Big Digital Energy

0:00 All right, what's going on? Did you all catch a happy new year, Colin? It's been a long time since. It's been a year, Kirk. Thanks, Chuck. I was like right here. I feel like we haven't

0:09 recorded with Chuck in ages. Well, it has been. I mean, I spent a month over in London. Yes. Whoa, whoa, whoa, across the punch across the pond. I did not as far away as our compatriot.

0:22 Mark is Mark, where are you?

0:26 I'm on an Arkansas pond known as I 30 right now It's running pretty hard. Mark and soul. Mark and soul. Mark's out on the road calling in today, which inspired us. So we're going to start sending

0:38 Mark out to the field to be boots on the ground. For all of our oil and gas, big company listeners. Have we given Mark the safety talk? Have you pulled over, Mark?

0:52 Do we have a safety meeting? Yeah, we need a JSA for this. So. Anyway, it's been a few weeks since we've all got together and recorded. I hope everyone had good, happy all the days and a good

1:02 new year. Um, want to give a shout out to TCU, um, their energy institute posted about us over the New Year's break saying that they are starting a new series where they share energy content that

1:14 they're consuming at the, at the institute. And their first installment of that was big digital energy. So I'm, of course, tickled that you have this renowned university and energy institute

1:26 posting about BDE on LinkedIn. But I mean, it just shows that, you know, this is the truth. You want energy news coming up, digital energy. And I'm just really hoping that Bill Ackman's not

1:36 going to start checking plagiarism on a big digital energy because I love this. I'm going to have to watch what I'm saying. Bill Ackman, he's, he's going in right now. And so I've made a two

1:48 about the other day that you can't get accused of plagiarism if you didn't go to college. So I saw that. That's good I had the foresight to play this out smart. Also, yeah, if you fact check BDE,

1:58 that's - Well, those of us that are actually went through sort of the public school system, which I did. Everyone can tell that. We didn't plagiarize. I don't understand where all this plagiarism

2:11 came from. It seems like everyone does it. I was like, I'd never did it. Actually, the superintendent for Kati ISD got ran out four years ago for plagiarism. Pissed off one of my friends really

2:23 being condescending to him in one of the meetings. So my friend went down this rabbit hole and found that he plagiarizes the dissertation and got him ran out. So this thing's been going on for a

2:37 while, but yeah. I mean, we generate 3 million supposedly peer reviewed papers, whatever you want to call them a year in academia And it's going to turn out that 95 of it's just reproducing stuff

2:55 already written. Well, you can have confidence that these are the people that are driving policy in energy and climate. So we're in good hands. I can't believe none of them referenced Solomon who

3:07 said nothing new is under the sun. Like everything that's been thought of has already been thought of. So. Family trade plus, I refuse to believe that there has been an original word written about

3:13 Shakespeare in the

3:19 last 50 years. I mean, go on, we beat that to death. Yeah, same with the JFK assassination They know we're finding stuff out every day and there's still 4, 000. Check, I'm bringing something

3:31 new to the table. Yeah, there's no furniture there. There are 4, 000 documents that are still classified. So. Hey, Mark, why don't you actually jump in here and kick us off on some real energy

3:44 stuff before I go down my JFK wrap at all?

3:49 Yeah, so really it seems like a topic spillover from 2023 2023

3:56 We talked quite a bit about the notion of inventory runway and a bit of the surprise, US production growth.

4:07 In the last couple of weeks, there's been a bit of a, I don't know if I call it a throwdown, but Dooberg was out with a piece calledBig Cheap Oil is a Myth, basically saying that

4:21 really smart people in the industry, some of the best in the world with science and engineering, combined with technology and the abundance of resource in place really have combined. We've been

4:36 through a sine wave over a long period of time of a drop, but it's been enough into the right type of story. In addition to that, and this is something that Dooberg coined in a recent, the past

4:50 piece prior to the one-on-pig-cheek oil as a meth, The definition of oil as it relates to what goes into refineries and turn them to other stuff. And the big wedge of that, not surprisingly, is

5:10 where the US. is in particular on NGL production over the last 10 years, we're, I think, knocking on the door of 7 million barrels a day And the point is you got to count that, too, and I've

5:24 lost my dexterity with, you know, distillation and processes and what up and down the NGL chain can be refined into what a particularly middle distillate, but the notion is we've entered a phase of

5:36 abundance as defined by what can be called a whale and what goes into refinery by an industry that has proven time again that it can get better, more efficient, technology. In fact, one of the

5:51 points he made in a follow-on podcast with the NGL chain can be used to and thoughtful money was, look, I think I take the over on oil production being at 140 million barrels a day. I think their

6:06 definition, which would include NGOs, for example, they take the over on 140 million barrels a day at 2050.

6:14 Well, last week, Bart Berman came out somewhat in response to that, I believe, talking about primarily the Permian, you know, the end is, you know, we're seeing the beginning of the end of the

6:27 Permian. It is subject to, you know, the natural laws of depletion, the wells have degraded. If you look across the big three, the Permian, the Bakken deal for the wells have degraded and

6:45 ultimate recovery prediction on the order of 20 to 30 percent. I'm fairly short period of time in the last two and three years of data. And what we're seeing is. you know, pulling on the straws

6:58 harder effectively, but interference and much too aggressive spacing is ultimately going to rule the day and did call out in Greenberg a little bit. So, yeah, I think coming off the year where we

7:10 got surprised to be upside or most did as to what the US is going to be able to turn out, it just sets up kind of where are we in the global supply-demand balance and all the other stuff that's going

7:21 on around that related to geopolitics, military conflict, et cetera. So, I mean, we've seen the way the stocks have started off with a fairly

7:35 erratic trade, I'll just leave it at that. I mean, it's interesting, art's article, I mean, art is a petroleum geologist, he's taking it from a micro perspective. He analyzed a lot of the

7:48 Permian wells. It's a really good article, but it creates a real big shadow over production rates in the Permian. And he actually does talk about Eagleford and Bach and a few others. But

7:60 ultimately, his belief is that EUR in the Permian and these other basins, tight oil, is rapidly declining at a pretty scary rate. So we've already hit in some ways, sort of peak oil production in

8:15 these major basins. And he talks about continentals. Ham discusses this a few others So it does point a pretty bleak, like maybe where's the next world to go? The sky is falling. I mean, and I

8:30 like art. I've had art on the podcast. I like it. I think he's really, really sharp guy. It is a sky is falling. Sky is falling. And then if you read Doomburg, which came out first, it's a

8:42 macro view. So one guy's looking at micro, these are what the data's suggesting. Doomburg's saying not necessarily, they're not antithesis of each other, but they're two different perspective.

8:55 Wait a minute, you know, like peak oil is a myth because number one, all the innovations is going on. Like they're going to figure out how to get more oil out of using less. I mean, they're

9:07 using smaller holes. They're drilling a lot faster. Like what is that, you know, one quote he said that they're reduced time, at least this is from Diamondback. It takes, reducing the time to

9:20 drill an average about 40 over the last three years So there's some massive innovation going on. Talking about political, he's like, look, in Saudi Arabia, politically the cost of drill in Saudi,

9:31 it's pretty damn low. But if you think of cost of drill in California, pretty damn high. So he brings in other perspective, and then he also adds, as

9:42 Mark said, NGLs. Like we're getting so much out of the ground that we don't call as oil, NGLs and other things that are almost sort of waste feeds that are actually super valuable. Like if we

9:56 looked, if you compared us to OPEC alone, the US would be the second largest producer of NGOs in the world. Yeah. From waste, from Thai oil. I just don't like, what did art say that's

10:08 revolutionary? I mean, that's all stuff that's been talked about for the last three or four years. I don't think art's really got a whole lot of original thoughts on this topic. And also we need a

10:17 new policy for if someone blocks me on Twitter, they shouldn't be able to be cited as a source on our show.

10:25 Wait, wait. Who blocked you? Denberg and Art? No, Art blocked me a long time ago.

10:31 Well, so where are we talking about? Art's out there listening, I'm a changed man. You can unblock me. But, I mean, this is all stuff that's been talked about for several years and, you know,

10:43 there's this saying that pessimists sound smart, optimists get rich or something along those lines. And, you know, there's all this negative talk about all The Permians declining. Yeah, cool,

10:56 you know, we've chewed through our, um, our tier one rock and I'm a big believer that we are just scratching the surface and enhanced oil recovery and you look at how much oil we leave underground.

11:10 I mean, I think I talked about this on BDE the last episode that we recorded maybe that I've got this book and it's called Wildcatters and it's some little shitty print, you know, print book and

11:22 but it talks about the resiliency of American independent operators. And this is like written before Shell. And it's just like it talks about how this industry always finds a way to survive and

11:34 produce oil and make money. And I think that the next wave of

11:41 technology is going to be around EOR and it's going to open up a lot of opportunities So, you know, I'd love to go back and read opinions back in 2006, 2007 about the demise of oil and gas. and

11:54 see how those opinions. I think the late '80s, they said, the

11:58 Permian was already done with Tier 1 Rock. I mean, let's go back. Well, I'll give you backup on this from kind of real world stuff. Get to Kane Anderson. The word of the day is acquire and

12:12 exploit. Buy from a bigger person. Squeeze more oil out of it. And that's how you made your money. The engineers that were really good at that Forecasting the reserves, the operational engineers,

12:25 and all totally didn't get anything done in the shale revolution until later, because they were so good, but they were so myopic in their view of technology will not get better. And it was the

12:40 dreamers like Aubrey McLendon, et cetera, that were like, no, no, no, no. We'll get 30 better. I know we will over the next 18 months that actually could be the high better, buy something and

12:52 then turn it into something better. Well, I even think you look at your point. Well, you look at all the MA activity, which I know we'll touch on here in a little bit, but everyone always thinks

13:02 it's like, oh, all this consolidation, like it's over. There's gonna be five major players. No, you have a new wave of entrepreneurs that are coming in and gonna scoop up fringe assets from

13:12 these larger operators and deploy new technologies. And so I actually get pretty excited about it. I mean, I know it's easy to sit there and hear these things and have a negative view on it. But

13:26 like I said, there's gonna be a new wave of oil men and women out there that find a way to produce oil and get rich, so. So one last point and then we'll let Mark close it. If he's got something

13:39 he wants to add on this, but one last point I would make that I think a lot of people overlook when they do the numbers. And again, I like Art, he was great on the podcast. If he wanted to go

13:50 grab lunch tomorrow, 'cause I do like him. The one thing I missed from reading his piece, and I've talked, I had Ted Cross from Novi Labs on the podcast six weeks ago, and we talked about this.

14:02 I know I've mentioned it on BDE before. One of the things, whenever you talk about the Permian Basin, you have to remember Exxon and Chevron, two of the largest land owners out there did not start

14:16 drilling until 2018 I way through the shale revolution. So they kind of came in with best practices, if you will, without a learning curve. But that gives you, when you look at the whole Permian

14:32 Basin year by year, it gives you this ramp like that when really, if they'd have been drilling and have learning curve stuff, you would have seen this. And so I think it makes more pronounced a

14:44 decline than there should be, just because the best acreage came in latest with best practices. So yeah. Mark, you got anything you wanna add to that?

14:55 Yeah, I'll just close it up. I think Kirk hit it on the head in terms of the way to think about it. In essence, I do it as they're, the two here are Jim Bergen, are maybe talking past one

15:08 another a little bit. The micro, micro

15:12 perspective or aperture on this thing is important to consider. You know, the thing, I grabbed my attention when I started reading big cheap oil as a myth. He starts off talking about Matt Simmons

15:26 and Twilight in the desert, which was published in 2005 and I had a front row seat to all that came before that and then certainly the aftermath of all that. And we've seen successive periods and

15:38 not just since tight oil has been a player, the dominant player in the whole US equation, but think about the advent of 3D seismic I mean, combined that was. deep water and ultra deep water

15:52 drilling, those were meaningful increments, if not step changes, that were technology driven that allowed us to take it ever higher. And shale may

16:08 end its high growth phase sooner as opposed to later if there's no more downspacing that can be done or we've, you know, we've got interference between wells, you know, there will be periods where

16:24 your fresh legs that, you know, you have shale or US production growth is about 80 driven by those three major oil plays. So I mean, if you take zoom out to the macro, we're going to find

16:38 something else and where that pivot points us in what technology gets applied. I think remains

16:47 Nothing cures high oil prices like high oil prices and nothing cures low oil prices like low oil prices. I've always laughed 'cause I didn't know that the tier of rock was a sliding scale that was

16:58 dependent on oil prices. Like I thought it was like, by the actual quality of the rock, but like all this tier two acreage is now upgraded as tier one based on the pricing. One thing shown out

17:09 here, we had a planning meeting on BDE, what can we do to improve? And one of the suggestions we had is we need to disagree more when we do. We don't have to be nice to each other. We're all

17:18 friends, we get along with that. And already we got like Mark sucking up to Kirk. Oh yeah, Kirk was right. Well great, let me throw a zinger 'cause I was thinking about this. You gave me, you

17:28 talked about Kane Anderson. Did you work there? I don't know. Okay, but here's Senator, I can either, if you're farm nor deny any sort of like question, you commented that you were in some ways

17:39 a butler when you were at Kane Anderson. you all you did is you put people together. I've got to believe that you created some value. I'm

17:52 not just buying it, but. So I'm. I was hoping that there's a longer pie so you could answer some crickets. I'm here to explore what value did you create in oil and gas when Chuck E. was at K.

18:03 Anderson? Because there's a lot of future Chuck E's that are like, I want that job. What's the value in August? In all seriousness, I think what we did really well, now it took us a while to

18:14 figure this out, but technology actually pops up the usage in small defined geographic areas. Like they'll do stuff in the back end. And they'll do it for a while there before it gets out. And as

18:32 crazy, and there are no secrets in the oil and gas business, but there is time. And I think what we did really well by having our group of engineers. is we would see some technology understand

18:42 what kind of rock it worked on in a certain area and be able to transfer that to basins faster than other people. Like we could go to our guys in the Permian Basin and said, hey, in the Bakken,

18:55 we're doing this, we're using these type of sliding sleeves, whatever the case may be, it might help you. And I think that kind of gave us a leg up. I think rich people always are in the

19:06 importexport business. And that's what I heard You're in the importexport business.

19:13 Importing out of Oklahoma. I wanna say, we opened up this episode of me taking a day get all your JFK proprietary future stuff. You're the only one that took to heart. We need to disagree more. I

19:24 didn't even hear that. I didn't even hear that feedback that we were supposed to do that. I was just doing it from my name. We decided not to share, not to give you a license. So, all right,

19:34 Mark, get us on to a natural gas.

19:40 You know, a few weather reports about the next week, a couple of weeks, both in Europe and the US. going to be slammed with, you know, pretty frigid weather, I think a pretty broad swath of the

19:53 US. And it just reminded me, and someone commented, I can't recall, where I saw it this morning, but I think it was on Bloomberg Javier Blas was talking about, you know, it doesn't really

20:07 matter now for traders, the winter is over, because as we said for the longest time, trying to gain natural gas weather, casino, it matters when it's cold. So here we are in the second week of

20:23 January, entering the second week of January, and we're just now getting cold weather, inventory is fine, et cetera. So we see, despite the deep blue and purple weather maps we're seeing, I

20:36 don't know what we're

20:38 natural gas in Europe and the US. trading down when it started trading last night. So, you know, just a reminder that gas

20:48 has got a lot more flexibility and mobility and weather does matter and the longer we go into the winter expecting cold weather and don't get it, then, you know, the tougher, at least for the

21:06 investment horizon to find this, I don't know, next quarter or the remainder of the year is a tougher one to sort her out and then sort out. Set another way. Mark and I

21:17 had periods in our career where our hurricane would hit and natural gas would jump 15, 20 percent, you know, in one day, even though you knew the hurricane had a shot of hitting. I mean, look at

21:29 February of two, was it two years ago, the big freeze? Yeah. Screwed everything up. Yeah. I mean, you can predict how it's going to be cold, but no one predicted. It's gonna be so cold that

21:39 nothing works. Yeah, that being said, I follow a guy on Twitter named Josh, and it's Josh Trades, and he's a big natural gas trader, and I don't understand that

21:52 whole world, but his take is whether it actually doesn't matter anymore because you've got energy diversity, you've got so much in the way of storage infrastructure, you've had this explosion of

22:03 natural gas production in the US, and a point I hadn't thought of that natural gas prices are correlated to the US dollar more so than ever before because we're exporting so much. So it's

22:17 dollar-denominated. He said you got better forecasting. He says you've got increased fixed price contracts. And then to your point with Winter Storm Yuri, Texas hasn't done the best job of it,

22:30 but most of the PUCs out there are saying bullshit to natural gas spikes to the consumers.

22:38 So it's just, you know, hey, it's X. So his take is weather doesn't even matter anymore. And I hadn't really thought that through till I saw his text or saw his tweet, you know. I mean, I've

22:49 never seen a couple of months ago. Just like kind of in my career of energy. I'll just say over the last five years, like I haven't seen weather really be a factor. Like it doesn't seem to be a

22:59 factor. So Aubrey McClendon paid, and I'm gonna make this number up. Mark, you correct me or Kirk, correct me if you know But he was paying, I think, 5 to10 million a year in talent that sat in

23:13 Oklahoma City and other places around the United States, just forecasting weather. Oh, yeah. 'Cause it mattered that much. Every one of those. Yeah, just being meteorologists, they had a bunch

23:25 of other stuff on campus as well, but yeah, that's exactly right. They brought two meteorologists, I believe it was in-house.

23:35 It's kind of crazy. I don't know that. Look, we'll have some traders. I wanna disagree with that guy. 'Cause he trades, I don't, but I clearly know. I have a microphone, so I'm the expert

23:47 here. I think weather is the baseline for trading. Maybe saying it doesn't matter because we all know what it is, but I'm sort of just gonna disagree. I'm gonna go reach out to some of my trading

24:00 friends and go like, this is bullshit. Well, your point is that it's just table stakes and that there may not be an edge on it, but it's the kind of foundation. Yeah, we've been saying, and

24:09 I've been waiting and I don't wanna see it, but if Europe goes into Tundra and becomes cold AF, they still are screwed. And I can't wait to watch. Now, I know we're gonna talk about France and

24:21 they're launching more nukes, not warheads, but they slowed power and they're exporting to Europe, which is hilarious 'cause I wanna see Germany, I wanna see France and Mercedes Benz move So

24:36 here's a, so here's what I got for you, Kirk. Josh has sent out a tweet that he will give15, 000 to anyone that can prove to him with data that weather matters. Now they're actually, they're,

24:44 they're actually, you know, they're, there's some rules and

24:54 restrictions to the, uh, to the trade, but he actually will back it up with cash here. Now this is where I get worried. I have some relationships. We all have relationships in the industry This

25:06 is a, this is on the friend relationship side. And he's a top trader, a very top trader. And I'm like, do I, do I cross the friend zone and say, look, this is, this is 15 grand. This is 15

25:20 grand. Of course he, you know, he probably makes 15 grand. You know, uh, every minute every, yeah, I think it's actually more than that. But, um, yeah, I might have to cross the friend

25:33 zone and go there. Sometimes you got to, man. Sometimes you just gotta do it. I'm so excited about our next story. What's that? About the wind farm. I've been waiting to hear Kirk's take on

25:47 this. Well, I mean, you shared it with me and I've been laughing, I still laugh. And I'm not sure why I'm so happy about it, just so funny. This was a tweet by an oiling OMG company. A federal

26:01 judge in Oklahoma has ordered Italian energy company, Anel, to remove a 150 megawatt wind farm from Osage Nation lands in Northern Oklahoma. The company ignored the Osage Nation's claim that a

26:14 mining lease was required prior to harvesting wind energy on tribal lands. The court ordered Anel remove all components of their wind farm in a ruling that sets an important precedent for future

26:26 cases involving indigenous land rights and resource extraction And else says it'll cost an excess of300 million.

26:35 to dismantle the wind farm.

26:38 Come on. I have lots of thoughts here. Let's go. So, yeah, I posted this on Twitter yesterday. Essentially, my headline was, the Italian company has to pay 300 million to dismantle 84 wind

26:50 turbines because they fucked over natives in Oklahoma. That's an expensive lesson to learn. And so, essentially what happened here is they dug up the ground to install these wind turbines. And the

27:06 natives believe that their mineral agreement covers that, that if you used any part of the ground to construct it, that constitutes using the minerals.

27:21 So they go to court, which, you know, I think you can have a lot of opinions on, you know, is that right or not? But the fact is they take it to court and not only did this Italian company, not

27:36 stop, they accelerated building them. And so I feel like, you know, that's just kind of a slap in the face to the natives and it's just going to piss them off, right? And obviously native

27:47 Americans have a very long, storied history of of less than favorable treatment, less than favorable treatment by the federal government, by the oil and gas industry, by a lot of people And so

27:58 where I found the humor was,

28:04 was this Italian company coming into Oklahoma out of all places and thinking that you can just not give a shit about the natives. And, you know, now you're kind of having to pay for that. We'll

28:14 also think it's funny is like, you know, the natives, to me, outside looking in, it looks like they're so petty. Like you could have had this Italian company like, Hey, why don't you just pay

28:23 us150 million instead? Well, let you do it. Like not take them down, take them

28:31 down Anyways. really interesting story. I think that it probably sets some level of precedent around constructing these things and what type of leases that you need. So it'll be interesting to see

28:46 what fallout there is in terms of precedent. I mean, what's interesting is, I mean, think about it, oil and gas rig. It's drilling into the ground and extracting resources. A wind farm is

29:02 basically digging into the ground doing the same thing to provide stability for the thing on top that that turns, but still provides electricity that

29:25 is then pumped back under the ground and moved, right? It's pretty clever, their case. Yeah, I mean, I would just consider it surface facilities to be honest. I guess it depends on how like, I

29:27 don't know how deep are you digging So it was every foundation around the world.

29:33 Now that's what I'm saying like yeah anything that has a foundation is now. Yeah, like if they didn't get mineral rights Yeah, yeah, that's exactly like where I'm going. It's like what kind of

29:43 precedent does that does that set? So it'll be interesting to see because I don't imagine these foundations are super Deep I mean probably like pretty heavy though. I'm pretty tall. You'd think

29:56 they'd have to go down at least a little bit I don't know but I mean what are you talking like fifty hundred feet? I don't I don't know but Relate like it's not like you're drilling a well. Does

30:08 Chevron's office downtown have middle rights? Because if they don't have the middle rights they gave their violation. Yeah exactly so anyway someone just said uh there was this conversation

30:20 happening in my Twitter thread of that post and people were just talking about like the idea of like middle rights around wind energy is such a just funny thing to like think about like there is like

30:30 you can't see wind like no one owns wind. And damn right, you can see wind. You ever been to West Texas and you feel like you're about to get an aliens about to take you because that is the

30:41 creepiest thing I've ever seen. And it makes a lot of noise. Yeah. I don't, I just want to say something though, on behalf of the Native Americans, because if you think about it, these

30:56 Europeans and their concept of property ownership, land here, take Manhattan Island for 24 beads, I think. And now these guys are sophisticated enough. No, go ahead and tear down all of you.

31:12 It's over, the game is over, bro. They have learned, so. Seeing the evolution of that. Speaking of Twitter, before we get on more serious topics, did y'all see my

31:26 protest shut down a road in Houston? Got bail money. Got bail money. I forget who, I think it was Josh Young that tweeted back about how it's wrong. And I said, I got bail money. Get the

31:39 picture on here. I even brought it into the office today. Just in case, I'm ready whenever you get jail. Is that 200 bucks? It's a Hunski, baby. I love bail. Right there. I bet I got

31:50 500 cash here. Yeah, so I guess that posting my intrusive thoughts on Twitter, but I was driving to the office and I was just thinking about all these road protests and like it doesn't make, like

32:01 we talk about every time, like these protests don't make any sense. It's like, why are you blocking a road? Why are you throwing tomato sauce on paintings? Let's cause more consumption of oil by

32:09 blocking off

32:12 the traffic. Let's drive there in a van. Let's do this with plastic science. But you know how I am. I'm like, we gotta fight fire with fire. And so who gives a shit if it makes sense? I was

32:19 like, we're gonna block a road and use them to advocate for more oil production. So I put out, if his tweet gets 10, 000 likes I'll block a road to advocate for more oil production And this thing

32:29 started taking off like early stages as I coach shit, I'm actually gonna have. to do this. And luckily, it topped out at eight and a half thousand likes. So we almost got there, but not quiet.

32:40 But, um, you know, I was, I was laughing because like some of the oil dudes in here is like, have you not seen oil production? We don't need more more oil. And like guys, you're almost missing

32:52 the forest for the trees. Like you're not thinking about what this actually means. It's like we're gonna go advocate for more oil and the good that it provides for society. And we're gonna do this

32:60 by shutting down a road because it makes absolutely no fucking sense to do that. So anyways, maybe later in the year I'll run the same challenge and we'll we'll make it happen. But I was a little

33:10 disappointed. I was a little nervous too. I was like, Oh man, I'm actually not to do this. I didn't think it was gonna hit 10k likes. But so before we get our next story, I do have a special

33:18 announcement. It's a PSA, a public service announcement. There was an event January 24th through 26th in

33:26 Port Arthur, home I'm with JATS. Joplin, that is Jimmy Johnson. that is funded by Bloomberg. George Jones. And George Jones, thank you. I knew he was gonna come up with you. And babes are

33:39 curious. The greatest female athlete of all time. And Jesse Dayton, by the way, who's my little, well, he might say he's a couple miles down the road, but same thing. So, there's January

33:53 24th through 26th. It's funded by Bloomberg and his beyond Plastics Activation Organization, along with a local group called the Port Arthur Community Action Network and the Society of Environmental

34:05 Journalists. And they're gonna be there to basically protest how bad plastics are. So I figure since Port Arthur is a heritage, a World Heritage Site of music, and that that's part of our backyard.

34:22 And there's a great college there, Lamar University. Should we be there? We should go down and be part of this event and tell everybody. Tell the world. Yeah, and shoot it. I think what we

34:35 should do is the four of us should draw straws and the short straw has to go. How's that? The short straw, I mean, Mark, you and I are in, for sure, right? Marking. Marking. Marking saw has

34:47 big bits on the ground, didn't you? Marking saw. I need, I don't know if you need some of the golden triangle. Not only is Mark smart, but also he's big, so he could be my bodyguard. I need to

34:59 hear, I need to hear some more Well, like I actually agree, like plastics are bad. I don't think plastics are bad in themself. I think the volume of plastic that we use is bad. Like I've got of

35:09 this whole, like, thing against single use plastics. So I need to know what the actual, what's the actual mission here? Dude, the father of environmental justice is speaking at this event. Dr.

35:21 Robert Bullard, you, of course, if I say father of environmental justice, you're like, Robert Bullard, of course, he's speaking So, at first I thought that was an official title. Listen, man.

35:33 It's like a church for this Our plastics bad of course like is eating plastics good for you. No, it's throwing plastics in the ocean good for you No, yeah, do we use plastics for purposes? Are

35:45 they good for moving? Water and liquids from point A to point B. Yes, very good. So are they necessary in the health care industry? We all be dead without them. I mean we could argue I mean is

35:59 that's what I'm saying is like the is the purpose Plastics are bad or is it the amount of plastic that we're using? I mean, let's just argue as a bullet good

36:10 What's that it's I got to do exactly

36:15 you're analogy

36:20 I can see it. I don't want to make that argument He's named all his kids after guns. I'm like right in the line of fire. Oh, yeah, let's go. Yeah I could take the other stance. Yeah, but

36:34 that's what, I need some more clarification. Like if they're just like hippies that wanna end all plastics, like fucking - The father of environmental justice will be there. That's all I have to

36:43 tell you. That's credibility, that's cred. Anything, anyone that says environmental justice is just, I know a grifter right off the top. He's perfect. I don't even know what that means,

36:53 environmental justice. You know, DEI is actually getting like starting to get squashed over on Twitter, and I love to see it. I love to see

37:07 pragmatic thinking, critical thinking come back. And so this whole like climate justice equity or environmental justice, I don't even know what that shit means. It wasn't mean like we focus on

37:23 equity in climate and injustice, like, the fuck are you talking about? Yeah, that sounds good, but so did communism. You know what I mean? Hey, Jen Powers will be there. She's the managing

37:37 attorney for the Gulfet Earth Justice. Nice. So, I mean, there's some, there's true cred there. I'll find out, Mark, Mark's agreed. We're gonna go down there. Okay, all right. Said you got,

37:48 you're good? Yeah, let's go. Damn, dude, finally. Let's go. Okay. Let me say Walker is from there. So we'll get him to provide our, our side of the music. How's he doing, by the way?

37:60 Doing well. Good, good, good. This is our next - Any record out. This is our next installment of Market Song. Dude, all right, so. We're getting to the Port Arthur. Mark, while you're

38:07 driving, I mean, you're pulled over right now, of course, but while, when you get back on the road, be thinking about our trip, 24 through 26, maybe we just pick a few days or one day and just

38:18 make it a day trip, but. And we'll, we'll, we'll shoot some footage. Yeah. I'm starting to drive to January right now, so maybe I'll break it when we get down there.

38:29 I'm gonna be in Oklahoma City, so maybe I'll get taps on the natives up there and we'll relay from both sides. Exactly, perfect. Hey, two quick stories, and then I'm gonna turn it over to you to

38:43 close Kirk. But one, there were three or four MA deals talked about in the last four or five weeks. Calan and Apache, we've got rumors of Chesapeake, Southwestern, Rockcliff, soldo, Japanese,

38:59 electric company, et cetera. Mark has promised me that he'll come back, I think tomorrow or the next day, and before the end of the week, we'll actually do some deep dive on those deals. So

39:11 we'll put out a supplement. BDE supplement number one. Nice. On the MA deals here before the end of the

39:18 week. Like it. These two stories are related, even though they won't sound related, But, you know, there's been some Twitter traffic about Germany reduced its emissions this year and it reduced

39:32 its use of coal and all that and kind of pisses me off. Let me throw some numbers at you. So all these emissions reductions, number one, we have the warmest winter we've had in Europe since 1880,

39:50 I think, or '82 or whatever it was So just total energy usage in Germany was down 8 year to year. So that's kind of number one on it. Number two, they

40:07 were shutting down their nukes and all, so they're talking about how much renewables added to

40:15 their electric grid. Well, guess what? The French right next door produced 40 more nuclear electricity this year. I guess where they were importing a lot of that. Exporting. Exporting. Yes,

40:30 exactly. To Germany. So lo and behold, you're patting yourself on the back. Well, we're not going to do it here, but 150 miles away, 200 miles away. We'll just buy it. We're taxes at a gnarly

40:42 better. So who said the French weren't smart? I mean, come on, let's give them a little crud there. And they're actually supposedly adding seven gigawatts of nukes as we detailed over the last

40:53 year when we were doing our breakout of the European countries and who was doing what on energy policies, the French actually reversed during last year. They were going to shoot at the beginning of

41:02 '23. They were shooting for 50 nukes down from '75. They've actually decided to add more nuclear capacity. So that's kind of cool. Can't let the French outpace us. They really are. They're being

41:16 way more thoughtful. They've been playing chess, man. That's embarrassing, man. And one of the things we really did learn during that breakout of all that. Europe got to go as renewable heavy as

41:27 they did because the French are just a big huge battery. They're baseloaded with their nukes. So

41:36 this is gonna sound like this doesn't have anything to do with this, but I think it does. The Everett LNG regasification terminal, which is in Massachusetts, much to Toby Rice's chagrin, not

41:48 allowed to build a pipeline from Appalachia up to Massachusetts to provide natural gas So they import LNG because of the Jones Act. They actually don't buy American LNG. They buy the vast majority

42:02 of it from Trinidad, although periodically they will take a delivery from Russia and buy Russian LNG. Everett's actually gonna shut down the spring. The utility that owns it runs a big huge power

42:16 plant or had a big contract between Everett and a power plant there and the power plant contract spoons. canceled. I'm not sure of the details of that. That means they're going to have to close L

42:30 and G. That all sounds great. Yee-haw, all that. Massachusetts is going to be short natural gas. And when they're short natural gas, what do they burn to make power? Well, heating oil. So

42:44 there you go. It's crazy, dude. I didn't

42:48 realize until a few years ago. You looked at the map of like the Northeast. It's all heating oil. Yeah. I didn't realize until a few years ago what that actually meant because one of my buddies in

42:57 New York had a baby and he tweeted that they'd ran out of heating oil and he had like order heating oil and all this and like he was just tweeting about it. He's like, there's got to be a better

43:07 light. I was like, yeah, dude, like welcome to the first like world down here in Texas. We just plumbed that gas everywhere. So I forget what like happened a few years ago, but like all these

43:19 stars in New York, you know, all the actors and actresses that we're protesting natural gas pipelines come in New York. Like it's bad for you, but what they don't realize is they burn heating oil

43:34 and replay, I mean, they like keep the oil. Yeah. Wow, that's super intuitive. I had no idea that this LNG facility was shutting down, but I mean, it's a pretty critical piece of

43:46 infrastructure for the new one area. I mean, it was 50, I wanna say it was 50 BCF, 75 BCF of the year, so yeah. And that was always been a facility that people thought was gonna flap and go to

44:01 export, but it just, again, going back to Dumber, the politics are sort of dictating the price. And in this case, it's really, the Northeast is just, I mean, they're just, you know, they're

44:16 doubling down on really bad policy, in our opinions, but. I think like that whole,

44:23 whole situation has to be like the epitome of bad energy policy, just like with the Jones Act, where you can't export from the Gulf and take it up the coast, like, that'd be better than, you know,

44:36 what they're doing now. And it's interesting if you talk to the traders that sort of trade a lot of these commodities, there's Jones Act only traders, and then there's other, I mean, they sort of

44:45 like, it's a, they just separate by a very old law. It's interesting In 1920s, I would love for someone to come on a podcast, like I've never heard anyone give like the pro version of the Jones

45:01 Act, like again, again, again, Colin, Colin doesn't listen to my podcast, Colin Grebault last week. He's obviously anti-Jones Act from the Cato Institute, and so we talked the vast majority

45:13 about anti-Jones Act, but I did put him in the spot and I said, okay, make the pro argument for it. The pro argument is. Well, we need those skillsets in America, you know, merchant marine

45:27 people that can work on the ships, repair the ships, build the ships. It's more the stark reality that we built one ship, Jones compliant in the last two years. I mean, we don't have that.

45:38 That's right. Yeah. But

45:42 the wildest thing he said on that podcast and the reason we still have the Jones Act, there was a jeopardy question six years ago And jeopardy contestants are in the top one person educated of

45:54 America. Oh, the Mensa. They're smart people, they're very educated. And there was a question where the answer was the Jones Act and nobody got it, right? I mean, nobody knows. Nobody

46:05 literally knows. I mean, my folks are really smart and I came home and said, Did this great podcast on the Jones Act? And they're like, Yes, dear, we'll listen to it. Some of the dumbest

46:13 people I've run across my life say that they're Mensa. And maybe it's, maybe I'm the dumb one and I'm probably am, but. Before we are in the show, can we jump to Mark? He might have some final

46:28 thoughts. Yeah, Mark, what did we mess up? A pretty interesting alert that just popped up on my screen. Mark, let's go to you. Yeah, you didn't mess up. I'm gonna come from maybe a bundle it

46:41 up,

46:43 direction out of left field, but prior to dialing in, I was listening to Joe Rogan's latest with Taylor Sheridan. If you don't know who Taylor Sheridan is, he's the genius behind Yellowstone,

46:56 1883-1923. Well, don't midway through the podcast, Joe Rogan triggers Taylor Sheridan with a comment on just stuff well in the protest, that turned into a wide ranging discussion, everything from

47:13 confusion to renewables, to the fact that Taylor Sheridan is going to be starting a series of Philly about important in the lead called land man. So I think given the subject matter and the topic

47:29 coverage that we've had today, we may have enough for a spinoff.

47:35 If nothing else around the notion of disputes between Native Americans and renewable interlopers violating lease terms, et cetera, you've got a lot of background knowledge in terms of the history of

47:51 all of that. I just found it very interesting. He's a very well-researched,

47:57 I don't know, Hollywood type is the way to characterize it, but this stuff is starting to make its way into the mainstream conversation and a more serious note. It really, we touched on a number

48:10 of things, not the lease of which was what Chuck brought up around February, and it's an enclosure and then what happened in Oklahoma.

48:20 There's just a lot of collision moments coming up related to energy policy that I think are going to unfold over the course of the year. And it gives us, I think, some pretty good, some pretty

48:32 good topical coverage for future shows as we moved into 2024. Well, Mark, safe travels. Thanks for those final words. Before I protest the Jones Act, I'm in the first in line, I want to be able

48:46 to buy tequila on Sundays here in Texas Is that wrong? No. All right. Finally, this popped up interesting. Week recorder shows on Mondays. Wait, is that just? Hey, you want to discuss this?

48:60 Let's go. No, I know, but this is not tequila thing. Was that just a random thought? I thought you were going somewhere with that, but - He was just slotting in a water express. Let's all

49:05 tequila before we get rid of the screws. Puerto Rico Act. Okay. But we record our shows on Mondays And tonight is.

49:19 the National Championship game here in Houston. Yep. And guess what pops on my screen? Because you say it's irrelevant or somebody in your podcast said it's irrelevant. The National Weather

49:30 Service has issued a tornado watch on January 8th for Harris County.

49:35 So hey, all you guys be freaking careful out there. And if weather has nothing to do with it. Remember weather doesn't matter. Weather doesn't matter. Natural gas price. If anyone hears the show

49:46 tomorrow, that means we survived a potential natural excuse to disaster. Well, a good thing is, is any tornado south of I-20 aren't serious. So there's nothing but a dust double, so. All right,

49:59 appreciate y'all tuning in to the show today. Appreciate Mark and Saul calling from the road. We will catch y'all on next episode.