Gigem77

@gothburz Lol. Yer killin' me, Smalls.

I have been asking about my WLFI tokens for four months. If no one on the project has met me, then no one on the project froze my tokens either. I would like Column 7 updated to reflect this.

The Texas Quote of the Day: "I know I belong to a Texas country church, because the only time I lock my car or pick-up in the parking lot is during the summer so my neighbors can't leave me a bag of squash!" ---- Anne Terry

What did Exxon pay in taxes of all kinds last year? I'll help: Total taxes paid in 2025 including sales-based taxes were $62.412 billion. Income tax was $11 billion of that total and the so called "incentives" were deductions and accelerated expensing applicable mainly to income tax. Note: The US exports 4 million barrels per day of high quality oil and 7 million barrels per day of petroleum products. We are the gas station to the world. Welcome to global competition and the resulting higher prices. When oil returns to $60 per barrel, and it will, I look forward to a post extolling the virtues of cheap gas. Meanwhile, get a job with an energy company and buy high dividend energy stocks. Stand in front of the train or ride it. Nothing stops this train.

I am a Senior Vice President of Upstream Portfolio Strategy at ExxonMobil. I need to explain the relationship between your gas prices and our stock price, because I think people are confused and believe these are two different things. They are the same thing. Observed from two different tax brackets. You are paying $4.11 a gallon. That is up 29.5% from last year. In Kentucky, it is up 42.5%. In California, it is $5.89. You are paying roughly $940 more per year per vehicle than you were twelve months ago, and I need you to understand that we know this because we modeled it. We modeled it in Q3. We modeled it over lunch. The lunch was catered. The model is called DEUGD. "Demand Elasticity Under Geopolitical Disruption". Thirty-one slides. I presented it to the board in a room with a Nespresso machine that takes pods we get at cost through a vendor partnership. The model tells us exactly how much more you will pay before you change your behavior. The answer is that you don't change your behavior. You get a second job. You stop buying ground beef. You canceled the pediatric dentist. You let the check engine light stay on for another month. You pick up a twelve-hour shift on a holiday you used to spend with your children. But you do not stop driving. We have forty years of data on this. The demand curve does not move. You are, and I mean this as a term of art, an inelastic asset class. One-fifth of the world's oil moves through the Strait of Hormuz. When the Strait is disrupted, Brent crude goes to $100 a barrel. When Brent goes to $100, our upstream portfolio generates an additional $11 billion in annual profit. Chevron gets $9.2 billion. The top 100 firms collectively earn $30 million per hour. Per hour. That is not a metaphor. That is the wire transfer schedule. I can hear the notification on my phone. I have not turned it off. It is pleasant. Last year, we produced 4.7 million barrels per day. Highest in forty years. We generated $52 billion in operating cash flow. We returned $37.2 billion to shareholders. Seventeen billion in dividends. Twenty billion in buybacks. Our CEO said on the earnings call — and the transcript is public — "ExxonMobil is a fundamentally stronger company than it was just a few years ago." He said this on the same call where we disclosed the war-profit uplift model. The same call. He did not lower his voice. Nobody asked him to. We are fundamentally stronger. You are paying $940 more per year. These are not unrelated facts. They are the same fact, observed from two different income brackets. I said this already. I will say it again. It is the load-bearing sentence of this entire confession. I sit in a building in Spring, Texas. The building has a subsidized cafeteria. Wednesday is brisket day. The gas station across the street from the building charges $4.09 per gallon to the people who work there. I have never checked. I expense my fuel. The company pays for my gas with the money it made from raising your gas prices. That is called a closed-loop benefit structure. I did not name it. I did use it this morning. We received billions in federal tax incentives last year. Congress debated removing them. The debate lasted four hours. The incentives lasted another fiscal year. The $940 your household pays is not tax-deductible. Our lobbying budget is. We spent millions on lobbying last year. The return on that investment was the incentives. I have seen worse ratios. I have never seen a better one. There is a poster in the lobby. The poster says "Powering the World's Progress." I walk past it every morning. I have never once thought about what "progress" means in this sentence. I suspect it means the share price. The share price is $146. The share price was $108 before the Strait closed. The share price is up 35%. Your grocery bill is also up. These are both called "progress" but only one of them is on my poster. We have an internal wellness initiative. It is called "ExxonMobil Thrives." It includes gym access, mental health days, and a quarterly mindfulness seminar led by a contractor we pay $40,000 per session. Last quarter the seminar was about managing stress during periods of global uncertainty. The global uncertainty they were referring to is the same global uncertainty that generated our $11 billion windfall. We are managing it well. $37.2 billion to shareholders. $940 extra per household. $30 million per hour. Millions in lobbying. Billions in tax incentives. The pipeline connects your gas tank to our dividend schedule. The pipeline is not leaking. The pipeline is not broken. The pipeline has never worked better. I would know. I built the model that monitors it. The model says you will keep paying. You have not proven the model wrong yet.

@adamtaggart @Haymaker_0 China may be having the same problem that we are, finding which 2nd Lieutenants are "in charge" and getting them to agree to a deal. Decapitating the leadership to the 10th level has its drawbacks.

To understand why the longer the Persian Gulf remains closed the more pain China feels, you need only look at this chart IMO, odds are good China will eventually press Iran *hard* to make a deal with the US for this reason (h/t @haymaker_0)

The statement from @CENTCOM is very enlightening. Instead of conducting a boarding, USS Spruance warned Touska for 6 hours it was in violation of the blockade. It is not clear if the ship was suppose to divert or stop to be boarded. The ship continued toward Iran and crossed the blockade line from the Arabian Sea to the Gulf of Oman. When Touska refused to comply, Spruance moved off from the ship, sent a warning to abandon the engine room and then proceeded to fire with its 5 inch/Mk 45. The gunfire either disabled the machinery or the crew brought the ship to a stop. Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit then conducted a boarding and seized the ship. It is surprising to see that the ship was fired upon and not boarded via helicopters as was done against Venezuelan tankers earlier this year. It is unclear what damage was inflicted to the ship, but it is showing Not Under Command on its AIS. More to follow.

Backwardation puts the brakes on capex for exploration. The 12 month strip is around $82.55. WTI is $103. Let's watch the quarterly reports for more debt paydowns and higher dividends. It's not a permanent ceiling on shale. Also, consider that Gulf of America production is rising. Total US production gets a boost from that.

It has been 21 weeks since U.S. crude #oil production last touched a record high on November 7, 2025. As the streak of stagnation continues, one has to wonder: is the American shale boom finally hitting a ceiling?

@Rory_Johnston "There is no steady, clear passage". Iran is moving oil through the strait. They have moved nearly 60 million barrels since the war started. The cleared path is close to the Iranian side of the strait. Their tolling system depends on a clear passage.

Bunch of people have asked so to answer directly: these Hormuz offset numbers are entirely bunk. Absolutely fair to be optimistic about the war ending and Hormuz reopening, but it’s fundamentally flawed to say we’re offset the Hormuz supply loss and irresponsible to clam it’s not a serious ongoing crisis. Bad estimates (the reality below) 🇸🇦 7M: Saudi Reroute (That’s total East -West pipeline capacity, already had 2-2.5 on the line so remaining “swing” from Gulf to Red Sea is 4.5-5.0 MMbpd) 📈 4.25M: Pre-War Surplus (We did have a pre-war surplus, but it was closer to 2 MMbpd, and even that remains disputed—I was on the bearish side of the debate) 🇨🇳 2M: China Safe-Passage (There is no steady cleared safe passage) 🇦🇪 1.5M: UAE ADCOP reroute (Again, this is the pipe capacity—swing is more like 0.5-0.7) 🇮🇷 1M: Iran Jask Bypass (This is silly, Jask never demonstrated that capacity but more fundamentally Iran Hormuz flows actually remain higher than that at 1.5+ MMbpd) 🇮🇳 400k: India Safe-Passage (There is no steady cleared safe passage) In reality, we have ~13 MMbpd of upstream Gulf production offline, with no sustainable offset—SPRs, etc. are only a temporary help. Today’s Trump blockade would raise that to more than 15 MMbpd.

@financialjuice I see the IRGC Navy attended the "Bagdad Bob" school of journalism.

IRGC Navy: Attempts by military vessels trying to cross the Strait will be met with decisive response - Iranian TV

The US imports oil from: #1 Canada @ 60% of total imports, #2 Mexico about 7% Then Saudi, Brazil, Iraq, Columbia. The exposure to Hormuz is limited. The US imports cheap oil and exports light expensive oil. The US also exports 7 million barrels per day of refined products. The U.S. is a net exporter of petroleum products. Gulf worldstopexports.com/us-crude-oil-i…

Much needed reminder that the USA is still a net crude oil importer.

@ces921 Capex for drilling and thus additional rigs won't increase until the 12 month strip makes hedging profitable. Backwardation causes caution. DUCs are being completed onshore and GOM production is growing again.

WTI vs US Oil Rig Count Wen Drill Baby Drill?

@AxelMerk The strait is leverage over the US if the related higher oil prices push the 10 year bond interest rate higher. See Luke Gromen for the details. Also, U.S. politicians are using a political calendar not an engineering one. Cheers

Let’s assume Iran will impose a hefty transit fee, creating incentive for others to build new pipelines. It also increases pressure for the world to diversify their energy supply. -> the market will "solve" this over medium term regardless of how this plays out. Am I wrong?

@adamtaggart Iran's communications are degraded. It will take hours maybe days to get the word out. If they are still arguing internally, then the ceasefire becomes even more tenuous.

Congrats to the 15% of you who predicted "ceasefire" in my earlier poll Now that a 2-week one has been declared, what do you think is most likely to happen next?

@adamtaggart The evidence is a lower oil price, lower 12 month futures strip. Dec oil is 71 bucks. We can call that "normal".

Oil supply missing today from the Persian Gulf is 15 of 105 million bpd of world demand. That's a high altitude headache, not a fatal asphyxiation. The US is not even at headache levels. There exists a large SPR surplus that is being released. Before the war began, the world had a production (supply) buffer of 1.3 to 2 million bpd that was going into storage. More leaks going around Iran are developing. For example, will all Iraqi oil (3.4 mmbpd) be allowed to transit? That will cut the 15 to 11.6. Meanwhile Iran is enduring a great deal more pain than anyone else.

If you go from 2% of needed oxygen reaching your brain (3-4 ships/day) to 14-16% of needed oxygen reaching your brain (10-11 ships/day)... ...you are merely going to suffer irreversible brain damage & then death just a tiny bit slower than you otherwise would have.

$uso Press Headline: "20 Million Barrels Trapped Reality Check: Minus Iran's oil (already moving): -2.4M Minus Saudi/UAE Pipeline bypasses: -5.7M Minus Iraqi "Exemption" flow (if real) : -3.3M THE REAL DEFICIT: ~8.6 Million bpd If /when tanker trackers show 5+ tankers leaving Iraq , the "20 million" narrative will collapse

I hold Luke Gromen in highest esteem. Like Mike Green, he challenges me to think and dig. His macroeconomic thinking is very good. I'm only picking at the edges of a couple of assumptions. Consider me a fan with perhaps too much optimism. But I am watching US energy companies and my home state of Texas increase production and delivery of oil in 2026 by more than the amount we import from the Persian Gulf nations (Iraq and Saudi). For example, Chevron/Shell/Beacon recently solved the problem of "20k PSI" and their projects are increasingly accretive to 2026 Gulf of America production.

@Gigem77 @LukeGromen You can't disagree with this guy he's got a doomsayer bias It gets alot of X engagement which makes him feel good apparently incentivizing him to incessantly post doom type of posts If he wants to get out of this mindset he should read the book Thinking Fast & Slow by Kahneman

How much of your savings would you sell to feed your family & pay your mortgage if you lost your job while food, electricity, & heating costs soared? You would sell all of it, & so will the world… …& the world has $70tn of “savings” (gross; $27tn net), mostly in USD assets👇

@financialjuice Will oil futures gap up or down tonight?

Tanker Ocean Thunder carrying Iraqi crude making its way through Hormuz Strait.

New technology - 20k PSI- is already producing oil and adding billions of barrels to resources/reserves in the Gulf.

How much oil production will be added in 2026 from the Gulf of America? An additional 308,000 barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil production is expected to come online in the Gulf of America in 2026 from new fields, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). How much oil did the US import from the Persian Gulf before the Iran war? The U.S. imported approximately 0.5 million barrels of crude oil per day from Persian Gulf countries via the Strait of Hormuz in 2024, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data, which represents the most recent full-year figures before the escalation into the Iran war.