Sifting through the news the last few days an article blasting Cowboys billionaire Jerry Jones for making a killing when the spot prices for natural gas went all Gamestop due to the extraordinary winter blast of cold and winter storms hitting Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana.
Eager to pounce on the 1% and the fossil fuel industry (despite natural gas being about as clean a fuel as you can get) the woke warriors at the Huffington Post and NPR went to work with this beautiful bit of fake news:
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/jerry-jones-jackpot-natural-gas-dallas-cowboys-043832631.html
The first bit of trickery that they employ here is using his name in the headline and then using the abbreviated quote “hitting the jackpot” in the opening paragraph. Of course that’s meant to imply that he used those words in regards to some of the ridiculous pricing in the markets on Thursday.
But he didn’t say that. The President of Natural Gas company Comstock Resources said it. Jerry Jones is the majority stockholder of that company and my guess is that the President, who is clearly a knucklehead for saying that, is probably going to be looking for employment beside the long line of Dallas Cowboys coaches that Jerry Jones has fired over the past few years for being equally as stupid.
Next let’s address the inconsistencies in this article (shocking, I know) and in the end we’ll get to the truth they don’t want you to read about.
First, they feature a tweet where one woke warrior notes that energy companies who failed to winterize their equipment and went offline due to the cold were now profiting from the lack of supply. Uh, you do realize if they had winterized their facility that also creates less supply (maybe none!) right?
A few paragraphs later they blasted Comstock for “ramping up production” in anticipation of the storm. Uh, so what did you want them to do? Say “ah fuck it, just pump out the usual amount, it’s not like we expect a demand jump with this forecast.”
“But Chance!” They implore me. “Comstock sold that supply (the one you said earlier companies didn’t have) at ridiculous prices, some of it literally a thousand times the usual market price!”
Second point is that may be true – but Comstock is only one side of the price equation. The supply side. The demand side is created by traders. And don’t you know from Gamestop that not all traders are created equally. An ass ton of knuckleheads dove into the market and tried to cash in on the demand/supply imbalance. This caused the prices to skyrocket, and yes, some companies like Comstock were able to sell their gas at nearly unheard of prices – for a few moments. But remember, this is a market and when stupid people are in it, shit happens. Huffpost of course acts like every single drop of natural gas was sold at the amazing prices. Not only is that not true, but once the professionals had stuck those contracts into the hands of people who were clueless – well, then to reference the classic movie Trading Places the Orange Crop Report came out.
Which leads us my final point of this article of bullshit – the headline that occurred the very next day. You know, the one that you won’t see HuffPost writing anything about:
That’s right, went DOWN 99%. Even that is somewhat misleading as they are using the top price of the day (which may have only lasted literally for a few seconds) is being compared to the market finding balance again as trading came to a close. But still, the market did a pretty quick and brutal correction and prices, as of Friday close, had returned to where one might expect them to be.
Not that the fake news will report that. Oh hey, and has anybody thawed out all those windmills yet? Asking for a friend.
Way to deconstruct the lies!
Well said.