Big Digital Energy

0:00 Welcome

0:03 BDE. And then there were two and there were two. I was like, do we get paid by the hour? So these guys aren't like coasting on us for our our multitudes of riches over here at BD. Oh, fully

0:15 expecting Kirk, but I'm intrigued by his extended absence. I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, I don't know if we're allowed to disclose probably not what he's doing. But anyway, it's pretty

0:26 baller. So I'll give I'll give Kirk that look for some. Hopefully very intriguing content. Yeah, he gets back in the chair, hopefully, hopefully he is shooting that. And then of course he may

0:38 have moved on. Yeah, Colin's out actually running a company that has a knowledge share app called Clyde that is growing users and user experience like 20 to 30 percent. What are you saying about us?

0:54 Do we're not? Yeah, we're not doing shit Well, it's in North Carolina.

1:01 In a world that I know nothing about, but it's something we've got to talk about. So hopefully you'll carry the ball on this one. Woodside buys to Lorian for 900 million bucks. All cash, 75

1:15 premium to, I didn't look at the timeline of the, I assume that's last trade. Because it was a bucket of share, right? And like, like, well, that's the low, they're paying a bucket of share.

1:26 Yeah. But that's like the lowest number you can put into the calculator, right? So I'm not sure it was a 75 premium as it plays to it. Maybe your calculator. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, and the Astros

1:36 are back in first place. So that's John Granada is going nuts because he called it 45 days ago on the radio. It only took him 24 to come from 10 games back, which is the fastest and yeah, usually

1:51 history for that. So real quick, and we'll go back to LNG, but so the greatest Houston athlete, I think, is a chemo losh one. I think we can kind of call it. 'Cause you throw

2:04 in championships and all that.

2:07 At the end of his career, are we saying it's Altouve? Boy, that's a

2:13 tough one. I

2:15 think he's in range of taking that in. Now, Elajuan is a top 10, top 15 player of all time. I don't think you say the same thing about Altouve, but in terms of meaningful impact when it counts.

2:31 Yeah,

2:33 as absurd as it sounds, Elajuan was undersized for the era of NBA centers, how they played and what their role was. All-time leader in blocks per game, which is stunning. And I just, I was

2:55 completely compelled the to role brought of he that athleticism his by

3:01 centers having grown up, you know, in the 80s with the true classic center. And so if we think about the comparative of undersized athletes and overachieving, then I would say it's a virtual tie.

3:17 Now, the ability to lead the team on an extended string of success

3:28 is a lot harder on an individual player when there's nine players on the field. And you have to bat an order right. So and and you're doing successfully, at least 30 of the time, the hardest thing

3:43 to do in sports, right? Which is at a high velocity baseball that is moving. Yeah, not moving in terms of velocity. It's actually moving around. Yeah. And although,

3:55 I mean, I guess if it's ever a tie, you have to watch what Elijah wanted to David Robinson in that series when he didn't win the MVP. So all right, anyway, let's go back. So Woodside, the

4:08 Australians. I've been to Australia. The biggest EP company in Australia buys to Larian. Yeah, 900 million, all cash. to Larian's essentially, as I think about it, a single asset company,

4:23 which is the Driftwood LNG project projected to be at 26, excuse me, 276 MTPA by 2028.

4:37 Whereas the project, it's essentially got the groundwork, literally the physical construction of the groundwork, the bulk of land, port, some concrete. Exactly. And so, at least as far as I

4:51 could tell, from their March investor update. that the expectation was that actual construction Bechtel being the primary GC,

5:02 EPC provider would start sometime in the second half of 2024. And so,

5:12 as far as Woodside's motivations, yes, you have an in-motion project that is fundamentally permitted and that permit is related to the non-free trade agreement country permit with ATHON, which is

5:30 the upstream provider that Woodside, or excuse me, to learn a selling to pay down some debt. But future agreements essentially are going to require repurmitting, FTA agreements are going to

5:46 require repurmitting, which then puts the risk of being exposed to the Biden pause. back in play. But you do have more than just dirt. You do have a contract in hand, a non-FTA contract. And

6:07 let's face it, Woodside's been pretty successful in your favorite new country in terms of the history and the legacy of LNG in Australia. Yeah. And

6:20 I don't know if there were, I don't follow Tulurian that closely,

6:26 but I don't know if there were things that were creating some more headwinds with respecting being able to continue to obtain the financing to actually execute the project going forward. Well, it

6:41 never helps when you kick out the founder when it comes to raising more money. Yeah, and so it's a good, we can think of a close to billion dollar bolt-on. bolt-on portfolio for,

6:59 and probably the best exit for Martin Houston and DeLorean. Yeah. At this point in time, just given all

7:09 the crosswinds of uncertainty related to cost, we saw the Zachary Bankruptcy, or the Zachary Entity Bankruptcy on the Exxon project. And so quite a bit of roiling markets and LNG and how we think

7:24 about future capacity build out. And

7:29 I haven't heard a bit of a risk option for Woodside. Well and, I haven't heard any scuttle, but from any of the banking stuff, where there are five bidders and this one heaked it out, or they're

7:42 the only bidders. So potentially that stuff will come out. I think at the end of the day, is it the right price? We'll know in five years, you know, would side either. massively overpaid for

7:55 something that's wallowing in the mud or Wow, they're They're shooting LNG all over the place. Yeah, and it was a shrewd move. So all right financial times wrote a Article on one of your favorite

8:11 things critical minerals mining. Yeah, there was a piece out I think it was July the 18th just talking about You know, can we make it happen? And the thing that was compelling was a ranking of the

8:28 key critical minerals producing countries where the US ranked next to next to last in terms of cycle time of new mine discovery to commissioning production from a new mine of 29 years where the global

8:45 average is 23 and and there were no countries and we'll find that a stack bar. of the country's cycle times, there were no countries, the fastest were still over a decade.

9:00 And so what are the implications of that? We've talked a lot about the IRA. We have some ramping

9:08 both US content rules under the IRA to qualify for things like batteries and renewables, machines that really start to ramp in 2025. I'm not gonna go into the details of what those content

9:22 prescriptions are, but if you look at US copper, for example, we consume in the US 18 million metric, tons per year, and we produce 48 of that domestically. I don't know what the split is

9:39 between actual kind of mind source and process copper, but. Which is actually, we were talking about this morning, that was kind of shocking time. Seems higher than I think, higher than I would

9:49 think Yeah.

9:52 Squaring all that with the ramping content prescriptions in the IRA, you start to think about just the

10:04 North Star of 2050 and some of the near-term emissions reductions, goals and the incentivizing aspects of the IRA, how does that line up? Well, if I take for a rounder math, 2025 and add 29 years

10:22 to it, it

10:24 puts me out beyond 2050.

10:30 We'll cover more. I've got a piece in the works that I hope to launch as the first

10:37 blog on a kind of working title, BDE sidetrack, where we take things and write more extensively on - This is news-breaking right here, right? I don't know about that, but that feels very news

10:51 breaking.

10:53 Am I too big of a prick if I say by Friday? Oh, not at all. Not at all, I'm not too big of a prick for saying it. I love it.

11:03 And so this, I think, is a good segue into,

11:09 and who'd have thought after last week's shows? Well, let me say one more thing about the mining 'cause you and I were talking about it this morning and I just had a thought. If we're gonna not

11:19 mine here, not in my backyard, but we need all these

11:24 minerals to be able to do the energy transition that we all seem to wanna do.

11:31 The way we achieve that is unfortunately gonna be a

11:35 crisis. That's the way we have a tendency to govern in the United States. It's gonna be a crisis and it's probably gonna lead to nefarious foreign policy stuff? I will go. know you, do we

11:51 overthrow a government somewhere so that we can get a hold of minerals, we'll have a confrontation with China over something that we shouldn't have at all. And, you know, we're gonna roll into

12:04 talking about Biden and I'll let you do it. But I was just thinking that, you know, that every time we don't have thoughtful policy about stuff, it leads us to actions that are usually bad that

12:19 people get hurt over. Does that make sense? It does, just, you know. I think more practically what we're going to see, just given these, you know, the seemingly growing wall of inertia and all

12:34 of this is we'll have attempts at legislative modification of things like the IRA which then relax some of the

12:47 prescriptions related to things like content, but we, you know, we.

12:52 We have administrative agency rulings that run theoretically counter to the legislative and executive objectives, and I mentioned one as a few weeks ago. You've got a copper and zinc perspective

13:11 mine in northwest Alaska, but that was essentially stopped cold because the Interior Department said, We're going to take no action on the permits for rights of way for the Amblar road, so the

13:30 Amblar mine in Alaska. Well, if I can't have rights of way through protected part of the route through,

13:42 forget what the name of the, I think it's the gates of the Arctic preserve, then you can't do it. And I think of. or fundamental point is, is that all of this stuff starts with digging something

13:56 out of the ground. But if you can't dig it, you can't do it. Because they are the primary building blocks of everything that we're trying to do with

14:06 more sustainability in the energy machines and energy production. So I was gonna let you give us the prelude to, and who would have thought that after an attempted presidential assassination last

14:23 weekend where we touched on two consecutive shows last week, weeks not we're 'cause, drive Yeah. political sensational more even have would we that the

14:35 discussion. We're not politics per se, but just the dominance of it is making us have to talk about it. And I think we've actually done a pretty good job the through history politics avoiding of.

14:50 show. So

14:52 let's do this. It's happened six times in history where a president has chosen not to run for reelection. James K. Polk, who's very underappreciated as a president. He added a lot of land. If

15:07 you go look, a lot of the land we have was Polk. He was the expansionist president James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes, and those are

15:19 all in the, that's all call it, 1845 to 1881. So those three choose not to run again. Calvin Coolidge in 1929 chooses not to run again. And what was his nickname? I don't know. Silent. Silent.

15:37 Yeah. The joke was Lady Walks up and says, I bet somebody could get you to say three words. And he said, you lose and walked off. It's supposedly a true story. Coolidge.

15:52 Maybe fortunately for Coolidge decides not to run again in

15:57 1929. Harry Truman decided not to run again, I guess technically under the current rules, he couldn't run today again, but back then we didn't have the amendment in place that limited you two

16:12 terms. 'Cause he took over FDR. Three months after his fourth term started Yeah, so I forget what it is on the, I think it's if you make it more than two years of a term that counts as a term, so

16:26 you can't read it. But anyway, and then Lyndon Johnson and Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the race in 1968, just in the face of Vietnam, strife, all that sort of stuff. And that's probably your

16:39 best analogy in terms of what's going on today Yeah, I saw an interview with RFK Jr. last night, and he was talking about the similarities between 1968 and what's happened here in recent days, and

16:60 the country was deeply divided in 1968 over Vietnam.

17:05 His father, well, back to Johnson. Johnson had narrowly won the New Hampshire primary in March of 1968 and was facing the Wisconsin primary on April 2nd. So his televised address ofI'm not going

17:25 to run and I'm not going to accept the nomination

17:29 was in advance of that, where I think some projections were he could have finished in Wisconsin as poorly as third, which for a sitting president in its own party primaries would have been

17:43 disastrous So coming out of that. you actually had Humphrey leading, Hubert Humphrey leading in terms of delicate counts, followed pretty closely. I don't remember what the respective totals were,

17:58 followed pretty closely by RFK Junior, RFK Junior's assassinated in June. And then you go, ironically, to the DNC in Chicago, which is where the DNC this year is, and you have that open, kind

18:14 of nominating free for all The issues then seemingly more acute, I can't imagine social media, then dealing with things like the Vietnam War and the divided country over that whole policy dimension.

18:31 But I just thought it was a very insightful

18:36 comparison by someone who obviously is very directly has been exposed to that and been touched by it a couple of times.

18:47 So let's throw some history on here, and this is only 'cause I looked it up, therefore I'm gonna say it, but what's wild is the first convention nominating someone for president was by the

19:01 anti-Masonic party in 1831,

19:06 and the Democrats and the Whigs, shortly thereafter adopted it. So go - Is it? During Andrew Jackson's time? I guess that is, wasn't Jackson 32? I think so. Yeah, so anyway, this, so before

19:24 that, the party leaders just voted in secrecy, and they nominated a president. And democracy was in effect, but general election, you know, this guy running against that guy. And

19:38 basically conventions were the way nominated a president until the 60s. Really, there was one experiment in between 1912. The Republicans actually had nine state primaries. It was a novel concept

19:58 back then. Let's go let people vote, see who they wanted. What happened was Teddy Roosevelt stepped in and he was winning each one of those primaries by ridiculous margins. I think he won

20:10 Pennsylvania 90, 75 in Illinois, something like that, but Taft didn't win a primary, wound up getting the Republican nomination that year. And so that's the bull moose party split that we've read

20:26 about. So you get to 1968 and what happened to the convention is what you were talking about just a second ago. Humphrey never even participated in a primary and he walks away with the nomination in

20:40 kind of a back room, brokered, the alternative

20:52 Yeah. And so anyway, he gets it all hell breaks loose. So the Democrats actually commissioned the McGovern-Frazier Commission in 1969.

21:00 I think McGovern was a senator and he was head of the DNC at the time, 28 people. They came up with rules, regulations, procedures and all this, but the punchline was they put in place stuff so

21:18 that the nomination process would favor the primary results and reduce the power of party leaders and they they trumped it, unintended, trumped it as more democratic. This is supporting democracy.

21:37 And the machines don't like that and the machines do not like that. But the reason I kind of kind of bring that up is

21:46 And we talked about this, last week when we talked politics, it was always like, well, what does this mean for energy? And I think what we said last week was, look at what our government is

21:59 willing to lie to us about and do to cover things up. They've got to be doing that to energy as well. And I think we're going to talk more this week on steroids of that I mean, basically the

22:15 Democrats who have been telling us we've got to save democracy or literally reversing stuff they put in place to be more democratic. I mean, this is, you know, we talk about going back to the

22:30 olden times, which were bad in various scenarios and they're doing it. Well, and it's only because they're losing.

22:41 sitting there saying, Joe, you shouldn't run because this is a national security crisis. You dealing with Putin? They're saying, Hey, dude, you got caught. Everybody's gonna see it. We're

22:51 gonna lose it. We're gonna lose the house and the Senate too. So they're doing this. So I'll shut up. And again, I'm not trying to be Republicans versus Democrats, I'm sure - What are you? I'm

23:02 a libertarian. I'm sure the Trump administration will lie on stuff. The thing you have going with when Trump administration lies, you at least have a bulldog media going after him on every turn.

23:16 So you're highlighting it. But anyway, I'll shut up. Yeah, I think there's, you know, and perhaps this is a bit of naivete, but I don't think so. I think a lot of the pronouncements, there

23:26 are clearly political objectives in policy positions and bold pronouncements on things like energy. And let's talk about energy I do think that in the spirit of not attributing to malice, what can

23:42 be otherwise attributed to incompetence? Fair enough. At least from the rhetoric and the substance or lack of substance in a lot of the policy pronouncements, particularly by those that are out on

23:54 the front lines of political campaigns and leading candidates is that there's a, for those of us who have some beyond lay person level of expertise in the energy, you know, think about the end of

24:10 last week's invention, I saw it on an analysis on Twitter where I think it was stated that in the review of the transcript that Trump mentioned energy, I wanna say a thousand times in 90 minutes,

24:24 it seems like a lot, but it was a lot. And then you saw the kind of the rallying cry of drill baby drill. Whereas before it's been very, very lightly touched upon if not at all.

24:40 We were talking about it before the show started. This notion of, okay, we're going to bring down energy prices immediately via drill baby drill.

24:53 It doesn't really square with what the industry, at least the US industry has been about for the last five years, certainly since COVID, capital discipline. These are private companies acting not

25:04 only in their national interest, but in the interest of their shareholders, where returns in cash flow have been paramount. And there's also the looming specter of other forces in the global

25:17 commodities markets, not the least of which is the fact that OPEC plus has got a discretionary two and a half plus million barrels a day off the market. That is theoretically available to at their

25:34 whim

25:36 So that's, you know, that's a weapon and it really comes down to I think a lot of these pronouncements and particularly in sound-bited political and policy statements are just woefully uninformed

25:52 about how the global energy markets work. And so that's stating the obvious to those who are in our orbit in energy. But I just think that

26:07 we've moved so far beyond holding any politician or any government accountable for statements made, certainly in the heat of a political campaign, when those results that they promised do not

26:23 transpire, there's always a work around or a deflection. Now,

26:30 you were talking earlier about kind of the tilt of the media in the messaging around that, I do think the way that

26:41 President Trump has been challenged on everything that he said by the media is much more of a kind of truth arbiter than what the other side has been subjected to. And that's, you know, we'll see.

26:59 I think the more interesting dynamic that comes out of what's happened over the last few weeks and certainly this past weekend is, what does it mean for the divide on energy policy? Well, in gas

27:15 dominant, drill baby drill versus those things that are embedded in the IRA and even more extreme where the vice president has been attached to explicit campaigns to end fossil fuels, fracking bans,

27:33 et cetera, you know, is the specter of a widening divide really the best thing right now. given kind of where we are. Yeah, no, she's not been constructive on energy and energy policy. And so,

27:55 and look, I don't necessarily think the Trump administration has been, was necessarily constructive on education and policy. There was more kind of a free reign, but at the end of the day, it was

28:10 get gasoline prices down 'cause I wanna get reelected, period. So,

28:20 it will be

28:28 interesting to see if somehow in any of this, some substance could happen on energy policy where the public could be somewhat formed, although my sense is there's gonna be shrilling at each other on

28:37 both sides with this campaign. So, yeah, hi. I think it's going to get, I think it's going to get more about kind of personal attacks on both sides and will be, well, it already has been,

28:54 it'll be zero some in terms of trying to score points. If things stay as they are, there was, I forget who was talking about it last night said

29:06 really what the power brokers in the Democratic Party are telling you not explicitly, but they're telling you is they realize that there's got to be a moderation in where their leading candidate is

29:23 in this particular election on the left-right spectrum And so if we can take Vice President Harris's orientation at face value, it is more extreme

29:42 oil and gas and the fossil fuel future in general. And so I think that's an interesting conundrum in the middle of

29:52 how the Democrats are thinking about positioning a candidate. But there's a whole host of other issues that impact upon the ultimate decision. And so you've seen, I think you've seen the Clintons,

30:06 Whitmer and a

30:09 couple of others come out and endorse Biden's tweet that followed the official announcement that endorsement was not in that letter to the American people. But a few minutes later, he tweeted out

30:23 the 23 year old Doris runs his account tweeted out. Right, so,

30:29 you know. It, you know, it will be no matter So some interesting energy dynamics that could play out. There's talk that Joe Manchin. is gonna throw his hat in the ring to run for president.

30:45 'Cause I guess at this point barring change in party rules, the delegates are gonna vote. And I think they have to vote. They vote before the convention because to get on the ballot in one state,

31:00 you have to be declared your state's, your party's candidate. So there's gonna be a vote that's upcoming before the, and it's the, before the convention, the delegates are gonna vote. And what's

31:18 interesting is the delegates are Biden people, right? They worked for Biden. Generally speaking, they're more kind of moderate party regulars, as opposed to

31:32 the extremes. And so could a Joe, a mansion, re-register as a Democrat and make hay. That would be a really interesting development for the energy business, 'cause I think the energy business

31:47 would potentially be okay with him as a president. He actually said, I think this morning that he's not. So he's not going to be a candidate. He's not going to, okay.

32:00 And then I think the really interesting dynamic is no matter who wins, who do we get as a secretary of energy, and I'm going to give you a reason why some really good candidate would do it. When

32:16 you sell all your stock and you join the cabinet, it's capital gains free. So, I mean, if there's somebody with a big, huge, built-in gain, a billion and a half, two billion dollars worth of

32:30 stock,

32:33 that's in effect, call it 25

32:38 to go take a cabinet position, even if it's for wasn't that. wasn't that kind of the dust up over Tillerson being named Secretary of State under the Trump administration? Yeah, he got to say it.

32:51 Yeah, I don't know that he actually sold his exon stock or not, but there was definitely discussion of it. So anyway, that's the reason you'd get a good one. I will say literally the demonization

33:05 and the mess of this campaign, as well as arguably the last two, there was a chance for a decent person to wanna go to Washington. I can't imagine anybody would wanna go there. So, well, he was

33:21 ambassador and I always, a derision who served eight presidents as in the State Department, I think dating back maybe to Ford or even Nixon In fact, he was one time the US ambassador to Syria.

33:43 So he said in advance of the 2016 campaign in a bit of a quip and thinking about, what both parties had brought forth relative to his much longer perspective in history with past presidential

34:02 campaigns, basically said, we kind of face a poverty of choice here.

34:09 And so whether you agree or disagree with that characterization as being maybe a bit too harsh, if you look at what

34:20 the campaigns themselves take on a life of their own lately, and that's just the nature of politics. And I was thinking about it as I was writing some other things this weekend in my own political

34:34 participation history. I was really into it when I was first old enough to vote I got to vote and. one of the Reagan elections actually volunteered on some stuff, but really ever since then, I've

34:51 gotten just a bit more disillusioned and a lot more in the last decade plus, it used to be really interesting to me because there seemed to be more substantive focus on policy and not personality.

35:08 Yeah And this almost reality show

35:14 aura that every political campaign seems to take on, I don't care if it's at the state or local level. Think, you know, the things that go on when, for example, Texas Senate seat comes up

35:26 between Cruz and Beto not too long ago. It just devolves into this very unsavory

35:37 kind of personal attack

35:40 point scoring gotcha. game

35:48 that it's a shame that it's kind of devolved to this because we do have extremely important policy decisions and strategies to get right and energies at the very top of the list. Yeah, I mean, it's

36:02 arguably

36:05 top three in terms of national security concerns I mean, you obviously have nuclear bombs, et cetera. You know what my suggested rule for political campaigns is that each candidate and their

36:21 families once every two weeks have to go eat dinner for an hour and a half, no cameras, you know, secluded location, no cell phones in there, no one else, you who you know, candidate A, is her

36:38 her family, candidate B, is her her family, and they all got to go eat dinner together. 'Cause I mean, it is just crazy. Hosted by Sally Yates. Oh yeah, Sally Cook. Yeah, more than that,

36:52 Sally could be, but the greatest referee. Oh yeah, Sally's great at referee and she'd be, she'd have everybody eating bobbigan-ish or whatever. The chicken fried steak, she's got a wide range.

37:05 So last thing just, I mean, I guess we actually didn't report the news, but everybody knows that Biden has decided to not run for real action. And where did it show at first? Showed up on X and a

37:18 ladder. What's really crazy is we haven't seen Biden in five days. This is crazy. I mean, I get putting out a lot. I would have thought he would have addressed my fellow Americans. I've decided

37:31 and at least give a reason. Here's, I don't feel good because of this COVID or whatever. I'm not running and you would have thought he did that Johnson did that. He was on the air for. whatever,

37:45 45 minutes when he, so he puts out a letter. Usually when you, in

37:48 effect, put out

37:51 a press release, you also put out at least a still photograph of you walking in or something. I mean, I don't think we've seen proof, and I'm not saying he's dead. I'm not that big a tin foil hat,

38:03 but it's just, it is kind of weird we haven't heard from the president. Now, I guess I get that he's stabbed people 'cause, pissed really him in the

38:14 back, but at some point, this becomes a national security issue. If our enemies know that our president is debilitated or something, we, anyway. Yeah, and I saw one criticism after I guess

38:33 Trump had put something out on true social that was then shared on Twitter about how quickly he took the advantage. of being able to say something pretty. Look, I told you so. Yeah. I did see

38:50 where upon Vance being named, Vice Presidential contender on the ticket, Vice President Harris was out close to a nanosecond with a pretty kind of harsh, you know, the characterization of JD Vance

39:07 is being, you know, he's never been about the country's and it for himself to which he fired back Look, I served in the US. Marines and built a company. What have you done? Yeah. That's the

39:18 kind of skirmishing I think we can expect going forward that, you know, is really unhelpful to really

39:29 highlighting what

39:32 the policy differences are. It's all gonna be about this war of personality and gotcha.

39:42 comments that'll be soundbited into characterizations of things that are completely inaccurate about either side. Yeah. One of the things getting back to energy that I thought was interesting when

39:55 we talk about this, I think there's, you know, if things say status quo and proceed the way they're going, the divide on energy policy gets wider. I just don't, I don't think there's going to be

40:11 a concession made by either side about, you know, we've, we're in essence on either side picking winners in the long-term energy future. One is 100 renewables. One is continued dominance by oil

40:28 and gas.

40:30 I listed to a podcast this weekend, Arjun Marti, who we've mentioned many times was on Dave Greeley's podcast. I think it's called Smarter Markets my apologies if I didn't get that right. But

40:42 Arjun brought up the point about

40:46 India. India is certainly climbing the GDP attainment ladder as I like to think about it. So if India went from its current two barrels per capita consumption per year to halfway to the US, which

41:06 is 20, so 10, India becomes essentially a net importer of crude oil and products of 45 million barrels a day per year, or 45 million barrels a day. No way they wanna do that, no way I think they

41:23 can do that. The point is, is that the US through policy strategy on the energy front has a fundamental opportunity to lead

41:38 through really capitalism and free markets and free markets. the development of viable technologies at scale. And so this notion of really the foundation of the global energy industry still resides

41:56 in the US. And certainly all of the relevant technologies, I think we can expect are going to come out of US. industry innovation, both from the industry and in conjunction with

42:12 new technology partners. The question is pace and timeline. So if you're

42:18 in advance of the race being decided, picking winners that for whatever reason have all kinds of practical limitations, technical limitations, you're only going to protract the timeline and raise

42:37 the risk where we're going to lurch from many crisis to many crisis. in the US or globally, more importantly, where we've got a huge disproportionate amount of the population between now and

42:50 certainly 2050 that is going to be wanting to get more prosperous. That's just fundamental. And so the way I look at what I believe is going to be a bigger divide or a widening divide in this

43:06 potential presidential election on energy policy is a bit sobering, if not a

43:15 little bit sad just because I think we're getting past the last few years of difficulty brought on by COVID and other things. And the reality that the market is telling you on certain things like EVs

43:32 and kind of slowing the role for a lot of reasons, getting back to more, and a pragmatic and practical evaluation of all things, not just oil and gas, not just renewables.

43:47 And this is potentially a bit of a setback to that, whatever that momentum is that's been building here for the last year or two. Yeah, I mean, I've said it a million times, so I'll beat the dead

43:59 horses. We just can't tell the next billion people on the planet that are in Africa and Southeast Asia Hey, guys, you eat cake, you know? I mean, they've got to be able to have energy so that

44:13 they can live the kind of life that they want to live. And quite frankly, any human deserves to live. And I like your point. I mean, so if I'm summarizing our take on this, my take is holy cow,

44:28 there was potentially a coup on all this. Just look how evil the government is So I did my libertarian bashing there, but related it back to energy saying they'll do that to a president, they'll do

44:43 that to the energy narrative. We talked potentially that how do we get thoughtful people to come together on a campaign or serve as a secretary of energy yuck? Probably not going to happen And I

44:58 think you just,

45:02 you know, batting clean up and brought home the bases or cleared the bases by saying, This is a really important time to have this discussion. It is. And I was hopeful, you know,

45:17 I don't wish kind of a life-altering pain on anyone, but if economic pain in terms of of getting out a bit over our skis on some technologies, the expectation that,

45:32 and I wrote about this a little bit.

45:36 Somehow we can wholesale change out an entire nation's energy system in a period of a couple of short decades, just as unprecedented, the physics and the economics don't support that. But we got a

45:59 tee off and recognized that there is a long horizon for all these, you know, I like to think about them in the cliched, it's all the above energy additions, it's not a transition. But as we keep

46:15 having these

46:18 skirmishes and these battles, it just creates, it introduces more inertia into the kind of evolutionary process of the energy system Quite frankly, if we had used our, now that I think about it,

46:31 used all the money and the IRA of stuff that may or may not, actually make a difference here in the United States and use that to in effect finance energy systems to the rest of the world. We

46:44 might've gotten a much better bang for our buck. I had a former colleague who I won't name but he was advising on a long ago kind of energy docudrama and it was bravo or FX and reporter was asking

47:04 him just kind of his take because some of these things were going to be surprising if not shocking to the viewers and his quip was and I'll paraphrase it a little bit. He said, you know, most

47:15 voters are ignorant about a lot of things. They're really ignorant about where their energy comes from. Yeah, that's right. And I think ignorance and competence, lack of understanding of the

47:29 energy system and markets is really, to use it as of a politically weaponized soundbite and not informing or not being informed. I just think that's, I don't know that we'll ever get past that just

47:47 because it's, it's fun to be bombastic on TV and social media. And I think it's believed to be one of the tools of political campaign success And maybe it requires the electorate to get more

48:04 interested in the more or the deeper aspects of how the energy system works. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I will say this. I wish our president actually the best. I hope he's in good health. I hope he's

48:21 bouncing back from COVID and he's just kind of pissed off and, and stewing about this as opposed to something worse happening But uh, anyway, enjoyed it this week, Mark. kind of getting used to

48:35 not having Colin and I think we're we're we're higher value education I was really I was actually really looking forward to Kirk's take on what happened at the open oh yeah I don't even know so we'll

48:53 say that for when he gets back I will say that you know Colin Montgomery the Scotsman who doesn't play in majors or I don't think plays much golf anymore was pretty critical of Tiger continuing to

49:10 push it when clearly he needs to retire meaning you shouldn't even should even be playing in the open at trend Tiger fires back well I get to make that decision he doesn't because he's a past champion

49:25 right he can play until he's what 60 or 61

49:29 something like that so that was funny all right guys appreciate you tuning in. We'll be back next week and hopefully we'll have Colin and Kirk with us.