I made a large series of sales in BAS for $26.23 on average. These shares were sold for an average gain of 116% from my initial purchase price a few years ago.

This sale brings BAS back in line to a 15% position in my portfolio. It had been almost 25%. The 10% cash raise will sit on my books for now.

I ran some numbers, and from their last report, I’m thinking BAS was probably worth about $8 a share. This massive move higher has been from the company managing to stop the losses they were taking every quarter. However, the next major risk to the shares will be execution; can the company turn a profit?

I think I can see how the company could make $1.60 a year in earnings pretty easily. That puts an 11 year break even point, which is about the top end of my acceptable range. At this junction, the shares are a fair price, in my book.

But I love the company, so I’ll be keeping the 15% position I have in them. I think they don’t just turn $1.60. I think they surprise us all and make $2.50-3 per share annually, sending the shares into the $30-40 range.

I cannot justify keeping the massive ~25% of my portfolio in BAS though. That’s too much, and I do have a lot of money sitting on the table here. I’m only willing to take regular risks that Basic Energy Services makes the next step successfully, even though I’m confident they will.

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This sudden resurge of equities has propelled me back to all time highs; and nothing is “surgier” than Hi-Crush Partners LP (HCLP).

Last night, they announced an amended supply agreement with Halliburton (HAL), for the usual terms – more committed volumes, higher prices, certain benchmarks for yet greater volumes at even higher prices still…etcetera etcetera.

This follows an announcement on the 17th of June for much the same deal with Liberty Oilfield Services.

The culmination of these announcements has sent HCLP to $58.50, at time of this correspondence, gracefully and effortlessly taking out new all time highs of its own.

For the year, I have only one bad investment, and that is NRP. At least, for now. Aside from that, it has been all gravy trains and cocaine buffets.

Up next on the menu: the EPA announcement of new power plant regulations will be recognized as the exact floor for coal stocks.

Get some while the getting is good.

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I found the terminal position I want, but it has nothing to do with coal. I bought a half sized position in ETP for $56.64.

Energy Transfer Partners, LP is a storage and distribution partnership that specializes in a diverse number of business lines, including (1) midstream, interstate and intrastate transportation and storage natural gas operations, (2) gathering, compression, treating, conditioning and processing of natural gas, and (3) purchasing and marketing natural gas and NGLs.

They’ve been making a flurry of acquisitions, their cash flows seem proper, and they seem cheap relative to peers. They also are paying me 6% in annual distributions to hang out. I like their market position and think the next 10 years will be big for them (same as BAS, same as HCLP).

This is right where I want to be. I’ll refocus energy on coal later – for the moment, I have half assembled positions in NRP and BTU.

Of course, at this stage in the game, it’s going to be hard to hit the kind of returns I got for BAS and HCLP. The market was just so negative about those positions and now since September of last year, it’s getting so expensive. But this is still a good buy here.

I admit it is getting a little harder to find positions to buy. Price to book of companies certainly looks heated, although that’s not the only measure. There are certainly some positions out there priced to fail, like EPD. And coal companies in general look terrible. It wasn’t just tech that got bid up last year.

But there are still lots of positions that are growing revenues and earnings just fast enough to keep that risk threshold around a 10 year horizon. It’s not the 5 year break even points you could have picked up in ’08, but what do you want?

Some of these positions are going to be stealth winner. I think coal names are artificially expensive, but really quite cheap. You have to consider how much of the “expensiveness” is being driven by low coal prices forcing write downs on entire proven reserves. So is the company selling the whole operation for that price level? That’s the big question isn’t it. If you get a coal price recovery, suddenly these operations are all trading <1X book with robust earnings growth.

95% invested.

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Considering the big reaction to these looming EPA regulations on how much sway they’ve already had on coal related investments, I thought I make a short list of my initial thoughts, after reading through this:

1) The real impact from these things is always grossly less than the exaggerated fear – take a look at the automotive companies being forced to raise fleet emissions. They hit those targets easy; it turns out, they already knew how to make more efficient cars, but were being lazy, not wanting to force implementation and get hazed by shareholders worried about cost. The automotive companies still seem pretty profitable right now. I’m guessing a 30% reduction from 2005 levels within three years means they probably already have some technological game plans in place to make it happen with minimal impact.

2) The EPA’s power here really relies on outcomes – if I’m wrong about (1), it will mark the beginning of a complete overhaul of the agency, leading to many many political hacks being dragged out by their hair to the gallows. The ability of the EPA to be the mini-crime syndicate it is, cutting backroom deals with Greenpeace, rests on their victims being small, disenfranchised minorities. If they mess this up and regular Americans feel the burn, it won’t matter who’s president.

3) Speaking of political power, this is basically the “GOP reelection act of 2014” – since there are three years to go before we even see impact from this, that gives three years of conservatives being able the ram propaganda down the throats of already terrified Red state Democrats (and a few Blue ones). As if they needed the extra firepower…

4) The EPA’s rules seem to possibly interfere with State commerce rights – if you force a small state like Rhode Island to stay within a certain limit of carbon emissions and then let a New York keep a much higher output level, aren’t you basically extending competition restrictions against the small state to preserve the economy of the bigger? While I’m sure Illinois is just ecstatic with another layer of monopoly power, if I were a neighboring state looking to grow my own manufacturing sector to help ease the unemployment level, I’d probably come out swinging. I’m not about to sit down and read a 600 plus page load of trash like an EPA reg., but my guess is there are either loopholes in place to just dance around this, or else this thing is on thin ice. An executive branch agency isn’t going to withstand 46 out of 50 state governors directing state resources to put said agency on ice.

5) The Legislature is coming – after the GOP sweeps November, they will proceed to start ramming countermeasures down the Executive Branches throat. This is obvious and looming. Obama is not going to withstand that for two whole years. This and a dozen other of his measures will visit the dentist, for tooth extraction. The man is just not popular enough to construe a mandate.

6) Modern regulations are federal guarantees of record profits – no new coal companies are forming in this environment. At some point, isn’t that just a monopoly for coal companies already operating? Sure the small fries will all fold, but anybody with a billion dollar budget is going to love that. It’s basically a federal mandate to acquire more assets at fire sale prices through what I can only describe as state sponsored theft. Let’s look at other industries that were “harmed” by government regulations over the past five years. Banks were subjected to new regulations following the recession – they made record profits. The automotive companies were subject to new regulations following the fuel economy standards – they made record profits. Health insurance companies were subjected to the ACA regulations – they made record profits. Can anyone point me to an industry where entrenched interests didn’t make a boatload of money following being gifted what is basically a non-compete agreement in exchange for some regulations? I can’t think of any lately. There’s probably a good reason for this too; the federal government can’t be seen intentionally shuttering industries for what are clearly political reasons. So if they want to make changes to these industries, the cost is…record profits.

The main takeaway is, the government can’t just destroy the power supply for 40% of the grid. They don’t have anything up their sleeve here. I’m not scared of environmentalists at all…even when they worm their way into powerful agency positions way above their competencies. Check out the last 50 years of environmentalist history, then tell me one major success they’ve had at curbing emissions or conservation or rolling back human activity.

When I think of emissions reduction, I think of natural gas. The US energy sector has reduced US emissions more in 5 years than environmentalists have done in 50…which I guess isn’t hard when environmentalists have never demonstrated an ability to reduce emissions at all.

When I think of conservation, I think of presidencies like the end of George W Bush’s, setting aside huge swaths of land as part of legacy building, or state conservation mostly at the local level. There’s no indication that the Sierra Club has had any influence in those choices at all.

Most of recorded history is industry smacking down doomspitters and terrorsayers warning of humanities looming demise. Every time population hits a new modulo 1,000,000 milestone, new generations of fear mongers feel compelled to give us the good word, casually ignoring the endless masses of false warnings and pontifications issued before them (because you know, they’re so much smarter than their countless predecessors).

At this moment, I have no reason to believe that the EPA regulations will be anything less.

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I added a small, 5% position to my book in BTU for $16.10, to commemorate the EPA issuing new power plant emission regulations.

My guess is the equity position is worth about $7 now. And they’re losing money every quarter. But this is investing, not guaranteeing. Market forces will either correct through higher electricity prices for consumers, rebalancing the coal market. Or, a third of the US grid goes offline and gun/ammunition manufacturers become the new Coca Cola.

I’m also looking at a few distribution terminals I think might see big volume increases as struggling coal producers – coupled with natural gas exporters looking to Europe – try and tap foreign markets for trade.

I’m moving slow here, not in any rush to push the limits. This is going to be very volatile; lots of room to play individual names sawing 25% up and down, but the overeager will lose a finger if they don’t give themselves room to back off.

The US is about to be the world’s biggest energy exporter for the next century. You can quote me on that. It’s just a matter of edging in and building position.

Your move.

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I entered into NRP some time ago, which was quickly an unmitigated disaster. The position is down 25% from my purchase price. I sold half the position, along with other partial positions, back in January when I raised cash.

Today, I added back some of that for $14.93.

I want to talk at brief about coal. The time to buy into US coal reserves is now, while euphoria over natural gas is highest and markets are most spooked about a Democrat directed EPA.

I am in no way minimalizing the importance of the shale revolution. Not by a longshot – if you look at my own holdings, BAS and HCLP represent a firm belief in the continued importance of those assets to the US energy equation.

What I am doing is highlighting the continued importance coal will have in US power generation and abroad.

Coal presently makes up just over 1/3 of US domestic generation. This is down from 1/2 earlier this decade, most prominently replaced by the surge in application with natural gas. Yet, markets price in equilibrium of choices, when operating correctly.

We have to presume that markets will find a price that fairly limits benefits between choosing natural gas versus coal versus nuclear versus…for equivalent production of energy. This would suggest that natural gas prices are set to rise (further enhancing the payoff for the producers). I would also expect that, as excess capacity gets utilized, the adaptation of coal plants to gas will subside.

This process may take a little longer to finish, and perhaps gas will even match coal in terms of energy mix before it is done. What I would not count on is coal rapidly or even ever completely being removed from global energy production.

Which brings us to the fears of EPA punitive measures against coal. So far, these are aimed at coal fired power plants. While this would, at least temporarily, hinder US energy production from coal here at home, what is to stop US coal producers from simply shipping overseas? And why is metallurgical coal acting so volatile when it is not a component of US power generation?

The signs, to my eyes, spell clear a story of market overreaction to pop culture and fantasy. Power generation shifts or slides, waxes or wanes. It does not turn on or off. Coal has been systematically shunned regardless of its exact nature (energy versus metallurgical) and the driving catalyst seems to be mostly political.

But politics change and politics in this country are about to.

I will give you a 6 month synopsis of what is about to happen. In November, the DNC is going to get creamed, delivering the Senate to the RNC. You can suspend your political predilections, as this is merely obvious to anyone not sucking their own exhaust. And the GOP has no problem with coal power generation. In fact, the Republicans think the argument against coal power generation is, quote, “stupid”.

This will change the short term plot dynamics that drive most superficial market players. Around middle of 2015 or early 2016, coal will be “the most obvious buy ever”, whereas today it is “fools nonsense.” Of course, when it is “the most obvious buy ever”, it will be at some considerable percentage above where you can take a position today.

This will accelerate especially if it should appear going into the next presidential election that a Republican is about to take the White House (that is still too far out for me to see, but it is certainly not out of the question). In such an event, the current shunning of coal will look especially stupid and myopic.

Regardless of the next presidential cycle though, the simple act of the GOP taking both chambers of Congress should noticeably shift the messaging surrounding out of favor coal plays. Executive overreach through agency bodies, no longer shielded by the Senate, will begin getting visibly and openly reprimanded; or even punished.

This shift, along with coals critical importance to the US economy and abroad, should render this a generous buying opportunity in hindsight.

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