One of the most bizarre places I have ever been was Qingping Market in Guangzhou, China. I visited there during some free time on a tour of China’s offshore operations.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, before or since, compares to it. Qingping seemingly has every herb, vegetable, fruit, meat (most still on the hoof ), souvenir, clothing, shoes, doo-dads, or what-have-you anyone could want—or imagine. Vendors in tiny stalls sell all this stuff, shouting for attention from the mass of humanity pushing and shoving down narrow aisles.

Want some monkey meat for dinner? Well, pick one of the monkeys in my cage. How about powdered turtle shell? We have that right here. You want ginseng? What kind? Freeze-dried, coiled snake? We have dozens.

Think chaos. The sights, the smells, the noise, the crowds overwhelm visitors. Our guide told of foreigners who suffered panic attacks while jostling through the hot, humid, smelly place.

In comparison, the public outcry of a futures exchange seems calm, orderly and sedate.

But to Guangzhou locals who come and go regularly I’m sure it all makes sense. They overlook the confusion, get their pickled eel or whatever, and go on their way. Likewise, the vendors in those tiny stalls know what to watch and what to ignore.

I see an application to the energy business. There has been a lot of noise and confusion lately, but those who come and go daily know what’s going on. They have seen all this before.

The recent shouting—at least in the midstream—may be more noise than substance. Morgan Stanley published an analysis as the fourth-quarter earnings season wound down that found things for midstream operators may be better than we think.

“Overall, earnings/guidance was better than expected on the margin. Fourth-quarter results benefitted from inertia (projects ramping, wells completed, etc.) and near-term protections in place (i.e., hedges),” the report said. “Earnings season as a whole was relatively positively received with many companies providing guidance that helped the Street get greater comfort around the bear case for many of these stocks from a direct commodity perspective.”

There are some other, anecdotal indications that the business may be OK. Hart Energy held two conferences in the first quarter: Marcellus-Utica Midstream in January and DUG Midcontinent at the end of February. Both had record attendance. A conversation with an upstream friend active in New Mexico relayed that a recent visit to Artesia found that oily town almost as busy as ever.

My visit to Qingping lasted about an hour before our group headed off to lunch. (No, we didn’t have monkey.) The chaos was the topic of a lively discussion. But would we have made more sense of things, would we have understood it better, if we had spent the day there? Probably, and that might be true of the current downturn in this business. We may need to stay at this like those vendors pitching their dead rats and yohimbe extract.

“It remains very early days in assessing the impact of the recent downturn in commodity prices (and path dependent from here), and there is still a lot of execution baked into expectations,” Morgan Stanley added. “While commodity sensitivity was lowered in guidance, volumes and capex may still need to fall further in our view (particularly relative to some producer updates). Capex deferrals, cost reductions, contango/exports/refined products demand, M&A and funding were other themes from earnings.”

So hang around, the bazaar hasn’t closed yet.

Paul Hart can be reached at pdhart@hartenergy.com or 713-260-6427.

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