[scuttleslops] GOOGL, TXN, Natural Gas

What are scuttleslops?

Invest Like the Best interview with Matthew Smith, founder and CIO of Chronometer Partners: America’s Next Energy Crisis; July 21, 2026

Matthew Smith’s central thesis is that the United States is headed toward a structural natural-gas deficit beginning around 2028, with the consequences appearing most visibly in sharply higher electricity prices. Natural gas already supplies more than 40% of U.S. power generation, and Smith believes it will become the country’s most important fuel as electricity demand accelerates. The imbalance predates the AI boom: the shale revolution created an era of apparent abundance, which encouraged the construction of liquefied natural gas export terminals long before data-center demand emerged.

Smith’s bottom-up work suggests that the domestic system can add only about 20 Bcf per day of production, roughly matching the incremental LNG demand before AI is considered. His probability-weighted base case then adds approximately 5 Bcf per day of credible gas demand from AI-related power generation, including combined-cycle plants, fuel cells and behind-the-meter generators. Less certain projects could push AI-related demand to 12–15 Bcf per day by the early 2030s, creating a shortage unless some other consumer is displaced. Simply curtailing LNG is not an easy answer because tens of billions of dollars of financing and long-term contracts sit behind the terminals, while Europe and Asia increasingly rely on U.S. gas for energy security.

The problem is not merely that the country will run out of molecules underground; it is that the known resource cannot be produced and delivered quickly enough at acceptable cost. Processing plants must remove liquids and contaminants before gas can enter regulated pipelines, gathering systems must connect new wells to those plants, and interstate pipelines must then transport the gas to demand centers. Those facilities take years to build, yet the United States has completed only one major new interstate gas pipeline in roughly the past decade because permitting and regulatory friction have constrained development.