Posted: June 12, 2026, 11:44 am

Happy Flag Day Weekend

After what seemed like a long vacation hiatus, the WPO is back. Frankly, it doesn’t seem like we missed much since the last publish. Oil had sold off and is trading pretty much where it was two weeks ago, the summer gas strip rallied a little but has since pulled back, and electric futures have been somewhat boring as well.

The US did get it’s first taste of unusual summer heat this week. MISO had some storms thrown in and we saw our first hot weather alerts, conservative operations, and capacity advisories of the summer. This is starting to seem like deja vu all over again as we seem to be starting off the same way we did last year. This weekend looks pretty muted on the operations and market fronts, so enjoy Flag Day Weekend!.

Oh-Oh Oracle 2.0

Readers may recall way back in the late fall we basically started Cocktail Corner on a “the bond market always knows” writing. We care about Oracle because it is one of the bellwethers of the data center revolution. At the time, the credit default swaps (insurance on bonds) were warning of some underlying issues.

Wednesday, Oracle released their Q4 (May) results. While not a total disaster, the stock sold off 9% Thursday as investors seem to be losing patients or expecting more. Without getting into a lot of finance Bro lingo, it appeared the AI backlog was good, but the margins weren’t. Bottom line, Oracle is still slated to build data centers, but they might just not be as profitable. Also, the company guided net FY27 cash outlays of around $70B. While they stated that customer prepayments and timing impacts will help offset the spend amount, this still looks like cash raise coming for a company that has debt concerns already.

The bottom line, it hasn’t happened yet, but if investors start getting a little jittery about the big spends or start demanding ROI sooner than later, some big promised money could slow the build. Datacenters have been at the center of capital plans with utilities and any hiccup would mean adjustments from all.

Of course, we could just move all data centers into space, but that’s a different stock topic with plenty of coverage today. Since we are wishing everyone Happy Flag Day weekend….Happy SpaceX day as well.

Natural Gas Market Commentary

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The air came out of the natural gas market a bit this week, as the current stretch of hot weather looks likely to be short-lived and followed by a period of normal to cooler-than-normal conditions across key population centers. Futures began the week on a down note and continued to trend lower, with the prompt-month July 2026 contract dipping below $3.10 on Friday after trading near $3.40 per MMBtu earlier this month. While the market does not appear to have necessarily turned a corner to the downside, the bullish momentum that built throughout May seems to be running out of steam as a more sideways pattern takes shape.

This week’s storage report only helped bolster that narrative. The 108-Bcf build announced by the EIA came in well above the five-year average, exceeded market expectations, and was nearly in line with the corresponding week in 2025. One report certainly does not establish a trend, but yesterday’s build provided at least one indication that the fundamental balance was looser than most models had suggested. Power generation demand reached an estimated 46 Bcf per day this week, the highest level so far this summer but still well below recent mid-summer peaks. The coming weeks should offer more clarity on how power generation demand will affect injections as normal temperatures climb toward their summer peak and the seasonal trajectory of storage growth begins to take shape.

Ballpark Beers

As we limp (Twins fan) into the one-third mark of the baseball season, we thought ballpark beers would be more appropriate given the time of year. So, instead of providing some talking points for the corner at the holiday party (Cocktail Corner), how about something for when… at the game your bullpen is getting shelled again and you can’t leave because you didn’t drive and are at the mercy of ‘stay until the end of the game’ guy.

Over the past couple weeks, the topic of power and energy density have popped up on our radar. They are both terms used to measure power plant output to land used. Since it’s a topic close to us, we thought we bring some energy density to the ole ball park. For fun, or boredom waiting for the game to be over, what would comparing a solar project with an annual output of roughly 90,000 MWhs on 265 acres look like compared to a nuclear plant with a comparable footprint?

These calculations get a little technical, so let’s put it into ballpark lingo. 1kWh of energy production equals about 860 food calories, so how many hot dogs do the two plants put out annually? The average of all the MLB ballparks seating capacity is 41,800, so lets assume that every game for the season is sold out and every fan eats one hot dog. Also, we will have to assume that we are at the game on one of those dollar dog nights with the small dogs….one dog, one bun, nothing else, let’s call it 300 calories for simplicity.

After doing the math, the solar project would pump out the energy equivalent of about 260 million hot dogs annually. Again, using the full stadium for every game and one dog per fan, that’s roughly 6,200 games or 2.5 complete MLB seasons worth of dogs. Using the nameplate, capacity, and footprint of a local nuclear plant, we come to around 85x the annual generation per acre. Bring that back to hot dogs, that puts a modern nuclear plant with the same energy density at about 22 billion hot dogs annually. Again, stadium sell outs and dogs per fan being the same, that’s roughly 524,000 MLB games or 216 MLB seasons worth of dogs. For some context, MLB baseball is said to have started with the founding of the National League in 1876, 150 years ago. So 22 billion hot dogs with nuclear and 260 million with solar on the same footprint, that’s some visual. Just a guess, but if you do decide to start this conversation, there is a good chance that never wants to leave early guy will crack and get you home pronto.

By the way, in the spirit of the bit, we were going to use beers in our example but we thought mentioning 33 billion beers and 324 MLB seasons might trigger a trip to the bathroom and you might not get to the important info below.