Dear Reader,
Two crises landed this week. They both point at the same sector.
Lake Powell hit a record low on August 17. It sits 30 feet above the minimum power pool at Glen Canyon Dam. Below that threshold, the turbines stop. Seven states lose hydroelectric power: Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Nebraska.
That same day, the US-Iran 60-day ceasefire expired. No deal. No extension. Brent crude climbed for the fourth straight session to $91.28. An unknown projectile struck a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz overnight.
The mainstream crowd is watching chip stocks crater and the 30-year Treasury hit 5.33%, a 19-year high. They are missing the bigger picture.
You are here because you know where the real signal lives.
Inside today's issue:
- THE BARREL: Oil climbs four days straight. The Hormuz stalemate has no end in sight, and US crude exports just hit their lowest level since November 2025.
- THE GRID: Glen Canyon Dam is 30 feet from shutdown. The hydroelectric crisis in the West is no longer hypothetical.
- THE POLICY DESK: The $40 billion US-Japan SMR deal is looking very well-timed. And a key energy sector insider just wrote a $2.19 million personal check.
- The last energy revolution made investors rich. The next one is already underway.
The Barrel
Brent crude hit $91.28 this morning. Fourth straight day of gains. WTI sits at $85.31. Both contracts closed Monday at their highest levels since July 24.
The reason is simple. The US-Iran 60-day Memorandum of Understanding expired on August 18 with nothing resolved. Trump said Washington is not planning new talks. Iran says the ceasefire is already dead. Meanwhile, a cargo ship took a hit from an unknown projectile in Hormuz overnight.
Here is what the market is pricing in: the Strait of Hormuz is not reopening soon. About 20% of the world's oil and LNG passes through that 21-mile channel. US crude exports fell to 3.06 million barrels per day last week, their lowest since the Iran war began in late February. The EIA inventory report due today is expected to show a 600,000-barrel draw.
The energy market is not pricing in peace. It is pricing in a new normal.
The Grid
Glen Canyon Dam sits at 3,519.9 feet above sea level. Minimum power pool is 3,490 feet. That is 30 feet of margin. Federal officials warned in April that a major intervention would be needed to avoid hitting that threshold by year-end.
The Bureau of Reclamation proposed a 10-year plan in July that includes major water cuts for Arizona, California, and Nevada. Arizona Governor Hobbs called the proposed cuts "draconian" and rejected them. No alternative plan exists.
Glen Canyon Dam powers seven states. Its hydroelectric output flows to Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Nebraska. When that water drops below minimum pool, those turbines do not slow down. They stop.
The Newsweek analysis this week put it plainly: higher electricity costs are coming to parts of the West regardless of what happens next. The only question is how much higher, and how fast.
This is not a climate story. This is an infrastructure failure in motion.
The Policy Desk
The $40 billion US-Japan energy partnership signed in March 2026 looks different today than it did six months ago. The deal calls for GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 small modular reactors in Tennessee and Alabama. Three gigawatts of baseload power. The timeline is the 2030s, but the capital commitments are happening now.
Meanwhile, Oklo reached first criticality at its Texas test reactor this month. That is the first reactor any private company has built and operated on private land with private capital under the Department of Energy's Reactor Pilot Program. Not a pilot project. An operational reactor.
And in the oil patch, Tor Olav Troim, director at BORR Drilling, bought 500,000 shares personally at $4.39 per share. That is $2.19 million of his own money going into offshore drilling equipment right as Hormuz tensions push day rates higher. Insiders do not write checks that size because they are optimistic. They write them because they see something.
When infrastructure fails and the grid cracks, the question is not whether prices rise. It is who collects the toll.
There is one corner of this market that profits whether Hormuz stays closed or opens next week, whether Lake Powell recovers or Glen Canyon shuts down, whether SMRs come online in 2031 or 2034. I want to show you the specific structure that sits at the intersection of both crises.
But first — our friend Porter Stansberry has been tracking something that connects directly to this story. Take a look:
SPONSORED: PORTER & CO
The Investor Angle
Two crises. One thesis.
The Western grid is losing one power source from the top: hydroelectric. Global oil markets are losing supply certainty from the bottom: Hormuz. Both pressures point toward the same conclusion. The United States needs more baseload power, produced domestically, from sources that cannot be strangled by a 21-mile strait or a two-year drought.
That is the nuclear thesis, and it is no longer speculative. SMRs are going critical. Federal partnerships are funded. Utilities in Texas are adding reactor capacity to the grid planning timeline. The capital is moving. The regulatory approvals are following.
The BORR Drilling buy matters for a different reason. Offshore drilling rigs do not care who controls Hormuz. They operate in the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Brazil. When Middle Eastern supply is uncertain, offshore production commands a premium. A director buying 500,000 shares at a depressed price is telling you something about where he thinks day rates are heading.
The B quadrant question is always the same: who collects the toll regardless of who wins? In energy, that is not the country that controls the oil. It is the infrastructure that moves, stores, and generates power when the primary sources fail.
That is what I am watching this week.
Chris Carroll
Publisher, Money, Power and Profit
P.S. Jeff Brown and Marc Chaikin predict Elon's new AI breakthrough collides with a market pattern that has a 100% track record — last time it turned $10k into $350k. Click here to see the details.