Big Digital Energy

0:00 Guess who's back. Back again. So I use that joke. I was doing my MM when I was in London because, you know, I went there for call it 25 days back here for 10 and then back for 12 and I sent that

0:17 none of the Brits got the joke. They didn't get

0:21 it. No MM. No MM joke since humor in London. But anyway, we're going to have potentially MM and Taylor Swift. Super Bowl match up I mean, that's going to be awesome. The Brits just don't like

0:33 Americans. How about that? Oh, wow. That was a shot across the bow. Would have been nice if you would have told me that 18 months ago.

0:44 All righty. So I heard when I was going. Missed a big storm. Heather. Yes. Heather was her name and her caught. I heard held up reasonably well and when I got back My guy that knows all about

1:01 the grid, I texted, I said, hey, here's what I'm hearing that West Texas wind was bad. Gulf Coast and South Texas wind good. Batteries were actually good. Demand was the true superstar because

1:14 it was 13 below expectations on Monday, 10 below on Tuesday. His take was we got lucky, we had enough wind. Urquot's new operating stance and winter inspections really made a difference For

1:24 thermal units, batteries need to report the

1:32 state of their charge. That's something we learned this time. And the PUC aired on that, but we did get lucky. So that's kind of what I heard about it. Well, you guys were here fighting it out.

1:46 I mean, I got a Twitter war with a few guys over this. They're saying, why are you knocking solar and wind because it actually saved your ass? I'm like, that's not the point The point is, is

1:58 that ERCOT. prioritized all these all these renewables into the grid making it more unstable instead of planning for a more resilient grid we did get so my point about Heather we got lucky I'm glad

2:12 when came through to some degree but the reality is demand was down that's and you still had periods where natural gas coal and nuclear were eighty five percent of the stack

2:28 as high as ninety five percent yeah and and I got notices by our car like hey by the way just try to preserve preserve preserve we all of course everyone just crank their heat up when that out unlike

2:41 your at least in my experience we didn't have really any moisture to speak of either that's true not a lot of of ice related problems to deal with I don't know where the pockets in the state were but

2:55 that that seemed to help as well at least help me I had texted you about What did you do with your house and you had the foresight to shut it off at the street and drain everything? Yeah, I was

3:10 across the pond and so I did it. And Mark, we'll click on the moisture issue. What are the ramifications of that of a freeze? Is it causing natural gas pipelines to freeze up easier? It's causing

3:26 repair crews harder to get out 'cause of ice? Well, I think it's that and mostly you don't have the damage that you have from a bunch of ice on paralyzed trees that are wreaking havoc as well. So

3:42 we didn't even have a flicker. Of course, I'm on Entergy and Miso, but - Yeah, you're not even in Erikaat. You're not even in Texan. You're in Ammon the Island or on the peninsula. Do people in

3:53 the island think that it's the, is it sort of like the Austin syndrome? We are the center of Texas The Woodlands is what we're talking about. We had a lot of inbound migration, let's just say that.

4:06 We're moving the capital to the Woodlands. Yeah, it's the weirdest thing to look at the map and see that there's this peninsula, but it's been that way for a long time. So,

4:20 let's do this. So, are we spiking a football that everything worked Senate Bill 4 from

4:31 2021, which was the response to Winter Storm Yuri. Are we saying we just got lucky? Are we saying somewhere in between? We're somewhere in between. Yeah. I'm glad it wasn't worse. Yeah, I am

4:46 too. At the end of the day, we're glad it wasn't worse. Yeah. And the awareness does quite a bit. If you've been through it once and our caught or anyone else sends out a notice to take it a

4:56 little bit easier and you find ways to do that, then, you know, if the demand response was. result of proactive

5:04 notices going out saying, look, we need to kind of lighten up here where you can. My generator went off one time. And I'm not sure if it was just testing, but it didn't go on during the normal

5:14 test period. So I'm assuming my power went out for just a short period. So just saying. Well, to your point about awareness too, is I think

5:26 the power generators, particularly the folks using natural gas, nuclear, it kind of oops the last time and probably had their a game on this time. Well, last time also you had a lot of compress,

5:39 you had the natural gas, had some failures along key points. So it wasn't necessarily the fact that they didn't have their ducks and roads. In fact, it was so cold. And you had ice that some of

5:51 the equipment needed to move gas around didn't work. I mean, you on winter storm, Yuri, you had literally folks that had coal that they were using to heat, you know, natural gas pipelines and

6:09 all that sort of stuff. And it was frozen in. So I'm sure things like that got worked out. And the last time in Winterstorm, you're the big new plant in South Texas went down because there was

6:20 literally one sensor. So it had a single point of failure that shut down. And so I'm sure there were two points of failure this time That's right. That's right.

6:30 It probably is somewhere in the middle. The other thing that's just highlights that you guys will say, Well, no shit Sherlock. But I don't know that I appreciate it. If you think about the shale

6:41 revolution and oil, for as much as we gripe about, it's so hard to get a permit and drill for a well in Texas and Montana and Oklahoma and all this, no, it's really not. It's actually really easy.

6:55 You can put oil into a tank, You can pick it up with a truck and you can get it to the market. to solve what we're gonna need to solve on the power grid. It's also interrelated. I mean, this, it

7:08 was wild in that parts of the state were trading for300

7:13 per megawatt and in Corpus Christi in Brownsville, it was trading at20 megawatt and that just highlights. You can generate, you've also got to move it. You've got to have transmission lines and I

7:27 read an article about there's a pattern, energy is trying to build the Southern spirit line, which is basically going to pull, in effect, nuclear electricity out of Mississippi to Dallas and then

7:41 send solar back the other way and they're doing it in such a way that it's not going to be FERC regulated and it's going to be DC-powered on. This is just really, really complicated. So if we're

7:51 going to need more electricity, this is not going to be handled like the Shell Revolution was. And anyway. Well said Chuck. All right. Well, that's my part of the show Now

8:06 so second the

8:11 other thing I heard I missed is that Mark Mills wrote a really cool piece mark. What was it? It's basically Published to you actually one Last week early to middle part of last week of the date

8:26 escapes me within a bridge version on Saturday really calling for Reform at the I a and just looking back at the history of the I a and why it was established which for those who Don't spend time down

8:43 in the weeds thinking about the I a the I a was established in response to The 74 crisis and they're Arab embargo when Western governments were looking around Trying to find options and responses and

8:58 finding that there wasn't really a good basis of information and data around the world. So that really established the

9:08 objective, the raison d'etre, if you will, of the IEA, which over the last five to 10 years, as Mark points out, has morphed into one of strong advocacy for renewables and transition. And his

9:22 point is it's really contaminating the original mission And the US is the, as it always has been, the largest funder of the IEA. And basically in this last piece says look, you gotta break it up

9:36 into two entities. One, we're the member countries who are paying for the advocacy, get that. But we need to preserve the original aspect of the IEA that is about the best data and information and

9:52 analysis on the energy here and now and what reality is and one of the comments he made in the. In the original piece, I think sums it up, at least his sentiment pretty well. And I think it

10:04 captures it

10:08 pretty well. It says, The IEA, quote, is now animated by an outcome that it hopes for rather than analyzing the realities that exist. And so I think there are some, myself included, that you

10:20 start to look at the data that the IEA provides and wonder about how conflicted that data analysis is given and just the overarching,

10:32 I think, political bent of the IEA and what it's become over the last five to 10 years. I mean, there's a 1974 crisis taught the world that there is a need for unbiased energy information. When I

10:47 think most younger people, especially if you ask them what the EIA is and their ability to forecast or give unbiased information, it's a joke I mean, they've become. a very biased organization,

11:01 and I thought Mark's point was spot on both Mark Meyer and Mark Mills. Ooh, by the way, Dublin Tondris, M squared,

11:10 two MMs. Mark squared. I thought he was totally right. That was actually very poignant. He's Mark sometimes brings some great analysis, Donnie. Mark squared. Mark's squared. You know, the

11:22 interesting thing, I thought and kind of reading that, that article was, if you're intellectually honest, if you truly want what's good for the world and you want a much lower carbon footprint for

11:36 the world to save it, you should want good data too, right? Because there are no, there are no right choices in life. There are just trade offs that we're going to have to make and we're going to

11:47 have to be thoughtful in each side as we talk about all the time. I mean, people

11:54 that don't have cheap energy in the winter. freeze today. So, you know, as we're balancing things, um, as we're making all these decisions, you should want as good a day to news chock is you

12:08 don't need to go to the IEA, you need to come to digital wildcatters BDE.

12:13 There we go. Because we deliver real energy formation, which speaking up, so that was a great piece by Mark, Mark Squared. But let's go over to what Vicki, said at Davos. Let's talk about sort

12:25 of real energy information and her sort of view of what's going to happen over the next few years. Well, as you guys know, Oxy's been pretty out front in terms of things like net zero and direct

12:37 air capture, investments, etc. But I thought it was interesting that this was a sideline comment. Apparently, I didn't even know Vicki was going to Davos, but here we are. I mean, shit, I'm a

12:48 company of an oil company. I'm going

12:51 to Davos, baby. Probably the quietest Davos we've seen in a while, and we can talk about. the political implications of that here in a minute. But she basically said, look, we're in a market

13:04 imbalance right now as I think we've seen crude and products trade in a fairly sloppy fashion. The equities are out of favor again. And so we've got an abundance scenario as Doomburg calls it

13:17 playing out currently. We've gone from tight to abundant. What Vicki said was, look, because we have so under-invested in exploration over an extended period of time, look to 2025 and beyond to

13:34 be a return of tight oil markets. And I think that speaks volumes about where demand's headed and what we've seen in recent data points, despite the pronouncements by the IEA that we're going to be

13:48 seeing peak fossil fuel demand within the decade, Vicki's pointing out kind of the here and now, which is, look, we haven't done - an adequate job of exploration, and as I think about longer term,

14:03 longer ago data and just looking at global annual exploration results haven't seen an update and it used to be part of the BP statistical review, what we're finding on a global basis is one

14:17 insufficient to replace. I think she quoted we're at 25 replacement relative to what we produce and consume every year when that used to be like five to one. I've always had a bit of a cynical view

14:29 that I can create more reserves with a pencil than I can with a drill bit, but that notwithstanding, pointing out that we've been leaning heavily on not really exploration dependent shale success.

14:45 Now we need to get back to the business of restarting the exploration engine globally you know, we're going to be facing some shortages or at least a tighter market balance. I mean, in 2025 and

14:58 beyond in her view. She had more to say, but let's just stop for a second. When I was researching, before I started investing into the space and I researched opportunities, one of the glaring

15:09 things to me was the underinvestment and exploration and even when I joined Shell, many of my colleagues were like, you're crazy. You shouldn't invest into exploration technology and projects. I'm

15:21 like, what are you talking about? This is a huge underinvestment. All the majors have been underutilized. They've been looking to buy acreage versus find acreage 'cause it's a lot cheaper to find

15:36 a barrel of oil when you find it yourself, but it's also a lot harder. And most of the oil and gas companies have been taken the easy way. And the Shell Revolution almost sort of suspended this

15:51 potential. issue that Vicki brings up. And I think she's absolutely right. We have not been investing in exploration. It's catching up and I think maybe 2025 it'll be interesting to see what it

16:03 does. I mean, where's most of the capital and valuation that's been raised by the industry, both public and private, where has it been directed? It's been directed at unconventional shale and not

16:14 making bets on exploration oriented as we used to think about them like a spinnaker that comes to mind, which was long ago, Gulf of Mexico, Deepwater

16:26 oriented model, right? But you had a special set of capabilities and data in a business model that was supported, at least to some degree, by the public markets that was a vestige of long ago,

16:42 which now, I don't know anybody raising money around a pure kind of exploration play at this point Yeah, you know, but what.

16:52 The thing I always like is nothing cures low oil prices like low oil prices. Nothing cures high oil prices like high oil prices. The interesting thing to overlay on y'all's discussion right there is

17:09 we had really high natural gas prices, which meant we could go get these tools. We had fracking, I mean, is fracking modern? No I mean, Wilkes Booth did before he shot Abraham Lincoln, he

17:25 was a frecker, he threw dynamite down the hole. I mean, we've been fracking wells forever. We drilled, I think, our first horizontal well. I think it was actually offshore in like

17:37 1936. That's right. So we had these tools sitting out in the shed, all of a sudden we got10, 12 natural gas, so we go get those tools, we use those tools, we figure out how to make shell works

17:49 So my question is. to kind of like overlay what y'all are just saying, is if we get that next spike, if we get call it125, 150 oil, we get10, 12 natural gas, what it is.

18:03 Is there anything in the tool shed we can go get that we're going to make work? And that's something that I sit around and think of and I haven't seen, you know what I mean? You could put together

18:16 in 2005 or 2007, you know, if we figure out this horizontal drilling and this fracking that we're doing on natural gas, if we figure out for oil, we could double US oil production. You could at

18:28 least think about it. That's right. You know, I was not predicting it or obviously I'd have been short, as opposed to long oil that whole time. But I guess my point is, I'm worried, you're

18:41 worried that we're not looking for the rock, I'm worried that we don't have the tools sitting around to find the, you know, to mess with rock that we already know about. It's, it's, it's another,

18:53 that's the word that Colin brings that point up is we extract so little oil from the ground as it is today as percentage. It's mostly water and other things. I think that's a good point. But I also

19:06 believe like, there's a lot more places in this world to find oil and, and we don't have, we've underinvested in the tools and technology to find it. And I think that's going to come home to roost

19:18 until, or I mean, we're going to solve it one way or the other, but I predict, and it's funny, Vicki predicts that oil prices as a result are going to be up, you know,

19:29 five to eight dollars more this year over last year. Yeah, we averaged 78 last year and 80 to 85 is the call for 25 to be on, That's her call. In the tight market, which isn't, which isn't a lot,

19:44 You know, it's better than what we have now. Are you predicting higher or lower than Dickey? I'm predicting just continued volatility. And that's, I think that's - You're smoking like a true

19:53 trader. That's the problem. That's the problem with establishing any kind of continuity of getting on a path to more balance between unconventional and the opportunity presented by okay, let's move

20:07 recovery factors a few percentages and get more of the oil in place because it's captive at short cycle We know the resources there versus, hey, investor, I want you to commit. And oh, by the way,

20:20 I'm expecting a premium valuation for a longer cycle business model to find is true conventional exploration, which for major projects in a major play have multi-year type of appraisal timelines not

20:33 to mention the development risk, et cetera. You haven't completely changed investor landscape from what's the terminal value of oil and gas trend, the whole transition dynamic in the middle of it.

20:47 So I think it's, I think it's harder to just establish that continuity and pivot into something that Vicki saying, we know we need, we need to do a better job and do more of what we think of as

20:58 conventional exploration, because that's where the big needle movers over time. Let's see what her budget is next this year in exploration. Let's see what, let's see if she puts her money where

21:07 her mouth is. No, that'll, that'll be funny The, you know, last thing I'll say on this, because we talked a while ago about Art Berman's piece, about how, and when Tag Cross came on from

21:24 Novylabs, came on my podcast and we talked about it, it was, you know, seeing performance, degradation, from new wells. I'm not, I've thought about this a little bit. I'm not thoroughly

21:36 convinced that that's not self-induced,

21:41 got a lot of volatility in the price. I'm gonna do everything I can to get 18 months worth of production out where I can hedge, lock it in. Absolutely. And so I may not have as good a well, but I

21:53 have way more certainty on that well than if I potentially went with smaller frack, produced at lower volumes and drug it out over time. So I'm not, I'm sure we've drilled our best stuff first and

22:10 there is a degradation in rock quality that we're drilling now, but I'm also not sure. It's not just self-induced, so.

22:19 Exxon?

22:22 Yeah, they

22:24 went to court Sunday night, five o'clock in the northern district, which is a little bit of a shift from where they usually file complaints in the southern district, but - Which I wish I knew a

22:34 lawyer to ask the question why they did that. I've found that odd, too. No, we're in Fort Worth, at least in the Reuters piece that I saw, there was a hearts piece talking about Exxon filing a

22:47 complaint to get, follow this, and Arjuna capital's resolutions for Exxon to adopt scope three targets, medium term scope three targets, back in

22:59 the proxy and up for

23:02 a shareholder vote at the May 29th meeting, Exxon said, look, we want to use the courts to file a complaint to, I think, challenge the SEC's rule making in this regard and actually have the

23:16 resolution removed so it can't even be voted on. And their point is, look, at least based on the statistics, they've had similar resolutions, at least over the last two annual meeting periods,

23:28 the proxy periods, that last year only garnered 10 support in the year before And basically, I think what Exxon's saying, look, we've already put this to the shareholder vote. It's not in the

23:39 shareholder or the company's best interest to continue to kind of flog this distraction. And Exxon is the only one of the Western majors that has not adopted Scope 3. And we've talked about that

23:52 before as well. So we'll see how they're asking for

23:56 a decision or relief by March 19th. I think their proxy has to be filed April the 11th, but to the point why in the Northern District as opposed to the Southern District. In the Reuters article,

24:10 there's an opinion that this particular judge is Judge Rideau Connor. He's always gone conservative. Been very favorable to the conservative side of the argument. That's why. That's why. Here you

24:23 go. I mean, hey, I was smart on their case. I mean, so Arjuna, which by the way, They're known for their interest in yoga. which, how do they get from yoga to sustainable investing? I don't

24:38 know, that's a different discussion, but our juniors are a mess with their chi. I mean, they've got good chi, clearly. But they're arguing that if they don't align with sort of the medium-term

24:51 targets in the Paris agreements, including Scope 3, it's in the best interest of the shareholders because they might in the future lose access to capital markets and have policy interventions,

25:04 which we can't bribe officials anymore. Exactly. Is that what they said? Exxon, on the other hand, is argued saying, the sole aim of their campaign is to harm the company's existing business

25:18 model, which makes a lot of sense. Well, this is all about the headline of the majors are not spending enough in terms of their portfolio allocation on alternatives to their core business or their

25:31 core portfolio, which is one of the gas.

25:35 we've seen over the last two to three years, the industry has really found discipline and has been ultra responsive to the demand for better returns of and on capital. And so these are capital

25:52 allocation decisions. I think back to what Mike Worf said at their rollout day on new energies 2021, I believe in September. And he was challenged as to why they're not committing to a chunk of

26:05 wind and solar investments. And he basically said, we just don't we don't have the competitive position to generate returns that would make that can compete against oil and gas for anything else in

26:16 their in their stack of

26:19 investments, including alternatives. And so this goes back the the Exxon goes way back to Lee Raymond days. But more recently, this is just a continuation of the whole engine one saga. but they

26:35 were very, very deliberate and explicit that we are not going to commit to a scope three. I mean, what's interesting to me is, this is the first time Exxon has ever tried to seek exclusion of a

26:51 shareholder proposal through court action. So it'll be interesting to see if this is a trend, or do we know if it's ever been done before anywhere else? No idea. I do not know that we were getting

27:02 into wonky levels of SEC policy making that's kind of beyond me. The one thing I'll say is I am severely disappointed in myself, I must still be jet lags, 'cause I was not able to make a downward

27:18 dog joke during that segment. We were talking, you just did, you just did. Well, you know, I lost my fastball, man. There was something in there. We had lawyers, we had yoga, we had

27:31 environmentalists, and I couldn't make the downward dog. Anyway, I still,

27:39 I still like, 'cause what did Exxon that said we're a molecule company, not an electron company? Right. Yeah. So, and I get back to a point you've been making for, gosh, almost two years on

27:53 BDE. I think you made this point when you guess has it a long time ago that the whole point is, why should the oil and gas companies do it? Why shouldn't Apple do it? Why shouldn't Microsoft do it,

28:05 et cetera? Or why shouldn't I be accountable for that order I place for the redundant or the extra trip that the Amazon truck makes to my house? That's, you know, and I should have done a better

28:18 job of planning to not emit as much at the scope three level and save that fuel for a non kind of repetitive or duplicative type of situation So it's really the, you know, the practicality of

28:31 accounting around it for. oil and gas companies and I think it's fraught with all kinds of confusion at a minimum on how we ultimately account for Scope 3, which are arguably the largest sources of

28:48 emissions related to fossil fuel burning and production and refining, but it's so dispersed out there in the consuming community that it seems to be,

29:03 I don't know if it's, once you sell that product, how do you adequately and accurately account for that? Yeah, there's going to be double, triple, quadruple. And I know there's a big modeling

29:16 and factor assumption in the middle of all that. I think at some point you just kind of lose your place in trying to calculate the absolute real numbers that you're looking for. It's very, very

29:29 true. And what I think what Exxon and others are telling you is that. It just adds a tremendous amount of unnecessary cost with questionable return on good data and information that would point you

29:41 toward tackling or solving the problem. It says here that companies have sued in the past, often involving disputes over the applicability or interpretation of rule

29:54 14A-8, which governs the inclusion of shareholder proposals in company proxy materials Companies may argue that a proposal doesn't meet the criteria outlined in the rule, such as falling under the

30:07 ordinary business exclusion, which allows the company to emit proposals relating to its ordinary business operations, which Scope 3 may fall right into that. So,

30:20 interesting to see. We'll see what happens. All right, we talked Vicky's stuff a me Davos. Give in

30:29 point or two about Davos, 'cause I thought it was great.

30:33 I don't know what I'm referring to, the Argentinian. But yeah, the milieu speech. Oh my God, it was awesome. Describe what happened there. So he basically got up there and channeled his inner

30:46 Milton Friedman and just told the whole world they're fucked because they're a bunch of socialist pigs. And he felt like he was almost calling them out by name. Yeah. And it was great. He said the

30:57 free markets, capitalism's the only way to survive and he let them have it And the single greatest thing about that speech is he flew their commercial to do it. No private jet. Really? Number two,

31:13 the fact he would even say it, I'll give Klaus some credit for even inviting him though 'cause he knew he was gonna be - He knew he was gonna be. He knew he was gonna be. And then three, the

31:21 greatest thing about it was the AI voice translator that put it into English and his voice, that was awesome. almost like he could lip read his speech in English. with that voiceover, it was

31:36 perfect, it was scary, but. The, another good thing that happened that I think is slightly underreported, and I'm gonna get the guy's name wrong, I think it's Kenneth Roberts, who's CEO of the

31:49 Heritage Foundation. He was included in a panel talk, and he lectured the world elite on being undemocratic and destroying the planet. So, you had a couple of good shots coming out of it I think

32:04 they probably expected the organizers in Schwab probably expected some of this just given what's happened on the global political scene here in the last few months with Millie and what happened in the

32:18 Dutch election, et cetera, so. And then heading into what's going to be a very interesting 2024 election here in the US,

32:30 There are real energy security. and policy implications at the heart of all of this. And so there's starting to see signs of pushback at the ballot box that I think

32:45 are likely to continue, although this is but one election cycle in short memories have a way of taking over as soon as another distracting event takes place. But it just feels like fundamentally

33:00 that people have been absorbing quite a bit of extra cost and they're starting to link that politically to

33:11 some of the top down mandates, et cetera, that have been worked into policy by the unelected. So the thing I'll say about Donald Trump, you can like Donald Trump, hate Donald Trump, but I don't

33:24 think there's been another politician in my lifetime. So attuned. to what I will say, the common man as Donald Trump. Say what you want about the guy. The guy understands the frustration of the

33:41 factory worker who lost his job because the factory moved to Mexico and Donald Trump will tell him, Don't worry, I'm a tax the hell out of the Ford if they move the auto plant down to Mexico. I

33:55 mean, he really does understand and I think has a way of communicating with the common man that's on par with anything I've seen. Even he has said, Day one issue, immigration, we're gonna shut

34:11 the border. But number two, it's been drove, baby, drill. So I mean, the fact that Donald Trump is leading with that on a day one event says you're right, Mark. People are starting to get it.

34:25 Yeah, and I still,

34:28 somewhat bristle at the notion when I hear politicians from either side talk about, you know, we need to get back to energy independence. Right. That's the way we've been talking about for a while.

34:38 We had record levels of production last year and September and October, 132 million barrels a day. And we're seeing a bit of a flattening, but, you know, this notion that there's going to be some

34:52 political watershed moment with a new administration that's ultimately going to change the pace and level in production trajectory that is largely driven by investors both public and private and those

35:08 companies responding to or not responding to the incentives and disincentives to invest capital or return capital to shareholders. We're doing a pretty good job with our kind of restrained level of

35:23 activity counts down what, 20 plus percents in September. et cetera, where it goes from here, we'll see, but it's, it's,

35:38 I don't know, if naive is the right word, the energy industry, particularly in the US, works in a very different way than what the political voices are suggesting that it does, that short-term

35:54 policy has had a major detrimental effect or a major incentivizing effect. I just don't, I don't think that that's the case. We're, we're playing in a global market and all of the commodities,

36:08 including natural gas now. And, you know, we have an industry, as I said, that's largely driven by a lot of independent decisions that are driven by investors on the front end of all that And

36:22 it's not necessarily, we talk about energy independence, but it's not necessarily, that's, That's an inaccurate phrase to some degree. It's almost, take the handcuffs off of the local producers

36:36 and let them, number one, export. Like, you know, we're talking about LNG. But there's a lot of refineries, for example, built on the Gulf Coast that import oil, because the oil that we take

36:49 out of the ground here, they can't refine that. The refines were built for importing. They're not gonna turn those around or change them, but ultimately what we're saying here is, let the oil and

37:00 the energy companies, let their economics go unlimited. Let them be able to do whatever they can to maximize their business, which is ultimately saying, make the United States business friendly

37:14 again. That's one of the big challenges is all the

37:18 requirements and the inability, we're talking about, Toby rise up in the up in Appalachia. Now we're we're uh, send the gas, et cetera, et cetera. I think there's a lot of things that, um,

37:33 Trump is promising that has opened a lot of people's ears. Well, there's, there's all kinds of regulatory reform and you, you did a podcast recently on one of the oldest kind of, um, we're

37:47 talking about the shipping. What's the right term? The Jones act. The Jones act, baby In 1920 and detrimental decisions, like things like closing down Everett, right, and not being able to

38:00 connect Northeastern, the, the Northeastern endowment of natural gas to New England is and not allowing me to buy alcohol and Sundays. Yeah. I mean, that's a big issue that really is the, the,

38:16 the one thing I think I will say in defense of politicians, because energy is a pretty complex event when they, when they talk about energy independence.

38:28 if they phrased it this way, they might be closer to right. And I do think at the end of the day, it matters is we could at least be independent if we wanted to be. You know, if you think about

38:40 it, if we got rid of regulations and stuff, we're drilling a lot, we have a lot of production. We could be if need be. It would take a lot of investment, re-plumbing. And just the threat of

38:53 that, I think, I think keeps changes the geopolitical balance. But I think could we theoretically refit the refining complex to take much more domestic production? Yeah, but that's reversing tens

39:09 of billions that were spent in the 2000s to make sure that we had the most complex system in the world 'cause the future was going to be heavy sour. Right, that's not what happened That's right,

39:22 and I think that the other bigger question, and this really goes to Mark, when is the woodlands going to become energy independent? But also, when are y'all going to build a wall?

39:36 I already have, the hardy total is a long fucking way up there, it's not a wall, but you know. It's always, when someone has to come that way, it's always an almost intolerably long trip. You

39:49 already have a wall, it's just called distance. It's called time and distance. One of the things that we have talked about, we've talked about Trump, but we're talking about, this is the year of

39:59 voting, isn't it? Yeah. On a global scale, Chuck. So the girlfriend, we need to give credit, challenged us like we did last year on BDE where we went through Europe and we broke down each

40:14 country and talked about their energy usage and decided not to treat Europe as a Uniblock and instead dive into some detail. She read an article and pointed out, In 2024, seven out of the 10 most

40:28 populous nations will go to the polls. Bangladesh, India, USA, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Mexico, some geopolitically strategic countries, Taiwan and the UK.

40:43 Also, some interesting energy companies are gonna have votes. The Congo, which technically happened December of this last year, but we'll need to talk about it Mozambique, the European Parliament

40:54 and Azerbaijan. So almost 2 billion people in 70 countries are gonna vote this year. And layer on top of that, we've got AI now that pops up. What will that do to elections? Watching what China's

41:10 doing, the Belt Road initiative, et cetera, all the stuff we've been talking about here, precious metals and the like. So it's gonna be a really interesting year So her suggestion to us was.

41:25 each BDE close with two or three minutes on some of these countries, the elections, and maybe how those could impact energy. And when we talk about a country, you have to bring a food from that

41:40 country to BDE. Oh, let's do that. I like that. 'Cause we'll have a cultural experience as well. I love that. Let's do that. So maybe next time we'll do the Congo, and I'll be in charge of

41:50 food

41:52 So there was one that I picked up that's in this

41:59 mix of politics I see. She's got listed for April, India, which is out this past week talking about doubling coal production by 2030 to 15 billion tons, and adding another 88 gigawatts of thermal

42:20 power by 2032, which. You know, the opposition will say that's not what we agreed to at COP 28, etc. But what you're seeing is, in some ways, policies that are being

42:37 driven by and being being designed to

42:43 create stability and a sense of political well-being in your home country, India being, I think a really good example of that, just given the, that the vast majority of their power production is

42:56 colon looks to be for the foreseeable future. It's the cheapest form of energy, by far. Yeah, and they're not the only ones, either. I mean, Indonesia's got a tremendous amount of colon delment.

43:08 And we've talked about that and politicians don't get reelected if people freeze. That's correct. Yeah. I think as Dan said, Dan Pickering said, coming out of COP 28, you have a lot of dancing

43:20 around, talking about and agreeing to things and then you kind of go home, you do what you want. Right, right. That's in my mind, India is a good example of really just doing what you want

43:30 'cause it's, I think, politically inadvisable to do

43:35 things that create - It's just a basically real fancy talk to Emory. Yeah. Yeah, so I had two meetings when I was over in London just with folks that friends with on LinkedIn, a really sharp young

43:53 petroleum engineer, one of the big companies in an investor relations guy for a company that has assets in Africa, and both of them through separate conversations mentioned if the West is gonna say

44:10 to developing countries, let them eat cake, ie, you guys don't get cheap energy like we do, that's not gonna end well

44:21 I completely agree, exactly.

44:26 All right, BD Wildcatters. Thank you for joining us this week. Wait a minute. Oh, we got to hear about the cowboys. We got to hear about the cowboys. But first before that, I have with a heavy

44:37 heart, one of my

44:40 idols, which I don't have idols, but I looked up to them as a child all through my life has passed away. Jackie Burke, junior, who's 100 years old, passed away on January 19th.

44:55 Legend. I saw him not so many days ago. I got to say goodbye in some ways. Great man. He won the Masters. He's won the PGA Championship. He won 16 tournaments and he was a great leader of

45:13 Champions Golf Club where I play golf. He's gonna be well-messed there's been some great people coming out and talking about. Jackie Burke stories, but he will be missed in the city of Houston and

45:28 in the golf world. So. Rest in peace. Rest in peace, Jackie.

45:35 So digital wildcatters. I'll just say it. Go ahead. You can break me. You can

45:41 talk about the Dallas team. What are they called? The Woodlands follow Dallas because you're closer than the Texans. I think it's a coin toss for most people. It's not for me. You do fly out of

45:51 love field, right?

45:54 All right, here's the deal with the Dallas Cowboys.

45:58 It does seem like Tony Romo and Dak Prescott appear to be the same guy.

46:06 And I love Romo. I actually think Romo's greatness is undershadowed by the fact the team never did that well. It was actually not a lot of talent on those Dallas teams and the fact he would get them

46:18 to the playoffs But anyway, I just,

46:23 McCarthy's gone. 12 and five, you know, three years in a row, which normally you'd build a statute of somebody that did that, but the disappointing ends to each one of those playoff games where

46:37 he just appears outmatched. You know, the teams aren't ready to play. I don't know how you bring him

46:46 back to coach. The one rumor I've heard is that Belichick just set word, no way I'm not dealing with the, uh, the mass, but you had Drable who's, uh, you don't want to live in Dallas or, or

46:59 deal with, you don't want to deal with Jerry Jones. Yeah, deal with Jerry Jones. Mike Graebel or Frable, Frable, uh, who's in effect, Bill, Bella, check light and by all intensive purposes,

47:10 a really great coach. What about

47:14 Harbaugh? Harbaugh? He's what he's going to the NFL. Everyone knows it. He is. Where's he going? He seems like he's spending a lot of time talking to San Diego. Yeah, excuse me, the Chargers,

47:24 which are now in LA, much to my cumbros chagrin. Yeah, which is arguably the best quarterback situation out there if you were a coach. My new old favorite NFL coach though, and I haven't spent a

47:38 lot of time watching the NFL over the last several years,

47:43 but the exchange prior to the game in Detroit between a reporter who they have not shown or named yet, asking Todd Bowles, the head coach of Tampa Bay, how he was planning to prepare his team for

48:02 the frigid temps in Detroit. That's great, that's great. And he looks at the reporter and says, You do know we play indoors.

48:11 For 50 years. It's not like they've built this thing. Yeah, they've been playing indoors in the Silver Dome and Ford Field for the last 50 years.

48:22 It'll be about 20 seconds from the time we get off the bus and get into the stadium. So I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal. But these blue collar teams, I love their outdoor stadium.

48:32 So you got Green Bay, you got like Buffalo. Their fans are, I mean, they're more rabid and incredible because the buffalo fan showing up the shovels and the. It's amazing. So I think Detroit is

48:46 just a week for that reason So I was in Cleveland and this was, this was years ago. Gosh, it might have been pushing 15 years ago. It was a Thursday night game. They were playing the Steelers.

48:59 It was supposedly the coldest night of the rivalry and municipal stadium sits right there on the lake. And it feels like every ounce of wind comes down, picks up as much cold water and moisture and

49:14 just flies right over the stadium. So it's freezing cold. my kind's my business partner was smart enough to drink wild turkey that night. So he was fine. I drank beer. I froze from the inside out.

49:25 But two, two observations from that night. One, generally speaking, the working class ticket season holders of the Browns can buy one jersey in their life. So when you buy that jersey, you then

49:40 put tape across the back and change the players name. You change their numbers with tape because you can't afford to go buy the next nice jersey. And so just seeing all of the old Cleveland Browns

49:55 players like a Jim Brown jersey that's been changed through the years, the different stuff was priceless. Number two, happiest guy I've ever seen in my life was literally out there in shorts, no

50:06 shirt on, drinking away. And he passed out halfway through the game and everybody just left him in the stadium. That's crazy. But anyway.

50:18 All right, BDE, we will rush out to the prayer vigil to pray for Colin and his injured prostate, and hopefully it'll get well, and he'll join us again.