Halliburton is priced for shrinking margins just as fracking capacity tightens. Revenue has been roughly flat since 2023 while operating margin fell from 17.7% to 13.1% and EPS from $3.13 to $2.37, so it trades at 15.3x expected earnings versus about 22x for SLB and Baker Hughes. Years of underinvestment have left less North American frac equipment, and management says its fracking schedule is fully booked. Each one-point margin gain adds about $0.20 of EPS. x.com 

Halliburton, a high-quality oil service company the market discarded, is well positioned to benefit from rebuilding Venezuela's oil infrastructure, where it kept offices through the rough years, and from a coming deep-sea offshore boom. The chart shows a backtest after an inverse head-and-shoulders breakout and a bullish inside day, with the next target around $43. x.com 

Money is rotating from big refiners and integrated oil companies into oil drilling and servicing firms. The move could be in its early innings, and the recent drilling gains alongside refiner losses are working in that direction. x.com 

Oilfield services such as SLB should benefit from capex for reconstruction and retrofitting, while refiners look too late to chase. Refining margins hit all-time highs as Chinese utilization fell and 40% of Russian capacity went offline, but refiners are over-earning and margins should compress. Making Venezuela's output meaningful would take significant capex across the supply chain and years, though producers risk repeating last cycle's capex blowup with December 2027 WTI at $70. x.com  x.com 

Crude oil and the XLE energy-sector ETF would be buys on a pullback because uncertainty over a real military strike could hang over the US market from the midterms through year-end. Only an actual strike or a true peace deal would settle that uncertainty. x.com 

Iran opening for business, with $300B of Western investment and half reportedly committed, could lift companies tied to Middle East rebuilding. Schlumberger gets paid to revive Iran's capital-starved oil fields at $60 or $90 crude. TotalEnergies has the clearest path back via its 2017 South Pars deal, and Boeing could revive IranAir's $16.5B, 80-jet order. Perma-Pipe's Gulf projects were only delayed by the war, and Energy Recovery has nearly 99% of sales in the Middle East. x.com  x.com  x.com  … Show more

Extreme bullishness about an oil shortage is a warning because oil has tended to return to around $50 within 12-18 months after such talk. Calls for a 'great oil repricing' appeared today, though they may not be widespread enough yet to mark the same setup. x.com  x.com 

Energy risk is being structurally repriced, favoring producers that never touch a chokepoint, such as Occidental and Viper Energy. Drone strikes took out Saudi Arabia's Petroline, which moved 4 million barrels a day, about 4% of world supply, as insurance against a Hormuz closure, and the Houthis seized Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandeb, compromising both Saudi exits. Brent rose 8.7% to $104.61 as the Fed hiked into it. A barrel stuck behind a strait is worth zero. x.com 

Crude oil's safety buffer is draining at a record pace, so the next supply shock will hit a market with far less protection. The Iran war and near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz have removed over 1 billion barrels of supply, and Morgan Stanley estimates stockpiles fell about 4.8 million barrels a day from March 1 to April 25, a record. A record 400 million barrels of emergency reserves have been pledged, and inventories are near 2018 lows. Even if Hormuz reopens, restocking will add demand. … Show more

Halliburton and Transocean deserve attention now because investors who thought the war was ending this week will be jumping back into drilling names. x.com