Big Digital Energy

0:00 All right, so we're going to start off with the conference championship games my favorite moment of it was Travis Kelsey Taylor swift out on the field after the game hugging walking along He shoes

0:17 Taylor away to hug his brother and his brother says you need to fucking finish this thing Taylor got a little bit dis there for the brother. I kind of like that. Yeah after watching him I haven't

0:28 watched him shirtless and buffalo That was awesome listen I mean Taylor Swift is a nightmare when it comes to dating anyway, and all of her songs are about how boys have broken her heart so she is

0:43 Probably class A crazy when it comes to relationships. Yeah, so I mean Good for Travis go Travis family first family and she is playing three shows in Tokyo the Thursday, Friday and Saturday night

0:59 before.

1:01 Are you a Zwifty Mark? I have three girls who are actually traveling overseas at some point for another of the Arrow's tour shows. I've been told that potentially we're gonna have to go see Tay Tay

1:17 next summer in Europe by Callie, so. There we go. I did have to kind of grin and bear it through the movie one night streaming. Ooh I didn't make the whole thing, I can tell. I haven't had to do

1:33 that. Now, real quick though, Dane Campbell, a lot of criticism today, went for it on fourth down a few times there, didn't kick field goals, didn't kick field goals, what do we think?

1:52 I mean, he's always been aggressive, he's a go for it. He has the most go for it than any coach in the NFL.

2:02 fourth down. There's a high school coach. I think an Arkansas doesn't have a punter on the team and just goes for it on every fourth down. He always onside kicks because the statistics say you

2:16 should do that. I think the reason coaches don't do that is they don't want to look stupid. Yeah. Even though the stats should do it. One way to not be there is not give up a 175 time elite on the

2:27 road. Yeah. And that had more to do with the players than it did Dan Campbell The one criticism I had and it was funny because it took 30 minutes this morning over to coffee to explain to the

2:38 British girlfriend but the one thing he did do wrong was the third and two from the goal line with call it 50 seconds left calling a running play knowing that if it didn't work it was going to burn

2:51 the timeout and that meant the only way you could tie the game is to get an on-side kick which is the lowest probability play in football. This is random, but I just had a flash back. other recent

3:03 SNL skit with Nate Bargats, where he's George Washington,

3:09 it's hilarious. He's got all these grand visions for the new country, and one of them is we'll have our own system of weights and measures, and he talks about, you know, pounds and 2000 pounds

3:21 will be a ton. Well, 1000 pounds be called nothing. But he talks about, you know, unpopular sports like track and swimming will be measured in meters and kilometers. But sports like football

3:34 will be measured in yards.

3:37 How many feet, you know, how

3:43 many feet in a yard, of course, 12 inches in a foot, then therefore it must be 12 yard or 12 feet in a yard. No, three feet

3:54 Which actually I can I can walk. I have an exact one yard

4:00 stance when I when I walk I've learned it, yeah. Because in golf, you have to know exactly sort of how far you are from something. There's such a great 12 in it. They have technology now

4:10 somewhere. And I can't make it. They have technology now, but you can't use a range finder. No, you can't, I mean, especially when you're on the putting green, but when I was watching the game,

4:20 I'm not sure if I like Brock Purdy or not. He's kind of weak, but he's an underdog and I like underdogs. They didn't look good in the first half. I can't believe they came back I'm just saying.

4:32 He balled out. I will give this to Brock in the second half. I mean, he talked the ball. He rushed for three yards less than Lamar Jackson did in the game against Kansas City, so. Wow,

4:46 impressive. Boy, that was a bit of a meltdown in Baltimore. Yeah, no, that really was a killer interception. Yeah, okay, Mark, kick us off.

5:03 I think of the stories last week that was the one that kind of just and we're trying to get we're trying to get Toby Toby Rise to comment. Yeah, so we might if Toby had a great tweet. We'll throw

5:14 the tweet up on The video here and hopefully Toby. We'll get a video from him for the show. Yeah, it's

5:23 The White House sent out an announcement last week just basically saying pending projects Pending LNG export projects are going

5:33 to be paused for the foreseeable future in order to assess the Environmental and economic impact so what I thought they said maybe maybe I read it wrong was pending projects are okay If you're in the

5:49 permitting process, that's what's getting paused. Right. Okay. Yeah, they're right. They're they're going So if you're building right now and stuff, you're okay But because it's really hard

5:59 you're thinking about it. It's really hard to stop once

6:04 You do have phases where they do inspections, and that can be slowed down as I've currently been aware of with a personal project, but I think it's really permitting is where most of the action

6:16 happens. Yeah, and I commented on a bit of a

6:23 sidebar, but I'd seen some discussion or something was published on Saudi developing their big shale gas project, Al Jufara, which is in the eastern desert, and the projections are they're going

6:42 to be at 22 BCF a day, and over 600, 000 barrels of NGOs and condensate by 2030 And if you remember back in October, they did put a500 million minority investment into mid-ocean, which has got in

7:01 his seeking stakes, and I think for Australia.

7:05 So another global player in the LNG markets looking to press full steam ahead, and we're continuing to contemplate our navel on things that could potentially have longer-term structural market share

7:23 implications. I'm BDE for speak to going because I think we're all on board with this, but basically we are free-market in nature, let's build projects, let's let them stand or fall based on the

7:36 economic realities of what happens. We're also, I think we would all agree, we can't really foresee the future, and so sitting here making these long-term predictions of, Oh, well, Europe's not

7:52 going to need LNG, so let's not build it We're like, let markets decide, generally speaking, is, so we would be, Hey, we've got these permitting policies, procedures in place.

8:06 yourself out is there actually a legitimate reason on the other side that we should be pausing

8:16 I don't think there's any energy security reason, I mean, we've got an absolute boatload of natural gas from both dry gas sources and associated gas, and because US. crude production increasingly

8:31 is dependent upon the ability to process and handle and take away

8:38 gas such as the Permian Basin, which is now at 17 BC. FA. Day of mostly associated gas, you run into I guess a confinement problem where you can't

8:49 do anything with the gas at some point. I mean fields get limited on their ability to process and handle gas, and if the economics aren't there you're not going to build the expansion infrastructure

9:02 to handle that. That's what the that's what the opponents are trying to say is it's a natural resource if we build

9:19 That's at least the argument I've seen back.

9:27 And I've seen kind of an intermingled narrative, if you will, about, you know, Europe is not going to be needing as much going forward. So why is that marked? Not well-explained. Exactly. I

9:43 mean, there's a few, but if you have, if you have options from Qatar and Saudi and other places that are going full steam ahead, then again, seating market share and the economics from a US.

9:56 producer and exporter might ultimately not work, the market will decide that and where have we not seen in these big infrastructure build-outs where things get overbuilt, you know, returns on

10:08 capital, get eroded, and the market ultimately takes care of it. Yeah. Two things I would say is2 gas tells you that it's probably not that significant, a national treasure.

10:26 Number two, tell me what the weather is going to be like the next five years in Europe. That's right. The only reason they have skated by is we've had two very, very warm winters in Europe,

10:37 although it did not feel like that when I was over on the island. Didn't feel it. Yeah, it didn't feel like that here. There's a few things. There's one is you have, sure, we could redirect the

10:47 gas to the entire northeast, but the northeast doesn't want the gas, so they're actually continuing to use fuel oil to warm the northeast. So what do you do with the gas? On an international

11:00 perspective, it's bigger than just looking internally. We are trying to keep the dollar strong as, I mean, our economy is dependent upon the rest of the world, and the less that the more we lose

11:14 market share and gas, the really it puts a harder burden on the United States to be competitive, and that's the bigger issue. Yeah.

11:27 a problem. Well and the the other thing too is if we're not maximizing markets we destroy the infrastructure that creates that market ie. we lay down rigs, people get fired, etc. I mean you don't

11:41 want to kill that capability. We've all been through a pandemic where we didn't have certain capabilities in the United States and it really really sucked. I mean you know we're we're shutting down

11:53 LNG but we're on hyperdrive we're importing fentanyl. So I mean let's put it in perspective. Let's do so. Well and it's you know it's ultimately a win for coal globally. That's true. Right. So

12:09 and we hate coal. And we've shown we've shown over the course of the last 15 or 20 years what the substitution of gas for coal does from an emissions standpoint I love how oil and gas travels. It's

12:22 so much better for the environment. Yeah. We're environmentalist when it comes to coal.

12:28 And I lived in West Virginia, I'd be so pro-col, I'd be a coal miner. Yeah, I've said as far back as your energy draft from a couple of years ago that natural gas and just giving the endowment

12:40 that North America has and particularly the US, all the way up to the North Slope is you can play offense and defense strategically over the long haul with natural gas just given the strength and

12:53 advantages we have and the know-how

12:57 So, you know - Geopolitics change when you can tell other people screw you. Right. It really does. Yeah, that's a good point, Mark. All right, speaking of, well, one other point I wanna make

13:12 on LNG. Let's talk US politics. Clearly this was Biden to the base that's not fired up about him. Hey guys, I'm here, environmentalists. We're gonna do this pause Thon a little bit of red meat

13:26 to 'em. I also think it was kind of 3D. I think they're more vegetarian, Chuck. So that's like easy. There we go. Bear with us. What's that fake meat called? Yeah, Beyond Meat. Beyond Meat.

13:38 Beyond Meat. It was Beyond Meat. It was Beyond Meat. It was Beyond Meat. A Beyond Meat porterhouse, right? So. Dually corrected on that one. I was watching some reality show with my wife. It

13:47 was hilarious. And it was there in California. And one person says the other. Like, Oh, I wanna have a steak. He's like, You're eating red meat? He's like, Yeah, what's wrong with that?

13:57 Because everyone knows red meat's bad for you. And he's like, How so? And the guy had no reply, like, Well, everyone just knows it's bad for you. Yeah, it's good data stories. Good data

14:09 stories. The proverbial they said. They said. Everyone knows red meat's bad for you. Hey, before we leave it, I feel like your head gear has got some kind of tie-in to this LNG story. I don't

14:19 know. I'm wearing it correctly according to digital walk-outers.

14:32 You look like a financial guy, out on location. I'm a suit, yeah, exactly. I'm scared that the ceiling's gonna cave in on us, so. Probably. No, but I think the other thing this did too is

14:43 basically the shot across the bow of, hey guys, we can just pause permitting here. If that causes one investor to look at a project and go, ahh, a little too much risk there, then that's a

14:56 victory for the environmentalists I mean, that's part of this. Well, if anyone ever argues the old adage from long ago that political risk in the US is low or lower. I mean, we've, yeah, no

15:12 doubt. That's, in some cases, been turned on its head. I mean, speaking of throwing red meat, but what happened over in France, in the Louvre, the Mona Lisa, and what did they throw at the

15:24 Mona Lisa? The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa, which, I mean,

15:30 one of our, you know, real treasures. Yeah, arguably the most famous painting on the planet. And what happened to it? Soup. They threw soup, was it vegetarian soup or not? We need to know.

15:42 It looked like they're standard tomato soup. I didn't see a close up of the video. Did someone die, did some animal die in that soup? That's what I want to know. So we can do this on another show,

15:55 and I've talked a little bit about the podcast, the Rogan podcast that Taylor Sheridan did with Rogan, not too long ago, and they talk about this very thing. Obviously Sheridan and his four sixes

16:08 ranch, and they're big in the beef business, but they talk about the actual, just utter destruction of life that goes into some of these farming operations, particularly in California, where he

16:25 said, You drive through the San Joaquin Valley, What don't you see? You don't see any birds. of all the things that they kill for these, these grows and the whole, you know, I learned that I

16:38 think every almond, on an almond tree consumes

16:49 we do have to give him, we do have to give him props because the funniest thing, we were just sitting in the office and Colin's in there and we were saying, Hey, what happened with the lube? They

16:59 threw soup on it and Colin's walking by. Change the way I view oil and gas, that's for sure.

17:06 That was awesome. Well, he's young and impressionable. Yeah, perfect, perfect. So, yeah, I don't get this stuff, but, you know, I guess it's the

17:18 echo chamber for the environmentalists. They go, Yay, we threw soup at the Mona Lisa. Well, the Louvre had to have been in on it, because how can you, I mean, they had, if you watch the video,

17:30 which we're going to post, they kind of just had free rain at this painting. They walked in, they threw. And it's not the first time It's not the first time, that's true. That's true. So, I

17:43 don't get it. Let's stay over in Europe.

17:50 Kirk, this is your story. Activists are going in all these different directions. BP's getting sued. I never thought I'd ever feel sympathy for BP. I might even feel sympathetic for them. I mean,

17:58 be careful. London Hedge Fund Bluebell, which, you know, not the

18:03 ice cream. London Hedge Fund Bluebell

18:09 calls for the abandonment of irrational strategy that has depressed BP's shareholder value So basically what they're telling BP is that they're concerned that they're reducing their oil and gas

18:23 production, and they made

18:26 a pledge to reduce it. Originally, Bernard Looney, who's no longer their CEO, a pledge to reduce oil and gas production by 40, they dialed that back to 25 by 2030 compared to 2019 levels and the

18:40 hedge fund is saying you're destroying shareholder value by moving away from hydrocarbons faster than society. And the reality is BP is trying to move towards

18:51 renewable projects which would have lower returns. So this is basically a story about the shareholders coming back with a vengeance saying, you're not going to destroy this company and we're going

19:03 to come after you. So you're seeing the tide turn. 'Cause this is on the heels of the, what was it, a600 million right down in their solar renewables business by BP. That's correct. And if you

19:11 look at Exxon, Total, Chevron, Shell and BP, BP is trading at the lowest multiple compared to

19:21 all of them. And it's been that way for a while. For a long time. And so, you know, the - 'Cause remember what BP, remember BP, meant beyond petroleum. They've been sort of, I mean, Macondo

19:33 was another one of the, he's like hiccups, but their whole strategy to get ahead of the society and the market has really depressed their shares. And investors are starting to think,

19:50 Which stands in contrast to one thing we talked about last week, which is Exxon going the court route to try and get resolutions related to scope three knocked off the proxy. Traditionally, you go

20:03 through the SEC 'cause it usually was an unbiased, I mean, government unbiased. I mean, whoa, excuse me, let me pause for a moment, but it was a strategy. However, in the recent

20:17 administration, it's become more of a kangaroo court. And as a result, Exxon's going a sort of, what they think it's gonna be a better strategy by using the courts. Let's bring up some,

20:31 I think, relevant and pretty current statistics. If you remember, Bobby Tudor at Fuse said, the total capital spent by the top seven majors,

20:51 130 billion like that. Yeah, we spend a trillion order of magnitude on renewables last year. That needs to be according to proponents. 3x that. So if it needs to be 3x that if it's 3 trillion.

21:10 If those seven put all of their capital budgets into renewables, you're down in the high twos. So it's always I get why they're the really the lightning rod for needing to make these as BP is

21:28 proving way too fast pivots.

21:32 But does it really matter given the magnitude of capital that is at stake here or on the table to affect this transition. And so

21:43 I think as we were discussing before the show, you know, how

21:53 rational, does it look, to look at companies that have been fighting to generate competitive returns over 100 plus years, and then all of a sudden expecting that that would be a good investment

22:08 case for a hard pivot into something where they particularly don't have

22:14 raw materials and manufacturing cost advantage for sure because of the Chinese lead in a lot of the segments of renewable. So the thing that always gets me too is I've never been able to wrap my head

22:30 around the well energy companies are just so greedy all they care about profits. I guarantee you this if it was more profitable to put up a wind turbine nobody wants to drill a well I mean there's

22:43 some people that want to just for the sake of it but at the end of the day if they could make more money money. Doing renewables, they would just do it. You can't have it both ways. You can't say

22:55 they're greedy and making all this profits and then turn around and say, Well, renewables are actually cheaper. And that's the reason they should make their hard benefit. There's one thing that we

23:06 know is been proven and Milton Friedman said in 1970 article, The social responsibility of business is to maximize profits. And when you don't do that, you're going to get fired or shareholders

23:19 will move their shares, their money to somebody else that will. And that's foundational to limited liability in US markets. That's right. That's the trade-off is that your singular focus is on

23:34 maximizing shareholder value and profitability. Well, in the bottom line is we have, in effect, a dictator that can do whatever they want and the Chinese are still building a lot of coal plants So

23:44 I don't, and

23:46 they're building a lot of renewables too, but it's not cheaper. And their control of the raw materials through products. In some cases, finished product supply chain, supply chain is a huge

23:58 competitive advantage over kind of this multi-decade period of time. I heard one thing I was listening to Dan Jurgen on another podcast on COBT last week, and he was giving a lot of perspective from

24:14 Davos, but one of the things he talked about,

24:18 and SP is in Jurgen have done work on copper in the recent past, but he was talking about the processing aspect. It's one thing to cite the minds and dig the stuff out of the ground, but the

24:31 processing aspect of it is obviously hugely important. I think the comparative statistics between the US. and China, the US. has five operating copper smelters, China has 55 and growing, and

24:49 really kind of the, maybe the realistic or cynical technique.

24:54 Copper's mindset basically everything right

24:58 but this the cynical mindset is we've got less than a snowball's chance in hell to accelerating permitting timeline for building things in this country like copper smelters which use a lot of thermal

25:13 energy as far as I know they're pretty energy intensive so you know a lot of heat a lot of how are we how are companies like BP and Exxon that operate in Western markets that have a lot of regulatory

25:25 and political hurdles to do the things that I think you need to be competitive in actually building a bulletproof supply chain from cost perspective and a resource security perspective how do we do

25:41 that if we can't build and operate critical components in that supply chain to make all that happen you know you control it from well permitting go out and drill and complete a well

25:54 gathering and processing you made on the downstream and the marketing, you know, it gives us a huge advantage in this business, but that's developed over a hundred and fifty years. And again, the

26:05 trying to pivot and make something happen within a twenty five year time frame that's taken us naturally when we go through these, these evolutions of energy which take over a century, it really

26:20 seems to be a bit of a mismatch in terms of what we can reasonably do and what we emotionally want to do. Well, and the problem I have getting back to what we do here on BDE being part of the media

26:36 is, why aren't we held, why aren't the environmentalists held accountable for that? Okay, this is your view of the world. How are we going to get the copper? Where are we going to do it? Can we

26:48 talk about it? Instead, if I say on here, I don't believe global warming YouTube. down this video and no one in the media will just gently push back show me your plan you know I'd love to see how

27:03 we're gonna have all these electric vehicles on all these minerals where are they gonna be we don't ever see that physics and chemistry and thermo or I mean the reality roofless disciplinarians the

27:14 protesters are usually funded by someone they don't have jobs and they run around using some billionaires you know uh budget to to do these things while the rest of us are working I mean it's that's

27:28 the reality um here's another funny story I've been we'll probably spend more time next week talking about it but I just wanted to introduce it this is hilarious to me so nuclear is is back right

27:41 people are like we need nuclear because it's a cheap base load relatively safe who's the top nuclear developer it's a france it's a french company edf so they've So they have a project that actually

27:56 Macron, when he was finance minister, Britain's been trying to build a nuclear plant, Hinckley Point. And its construction started in 2017, their specta finished in 2025, but it's way over about,

28:11 it's13 billion over budget.

28:13 What's funny is we have left nuclear construction up to the French. The French clearly cannot do anything efficiently And so, it's almost hilarious because the whole future of nuclear is in the

28:31 hands of the French. And they're great at it. I mean, they do dominate nuclear, but they just can't build anything on time. And there's a project in Normandy, there's a project in Finland and in

28:42 China where everything's way over budget and it's EDF that's behind it and they're way in debt. So, it'll be interesting to track nuclear over the next few years on the show as we've coming back,

28:55 but when you think about who's actually building these plants and you realize it's a French company and they're in trouble, we'll be tracking that story. Well, we got to be careful about the glass

29:06 house. What's the project in Georgia that is? I'm not saying that you wanted more pushback between us. There we go. You got it. So I don't think the story is any rosier in the US, although I did

29:20 see something, I didn't read the full article that there was a headline that

29:29 at least it conceptually being discussed of maybe having a small modular reactor at the University of Illinois Champaign. Okay. So to your vision, your future of. That was Mark Rosano on the

29:47 policy draft, micronuclear Right, micronuclear, but this was a headline around a university. system, talking about

29:59 SMRs as a potential alternative. I mean, SMRs has been sort of last four years, have been a ventures dream, you know, let's go. Well, where did the first actual reaction take place just up the

30:12 road in Chicago under the - This is true, yeah. Amos Alonzo, step football field at the University of Chicago. Well, I can't speak to you now that I'm - I dogged the French here for a second,

30:22 and I love French food, and I love their wine, and it is that this could be all

30:29 based on permitting. It might not actually be - I mean, it might be just all the things around nuclear versus we just don't know how to build things. It could be all the other things. I mean, I

30:40 know in London, I mean, in the UK, the Hinkley Project, a lot of it is delays based on not only financing, but public sentiment, and that's going to be interesting to watch So there's a guy and

30:53 I'm looking it up right now.

30:58 Yeah, there's a podcast called Titans of Nuclear, and it's a guy who was just a student at MIT, and he wanted to hear about nuclear, so he just started calling all these big dogs in nuclear, and

31:13 he didn't think he would get a phone call back, and everybody's like, Yeah, I'd love to talk to

31:20 you. In one of his episodes, one of the folks talking about nuclear was saying the problem is, is the first one is almost from scratch, right, because we're not building these on a regular basis.

31:33 And so, if you actually wanted to do these cost effectively, you'd get the industry together, you'd choose one format, and you'd just start replicating, and the first one would cost 10, the

31:45 second one would cost 6, third one would cost 4, and eventually you'd get it down to 2. But that's the problem is, you know, we built all these things back.

31:57 Everything's changed technology permitting public sentiment all that so you're literally building all this stuff from scratch interesting Yeah, although I will give my people in Britain some credit

32:12 They are actually playing 4d chess right here. You know what they're doing. They're slowing nuclear So that we're gonna delay so we have a nothing global warming because with Two a degree and have

32:27 two more degrees the greatest champagne region in the world is going to move north into England Dang the French will will be second rate citizens when it comes to wine. Dang with two more degrees Wow,

32:40 that's what they're doing This is this is this is this is the wars back. Yeah, the wars back the wars back. We're gonna fight it through grapes Not through tennis. It's now moving to grapes. It's

32:52 moving to grapes. I like it the So, one other thing since we're on this. We're on funny stuff. The electric vehicle buses. My goodness, man. This is you. You were giggling, so please thank

33:05 you. I mean, I've been giggling because all these cities around the United States and Canada have been purchasing these EV electric vehicle buses. And there's one company called Proterra that's

33:17 been the primary manufacturer. And they went bankrupt in August. So I've just sort of been tracking through our friend, energy absurdity, David Blackman. This is sort of the list. Asheville,

33:32 North Carolina, out of five buses out of the fleet, three are out of commission because it's broken and they have an irreparable door and it's going to cost like40 million to fix just the door.

33:43 Stocks in California, six out of 17 buses are not operating. And they have charging issues. Duluth, Minnesota, they're experiencing issues with crack chassis and inability to climb steep hills.

33:59 are terrorists no longer doing anything, so they can't get help. South Philadelphia buses are stopping due to crack chassis, can't fix them. Edmonton, Alberta, they purchase 60 buses, most of

34:13 which are not running. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, all eight purchase buses broke down at some point too, were fixed and running as of December. So they've sort of bought into the EV dream of public

34:27 transportation and they're having, it's a nightmare. Not only were the buses five to 10 times more expensive than a regular ice bus, but they're screwed. And Proterra's bankrupt, so. So they're

34:40 OEMs out of business. They're OEMs out of business. So a lot of people's tax dollars kind of wasted on that front. It's interesting to watch. I mean, the fever was high Per chance are we having

34:56 to go back?

34:59 aren't as emissions efficient as maybe newer buses might have been yeah well this is the you know similar example we've talked broadly about all the hope around s-curbs all over the place where you

35:14 run into the reality of doing things in the physical world like building cars it's really hard to do and accelerating physics is is I think proven to be in some cases of fool's errand the worst the

35:31 worst analogy out there is software because relatively speaking software code is easy to write and you can you can and it builds upon itself over time and so you truly can have when you think

35:48 technology and you think software based stuff you truly can have s-curve type acceleration on stuff but to your point like physical stuff i mean Building cars is hard. Yeah, and we've been doing

36:01 that for 125 years with - Building them in terms of if you haven't done it before and installing them on time, on budget is hard. Yeah. If that's not your poor business and you don't have a lot of

36:13 reps doing it, so. Totally, I mean, just look back at any, like an old refrigerator. I mean, they've gotten a lot better over time, you know? It just, yeah Yeah, but it never pays to repair

36:28 appliances of any kind anymore. They're designed to fail, so you have to replace them every, what, five to seven years? Yeah, we made that choice in the United States. Although I have a 20 year

36:37 old refrigerator, so it's still humming along. Yeah, exactly.

36:42 Mark, real quick, let's close a show out with oil. What's going on with oil markets? There was hedge fund, crude, short company. Yeah, I mean, it's had paper markets. You just had a flurry

36:54 of short covering last week So we've seen support.

36:59 I move into the mid to upper

37:02 70s. There's still all the crosswinds of, you know, particularly the conflicts and worries crop up about,

37:13 you know, is the Chinese engine going to continue to accelerate from here? You know, still a lot of concern around demand, although OPEC came out I think last week and strengthened its demand

37:25 outlook for 2025, reiterated 2024, which is over two and a half million barrels a day, I haven't seen what the IEA said, so this is maybe a bit of momentum on the back of, you know, NIMEX

37:42 inventory is really starting to precipitously fall, and so that inventory still remain a very important physical indicator that drives

37:58 We're not, based upon the sideways nature of the equities, we're

38:06 certainly not all clear up and to the right, but we did see a flurry of mostly short covering last week that was pretty supportive of TI.

38:18 It's going to be interesting as the upstream companies, the EMP, start to report here that

38:25 the heels of what Somberjay and Baker Hughes had said, you know, internationals looking pretty solid, you know, a few percentage points of growth, the early pronouncements or the forecast for

38:41 2024 for North America is flat to down in terms of spending and activity, it will be interesting to see how

38:49 against the backdrop of, you know, kind of recent commodity strength

39:02 formidable fourth quarter end of year reporting season that seems to last all the way into March Yeah, cuz I'll I'll get this stat totally wrong and one of y'all to correct me But I believe what is

39:14 it? They're 10 to 12 financial barrels on the planet for each barrel of production daily I think yeah,

39:23 I think it's how the math works out sounds right, but I'm going to yeah We'll go look it up and actually crack, but it's something to that magnitude So you truly can have these disconnects, but at

39:34 some point you're right fundamentals matter, so

39:39 Okay Refresher from last week the girlfriend pointed out Cuz she read an article in the Economist that seven out of the ten most populous nations are going to the polls in 2024 so 2 billion people in

39:56 70 countries are gonna vote this year So it really is 2024. politically even some of the non-populous countries but important ones like Great Britain,

40:11 who else, Mozambique, the European Parliament, Azerbaijan, they're gonna have elections. Congo's election was December of

40:23 2023. Next week we will cover it for let's say five minutes because some some interesting things happened and obviously with what we were talking about today, all the mineral, all the precious

40:36 metals from Congo, we need to watch this stuff. So we're gonna be some some wild things this year.

40:45 One that she pointed out was just AI use and fraud for elections and in the New Hampshire primary there was actually there were actually reports of Joe Biden's voice calling saying please don't vote

41:01 in the primary. Don't write.

41:04 about it. That was a fraudulent call. Yeah, a lot of interesting stuff. And in the US we've got the continuing side shows that are the primary season Republicans. I don't know if you guys saw was

41:17 it Friday? The judgment came out against Trump and the Eugene Carroll case, I think, in a, in a comp million, 833 million, I think was the number. So, and on the heels of things like that,

41:32 his popularity continues to rise.

41:38 I really thought when he said the John McCain thing about, you know, I like heroes that aren't captured. I thought that was the end of it. So, I have no barometer in terms of being able to hear

41:50 something he says and figuring out how the populace is going to react to it. So,

41:57 anyway, appreciate everybody tuning into the show. Make sure you forward it, leave on it and peace out.