Morning Energy is a syndicated note I publish through Enverus Intelligence. My contributions will also be distributed here. Please note that links frequently lead to content available only to subscribers of Enverus solutions. Please reach out if you have any questions. Thanks! - Ian.
In Jiro Ono’s kitchen, an apprentice spends years perfecting rice before touching fish. Tamago, the simple egg, takes 200 batches to master. The repetition is not mechanical. It is refinement. The Japanese call this shokunin: the craftsman’s ethic of doing the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit. Today is edition 1,000 of Morning Energy, and like Jiro’s Tamago, we continue to chase perfection.
The first edition hit inboxes on January 4, 2017. It was a stream of short descriptive paragraphs about GOM layered maps and MLP consolidation. WTI was $53. Henry Hub was $3.30/MMBtu. U.S. oil production was 8.9 MMbbl/d, still nursing wounds from the 2015 to 2016 bust. Early Morning Energy was functional, not yet refined.
Three years later U.S. production touched 13 MMbbl/d, ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia. And like the industry it narrates, Morning Energy evolved too. Its voice became clearer, more personal, more opinionated.
COVID brought new changes. Negative oil prices, but also a surge in momentum for low-carbon energy and, ultimately, the passing of the IRA. Power markets, which rarely made headlines in 2017, became the story after Winter Storm Uri put ERCOT on the front page. And Morning Energy moved beyond oil, gas and shale.
Today, AI is bringing new changes. Hyperscalar land positions are the new inventory, electrification is the new emerging economy, and silicon production is the new rig count. Gas, once a target for phase out, is now the essential fuel of the AI economy.
Morning Energy started as one analyst’s notes. It is now written by a team, but the ethic hasn’t changed. The Japanese have another tradition: fold 1,000 paper cranes by hand and your wish is granted. The wish? Get it right more often than not and make sure it’s worth reading.
Comments, questions or things I missed? Send me a note (or hit reply) - I would love to hear from you. Thanks for reading!