Questions about environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues are becoming central to commodity markets and capital allocation discussions.

Tensions in the Middle East and North Africa have once again brought geopolitical risks to the forefront of oil markets.

Attacks and outages could add to the longer-term geopolitical risk premium in oil prices.

Continued tight crude balances could be the bigger surprise to the market.

Demand concerns, trade tensions, and strong implied U.S. production are driving an oil sell-off, much like in fourth-quarter 2018, but the complicated backdrop may create investment opportunities.

North American oil and gas production will likely be a critical input to the global growth engine, and the midstream sector underpins this growth.

The OPEC agreement seeks to limit the market imbalance and stem the recent price decline while not driving prices substantially higher.

While trade policy has dominated headlines, we believe investors should focus on the collapse of Western Canadian Select (WCS) oil prices relative to global benchmarks, which represents the biggest exogenous risk to the Canadian economy.

While we believe investors can expect a hawkish policy stance to keep supporting prices, the possible extension of waivers could drive the price trajectory.

Ultimately, we think the sell-off will prove transient and that the relationship of real yields to gold observed over the past decade will prevail.

The modified ruling triggered sharp rebounds for the names hurt most by FERC’s March policy announcement.

Our base case is that oil balances remain tight and that prices realized exceed what the futures market is indicating.

We believe the trend to simplify complex corporate structures strengthens the case for investing in MLPs and in midstream energy more broadly.

The ultimate impact will depend on Russia and OPEC’s responses to rising prices and tightening supplies.

We expect the recent rise in oil prices to be a modest headwind to U.S. economic activity while supporting inflation.

We see the tide turning for the MLP sector after a frustrating 2017.