Big Digital Energy

0:00 All right. What's up, BDE going to just give a warning here that this is probably going to be the worst episode of BDE in all existence. This shit's so much easier when Mark's here. We really miss

0:13 Mark here, very, very dependent on Mark to come up with a run of show to see, hey, what happened? What happened the last weekend in energy news? And when Mark's not here, Chuck and I are just

0:25 our lives and shambles. And so well, well, we were like going, okay, what happened over the last week? Well, number one, Thomas Rhett got on stage with Rob Thomas, a matchbox 20 and saying

0:37 it's 3 am. in the morning. And why are you pissed about it? Because I set that up. And you weren't told about it. I was, I actually don't think the Thomas Rhett entourage will be mad. So I'll

0:49 go ahead and tell the story. But Stacy Glenn, who went to rival high school with me and is about my age a couple years younger than me. Um, but we never knew each other. We met at the whammy's

1:04 party and the whammy is Danny Harrison. So that's George Harrison's son every year during the Grammys. He rents out a bar and he gets all his music friends to come together. They choose one band

1:16 and they just play covers all night and they don't rehearse. So it's just and Stacy is a longtime drummer. He was letters to Cleo, Veruca Salt played drums. He then had his band, you might

1:29 remember American Hi-Fi. They had that one song, Flavor of the Week. Just anyway. He's now Miley Cyrus' drummer and her musical director, but when Matchbox 20 tours, he's the touring drummer.

1:46 Because the guy that plays guitar while touring actually plays the drums on the record. So he's just a touring drummer. Anyway, He was there. We met that night. Anyway. great dude. We're

1:58 talking about being from Fort Maine County. So we become friends, you know, we're texting and stuff. So anyway, I'm watching Thomas Rhett and I text Stacy and I go, man, we need to get TR

2:09 texting or on stage with your boy Rob, make it happen. And Stacy's like, all right, I got this. And it happened last week. Thomas Rhett sent out this great quote about or great Twitter He

2:22 tweeted, thread about it. Yeah, and all this. And I'm like, I didn't get credit. That's my idea. I made it happen. Well, but, but hopefully you get, hopefully you get justice you've

2:35 indicated for setting up this. You know what? You know what I will say? I will say every single person involved in that situation. So Stacy, Stacy Jones and

2:50 Thomas Rhett, all Thomas Rhett's management team stuff all best people on the planet. So actually really happy for them. And I'm cool. And I'm cool, they did it. I'm always impressed with how

3:01 much information you index in the music industry, like knowing, oh, you know, their manager at Miley Cyrus. And I'm like, how do you remember all of this stuff? Yeah, this is funny 'cause I've

3:10 played fantasy football with the same guys since I graduated from Rice. So that was, you know, 30 some odd years ago, right? And we've been playing it. And I used to just crush it. I would win

3:21 the league every other year I was great and then, you know, kind of the last 15 years or so, I haven't been as good. And I was going, well, you know, it's because I got kids. And I used to

3:31 always be, like, I would call the newspaper writer for the local newspaper that covered the team. So I was all buddies with all these sports writers everywhere. I'd get inside scoop. This is all

3:43 pre-internet and stuff. And so I was telling my buddy, fish, I'll go, yeah, it's just, you know, it's all kind of changed. He goes, let's cut to the chase, Chuck If we were playing blonde

3:53 country music singer. You'd win every year, I think your focus has changed. You just don't, yeah. You don't have the incentive for the motivation, so. So what did happen this week? That's my,

4:06 that and us going to New York. We can tease this, 'cause we were in court. We'll talk about that a little bit, but in energy news, it seemed kind of like a slow week, so especially coming off of

4:17 last week's PD, 'cause we're expecting a lot of action. You know, markets are in turmoil and seems like, actually, maybe they weren't. It was a yawner. Yeah, and we shouldn't say that, 'cause

4:29 bombs have gone off in the Middle East, but not the all-out assault that potentially we were expecting. So anyways, kind of slow on the energy from, but I think he has some OPEC news. So OPEC

4:41 actually came out, so for the first time since July of 2023, they actually cut their estimates for future oil growth So they went from, they were predicting 2024 to be up. 225 million barrels a

4:56 day of demand, they're cutting that back to 211 million barrels a day of demand, which is still a huge growth in demand. I mean, my whole career, it feels like it's up a million barrels a day.

5:15 And they also cut back 20, 25, so 185 million barrels down to 178 million barrels, so a little bit of a cut. And that's all kind of on softening in China demand. Yeah, it's

5:32 very unfortunate that we don't have a mark here today to talk about second and third order effects of what that means for the market. But

5:42 I want to read this tweet real quick that just popped up in my fate as I'm sitting here. Sam Bradley said, You know what I don't miss? A tweet from Trump on oil would get over70 a barreland it

5:52 would promptly fall like6 a barrel.

5:56 I think a lot of people would get about that as when Trump was in office, any time oil prices would go up, he'd just start tweet storming. Oh, he'd just battle. He'd beat him into submission.

6:06 Trump was like single-handedly OPEC Jr. just at this Twitter, so yeah, that was funny But yeah, we'll get Mark next week. Or once Mark Beck is back next week. Yeah, he's back next week.

6:22 Hopefully. Who knows? Who knows? I don't even have to talk to Kirk, I don't even just Kirk a lot. I don't know what Kirk's up to in the world, but you and I, we're up in New York this weekend.

6:37 Really good time. Tom bubble, I don't want to go ahead. Yeah, no, so we went up, we actually recorded, A good two hours with Jonathan. He was pissed that I called him John Farber. He's

6:51 Jonathan Farber with an A, T-H-A-N. Yeah, but anyway, he sat down with us in two hours. We talked about kind of everything. I mean, we talked about the Crown Rock deal, private equity, state

7:03 of private equity today. Oxia acquires Crown Rock, 12 billion. Lime Rock backed Crown Rock. We got too many rocks here A lot of rocks. Yeah, a lot of rocks. Just hell of a story there made it a

7:18 just unbelievable return on their investment. And the cool thing about it that we talk about a lot, and hopefully this will get to stay in the podcast, just compliance, it's always difficult to

7:30 what you can talk about. But then that asset for 17 years. Yeah. So typical private equity is three to five, and back in the heyday, it was like two to four. Yeah, you bought something drilled

7:43 two wells and you flipped it. Talked about the conviction that they had in that asset and the team. And so that podcast was super good. You know, I loved what I loved about it was with you and I

7:56 on there, like, you've known, you've known Farber way longer than I have. And you know, I'm way better. And so you already know a lot of this story, right? But I didn't know anything about him.

8:06 And so getting both kind of his outlook on oil and gas today, private equity markets, but then getting to roll that back into his backstory, like, you know, he started his first fund when he was

8:17 30 years old, 100 million fund. I thought that was fucking impressive. And so just getting to hear how, how he came up. And there's also a lot of Houston energy finance history in there too.

8:28 Kind of talking about some of the density of people that were at Goldman back in the nineties that are, you know, the mannered holds and the Bobby tutors These are Mary Mullins. Who's now at Lime

8:39 Rock Resources with them. to unpack all of that. Yeah, I've always, people have always talked about, you know, oil and gas startups and then Chuck Yeats needs a job. And I've always said that

8:54 what you and Jake do such a great job at as an entrepreneur and getting them to tell their story. Yeah. And it was cool watching you do that with Farber because that's what you were doing. It's

9:04 like, Hey, time out, level set me back here. Yeah, no, like I thought it was a unique conversation because of all those those different elements bringing it together. So yeah, I'm excited for

9:15 that to drop

9:17 because I just think that there was so much insight on it. But yeah,

9:22 there's a there's also a story that we didn't get to talk about on the podcast where Farber was telling us over dinner where, you know, they lost a ton of money taking a big bet on this asset and

9:31 that same fund is the one that rolled over to this crown rock. And so I'm hoping that we can get Farber back on to tell that story because that was like. when he was telling it. That was kind of

9:41 like a rollercoaster of emotions. Just all around. Great storytelling. And he took us out. Amazing dinner. I wanna give him a shout out. I sent him a text yesterday, told him thanks for that

9:51 dinner because that was amazing dinner. I think I ate more seafood Thursday night than I have a cumulative in the rest of my life. And it was amazing. I did not take, I was not food porn dude,

10:04 like I normally am. So I wasn't taking pictures of everyone. Yeah The green bell pepper

10:13 gazpacho. Yeah, drinking it out of it. Drinking it out of a celery straw. I got a picture of that. Salsa in the kitchen, Jacob. Well, I told that. Everybody needs to see that. I've got a

10:21 video of the muscles that were cooked in the pig's stomach. We

10:26 can throw that in. Since we have nothing to talk about this week. Because like that restaurant was way more bougie than what I am. You know, I'm like a barbecue hamburger state type of dude. And

10:36 I was laughing because every dish that they brought out of that restaurant, they had to give us instructions on how to eat it. And like, I needed the instructions. Like, they said it out in front

10:44 of me. I'm like, I have no idea how to eat this. But yeah, actually, one of my friends who's in New York and is like a New York foodie when I posted that Instagram story of the muscles in the

10:54 stomach, she replied, she's like, Oh my gosh, where is that? And so like, just talking to your out in Brooklyn. So yeah, instead of staying on top of energy news, me and Chuck were just

11:03 getting to eat some of the best food in New York and I tweeted out the the wine we were drinking. We crushed the wine that night. Yeah, we did. I mean, that was the Friday night wine flicks.

11:17 Yeah, exactly. All right, let's see. What else do we have in energy? So energy prices are up five five bucks all over the last week. All we had to do was get online last week and say, you know,

11:32 all hell's breaking was. Uh, but they are, they've bounced back a little bit.

11:39 Yeah. Um, man, there's really not a ton that I've seen, um, in the energy space. There is this one, uh, we'll talk about this Twitter thread that, that. I read cause I, I found it

11:54 interesting. And it's this guy that's a, he's an indie hacker. And so what that means is he's a software developer and he has several, like he just builds, uh, different small software, um,

12:06 companies and sees which one sticks. So he has like six of them now that have, have been able to commercialize and he travels the world and he posted this chart, send this chart to Jacob. So you

12:18 all can see it on video, but the chart is GDP per capita versus temperature. His whole point that he's talking about is how air conditioning leads to, uh, productivity and. What he said was he's

12:33 like in Bali, my friends would go all into an idle state without realizing it. You just sit in cafes and restaurants. Most don't have AC there and you do nothing. You're just hanging around. Then

12:43 when you enter into a cafe that does have AC, after half an hour, you'd wake up from the standby mode. You have ideas again and your ambitions back. You wouldn't even realize that you get into

12:53 this idle slow state, but your brain goes on power safe mode with the heat and you can't even think And so his entire point is that

13:02 really the air conditioning leads to higher productivity in humans. And this chart that he posted shows the correlation between temperatures and GDP. And so this is obviously an energy conversation,

13:17 right? And shows the importance of air conditioning. And like you look at it right now, like you see these headlines over in Europe where it's like, heat wave devastates Europe and, you know,

13:31 it's like, 80 degrees Fahrenheit or something like that. And like we laugh about it. But then when you think about it, it's like they don't have air conditioning and they're sitting in these, you

13:41 know, musty houses with, you know, not great airflow and, you know, Europe's already pretty nonchalant when it comes to work ethic.

13:54 I don't want Laura to be listening to this. Yeah, I was gonna say, man. I got no

14:01 peace to this Are you out there on your own? But then you put on hot temperatures on top of it. I mean, this is just biological reaction that

14:09 your brain goes into power saving mode. And so I thought that was interesting to see that this guy that really doesn't talk about energy, he's just a software developer that makes software products

14:19 talking about this correlation between AC and GDP.

14:26 Yeah, and what's interesting is

14:33 to the next step of, maybe that explains why GDP growth and energy usage are so entwined, you know? 'Cause you're one at one, I mean, it makes sense. I mean, anytime you're using energy,

14:45 you're offloading physical labor to a machine that can do multiples of the labor that you can. So that's actually a great growth, but air conditioning playing a big part of it. Yeah, I mean,

14:58 ultimately it's humans that come up with it Ideas and businesses, right? And energy's always fueled the industrial side of it. And so I think at times we forget to think that humans are really

15:12 machines ourselves, right? And

15:15 we

15:17 have energy consumption. And so when your body's hot, just you have different second third order effects from that. So I'm just like scrolling through here on Twitter, like finding interesting

15:28 things that I -

15:30 I'm going to Grog right now. What happened in energy in the

15:34 past week? Colin and I are struggling. We're sitting here. Yes, you. Chugging out. Chugging out are literally sitting here free styling a podcast right now. Mark would be so disappointed. It's

15:46 Argentina's president, Javier, you know how he pronounce his last name? No, he's mispronounced it. That's why I wasn't even saying anything. President of Argentina, Javier Millet. Javier

15:54 Millet. Javier Millet Quite

15:58 a picture of him circulating on the driller's console of a neighbor's drilling rig. I thought this

16:07 was badass. I retweeted it and said, what did I say? Oh, I said this dude is drilling well. Well, it's what an absolute stud. Easy 300 likes there. Take that in those singles all day. But I

16:19 was thinking about this a little bit deeper. 'Cause this guy's here, sitting here in the dog house with a neighbor's crew behind him and he's got coveralls on, got safety glasses, sitting in the

16:33 driller's chair, working the joystick. They're clearly showing them how to work this rig. And you know, I think we made a comment about this last week on BDE, where it was like any politician

16:46 that's like Harris, that's anti-fracking, ban fracking. Like just ask them a simple question of like, Okay, yeah, we've been fracking, what is fracking? Like I just want, do you understand

16:56 what fracking is? Can you imagine if like Joe Biden or Harris or Trump, anyone? So I can't, I'm gonna go throw on some coveralls. I'm gonna go hang out on a day with a rig and I wanna learn about

17:07 it. Like I wanna learn about what it actually takes to produce oil and gas, what it takes to produce energy for the world. Like this is why this guy is so loved and has such a deep following and

17:21 because he's a leader and he's like, I'm gonna get out here and just see how these things work. Could you ever imagine an American president? doing that in modern times? No. No. Like zero chance.

17:36 There are people like, I saw Zuckerberg like five or six years ago, him and his wife went and toured a deep water drill ship. I thought that was cool. Yeah. This fuck. But like politicians,

17:46 like it's just, they don't like, they don't care to be out there with the people and like learning about what it, what it's like. One, it's hot. It is nasty and it's the middle of nowhere, but

17:57 you really should, given the significance of energy in the world, the fact we fight wars over it, and you should have more than a bullet point understanding. Yeah, no, 100 and then make bullet

18:11 claims that we should ban it. Yeah, like that just, it doesn't make sense, so. Yeah, 'cause that's gonna be really interesting. The Vicaro, is it the Vicaro basin that's down in Argentina?

18:25 Because I've the as big as it's. heard

18:29 It's as big as the Permian. It's just got more pressure. Do we may just have to delete this podcast? Vodka Marte. Vodka Marte. Oh,

18:40 yeah. Vodka Marte. Hold on. But supposedly it's the Permian, but it's got way more pressure. Yeah. So, I'm trying to look at where the,

18:53 yes, Ted Cross at Novey Labs is just like, got his head in his hands, going, Oh my God, I talked all about this basin to you, Chuck, and you can't even remember. Well, she gets head on

19:05 sometime. I had Ted on - Not BDE. Oh yeah, no, it'd be great. I've kind of given him standing off or any time he wants to come back on Chuck job. 'Cause he's so smart. Yeah, he is. And really

19:18 thoughtful. We should definitely pull him in on like analyzing some of these MA deals or,

19:27 or get Zach Coplin to come on and do a live analysis of them. Yep, so. Okay, well, dude, I think that we should probably just send this thing to this fucking painful. We still think

19:41 the presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, should sit down with an interview. Happy to have her here, but we'd like to know why she is no longer for a ban on fracking Because, I mean, we've got

19:57 video over 2019, we need to ban fracking, offshore drilling, all that. The campaign has put out a statement saying they're not for banning fracking. We'd just like to know why, minimal, you

20:10 know. Get some clarity on where they stand on that. So,

20:16 yeah, if they're listening, open invite to come on the show. So, all right guys, well, I appreciate y'all sitting with that, um, uh, very painful show. You probably walked away from this

20:29 idea. I might not learn a single thing today about energy news. So apologize. But look out for the Lime Rock, Jonathan Farber podcast. It'll be dropping on, Chuck Yates needs a job. Highly

20:42 recommend listening to it. It'll be dropping sometime, maybe next week. Yeah, gotta run through. Gotta go through it. Gotta go through legal and compliance, but highly recommended, I think

20:52 that it was a super entertaining conversation And then we'll be back next week. Kurt Coburn will be back on. We just got official texts from him that he's gonna be back. Is Mark back next week? I

21:01 think Mark's back too. Okay, so we might actually have a show next week. We might have a show.