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The Energy Report

Phil Flynn
http://www.pricegroup.com/
pflynn@pricegroup.com


Folks, We Got Trouble. The Energy Report 09/18/2026

AI, don’t you understand? Friend, either you’re closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge ,Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster, Indicated by the presence of a Data Center in your community!

Well, ya got trouble my friend. Right here I say, trouble right in River City, why sure, I’m a data user , Certainly, mighty proud I say, I’m always mighty proud to say it.

I consider that the hours I spend with a iPhone In hand are golden. Help you cultivate horse sense and a cool head and a keen eye. Did you ever swipe and try to find an iron-clad passcode for yourself from a three-tap iPhone lock? But just as I say it takes judgement, brains and maturity to score In a Block Blast game, I say that any boob can use AI to be an intellectual pickpocket.

I say first, , he does “just draft this email” then AI replaces his job and he goes on the a bottle. And the next thing you know your son is prompting for money in a AI scam and listenin’ to some big outta-town jasper hearin’ him tell about On Line gamblin’. Not a wholesome dice games, no, but a game where the computer model makes all the big bets. Like to see some stuck-up chatbot boy settin’ on Dan Patch? Make your blood boil?

Well I should say. Now friends, let me tell you what I mean. You got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 models on a screen Models that mark the difference between a thinker and a drone With a capital “A” and that rhymes with “pause” and that stands for AI And all week long your River City youth’ll be fritterin’ away I say, your young men will be fritterin’ Fritterin’ away their noontime, suppertime, choretime too Get the prompt in the pocket, never mind gettin’ the essay written Or the term paper drafted or the history learned Never mind pumpin’ any original thought, ’til your parents are caught With the homework empty.

On a Saturday night and that’s trouble Ya got trouble, my friends, right here in Silicon City With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pause!

We’ve got trouble, right here, I say trouble Right here in River City First thing you know, your boy’s clickin’ ChatGPT Then he’s askin’ it for the answers Then he’s copyin’ the whole darn paper Then he’s forgettin’ how to spell Then he’s forgettin’ how to think Then he’s sittin’ there glassy-eyed While the machine does the livin’ for him Mothers of River City, heed that warning before it’s too late.

Watch for the tell-tale signs of corruption The minute your son leaves the house Does he pull out his phone and start typin’ NO!

“Write me a poem,” “Do my math,” “Explain the world”? Are there midnight sessions with Claude and Gemini. While the dishes pile up and the lawn grows wild? Ya got trouble, folks, right here in River City Trouble with a capital T And that rhymes with P and that stands for Pause!

Oh, we got trouble , We’re in terrible, terrible trouble That game with the glowing screen is the Devils tool. And the words that write themselves ! Makes you want to shout, “Pause it! Pause it!” Right here in River City Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock, and the Golden Rule !

nd for heaven’s sake, remember to think for y ourself Before the models get too big And the future gets too strange And we all wake up one morning With the cistern of common sense Speaking Chinese! Folks Listen May I have your Attention Please, Attention please I can solve the problem with the wave of my hand this very hand/ Please excuse if you will Im Professor Bernie Sanders and im here to organize an Arterial Intelligence Pause Oh think, my friends, how could any US Capitalist ever hope to compete China’s golden Trombone . Rah, rah,rah da dat da rah dah. Remember what a handful of Commies trumpet players dive to the fabled Wall of China. The oligarchs just came tumbling down.

Well a Pause will do it my frinds and AI pause do you here me. I said the US needs an AI pause and I mean she needs it today With Senator Bernine Sanders on Hand the US is going to get its pause in hand As sure as the Lord made little green apples. We all can be uniform so China can catch up so we all can be AI equals keeping in mind that China needs to be more equal than us.

Ah yes, the hustlers are trying to sell us on the dangers of artificial intelligence and data centers. But what the leftists really fear is the ability of people to become less dependent on the government and more dependent on themselves. As an energy analyst I understand the amount of energy it is going to take to power this AI revolution. I also realize it is going to impact every business and every person on this planet. With every technology there are challenges and concerns, whether it was the buggy-whip industry disappearing or the Internet replacing the way we got our news. What they really cannot stand is that artificial intelligence can unleash a new era of freedom for people.

Also from a national security standpoint. AI weapons are the way of the future, A moratorium is not going to change that. We must lead not follow and not be put at risk.

From an energy analyst’s viewpoint, energy is a big component of meeting these needs. We have learned from the recent diesel-fuel crisis that short-sighted energy policies—closing refineries, shrinking capacity, and treating so-called climate change as a bigger threat than it actually is—have done a lot of damage to the poor and the middle class.

Keep this in mind: here in the United States, because of technology and partly because of the coming artificial intelligence boom, official poverty fell to 10.2 percent in 2025, the lowest rate on record, with 34.5 million people in poverty and a record median household income of $87,460. That is absolutely amazing. The reason poverty is at the lowest level is because of capitalism. All you people pushing this socialist agenda and talking about unfairness: there has never been a socialist country on earth that has a lower poverty level than the United States when you consider the size of the country on a per-capita basis.

Today energy prices are trying to get back under control. President Trump has a huge decision to make when it comes to Iran. In other words, is President Trump ready to give the knockout blow to the Iranian regime? We know militarily the Iranians cannot compete with the U.S. military. They can only use terrorist acts, and they are trying to ramp up attacks in the Strait of Hormuz just to remain relevant. Plenty of people speculate they are trying to keep the war going until the midterms, with the hope and prayer that they can get some of these leftist Democrats in power who sort of support them over the United States.

If we look at the numbers this week, workarounds on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline are supposed to bring about half of that capacity back online sooner than expected, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright saying crude should be flowing again in a matter of days. At the same time they did warn customers in Europe that they would not be getting any of that oil this month. Oil prices have cooled a little bit—Brent is back around the high $90s to low $100s after trading above $107 earlier in the week, and WTI is in the mid-to-high $90s. Going into the weekend there is going to be a lot of nervousness about what comes next.

The Federal Reserve just raised rates a quarter point to a 3.75 to 4 percent target range, the first hike in years, and that is really a sign that the economy has been pretty resilient and able to withstand this energy shock. There has been a lot of talk about so-called demand destruction. We have seen demand moderate in China by about 2 percent. Here in the U.S. it is relatively flat. When we talk about real demand destruction we talk about businesses going out of business because they cannot afford fuel. I know we are seeing some real pain at some companies—I do not want to dismiss that—but as a whole we are not seeing the type of demand destruction we saw during the oil-price spikes of the 1970s.

Nobody likes paying these record-high prices for diesel. U.S. retail diesel has been running above $5.50 and has already printed all-time highs near $5.85 to $6 a gallon, and it hurts everybody. At the same time, if there was ever a time in America when the economy was able to absorb this price shock, this is it. I am not just saying that because businesses so far have been largely unaffected. This recent spike has not been fully priced into every market, and we are going to have to see how businesses react to these high prices. We have to see if we see bankruptcies declared or airlines get shut down. Keeping our fingers crossed, we are hopeful that if we can see the price of oil moderate we are not going to see the bad impact.

Going into the weekend, of course, anything can happen. Playing the puts and calls and protecting your hedges is a good thing. All my diesel clients—I have been begging for months for you to be hedged, and I hope you are, because the hedges right now are going to pay off for you pretty nicely.

Natural gas remains locked in a very tight range as shoulder season arrives and we come to the official close of summer. October natural gas is hovering near $2.85 this morning after Thursday’s $2.901 settlement — a classic late-September grind with cooling demand fading and heating demand not yet in the picture. Celsius Energy notes that with yesterday’s EIA-reported nat-gas storage injection, the to-date build stands at +1,437 Bcf. That has dropped just below 2023’s +1,439 Bcf and now stands as the third-smallest to-date injection in the last five years. Next up: 2021 at +1,298 Bcf. With 2021 seeing large injections the rest of its season, it is possible the current season can improve to the second-smallest to-date build by mid-October.

The latest EIA print for the week ended September 11 was a +44 Bcf injection, lifting working gas to 3,298 Bcf. That was a modest build for this time of year and one reason the market could not hold the four-day bounce. Surplus versus the five-year average is still there, but it is no longer growing the way the bears wanted. Production remains robust, LNG feedgas is the swing factor, and the tape is waiting for weather to pick a side.

So weather is key — and the key is to download the Fox Weather app. Fox Weather is watching a quiet Atlantic. The National Hurricane Center is tracking a small area of low pressure a few hundred miles east of Bermuda (Invest 98-L), but development odds have been cut to about 10% over the next several days as the system drifts west over the subtropical Atlantic. This has been a historically late season for a first hurricane, with El Niño helping keep the basin suppressed. For gas, that means less storm-driven demand destruction risk in the Gulf and less of a weather premium in the prompt contract.

Bottom line: range-bound gas until either a real cold shot shows up in the 6- to 10-day or storage starts to look tighter into October. Until then, this is a weather market in name only. Watch the Fox Weather app, watch the next EIA, and don’t get cute in a $2.75–$3.00 box.

Also stay tuned to the Fox Business Network and get ready to open your account with the price group today by calling me at 888-264-5665 or you can e-mail me at pflynn@pricegroup.com Have a great weekend everyone!



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Phil is one of the world's leading energy market analysts, providing individual investors, professional traders and institutions with up-to-the-minute investment and risk management insight into global petroleum, gasoline and energy markets. Phil's market commentary, fundamental and technical analysis, and long-term forecasts are sought by industry executives, investors and media worldwide.

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Past performance is not indicative of future results. The information and data in this report were obtained from sources considered reliable. Their accuracy or completeness is not guaranteed and the giving of the same is not to be deemed as an offer or solicitation on our part with respect to the sale or purchase of any securities or commodities. Alaron Trading Corp. its officers and directors may in the normal course of business have positions, which may or may not agree with the opinions expressed in this report. Any decision to purchase or sell as a result of the opinions expressed in this report will be the full responsibility of the person authorizing such transaction.

Contact Phil at 1-888-264-5665 or pflynn@pricegroup.com.