An AI trade involving energy and infrastructure that’s doubled your money,

(This is CNBC’s “Power Insider” newsletter, your inside look at the investments, people and companies powering the global energy industry. Click here to subscribe.)

Oil prices are off their highs this week and media reports are citing Trump’s comments that Iran negotiations are in their “final stages.” But that’s not the real reason. The real catalyst is that ships are starting to move through the Strait of Hormuz. Crude prices started pulling back as soon as hedge funds started seeing that traffic pick up, even before the Trump headlines hit.

Sure enough, oil prices have ticked higher Thursday morning on more negative “headlines.” Just keeping watching the strait traffic as your guide.

Thankfully, that’s not my focus today.

There’s so much more going on in the energy industry beyond Iran and investors can’t afford to be consumed by the barrage of headlines on the conflict and miss the other big money-making themes unfolding.

In last week’s Power Insider, I talked about the massive scale of A.I.’s electricity demand. (I’ll have another interesting trade idea on that lower in today’s edition.)

Well…a few days later, I was on a plane to visit two huge liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities in states near the forefront of the power story: Louisiana and Texas. About 48 hours after that, NextEra Energy (NEE) rolled out a blockbuster deal to buy Virginia’s Dominion Energy (D) and create America’s biggest utility. 

Let’s start with the Dominion Deal.   

NextEra shocked the energy world by announcing a mega-merger with Dominion.  The all-stock deal is worth about $67 billion, but the combined enterprise value of the new company will be about $420 billion – if the deal is approved.  That’s a pretty good-sized ‘if,’ because some on Wall Street aren’t convinced this deal will be approved by regulators.  The Jefferies team notes that NextEra “doesn’t have a great track record of approval” and they think the deal “could get rejected.”  But Jefferies also notes that Dominion wasn’t “loved in Virginia” – its home state – and is probably pleased to have a potential buyer in NextEra.   

Another energy insider I spoke with called the sale “surprising” and added that it will be a complex process to get this through multiple state approvals.  He understands the NextEra side – the Florida company likely wants to grow its regulated utility base and can use the big recent stock gains to help cover the cost.  But on the Dominion side, my insider calls it “perplexing” and notes that it might come down to a board frustrated by Virginia policies … and likely enticed by the promise of a big payout for its executives.

Don’t undersell the scale of regulatory approval, says Evercore ISI.   Analyst Nick Amicucci highlights that this potential merger will require approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), some combination of the FTC and DOJ, and all three of…