavy. Rare earths. Tariffs. Iran. And energy exports. China buys more than 80% of Iran's oil. The Hormuz shutdown has tightened Asian supply. Trump wants to sell them American LNG and ethane instead. Reuters confirmed last week that a deal could reopen U.S. energy export channels to China that the trade war had closed.
At the same time, FERC announced a technical conference for July 23 on PJM governance reform. The grid is buckling under AI and data center load. The regulator knows it. The reform process has started.
And Washington committed financing support for $80 billion in Westinghouse nuclear plant construction. Ten large reactors by 2030. The government takes a 20% profit stake. Westinghouse must go public by 2029 if it surpasses $30 billion in value.
The policy direction is clear. Washington is betting on nuclear, LNG, and domestic grid infrastructure. But there is one structural detail in this picture that most investors will miss -- and it has to do with who actually collects the revenue regardless of which company wins the nuclear race or whether Hormuz reopens next week or next year. Before I show you exactly what I am targeting...
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REVEALED: Trump's Gift to Patriots on America's 250th Anniversary
Just a few weeks before America's 250th anniversary... President Trump is planning to use executive powers to make a critical move that could make 2026 the biggest wealth-building year of your life.
Jim Rickards just released a new exposé with all the details (click here to get the full story).
...here is why right now is an unusually precise moment to position.
THE PLAY
The toll-collector framework and where I am looking
The LNG infrastructure is the first leg.
When Hormuz reopens, the question shifts from where crude flows to where gas flows. The U.S. now has 9 LNG export terminals, with five more projects coming online by 2027. China needs them. Europe locked them in after 2022. Golden Pass alone adds 2.1 billion cubic feet per day at full capacity. The toll gets collected whether WTI is at $70 or $120.
The nuclear infrastructure is the second leg.
Two construction starts this week. Three restarts underway. Morgan Stanley projects $2.2 trillion in nuclear investment through 2050. Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon all signed nuclear power purchase agreements. The utilities collecting that long-term contract revenue are the toll booths of the new grid.
The grid infrastructure is the third leg.
PJM cannot function at current scale. FERC knows it. Reform is scheduled. That means new transmission, new interconnection rights, and new infrastructure spending -- and someone owns those lines.
My principle: find the road, own the toll booth. The energy war is fought by governments and militaries. The energy income is collected by infrastructure owners.
To your power,
Robert Kiyosaki