CMR is the leading provider of funding and management support for small to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs 

Authored by Jack Hunter via Libertarian Institute 

Piers Morgan recently said on his program of Russian President Vladimir Putin, “I do think he’s the nearest thing to a modern day Hitler…” Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton had something to say about that. “You know what?” Horton said. “Noriega’s Hitler and Saddam’s Hitler and Milosevic’s Hitler and Putin’s Hitler. It sounds to me like Adolf was just another Hitler.”

“And apparently, any country that America doesn’t like, we can just start an aggressive war against them because they’re all the same as that one guy that one time,” he exclaimed.

Morgan: I actually do think [Putin is] the nearest thing to a modern-day Hitler. Scott Horton: Noriega's Hitler, and Saddam is Hitler, and Milosevic is Hitler, and Putin is Hitler. It sounds to me like Adolf was just another Hitler! https://t.co/1G3sDIxm5a

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) October 15, 2026

Horton is right: There is a broad consensus that the supremely evil, mid-twentieth century German National Socialist dictator, responsible for the Holocaust and other horrors, deserved death and defeat for his crimes. Which is why so many war advocates ever since have tried to cast whoever they want to go to war against as being on par with Hitler. But just like Satan, there can only be one—unless you crave war.

I could not possibly list every would-be Hitler that American leaders have wanted to take out. Scott listed off a few examples of enemies, real and imagined, going back to Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega of the Reagan-era ‘80s and Slobadan Milosevic in the Bill Clinton ‘90s, and then Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in this century.

In the post 9/11 era alone, the late Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned that if Muammar Gaddafi wasn’t taken out in 2011, the Libyan dictator would strike European cities.

Like Hitler, of course.

“He actually means it,” Graham said of Gaddafi fifteen years ago. “Hitler meant it. He means it.” Graham would also later compare Syria’s head Bashar al Assad to Hitler. Graham also assured us over a decade ago that the Iranian regime were Nazis, and of course that Putin was also Hitler.

Everybody’s Hitler!

Graham had plenty of company. For starters, he certainly wasn’t the only person to do this with Gaddafi.

The same goes for Assad. Secretary of State John Kerry said in 2013 that “Bashar al-Assad now joins the list of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein who have used these weapons in time of war,” referring to certain claims about the use of chemical weapons. Two decades ago, it was all the rage for some leaders to claim Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was Hitler. Trump even said this year at the beginning of his war with Iran that its leaders are the worst people since Hitler.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) declared over a decade ago that “appeasing” Iran was another “Munich moment” like when England negotiated with Germany in 1938. The late Senator John McCain (R-AZ) did the same in 2013 when he said of President Barack Obama shaking hands with Cuban President Raul Castro, “Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Hitler.”

How did all this let’s-get-the-next-Hitler war drooling turn out?

America’s role in deposing Libya’s Gaddafi created an instability in the region that created a vacuum for ISIS, a foreign policy decision Obama would eventually call the “worst mistake” of his presidency.

The United States would end up arming al-Qaeda members against Syria’s Assad, and now a former member of the terrorist group that carried out the 9/11 attacks is that country’s president.

“Never Forget.”

How has going after the allegedly Hitlerian Iranian government gone so far? That disaster is still in progress. But its authors have also teased regime change against Cuban Nazis too.

Surely Cuban regime change would be an unparalleled success!

It’s probably worth noting that the Ukrainian forces U.S. war advocates support have within their ranks actual neo-Nazis (something Horton also noted to Piers Morgan).

Also, doesn’t equating everything with Hitler undermine the unique severity of the Holocaust tragedy and ultimately disrespect its victims?

Also, for Republicans who constantly invoke this, how many times have political opponents of Donald Trump compared the president to Germany’s Fuhrer? Many things can be said about Trump, including exhibiting authoritarian behavior. But Hitler?’That’s not remotely serious. About as serious as Republicans comparing Barack Obama to Hitler.

Just stop.

It’s not that so many of these foreign actors aren’t horrific. Of course they are. But the United States can’t go to war with every country on earth to solve every wrong or ill. That’s not America’s mission, or shouldn’t be.

But the reason to compare every potential war to World War II and every foreign foe to Hitler is because most people find it impossible to argue against a war with Hitler.

That’s key. Whether it’s true, not so much.

Everyone we don’t like is not Hitler. It’s dumb and dishonest to say so.

So expect people to keep doing just that.

The video game industry is collapsing in 2026 under the weight of their own arrogance and stupidity, and the "chuds" are cheering.  Why?  Because this is what needs to happen before better companies and better games can be made.  The people who ruined the hobby with their politics need to lose their jobs and be exiled from the business.  

Around 13,000 games developers are slated to be fired this year alone.  Since 2022, the industry has cut over 57,000 workers due to imploding revenues and lack of consumer interest.  Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, EA and a dozen other studios are cleaning house and booting out the rubbish. 

The most recent example is the large Xbox cuts to ultra-woke Bethesda Softworks.  Their layoffs (reportedly close to 440 workers) triggered socialist protests and accusations of discrimination against LGBT and minority employees.

The vast majority of these layoffs are being blamed on "restructuring", but the restructuring was caused by a plunge in gamer interest.  And the decline in gamer interest is part of an ongoing boycott of woke propaganda in games.  This is something the political left will never admit to, but the fact remains that the majority of developers who get woke, ultimately go broke.  In other words, the majority of woke products fail. 

Gaming studio Bioware, a veteran company in the industry, did not learn this lesson soon enough.  Bioware officially announced this week that after 30 years, they will be shutting down.  

https://t.co/TicSujMWps

— BioWare (@bioware) October 21, 2026

The company dove headfirst into woke virtue signaling around 2016-2017 and it was all downhill from there.  Critics say the final nail in the coffin was the game Dragon Age: Veilguard, which is widely considered one of the most ridiculously homosexual games ever produced.  The game was so notorious, it is still the subject of internet mockery to this day.  

For anyone with common sense, it's easy to see why the company is being scrapped by parent company Electronic Arts (EA).  Veilguard was the last game they published before they hit rock bottom.  Industry shill and activists initially claimed that Veilgaurd sales were doing well, despite evidence to the contrary.  The estimated cost of development and marketing was around $250 million, and it took around 9 years to make. 

After release, most estimates suggest the game pulled in less than $50 million in total sales.  An utter disaster.   

At its historical peak, BioWare employed around 500 people. By the time of the October 2026 closure announcement the remaining staff was around 50 people, all of them are now being laid off.  The lesson here is clear:  The progressive invasion of gaming media was a disaster for these companies. 

Those who want to survive past 2026 need to accept an undeniable reality - The consumers own you, you do not own them.  You cannot force gamers to buy your products. You cannot shame them into opening their wallets. Games are not a platform for your degenerate fanfiction.  They are not a platform for your personal politics. The "modern audience" you are trying to appeal to does not exist. You cannot win. 

Either make games that the people you call "chuds" enjoy, or go broke and get replaced.  It's that simple. 

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” said Lady Macbeth as she paced in a hallucinatory state, reliving in her subconscious the murders she helped plan. She rubbed her hands as if washing them, to wash away the sin, following up the promise to her son that “a little water clears us of this deed.”

The line comes to mind from the latest dump of entries from the diaries of Anthony Fauci that cover the months December 2021 to May 2022. These were the darkest months of the Covid era.

Confidence that the virus was a lab creation was growing. That points directly to Fauci. The lockdowns had given rise to growing population-wide fury. And the shot was not working, not stopping infection or spread while groups reporting deep injury from injection could not be censored fast enough to make them vanish completely, though tech companies certainly tried.

Fauci still held his position at NIAID with certainty that he would keep it under President Biden, whose confidence he enjoyed. He was daily in touch with the people who were actually running the government – aides Ron Klain and Jeff Zients – and coordinated his decisions with them. They trusted him to continue the Covid operation, which they all knew to be a national security issue beyond the control of any political player. Fauci was the front man but an effective one, until he became a liability.

We know from previous entries that Fauci at first hoped the new virus would get lost in the mix of a bad flu season. This was mid-January 2020. The CDC called him out on that. His first scheme failed because a savvy businessman in China spilled the beans by posting the sequence on a pay-to-play website in mid-January.

After pressing a friend and former colleague to use his personal credit card to download the sequence, Fauci launched plan B, which was to deny the lab leak and prepare a nationwide inoculation to make it all go away.

The audacious scheme was to keep population immunity at the lowest levels possible through lockdowns while the shot went through clinical trials and was ready for distribution. Fauci knew for certain that this was the type of virus that would mutate rapidly. His hope was to take the energy out of the pace of mutation by reducing the infection rate as low as possible.

Sadly for him, the new and most powerful variant had appeared just as his shots hit general distribution. Delta disabled their protection that had been formulated for wild type and Alpha. The race was on, as mutations appeared faster than repeated boosters could catch.

The spot would not go away no matter what he did.

The darkest hours open with the appearance of Omicron in December of 2021, the fastest spreading but least virulent strain. He now had a new problem. With Omicron operating as a form of inoculation itself, there was less reason for vaccination than ever, especially given the risk of injury. And yet his goal of 90 percent coverage was nowhere in view, while population opposition to the entire Covidian regime was rising.

Fauci might as well have thrown up his hands, admitted defeat, apologized for putting the country through the biggest trauma of our lifetimes, and ruining the lives of students everywhere, in addition to crushing the dreams of millions of small business owners.

But that is not who he is. He would not and could not accept responsibility for doing this. He ended up demonizing the opposition, scrambling for cover, wrapping himself in ever more layers of fame for protection, and clinging to the lies he told himself as self-justification as his career and legacy were permanently tarnished beyond repair, even as he developed a severe and strange case of germaphobia in a Macbeth-like way.

Two weeks before this tranche begins, Biden had gone on TV to declare the following: “We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated – for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm. But there’s good news: If you’re vaccinated and you have your booster shot, you’re protected from severe illness and death.”

It was an intense claim even as the weakest of all variants had just appeared, even as evidence poured in that these injections provided no protection whatsoever. Regardless, the Biden administration was dedicated to ruining a second holiday season with terrifying warnings all in the hope of maximum shot coverage.

Fauci begins his diary close to Christmas in a dispute with the CDC, which was starting to open up a bit and lighten up on its diktats. It wanted to permit people to choose whether to get tested yet again after recovering from Covid. Fauci smelled a rat – that dread thing called freedom – and tried to strangle the baby in the crib.

Meanwhile the opposition campaign gained new steam from the release of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s masterpiece, The Real Anthony Fauci, and he had headlined a rally on Capitol Hill that galvanized a movement. Fauci was aware of the growing opposition but was mostly dismissive.

By February 2022, pressure was rising to open up the economy and society and Fauci was on the backfoot. He was still defending China-style lockdowns before he later claimed never to support them at all.

Fauci began collecting international endorsements to assure himself of the good job he had done.

The White House, meanwhile, was increasingly concerned about the sheer number of military men and women who had quit rather than submit to vaccination. What kind of militia might they form if it came to that? Fauci claimed not to be worried about that at all, observing that they must not have liked their jobs very much. This is a man entering into deep denial.

Meanwhile, he was being more honest with himself about the lack of efficacy of the shots themselves.

His fame and stardom became his only solace, the warm blanket in which he wrapped himself for comfort from the storms outside.

Another strange feature of this period is how Fauci became absolutely obsessed with avoiding any possibility of catching Covid. He started panicking in crowds, taking his own advice ever more seriously. He started cancelling dinners and meetings.

Thinking through why, consider that he knew that this virus was created in a lab and he knew that the shots would not protect against it. He now had fully two years to turn over these facts in his brain. They began to eat at him more and more. No matter how many times he boosted himself, his paranoia only grew worse.

By the spring, even Fauci started admitting that both he and the CDC were completely making things up. There was no science to anything they were saying and he knew it. Even he had lost faith in the system he created, playing a scientist only on TV.

By late April, Fauci was starting to clamor for other ways to understand all that had unfolded. Maybe the Great Barrington Declaration had been correct all along? He could never admit it to himself. But his egregious failures to control the virus through any means finally led him there through a side door.

That said, Fauci’s own personal germaphobia only intensified to the point that it was debilitating.

This tranche ends with Fauci’s paranoias growing, his fears of the opposition intensifying, and finally mollifying his psychological breakdown by reflecting on his own global fame, which he regarded as his only real hope to avoid the consequences of all that he had done.

Fauci was finally pushed out of his job later in the year, mostly because of growing concerns that the more he talked, the more the resistance to vaccination grew. There are even indications in this drop that it was industry itself that pushed him out for doing such a bad job in selling their product. He found safe haven at Georgetown University in a high-paid post.

And where are we today? Fauci will talk with no one, no reporters, not even on background. His last public appearance consisted of 110 invocations of his right to remain silent under the 5th Amendment.

The spot never went away, no matter how much sanitizer he rubbed on his hands. “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,” he might be saying to himself, “that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

America's reindustrialization depends on securing reliable, conflict-free supplies of critical materials, including rare earths and other critical metals, most of which are produced and processed overseas.

The Trump administration has made rebuilding and strengthening domestic critical material supply chains a national security priority. Its designation of helium as a critical material on Friday morning extends that effort to now include the industrial gas used for semiconductor manufacturing and many other applications. 

The Energy Department's decision earlier today makes the 20th critical material designated by the agency and brings the industrial gas within the Energy Act of 2020's critical materials framework, including closer government monitoring.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright wrote in a statement, "President Trump is bringing back America's manufacturing industry, and that means making sure we have the materials needed to build things in America again."

Wright continued, "Helium is essential to producing the semiconductors and advanced technologies that power our economy. By designating helium as a critical material, we are taking another step toward securing our supply chains, creating American jobs, and ensuring the United States leads the world in energy and technological innovation."

Helium is recovered as a byproduct of natural gas processing and faces growing geopolitical risks in the Gulf area. Qatar's exports have been severely curtailed by Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on Qatari infrastructure, while Russia imposed temporary export controls in April. 

The good news is that the US remains one of the top helium producers in the world, supplying 81 million cubic meters in 2025, or about 43% of global output. It exported 38 million cubic meters that year.

Helium is critical to applications ranging from chipmaking to medical imaging to quantum computing to magnets to space rockets. 

Assistant Energy Secretary Audrey Robertson warned that shortages could become a "single point of failure" for strategically important industries. The Canadian Press quoted her in an interview.

"We need to make sure that we can build those here. And helium is one of those components that could be a single point of failure, where we cannot let that happen. That's why we're designating it within our statutory authority, but I think why it's important is not necessarily for our birthday parties," Robertson said in an interview. "It's really towards the future of American competitiveness and energy security, which we believe is national security."

Designating helium as a critical material under the Energy Act of 2020 brings it within DOE's framework for developing, demonstrating, and commercializing critical material technologies to support America's reindustrialization efforts. 

The new designation could help qualifying helium projects access government financing, technical assistance, and partnerships, similar to support provided to rare earth miners.

Seven months ago, Qatar was the world's biggest LNG seller. Now it's a buyer. 

According to a Reuters scoop late Thursday, QatarEnergy is in advanced talks with Venture Global (VG) on a long-term supply deal for at least 3 million tons of LNG a year, sourced from VG's CP2 plant, which is still under construction in Louisiana. The report landed just hours after QatarEnergy signed a separate deal with Cheniere (LNG) for up to 4 million tons a year through 2054. VG shares jumped more than 6% on Friday, and they have now roughly doubled this year. Then again, they're still trading about 45% below their $25 IPO price.

Venture Global's other headline this month is that it wants to get into AI data centers... in a very big way. Goldman thinks both stories come back to the same molecule. Below we summarize what Goldman's LNG team has been telling clients about each (available to pro subs), and why we think the Qatar trade is the one that pays first.

The Customer Who Used To Be The Competition

Regular readers know how Qatar got here. In March, Iranian missiles hit Ras Laffan, the world's largest LNG complex. We wrote at the time that the attack itself was "bad" and the math behind the global LNG fleet "far worse", and a day later we concluded that Qatar had been dethroned as "LNG King", with the US taking the crown. The strikes damaged two of Qatar's 14 trains, taking out 12.8 million tons a year, or about 17% of export capacity. QatarEnergy CEO Saad al-Kaabi said repairs would take three to five years and cost roughly $20 billion a year in lost revenue.

The bill has been coming due. Last week we reported that Qatar's government revenue plunged 42% in the first half: LNG exports were just 1.6 million tons in September, less than a quarter of the prewar average, and Kpler sees October falling to 0.6 million tons. QatarEnergy has also been renewing its force majeure notices every month, most recently through November.

Meanwhile, Doha still has customers to serve. So it has been buying spot cargoes, many of them from Venture Global, and is now trying to lock in long-term supply. As one source told Reuters back in September, "They will have to buy whatever they can get their hands on." We flagged where this was headed the moment Bloomberg first reported the talks:

Qatar buying LNG?

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 10, 2026

Goldman's Americas Pipelines & MLPs analyst John Mackay ran the numbers that same day in "Outlining Contractable Capacity for Our LNG Coverage Following Media Reports of QatarEnergy Interest". Mackay notes that Qatar is "the largest single LNG exporter in the world," sits behind the Strait of Hormuz, and "is planning the largest LNG capacity additions through the medium-term." Goldman says it takes no view on whether a deal happens, but it points out who would be on the other side if one does:

We note that Venture Global (VG, Buy) management stated during our mid-August virtual NDR that such deals could be a sign of significantly tighter global LNG balances than the market currently expects. To illustrate the scale of available capacity, we outline below the uncontracted capacity within our coverage universe, which totals ~69 mtpa potentially available by YE32. Specifically, we project up to 40 mtpa / 9 mtpa / 7 mtpa / 12 mtpa of contractable capacity at VG / LNG / NEXT / GLNG, respectively... In our view, VG and Golar LNG (GLNG, Buy, on CL) are well-positioned due to their ability to offer meaningful capacity with flexibility around timing.

Put differently, VG alone has about three times as much uncontracted capacity as Qatar lost at Ras Laffan. Rapidan's count of capacity under construction is more modest, but VG still leads it at 10 mtpa, ahead of Cheniere and Woodside (6 mtpa each) and Sempra's Port Arthur (3 mtpa). So when Qatar goes shopping in the US, Venture Global probably can't be avoided.

Mackay brought Qatar up again in his 3Q26 preview on Oct 8. He trimmed his 3Q EBITDA estimate to $2.52 billion, below the $2.61 billion consensus, but kept FY26 at $9.03 billion, "still at the top-end of guidance." He also wrote that "any Qatar contracting, on top of their ongoing spot deals, would be meaningful." That was two weeks before the Reuters scoop. Goldman also counts recent additions such as ConocoPhillips' 20-year deal (Oct 1) and China Gas as "high-quality," while dismissing the adverse Galp arbitration ruling on CP1, where damages are capped at $170 million, as "manageable." Goldman's price target stays at $18, about 32% above Friday's price.

Two caveats. Nothing has been signed yet: Reuters "could not immediately learn the timeline of any agreement... or how long a contract could run," and neither company commented. And Cheniere's deal doesn't start until 2031, which says a lot about how long Doha expects to be without those trains.

Plan B: Burn It For AI

The Qatar news is relatively straightforward. The data center plan is a far bigger swing.

On Oct 15, VG signed frame agreements with GE Vernova (GEV) and Baker Hughes (BKR) for up to 16 combined-cycle "power island" units of 720 MW each, plus transformers and switchgear. VG says the units could support up to 10 GW of compute by the end of 2034. The plants would run behind the meter, without drawing on the grid or local water utilities, around VG's existing Louisiana LNG sites. VG plans to place its first power island order by year-end and was set to file its first permit applications that week. It already runs 4.5 GW of gas-fired generation in island mode to power its LNG plants.

Goldman's first take, called it "on its face, a major diversification away from VG's core LNG export focus," but listed five ways it could fit with the LNG business. The fifth is the most interesting:

...an admittedly amorphous but potentially meaningful ability, over time, to "switch" between liquefying gas for export and burning it for compute.

In other words, VG would own an option on which use pays more for a molecule of Louisiana gas: a Qatari utility or a hyperscaler. That's the "sell gas twice" pitch.

The market wasn't convinced. VG was up 1.5% in the premarket, according to Goldman's Industrials & Natural Resources desk, which called it a "big diversification for VG." The stock then closed down 5.8%. Investors seem to be asking the same thing as Mackay: whether VG can fund the rest of its LNG buildout to ~85-100 mtpa before taking on a second capital-intensive business. Goldman also notes that "strip pricing would add ~$20b to our EBITDA estimates, all else equal, by YE30." That's a good reminder that the LNG business is the one generating the cash.

"A Relatively Low-Cost Call Option"

Goldman hosted CEO Mike Sabel and CFO Jack Thayer for a virtual roadshow the next day. The Oct 19 takeaways note, "Significant Potential Power Scope, but Limited Spend Ahead of Customer Deals" is where the numbers got big:

...their plans are potentially massive, specifically >10 GW by 2034 and ~$160b of deployed capital, with typical scope effectively being a powered shell solution (~teens million of capex per MW) vs. smaller-scale behind-the-meter (BTM) solutions (generally ~$1-2m/MW)... potential scope aside, VG's current commitments are relatively small - specifically ~2 power plant commitments and a few hundred million dollars in capex, with firm off-ramps before meaningful capital is spent, and could be redeployed for their LNG expansions and/or resold if commercial wins do not materialize.

Some math: $160 billion for 10 GW works out to about $16 million per MW, roughly ten times the cost of a typical behind-the-meter project, because VG would supply the land and buildings as well as the power (everything except the chips). About two-thirds of that capex isn't power-related, and VG says it won't commit to that part without signed tenants. For the power portion, management is targeting ~75% investment-grade debt financing. If the power piece is the remaining third, or about $53 billion, that's somewhere around $40 billion of new debt on top of a balance sheet that already carries a debt-to-equity ratio of about 3.5x.

Goldman, which rates VG Buy, ends up more constructive than the tape:

Overall, we expect the broader power trade could remain choppy in the near-term and believe investors will look for more confidence in commercial execution before giving more credit to VG (as we have recently seen for others in the data center power market, including WMB, KGS, and LB in our coverage). That said, we come away from the conversation increasingly viewing the strategic rationale of the BKR/GEV agreement as effectively a relatively low-cost call option for VG, with a mostly limited impact on the story if the broader power macro story doesn't re-inflect - and with significant potential upside over time if it does.

Wells Fargo, which had been sitting at Equal Weight, apparently agrees: it upgraded VG to Overweight on Tuesday and raised its target from $15 to $21. The "choppy" part is easy to see: as Goldman's desk showed a couple of weeks ago, IPPs and GE Vernova were trading near their "Liberation Day" lows on a P/E basis.

Cheap Power, Slow Power

We've been pounding the table on on-site generation for almost a year. Since last November, we have argued that every data center should have its own "behind the meter" power so that households don't pay for the AI buildout through their electric bills. A month later we put it more simply:

Make "behind the meter" mandatory https://t.co/bCBnwx2E5g

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 24, 2025

Wall Street has since come around. Goldman now expects behind-the-meter generation to power a quarter of all US data centers by 2030. So VG's idea is sound. The problem is timing, and it comes down to which technology VG picked. Combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) are the cheapest behind-the-meter option and also the slowest. Bernstein's machinery team spelled out that trade-off last month in "Powering AI: The modular advantage" (also available to pro subs): CCGT power costs about $48/MWh, but it takes 4-5 years to deliver, versus months for fuel cells at almost twice the price.

That lines up with Goldman's timeline: first deployments in late 2028 at the earliest, and only about half of the capacity ramped by 2031. By then, VG will be competing for tenants with everyone who signed up two years earlier. Goldman flags this too, asking about "their go-to-market strategy for signing customers as a relatively later entrant vs. other competitors in the space."

Equipment is the other constraint. Back in September we noted that the gas turbine shortage was sending AI developers back to boilers and steam. VG's GE Vernova and Baker Hughes order secures a big block of a very scarce resource, and as Goldman notes, VG is already one of those suppliers' largest customers. There's a twist here, too. As Bloomberg's Stephen Stapczynski pointed out in March, Qatar's two damaged trains need new gas turbines for their refrigeration compressors, with delivery expected to take 2-4 years. So the same turbine backlog that keeps Qatar's capacity offline is the one VG has just reserved a large chunk of.

One Molecule, Two Bidders

VG now has two possible new markets for its gas. One is a state-backed buyer that has lost a sixth of its capacity for years and needs cargoes now. The other is a data center business that doesn't yet have a single tenant and can't deliver power before 2028. Goldman's view is that the power plan is a cheap option and the LNG business keeps generating the cash in the meantime:

...the size of their agreement and their track record of disruption in LNG should argue for VG upside over time as well as a potentially meaningful shift in competition for the BTM power and EPC sectors.

We agree with the first half. The Qatar deal is close to signing, the counterparty is about as motivated as a buyer can be, and every month Ras Laffan stays damaged makes 20-year American LNG look more valuable. The $160 billion data center plan is a different matter: until VG names a tenant, it is mostly equipment reservations and press releases. To its credit, VG knows this, which is why it built in "firm off-ramps." The bigger risk may be the timing. If Hormuz reopens properly and Qatar's trains come back sooner than expected, the spot cargoes, and maybe the urgency to sign long-term deals, could fade just as the power build starts requiring real money.

For now, the market is rewarding the Qatar story and punishing the AI one: shares jumped over 6% on a Reuters report of talks and fell 5.8% on 10 GW of compute. We'll know more on Nov 10, when VG reports third-quarter results.

Much more in the full Goldman notes (here, here and here) all available to pro subs.