North America Midstream & Energy Infrastructure: Midstream Snapshot: Deja Vu All Over Again

Research evidence excerpt

North America Midstream & Energy Infrastructure: Midstream Snapshot: Deja Vu All Over Again

Flash |

10 Jul 2026 08:09:50 ET │ 12 pages

North America Midstream & Energy Infrastructure

Midstream Snapshot: Deja Vu All Over Again

CITI'S TAKE

Midstream traded higher this week along with Crude as the US and Iran

exchanged strikes (BBG 07/09/26) throughout the week. Notably, our

Commodity team maintained their base case of $75/bbl 3Q26 Brent on

assumptions of renewed negotiations over the next 1-2 weeks, though Spiro DounisAC

they point to an increased probability of a bull case oil price scenario. For +1-212-816-6926

Midstream, volatility could present some brief opportunities to capture spiro.dounis@citi.com

spreads, but any broader read-throughs would be premature, in our view.

Douglas IrwinAC In fact, we see recent volatility largely vindicating management teams'

reluctance last quarter to impute much upside into guidance ranges +1-212-816-9525

douglas.irwin@citi.com beyond what had already been realized or hedged. To that point, our

earnings previews are underway and we generally expect companies to Charles Bryant

strike a similar tone around guidance. That said, we don't expect 2Q to be +1-212-816-3284

the peak and we expect optimistic commentary around 2H26 volumes as charles.bryant@citi.com

Permian egress constraints begin to alleviate.

What were people asking? 1) Where did VG's pre-release trend relative to

expectations? Implied gross margin beat our Citi estimate by ~$0.25bln (but likely

relatively in-line with Street mean) and volumes would have exceeded guidance with

5 DES cargos that fell into 3Q26. Margin drove the beat vs our model, which was

likely at least partially driven by VG's ability to outperform our assumptions around

shipping costs.