Big Digital Energy

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;38;22
Unknown
Hey everybody, welcome to Big Digital Energy BDE post-election. What like mid-game I ran war maybe the the way to phrase it. That's sad is bring the e into it at some point and, the, Hey, boys. The Dallas Cowboys did win, although they beat the Colts and it felt like we lost. I got to see two out of I got to see two out of three daughters this weekend and got a snarky text from the third saying, hey, why didn't you come see me to daddy?

00;00;38;22 - 00;01;12;28
Unknown
So, life's all good. Why don't you recap that saga for us? I followed that a little bit on on Friday. All right, so the University of Oklahoma Law School has a symposium for continuing education credits for lawyers. So huge irony that they would get credit for hearing me, the law school dropout, actually speak. But I had a delightful fireside chat on AI and the law with Piper Hamilton of, Devon.

00;01;12;28 - 00;01;36;28
Unknown
And she's awesome. She's in their legal department. She was really cool. We did the lunch fireside chat, and I was supposed to fly straight to New York to hang out with Charlie. Weather delays in Oklahoma pushed my American flight to the point of it eventually got canceled. I ran around the airport, and United could get me there through Chicago.

00;01;37;04 - 00;01;51;13
Unknown
They just wouldn't sell me a ticket. I was like, sitting at the gate going, hey, can I have this? Well, we can't do it. You got to go out front. I went out front. We can't sell you a ticket here. You got to do it on the app. The app was like, well, you're within an hour. You can't do it.

00;01;51;14 - 00;02;12;24
Unknown
And then good luck trying to call the one 800 number. So, of course, in all things airline travels, when it really sucks and you're having to deal with a crappy airline like United, you walk over to southwest. Hey, what are you trying to do? I need to get to New York. They walk through it, they go, we can get you to Nashville, and then we can go Nashville to New York.

00;02;12;24 - 00;02;40;14
Unknown
I go, that's great, and I go, Nashville. I texted Sarah, I'm like, hey, you're 21st birthday. Can dad show up and buy you a drink? I was expecting no, dad, you already are buying me a drink because I have my credit card. Have your credit card? But she said, dad, love to see you. So I actually went. Flew to Nashville, hung out with Sarah for a while, and then caught the 6 a.m. flight to New York and had dinner at 11 Madison with with Charlie.

00;02;40;14 - 00;03;00;27
Unknown
And it was epic. And I did my, I did my middle daughter's 21st birthday in Nashville, but that was all planned, so I'll tell that story another time. It's a pretty good one like this. I kind of like just going rogue this way, Chuck, but that's kind of your personality, isn't it? That's kind of what we do around here.

00;03;00;29 - 00;03;30;00
Unknown
Sad. Yeah. Yeah. So Chucky works. All right. Mark, where are we kicking off? Well, we're we're kicking off with the blues a week later, and Jacob's got a piece from Mr. Global. I think that kind of sparks the discussion. All right, roll it. Jacob. Well, it is election day. Yes, I voted, and today we have the highest gas prices of any election day in history.

00;03;30;02 - 00;03;53;02
Unknown
And Chris Wright says this the best cure for high prices is high prices. It grows supply. And so supply is growing. We're getting more refined products out of the Arabian Gulf. Well, historically, in any other situation, yes, the best thing for high prices is high prices because it does grow supply, but not in this situation. And that's because this isn't an oil production problem.

00;03;53;04 - 00;04;12;17
Unknown
And even if it was, we wouldn't be fixing it because oil production growth under this Trump administration, the first 20 months is less than half what it was of the last 20 months of the Biden administration. And Biden was no friend to all and gas, let's be honest. But what's he going to say? We started an infrastructure war in OPEC's backyard.

00;04;12;20 - 00;04;36;26
Unknown
Now he can't say that. And he also said we're getting more refined noticed. He said, we're getting more refined products out of the Middle East. That is a complete lie. More oil? Yes. More refined products. Wrong. So where's the data that suggests we're getting we're not getting more refined product in the flows through the straight. I'm not even sure where we are.

00;04;36;29 - 00;04;40;07
Unknown
And we'll get to the.

00;04;40;09 - 00;05;10;01
Unknown
Kind of the status quo pronouncement from yesterday. Well, I mean, I think the big deal is, you know, we've and we've talked about this a million times is we've we've blown up seven, eight, nine, 10% of refining capacity worldwide in these two wars or in effect, immobilized it. And so the data that you want to look for and I'm right there with you, I'd love to.

00;05;10;03 - 00;05;29;21
Unknown
I wish we had better data on it ultimately is manifesting itself in price. I mean, crack spreads are still through the roof compared to a to history. And again, we're not building a new refinery in the United States.

00;05;29;24 - 00;06;03;19
Unknown
There is an IPO going on or actually not an IPO, but I think it's an IPO in Nigeria for their refining for for their refinery down there. And I just seeing the news headlines that it's getting bid up. No doubt Ben. There's no there's no ad campaign in America. That's that beats for dollar gas. And and we can dig into this election and talk a little bit about the conspiracy theories and democratize like creating all these votes and blah, blah, blah.

00;06;03;19 - 00;06;25;07
Unknown
But at the end of the day, if you want to know part of the problem, it is the fact that prices are high and people are tired of the Iran war. And those are those those go together, the correlated. So I don't know, what do you think, guys? Diesel added a dollar to a case of Coors Light over about the last two weeks.

00;06;25;13 - 00;07;18;15
Unknown
I noticed you're not a medulla man sometimes. Got it. Yeah. And I, I talked to people at their grocery store and on the street. And, you know, I live in a community that is probably one of the higher IQ on claves in the United States because there's this is the research triangle, but the lack of basic understanding about how energy markets work and people talking at nauseam about gasoline prices when the sleeper is and has always been diesel in terms of the way we think about it's it's propagating effects through everything we do in commerce, whether it's on a personal or a business level.

00;07;18;17 - 00;07;51;02
Unknown
And so people are starting to pay a little bit more of attention to that. Unfortunately for the GOP, it wasn't an awareness that built to significant enough degree before November 3rd. So we got the result we got and it was affordability. You can't separate the two. You know, JD Vance was, I think, pretty pronounced in his proclamation that it was the Iran conflict that lost the election for the Republicans.

00;07;51;03 - 00;08;26;26
Unknown
But the knock on effects or the catalyst responsibility for the conflict as it translated into elevated and persistent high prices, I think, you know, it all comes down into the favorite buzzword of today, the affordability thing. And we talked about this two years ago, right when there was like, you know, gasoline prices don't really matter because it's so much less on an inflation adjusted basis in terms of your disposable income or your it's demand on, on household budgets.

00;08;26;28 - 00;08;50;18
Unknown
But it is something that is front and center and in your face every single day. So it does matter. And I think a lot more people are going to be educated about what diesel is and what it does, not only for moving trucks around, but everything in their in their daily lives. And I think in large part, that was the reason for the result that we got.

00;08;50;20 - 00;09;21;09
Unknown
I mean, and let's let's be honest, no one cares. I mean, who you don't need to know anything about how energy markets work. All you need to know about is it's expensive to fill up my gas tank and I'm pissed. That's simple. Well, and it was grossly mismanaged by the Republicans. I mean, I think this was the time place for the mantra of who won't let you build a refinery in America?

00;09;21;13 - 00;09;52;19
Unknown
Who are those guys that told you they wanted to get rid of fossil fuels? They're the ones to blame. I mean, they should have just been harping away at that every single day, you know that. Who was the one that told Ukraine it was okay to blow up the refineries? I mean, just they should have just gone on and on about this, and they should have introduced a bill, the Refinery Construction Act, with stripped down, you know, requirements, checklists to get a permit.

00;09;52;19 - 00;10;16;24
Unknown
And they should have just been harping on it. And, you know, that's kind of on Chris, right? I mean, Chris Wright should have been the one making that case, not, you know, nothing cures high or low prices like high all prices. It should have been hey, you want cheaper gasoline prices. Let us go build. And I, I think there was a shot to have some real wedges there.

00;10;16;24 - 00;10;42;21
Unknown
But at the end of the day, the Democrats just kept harping back to Iran and yeah, I'm sorry, even even though history is ultimately going to judge that if if the Iranians were truly 60% a nuclear or had the material at 60%, that meant they were a month or two away from having a bomb. So history is going to judge that one.

00;10;42;21 - 00;11;17;23
Unknown
And whether the the war was the right call or not. But man just totally misplayed. You could have put this all in the Democrats face. All their environmental policies, all their no build, etc. and just a total whiff. Well, the the Iran nuclear weapons was the only consistent reiteration of the predicate for the war. And I think people just, you know, they're too preoccupied with their own personal circumstances around affordability.

00;11;17;26 - 00;11;42;10
Unknown
It's easy to point at big oil and high gasoline and diesel prices. And I was thinking about it over the, over the past week. You know, we did have a, I don't know if it's a false predicate, but it was it was ultimately disproven that, you know, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. How much of that memory played a role?

00;11;42;10 - 00;12;02;23
Unknown
And people kind of had a big eye roll. I'm not you know, I'm not going to support this action based on something that, you know, proved not to be true last time. I tend to believe more that it is the case this time with Iran than it was certainly with with Saddam and weapons of mass destruction. But that's that's ancient history is just something that crossed my mind.

00;12;02;25 - 00;12;29;12
Unknown
Yeah. I mean, the the nuance of it was that the money that had been freed up under the Obama deal gave them the wherewithal to build a conventional weapon shield so that you couldn't come in and get the nuclear bombs, even if you had to, you know, the anti-aircraft, etc.. And so, you know, don't know if that's true.

00;12;29;13 - 00;12;58;23
Unknown
History will have to, to judge it, but just a total with the one thing I will say while we're here, did y'all see what John Kerry said? I forget which global Save the Planet conference he's at, but he came out and said the midterms were the United States choosing to take proactive steps against climate change in a world in which high gas prices were supposedly the call.

00;12;58;26 - 00;13;27;09
Unknown
I mean, you can't even make this up. There's something about drifting or they just get even better at grafting right in front of us. But what's interesting, did you see sort of the Hennessey and Elon Musk and and Donald Trump? Little hiccup this week and last week lay it on us. So Gina, the new, you know, incoming governor of Texas has basically said a few things.

00;13;27;09 - 00;13;50;25
Unknown
One, that she's going to freeze electricity prices. Here we go. And Chuck, I if you're if you guys don't follow Chuck on Twitter, it's he's been tweeting some great ones. So solid under the battery, under the bat, under the banner of here they come. Here they are. They come. It's so good, Chuck. That's when you're you're on a roll there.

00;13;50;25 - 00;14;14;23
Unknown
You're on fire. But number one. So so let's freeze like Tracy rates. But she made a comment about coming after Elon Musk and Elon Musk. Like I love this guy for the simple reasons. Like, hey, I'm just going to take my ball and go somewhere else. So he's basically saying, I'm going to rip up Tesla Space X out of Texas, and I'm going to move it to Florida or somewhere else where they'll accept me.

00;14;14;25 - 00;14;36;26
Unknown
And this is created a dust storm where Donald Trump has jumped in. But Jean has gone quiet. I think people in her handlers are like, you need to be quiet, because if if space acts and Tesla that basically employ thousands of people and thousands of left wingers that voted for Gina, but what happens when they have no job anymore?

00;14;36;26 - 00;14;55;24
Unknown
So it's interesting because it's easy to campaign and say, you know, I'm here for the working person, but what happens when you take the employer out of the out of the person that's employing all these people that want working wages, they're going to be home. They're going to be out of, you know, out of a job and looking for something.

00;14;56;01 - 00;15;22;14
Unknown
This is a bad move on Gina's part. It's interesting because I think Texas is now become sort of the purple fight state. And a lot of things are going to happen here, especially as we're hearing gun control, we're hearing freeze electricity rates, we're hearing, let's go after the billionaires. It'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few years.

00;15;22;17 - 00;16;01;16
Unknown
Well, I want to give some, on a related subject, I want to give a props to last week's Old Man Coffee, which was titled compute is the New Gasoline. And this has a strong linkage to the spanking that the GOP took on November 3rd. And you look at kind of the resounding results in places like Sunbury, Ohio, they passed a ban with 79% in favor of the ban.

00;16;01;19 - 00;16;09;29
Unknown
And the quip was roughly the share of Ohioans who think skyline is chilly.

00;16;10;02 - 00;16;36;28
Unknown
So why don't you? Why don't you tee up the whole. Yeah. So the you know, basically we've we've talked on here about refining and that we can't build a new refinery in the United States because of the permitting and all the hoops you have to jump through. And people bitch about gasoline prices and diesel prices. And it's just, hey, if you don't let us build it, how are we the asshole, you know?

00;16;37;00 - 00;17;04;07
Unknown
So we had to export building a refinery capacity. And unfortunately, it's in places that drones are flying over and bombing right now. And so the parallels I saw were to compute. I mean, everybody likes their AI searches, everybody likes Crock-Pot. But when it comes to the data centers that we need to power all that people are saying, not in my backyard.

00;17;04;09 - 00;17;31;23
Unknown
And if you look, there were 41 measures on the ballots nationwide. I believe 20 or 21 of them were in Ohio, and all but one of them, in effect, failed. Limiting or, banning the, the data center from, from being built. So I see a lot of parallels in that. And I was kind of warning big tech, hey, get ready to be called an asshole.

00;17;31;25 - 00;17;59;10
Unknown
Based on based on price. The one thing I did, we've into that old man coffee. And by the way, you can, get old man coffee@collide.io. And then it's one of the the things you can go down to old man coffee. You can also subscribe so it gets emailed to you when I drop it. But one of the things I did say about the data center is one of my old man coffee guys is a bad ass cowboy rancher.

00;17;59;11 - 00;18;28;22
Unknown
I mean, he is in the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame, and he will swear that if you put a data center next to his cattle, they don't eat, they don't get as fat, and they don't breed as well as they used to. And so it's a real PNL thing for him, not a not in my backyard thing. And he's a private property rights, votes, Republican free market kind of guy.

00;18;28;24 - 00;18;58;28
Unknown
And so there are some real issues we're going to have to navigate with this. But, the irony is not lost on me that, you know, high gas prices causes a fear. Hey, big tech, wait till you start cutting off people's grok bot or charging a more for it. I mean, the last eight months has shown us in the world what the consequences of 50 years of pretty poor energy policy or non-existent energy policy have meant.

00;18;59;03 - 00;19;28;09
Unknown
You know, we haven't we haven't built enough, I guess, diversification into the refined products production and supply system. So here we are. Right. And then we before we throw shade at sort of blaming the regulators, is it really a regulator issue or have investors in the United States said it's not worth building a refinery because of the return on capital?

00;19;28;11 - 00;19;58;26
Unknown
Chuck. Well, I mean, there was definitely a time when, when the refiners were spending tons of money on everything, but at the end of the day, they were having to build within existing facilities because of those permitting type issues. And, so I would I would argue that capital is always going to EB and flow based on, based on demand.

00;19;58;27 - 00;20;27;01
Unknown
But if you're going to box it up and say, hey, you can't build anywhere except expanding your own facilities, then yeah, it's the regulators type fault. Because right now, at $115 crack spreads, I bet you could get some people to buy. Build some if, if you could get it permitted quick enough.

00;20;27;04 - 00;21;09;13
Unknown
Yeah. I'm part of this is, you know, how much more export opportunity is there for U.S. refiners if places like Europe and we've talked a little bit about how the Australians have let their refining a domestic refining capacity dwindle, you know, if we can build it in the US, refined product like fruit is ultimately a global market. Natural gas is certainly a lot more that way than it was 20 years ago than, you know, the United States strengthens its strategic positioning as a supplier to its allies.

00;21;09;15 - 00;21;42;18
Unknown
And, you know, we're seeing in Europe, in places like Japan, which don't have much domestic resource, things like, you know, $3 natural gas here in the US, paying 25 to 30 in Europe and Japan. And from the European standpoint, that is mostly a policy and regulation and political consequence. So if they're not going to build it, we can, given the right incentives and kind of the right risk appetite.

00;21;42;20 - 00;22;09;28
Unknown
No, no, no serious refinery is going to build based on the margins we've seen over the last few months. But there is, I think, a more global opportunity, just given the void of capacity expansion that we're seeing elsewhere. And look, it's anomalous that so much of Russian refining capacity is offline right now. Who knows how long that's going to take to come back online?

00;22;10;01 - 00;22;54;10
Unknown
Due to drone and other types of explosive damage. But those are, you know, those are opportunities for the US, I think, long term and structurally, as the world kind of rejigger, it's at least the West kind of rejigger. It's, it's network of refined product production and distribution. Yeah, I started what? Chuck. Kirk, I might summarize it by just saying, you know, the last major refinery that we built in the United States was 1977, as we've talked about, same year as Star Wars, God knows, we've we've made 12 more Star Wars movies from them, even even the crappy ones here at the end.

00;22;54;12 - 00;23;22;05
Unknown
So, yeah. And then the guys behind it for guys that we that were kids when Star Wars weren't even born when Star Wars came out. Hey, I love like, look, Jacob's a great producer here, but he's not giving credit to the questions coming through. So, Crystal, tell Jacob how you do it. Because I love how you, give credit to this, but we have a few questions from the peanut gallery.

00;23;22;13 - 00;23;31;23
Unknown
If Texas could permit a new refinery in 12 months, who would write the check?

00;23;31;25 - 00;23;45;03
Unknown
Oh, I think you'd have Exxon, Chevron, Valero, all those guys lining up to to build a new one. Let's get the Venezuelans in there, man.

00;23;45;05 - 00;24;10;21
Unknown
Europe and Australia keep closing refineries. How much more diesel can Gulf Coast plants actually export? I think they're at their limit. I mean, we'll get 90. Yeah, we'll get 90. Random on here to give us a, a a better take on it. But it feels like they've been running at 98% and you just can't do anymore. We're tapped out.

00;24;10;23 - 00;24;46;07
Unknown
We're definitely tapped out. So, Hey, I see, and Valero took a cheap option on the lion del facility, which I believe they project to get back to kind of half capacity of 100 and maybe more than half, 160, 170,000 barrels a day sometime probably in the latter part of 2027. Yeah. So, 90s random, good friend of the program, dear friend in real life actually did make one point that I need, I think bears repeating right here.

00;24;46;07 - 00;25;11;22
Unknown
He said, hey, yeah, the permitting stuff and all, but a lot of the reason we're building within the existing, infrastructure is what we're doing today is so incredibly complex that it's actually easier from a process perspective to bolt it on. And so he said, yes, I think you're you're fair. We need to be able to build new refineries.

00;25;11;22 - 00;25;37;06
Unknown
But at the end of the day, there's still going to be an element of adding on to the old ones just for that reason, which has been true ever since the last greenfield refinery was built in the US. The the miracle of brownfield expansion is what has allowed this, this kind of exporter to the world position that the US finds itself in, in this crisis.

00;25;37;08 - 00;25;58;16
Unknown
So I don't know about the rest of the world, but but many of us like probably have never seen a refinery, but those of us that live near Refinery Row, it kind of reminds me of like, you know, when you drive through it by a cemetery, you hold, you know, the old wives tales to hold your breath, to be respectful of the dead.

00;25;58;19 - 00;26;23;27
Unknown
I drive by refinery and I'm like, I hope it doesn't blow up while I'm driving by. Because you see the flare gas flares and you're like, man, just one wrong move, one, one degree off. This thing is gonna blow. Well, but we need any more fires. I drive by and catch that smell, and it's kind of like, the movie Apocalypse Now.

00;26;23;27 - 00;26;45;13
Unknown
I love the smell of napalm in the morning. I love the smell of b techs in the morning. All right, all right, so let's let's hold on, hold on. Mark, we've we've got to get out on this topic. The advice from the old villain to the new villain always wear a dark suit to the hearings and no smiling.

00;26;45;16 - 00;27;10;13
Unknown
Well, let's not leave this yet. I want to I want to hear from you guys. What should Abbott do between now and when the Texas Legislature goes in session, I believe January 3rd. You know, Hosa takes the oath on the 19th. He's got the Ercot badge zero audit going on. The Tsk is frozen in terms of permit issuance.

00;27;10;17 - 00;27;23;15
Unknown
What should he do between now and then? I'm hearing some things that, you know, we might get some relief on the TCE front, at least maybe as early as sometime this week.

00;27;23;18 - 00;27;52;12
Unknown
I mean, at the at the end of the day. I actually think what he needs to do is nothing. And I hate to say that, but the voters spoke. You ought to libertarian there I am. No, I think you need. I think you need peaceful transition. You should not. I'm not a big fan of jamming things in right before you go away, particularly when you were sent to a message.

00;27;52;14 - 00;28;30;24
Unknown
And so I think he needs to be gracious educator on on all the stuff he can and, and plan for a peaceful transition. Well, I mean, I think taking a this is something I would probably never would have said in the past. And watching what we're seeing right now with the current, the Finns in the Republican side of Congress right now, I think he should just pardon as many people as possible, including Elon Musk, because people like the Democrats are going after people I don't know, even Republicans.

00;28;30;24 - 00;28;52;16
Unknown
Mass. He's going after headsets. I don't know what I mean. Can we just find better things to do here? But if he just gave mass pardons, I mean, if you were a former railroad commissioner, I mean, there's a lot of people that the Democrats could go try to hang for no reason, but that might be the only thing he should do.

00;28;52;18 - 00;28;56;07
Unknown
My $0.02.

00;28;56;10 - 00;29;12;21
Unknown
Well, you has another year or so of overlap with the new administration and all three of the commissioners or Abbott appointees. And so.

00;29;12;23 - 00;29;46;28
Unknown
They they can do a lot or they can do nothing, you know, between now and then and between now and an all day if the moratorium is lifted, if look, I believe that ultimately it's it's back to the old adage of follow the money. There is too much tax base expansion at stake to have Texas reverse course from it's now seemingly erstwhile open for business profile.

00;29;47;01 - 00;30;26;21
Unknown
What do you guys think? Well, there's really no time to waste here. We can sort out the the Nimby issues that I think were front and center. Those are very suburban and urban area centric. The the rancher example is absolutely spot on. Real. But how long in all and gas have we operated and seen the demand to be a better operator, the license to operate the standards around that go up over time, everything from routine flaring, which I was going to laugh at as an oxymoron, even rewarding yourself.

00;30;26;26 - 00;30;50;07
Unknown
Incentive compensation for mitigating flaring you shouldn't have been doing in the first place. So, you know, those things are I think those things are kind of ingrained in the way industrial operations take place in Texas, and the standards keep going higher, and your license to operate is something that you're not going to get away with violating for very long.

00;30;50;07 - 00;31;13;29
Unknown
I don't care if you're an oil and gas operator, a data center operator, food manufacture, whatever. Well, what I'll say is the governor elects first shot out of the out of the bow on data centers I thought was actually pretty reasonable. I mean, hey, you need to be behind the meter. Great. We're already doing that. Hey, probably some noise pollution type levels.

00;31;13;29 - 00;31;40;24
Unknown
That's thoughtful. We can go work through those. The water issue? Yeah, we can go work through those. Said they had to be built with labor. Labor union. And I was like, I'd push back on that, but I kind of get where that comes from. So she she didn't sound that unreasonable and kind of sounded like she was going to come to the table and try to be constructive.

00;31;40;26 - 00;32;04;29
Unknown
So it'll be it'll be interesting to watch because you're right. We've we've kind of got an economic miracle going here. We have were the most moved to state over the last 5 or 10 years, whatever the stat. And there's a reason for that. You know, I mean that's all we need, Chuck, is we need, to come out and say pro labor union.

00;32;05;02 - 00;32;39;01
Unknown
Every company that's in California or New York is looking at Texas or Florida to move their business. I mean, Goldman Sachs is building a huge facility here in Dallas. Now you're thinking, wait a minute, did we make the wrong decision? Let's see, even if I don't agree with Elon Musk, if that's how he's going to treat businesses operating here, let's find a place that long term has the longest run for us to be successful.

00;32;39;03 - 00;32;59;24
Unknown
You don't want labor unions. Texas has been fighting labor unions and is a right to work state since the beginning. So some of these ideas are creating pause and people are thinking, do I move to Florida or do I move to Oklahoma? But if you do that, Texas is in for a long period of decline.

00;32;59;26 - 00;33;28;17
Unknown
Yeah, I don't disagree with you on that one. One microcosm anecdote about how sometimes the outcome is worse for everybody, where there's a demand that there's a certain level of kind of union scale wage. And this, this had to deal with mostly unskilled labor. I remember on the Valdez project, we had a general contractor that had to.

00;33;28;19 - 00;33;53;00
Unknown
I there was there was a segment that was nonunion. There was a segment that was union. I don't remember exactly how all that pieced together, but in the in the hourly wage negotiations, it ended up, you know, deferring to the, the union scale demand, which actually ended up being less than they could have gotten had they let the market work.

00;33;53;00 - 00;34;18;11
Unknown
Now, that was a crisis. There was, you know, kind of balls to the wall, type of type of project. But in aggregate, that's kind of what we're talking about here with data centers. And I don't know about you guys, but I think we have a real kind of crafts and skilled labor, construction wise, scarcity to deal with.

00;34;18;11 - 00;34;40;13
Unknown
And if you look around some of the anecdotes of what, you know, electricians are getting paid on the project in South Haven, that power project that x I or SpaceX is building for the Colossus data centers. You know, electricians are getting paid something on the order of like $8,000 a week. Yeah, bring more of that. And those are those are nonunion jobs.

00;34;40;19 - 00;35;05;19
Unknown
So it's going to be interesting if if we throw this complexity into construction jobs and, and skilled craft labor jobs in the Texas build out and it's it's going to be in a hurry if it works. What what that's ultimately going to do for, you know, the, the outcomes for, for the average kind of laborer in this whole thing.

00;35;05;21 - 00;35;38;17
Unknown
Well, let's move over to Washington, Mark. What's happening? Subpoenas not laws. What have we got going on in Washington? Yeah. Look, the the first opportunity to get in front of a mic and a camera, last Tuesday and Wednesday was overwhelmingly about who we're going after. Get ready. We're forget which senator said that we're going to we're going to issue so many subpoenas.

00;35;38;17 - 00;36;12;00
Unknown
It's, you know, it's it's going to mow down multiple forests worth of of wood. And Paul, you know, just somewhat nonchalantly about that, but there was nothing about the legislative plan and policy that came out of those that were bringing in front of the cameras. And look, I think it's I think it cuts both ways, as we've seen, politics and the grandstanding that goes on by the, by the victors.

00;36;12;02 - 00;36;19;13
Unknown
It's really unfortunate because it's, it's now turned into a zero sum game.

00;36;19;15 - 00;37;10;02
Unknown
Yeah. No, it's I, I just pulled up a list of energy specific subpoenas. So things like Venezuela, whatever you had, Frank Pallone, Ron Wyden, Jared Huffman, whacking Castro, Gregory Meeks, who have all wanted to dig into Venezuela operations, Robert Garcia, Ed Markey, Jamie Raskin have all called for a subpoenas to investigate various new things. Yeah, I, I think if the Democrats do this in a weird sort of way, it's going to be good for the economy because you go back and you look, whenever we have divided government and the rules can't change, even if I have crappy rules, if I'm pretty certain they're not going to change, I can budget, I can plan.

00;37;10;05 - 00;37;38;06
Unknown
So you get economic activity and they're not going to be real popular with with Americans two years from now. If all they did was have a bunch of hearings where everybody screamed at each other. I mean, all the company CEOs are probably holding their breath, but there's only the good. The respite today, at least, is that the Nvidia founder and CEO has been caught having an affair with a Chinese spy.

00;37;38;09 - 00;38;05;12
Unknown
And so Silicon Valley is now sort of the has the bullet pointed their way. So, Hold on. Kirk, you got to see those. Put the tweet up. Joseph, that, Irene sent out. It was his chair. Joseph. Jacob. Jacob. Sorry, Jacob. Real quick while he's doing that.

00;38;05;15 - 00;38;33;08
Unknown
To you today, you're Joseph. Because you're not you're not running the show as a Jacob. You're running it like Joseph. Hey, real quick, guys, if you're watching and you haven't joined Clyde yet, it's a free online community for all and gas professionals, go to Clyde dot I forward slash community and when you use code BDE when applying, we'll send you enough watch for a free t shirt.

00;38;33;12 - 00;39;08;28
Unknown
Watch our collides in-house currency. We can't buy them. You can earn them. And you can spend them in the doghouse on merch and other gear. That code BDE sign up everyone. That's awesome. Now. All right. Joseph, what have we got? Joseph here. Here's your tweet. Charles. Yeah. So? So I reigns out. If I had a billionaire husband and no prenup, I'd introduce him to the Chinese spy myself.

00;39;09;01 - 00;39;23;08
Unknown
Yeah, I, I hope to God there's nothing here. I hope, I hope there are no secrets when anywhere. But I can't defend my species. We're not really good when we think with the little man down there.

00;39;23;11 - 00;39;29;13
Unknown
So that's a that's an old man. Coffee for sure.

00;39;29;15 - 00;39;58;16
Unknown
Just given the criticality of what Nvidia does and dominates and the threats and risks related to, you know, trying to getting away with more than its fair share of Nvidia GPUs. And in one example, what what does this all mean? Where does this go? Does he survive this? You know, no insight on the in video board and all.

00;39;58;16 - 00;40;28;11
Unknown
But that's definitely been his baby. And so it'd be hard to see them getting rid of him unless there's just out and out. Secrets were given and and you know, there's always pillow talk and so maybe some stuff around the edges he survives. But if if there was a secret that went that way that that's really bad and that would be the end of him, I think.

00;40;28;13 - 00;40;48;28
Unknown
I mean, I, you know, no words here. It's funny because in all and gas there's nothing really to steal. You know, it's like, wait, are you gonna drill in that in that hole or am I going to drill? Maybe you can, you know, steal some drill secrets. But it's interesting. This is a totally different game. Totally different game.

00;40;48;28 - 00;41;13;15
Unknown
It'll be interesting to watch. Glad it's not us. You know, that's all I'm saying. Although I'd like to be important enough to be chased by a Chinese spy. That'd be kind of cool. I think I'd say no. You want to see a funny a meme? Sure that on there, boomers like memes, right? There's some really good AI coming out on this.

00;41;13;19 - 00;41;34;04
Unknown
Never told anyone. Maybe like about GPUs. You can tell me anything you want to. Even something material and nonpublic. I just feel like you're so good at explaining things. Like, what if you just explain the latest chip architecture to me? Know the unreleased one? I just feel like we belong together the way your H one. Hundreds belong in China despite export controls.

00;41;34;06 - 00;41;41;25
Unknown
What's the secret? You've never told anyone?

00;41;41;27 - 00;42;05;14
Unknown
That's funny. Thanks. Thanks, Joseph. All right, guys, we have to wrap up. Well, I want to say one more. I know that we had it did get it did get me my first old man coffee mention. And Chuck took the liberty of bringing up one of our favorite kind of comparatives, which is big oil. Net profit margins versus big tech.

00;42;05;17 - 00;42;22;21
Unknown
And the clip in in Old Man Coffee was, in video, in video posted a 60% net profit margin last quarter. That's not a margin. That's a stick up.

00;42;22;23 - 00;42;51;00
Unknown
Here's actually a really good point from I g Zach Chips. I thought complexity of the hardware kept their company afloat. What secrets could they be stealing? Well, a couple areas. First of all, graphics memory, which is one of the most expensive pieces of, of sort of the of what in vedere designs, which is graphics cards, etc.. Those are made by mainly Korean suppliers.

00;42;51;00 - 00;43;15;12
Unknown
So Samsung NEX, those are the companies that sort of build this real complex memory on the actual, engines that they're designing. You're right. I mean, I think you could steal the designs. You still have to build it. But but China has been building technology. Look at Foxconn. It's it was sort of the original ODM, I think.

00;43;15;14 - 00;43;37;17
Unknown
Absolutely China could steal it. And if they did and they could replicate it most likely. So I think it's the architecture. And I don't think how to build it is actually something outside of China's capabilities. I think they're very capable of doing it because they build most of the technology around the world, minus some of the really hard pieces in Taiwan.

00;43;37;18 - 00;44;05;18
Unknown
If, if, if, if, if I think the, the, the key concern would be access to some of the machines. I mean, if, you know, we have the ban in place, they're not supposed to get them. If somehow. Hey baby, can you get my my friend over here some machines and I don't even know how that conversation goes, but you know the that would a that that would be the, the big thing that I think would get in the ax.

00;44;05;23 - 00;44;26;09
Unknown
So hey Chuck has to leave. So if y'all want to stay on Chuck and I can boot him and we can go another ten, 15 minutes. Well, let's see what you got. Hey, Chuck, good to see you. Take care. Maybe we'll wrap it up if we've got any other questions or comments. I think that pretty much covers the run of show Kirk.

00;44;26;12 - 00;44;57;01
Unknown
Yeah. It does. I mean, from the Iran war status quo. I mean, I'm looking, you know, kind of real time news coming through. Abu Dhabi just announced that, you know, more LNG exports are flowing because of Hormuz left. You know, you've got that Nigerian refinery. You know, there's some signs that that the Middle East conflict is starting to get a little bit more bearable, but that probably won't play out again.

00;44;57;03 - 00;45;26;13
Unknown
We have talked at nauseum on the show about the structural issues of the industry, lack of refining capacity. You know, increased demand as AI proliferates. So that's going to be a structural problem. This is, you know, the Hormuz issue is a temporary issue, but it played right into our elections, which we talked about earlier in the show.

00;45;26;15 - 00;45;56;29
Unknown
I don't know what the workouts going to take months not from a physical standpoint. The workouts going to take months. You know, some some are suggesting as long as two years, particularly on the refining and, and distribution side. And so, you know what's changed SPR is that that all time low. Global strategic reserves have been pulled really hard.

00;45;56;29 - 00;46;24;18
Unknown
So there is there is that ambient demand or that baked in demand that it takes a while to refill back to comfort levels. And so it's and never mind the fact that Europe I saw the guest stats across key European countries. Germany is actually at the lowest, I think under 70% of of of its, of its fill, heading into winter and gas storage.

00;46;24;18 - 00;46;53;11
Unknown
So maybe that maybe that gas is going to participate here for a little while over the next few months. Jack, Zach, Chip says, put some brains behind a shield for the tankers that protect them from these janky attacks. I mean, we got. Why don't they just put drone like, you know, on every ship should be one of these, you know, cargo ships of drones that just go out and attack people attacking them a little.

00;46;53;12 - 00;47;21;15
Unknown
Many Reagan's Reagan Star Wars capability on each tanker. Man. If I watch one more like zone killing. You know, a a a warrior in the battlefield. I mean, I it I somehow my feeds filled with that last question mark. Who's the biggest election loser in the midterms?

00;47;21;17 - 00;47;28;00
Unknown
Biggest election loser? Well, I would say the state of Texas.

00;47;28;03 - 00;47;56;27
Unknown
Great answer. The the only kind of rampart or balance check that we've got is that the Texas state legislature is still majority Republican, despite the fact that the lieutenant governor lost. And that changed hands. And so that that offers you know, we'll see how effective that check is. But the thing I worry about, I think the US Senate was a was a big loser as well.

00;47;56;29 - 00;48;29;24
Unknown
I mean, they've got at least a 54 seat majority. And so in this, in this kind of, devastating, rejection of the current administration and the current congressional legislative orientation, do some of these, you know, actions that they're going to certainly take to go after certain individuals? We'll see. I think the hex thing is going to be is going to be pretty telling.

00;48;29;28 - 00;48;58;23
Unknown
Do you get you know, it's it's a lot longer to get from 50 to 60, but 54 is a lot closer to 60 in those in those votes that require us, you know, 60 vote majority. We'll see. You know, this thing may have more teeth to it. And we know we're going to start to see a flurry of impeachment actions against the president himself once new Congress, sits down.

00;48;58;25 - 00;49;25;05
Unknown
I mean, I don't care what what. Even less, there's there's going to be even less actual legislative good policy making focus by what Congress is supposed to be doing, because there's it's payback time. I mean, absolutely, I you know, I don't care what side you're on. I do, but but my point is that the Republican Party, especially the leadership right now, are filled with Bethune and grifters.

00;49;25;08 - 00;49;59;18
Unknown
So it wouldn't surprise me for many to cross over on the head set deal. But at least we'll have hopefully a locked over the next couple of years. We'll have a bunch of nothing happening, which is fine, but I think you're right. I think Texas is the big loser in this election. And I also think AI is going to take I mean, the whole not being able to build data centers, whether you're for against, I think it's going to be interesting to see big tech people coming after them because it's raising your power bill.

00;49;59;21 - 00;50;17;07
Unknown
People need it. I think it's going to be interesting to watch. It's it's, you know, maybe it's sort of like well and gas now where, you know, you need more power, but power comes with a price and people don't want it. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out over the next few years.

00;50;17;10 - 00;50;39;28
Unknown
Any other questions in the queue? We had a couple. We had a by the way, the lieutenant governor has no authority until she is sworn in. Thanks. Bob feller 604 and we have a few others. If Democrats start hauling oil CEOs in, is a windfall profits tax actually back on the table? I think it's back on the table.

00;50;39;28 - 00;51;02;19
Unknown
I you know, we've seen before and that along with a lot of other kind of show trials or show hearings in, in Congress, are going to be part and parcel of what we see, even if prices are, you know, trending down. And they are I mean, gasoline get a shot at getting well under $4 if the current trend continues.

00;51;02;21 - 00;51;26;05
Unknown
I'm more interested in what's actually going on with, with demand and, and watching inventories. But, you know, back to the whole what's going on in the real physical world. But yeah, I think, I think for sure we're going to see kind of a renewed emphasis on something akin to windfall profits tax, despite the fact that it did not work.

00;51;26;07 - 00;51;53;27
Unknown
The first time it was tried, you know, I, I was thinking about, you know, or are we now going to start to demonize the quote unquote, subsidies at all and gas, enjoys, things like IDC's intangible drilling credits or those or those things on the table as well. I, I'm not betting against anything is as absurd as this potentially is going to get.

00;51;53;29 - 00;52;25;09
Unknown
Let me ask you a question, Mark. You've been been doing this for a long time. Most of the time when people are pulled into Congress, it is the big ol CEOs, and you've got the independents running just under the radar doing what they do best, which is drilling and pumping oil. But with Gina in the as Texas governor, do you think and with kind of where we're heading with Texas, are they exposed to from a state on a state level?

00;52;25;11 - 00;52;59;22
Unknown
Yeah, I think look, the the big independents have been more front and center in the high profile stuff. If you think back to when Trump convened the meeting right after they grabbed Maduro, it wasn't just the big oil CEOs. It was, you know, I think ConocoPhillips should be considered a super major over BP. But that's, you know, old habits are hard to break just because Conoco Phillips was about 15% larger, say there are a lot of good people at BP.

00;52;59;25 - 00;53;06;11
Unknown
Yeah, and there are. But anyway, I digress. It's

00;53;06;13 - 00;53;33;15
Unknown
You know, those companies are big enough. People are going to remember how the FTC went out after, you know, Pioneer and Scott Sheffield, the biggest independents are all or all in the mix. And they're, you know, it's unfortunate because this is mostly okay, price gouging at the pump and refined product, what consumers see and what Congress is, you know, trying to to demagogue here.

00;53;33;17 - 00;53;53;15
Unknown
And I think just by nature of them being more involved here recently, we're going to see them shoulder to shoulder with, you know, the Darren Woods and the Mike Wirth Mike worth of the world at the at the table when the hearings he was in the collide office last week or two weeks ago. Impressive. Hey, I've got two more comments.

00;53;53;15 - 00;54;17;24
Unknown
We're going to end on the last comment because it's just it's perfect. But but thermostat Jen says what energy bill can a 54 seat Senate actually pass with Trump still holding the veto pen? Good point. But I think it's more optics than it is actual actuality. I think it's keeping, you know, keeping people going to going up to Washington, D.C..

00;54;17;24 - 00;54;41;08
Unknown
I think it's the hassle factor that will have the biggest dent. I don't think you're right. I think thermostat Jen makes a good point. What can they actually do? Well, there are quite a few Republicans that will cross over because barn none, they are the party of grifters in there. So that's my take and I'm sticking to it.

00;54;41;10 - 00;54;58;24
Unknown
Well, what they could get done is the lame duck could pass the energy permitting legislation. I don't know where that stands. I haven't been paying attention to it over the last week or so. Let's get on it next week. Yeah, that's something we've been talking about for quite a while. I don't know if it's going to get done.

00;54;58;24 - 00;55;34;02
Unknown
There's a lot of good by around bipartisanship. But I remember being in Washington immediately after Trump's 2016 election and making the rounds in Congress in a, you know, mostly House of Representatives members and a couple of senators. And there was just a sense of shellshock that had taken place. So really, are they really going to get anything meaningful done between now and the time the the new the new Congress is seated cynically, I don't think much.

00;55;34;04 - 00;55;58;12
Unknown
But I'm I'm hopeful and we'll talk about it next week. If there has been any break on the in optimism as it relates to the to the permitting reform I just. All right. To wrap up we've got we need to get her on the show. But can pie jewels. Passed Chuck passed on a refinery. Ohio passed on data centers.

00;55;58;14 - 00;56;07;21
Unknown
Ellen's passing on Texas. Best week for passing since the Cowboys last playoff run.

00;56;07;23 - 00;56;31;01
Unknown
That's a great answer. So funny. It's so good. All right, everybody, please subscribe if you haven't already. You have an announcement for anyone who's hung around. And this is just also to remind y'all if y'all have if y'all haven't seen this, you giving away some. What's you wish? No. It's about the Scott Gale documentary I've been working on.

00;56;31;01 - 00;56;51;12
Unknown
Have y'all seen me hint at this? No. Tell us more. So I'm gonna. I'll. I'll kind of spill the beans here because I don't I'm not, like, so clear about it, but it's a it's an interesting, fun, shitty story. I don't know how to put it, but, Scott Gale's huge. And in the community in Houston and energy,

00;56;51;15 - 00;57;17;26
Unknown
And he passed away. His death date was almost two years ago, and his birthday is coming up. And Brad Versace and I had been working on doing some kind of tribute for him. And so, basically, like, he, he knew about his cancer for years, and he was just kind of telling people here and there in person and stuff like that, all while building like so much here in Houston.

00;57;17;26 - 00;57;52;16
Unknown
Whether it was his contribution to the Startup Week, the I on all that. So he's just he is just in a web of connections here in Houston. And he had a ticking clock the entire time. Sure I can. Yes. He, so him and Brad were already doing a podcast called curiosity and yeah, with with seconds on the clock, weeks of his life, him and Brad sat down in the old D.W. Studios and they shot three sessions, talking about everything.

00;57;52;17 - 00;58;15;09
Unknown
And, unfortunately, this word of shitty part comes. We lost two of those three sessions. I mean, this is back when I'm in Austin virtually. We have people like Julie going in there and, like, recording, like like there is no producer at D.W. back then. And so we had a lot of mistakes, which sucks and you can get over.

00;58;15;09 - 00;58;39;18
Unknown
But with this situation, it was it was not cool in my opinion. So with that one session that we had, it was a good one. And there's a lot of good stuff. It's unreleased. It's him talking about his diagnosis, his whole journey and stuff like that, and it was enough to hold up on his own. But I, I was like, you know, we have so much content of this guy talking on his podcast panels.

00;58;39;20 - 00;59;01;21
Unknown
Other people shows things that I produced half of. And I was like, I'm going to go through every single frame and second of his of what I have of him, and I'm going to make something amazing. So, you know, not only did I pull from the podcast that we've done with him in the past and other events, I, I watched and got transcripts of everything before and after.

00;59;01;28 - 00;59;28;23
Unknown
You know, they they the show was supposed to start because there were so many genuine casual, candid moments before and after. And I got all of that and I made essentially a compilation of him telling his story through the microphone, many microphones and some kind of weird, like, stitched together biopic told by him himself. So very interesting, very beautiful.

00;59;28;23 - 01;00;03;01
Unknown
If you were close to him or know of him at all, you will definitely cry like a baby. It is. It is devastating. It was so hard to edit. Even if you weren't, you should watch it. All right, let's, let's sign off with a happy 251st birthday to the United States Marines. In special shout out to friend of the show and husband of one of our shining stars at collide, Crystal Robertson, gunnery Sergeant Jesse Robertson.

01;00;03;01 - 01;00;29;18
Unknown
I think I'm supposed to refer to him as Gunnery Sergeant Robertson. Congratulations. He recently was promoted to that rank. And so happy. 251st anniversary to the United States Marines. All right, that'll do. Sign us off. Thanks, Clyde. We'll see you next week. Come back with your questions, and, we'll see you next week. Same time.