Richard Kinder doesn’t lose sleep over trade wars or chatbots. The billionaire co-founder of Kinder Morgan waved off the industry handwringing over U.S.-China LNG tariffs and the supposedly overhyped energy appetite of AI data centers.
“Our view is that any loss of the Chinese market will be more than offset by the efforts of governments in the EU and Asia to increase the imports of US LNG,” he said on the company’s recent Q1 earnings call. Translation: let Beijing play tariff tag—Kinder’s pipelines are still flowing.
To back up his point, Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI) posted what you might call quietly robust numbers. Q1 adjusted EBITDA clocked in at $2.16 billion (a modest 1% bump from last year), and net income hit $717 million. And while the company’s total net income dipped slightly year-over-year, adjusted net income rose to $766 million.
The board even sweetened the pot with a 2% dividend hike.
Kinder also brushed aside skepticism over AI’s future energy draw—even after reports surfaced that China’s DeepSeek uses a fraction of the juice compared to American data gluttons. KMI is still betting big on AI-driven demand, and why not? The company’s pipeline backlog now tops $8.8 billion, with 91% tied to natural gas. That includes chunky new projects like the $1.6 billion Trident line and the $1.7 billion Mississippi Crossing system.
Meanwhile, Kinder Morgan’s LNG transport contracts are already locked and loaded: 7 Bcf/d now, expected to hit 11 Bcf/d by 2027.
And as for AI forecasts being too rosy? Kinder didn’t blink. “We continue to fund high-quality growth while maintaining a healthy balance sheet,” said CEO Kim Dang.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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