Big Digital Energy

0:00 Hey, Digital Wildcat is Nimble Fatty here. I'm talking today about the Mark, the Minerals and Royalties Conference. April 14th and 15th at the Posto Hotel. Colin's gonna be up there as part of a

0:13 panel talking about AI. It's gonna be really cool. It's the best party. It's the best minerals conference. We'd love to have you guys there. So if you go to mineralsconferencecom to sign up and

0:25 you use promo code DW2025, they'll give you a hundred bucks off Tom Nimble Fatty sent you

0:35 But you know what's so wild about, you know, theoretically, we all should follow each other and see each other's tweets and stuff. They say that it's, you literate your followers, see about 10

0:48 of the stuff you tweet out or you post on LinkedIn or whatever. That's why it's always like early and often and over and over again. You almost can't do it too much. Totally agree with that So,

1:01 give us the piece you wrote and the piece you're going to write so that people are on the lookout. Oh, it's about Rory McElroy and just the change in the media landscape, especially around sports.

1:14 I mean, Rory stole someone, actually Luke Potter, a University of Texas golfer who just won a tournament last week. He was at a practice round during the players' championship and Rory hit one in

1:30 the water and he heckled, he's like, Just like the 2011 Masters. Oh. Low-rate charge around, grabs his phone and takes his1, 000 phone and who knows what happened to it. And then has the guy

1:43 kicked out of the players. So, then Rory was asked later about it. He was like, I don't want to talk about it.

1:52 And I would do it again. And then after he won, he said, I'd do it again. I'm just writing about the fact that it's getting harder and harder for media to talk to these guys because they hide

2:06 behind the ropes, their agents kind of cock-bock them, if you will, and call more a call a two weeks ago, refused to talk to the media when he lost, came in second. And it's interesting if you

2:21 juxtapose that to the fact that YouTube golf influencers have more followers and more engagement than any professional media coverage.

2:33 And they trump, they trump professional golfers. And so it's interesting just to see the fact that professional golfers are becoming more and more, I don't wanna talk to the media when you have,

2:43 in the past, you guys have guys like Tom Watson and Greg Norman after a horrific loss will tell the media like, man, and they'll talk about how hard it was. And that's what we used to hold on to.

2:56 But now that you have YouTube and social media, a couple of things One is you can have a direct relationship with your fans. But two is fans would rather spend time with, be around, follow

3:10 influencers than professional golfers. They're more approachable, they're more like us. There's an interesting dynamic happening in sports and influencers in general that is just changing the game.

3:21 And it's interesting to see that professional golfers are actually going away from media than towards media It's kind of my article.

3:34 I think the sentiments you just shared, you could probably plug into any vertical you wanted,

3:44 in terms of, I think that's the same. Media had this position where it was in effect to monopoly, you didn't like how you were treated, now you can go on Rogan, now you can do this. And so, hey,

3:57 I'm out media, leave me alone And you've seen the rise of influencers in every industry, the three of us in oil, for instance, you know? Yeah, and you get, and you mitigate the risk of getting

4:13 sound bited or taken out of context if you're out there

4:18 with the full measure of what your comments are. And I find it interesting that Rory is, I think he's proven to be one of the thinner skinned Professional athletes out there. He was quite vocal

4:32 during the initial days of the dust up between the tour and love, so. Yeah, he was. And I think he was almost put out there, put out by the tour as a media piece. And it's interesting. I don't

4:47 want to necessarily, I'm not taking a side. Now, I wouldn't have been Rory and I wouldn't have been Luke Potter. I actually, I'm laughing with Luke because Go Horns number two, man, what a bold

5:00 move to heckle. If I hit it in the water and someone heckled me, I'd laugh. Like, that's how I play golf. Now, I'm not a professional like Rory is. So, but I did shoot five under at Herman

5:15 Park yesterday. So, a

5:18 couple of chip ends, but - Props to you. From the tips, but it's still Herman Park. Gonna give you that. So, one more on this. I think, is it Anthony Kim who's been - Providing a lot of access.

5:31 Anthony Kim, I love the guy because he does write about he's open. Yeah, he does. Yeah, that's right. He posts a lot about, you know, a lot of behind the ropes type stuff or inside the ropes

5:43 type stuff, which I've read bits and pieces of it. I thought it was pretty cool. Anybody that's ever played the game on the heckler side should know that with a full gallery and under pressure and

5:54 from the tips and tournament conditions, some of these courses that it's well, what's interesting is, that might even have helped Rory thrive by being that way. I mean, that's one of the things

6:05 that to watch is he won the tournament after that. It didn't seem to bother him at all. Maybe it made him play better, but it's just interesting because when I went, you go to a good, good golf

6:19 event or a four, a bar still sports, four play golf event, there's a ton of fans that want to, They're there because they want to be around the influencers, because the influencers are famous,

6:34 but just like them. And we watch professional golf part because we're in awe at how good they are, and it's the best of the best. But we definitely don't relate to them. It's not relatable. Like

6:48 it's not relatable if you heckled me, I'd come steal your phone and have you kicked out. I'd laugh with you, maybe throw something at you if I was upset, but it's sort of part of golf. That the

6:60 thing is, and professional golf people say, well, that's not part of golf. I'm like, it actually has always been part of golf. Like we heckle, I mean, Tiger Woods was the king of needles. We

7:11 needle people all the time. We heckle people all the time. Professionals heckle each other all the time. It's an unwritten rule. I think that's a good article, by the way But I think that's part

7:24 of what's interesting is. It's who's inside the ropes and who's outside. And it happened to be actually a really good golfer who wants to play on for someday, Luke Potter, who had to apologize

7:37 immediately because he knew his reputations at stake if he, well, he was out there, you know? So now he apologized to the tour and say, I'm sorry I didn't mean it, because he's worried about

7:51 what they're gonna do to him someday. It still all comes back to, I think the greatest smack talker of all time was Larry Bird, so I'm all for it. Let him talk smack. It's good stuff. Yeah,

8:03 amen. Exactly. Yeah, what's the most famous bird one at least, the one that I remember as he walks into the locker room during the All-Star game right before the three-point shootout and looks

8:16 around and says, Which one of you coming in second? Yeah, and he did win it. The other one, I forget who he was talking to. It was Magic or Isaiah or one of the, or I think it might have even

8:30 been Charles Barkley. He pulled Barkley aside and he said, Man, why are you doing this? You're just disrespecting me. You got a white guy covering me. Come on, man. There's not another white

8:41 guy out there that could cover me. Yeah, he was great. Dude, Michael Jordan, like if you follow stuff on Twitter on Jordan, the Jordan stuff is just bar none, especially around the LeBron James

8:54 as he as good as Jordan. Jordan, dude, that guy is beyond measure, beyond untouchable about how great he was and competitive and how if anyone irked him, he would just take it out on him. It's

9:07 hilarious. And it's 247 with them. My old partner, Jerry Castellini, used to play in some of the famous or infamous foresomes Bobbalank in Chicago and Jordan would show up occasionally and it's

9:22 It's every hole, every shot. And it's everything in his life. I mean, literally he is competitive at

9:31 everything. Yeah, Jordan, I mean the supposedly at the Olympics, the dream team, I mean they were getting into punching matches and

9:41 practice 'cause people were going at him. So yeah, good stuff. Speaking of, we should talk about the Iranians and the Houthis Yeah, let's do it.

9:54 Didn't think I'd worked that transaction. Yeah, that was quite a transition. Thank you. From exactly. Didn't have that on the bingo card. Fire away, Mark. From bulls and Celtics to pirates.

10:05 Yeah, the US initiated. I think it was 30 airstrikes over the weekend and basically targeted at, you know, terrorist training facilities and

10:17 command and control facilities for drones, et cetera. really a message to Iran about

10:26 an escalation in attacks, which they certainly have been the full, somewhat clandestine backers of over a long period of time as this flare up in the Middle East really notably and Gaza has taken

10:42 hold. And

10:45 this was not kind of an all out campaign as emphasized, but it was a strong message, at least intended by the president to the Iranians directly saying look, you need to quit meddling with American

10:60 interests, American ships and basically commerce traveling through that region. So we'll see

11:09 another example

11:12 of some type of military activity in that region not having any kind of meaningful

11:19 impact uncrewed and I guess if we're tamping down

11:22 the risk to shipping in that area, maybe it's a, maybe it's a bearish sign. So you've got, still don't have crude figured out, given all the chaos that seems to be continuing to unfold,

11:35 particularly in that region and then more broadly in the world. Yeah, I was gonna say this last week, Mark and Chuck, but we need some guys from like VTOL traders on the floor. I know this is so

11:48 anti-regulatory, but I love the idea They need to be in little widgets down on our screen, commenting live on like, Hey, Bob, what's up with the, body, what's up with the crude right now? And

12:01 he's like, Ah, here's what we're thinking aboutaround the hoot teeth. Now, he would never give up his position strategy, but it would be incredible to get the traders who are actually trading

12:11 around this news to comment in real time. Yeah, to Mark's point, are they even using news, Or is it like, you know, ho-hum? It didn't seem to do much to oil prices. The thing I'll say about

12:27 this, that I like kind of two things. One, pretty freaking baller for Trump coming off the golf course in his own golf shirt after winning the club championship, putting on the headphones and

12:41 watching it on the screen live. I thought it was pretty cool and a little bit of, hey, we're back, baby But then the second thing I'll say is, it seems like the world, particularly the Middle

12:59 East, is just a lot calmer when I rans poor. So hopefully we're gonna squeeze the sanctions back on those guys and let's get the Abraham Accord signed between Israel and Saudi Arabia and whoever

13:17 else there, and maybe in our lifetime, see a relative period of peace, 'cause quite frankly, everybody deserves it there, you know? Especially the Iranian citizenry. Yeah, no doubt. I mean,

13:31 we pray for peace in the Middle East on a weekly basis. I mean, come on. But it might be universal, it never happens. Who knows? Well, maybe it's on the table. We got a lot of business to

13:43 conduct, apparently, and Saudi here before too long on the heels of the extended phone call that Trump had with Putin yesterday. Any reactions to that? You know, the whole thing I hate about this

13:57 whole Trump-Putin, the peace in Ukraine thing is I just wish everybody would shut up about it 'cause I don't think it does us any justice If we're running around saying, you know, Trump's a Putin

14:14 agent. You gotta say nice things about the guy to get him to the peace table. You don't, you know, it doesn't mean you're his best friend. It doesn't mean you're an agent of him. But, you know,

14:25 Putin holds a lot of cards right now. And at the end of the day, you know, that war needs to stop. And, you know, at the end of the day and, you know, if it's such a great war, you can go

14:40 sign up Zelensky said anybody can come join my army that they want. This thing needs to stop. And so I just wish we'd all kind of shut up and there's going to be this awkward dance of trying to

14:53 figure out exactly the terms of the ceasefire. And let's just hope it actually works because at the end of the day, I don't think we're doing none of us commenting on it and saying, oh, Trump

15:07 should do this, Putin should do that, Zelensky should do that None of that is helping. Well, yeah, and, you know, This is to your point diplomacy. There's kind of the honey versus vinegar,

15:23 right? So if you're making public comments about someone, it's probably good to say something constructive post a private conference call or a call. I found the characterization coming out of most

15:40 of the mainstream media, you know, a bit of an eye roll in terms of, well, it started with a phase one, which is we're gonna cease fire for 30 days on striking energy infrastructure. Well,

15:56 that's a starting point. And in the meantime, you know, Putin allegedly had delineated some demands primarily that the West and NATO in particular stop providing support both in terms of resources

16:16 And, you know, we'll go from there. And so that's obviously going to be, I think the president is talking to Zelensky today, who's not hesitated to put pretty extensive tweets out there,

16:33 basically, I don't know if it's digging in his heels, but I can't imagine if these types of demands, at least the initial round of demands from Putin that basically says you need to kind of need to

16:47 pull the rug out from under Zelensky from a support standpoint, that's going to be a non-starter, but who knows? I wish they'd get behind closed doors, whether it's in Saudi or somewhere else, or

17:00 get on a Zoom call and start the conversation with all parties involved. I just want to make it pointless. I mean, give it to the Democrats, when it's because it is warfare politics. The fact

17:14 that they have position Trump as a sympathizer with Putin, has really created a credibility with, to some people with Trump speaking to Putin ever. I mean, you kind of have to give it to, wow,

17:29 what a strategy it actually did play out, even though the Russian collusion hoax has been proven to be a hoax, whatever. But the fact anytime Trump speaks to Russia, there is a question mark there

17:44 So, you know, again, you know my feelings about Russia. I don't, I think it's much to do about nothing and way overplayed,

17:54 besides the Ukraine issue, which is a major issue, but other than that, I don't, you know, sound a nuclear issue, energy, the energy policy is an energy policy. I haven't changed a whole lot,

18:06 has it? How did the Cold War end? Correct diplomacy between Reagan and Gorbachev as one dimension of it. Even at the height

18:19 of the Cold War, I mean, we were back channeling with the Russians. I mean, there were always discussions happening between us and I think it's dangerous if they don't. I mean, anybody that's

18:32 got that much nuclear warheads facing us, I at least wanna be talking to 'em. I wanna hear what they're thinking, even if they're bad people. You know, and at the end of the day, I know I've

18:44 tweeted this out a million times, but I'll go ahead and say it. You know, all this Russian collusion, he's an agent and stuff. Until you show me the PP tape with the prostitute, I don't believe

18:56 you. You know, I mean, come on. And then the last one, I guess, Israel is taking its sanction or support from Trump to do whatever's necessary to end this hostage situation the over seen we've

19:11 So. last few days

19:16 reinitiated strikes in Gaza. Again, another escalation that doesn't

19:23 seem to matter to crude markets, which is by and large, still way overshadowed by the fact that the OPEC-8 involved in the restoration of cuts to the market is the big over to hang in as always

19:38 watch inventories. I think the context for this discussion on BDE is around whether they pull others into the fight. If they're not, then it's kind of just an isolated, big issue, you know,

19:54 outside of energy, but inside energy is sort of a non-issue and my side of it will get pulled in. And that's the question mark. It goes back to Iran, who else, you know, like sort of where are

20:05 the loyalties lie and what's gonna happen? That to me is what the risk is and what to watch who's going to get pulled out and why and what's going to happen. Yeah, it's the, what is it, 20, 25

20:17 of the world's oil going through those straights right there. That's kind of the issue. 'Cause if you make that so dangerous, that can't happen, ships can't go in there. Nobody will insure it to

20:30 your point, Kirk. That's the deal. Now, morally, this

20:46 is not a good idea, but I'm just gonna ask a question here. If we got some private equity chuck, and our business model was to go pirate these big oil ships and trade off the information, could we

20:55 make a successful business there? Well, you know, I think we're already doing it with satellite imagery and stuff, you know? I mean, at the end of the day, I think they're being tracked and

21:06 people smarter than me are sitting there figuring out what all this means, You see periodically someone say, here's the ship and it disappeared off satellite. Maybe that's our business idea is if

21:20 we can make stuff non-trackable by satellites. I think that oil X is already doing that. I think that's their business model. Speaking of, back to Russia real quick, it's my understanding that

21:34 there was a cosmonaut on the capsule that splashed down yesterday Yeah, I saw him, I was watching the press release of him being dragged out of the thing. And he'd been up there, I think 171 days,

21:50 that to Russia and the United States credit, none of the politics has seeped over into the space

22:02 initiatives and we've kept it civil there and we've still cooperated And that's probably a good thing, which, which is You know strong evidence of the the benefits of a tense, but peaceful

22:19 coexistence politically Right, we're we're doing some really cool stuff and we have been collaborating across that that

22:31 Divide for decades now, especially where the International Space Station is Concerned and so I just caught my attention. Oh, there's a cosmon on capsule Wait a minute. I Does that also mean that

22:45 the president is is is a Putin agent or a mouthpiece? We've been doing this stuff for decades, you know, we don't need to go on more about this, but Russian China teaming up is bad. So to the

23:01 extent we can kind of keep some distance between those two somehow and It's probably gonna be equal parts carried equal parts stick with both of them to kind of,

23:14 to keep that relationship at bay a little bit. It's just something we're gonna have to do. I wish I had the exact quote, but Marco Rubio was talking about international relations and his whole

23:27 point was, yeah, you don't trust the

23:32 people you deal with, but you have to deal with these people. And so you watch their actions and verify

23:41 and that's what we have to do. I mean, unfortunately, we don't get our choice of who runs this country or that country 'cause we've tried that some and it hadn't worked out very well for us. But

23:52 by the way, Chuck, speaking of, I mean, we haven't even spoken about the biggest news ever yesterday. I mean, the JFK files released, you're a big JFK junkie, I just read a book about it. So

24:06 now as I texted you, I'm kind of on this. Shane, what do we know about JFK? And how does that tie to our energy policy? Let's try to take that route somehow, but let's just talk about the

24:20 biggest news ever. Who killed him? They, you know, it's wild 'cause the backdrop just for people that haven't watched Chuck Gates needs a job have had, I've done some Kennedy stuff there. My dad

24:34 went to Southwestern med school in Dallas in the mid '60s, and the teaching hospital was Parkland Hospital where Kennedy was brought. And so the folks in the operating room working on Kennedy, the

24:51 emergency room, trying to save his life were actually my dad's professors in college. And so the one bit of information that I have about the assassination that no one else has, and I wrote my

25:05 senior thesis at Rice - And you're alive, which is crazy. Yeah, which means I'm wrong. That was actually the premise of my thesis is, if you said something about the Kennedy assassination and you

25:17 died mysteriously, you were right. If

25:22 you're still alive, you're lying. So, you know, Arlen Spector, Dan Rather, all these people and their takes on the assassination, they're still alive, they're thriving, they're dead, or

25:33 they're lying versus the person that dies in the one car accident. But now, the one story I have that's unique is the, you know, Oswald would not have been charged with the federal crime. He

25:49 would have been charged by the state of Texas for murder. But I wasn't against the federal law to shoot the president, it is now. And so, under Texas law at the time, Oswald, as a defendant,

26:02 had the right to an autopsy on the victim. by the county medical examiner. And that guy's name was Earl Rose. And Earl Rose was kind of this Quincy-like

26:16 character before Quincy was there. He solved a crime one time where came out to an apartment and a woman is shot dead in bed and the guy's sitting there saying I didn't do it and they're arresting

26:29 the guy. And Earl Rose goes and puts string and all the holes 'cause it was a shotgun of the woman and he gathered it back and lo and behold, it was outside and there was a tree there, big limb.

26:46 And so an ex-boyfriend had climbed up there and shot from outside the window. And so Earl Rose was this amazing pathologist and he was in the emergency room, saw Kennedy's body. There's rumors that

27:01 he started the autopsy and he got dragged out. what the doctors saw paramount feature. They talked about the Secret Service holding Earl Rose up against the wall as they dragged the body out. So my

27:18 dad - This is documented. Yeah, my dad and Earl Rose got along really well 'cause that was dad's pathology professor. So dad's after class one day talking to Earl Rose, student comes up and says,

27:30 Hey, Dr. Rose, I'd like to ask you about the Kennedy assassination Earl Rose says, Hey, everything I have to sayis in the Warren Commission, go read it. I don't talk outside that. That student

27:42 walked away. So it was just dad and Earl Rose. And Earl Rose looked at dad and says, I don't care what anyone says. This was an entrance wound. And so when I wrote my thesis at Rice, Dr. Rose

27:55 was in Iowa, I think at the University of Iowa, I actually called his office, got him on the phone, said, Hey, Chuck Yates, my father, Charles Yates was student of yours in the 60s. So I

28:07 remember your father, I was quite fond of your father. And I said, I said, well, dad said, you said this, that that was an entrance wound. And Earl Rose said something to the effect of

28:19 wouldn't you like to know and hung up on me. But yeah, now it's,

28:25 so basically when you're getting all the release of this stuff, as best we can tell, there are no smoking guns in this yet There are redacted things, but with most things, Kennedy, what happens

28:37 is you find a small little nugget here, you tie it to this, and it's more like a jinga game, if you will, than there's gonna be a memo that says kill Kennedy today at one o'clock. What about the

28:54 Underhill letter?

28:56 Yeah,

28:59 so Underhill came out and said, Hey, the CIA killed Kennedy and. He quote unquote committed suicide six months later. The other interesting thing is supposedly John F. K. Jr. wrote a

29:11 handwritten note to Joe Biden saying you're a traitor. Now they can't verify that John F. Kennedy Jr. actually wrote it or just somebody purporting to be him. There's a lot of stuff in the files

29:26 about JFK and being weary of the CIA So more of that's coming out, there's more about tracking Oswald's movements in Mexico because he was going down there to the Cuban Embassy. None of the IRS

29:42 records have come out yet. So that's kind of a thing that the conspiracy folks are looking for. But so far, no smoking guns. The one thing I'll close on is Cash Patel, our new FBI director, He's

29:60 actually read all of the Kennedy files. And when he was asked about it, he said, Well, I can't talk about it. That said, you're not gonna learn anything more about the assassination, but you

30:14 will be shocked with what you learn. So people have kind of thought that the reason these things haven't been

30:23 released yet is not so much about the assassination, but maybe practices and methods by the CIA or maybe who were CIA agents or informants and stuff. And so I think that's, as this stuff continues

30:39 to get released, that's probably what we're gonna see. I'm just curious about why the Secret Service pulled Kennedy's body out of the autopsy room. Like that's documented, and it was a Texas,

30:54 it's a Texas murderer under Texas law. And it's under law, they had to do the autopsy in Texas, but they didn't. The Secret Service wouldn't allow them to do the perform the autopsy. That to me

31:06 is stinks. So it does stink, but, and let me say this, I will defend LBJ here. At least one of the scenarios by the CIA is that when the Russians invade, they shoot our leader, and then they

31:25 launch nuclear bombs at us So this is before the age of instantaneous communication, Kennedy is shot, Johnson is sitting there going, what the hell? Get me back to DC. Jackie's like, I'm not

31:42 going without his body. And LBJ is like, I am not leaving Jackie and Dallas, grieving in a blood stained address while I fly back to DC. He looked at the Secret Service and said, go get the

31:56 fucking body and let's get the hell out of here. And literally when LBJ landed, NDC. That was his first question. Our nukes on the way. So I'm

32:09 defending LBJ here. I don't, I get it kind of stinks, but at the same time, I understand it. That being said, as a Texan, I'm going to be really disappointed if LBJ wasn't involved somehow.

32:21 Dude, LBJ rigged the election at Southwest Teachers College, when he ran, when he was at university there. So I'm like, he's corrupt. So somewhere there is something he's involved somehow. But

32:39 read about his 1948 Senate victory,

32:45 the ballot box and the bank that burned down, I think it was in Jim Wells County

32:52 That's why they call him landslide London. Yeah, there we go. Now totally, totally understood the, uh, the, the power of government and how to win. Win friends and influence, but yeah, LBJ

33:06 was one of a kind. But yeah, no, so I tweeted out this morning. I asked Cash Patel if he'd come on the podcast now that the documents are released and just tell me what he was talking about. Well,

33:21 cool boys, we'll get to Alaska next week. I'm dropping a podcast sometime soon with Colin Grebo from the Cato Institute He's the anti-Jones Act dude that

33:34 I've done a podcast with before. And anyway, he went through just all the energy ramifications from the Jones Act. Like Hawaii has to buy propane from Libya. And part of this whole Alaska story is

33:49 I wanna build this pipeline. The only reason they need a pipeline is there are no Jones Act compliant LNG tankers out there where Alaska could just ship. to itself, you know? So unfortunately we

34:04 need it. We need an exception there, so.

34:09 Yeah, you do have the issue of not fully ice-free waterways up around the North Slope where all the gas is. Yeah. But yeah, and I just did a quick calculation. There's 35 TCF of gas that sets in

34:24 the gas cap at Prudo. And if you built that three in FBCF a day pipeline, which we could talk about more, it would take you almost 30 years at assuming that

34:36 rate is maintained. So there's lots of gas up there. Well, we'll talk a lot more than Alaska needs. Well, we'll talk Alaska next time. Good to see you guys. Yeah, no doubt. Talk less. All

34:50 righty. Hey, everybody, if you enjoyed the podcast, tell your friends about it, leave comments. Don't say mean things about me I'm very fragile and my ego wouldn't be able to take it. And he

35:01 might take your phone. Yeah, I try to take the mic. Don't huckle chuck.