Behind The Data

Jeff Krimmel

Each week, Jeff Krimmel goes behind the energy market analysis he publishes online. What surprised him in the data. What he left out of the written version. What he's still chewing on. If you want to understand how an energy strategist actually thinks through the forces shaping oil & gas, power, and the broader energy landscape, this is 15-20 minutes of unscripted, honest perspective. Jeff is the founder of Krimmel Strategy Group, where he helps leadership teams turn energy data into clarity. 

Episodios

  1. HACE 1 DÍA

    007: UAE-OPEC, reading energy headlines, Shell-ARC Resources, U. S. Steel

    This is Behind the Data, where I take you behind the energy market analysis I'm publishing online. I open with the research piece I wrote at Foundations of Energy on why the UAE is leaving OPEC now. Most of the commentary I was reading focused on what happens to oil markets after the decision, e.g. how much more the UAE will produce, how Saudi Arabia responds, what instabilities follow. All reasonable questions. But the angle I felt was missing was the causation running the other direction: oil markets had already been changing in ways that made capital discipline the dominant logic, and the UAE was reading those tea leaves. The decision is a consequence of where the market was heading, not the start of the turbulence. From there I share a clip from the opening session of Oil & Gas Market Mastery's second cohort, where I walk through the first framework I teach: when you see an energy market headline, ask yourself whether it's more about supply or demand. It sounds almost too simple to be useful. But with the volume of headlines we're getting right now (between the Iran war, macro turbulence, and ongoing OPEC+ moves) the two natural responses are to tune out entirely or to try to ingest everything deeply. Neither works. This framework is the 80/20 version: a small amount of rigorous thinking applied consistently builds market fluency without requiring hours of your day. Next I get into Shell's $16 billion agreement to acquire ARC Resources. The Shell-bp parlor game gets all the oxygen, but Shell-ARC actually happened, and the deal sits at the intersection of three threads I've been working: how energy management teams communicate strategic moves, capital being deployed in the direction of energy security, and the geopolitical repositioning happening between the US and Canada under the current administration. Shell's slide deck and press language tell you a lot about how they want investors to read this and what they're betting on. I close with my time in Birmingham at the U. S. Steel customer event, where I joined a panel on market dynamics and tubular goods, and got to tour Fairfield Works. I'd never been inside an integrated steel and pipe mill before, and the post was partly a reaction to the sensory experience (the scale of the buildings, the heat off the furnaces, the constant motion) but also a reminder of the existing US industrial footprint and how aggressively capital and innovation are being steered into it. As wells get longer, deeper, and more demanding, the equipment side has to keep pace. Fairfield is one example of how that's happening. The second cohort of Oil & Gas Market Mastery is underway. You can still jump in and catch up. Learn more at https://krimmelsg.com/ogmm

    17 min
  2. 27 ABR

    006: SLB Q1 Earnings, My Xait Forum Talk, Future of Power

    This is Behind the Data, where I take you behind the energy market analysis I'm publishing online. I open with SLB's Q1 2026 earnings release and a word cloud I built from the text. Two words sat at the center: "digital" and "production." Neither is new for SLB, but both took on different weight this quarter against the backdrop of the Iran war, higher oil prices, and the reality that producers aren't racing to expand drilling programs. The path to incremental barrels right now runs through mature wells, and SLB's ChampionX deal is looking well-timed. From there I get into the talk I gave last week to open the Xait Forum here in Houston. The title was "From Advantage to Imperative," and the argument is that capital discipline, demand uncertainty, and the pressure to do more with less have moved digital tools from a nice-to-have to a necessity for energy companies. The whiz-bang demos are fun, but the market forces underneath them are what should be driving the urgency in the room. I close with GE Vernova's Q1 2026 results, where Q1 power equipment orders alone exceeded all of 2025. That's the kind of number that should temper skepticism about how much of the AI and data center conversation is hype. The more interesting thread inside the GE Vernova story is the tension between utility-scale and decentralized power, including why the big gas turbine OEMs remain so cautious about expanding capacity even with the backlog they're sitting on. It's a story I'm spending a lot more time on, both in the research and in the talks I'm getting invited to give. The second cohort of Oil & Gas Market Mastery kicked off last week. We're one session in, with eleven to go, and you can still jump in and catch up. Learn more at https://krimmelsg.com/ogmm

    17 min
  3. 20 ABR

    005: Reading a War-Driven Market, US E&P Discipline, bp's Reporting Segments, Norway's Oil Windfall

    This is Behind the Data, where I take you behind the energy market analysis I'm publishing online.  In this episode, I start with the webinar I hosted on reading the market after six weeks of war, and why I think this conflict is such a rare teaching opportunity for anyone trying to build real mental model fluency, the kind that avoids both false certainty and head-in-the-sand paralysis. Then I get into why US E&Ps have stayed disciplined on production even with oil prices elevated, and the piece of the story that I think gets underplayed: the Gulf states have their own vote in whatever resolution the US and Iran land on, and the longer the war drags on, the messier that becomes. From there I turn to bp's move to collapse its reporting segments down to Upstream and Downstream, eliminating the low-carbon segment entirely. I walk through what reporting structure decisions actually signal, about where management believes earnings will come from, and about the tradeoff between optimizing multiples and optimizing earnings dollars. I close with Norway's record crude exports, and why they're a useful antidote to the tribal dunking that often dominates conversations about European and California energy policy. The reality of both is more pragmatic and more complex than either side tends to admit. The next Oil & Gas Market Mastery cohort launches Thursday. If you want to develop executive-level market fluency alongside a cohort of peers taking it as seriously as you are, you can learn more at krimmelsg.com/ogmm.

    20 min

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Each week, Jeff Krimmel goes behind the energy market analysis he publishes online. What surprised him in the data. What he left out of the written version. What he's still chewing on. If you want to understand how an energy strategist actually thinks through the forces shaping oil & gas, power, and the broader energy landscape, this is 15-20 minutes of unscripted, honest perspective. Jeff is the founder of Krimmel Strategy Group, where he helps leadership teams turn energy data into clarity.