Equinox Partners, L.P. - Q4 2005 Letter
Dear Partners and Friends,
2006 Outlook
A global tidal wave of liquidity has bid up asset prices around the world. From the more than $150 billion dollars in private equity capital raised last year to the record compensation on Wall Street (Goldman Sachs alone paid out $11 billion in bonuses), bull market froth abounds. We suspect that the excesses specific to the hedgefund industry, which have grown unabated despite the sector's lackluster returns, will not be sustainable over a meaningful period of time. In the long-run, the combination of unrealistic investor expectations, normalized returns and high fees will leave most of today's hedgefund investors disappointed and lead to a structural change within the industry.
As leveraged owners and short sellers of junior securities in volatile markets, Equinox Partners is by no means exempt from the possibility of producing disappointing results. In fact, lately, we've spent a great deal of time worrying about the effect that meaningfully tighter monetary policy will have on the value of our long positions. But review after review of these holdings has returned us to the same point: our investments remain very attractive in the long-run. That said, our concern about a widespread contraction in liquidity has prompted us to increase our short exposure in an effort to hedge against a sustained decline in the value of our long investments.
“Way Past Conventional Thinking”: Saudi Arabia and Global Petroleum Production
The author of the recent Fortune Magazine article on the billionaire investor, Richard Rainwater, summed up the investment approach responsible for Rainwater’s incredible success as follows:
“You have to push way past conventional thinking, test the boundaries of chaos, see events in a bigger context. You have to look at all the scenarios from ‘A to friggin’ Z,’ as he says, and not be afraid to focus on Z.”[1]
We would like to think that Equinox has a tradition of “pushing way past conventional thinking.” In March of 1999, for example, we opined that the consensus investment environment was ‘friggin’ Z’—or as we put it, “simultaneous extremely anomalous securities pricing in several different markets.“ At that time, to imagine that Korea and Indonesia would quickly rise from the ashes of the Asia Crisis or that the price of oil and gold would more than double was almost unthinkable. But, our fundamental research indicated that those unconventional forecasts were not only possible, but in fact probable.
One ‘Z’-like scenario that we have followed for quite a while is the possibility that the inevitable peak in global petroleum production is nearer than generally thought. Years ago, our own experience witnessing thirty-percent annual decline rates in the North American natural gas sector sensitized us to the difficult realities of wringing ever more hydrocarbons from the earth’s crust and sparked our interest in ‘peak oil’ theory, an idea which was then still way outside the mainstream. With ‘peak oil’ theory now having gained a good deal of legitimacy, we thought it about time that we clarify our own thinking on the issue, particularly with respect to the oil production prospects of the world’s largest producer, Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia’s mammoth 260 billion barrels of stated oil reserves make it one of very few potential sources of significant production increases. But despite the Saudi’s large claimed reserves, experts such as Matt Simmons are beginning to question their future production potential. In his recent book on the subject, “Twilight in the Desert”, Simmons argues that the giant Saudi fields cannot even maintain their current production, let alone increase it:
“The geological phenomena and natural driving forces that created the Saudi oil miracle are conspiring now in normal and predictable ways to bring it to its conclusion, in a time frame potentially far shorter than officialdom would have us believe.”[2]
The Saudis, of course, vehemently reject Simmons’ claims and insist that they can in fact raise their oil production. To this end, the Saudi oil ministry has authorized a massive capital expenditure program, the “largest expansion for the state-owned Aramco in over a quarter of a century.” While it is undeniably true that the Saudis are investing significant amounts of capital in their oil sector, it is also true that they are projecting a production increase of only half a million barrels per day in each of the next four years. An additional half a million barrels a day is not nothing, but it is a small fraction of the annual increase the world requires. Implicit in the Saudi projections is an admission that they can no longer exercise their historic authority as price setter, truly a watershed event:
“…the kingdom’s position in the global oil markets is slowly shifting. As the sharp rise in oil demand whittles away its spare capacity, Saudi Arabia is shunning its traditional role of the swing producer who stands by with excess oil to pour into tight markets; rather, it now aims to produce supplies just in time to ship when consumption dictates.”[3]
Should the current oil market status quo persist, we will profit handsomely in the coming years as our companies’ production continues to grow profitably. If, however, the peak oil theorists are right, and as Rainwater puts it, an “economic tsunami is about to hit the global economy as the world runs out of oil,” we’d expect our stock picking in the energy sector to produce spectacular results.
Equinox is of the opinion that experts suggesting that the days of ever increasing oil supplies are coming to an end deserve careful attention. After all, what if they are right?
[1] Fortune Magazine, December 26 2005
[2] Twilight in the Desert
[3] Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2003
Sincerely,
Sean Fieler
William W. Strong









