Big Digital Energy

0:00 Don't don't don't don't welcome my friends show that never ends. I'm so glad you could attend. Come inside. Come inside. All right. On a day when Roaring Kitty is back on Twitter and GameStop is

0:13 up 71

0:16 of 13 bucks today. How great is that? The best tweet I saw was somebody said, not a good day to be in an efficient market guy. You know what the 10 day volatility is in that stock as provided by

0:29 our friend John. 21 million. Nice. There we have better trade it right. So we're back. Colin is out and may or may not be on BDE much for the next six weeks. He's been sent. He's actually to

0:45 his credit is taking a coding class from 12 to 2 every Monday. So we're going to try to record at 1045 so that we catch Colin a lot. But if he has a periodic absence, it's not

1:02 We'll go ahead and get killed that joke. You know how we oftentimes talk about how short sellers like crush everyone? What's great about GameStop is that short sellers have suffered a mark-to-market

1:16 loss of over a billion dollars since GameStop's up over 70. It's hilarious. I mean, what's AMC doing? The volatility and it's got to just drive some people absolutely crazy. It's almost like oil

1:31 and gas. Oil. I mean, gas is a little bit stale, but still. Welcome to the commodities world's boys. Exactly. It's going to be fun to watch Charlie Gasparino's feed. He's like the nemesis

1:47 of the guys on the other side of the GameStop and the AMC trades. That'll be cool. That'll be fun All right, so today we're gonna head talk Calpers and Exxon, we're going to talk about a law

1:59 change in Vermont. We're going to get to the North Slope up in Alaska. We're going to talk about Macron, who I can't believe all the

2:08 stuff he actually said. So we'll talk about that for sure. We'll talk about the IEA and then election wise. Basically, we're going to postpone it because India is in the middle of their elections.

2:22 Let's let them get through. We'll deep dive India, and then we've got a couple of other geopolitically strategic countries coming up. So we'll do that. So Mark, you want to kick us off about

2:33 CalPERS? Yeah, that I may go on a rant here, but

2:38 there was an F there was an FT. It's also on Reuters, which is where I pulled it. CalPERS is weighing the possibility of voting against Darren Woods, chairman and CEO of Exxon Board candidacy at

2:53 this next meeting. And so basically the crux of the issue goes back to Exxon's unprecedented actions of trying to keep the resolutions that are Geno Capital who we've talked about and follow this,

3:13 most of it related essentially to Scope 3 from showing up on this year's proxy and up for vote. And those general resolutions have seen a declining vote of support over the last couple of years, I

3:27 think two years ago, the Scope 3 year related resolution was supported 23 by

3:34 in the vote and last year it was down to 10. And that was, we want you reporting Scope 3 kind of the environmental. Yeah, and Exxon when it was, when the engine one activists board members were

3:52 elected to the board, basically. reiterated its position, unlike the European Majors, that it's not going to get on my words, it's not going to get on the slippery slope of scope three that we've

4:06 talked about incessantly on the show. The comments from the head of CalPERS and also California's treasurer who is on the board of CalPERS around this set of actions being taken by oxen and the form

4:23 of the lawsuits is really a circumvention of what I call shareholder democracy. So it doesn't appear on the proxy. You can't vote on it. And it characterizes an attempt by Exxon to silence debate

4:36 on these important issues. And so that's what CalPERS is claiming. Right. No, they didn't say definitively that they were going to vote, but against woods. I mean, Exxon still, even though

4:51 follow this And Arjuna, I have dropped. lawsuit, Exxon still suing

4:59 him. But what's interesting to me is, the quote from Michael Cohen is the chief operating investment officer, chief operating investment officer.

5:13 That's who his title is. It's weird. Michael Cohen of CalPERS said, quote, I'm deeply concerned about the case, adding it appeared to be an effort to silence critical shareholders. But does that

5:24 really what this lawsuit against them really is? What do you think? I'm wondering if it's really about silencing investors and more about, because we talked about this what months ago, that it's

5:38 more about they're not following the right procedure. What do you think? Well, I think Exxon's route that it took in going the litigation route was to. essentially say, look, we've spent a lot

5:58 of time and money on defending against these resolutions. They keep showing up. The data points that I pointed out, they're getting less and less shareholder support. And

6:17 my initial reaction was in seeing this article was 2020 called and once it's proxy resolution back. So we've seen really this stuff, particularly as it relates to Exxon, go through repeat votes and

6:33 see declining support. And so, all this stuff costs time and money. Absolutely. Right, so theirs was just an alternative way that the SEC process continues to allow this stuff

6:51 and go on and on and on, and they're saying, look, from a practical standpoint,

6:57 my opinion, not anything articulated by Exxon, is that we're not gonna get on

7:05 the scope three slippery slope, say that five times real fast, and

7:12 we'll continue to address and create positions around resolutions that have things to do with

7:25 things that are critical to our mission as a company, which every US listed company has a shareholder primacy objective or mandate. And so let's stop wasting time and money on things that are

7:45 allowed through a much more permissive SEC process C process.

7:49 And this is just an alternative for them to kind of fight this battle and it's completely within reason. If we were in court and I was the

8:01 defense lawyer, it'd be Aston answered. Right. Move on, you know? Yeah. The objection has to answer. Yeah. Yeah. So as I thought about this, I thought, hmm, what else related to the kind

8:15 of Exxon annual meeting and proxy process

8:19 is somewhat connected? Well, you and Colin talked about it in a special edition. It's the consent order that the FTC issued prohibiting Scott Sheffield from being nominated and elected to the board.

8:33 So they basically took those shareholder rights in the form of an ability to vote, whether you vote yes or you vote no, you have an ability to vote. Coppers was silent on that. And so in my mind,

8:46 it's at least a bit of an inconsistency We're worried about silencing debate and. and squelching a vote or preemptively taking a vote away from a rightful shareholder, doesn't this rise to the same

9:00 standard of you're limiting my rights or eliminating my rights as a shareholder? Whether CalPERS voted for Sheffield or not. Or at a minimum, making me spend a lot of money to fight it. Because I

9:12 mean, theoretically Exxon could have thought it, fought that Sheffield said, Hey, I'll step aside. Let's go ahead and do what's in the best interests of the shareholders. But the thing that's

9:24 kind of getting me, the evolution of my thinking is the first tweet I saw was, FTC approves the merger. And I'm like, Oh, great. And then it's like, FTC approves the merger, but Sheffield

9:37 can't be on the board. And I'm like, You know, that's kind of crappy, backhanded slap. But you know, at the end of the day, you'd like to think the pioneer workers and the shareholders would

9:50 have some representation because board meetings actually do matter things get decided in them and all that But you know, you keep watching this the FTC has turned this over to the Justice Department

10:03 which I would laugh if it were funny, but it's not it's really not here and So mark and I were talking about this morning because mark it's the one that brought up this point We went and looked at it

10:17 1970 is when the US peaked oil production. Let's call it 10 million barrels a day You get to 2006. We're down to five million barrels a day. Yeah, financial crisis Oh eight oh nine, but like 2010

10:30 I think we hit a hundred and ten dollar oil and the US is at what like six million barrels a day of oil production We're at 13 million today Plus or minus so we've added seven million a day. I mean,

10:45 that's totally reverse the course. I think I don't know what the average from

10:51 2010 to today has been in terms of oil price. It's been a hell of a lot lower than 100. I mean, we hit minus 37 in there because of COVID, but even pre-COVID, I bet the average was maybe 40 bucks,

11:05 50 bucks somewhere in there. So the greatest consumer benefit that's happened, this major influx and driver of the economy, oil price was brought down dramatically by, gotta give Scott Sheffield

11:22 credit for this. I mean, he was a leader in this, it was the Permian Basin, horizontal drilling, fracking, et cetera. And now the FTC is saying he colluded during COVID

11:34 and minus37 oil to bring the price of oil up, you gotta give him credit for the previous decade. And all the freaking fucking Amazon vans running everywhere. I mean, there's another article

11:47 yesterday in the Financial Times that the US. shale companies are accused of collusion over the oil price, ExxonMobil, Occidental, Diamondback Energy are among the company's name and at least 10

11:58 class action lawsuits alleging they conspired to coordinate and constrain production. The only little background here, and you mentioned that time period where we had sustained, you know,

12:11 approaching 100 plus oil prices over a multi-year period, you had a tailwind of90

12:19 to100 oil prices and over the course of that from that inflection point to 2015, we all know what happened in Thanksgiving of 2014. But over the course of that multi-year period, you spent globally

12:33 about600 to700 billion on what I call drill bit CapEx mainly One US non-OPAC essentially was flat during that period.

12:46 savior or from an ability to grow into growing demand and supply growing demand was US onshore, principally the Permian Eagleford and to a somewhat lesser extent the Bakken over that time frame. And

13:02 so we were talking about this. What prices, what would prices have been had not kind of the miracle of what happened in US unconventional on the oil side. So,

13:15 you know, I look at that and that Herculean growth from that five to six million barrel a day trough was basically executed by hundreds of companies acting in their own interests. And over time, as

13:35 was proven out by a decade of essentially zero returns on capital to the detriment of shareholders, but we got the growth out of it, which was as you pointed out a huge, huge benefit to consumers,

13:50 to industries over the same time period. And as well as change the whole geopolitical balance of the world, I mean, prior to the Shell Revolution and oil, OPEC had us. I mean, we were at the

14:04 mercy of OPEC and with the Shell Revolution and us doubling oil production here in America, I mean, that changed the whole balance of the world. So the FDC is saying they didn't want that. At two

14:19 to three million barrels a day combined, and that's probably not accurate on just an oil side or an oil cut, you're less than 3 of the global market. That from my textbook days does not

14:35 translate to market power and market concentration, which we've also talked about in terms of the industry coming under fire for things like gasoline prices. you look at how fragmented every part of

14:47 the chain is, there's just no ability to set price. And so you've got thousands of people operating in their own self-interest with no coordination. And we got what we got over the decade that came

15:04 out of the 2000s into the

15:09 2010s

15:11 because we overgrew

15:14 certainly wasn't in the company's best interest. And if these conversations around market concentration, market power are somewhat humorous when you look at other large segments of the market and

15:32 the economy, I mean, I don't really hear much about the fact that Apple has 62 market share in the US smartphone market And you and I talked. I can't remember if it was a Chuck job podcaster on BDE,

15:47 but we talked all about the net income margins at Apple versus the energy companies. It was just, it was ridiculous. If the industry is coordinating, they're not doing a very good job. They suck

15:58 at it. Yeah. But, so last point on this, and then we'll move on. You know, I hate the fact that we have demonized the political process so much that your family gets destroyed. And

16:14 now we've weaponized the Justice Department to go after people. I hate that. If we're going to start doing that to industries that we demand, that we rely on, and that we have to be good at for

16:27 our standard of living, and we chase bad good people out of that as well. This is not going to end well for us. And so FTC, be

16:36 careful what you wish for when you protect consumers, because dealing with the Venezuelans to get your oils not going to be a lot of fun. I agree. It seems coordinated for sure. I mean, it's not

16:49 coordinated on the collusion side, but this seems like a coordinated attack against the industry

16:55 because there's been this is not this is not a new story. I mean, they have come gone, but it's back and it's gonna be interesting. I mean, it's the highest profile major and arguably the highest

17:06 profile independent and one of the leading voice and leading figures and no pun intended one of the pioneers in the industry. And that pioneering predates a lot of what pioneer and others have done

17:25 in the Permian as well and the long history of Parker and parsley and pioneer. So

17:32 as an ex on shareholder, I'd kind of like to have the perspective and the experience and the expertise both technically, geologically. in organizationally and culturally of someone at least in a

17:47 reasonable period of time sitting on the board, helping with that integration from a governance and a, you know, all the other aspects of bringing these two companies together. I mean, CalPERS

17:58 has 02 equity. I'm assuming you own more shares than they do. So are you voting for Aaron or are you voting against?

18:07 I've already voted. Okay. Don't worry about it, guys And in full disclosure, I still do. And once you get the X on chromosome, it's permanent.

18:18 Damn. It's got him in RA, I mean, wow. Okay. There we go. All right, take us to Vermont. What's going on there? In more political and government news related to the industry, Vermont

18:33 legislature last week, passed a bill that would essentially charge big fossil fuel companies. for the damages caused by climate change.

18:47 And the basic model for this is draws from the EPA super fun framework, which the deepest pocketed proportion was responsible for paying the cleanup of some of these really awful sites. I mean,

19:01 we're not a lot that arguing of the

19:04 super fun sites didn't need intensive remediation 'cause there's a lot of bad stuff that went on

19:12 The fines will be based on calculations and we'll rely on what's called attribution science. And it seems that the attribution is going to be based on the single factor of what the companies who are

19:32 charged with the damages, what the company's proportional CO2 emissions are. And so once again, I bring you to your favorite, metaphor or your favorite analogy, what is that? No, I don't want

19:45 you to say it, Mark. No, I'm not gonna say that. There's no ping and non-ping section of the pool. So I didn't dig in enough. I'm not gonna be damn near proud of that. I didn't dig in enough to

19:59 see if it's, you know, scope three related, but I assume that it is. And so when we have a bad weather and adverse weather event in Vermont, there's going to be a lot of calculations being made

20:13 in terms of what can be charged to the particular companies who have operations and retail outlets in Vermont. They experienced record-breaking rainfall in July and they say it caused catastrophic

20:25 flooding which cost them close to22 billion. But one of these guys quotes in this article, New England had a 60 chance increase in the heaviest precipitation days. For every one degree Fahrenheit

20:39 increase in temperature, you get a 4 increase in the amount of water vapor that the atmosphere can hold. Let's kind of fast forward. Basically, this is a witch hunt after companies that are

20:51 basically gonna be held responsible for these adverse weather events. Who do you blame? Those that are the biggest polluters or that pollute

21:01 in Vermont, or is it just companies that happen to be polluters outside of Vermont are gonna be held responsible? Good luck. What's happening in Chinese or from India?

21:14 I think what's basically gonna happen is every major energy company's just gonna close any of their gas stations, retail, distribution networks, whatever and just pull out of Vermont. I mean, why

21:29 do you wanna deal with? And we're not gonna distribute our products for sale independent operators in Vermont.

21:38 to sell gasoline, for example. Good luck in the propane. So we've got this, we've got this - We don't get this more than one. We've got this medical and off wood chips. And that's what they're

21:45 good at making anyway, right? Biofuel. Known as AKA

21:49 wood pellets. Yeah. There's zero emission according to Europe. Exactly. Well, the thing I - My Traeger does emit a lot of smoke. When I'm using those wood pellets. It's a smoker.

22:05 Yeah. That's gonna be crazy Not surprisingly, there's chatter among other states. Enthusiasm about Vermont taking this step and things that are - There's also a lot of chatter. Yeah. Being

22:19 considered

22:23 to use this as a template or a model for other states to enact similar legislation. It'll get to the Supreme Court and then they'll read the interstate commerce laws. Another front on which

22:32 companies

22:37 ultimately have to spend money in time defending themselves. Yeah. All right. This is like, is this Rasputin, is this the Phoenix? What is it? This keeps popping up, so let's do it again.

22:51 Shell

22:53 BP valuation list in New York. Yeah, and comments were apparently made in the forum of their earnings calls that it's gonna be way more about buybacks And I characterize it as a bit of deflection on

23:07 any kind of imminent relisting in the US away from the FTSE.

23:14 The valuation gap, I think, is way more systemic and structural and it has to do with

23:22 and just for level setting, this comes from an FT article over the weekend. The valuation gap is pretty wide and on a forward cash flow basis, I think it's an habit of multiple four times. plus or

23:36 minus for the Euro majors. And Shell was the main focus of this particular article, 'cause I think that's been the most noise out there about relisting or moving. And Shell did make the move from

23:49 the Netherlands to the UK to about 2X that for Exxon. And so kind of what's in play here is a relisting really going to do the things that re-inflate the multiple for the Euro majors or close the gap.

24:09 I think it has more to do with the fact that the balancing act of shareholder versus stakeholder issues in Europe is a

24:18 lot more complex, a lot more difficult than it is for companies who are

24:24 incorporated and listed in the US, which is, as we said earlier, the real singular objective of US publicly traded companies is shareholder primacy. and that is profit-making. And so there's a

24:39 lot of stakeholder things that even if you listed in the US. and are still headquartered physically in Europe, you're gonna have to deal with. And that extraction and move I think would be

24:53 incredibly. I mean, it's a pain in the airy to move. Well, and I didn't like your answer last time I asked it, so I'm gonna ask you to do a dance shot. Was this the friction that we're looking

25:04 for? Exactly No, I do think there is an element when you look at the cash flow streams from Exxon versus BP and Shell. A lot of BP and Shell is trading type earnings, and they just shouldn't get a

25:20 higher multiple, so I didn't think the European or do you think the renewables - Which answer do you - And going on like, last time. Give it this time. What was the answer last time? Now I'm

25:31 titleing you on that. I wanna see what you're gonna say this time. I think there should at least be some of that because of the earnings component. But. I agreed with you, I think last time, but

25:42 let's create some friction. All right. Shell came in in the first quarter, 20 above profit expectations at 77 billion. Because of their liquefied natural gas business and their trading operations.

25:57 Now, what we don't know is how much of that was trading. It could have been a 100 driven by trading The challenge of trading is CFOs hate trading 'cause all the margin risk, they're balance sheets

26:11 tied up in trading. That's the biggest problem with it. Now, trading, if you're good like Shell and other MVP, which have really good trading positions and they see the market better than just

26:23 about anybody, they can make these huge trades and make a lot of money 'cause they know what the market's doing. The challenge with that is trading in and of itself not super valuable. except it

26:35 can help you hit earnings. It's, I mean, it's like a visibility and it's predictability, which is inherently lower multiple. Lower multiple, yeah. So I agree with you, but if you're a shell,

26:49 they just hit their estimations or achieve their estimations or hit them when above because of their trade. There's no doubt when you have the physical assets that trading is a less risky and proper

27:02 - Yeah, but usually like an Exxon position is, we only hedge our assets 'cause we wanna, it's hedging risk and the BP and the shell perspective, they're not hedging risk, they're taking risk.

27:17 Yeah, and I think that may be changing for the US majors, particularly Exxon, you know, they saw kind of what was available in terms of those risk profits from trading in 2020, 2021 missed out on

27:32 a lot of those.

27:35 Is that, you know, is that the path to multiple expansion? And I would argue consistently. I just point you just made, which is, it's not. Having spent time in the trading operations, one of

27:48 the things I've learned is BP and Shell have in some ways an unfair advantage. They can make money and they're making money trading, so they're gonna continue to do it. So I wouldn't shut it off.

28:01 And I'm not sure how easy it is for Exxon to jump in, 'cause part of it is cultural. I don't think Exxon has the risk appetite and profile to trade on balance sheet. Yeah. But one of the greatest

28:12 - It's the greatest to pay people, the ridiculous amount of the price. That's right. Well, I mean, Shell loses some of their better people to the shops. Yeah, absolutely. If you wanna go take

28:27 the most risk out of VTOL, but they actually, they crush it. They do deals that no one else will do. Right Well, any one of the quotes in the article from a. one veteran energy banker to mean

28:39 unknown quote investors do not trust shell and BP to do deals they want to see consistent returns in quote we don't trust you do deals just just just deliver us the money yeah but that but there is

28:53 that you know and i i was just i was just jabbing you on that but that i mean there is definitely something to the ex-on mentality of we make money extracting oil and gas and selling it to end users

29:07 soon to be minerals right soon to be minerals and uh in our console but over over uh the the forays that bp and shell have gone into and renewable world etc i i think in the recent past that bp and

29:23 shell have had to take the position that

29:28 responses to esg issues were more actionable in the form of you know bp spending hundreds of millions on offshore wind leases in the North Sea, things like that, whereas the US majors can take a

29:41 much more measured approach than they have, but when you expose that much capital, what was it in the,

29:50 some of the criticism of BP was, why are you spending or investing at a rate, multiples of what the market opportunity is developing from a demand and pricing standpoint in some of these renewable

30:05 segments. They got way out over their skis and those dollars of capital are inherently sunk until those markets recover and the clock meanwhile is ticking and it has been, I don't know what the

30:16 portion is, it has been a drag on the Euro majors, return on capital employed, which investors have been telling you since certainly 2014, 2015 should be your priority back to the, you spend a

30:30 bunch of money doing society and businesses and growing way faster than demand growth, but you paid for it as an investor in poor to zero returns on capital employees. So let's use this as the get

30:45 out question. I'll go to you, Kirk. One, do BP and Shell move listings to New York. And if they do, what happens because of it? No, they're not, they're not moving. I mean, it was hard

30:59 enough to move out of the Netherlands for Shell. They're just looking ultimately, I don't think it's really about relisting. That doesn't change their multiples as we, I think the three of us

31:11 agree, it's not really about where you're located. It's more about the profile of your risk. Um, and that's not going to change. So I don't see, I think that they're trying to change it by the

31:23 recent announcements that were kind of not doing these silly environmental type deals that aren't returning capital. go back to returning capital on a consistent basis, that should move their

31:36 multiples closer to the US - based companies, but moving to the US. is not gonna help them. Do we see a move, Mark? I think they ultimately will. I think this continues to be, I ultimately

31:50 think Houston gets both of them. I think we should do a wager on this, boys. Am I right? How much do we bet, Mortimer? 1,

31:59 I like that1, boys. What's the timeline? Now, 18 months. Two years. Two years. Are you good with two years? Two years, let's go. Do you know where yes? All right. Will Clyde be able to

32:11 remember that? Yes, exactly. We'll be able to check Clyde. You think everybody's gonna be headquartered in Houston? I think we're coming to Houston. Yeah. I don't disagree with that. All right,

32:20 take us to Alaska real quick, 'cause you were telling me this story this morning. I didn't know anything about it, it was fascinating. It's kinda like Shell Day Well, I got a call from a former

32:30 colleague. and friend who knows that I spent some time earlier in my career in Alaska in North Slope is always an area of interest for me, but

32:43 there is a small company, private out of Dallas that owns some leasehold in an area called West Harrison Bay, which is directly north of Conoco Phillips' Willow project Now, West Harrison Bay

32:59 leasehold is state land. Conoco Phillips' Willow is in the NPRA, which is federal, obviously. And so there was a recent hearing by the Oversight Committee with the Alaska State Legislature that at

33:19 which Norwall appeared. And the issue is Shell has, in the middle of the West Harrison Bay area, as the it's lease leases are. have been unitized under what's called the West Harrison Bay Unit.

33:33 Shell took those leases in

33:38 2012, and Norwell's argument is we haven't seen them live up to, and the Department of Natural Resources has not enforced their shell's obligations under the terms of those leases, in terms of

33:53 getting a work program done. Shell has said, We want to find an operator. We don't want to operate. If you think back not too long ago, they spent north of seven and a half billion dollars in a

34:05 dry hole in the Chuck GC.

34:10 And at this hearing, while Norwell was present, the DNR was not. The Department of Natural Resources was not. Their reasoning the day after in the letter that they What they sent out was, were in

34:26 the midst of active wooded wooded wooded wooded wooded. litigation that Norwall has filed on these issues and there are confidentiality things that are going on around this. Part of the, you can

34:36 find it at a place called Alaska Landmine. There's a podcast with Norwall's CEO

34:42 that's pretty interesting talking about this hearing and the whole kind of history of what's led to where we are now. And so Norwall has said we are committed to drilling a couple of exploration

34:59 wells on our leasehold here in the next, well, and I read it as 2025, right? And so if you know anything about North Slope exploration wells, it's not for the faint of heart, both in terms of

35:11 risk and the ticket size of those wells. But given what's happened with Willow and this impasse or this inertia with West Harrison Bay, You have a continuing.

35:28 of a timeline to get anything done to evaluate the potential, which Narwhal estimates for the benefit of the state of Alaska is something on the order of20 billion in future royalties, which for a

35:41 state that has a pretty robust, primarily oil funded permanent fund, that's a pretty big deal. And so you've got the head of the oversight committee, I think spent years as a lobbyist for the

35:57 industry. And so it's

36:02 kind of the Fisher cut bait shell moment, given that they're apparently or allegedly beyond their deadlines for committing some minimum level of work in an exploratory work program. And so, you

36:17 know, Narwhal is kind of out front talking about this My thought was, and discussing this, was. or thinking about it was, is there some invisible hand going on here related to all the friction

36:36 and dust up we had around Willow and the Biden administration finally granting approval from a scaled down footprint of Willow and we're just not going to be confronted with this type of

36:50 decision-making

36:53 Although it's state lands, is this part of the larger conversation, can I help us out here in pushing a more anti-development type

37:07 of stance? I don't know, the DNR is being taken to task for not enforcing the terms of the lease. And so, or the lease says on Shell and the West Harrison Bay unit, the last point that was made

37:23 in the article, or one of the One of the primary points was, look, Shell kind of, my words, got egg on their face when they relinquished

37:36 their position in Guyana right before Exxon made the mother load. The mother load, the discoveries in a guy on a basin. By the way. So I don't, you know, I don't think Shell wants to operate or

37:50 have significant focus and portfolio spotlight on the North Slope. I just think that's mainly been their history. And but also it's, I think it from an optic standpoint, it's a, it's a trade off

38:05 that they are willing to make despite the potential of the North Slope. And I'm as big a 10 foil hat person as there is on the planet and you were telling me this story and it was interesting, I

38:17 thought about it just a little I think if the Feds are leaning on Shell. It has to come public. 'Cause one thing Biden does, the administration, they lean on somebody so they can get credit with

38:35 their environmentalist group. Hey, we delayed LNG. You know, every time they do it, they make sure they can get credit. So it'd be interesting if kind of, at any of these fundraisers or what

38:48 are, that's the way it would sneak out if the feds are actually doing it. They'd be taking, oh, and by the way, we pressured Shell not to do it. I do think it has to come out if they were doing

38:59 it so they could score their political points. Well the Valdez on experience firsthand, ago long a was there and, Project when we had a group from lower 48

39:14 post the first season of cleanup and

39:19 The federal agencies and the state agencies were literally packed into the helicopter that was following us around on this private tour. And every time we landed to show them

39:30 what they were seeing on CNN was not completely

39:36 accurate in terms of the condition of we took them to a group of shorelines in Prince William Sound that we termed the dirty dozen. That was known as the dirty, so the worst of the worst And I

39:50 remember every time we landed and gotten our group and talked about it and toured around a little bit, someone from that other group was looking to peel these guys off for private conversations. And

40:01 so there was a lot of, you know, there was a lot of

40:08 federal and state

40:11 coziness in how things were conducted So., you know, obviously at that time,

40:19 the federal government, the administration was looking

40:25 for some credit for getting involved and doing quote unquote, doing the

40:31 right thing. No, that's exactly right. All right. One last thing, we may push the cleaning summit to next week just because we're running out of time. But let's go to France. I mean, Macron,

40:46 this is yours A couple of things. First is that Macron's been touting this15 billion in overseas investments into France, Amazon, Morgan Stanley, Pfizer, and others have a Microsoft are

41:01 announcing that new projects in France. Now, this is after we've already talked about France turning on their nukes, more nukes, building more nukes, lower prices, it's cheaper to manufacture

41:16 It's a cheaper place than Germany. Germany's been upset because France is turning up their nukes and Germany's like, don't do it, because we're screwed. So it's interesting, France is about to

41:30 come back, like he grew a pair of balls or something. I mean, it's, he's, he gives this speech and then he sits down with the economists to give this interview. And it's, he literally, you

41:42 could call all of this stuff, our Europe can die. That's kind of the title of his speech And he's like, we've got to get collective to stand up the Putin, 'cause America's not gonna be there for

41:53 us. He says, we're way behind technology and China's kicking our butt. We need stimulus deregulation. And then he was worried about the growing populism in Europe. But the interesting thing is,

42:06 he's talking about Europe needs to be an integrated energy market, it needs to be an electric power market. to be able to have the wherewithal to industrialize, to take on the rest of the world. I

42:22 mean, Mark and I were joking, it sounds like somebody that's talking their buck. That's right. But a nuclear power. But at least there's a growing realization in Europe that we can just decay

42:35 into nothing

42:38 and it ultimately does come back to energy. Well, regardless of whether Macron believes it or not that Europe needs to be collective, France is just moving forward again. I mean, they're moving

42:50 forward. It's interesting because Lillium, a German startup, is building a 400 million euro factory. They assemble vertical takeoff electrical jets, which seems pretty cool, but they're doing it

43:03 in France. So if German manufacturers are building in France, that is a big slap in the face. And if I'm Macron, I'm saying, Hey, Germany, keep doing what you're doing. The rest of Europe keep

43:17 doing what you're doing. Everyone's coming here. We have cheaper energy. Yeah. And we'll put this up. I sent this graph around Chris Martz tweeted and was just talking about a longer-dated

43:30 history of what individual countries cost and something called overnight construction costs, US dollar equivalent.

43:41 It's pretty dated back to 2010 in terms of dollars per kilowatt for nuclear. And it's a pretty nice color-coded scatter chart of the history of each individual countries build-out experience with

43:55 nuclear. France is one of the lowest cost builders of nuclear. US hockey sticks kind of leading in from the mid-70s into 1980 to be completely competitive, which is very related to what we talked

44:11 about with Bob Kuntz when he was here talking about. you know, the NRC and just the impediment, all that is to innovated, faster nuclear development within the US. So France is certainly

44:26 operating from a position of strength. And why you would want to dilute that strength when it has pretty significant growth implications from an industrialization standpoint, maybe he's just being a

44:41 good EU citizen But there's quite an advantage that France could take if they chose to push in it. And a little bit of a lesson for us, no matter who wins our presidency, whether it's Biden or

44:57 Trump, both will be in the second term and no prospects for reelection, right? And that's where Macron is He's in year one of his second term. He can't run for a third term. So. Maybe this is

45:14 the micron we see for the next three years, leading the charge to bring Europe together and become a formidable force and it starts with energy. So there we go. I mean, it's quickly people are

45:27 making a big, big investments into France, which is crazy considering that just five years ago,

45:36 energy prices were not the lowest in Europe. And doing business in France is actually kind of difficult. Having invested in a company with their bankruptcy, I can tell you that the ins and outs,

45:49 it's difficult. But I think Macron is starting with energy and moving. We'll see what kind of legal changes are gonna be made as well, but. Literally in the last five years, they've gone from

46:02 having 75

46:05 of their electricity generated by nukes and proclaiming that they wanted to get below 50 and decommissioning plants. and now we're building more kind of crazy. Yeah. Awesome, man. All righty,

46:20 thanks everybody for joining us this week. We hope Colin has learned his software. We'll go check in, we'll update next week on what he learned to code. If you enjoyed the show, share it with a

46:34 friend this week. We're heading to Energy Tech Night, Wednesday night in Fort Worth at the 411 If you listen to BDE, hit me up somehow, and I'll put you on the list if you want to come. Then

46:48 we're going to hit Doug the next day. Kirk, you missed us. We were talking last week. I had dinner with Rich Eichler. They have AI alley at Doug this year. Really? To me and Rich Eichler,

46:59 these two boomers talked all about AI, the other kind of dinner. Can I say AI again? Yeah, exactly. That's where it started. But, oh, you had something? No, sorry, gotcha.