Jack Prandelli

🚨3 weeks ago Brent fell hard and the market declared the resource war over. I had 13 positions built on the opposite view. So I did the only honest thing a trader can do: I spent weeks stress testing my own thesis, across 5 articles and every name I hold. Today I published the verdict. 12 of 13 positions are green🟢 Average return roughly 9%, earned while oil was falling. The only loser was flagged and trimmed 30% before the deeper drop. In my latest article I show you the machine behind the move a paper oil market that trades 5 billion barrels a day against a physical market of 100 million. That ratio is why prices dislocated for 3 weeks, and why they are snapping back now. all 13 names, with entry, current price and P&L for each and the 1 picks and shovels business I am putting through a probation before it becomes position 14. If you want to see what a portfolio built for the physical market looks like after the paper market threw everything at it, this is the one to read. Link for the full analysis👇 open.substack.com/pub/themerchan…

🚨Shell's largest deal since BG Group in 2016 just cleared 99.54% shareholder approval. Both times, the thesis was the same: gas and LNG ⚡🇨🇦 C$22 billion (US$16.4 billion) to acquire ARC Resources Ltd. one of Canada's largest Montney gas producers. The vote: 99.54% in favour. Court of King's Bench of Alberta hearing scheduled. Closing: H2 2026. What Shell is actually buying? 370,000 boe/d of production. Mostly low-cost Montney gas and liquids. 1.5 million net acres in the Montney added to Shell's existing 440,000 acres. 2 billion boe of proved and probable reserves. Accretive to free cash flow per share from 2027. Double-digit returns targeted. ARC's Montney acreage sits directly adjacent to Shell's Groundbirch asset in British Columbia which supplies gas to LNG Canada, where Shell holds 40%. Montney upstream → Groundbirch → LNG Canada → Asia. Shell just built an integrated gas corridor from wellhead to export terminal to cargo. LNG Canada is coming online. Shell needed feedgas security for decades, not spot contracts. This acquisition locks that supply. It also gives Shell a low-cost, long-life North American gas base to feed Asian buyers who want Canadian LNG as an alternative to US Gulf Coast exposure. 2 crises have made that diversification argument for Shell. 1️⃣Europe needed it in 2022. 2️⃣Asia is watching Hormuz in 2026. In 2016, Shell bought BG Group for $53 billion the bet was LNG as the backbone of the global gas market. That thesis proved correct. Shell is now doubling down on the same logic, with a more targeted, integrated execution in Canada. Gas is not a transition fuel for Shell. It is the strategy. If you want to know my latest analysis on Shell and other LNG stocks do not miss my latest article. themerchantsnews.substack.com/p/after-the-st…

Trump says the US is protecting the Strait of Hormuz, which helps every buyer downstream, including China. Trump also says the US is blocking Iranian oil specifically, and almost all Iranian oil goes to China. That is not a a favor to China. Venezuela's discounted oil got cut off first. Now it is Iran's. Same pattern, 2 countries. The US is not protecting China's supply. It is removing China's cheapest sources of it, one sanctioned producer at a time. themerchantsnews.substack.com/p/china-has-a-…

🌎The world just became addicted to American gas. Global LNG trade hit 56.3 Bcf/d in 2025 A RECORD🚨 And it happened almost entirely because the US kept building. American export capacity expanded to meet rising demand, and that expansion alone is what pushed the whole global number to an all time high. One country's build out. One global record. That's how much the US now drives this market.

as I mentioned in my article here: themerchantsnews.substack.com/p/when-did-the…

"Massive new oil partnerships with Iraq." That is how Trump teased what is coming out of today's meetings with Iraq's prime minister. Behind the phrase: Chevron negotiating to take over oilfield assets previously run by Russia's Lukoil, HKN Energy targeting 140,000 barrels a day at the Hamrin field, and Halliburton managing the Bin Omar and Sinbad fields in the south. The stated reason: diversify away from Hormuz risk and away from Chinese and Russian dominance in Iraqi energy, with new pipeline routes planned through Turkey to the Mediterranean. This is the American energy leverage thesis playing out in crude and infrastructure now, not just gas. themerchantsnews.substack.com/p/china-has-a-…

The world is not waiting to find out who controls Hormuz. It is building around it. Goldman Sachs tracked 7 pipeline and export projects now under construction or planned across the Gulf. 1. By end of 2027, over 45% of pre-war Gulf exports could bypass Hormuz entirely. 2. By end of 2028, that rises past 60%. 3. Median Gulf pipeline construction time: 2.5 years, faster for disruption driven projects. 7 to 9 million barrels a day will still need Hormuz no matter what gets built. Qatar's LNG has no alternative route at all. The era of Hormuz as irreplaceable is ending. It is not ending fast enough to matter this year. source @MarioNawfal

Siemens Energy is rebranding to Omterra, uniting Siemens Energy and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy under 1 name. The trigger is contractual, not strategic. The brand license from the 2020 spin off from Siemens AG was always time limited, and that window is now closing. A reminder that corporate structure decisions made years ago still surface on their own schedule, regardless of what the market is doing.

The entire oil and gas industry in 3 words. Upstream finds and produces it. Midstream moves and stores it. Downstream refines and sells it. Every headline this month, Hormuz, refineries, tankers, storage, fits into 1 of these 3 buckets. Save this for the next time someone asks what you actually cover.

The full LNG value chain in one image. Tomorrow, 18:00 CET, I go live with @Swissquote to unpack The LNG Supercycle: → USA capacity doubles by 2029 → Iran war reshuffled Qatar → AI + data centers = domestic gas boom → 5 names to watch Register free ↓ swissquote.com/en-ch/private/…

🚨3 weeks ago Brent fell hard and the market declared the resource war over. I had 13 positions built on the opposite view. So I did the only honest thing a trader can do: I spent weeks stress testing my own thesis, across 5 articles and every name I hold. Today I published the verdict. 12 of 13 positions are green🟢 Average return roughly 9%, earned while oil was falling. The only loser was flagged and trimmed 30% before the deeper drop. In my latest article I show you the machine behind the move a paper oil market that trades 5 billion barrels a day against a physical market of 100 million. That ratio is why prices dislocated for 3 weeks, and why they are snapping back now. all 13 names, with entry, current price and P&L for each and the 1 picks and shovels business I am putting through a probation before it becomes position 14. If you want to see what a portfolio built for the physical market looks like after the paper market threw everything at it, this is the one to read. Link for the full analysis👇 open.substack.com/pub/themerchan…

What does a record LNG year actually tell us? 579 bcm traded in 2025. A new global record, +6% year on year📈 US and Qatar drove export growth. Egypt, Italy, France, Spain drove import growth. US, Qatar, Australia stayed the top 3 exporters. The main story is familiar... US LNG into Europe, Filling the gap left by Russia. In 2026, the landscape has completely shifted, and Qatar has suffered heavy attacks. In my portfolio, I break down the top-performing stocks positioned to benefit from this crisis. themerchantsnews.substack.com/p/after-the-st…

Every commodities to stocks ratio extreme in the last 35 years marked a turning point. Extreme relative valuations do not last... They break. 1999, stocks so dominant commodities became irrelevant 2000s, commodities entered a decade long boom 2008, commodities became consensus, the GFC ended it 2026, the ratio sits near multi decade lows again⚠️ Everything covered this month, refineries under attack, Hormuz closed, Chinese stockpiles drawing down, is happening while commodities are this cheap relative to stocks. That is the setup. themerchantsnews.substack.com/p/after-the-st…

Asian refiners are back at the table for US crude. Why? the Hormuz standstill has made Middle East barrels a logistics risk, not just a price question. The bid offer gap is still wide. Nobody has agreed on price yet. But the buyers are showing up. This is the same leverage from the LNG piece, now showing up in the crude market too. themerchantsnews.substack.com/p/after-the-st…

A friendly reminder: 2 weeks ago I said Indian refiners would step up and capture the margin gap left by Russia's export ban and the Middle East disruption. India's product exports are now on track to hit 1.4 million barrels a day in July, the highest since September. That is roughly 20% higher than a year ago, and nearly 50% more than May, per Kpler. The world's 4th largest refining hub is filling the hole other refiners cannot.

How much oil can you move in 26 days when you know the window is closing? Iran found out. Over 80 million barrels of oil and refined products, worth roughly 6 billion dollars, moved out before the US blockade came back. 30 million barrels are now stranded in storage. Another 60 million barrels of floating storage capacity still sits inside the blockade zone, waiting. That is what a sanctions sprint looks like, and what happens when the window slams shut mid stride.

1000 days since October 7. The Middle East that exists today is not the one anyone modeled at the start. Every war remaps who trusts whom. Saudi Arabia and UAE's positions relative to Iran visibly crossed. So did Qatar and Syria's relative to Israel. Trade routes redrawn around Hormuz. Battlefields expanded from Gaza to Iran's interior. Public opinion split along new lines. This is a region resetting its alliances in real time.

The Salavat refinery, 1,400 km from the Ukrainian border, was hit again overnight. Explosions and fire reported by local residents. But the sharper data point is what is happening on the water. With refining capacity offline, Russia has to export more crude instead of processing it, and it cannot find buyers fast enough. Crude held on tankers is back near the highs seen at the start of the year. The refinery campaign is not just cutting supply. It is creating a crude glut Russia cannot place.

National average gas price today: 3.86 dollars a gallon, per AAA

here: themerchantsnews.substack.com/p/after-the-st…

🚨BP pumped less oil in Q2 than Q1. But they made dramatically more money💰 That gap tells you everything about where we are in the energy cycle🛢️ BP's Q2 trading statement: Brent averaged $97/bbl in Q2, versus $78/bbl in Q1 and $67/bbl a year ago. The Iran war didn't just squeeze supply. It handed every barrel still moving a massive premium. What those numbers translate to for BP? 🔸Oil production earnings: +$1.8–2.1 billion uplift vs Q1. 🔸Gas & low-carbon segment: +$0.5–0.7 billion uplift. 🔸Refining (diesel, jet tightening): +$1.2–1.4 billion. 🔸Oil trading: "slightly higher" than an already "exceptional" Q1. Production was actually down 2.17–2.22 million boe/d vs 2.34 million boe/d in Q1.... Didn't matter, the price did the work. What bp did with the windfall? 🔹Net debt cut from $25.3 billion (March) to $22–23 billion (June). 🔹€2.5 billion of perpetual hybrid bonds redeemed. 🔹$1.1 billion Gulf of Mexico spill liability cleared. 🟢Total balance sheet reduction in one quarter: $6.3–7.3 billion. Target: $14–18 billion net debt by end-2027. Now it looks credible.... Citi raised Q2 EPS forecasts by 18%. 🌍 BP is using crisis driven cash to clean up its balance sheet and quietly write down the energy transition bets that didn't perform. The profit drivers are oil, gas and trading. The impairments are in renewables and low-carbon. The numbers make the strategy clearer than any investor day presentation. "Back to barrels" isn't a slogan at BP anymore,it's the P&L. Do not miss my latest article on oil prices + my portfolio. Link in the below comments👇