Ferg's Finds

This is a short weekly email that covers a few things I’ve found interesting during the week.

Article

Hubbert’s Peak is Here - Goehring & Rozencwajg A long read, but the shale section is worthwhile.

Podcast/Video

I enjoy finding smart oil bears: The Chinese Yuan "Doom Loop" & The Oil-Dollar Wrecking Ball | Michael Kao & Alexander Stahel

This was awesome, and a must-watch: "The Great Australian Scream" - Opening Keynote, Sydney Morning Herald Sydney 2050 Summit

Quote

“As usual they extrapolated it rather than question its durability. As in so many of the examples in this book, for most people, psychology-driven extrapolation took the place of an understanding of and belief in cyclicality.”

― Howard Marks

Tweet

Ever since I first researched rare earths, I understood this was a powerful weapon China could use against the West.

Charts

How the West believes the world still looks vs how the world actually looks.

Similar to expecting Saudi to fall in line with US requests (the US used to be 25% of Saudi oil exports), now China is 26%.

“Whose bread I eat, his song I sing”

Something I'm Pondering

How far China pushes these restrictions? I’ve observed before that the next oil embargo could be a Green embargo.

Rare Earths are the obvious tool; that said, there are few Green supply chains China doesn’t have majority control over.

China’s dominance is even understated in many of these charts when you consider the Chinese set up many “other Asia Pacific” manufacturers to dodge restrictions on China-manufactured goods, particularly solar.

None of this will help with the high-cost inflation the Green Transition is already experiencing.

I hope you’re all having a great weekend.

Cheers,

Ferg 

P.S. In case you weren’t aware, I’ve split with Crux and made this Substack the sole platform for all my content moving forward.

If you want to learn more, I wrote this piece as a breakdown of what led up to this.