A New Commodities Supercycle Could Be Powering Up After A Long Freeze

A New Commodities Supercycle Could Be Powering Up After A Long Freeze

Frozen power lines



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As many of you know, I grew up in Toronto, where winters can be brutally cold. Like most people who live in northern U.S. states, I'm accustomed to driving on snowy, icy roads.

But then, roads in the north are plowed, sanded and salted when there's snowfall. With rare exception, the roads here in sunny San Antonio, Texas, do not see that kind of maintenance. There are no snow plows or salt trucks. Driving, then, can be several times more precarious when we get the kind of extreme weather that hit us last week.

Similarly, our electrical power infrastructure was designed to withstand heatwaves, not blizzards. I think a lot of Texans last week learned for the first time that a large share of the Lone Star State's power grid operates separately from the rest of the U.S. Because of this, much of the infrastructure, including plants and pipelines, has not been winterized, which contributed to the widespread outages that left millions without power and water for days.

Texas Interconnect Power Grid Separate From Others



U.S. Global Investors



That fact alone, I believe,