Woodside (WPL) Strategic Valuation, page-13

"I notice your disclosure is now not held. Is the decision of management to invest in hydrogen with a target return of 10% pa ( in my view this seems optimistic ) a turn off since WPL isn't sticking to its knitting? And thus will reduce the amount of capital available for its core business or capital returns. I agree with the ESG , energy stops growing thesis and the value further out in the oil futures chain. But am a bit torn on whether the oil stocks themselves are sufficiently attractive investments. I'd be tempted but the hydrogen investments feel like they could squander capital. A bit like a certain railway stock which made a dubious acquistion rather than stick to its knitting (fortunately I had happened to exit just before that misstep.)"


Apologies; I pay zero heed to that SENTIMENT* (REQUIRED)POSITION* thing in other posters so I don't attend to keeping my own settings in top working order (but fixed, now).

I expressed disdain at the time of WPL's "We Are Going to Do This Hydrogen Thing Even The Financial Returns Are Highly Dilutive", but do still own WPL, which - apart from a coal stock - was my first investment since I become aware of this Long-Energy play.

But, like you I have developed an acutely heightened sensitivity to the duel risks of:

1. Sub-optimal capital allocation in order to placate opponents of fossil fuels (a la - as you point out - WPL and AZJ),

and

2. Potential punitive regulatory measures in the form of extra-ordinary royalties or other taxes that could be levied by governments which are now cash strapped after blowing budgets on Covid stimuli... and after all, increasing taxes on fossil fuel producers when they are making an absolute poultice in profits: which politician wouldn't? The are certainly no votes to be lost in doing so.
(Of course, that would merely add to the disincentives for oil companies to invest in additional capacity, which would exacerbate the longer-term under-supply situation even further... but, hey, it's that kind of that populist logic that got us to the energy crisis at which we are today and by then those politicians would be long gone, anyway).



So for these reasons, instead of buying more shares in oil producing companies (which offer the leverage, but with the risk, as described above), when I have added to my Long-Oil/Energy position in recent months, it has been via buying the physical (specifically an oil futures ETF).

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