The Million Dollar Way (The Bakken Oil Blog)

Saturday, July 26, 2025

Amazon Scraps Plans For Tech Expansion In Ireland -- Couldn't Secure The Energy That Would Have Been Needed -- July 26, 2025

Locator: 48693TECH.
Locator: 48693IRELAND.
Locator: 48693AMAZON.

Tag: Amazon AWS Ireland

Link here.

Katie Ledecky -- July 26, 2025

Locator: 48692LEDECKY.

Updates

Sunday, July 27, 2025: Ledecky clocked the fastest time in the qualifying heats to advance to the finals, but Ledecky took third in the 800-yard freestyle, behind Summer McIntosh and the Chinese swimmer, Li Bingjei.

Original Post

Link here.

From the linked article:

One year to the day after the 2024 Olympic swimming competition began in Paris, the first major international competition of the 2028 Olympic cycle is set to begin.
The swimming program at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships starts Sunday (Saturday night Eastern time) in Singapore as Katie Ledecky, Summer McIntosh, Léon Marchand and more stars from the Paris Games kick off their runs to Los Angeles.
The year after a Games is typically one of transition. Some athletes are taking time off after the Olympic grind. Some have retired. Some new faces are emerging, and some familiar ones are plowing ahead.
“It’s going to be a unique world championships, because you don’t know what you’re going to get,” longtime NBC swimming analyst Rowdy Gaines said by phone from Singapore. “You know, in two years, we will kind of know what’s gonna happen, but this is always a strange one, the one after the Games.”
The rivalry between McIntosh, the 18-year-old rising Canadian who won three golds and a silver in Paris, and Ledecky, the 28-year-old American with more swimming medals than any woman in history, will be one of the top storylines over the next week. As will Marchand’s pursuit of more hardware. The 23-year-old French star won four golds in his home Olympics to stamp his place as the new force of men’s swimming.

AI Is An Energy Story -- CNP -- July 26, 2025

Locator: 48691CNP.

I've written about CNP off and on over the years but have generally lost interest in the company.

Then, today, I see that oilprice has a piece on CNP.

Link here.

CenterPoint Energy (CNP) reported solid second-quarter 2025 financial results, reaffirmed its full-year guidance, and raised its 10-year capital investment plan by another $500 million to $53 billion, the third upward revision this year.

The Houston-based utility reported GAAP earnings of $0.30 per diluted share and non-GAAP EPS of $0.29 for Q2 2025, down from $0.36 in the same quarter last year.

The decline was largely attributed to the timing of rate recoveries and higher financing and maintenance costs. However, favorable weather and usage partially offset these impacts.

CenterPoint reiterated its 2025 non-GAAP EPS guidance range of $1.74 to $1.76 (which averages out to $0.44 per share), which implies 8% growth over 2024 and supports the company’s longer-term annual growth target of 6%–8% through 2030.

Today’s $500 million increase in long-term capital spending follows previous boosts totaling $5 billion earlier this year, bringing the full 10-year plan to $53 billion.

Importantly, the company noted it expects to fund the expanded investment plan without issuing incremental equity.

President and CEO Jason Wells said the expansion reflects both confidence in demand growth—particularly in Texas—and a “conservative approach” that leaves room for additional investment opportunities not yet factored into current projections.

A refreshed 10-year plan is expected to be released by the end of September.

The company reported a 6 GW increase in its interconnection queue since its Q1 earnings call, further validating its forecast of 50% load growth by 2031. This surge is fueled by rapid industrial, data center, and electrification growth across its territories, especially in Texas.

CNP: a utility. A simple utility. A simple, boring utility. It forecasts a load growth of 50% by 2031. That's about five years from now.

Does a 50% increase in load growth by a simple, boring electric utility seem unusual over the next few years seem unusual?

Three things are going on in Texas right now:

phenomenal population growth;
a Permian that keeps producing more and more natural gas, though the rate of rise has flattened; and,
AI data centers.

Look at share price for CNP. Most unusual schematic for a simple, boring electric utility.

And then at that multiple for CNP. In the same ballpark as the P/E for AAPL.

For comparison: MDU's multiple is 13. SRE, 17. OTTR, 11.

If CNP grows into its P/E, a. year from now, CNP could be trading for $80.

U-Haul: I don't know if folks remember the number of U-Haul trailers stacking up in Williston in 2009 during the boom. I stopped by our local U-Haul location today, here in the DFW area, north Texas, northwest of the city that won't keep growing, according to The WSJ. I've never seen it so busy. It looked like Williston at the height of the boom. I mentioned that to the assistant manager at U-Haul today and they said they're getting slammed every day, weekdays and weekends. It's been going on like this for quite some time.

Some people say AI is a bubble. I don't recall "things" looking like this during the dot.com bubble. I do remember things looking like this during the Bakken boom.

Oilprice is an energy site. I don't recall the last time I saw oilprice posting a story about CNP. I don't think oilprice is all that interested in data centers. LOL. Wow, what a story. Absolutely fascinating.