Trump’s Checkmate - Shadow Committee deploys Reagan’s Playbook

Dear Fellow Investor,

Happy Halloween!

I spent half of yesterday getting ready for my big annual Halloween party, and the other half watching the markets.

Friday’s big stories centered on oil.

Financial Times reported on ExxonMobil and Chevron posting bumper profits, benefiting from foreign refined oil shortages due to Middle East conflict and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries.

Then the Wall Street Journal ran a long piece on the U.S. Military’s mission to keep gulf oil flowing, reporting that troops are working around the clock escorting commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz to protect them from Iranian attacks — a program one defense analyst makes clear we’re “prepared to do indefinitely.”

Oil prices climbed on Friday while the Nasdaq sold off hard in the afternoon. We saw oil companies printing money and tech gutted for spending it.

But here’s the really interesting energy news this week, and it’s got a little twist to it.

One thing a lot of people don’t think about when they look at the global chess board and see what looks like chaos is this:

There’s a man whose job is to sell American energy.

Remember something. In February of last year, the President created the National Energy Dominance Council.

Doug Burgum chairs it, Chris Wright is right there with him, and they got seats on the National Security Council.

Think about that for a second. Selling American energy is now treated as a national security job.

The man who runs the council, Jarrod Agen, was at the UN last month and said, “We need to de-emphasise the strait.”

He wants so many routes for energy that “no one route can be attacked and shut down.”

Then he said, “The only person that can quarterback that is President Trump.”

Now, how is the selling going? Here’s a snapshot:

After meeting with President Trump at the end of July, Europe agreed to purchase $750 billion of American energy through 2028…

Up from about $74 billion last year, which was a record itself…

South Korea agreed to look at investing in an Alaska gas pipeline…

Then the best salesman showed up

Here’s the twist.

A lot of people don’t realize that Qatar, a country the size of Connecticut, shipped one out of every five tons of the world’s liquid natural gas before this war started.

It’s the biggest gas seller in the Persian Gulf, with its exports stuck behind the Strait of Hormuz.

Well, a week ago Thursday, Qatar’s state energy company signed a deal to buy 4 million tons a year of American LNG, all the way through 2054.

This Thursday it signed another one, 3 million tons a year for 20 years, from a plant being built near Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Qatar is now the largest buyer of American LNG in the world.

If you’d told me two years ago that the biggest gas seller in the Gulf would be buying gas from Louisiana, I would have asked what you’re smoking.

So who made that sale?

There’s no named trade negotiator. The war itself brought QatarEnergy’s CEO to the conclusion that overseas purchases can generate revenue during future Strait of Hormuz disruptions.

No slick salesman out of Washington or anywhere else could have talked Qatar into a bet on American gas that runs to 2054.

The war did the pitching, and Qatar did the math.

Weaponizing the supply lines: “The Reagan Playbook”

A little over a year ago, President Trump invoked a rare law that allows the president to create a “shadow group.”

Its members, orders and meetings are legally invisible to not only the public, but to Congress and the courts.

And the last time a president used this law, America broke a global superpower without firing a single shot.

I met with two members of this group three days after the first bombs fell on Iran in Operation Epic Fury this year.

What I learned in those meetings sent me on a research mission, and turned up the stock benefiting from every oil and gas move Trump makes…

I put all of my research, details of my meetings and the men carrying out what I call “Trump’s Checkmate” into a comprehensive report.

Here it is, for a limited time.

On my Diary video Thursday I talked about the difference between this AI build-out and the 1990s.

Back then they built capacity and hoped the demand would come.

Today, I said, “you are building capacity, and you’re hoping you can keep up with the demand.”

Same thing here.

A 20-year contract in demand that already showed up, with a signature on it.

And look at how that first Qatar deal is priced.

It’s tied to American gas prices plus a fixed fee. Even the Qataris are paying a toll.

Now here’s the part nobody writes about.

Every one of those molecules starts in a gas field somewhere in Texas or Pennsylvania or Louisiana, and it doesn’t fly to the dock.

It rides on steel. Before a single ship gets loaded, that gas has crossed a lot of pipe that somebody owns, and that somebody gets paid every time it moves.

One company owns one of the biggest networks of that steel in this country.

It runs through 44 states and about 140,000 miles of pipe.

More than 90% of what it earns comes from fixed, long-term contracts, so it gets paid for moving the gas no matter where the commodity is priced.

Here’s why I think Washington’s energy playbook runs right through this company’s pipes.

Have a wonderful weekend.

“The Buck Stops Here,”