Behind the Data
Jeff Krimmel is the founder of Krimmel Strategy Group, where he helps leadership teams turn energy data into clarity.
Each week, Jeff 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.
Behind the Data
007: UAE-OPEC, reading energy headlines, Shell-ARC Resources, U. S. Steel
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
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