Big Digital Energy

0:00 Hey, digital wildcatters, we are back. We're in a brand new studio, thus, you know, the black walls everywhere. Um, that being said, we all have all sorts of neat gimmicky things. Jacob now

0:16 has a computer screen that y'all can't see. That's right off camera. He's going to pop stuff up on us. And, uh, this is the, this is the new studio. Welcome back, Mark and senior in the studio

0:28 I, uh, what, what's the facility called? What are we calling this? Wildcat or warehouse. Wildcat or warehouse. Oh, yeah. Clyde warehouse, Clyde campus. Maybe not, not it didn't come off

0:43 like wildcat or warehouse. And this is the first first thing I ever recorded in here in the new studio. There it is. And anyway, so big announcement, um, digital wildcatters and within six

0:58 months, will be known as Claude. Um, because every tech company is named after its product and collide as our product, but, uh, we closed a5 million seed round led by mercury ventures out of

1:12 Houston. Blair, Alex, thank you very much for the money had a numerous other notable oil and gas folks in there, Billy Quinn, Brian Sheffield, David Allman, Trey Yates, um, who else? Gene

1:29 Shepherd, Cameron, Dan, Dan Pickering came in. Sorry, Dan. And, uh, anyway, so really excited. We have completed our transition from kind of podcast media, bros to being a legit AI

1:46 enterprise software company. Kind of cool Big week. Big week. Absolutely. The, uh, it's funny. A lot of people have been texting. Calling. Hey, congratulations. Saw the announcement on the

1:60 deal and all. And I still comes back to it. My dad always says, you know, dad's a doctor and people go, well, what's the chances that I live, Doc? And dad always goes, well, it's either 100

2:11 or zero, either. Well, he wants. So, you know, we got5 million. We still have to go build software, sell it and and monetize. But it's easier to do with some money And how's that

2:23 going now that you have a job? I do have a job. We may have to change the name of the podcast. Chuck Yates has a job. No, it's wild. Seeing the enthusiasm, receptivity to technology, AI, it's

2:41 kind of top of mind, I think, with everyone. And just the ability to go out and search stuff really quickly is pretty exciting given we all spend what half our time looking for shit. So yeah, I'm

2:56 getting Better, faster is, I think, everyone's ultimate objective. Now that we've - That's what she said, diddadadada. Now that we

3:06 find ourselves in another phase of sector, you wanna call it stress, certainly not stress. Yeah, where are we? How would you even describe, I mean, since the last - I don't know, I haven't

3:17 looked at X in the last five minutes. The run of show has changed 12 times since the last time we recorded it. Let's talk about this, nope Now it's changed, you gotta talk about this. Yeah, I

3:28 think we vowed to, 'cause we let off last year, several weeks in a row with oil, but

3:36 we're kind of back to that as the leading indicator of things that are most front of mind and topical. I'm pretty curious to see how earning season kicks off and all of this uncertainty and what's

3:51 happened to crude over the last few years. couple of weeks since Liberation Day and OPEC's acceleration announcement. Yeah, so just to level set, Trump comes out, announces tariffs on the whole

4:03 wide world, 90-day reprieve, exceptions here and there seem to be floating out and all, but obviously havoc in the market, markets collapsed, bounce back some, et cetera All prices took it

4:20 totally on the chin, have bounced back a little. Where are we? Mid 60s? Good. Pushing 63 today, I think we're a little under 63. Having visited the upper mid 50s, although I don't think we've

4:34 had a close in the 50s over the last week or two, but

4:42 I kind of look at, and it's on down the list, but one of the things that I was going back and forth with origin about in the midst of the beginning of all this was, you know, Yeah, we've got the

4:56 announcement that OPEC is going to accelerate the restoration that they announced being on plan to start the spring. And I think they actually have it. I mean, I think for years on the podcast,

5:11 I've always said, I'm not sure OPEC really has to spare to look at the right county. I think that I think they actually have it this time Yeah, and I look at it this way and of course the industry

5:22 is doing a bit of a double take because of what's happened and the notion that, you know, activities going up, spendings going up, productions going up is pretty counter to what the industry has

5:40 been through for the last five years at least and some could argue the better part of the last 10 years being more disciplined, being focused on returns, less so about absolute production growth.

5:53 And so I think somewhat cynically or creatively that Trump could point to what I call drill baby drill by proxy. I mean, he got 10 bucks out of crude in a matter of less than a week

6:10 with these announcements. And you've got an industry a bit on its heels again in terms of how it's thinking about near term and into next year CAPEX So

6:24 if we peaked as oil production finally peaked in the United States, I mean, it feels like the whole time we've been doing this podcast, I'm sitting there going, oh, we peaked. Nope, not yet.

6:35 Oh, we peaked. Not yet. We're still seeing a bow wave of efficiency gains. I think growth rates remain positive year over year, but

6:45 certainly at a lower rate of change A few hundred thousand barrels a

6:51 day this year over. last year and, you know, we, we perform above expectations in, in 23 and 24. So, you know, we'll see. But I do think that there is, you know, this is one clear, at

7:08 least political when that, that Trump or, or

7:16 one of the many promises in terms of both policy and the political expectations that have been set, you know, I don't care about the details that this isn't the US producer group, meaningfully

7:30 adding to supply growth, crude prices are down a lot in a very short period of time. So, a good point to that is when I don't bother me with the details as a, kind of a generalist or a consumer,

7:42 I just know energy prices are coming down and they came down pretty hard. You know, I said at nape on the panel and nape was cool enough to let me release it as a podcast. So you should get check

7:53 it out cause, uh, uh, and Dan Kathleen, everybody was really good on, uh, on that panel, but I said, look, Trump's just a low oil guy. He always has been, I mean, he, he always has been,

8:07 and he was going to get there by hook, crook, whatever, you know, if it's bribing the Saudis, he's going to go bribe the Saudis He's going to get his lower oil prices. We got to figure out what

8:19 we can get out of Trump. And I think that, you know, and we've talked about it on here too, is that's building infrastructure. Anything we need to get built. Let's do it in the next three years,

8:30 LNG, export, turnals, pipelines, power lines, whatever. We got to get that done. I did have that and that's, that's fundamentally what drill baby drill means, which is a broader energy

8:42 infrastructure and capacity expansion. Yeah, but our industry is certainly kind of raising an eyebrow here and against the backdrop of - Yeah, Chris, right? Come on, where are you, dude? Help,

8:59 help. Yeah, I mean, did we expect anything different though from a -

9:05 Well, as Brian Sheffield said, from a Yankee. He's a Yankee, he doesn't understand oil, but no, the, so I actually have an interesting day to point to, last two days have been the mark, the

9:18 minerals and royalties conference that Carl Brinsicki and the guys at Haymaker put on. And, you know, it was really good stuff. Steve Trauber's speech, supposedly just crushed talking about the

9:33 current environment. What's going on with the tariffs? And like, talking to a CEO, and I asked multiple of them, I'm like, have we seen a tariff in an AFE yet?

9:46 And the answer was, Nah, nah, I haven't seen anything except one guy said yes. And I said, Oh, really? What's that? And he goes, It's interesting. I've been texting all day with my head

9:58 operations guy. I haven't talked to him, so I don't have the details, but we've just been texting, you know, sand is domestic. It's, you know, so that wouldn't it. But supposedly steal and

10:12 pipe prices The, the pipe quote was two acts, what it was three weeks ago. That, it was, and it was, it was anticipation of tariffs coming in and no doubt. Chinese steel. Well, well, this

10:29 guy said American steel, but it was anticipating higher prices from the Chinese, you know, and so they think they can capture some of it. Of course, EMP companies and service companies just do

10:43 this all day. He didn't know if this was just an opening salvo and they were gonna back off, but he's like, yes, I have officially seen a tariff price now in an AFE.

10:55 Remember, Aubrey used to send out those mass letters in downturns and downturns. Yeah. Do you ever see those? Yeah. Yeah, those are great. Demanding across the board. Yeah. So what you're

11:10 saying is on the steel front, American suppliers are anticipating higher price dealing because they can raise their prices to instill be more competitive with something that's got what,

11:24 125 tariff on it? Yeah. Yeah. And so we've got at least one data point. And the guy said, Hey, when I talk to my ops guy, I'll call you and I'll walk you through it. So I'm expecting that

11:32 phone call to learn more But so where does this shake out?

11:44 I mean,

11:47 I think, so what I think happens is Trump just shook everything up, and whether it was premeditated or he had to just walk stuff back because the markets went crazy. It doesn't really matter. We

12:01 basically got to 10 tariffs on the rest of the world, and everybody seems pretty grateful about just having 10, and supposedly 130 countries have reached out, including the island of penguins,

12:15 supposedly.

12:17 For negotiating trade deals, it looks like Japan's really serious about it, Israel's serious about it, the UK's serious about it. Don't know how serious Europe is, but they haven't retaliated

12:25 Canada retaliated, Mexico didn't, but it looks like something's going to happen there, and the administration will be announcing, I bet.

12:44 a deal a week for the next several weeks of some sort. So we have essentially what amounts to a 90-day cooling-off period? 90-day cooling-off period will be announcing deals all the, but all eyes

12:57 on China. So we're sitting there standing with China and it's who blinks, who has the relative strength there. I think consensus is America probably holds more cards there, but I'm not sure,

13:13 because Xi is in office for life, and Trump arguably has 18 months given the midterms. So I don't know that we hold as many cards as we think we do. Yeah, and one of the things that's supporting

13:32 or boosting crude today, if you can call the move toward 63 a boost, we'll take it Yeah. Yeah is. You know, there seems to be some movement at least on starting negotiations. I read somewhere

13:47 that China is demanding,

13:52 quote unquote, more respect. And I think they've asked for a new primary contact, whatever that means. And so, you know, this whole issue of

14:05 the pause or the 10 standard, the 90 day thing is the thing that just keeps the, I think the markets off balance in terms of, okay, what happens after 90 days? Because not to get too far off the

14:24 subject, although I think it's relevant. DRW put out the sub stack yesterday called dotting the eyes and crossing the T's. And on a lot of these high profile

14:39 issues or promises execution of those things, the symbolism has been great early on in the administration, but the execution has been, in some cases, arguably sloppy, right? So if you take, for

14:56 example,

14:59 the notion that Russia Ukraine would be resolved within 24 hours, or at least within the first hundred days, we've reached kind of an impasse where the president's impatience is

15:14 starting to show and basically signaling to Russia, you got to put up or shut up. Well, what's clear in that chaos of back and forth on ceasefire and certain escalations of

15:29 attacks is, you know, the fundamental issues are still kind of intractable from either side. NATO membership, ultimately some time. Ukraine and then Russia being able to hang on to its territory.

15:46 So are we getting closer to this

15:51 full ceasefire notion when we had the kind of the start, we're going to call a ceasefire on attacks on on energy infrastructure, but are we getting closer? It kind of feels like we're we're stuck

16:04 in the mud here. You know, my gut on and I have no unique insight into Ukraine and Russia. Maybe we should ask Vlad next time we have coffee with him this morning. There. Yeah. We can ask Vlad

16:18 if he's got any insight, but my feeling is there was always a saying about the Middle East that it's always kind of darkest before the dawn. And when it gets really bad is usually when you have a

16:31 breakthrough. And if you kind of trace through the history of that, it feels like with the three hard-headed people we have dealing with Russia, Ukraine, Trump, Putin, and Zelensky, it's going

16:46 to have to be really bad and come to a head before something crystallizes. And maybe that is what's happening right now. I mean, the Russians just drop some bombs, civilians got hit. Trump's

17:01 starting to lose, lose his patience and saying, hey, you know, we got all sorts of stuff, we can throw at you, Russia, you know, he's, he's obviously lost as cool as Zelensky a few times and,

17:14 and that seems to be creeping up. So maybe we're at the point where something's going to happen, but can't disagree that it, it hasn't been the, we're done in 24 hours. It's more of a commentary

17:26 on just, or broadly, the execution across the high, the highest priority or the highest profile set of issues politically. whether it's immigration, whether it's Russia, Ukraine, whether it's

17:41 China and tariffs in the trade war, there just seems to be quite a bit of unnecessary noise around that and putting expectations out there that these things are gonna reach resolution very quickly,

17:57 I

18:01 think is increasing the risk of the risk the risk on the runway heading into next year in the midterm elections. Although, what I will say, what I've always said about like, you know, liberal

18:14 friends everybody's are like, oh 'cause Trump my God, he's such a liar and blah, blah, blah. I'm always like, yeah, but directionally he's right. And I

18:24 think it's because at his core, he's a real estate agent. Hey, these are the greatest schools in all of Houston. This is the most beautiful street, you know, this is the best looking house

18:33 you'll find a great price on this. I mean, directionally your real estate agent isn't lying to you, but they're definitely full of hyperbole, et cetera. So I think that's what you get a lot of

18:45 times with Trump, directionally he's right. He probably is the only person that can get Zelensky and Putin to come to an agreement. It's not gonna be

18:56 24 hours. And I do think you're right that ultimately that kind of devil in the details actually getting stuff done. You've got the mainstream media just beating against him. Ultimately, where

19:07 does that play out in the midstream? Is the big constraint on him? Well, and I don't think it's squarely on the administration or singularly on the administration. Congress needs to get some stuff

19:17 done too. Totally. We have a flurry of executive actions, but we need to budget. We need to make these policy pivots permanent in the form of legislation. Yeah, 'cause two things with all the

19:30 market and blaming tariffs and all that. I mean, the largest tax increase in the history of the United States is staring us in the face unless Congress asks, or acts. And so that's some real risk

19:44 right

19:45 there. The other thing is the, I read this, Kyle Bass, put up this tweet about a week or two. The Fed's actually shrunk its balance sheet by23 trillion. So

19:59 I mean, guess which direction markets go when the Fed shrinks its balance sheet? So I mean, definitely, definitely not. All right, so prediction, where are we in six months on all of the litany

20:15 of the things we're doing? So where are we on tariffs associated with markets? Where are we on oil price? Where are we on Russian? Let's do our predictions so we can be held accountable So

20:31 six months is, you know, a year out from midterm elections. I think we're

20:38 resolved in some way, shape, or form on the key tariffs issue. I think we have to be, you know, the political damage of, I'd read something about, I think it was an Ohio paper mill that had

20:55 been operating since 1817, announced its closure as of this month because of the cost increase, the operating cost increases related to tariffs. I don't know what all the details are in behind that,

21:12 but, you know, we can't have a litany of those types of things where, you know, the time to adjust to tariffs that prove, let's say after 90 days, we go back to the kind of the reciprocal and

21:29 escalation certain cases on key supply chain components. Um, you know, that's, that's going to inflate costs. It's going to probably in the short run result in, um, higher unemployment, et

21:44 cetera. And you know, you don't, you don't, you know, you don't revitalize the manufacturing sector, which is one of the, the aims of, of the, of the tariff strategy, um, between now and

21:58 the critical time of the midterm elections, what's your, what's your thought on, on the tariffs So here's ultimately what happens. 27 deals between now and, uh, the 90 day end, I think we're on

22:13 day 83. So 83 days from now, 27 deals will be announced, including some big E's. Let's say Japan, maybe Israel, um, will be announced as agreed to or substantially agreed to. I think there's

22:29 going to be a lot of, we have the framework for a deal with Japan.

22:35 suspending the tariffs indefinitely to get it done. So 27 of those will happen. Why 27? I'm looking into the crystal ball, it says 27. So 27 will be done. It'll be standoff with China. It's

22:51 gonna be full on escalation. Z and Trump, six months from now, will have not sat down, will not have had a meeting No talks have happened. I believe at the six month point, Trump plays the card

23:12 of sending US military planes into Taiwan. Wow. And he picks up basically the brain trust of Taiwan and gets them out of there. 'Cause at the end of the day, what I've heard about those chip

23:26 manufacturers is the buildings and stuff doesn't matter It's maybe 200 people. that know how to run those factories, know how to innovate, et cetera, that matter. So grabbing those 200 people and

23:43 getting them out, you can hand Taiwan to China and they will not get the revenue machine they thought. So we just bring them here to the US. We'll just bring them here to the US. They get steeply

23:55 discounted gold cards. They get a gold card, complimentary gold card and free buffet and cheap drinks So I think, I think, you know, I'm being flippant here but I do think it escalates with China

24:10 and neither side's given in kind of on six months. I don't know ultimately what the impact will be on the economy in that. I mean, I have a sneaking suspicion that both sides will turn a blind eye

24:29 to China goods going through Vietnam coming here. So maybe functionally we won't have the big tariffs in place on either side. But I think it's gonna go longer and I hope I'm wrong. I mean, I hope

24:47 Trump and G sit down and figure this out. Yeah, he's got a lot on his plate. We haven't even talked about Iran. Yeah. So

25:01 what was the second issue? I forget, we were talking tariffs. Ultimately, what does that do to oil price? The economy, what else did I say? Anyway,

25:14 we were making predictions on all of it and I've forgotten.

25:18 So go to Iran.

25:21 Direct talks with the Iranians are starting. Are starting, supposedly round one went well enough that they're going out on the second date, which is I believe in Rome. Is it in Rome? I think so.

25:36 Yeah.

25:40 Very interesting because at the end of the day, I think what has, at least what I've heard communicated is you're not gonna have a nuclear bomb. And if not, us and Israel are gonna destroy your

25:57 capability on that front. It's your choice. So this is less about a framework of a deal and how much uranium can you negotiate as opposed to we get to check up on you. Let's figure out those rules.

26:11 Yeah, and as I may have this wrong, but wasn't one of the have to haves on the Iranian side, we reserve our right to enrich uranium. Yeah. Which obviously has a weapons end game. And so, is

26:27 that like the set of non-negotiables

26:32 are essentially still in place with respect to Russian Ukraine as an example, you know, and does this ultimately get anywhere? Or do we end up sanctioning Iran and with more aggressive enforcement

26:44 of driving their, theoretically driving their, their oil exports to zero? Yeah. Is that, you know, is that where this goes? Are you hopeful that we're going to get to some resolution within

26:56 that six month forecast timeframe that you talked about with the Iranian negotiations? Yeah. The, you know, the, at the end of the day, I've always wondered if I was a dictator of a third world

27:12 country of some sort, I think I'm good. You know, it's like, I kind of run a country here. I got some nice beaches. I hear the skiing in the mountains outside of Tehran. Very nice. Like, why

27:26 would I want to go to war with the great Satan. You know, it's okay to kind of rattle your saber about them, but why would I actually want to go to war with them? So I'm hoping there's an element

27:40 of that that plays out with the Ayatollah of just, do I

27:46 really want to risk the fact that they'll unleash Israel and their own bombers on me? No, okay. We'll figure out some gracious way to back down from this.

28:04 All right, what else do we have? So moving north of the border, I thought the piece that Dunberg put out this morning, what I call Canadian federalism and rapid permitting reform, the title of

28:19 the piece was the fixes in. And it's basically, look, I think everybody can agree that Carney is going to win the election next. Which is stunning. Yeah. It's absolutely stunning I never would

28:32 have thought, when that dude was sitting there, I'm blanking on who the opposition guy is, but he was eating the apple being interviewed. I was like, oh man, this guy wins 80 of the vote. Yeah.

28:44 So the thesis in this piece is that, you know, you've got, you've got a country that for the last 20 years has more or less blocked

29:00 or shut down or been slow. about building needed energy and infrastructure, mainly pipelines for egress out of Alberta to either the Pacific coast or across Canada to Quebec where the demand centers

29:17 are. And

29:21 they posit that, you know, ultimately, because, you know, the premiers of Alberta and Quebec are now talking, there's, you know, kind of a rising patriotism and federalism in Canada that, you

29:38 know, ultimately, Carney's gonna take office and really fall in line and you're gonna see a real domino effect with respect to

29:48 permitting and

29:52 getting some things done. And I think the most interesting point The most amusing point to me is, you know, Climate was really

30:05 the fly in the ointment to getting things done over the last 15, 20 years in Canada. Very effective oppositions. The only thing that really got built in terms of major projects was Trans Mountain.

30:16 And that was way late and about four times budget ended up costing over30 billion. I don't know if it's Canadian or US, I think it was US dollars

30:27 But the notion that Trump is a greater threat, mainly because of what's happened in the early stages of the administration back and forth, Canada's 51st state, et cetera, that now we're going to

30:43 get things done and get this infrastructure that's key to

30:48 both our national security and economic well-being. And that basically the climate-based opposition is ultimately gonna be defined. in Canada. So that's the prediction. We're going to see a lot of

31:03 activity in Canada with support from the US. In fact, I don't recall Trump in the last couple of weeks

31:14 uttering any of that rhetoric, you know, Governor Trudeau and. Yeah, that may have just been directed at true to not the Canadians But so I think it's an interesting thesis or hypothesis about

31:32 what's, you know, what may break the inertia that has beset Canada and this jolt that they've gotten from, you know, the threat of tariffs and this whole, despite the fact that we did have some

31:46 exemption and relief on Liberation Day for Canadian energy imports, which makes all the sense in the world, by the way. Yeah, no. I mean, we definitely want to remain as pregnant as possible

31:58 with Canadian energy. just so it always has a home in the United States. The other thing, though, that I think, you know, the more I read about it, Israel is, there really is fentanyl stuff

32:12 going on in Canada. That was not a made up thing by the Trump administration. They've busted multiple labs where they're importing stuff from China and mixing it in Canada. So there was something

32:26 real to that Yeah, and people trivializing the fact that the seizures last year amounted to what, 43 pounds? Yeah, enough to kill 10 million people. Yeah, in pure form, it kills 10 million

32:39 people. That's enough lethal dosages to kill - And that's just what we caught. I mean, yeah, who can imagine that? So anyway, yeah, it's stunning. I mean, who would have ever thought Canada

32:54 would have, who would vote for?

32:59 Yeah, so you talked about gas and LNG. Kind of the last item here is, I think it happened last week. Muba Dala, which

33:13 is the sovereign wealth fund of the Emirates announced a 24 stake in conjunction with Cambridge and a joint venture that they set up around both Cambridge, Texas gas, and this Commonwealth LNG

33:30 project that is planned, it's pre-FID that's planned for a Cockshoe Pass. And if you remember Adknock's CEO announced, it's here a week that they had planned over time and starting very quickly,

33:44 you'll see signs of it.

33:47 Both Adknock and Muba Dala are state owned entities They're separate, I haven't found any kind of overlap and affiliation, but they're - well may be some, but you're starting to see very quickly,

34:06 you know, pretty good, pretty good activity as it relates to making commitments the US. and developing jointly and investing in the build out of US. energy infrastructure in this

34:24 SOTEX, as I call it, this camera is SOTEX,

34:29 venture with Mobodala taking a pretty big stake is kind of putting your money where your mouth is. Now, again, the LNG project itself, which I think is on the order of four and a half to five

34:42 billion, is still pre-FID. But if everything falls into place, they're going to be sending out beginning in 2029, so it's not that far away.

34:55 I'm not going to get this, right? 'cause I'm not an LNG guy. I haven't been a midstream guy during my career, but there's supposedly a process of some sort. And it's got a form number for LNG

35:13 that you have to fill out to be able to get like the first check mark to even start thinking about building an LNG facility in the United States. The FERC requires us And I may be getting all these

35:27 details wrong with the spirit of this is right. There have been rumors that the Trump administration is just gonna waive that. You don't even have to do that. Just go on to step two. And this step

35:39 one has some sort of environmental impact, study, et cetera, associated with it and that the Trump administration may just say, nah, go ahead, start building these things Yeah, I wrote about it

35:53 a little piece on Clyde last week broadly on LNG, on the heels of

36:01 the tariff dust up. And to your earlier point about have we seen tariff show up in essentially well construction, which is mostly, I think, steel and consumables related that may be imported from

36:23 China and or, I'm not gonna call it price gouging, opportunistic price increases that domestic supplier. See what does that mean for, and your forecasts that we're going to kind of have a rough go

36:40 here and be at a standstill or an impasse with China on tariffs. What does that mean for the projects we just talked about like, you know, a commonwealth or.

36:54 I wrote about it in the context of venture global. Remember Secretary Wright and Interior Secretary Bergham went down to venture global's Plaquaman

37:07 expansion site, which is like an18 billion project. What would have all the steel and aluminum, if we're looking at the shock and awe price increases that were indicated. Yeah, whatever And it

37:20 totally by the intelligence that you got. So risking capital with more clouds of uncertainty is

37:31 just not a recipe for getting things done in a timely fashion until those clouds clear and we get some more clarity on where all this is going.

37:41 'Cause these are meaningful proportions of overall project costs and certainly measurably impactful on returns Yeah, sitting there staring at. you know, a midterm election, you know, 18 months

37:56 away in a presidential election three and a half years away where president, you know, knew some or

38:04 whatever, you know, that that's going to be an interesting balancing act for these energy companies of, all right, we got to pay more for steel prices, but at least we get it built and we have it

38:15 for 30 years. All right, if you were in your former chair heading into the rest of 2025 in terms of activity and I only bring this up because I believe Q1 earnings season, which I'm guessing in

38:32 energy company Q and A is going to be

38:37 hyper-focused on what adjustments are you making relative to tariffs and the uncertainty around them, what do you think is going to happen? I mean, you know, the beauty of being a private equity

38:51 backed company is you literally toggle on that switch when you want to and you toggle off that switch when you want to. And so potentially what we would have done run ups is we might have gone and

39:06 purchased a bunch of pipe, you know, kind of in advance Yeah,

39:12 of, you know, Trump went in the election, but in advance of him taking office. So we potentially would have had inventory for that. I guarantee you, if I was still sitting in that seat, we

39:24 would have done a lot in the way of hedging because, I mean, Trump's just a lower oil guy, a lower price oil guy And so then you sit with those hedges, particularly when prices have dropped and

39:40 pipes sitting in inventory, both those become assets, and you just work with them. math of, well, is it better to drill a well with that stuff? Or do I monetize that stuff now that the bet has

39:52 done right? So that's what we'd be looking at in the board book is, okay, what are the rates of return? If we, if we drill these things. Another thing that I didn't have to look at, because we

40:06 basically, we bought early stage assets, we proved it up enough to sell to the next guy. So we really didn't hold things. We didn't turn into manufacturing companies where we had to develop

40:19 projects. That, that would be an interesting dynamic because you're going, okay, we shouldn't drill for all the reasons we just laid out. But man, I got a big GNA budget now, because I'm

40:31 capable of doing that. I've got all the people in place. And what do I do with that?

40:38 Yeah, I think the publics are going to be a little different just because they. have to comment publicly or they're going to get asked questions about it and you know the thing

40:53 I'm wrestling with is are they going to take because you know behind the scenes and some more vocally than others I think Kase tweeted about something and the after immediate aftermath of the tariffs

41:06 if we could find that tweet I know I sent it to John last week about you know basically better have a good explanation of how all this works because you've got the double whammy going on with our

41:19 industry with you know the tariff uncertainty and potential cost escalation along with

41:29 certainly an air pocket and commodity prices and crude oil in particular and

41:36 so do they take the opportunity in Q1 forums to

41:43 adjust 2025. capital spending, which they talked about in late January or early February, in Q4 calls,

41:53 do they take the opportunity to send a message that, you know, we're making pretty significant adjustments to the downward direction to capital because more or less what you've seen from the more

42:04 prominent players and reading between the lines is flat to slightly up versus last year. But I, you know, I think there's certainly downside risk to those, those spending plans is just a question

42:18 of, of how much the industry in essence through, through what it says publicly on its calls. Are they going to punch back a little bit here? Yeah. And, you know, at the end of the day, I've

42:31 never understood why our industry isn't more just transparent about all this with, with investors. I mean, because at the end of the day, if you continuously disappoint, people don't trust you,

42:50 and you get the worst case scenario anyway. So why not just say, hey, we're watching these tariff things. I'm actually gonna drop some rigs. I feel like there's plenty of rig availability. We

43:01 can ramp back up when we want to. And I need to feel good that I've got, you know, pick a number, 70 oil flat for a sustainment before I'm gonna drill. And I'll tell you what, every bit of cash

43:14 flow we get, we're gonna pay down debt, buy back stock, and pay dividends, so. Well, I've talked about it before too. I don't think, you know, and hopefully this is like the inverse Kramer,

43:26 but the IEA was out today also talking about adjusting demand expectations for 25 to be the, you know, the demand growth in 2025 to be the lowest in five years. And that five years obviously

43:42 started back during the COVID trough.

43:48 You know, I tend to think that

43:53 this is OPEC's decisions to accelerate or a little bit of playing ball politically. And if you remember the first call that Trump made post inauguration like same day was to the Saudis. Yeah. And

44:08 so I don't think these things are coincidental, right? He gets a political win, but I also don't think that the players in that group that decided to restore production, keep in mind that OPEC,

44:24 when they made that announcement, they can reserve the right to adjust based on market conditions.

44:32 My belief is the Russians certainly don't want that because they're so heavily dependent on their economy, so heavily dependent upon higher oil prices as a.

44:46 very concentrated part of their revenue in GDP. So, you know, is this just a test case to maybe push some of the, you know, the higher growth, non-opec players further back on their heels and

45:03 maybe opportunistically grab a bit more market share here that they lost, you know, when, when shale was capturing it all in the last, in the last 10 years Yeah, all right, you know how we

45:15 should take this out now that we have this new tool. Hey, Jacob, play the, play the announcement video of our, the, the cartoon that Colin did play that here at the end and Mark and I'll watch

45:34 it real quick and then we'll comment before we say goodbye.

45:39 With rolling blackouts affecting millions and fuel shortages reported across the country, officials are scrambling to find immediate solutions as the situation escalates

45:52 It's amazing how it kind of looks like Collin, who would have thought, is there sound? Mm-hmm.

46:53 The world's power is restored

47:15 So, friend of the, friend of the program, Russell Gold from Texas Monthly, put on my LinkedIn. I have questions. Is that briny water he drinks? And have you copyrighted that new drilling

47:29 technique? So, I do think the video slaps, so I think it's cool.

47:37 Yeah, I agree And I think the production value is really high, creativity is even better, even better. There we go. All right. Again, Mark here, thank you so much for the money. And folks,

47:52 if you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend, share it. Leave us comments. Remember, my ego is really, really fragile, so don't be mean in the comments and we'll