Big Digital Energy

0:00 Don't don't don't don't don't. The. So at the risk of running our five year,

0:11 25 million sponsorship deal that we have on the table, negotiating the final terms of this is time to fuck it up with United. Fuck it up and tell me about your trip to South Africa. Dude, I just

0:22 tweeted United because let me tell you something. Traveling sucks, right? Yeah So I was going to South Africa, Johannesburg to film our live long drive golf event. And I'm in Newark because, you

0:37 know, I had to fly from Houston, New York. We're three hours in, don't ever take an ambient or anything like that. When I don't know when you actually should take any sleep aid. But we had to

0:50 circle and we flew back to New York because we had something wrong with the plane. Then they lose my luggage blah blah blah. But I'll tell you this, I'm going to give United some credit. If you

1:01 tweet at United, they'll respond back to you. And even though they didn't necessarily improve the speed of finding my luggage, they were there with me as if it's my blanket. So I'm like, they

1:16 were there, they helped me, I'm gonna give it to 'em. Oh, okay. Then the people on the airplanes, 'cause I've had multiple shit shows going there and coming back, the people there are great I

1:28 love the United attendance and sometimes the captains are pretty cool. I would never say that 'cause you're kind of born to hate airlines 'cause it just is such a shit show. But in this case,

1:40 United made me feel better and I'm gonna stay loyal. Oh, nice. Well - Can't believe I'm saying this, but it's actually true. I think to this day, and I forget how long ago did they merge, but

1:52 you used to, right after the merger, you used to be able to say, ah, you're a continental crew, aren't you? Well, oh yeah. You're a United crew, yeah, I get it. How I got in with the flight

2:01 attendants would say, You're continental, aren't you? And if they said yes, they know there's like that special bond of Houston-based - We had God, we had it. And basically it's 'cause the CEO

2:13 didn't want to live in Houston with his wife, right? Yeah, of course. And it's always, yeah, moved the

2:19 headquarters to Chicago, but anyway. Yeah, continental was in great shape right before they merged. I mean, of course We had direct TV on all the flights. The crews were nice, you know.

2:32 Awesome. Anyway. The, so, okay, cool. The, we're missing Mark and Colin. So there's a gratuitous prostate exam. Yeah, no doubt. Probably for both of them. For both of them. Maybe each

2:46 other. Let's do that. All right, so first story, you wanna hit it? You want me to hit it? Big announcement from Exxon. Yeah, hit it.

2:57 Pull up the story just to make sure I didn't, I don't misquote anything. Cue the story. Ooh, little bit of kind of being mysterious and nebulous about stuff. But Exxon announced they're gonna

3:12 build a natural gas-fired power plant to exclusively power data centers. They're talking about one and a half gigawatts of natural gas-fired power They're gonna use carbon capture storage group to

3:28 make sure they capture at least 90 of the emissions. And so this is a pretty big deal. Hey, listeners out there, this is my question to you. If they're capturing 90 of admissions, I wonder how

3:43 you compare to the true carbon output of clean energy No, you're right, 'cause I mean like, I mean, at the end of the day, it. We all heard Billy Bob Thornton's speech on layman. To do wind,

3:59 there's a lot of concrete. Yeah, it's terrible. A lot

4:03 of metal in those things. The even solar, I mean, a lot of coal-fired stuff in China building those things. So now you're right. Well, it's interesting. You always think that Exxon, they've

4:19 got a great balance sheet. So that's, they're a big bank as you know. Right They never make decisions quickly. They watch the market and they attack and pounce when it's ready, which is kudos for

4:32 them. That's why people have own Exxon stock forever 'cause it's a safe bet.

4:38 They're playing chess and this is a chess move. They were waiting for the right time. It's smart to make this decision. And it's interesting that I wonder how long they knew that gas was gonna be

4:50 the preeminent fuel 'cause the, the end of the, so. A couple of things are interesting on this. Can't wait to see who the counter-parties are. You know, is this meta, Microsoft? Right,

5:01 through the office setting, right. Love to. We all know enough people at Exxon that we might get some insight into how it all went down. You know, Darren Wood goes to sit down with Zuckerberg or

5:12 something on how that pitch went. Because. I mean, Zuck have to take a shower immediately after or not. I mean, that's what we have to know Well,

5:24 and you brought up the balance sheet, 'cause we've been talking a long time on here that the natural gas guys have to go talk to Silicon Valley, Big Tech, to power data centers and they gotta make

5:33 their case 'cause data centers are gonna choose nukes, otherwise. So Exxon arguably went and did this. And the thing I think we underappreciated when we were talking about natural gas guys and I'll

5:47 pick on natural gas partners just 'cause they're one of my favorite PE energy funds Like if they had a portfolio company, company X.

5:56 Company X can have enough gas to power a data center for 20 years from Meta. It's just Meta's gonna say, who is this? Who's their balance sheet, all of this? So we probably, over the last year

6:11 when we were talking about this, we should've been talking about natural gas guys need to go in, sit down, make their case to big tech, and they need to be walking in either with Exxon, Chevron,

6:23 somebody like that's balance sheet, or one of the big banks, Goldman, whatever, you know, this is gonna be my balance sheet. 'Cause if you think about a data center, it's probably a 20,

6:33 25-year asset. Absolutely. And Exxon can sign those deals where maybe small independents can. Here's what I'm curious about, 'cause at Shell, I knew a lot of the business development people that

6:44 would try to do these types of deals. I wonder if the commodity traders, you know, the traffickers, you know, the VTOLs of the world, Were they in the middle of any of this stuff, or was it a

6:54 direct deal? Yeah, no, that'll be interesting to see if that pops out too. You never hear about 'em. But the people that make all the money seem to be these guys, and I'm wondering if they had

7:04 any involvement in brokering the steel. Yeah. No, that's interesting. If you're, you know, if you're meta, if you're Microsoft, are you gonna want

7:16 V-Tall or whoever, on the other side of that deal balance sheet, given that it feels like every year, we have a rumor that they're imploding. Or maybe let's just pick on V-Talks, 'cause they're

7:27 not here, they're not in this room, but they're freaking probably gonna text me once this hits, but

7:34 they could have just been paid a commission for brokering the deal. I mean, they're in, get paid a lot, they're out, whoever was the guy that, or gal that did the deal, makes a lot of money,

7:44 and it's already settled. I mean, they don't have to even worry about it. The other part of this trade, so one, how it went down, The other part of this trade that I'm interested in is producing

7:59 the power. I mean, historically, that is a core competency of an oil and gas company is to procure power for your field, but one and a half gigawatts. This is a different game, you know? It's

8:14 big. So did Exxon hire that talent internally? Are we gonna have somebody like Calpine that is involved in this or a local utility that's involved with this actually putting in the power generation?

8:29 That's gonna be interesting to watch too. Good question, I'm curious about what went down at the big tech over, they've been staffing up sort of renewable energy experts. How are they, I mean,

8:43 who is the one that actually says, Hey, we're gonna do a natural gas deal. That's gotta be an interesting conversation in there. Maybe we can get some feedback from one of our friends

8:54 Something so forth and so on Yeah we the people want to know Chuck Yeah now and in and I Will I will say this if if we can be so bold as to make a suggestion to to exxon may you ought to be telling

9:09 the story the stories like Cool I mean Big Tech chose natural gas to power this you know there's an old phrase shocked that that might harm but they say that money talks but wealth whispers Riot

9:25 exxon's wealth man they don't need to talk about anything yeah that that being said we all could use some some PR supposedly so this this follows on the heels of last week meta announced a new ten

9:42 billion dollar data Center in Richland Paris Parish Louisiana They're partnering with entergy and they're talking about

9:54 building nukes to build a big, huge data center. I read the press release and I didn't get anything in there in terms of as natural gas, maybe gonna be a backup. Kind of seems like an interesting

10:08 choice Northern Louisiana to go build nukes, but maybe it's regulatory. Maybe there's some natural gas right there in case we need backup But

10:23 that's interesting as well 'cause this is another big data center and how

10:30 the United States is tackling it. No, I mean, obviously we've known for a long, we've been talking about it on the show for a long time that data centers are gonna, there's not enough power. The

10:42 biggest problem with data centers and AI is the fact that we don't have enough power to power

10:47 all these data centers And I think that's the core and people are figuring it out.

10:52 An political standpoint it's it's not as a big deal to go after your you know Nuke I mean sing about the nuke industry and it's come back since the Japanese incident how many years ago was at but

11:05 finally nukes back and then now you're seeing like gas and I think that really was because of the latest election where people are feeling a little bit easier as you're seeing DEA programs go away

11:17 you're saying and the fact that we're going to go after a sort of dirty fuel even though this is you know exxon's announcements include carbon capture but people are coming back to reality where

11:29 economics are driving the discussion well and and the the other thing that's happening right now is and I Dunno where it stands as of this moment but the Joe Mansions whole permitting absolutely

11:45 absolute John Arnold tweeted about that a couple of days ago san come on Guys it's time to pass this Thing But it's talking about possibly getting out of committee and getting to Biden's desk before

11:59 January 20th. And even if it doesn't, it feels like that's gotta be on Chris Wright

12:07 and Donald Trump. Donald Trump's desk to make happen because at the end of the day, 'cause

12:15 this is gonna tie into the last thing we're gonna talk about, but this is national security You start putting AI data centers someplace where the Chinese can go take 'em over, that's not good. I

12:26 mean, I was down in South Africa as we were talking about and I was driving by a large platinum facility, the gold, chrome, and I was thinking like, talking to one of the locals that was driving

12:42 me around, he's like, South Africa has this huge with precious metals and resources their second largest diamond Um. resource as well. And all these mines are owned by the Chinese. So the Chinese

12:60 own all the mines there, taking all these precious metals. I mean, absolutely. We already know that there's sort of data centers. You can't put certain information and data centers located in

13:11 other countries. So we already know that. But I think you're right, we're going to have to strategically locate data centers. And that's been one of the biggest issues. Even though you've seen

13:21 out of the Middle East, because of their low cost of power, they've been trying to build these gigantic data centers. Now the question is, what do you put there? Yeah. Maybe we need to bring on

13:32 one of our big tech people, executives to come in and talk about it. Yeah, I'd love to get their insights on it. Yeah. And you know, I'm a big libertarian, but even I could be okay with some

13:45 federal government stipulations coming in saying, hey, that stuff doesn't leave the United States. Well, I mean, I don't want to go political chalk, but the reality is you have to have secure

13:59 borders, and part of that is digitally as well if you want to protect

14:05 the sovereignty of the nation. It just is what it is. Yeah. So let's roll this into the last thing, because I think it's related. You've seen this stuff about the drones, right? No, they're

14:16 everywhere. Yeah, they're following us. Yeah, and they've been talking about it for a month, and some people are saying there's biggest cars. Yeah. These drones that are flying around flying

14:27 around. Now, I've listened to a bunch of stuff about drones. I don't know much about them, but I've listened. I think they're only good for two things, right? Surveillance and shooting at

14:37 things, right? Well, I mean, being in the media business, they're good for, I guess, surveillance, but they take photos and video too. Yeah. Pretty good at that. Yeah. Which I guess is

14:47 surveillance, right? Yeah, that's surveillance, right? surveillance, and

14:49 then they shoot at things and Well, not only do they shoot at things, what I've seen online and I'll be guilty to say that it's actually interesting is they actually are bombs. I mean, they'll

14:60 just come out. I've seen them just go right into a someone from the other side and just blow up. So not only can they shoot at people, they can also just detonate on top of someone and kill them.

15:11 And so

15:16 do we actually know what these drones are and we're not telling people? Or do we truly not know what these things are? Because the rumors on Twitter are just crazy. It's the Iranians. It's the

15:30 Chinese. And, you know, technically these drones aren't violating a law, as best we can tell. I mean, I just saw the latest Alien movie. So they could be aliens, Chuck. Nice. We don't know.

15:43 But it'd be awesome if it was, just because all that will bring out all the tin foil people could be aliens.

15:51 could be AI, 'cause I saw another movie on the flight. You know, you get bored after 60 hours of travel. I saw this interesting movie about how an AI basically is controlling people and what they

16:04 do to keep the AI alive. And so it's a new metric, so I saw it too. No, it's a new one, it's a new movie. It's free at the name of it. It's like scared or afraid. I think it's called a frayed

16:15 maybe. It's an awesome little flick But the point is, maybe this AI running out of data centers, by the way, are controlling these droughts. Now, people have to be involved. But maybe the

16:29 people that are involved in launching these sayings don't really know what's going on. Yeah. Because, I mean, if we haven't figured out by watching Ukraine and Russia, I mean, they're fighting a

16:43 lot of that war with drones. Absolutely And we've then a lot of fighting effect been our war -

16:50 Yeah, we've been fighting a lot of our war in the Middle East with drones, right? We've led drones over and shoot terrorists as opposed to necessarily engaging on the ground. I don't know that

17:02 we're ready for this. We seem to be locked in the old mindset of, we need, you know, a B-52 bomber. And that's kind of worrisome 'cause, you know, when I'm on Twitter and social media and I see

17:17 these headlines like, you can't believe you're not ready for this. I'm like, I'm ready for, just give me the truth. I'm, let me, you shouldn't be the one to decide whether I'm ready for it or

17:29 not. Right. There's nothing more frustrating than like, I think there was New Jersey and the governor was like, was didn't even show up to the press conference about all these drones in his

17:38 backyard. We're ready for the, for the truth. The problem is government authorities, they always make these decisions on what people should and shouldn't know. That drives me nuts. So who knows

17:51 what's going on with these drones? It's frustrating because if the drones are there to protect the people, we are the people. So just tell us, what are you doing? Right. And the Chinese are way

18:01 ahead of us on terms of drone technology. I mean, they fly the

18:07 slowest air, they fly air balloons over our country and we can't even do anything about it. And those are the slowest moving, most obvious object in the world So, of course they are. Yeah,

18:20 'cause the, you know, this comes back to what we were talking about. We gotta have data centers here. We gotta have the power to do that. But if you're gonna get a war with the United States, I

18:33 mean, what better way to do it? Let's fly drones and just take out power lines. Oh, absolutely. And power generation plants. 'Cause, I mean, you do that on a really cold night. That's way

18:43 more effective than dropping a bomb. But before we get there,

18:48 You know, I'm always started economics, Chuck, versus foreign policy and then domestic policy. But when you think about it, we rely on China, China relies on us. It's a major battle between the

19:02 two of us. And it's all about economics. So if they wanna start war, then we're gonna take each other down economically. That's the bigger risk here. So we have to be really thinking about, what

19:15 are the factors that, at what point, are we so economically disadvantaged or advantaged against China that we need to do something militarily? And I just don't think we're even close to that, but

19:30 that's part of Cold Wars, and that's part of protecting your borders, is having a really savvy

19:39 intelligence agency that's always trying to ask for forgiveness versus permission. So. If the Chinese are spying on us, we need to be spying on them. That's just the way it is. Yeah. The, you

19:51 know, another thing that I've noticed that's kind of weird, that's been a big change at least in my lifetime is, I mean, Cuban Missile Crisis is going down literally as close as we've been to

20:04 World War III. Yes. I mean,

20:10 Robert Kennedy, who's, you know, the president's brother, he's the attorney general, is going over and meeting with the Russian ambassador to the United States and it's transmitting messages and

20:24 they're going offline and they're talking. You know, Reagan and Gorbachev were sitting down, Nixon went to China, they were the enemy, but we were engaged, we were talking to people and stuff.

20:37 When's the last time Biden and Putin talked to each other? Now you're a Putin sympathizer. if you just want to talk to Putin. I mean,

20:50 that to me is pretty scary. I hope that narrative changes. 'Cause yes, Putin's a bad guy. He's our enemy and all that. But I think Biden, Kamala Harris, if she would have won, Donald Trump,

21:02 they need to be talking to Putin on a regular basis. I mean, at the end of the day, Chuck, I'm like not to be, no, I'm just gonna say it. I mean, what are intelligence agencies to the best at

21:13 over anything else, propaganda. I mean, so we've created this, I mean, if you think of just what's happened over the last eight years, maybe even more, it's made it almost uncomfortable for us

21:25 to have just honest dialogue with one another and fear that we'd get canceled over something we said. So that one of those sort of propaganda is that it's been who knows who and how and what, but

21:39 what we do know is it's, You can't even talk about having. open dialogue with Russia because that means you're a sympathizer and you're a trader. Even though our own government are bigger traders,

21:50 if you think about January six and things like that, if you just start peeling back onions, like, wait a minute, who's controlling this information? Who's controlling this narrative? It's just

21:59 unbelievable. So I think good diplomacy is having communications with your enemy and keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer Yeah. And we can just bring this all back to the close,

22:17 same exact thing when you talk propaganda when it comes to energy. It's like, hey, we're going to natural gas fire a data center and to use carbon capture and get 90 of it. And oh, by the way,

22:30 that might be better than using solar panels given if you have the full carbon spectrum of the project and all and you and I potentially will get canceled on YouTube for saying this. as opposed to

22:43 being able to have a discussion about it. I mean, as I've said, even though I've worked for one of the big oil and gas companies, Exxon has always been ahead in terms of how probably conservative

22:55 they think, but also how they make really good long-term decisions. And this is one of them. And they've been probably planning this for a long time, but I think they've done their math on the PR

23:05 impact, et cetera, et cetera. But when it's revealed or how it's revealed that tech is driving this, then the pressure really, while there's still gonna be gonna put heat on the exons of the

23:17 energy providers of the world, I think tech is gonna be put in front of the mirror too. And tech, as we're seeing now, is they're starting to think economically, not politically. And I think

23:28 that's one of the big changes we're seeing here. I mean, I was kind of laughing before the show about, you know, this quote, quote, Hydrogen is the Swiss Army knife of energy, so is Eric Toon

23:40 of Breakthrough Energy Ventures. his complete and total game changer and quote hydrogen I Dunno Eric that well at all actually but I know breakthrough energy ventures and we know quite a few people

23:53 over there but hydrogen hydrogen I mean that's hilarious hydrogen has been a a byproduct of oil and gas forever and interesting that now that clean energy investors are saying hey this is a complete

24:07 game -changer when it Wenzel I mean the narrative is changing quickly and is changing based on economics and thank goodness so maybe we're past the heidelberg or the Hindenburg the end and by Me Tam

24:19 what was the Led Zeppelin album cover that there was a Hindenburg in Edinburgh is like you know isn't it just sort of frying our brains over like that mental pictures crazy but you know it's coming

24:34 maybe it's coming alright what are Y'all doing for the holidays anything good while we forgot the biggest story of the holidays this saturday Someone's having a big party. The annual Yates Christmas

24:46 party, Casa Yates. And yeah, so originally that party started on December 23rd, 'cause, you know, I grew up in Richmond. So all the high school friends come back to see their parents, but

25:01 nobody had anything officially to do on the 23rd. So I started having this party and I just invited everybody I knew, right? It's like, you know, all about - We know a lot of people, Chuck Well,

25:10 you know, and I'll invite people I went to rice with, high school buddies, people I work with, people I meet later in life like you. And I always say this party sucks 'cause I get 45 seconds. So

25:21 when you show up, it'll be like, Hey, Kirk, hey, Holly, good to see you. You look lovely, blah, blah, blah. Oh, sorry, I have to go to the next thing. But what's so cool is inevitably in

25:31 two or three weeks later, next time we're recording VDE, you're gonna be, dude, I met your high school buddy or I talked to your brother or whatever I'll change the names to protect the innocent,

25:43 but I'm walking a banker out one time to their car after the party. They really appreciate you coming and a dude was like, oh man, that was a bad deal about Mary in high school. Like what do you

25:53 mean? And he goes, well, you know, Mary, when you were dating her, she was cheating with Bob. I was like, what? And he goes, well, I was hanging out with your high school buddies all night

26:03 and they told me all about it and I went back into the party, Bob, what the hell? Oh yeah, we didn't want to tell you. I was like, seriously? You just find this out. Yeah, I'll find this out

26:11 40 years later, which is great, but that's the fun part of the party, so. Best part of our holidays is kids are coming to us, can't wait, it's gonna be quiet, we're gonna have a great time, I

26:22 love it. Nice, that's so awesome. Happy holidays, 'cause I guess this may be the last BDE of the year. It might be. Yeah, so. Do we need predictions real quick about anything? Oh yeah, we

26:31 ought to predict

26:34 some stuff, just 'cause it's on the oil. well price or what about the last time we probably should have looked that up well we'll all hold it for the first episode the first episode but but let's

26:46 lay some predictions down we're going to go back and forth all started off with the clear cliche where's oil a year from now I mean I you know I'M going to say sixty dollars Yeah so I could make a

27:02 case for low cause trump say low oil Guy I mean he's Gonna pressure everybody to Pump Yeah what gasoline prices low so he's going to do that although I had and the sky on Chuck Chuck Yates the job

27:19 last week who came on and basically said Iran and Israel are probably going to war cause this is at the point this is this is you know they're at the point now where if if Iran gets a bomb Israel

27:33 can't do anything so they Gotta do it now and he said first thing Iran's going to do when they start a start this war is they're going to say anybody comes down the streets of Hormuth boom boom we're

27:46 taking it out and that's 20 of the the oil production being shut in and you're like there's been some twitter traffic about this with some people saying you know hey the US Navy can handle all this

28:01 but like who's going to ensure a boat driving through there if I ran if I ran says we're gonna go throw a drone at it vehicle or traffic era that's the only those are the only people that gonna do it

28:12 and they'd be hell no they're not insurance companies but they might pay for yeah it might be but so you could also make a case for a hundred fifty dollar oil should something break out let's hope not

28:23 or you know let's let's let's hope not um okay what happens to the Astros this year I hope to God they're back. They're back, for sure. Okay. I think they lose Tucker.

28:41 I think they lose Braggman and they're going to have to sign some pieces if they want to come back. It's going to be a rougher year for the Astros. Ooh, my prediction on that. So it's a rebuild

28:47 year. It's potentially a rebuild year. Okay.

28:52 So, all right. All right. What's going to happen to Rice football or baseball, you can pick either one. So Rice baseball, we're at the point, you know, Jose Cruz Jr. and alum is the coach

29:04 who's come back and this has kind of got to be his year. He's got to turn it on or he's yeah, or, or something, you know, because we had that great run with Graham. We brought in great fellow

29:19 from middle Tennessee and just kind of two years of falling by the wayside. And I think this is year four for Jose Cruz Jr. So it's got to, it's got to turn it on. We've got to win And then SEC,

29:33 what a shit show of a year, you know, as a Longhorn. It's been, I guess, good, right? Right. Even though we can't seem to have to figure out Georgia. I mean, the Aggies have to do something.

29:46 Well, is this not, is this not crazy that I can literally, as a proud father of a Vandy student, I can say arguably your best win was Vandy this year. You know, I mean, that's close. Best

29:59 quarterback in college football was Vanderbilt. Yeah. Love Vandy Yeah. And I want to keep them as you see, 'cause I want to see things like this. Now they don't put any money in their football

30:09 program for some reason. They have a great baseball team. I hope this gives them the impetus to put more money into football, because we're all scared, you know, playing Vanderbilt. So the

30:21 coolest thing about them beating Alabama is the daughter is calling me FaceTiming from the game. I'm like, get a picture in front of the scoreboard. You and your buddies, you're going to want that

30:31 forever. The second thing is whoever found that loop of Saban saying, Oh yeah, the SEC's always hard. Well, except for Vandy. And just playing that on a

30:33 loop at

30:40 the state. Incredible. Third is they carried the field goal to the river. And I don't know if you know, that's not an easy hike. That's not just a right behind the stadium, it's far. Yeah,

30:53 it's a good mile and a half, two miles or something. I'm like, that's impressive. Damn. And the other thing that was cool about that is the police monitored so that nobody got hurt and they just

31:03 let 'em do it. I let 'em do it. That was really cool. That was very cool. We need one other prediction, it seems. You got another question. I mean, let's talk, let's go Houston. What's

31:14 prediction for Houston this year? You know, I think one of the things, I don't know if it's necessarily this year, but I'm starting to buy into, Carter is gonna wind up having a. big, huge

31:29 liquidity event, whether that's an IPO or whether that's a big sale. You've already created a lot of millionaires. There's going to be a lot of liquidity. I think five to 10 years from now,

31:41 because of that money that comes in, because of literally just Carta, we're going to have a tech ecosystem here that we're going to rival Austin with. Oh, that would be cool. I believe that. I

31:53 believe that could truly happen And the one thing when speaking of Blair, that you mentioned talking to dollar talking about me the other day, Blair. Hey, you know, Blair's been Blair in the

32:04 Houston, really the HCC used technology center. But it's really like the Houston Angels network, Blair being one of the feet, you know, early mercury funds.

32:14 We've talked about this for a decade now. Right But you need a big exit to really spark an ecosystem. Money has to get recycled. And I think you just nailed it. I hope money gets recycled, it'd

32:28 be great. Well, and me trying to straddle both sides being former energy private equity and VC, I think the biggest hurdle in this is truly everybody in energy is a back-end after payout. Hey,

32:44 Kirk, let's do this deal. If I get my money back, I'll give you 25 of my profits. And VC is the upfront promote. Hey, Kirk, you just started a company I'm a value at 35, so you're 50 is now

32:59 worth17 million. And literally, that is, I think, what stops deals getting done. And that's why you would think all the rich oil and gas guys we have around here that want to diversify, that see

33:13 the benefit of the tech, haven't been able to do it because of the structure. And you're talking about ones and zeros, which is not molecules. I mean, it's just different Last prediction. All

33:25 right. He's not here. What's your prediction for digital wall cotters? Gimme, where is DW a year from now? So, you know, knock on wood. I think the

33:43 AI apps we're building really do work are good things. I mean, our feedback from our two applications that are in really positive. They want more. We've got about 10 proof of concepts going with

33:56 folks that we're building. So I think the things we have to do is we've got to get a financing round done, which at the end of the day, I think we'll get one done. And we've got to be able to

34:11 convince a couple of really smart people to come from the valley, to come live here in Houston, which I think we can do. I think Houston actually sells itself if you get here. Great place to live

34:24 great place to raise a family fun town great people that's what I always say we have the best people on the planet we may not be attractive we may have the climate of a third world country but

34:35 terrible but but Yeah no Great Great a great people so I mean I I think you know You're talking the Big Carta a liquidity event and stuff maybe the Buzzer on Digital Wildcatters happen by the end of

34:51 next year same sort of thing it's going to be in collide so we'll see Yeah exactly exactly holidays happy holidays tell Holly I said absolutely hopefully we'll see on Saturday for the Big Party

35:03 everyone show off

35:06 the girlfriends mortify you invited Erie Clyde Listener on both of them so too Yeah exactly exactly peace out chairs