Daily Standup Top Stories
The Current State of Critical Minerals in the US Market
In an era defined by the push toward clean energy, electrification, and advanced technologies, critical minerals have emerged as the backbone of modern manufacturing and national security. These essential resources—ranging from lithium for batteries to […]
China and Iran Seal Oil-for-Infrastructure Deal to Bypass U.S. Sanctions
In a bold move amid escalating geopolitical tensions, China and Iran have formalized a significant oil-for-infrastructure agreement, effectively sidestepping U.S. sanctions through a barter system that exchanges Iranian crude for Chinese-built projects. This deal not […]
DAVID BLACKMON: Only Congress Can Reverse Instability Regulating Energy Projects
ENB Pub Note: This is an excellent article from David Blackmon on The Daily Caller. Michael Tanner and Stu Turley will be covering this on tomorrow’s daily show. This also ties into the China Critical […]
Phil Mickelson says if you want cleaner Beaches, then restart oil drilling
In a surprising twist that blends celebrity influence with hard science, golf legend Phil Mickelson is championing the restart of oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast, arguing it could lead to cleaner beaches and […]
Texas Oil Driller Taps Trump’s Team to Save California Crude Project
In a bold move highlighting the clash between federal energy priorities and California’s stringent regulations, Houston-based Sable Offshore Corp. is turning to the Trump administration’s National Energy Dominance Council for help in reviving a stalled […]
Rig Count Drops as Oil Prices in Free Fall
The energy sector is facing headwinds as crude oil prices continue their downward spiral, influenced by factors such as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats on China, a ceasefire in Gaza, and forecasts of global […]
Baytex Considers $3B Eagle Ford Asset Sale
In a move that could reshape its portfolio and bolster its financial position, Canadian oil producer Baytex Energy Corp. is reportedly exploring the sale of its U.S. Eagle Ford shale assets for up to $3 […]
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
00:15 – The Current State of Critical Minerals in the US Market
06:59 – China and Iran Seal Oil-for-Infrastructure Deal to Bypass U.S. Sanctions
09:08 – DAVID BLACKMON: Only Congress Can Reverse Instability Regulating Energy Projects
10:40 – Phil Mickelson says if you want cleaner Beaches, then restart oil drilling
13:12 – Texas Oil Driller Taps Trump’s Team to Save California Crude Project
18:18 – Market Update
19:55 – Rig Count Drops as Oil Prices in Free Fall
Frac Count Update
20:03 – Baytex Considers $3B Eagle Ford Asset Sale
26:35 – Outro
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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Michael Tanner [00:00:00] Why the critical mineral ban from China is great for the United States. Next, on the Energy News Beat, Stand Up.
Stuart Turley [00:00:08] The current state of critical minerals in the United States market, thanks to China’s rashing about last week, it is a huge issue. So I wrote this story on an era defined by the push towards clean energy, electrification, and advanced technologies. Critical minerals have emerged as the backbone of modern manufacturing. Unfortunately, China has most of the control thanks to the Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Over the last 30 years, China leads critical mineral production. Michael, they got about 80% to 90%, depending on how you want to look at it and why I put this in here. Look at this chart. I’ve got lithium, EV batteries, Australia’s 50%, Chile’s 30%, and China’s 10% for mining. But you look at how they’re being produced, it goes over to China. Cobalt battery. You take a look at Australia, Indonesia, and the DRC. China is 70% of the refining of cobalt. China, 35 to 40% of nickel. I did not know that. Indonesia, Philippines, and Russia make up 65, 75% of it basically in the nickel refining and mining. Take a look at graphite. China is 90% dude. 90% of graphite you ask what is important other than number two pencils? Everything. Graphite goes into a lot of electronics.
Michael Tanner [00:01:42] Yeah, so I want to dive into this a little bit because I think there’s a little bit of a misnomer, you know, when you know as you mentioned, we’re talking about refining capacity. Refining is different than the actual physical mining. There’s actually not as much mining activity in China as you would expect. So this idea that China has all of these rare earth metals or in our case, critical minerals is actually not true. What they have is refining capacity. Now, that’s critical, but why? The question is, why did it all end up in China? Refining minerals is not that hard. It’s not like creating a semiconductor that it’s some super complex task. There’s one reason why it all ended up in China. The answer is pollution, because this is extremely pollutive industry to have. And so the only country that was willing to take it was China. Again, they were forward And part of this report is a big reason why the stock market tumbled, this 100% tariff that Trump dropped on Friday is one of the big reasons why I think this is super important. Now, I want to say something here that I actually think China, because China then, what did they do in terms of the tariff war? Well, they said, OK, if you’re going to put 100% tariffs on us, we’re now going to go ahead and restrict the export of refined metals to the United States.
Stuart Turley [00:03:06] You have it backwards, they did that first.
Michael Tanner [00:03:09] Okay. Well, regardless, whether they did it first, here’s why I think it’s going to come back to bite them in the rear, much like the U S semiconductor export bands to China will come back to buy us in the Bahooty. I think there’s two things. So one, when you are forced not to have something that you need, what do you do? You innovate, you figure out how to replace it. Let’s look at what’s actually happening right now in the U.S. Semiconductor space. Indivia and AMD are not allowed to send their best chips, even the worst chips, they’re only allowed to send a finite amount to China. So what is China doing? They are going to begin creating their own semiconductor industry. And I guarantee you in 10 years, guess what? They’re going to have chips that are far more advanced with us, why? Because our policies at home force them to innovate. If I was China, I would understand this and say, why restrict minerals? You want the refining capacity, you want to be the bottleneck when it comes to refining critical minerals because then you can use that as leverage when you need it down the road, when you attempt to go to war with Taiwan, when you attempted to do all of these things. I think the fact that they’re putting these controls on the exporting of these refined metals, I think is going to eventually stab them in the back because eventually what’s going to happen is That refining capacity is going to onshore here to the United States. We’re going to find other places in Southeast Asia that will be willing to stand up refining capacities. So I actually think this ban on exporting critical minerals or really refined metals is going backfire on them. And I think the case study is what we’re seeing right now with the indivia and AMD chip band that’s going to China.
Stuart Turley [00:04:53] I agree. And it’s a little more than that. Also, you’ve described it, but it’s also taking a look at South America and Africa. China is playing a really political heavy hand to try to shut us down. They think they have all the cards. But I think Trump is going to get pulled that over. I included this one because David Blackman had a really good point. The mine from Christopher Messina talked about Greenland there. You bring up a great point, Michael. That is there’s going to be other areas that we can look at. And Greenland is a great source. So maybe Greenland and Canada are going to fight to become the 52nd state. 51St and 52nd State, who wants to be the winner there? But when you take a look at that, there are rare earth minerals all over the place, and you are right. Who’s gonna be, where do you wanna put it? It’s all in the regulations and the EPA’s hands, because it’s gonna the lawsuits and all the anti-climate folks and everybody else doing the lawsuits.
Michael Tanner [00:05:58] Well, it’s going to end up being like what we see with what’s going on with data centers right now. Everybody wants data centers. Everybody wants AIs, but then people try to spin up a data center in your backyard and everyone says, no, no no, and to be honest, I’m kind of with them. You’re going to have electrical prices increase. There’s a lot of pollution that goes along with some of these massive hyper-scale data centers, so that’s I think the issue that we’re going run into the United States is nobody wants to live next to one of these facilities. So where do we put them? I don’t think Canada is going to take them. I think that’s off the table. I’ll be interested if Greenland takes them. I think the problem is Greenland with their really under the control of the EU, I don think the EU is going do it. I think our best bet is either to find places here in the United States, or I think what you’re seeing is a migration down to Southeast Asia, sort of like what happened with low wage labor. All went to China in the early 2000s. And then when China started increasing their labor costs because they ended up becoming high skilled, They went from low skilled, cheap labor to high skilled, low wage, all of that. And then the wages follow the high skilled. Everything moved to Southeast Asia. I think that’s what’s going to happen here.
Stuart Turley [00:07:06] You bet. Hey, let’s go to the next one. Speaking of China, China and Iran seal oil for infrastructure in a deal to bypass US sanctions. The great Irina Slav has always said sanctions don’t work as intended. In a bold move to escalate geopolitical tensions, China and Iran have formalized a significant oil for infrastructure agreement. You got to love a good bartering system there, Michael. The deal not only secures a steady oil supply for Beijing, but bolsters Tehran’s infrastructure amid ongoing economic pressures from Washington. Hey, Iranians, if you’re listening, make sure you check any of their grid equipment that they put in that they can’t remotely shut down because that’s going to be pretty much what they put it in. They’re going to put in anything that they own you. So under the new framework, Iran gets the exchange for Chinese contractors developing key infrastructure and rail lines, ports, industrial facilities. Settlements occur via non-dollar channel money.
Michael Tanner [00:08:13] Ding! That’s the scariest part, and I was about to point that out. Settlement occurs in non-dollar channels. I mean, this is the same thing that China’s been doing with their Belt and Road initiative for years now, these loan-to-own programs where they’ll loan you a bunch of money, loan you bunch of stuff, and then now we’re all of a sudden going to end up owning you. In this case, we’re going to own the oil flows. If I were Iran, I think this is a bad deal for Iran. Iran needs to be, again, I don’t want to pretend I’m the Ayatollah, And that’s not necessarily, I don’t need to be given advice to that guy. But if I was in charge of a country, I wouldn’t necessarily want to give away my biggest resource, my most profitable resource in exchange for goods and services. I would prefer to get some sort of cash, whether it’s via non-dollar channels, whether it dollars, whether it gold, whether it whatever, and then use that and shop my infrastructure around. And maybe I end up going with China, but I can use more of a competitive market. I don’t necessarily like this from a strategic standpoint. It is going to be interesting. And yeah, check all that stuff. There are going to listening devices everywhere.
Stuart Turley [00:09:19] Yep, and then they’re going to shut them down. Hey, speaking of David Blackman, let’s roll over here to David Blackmon. Only Congress can reverse instability regulating energy projects. I’ll tell you what, this was a great one. This was on the Daily Caller. David Blackmen wrote this out there. Energy companies doing business in the United States increasingly cite diminished stability in the US regulatory system, making it harder to Finance Michael and execute big domestic projects in a complaint. I’ve heard from several every executive I’ve interviewed since 2021 One that was recently echoed by the head of Shell Americas. Good grief, listen to this. I think uncertainty in the regulatory environment is damaging, I don’t want to mispronounce their name. However, far the pendulum swings one way, it’s likely it’s gonna swing just as far the other way. I’ll tell you what, Lee Zeldin’s gotta get this thing figured out. For every one regulation they put in that he removes 10 others, I haven’t heard if that’s even actually happened or not.
Michael Tanner [00:10:24] Yeah, no, I mean, regulatory changes are needed in order for us to continue to output energy relative to, you know, I mentioned data centers. I mean that’s become a huge topic over the last couple of weeks is, you now, everyone’s, we’re spending a trillion dollars on data centers, well, who’s going to power those data centers? Where is it going to come from? What’s that going to do to the grid stability? All that interesting stuff. So I think the best solution to that is doing exactly what David Blackman is talking about in here and doing a bunch of reforms with the EPA.
Stuart Turley [00:10:54] Oh, absolutely. Hey, let’s go to the next one. I did not have this story on my bingo card. Phil Mickelson says, if you want cleaner beaches, then restart oil drilling. I got this story actually from the great Mike Umbro. He was sitting there talking to me and we were kind of going back. Golf legend Phil Mickeleson is championing the restart of oil drilling in Santa Barbara coast, arguing it could lead to cleaner beaches and a stronger California economy. Michael, you ask, how is this possible? It’s because there’s so much heavy oil in California it oozes out onto the beach and if you take the pressure off this is actually a proven scientific fact. This is not an Al Gore. The whales are going to be dying and the bears are going be underpopulated. According to Mickelson, scientific studies reduce natural oil seepage through the ocean floor, potentially eliminating sticky tar balls. I always hate it when my tar balls wash up on the beach, especially in stained feet and everything else. I thought this was a pretty darn cool story, but you know what’s not going to happen? They’re not going. They’re going to go for it. I love the story, but I think the nut job Newsom is going to just absolutely do that. In fact, there is one problem with nut job that he’s got is he is about to sign about 15 different bills, Michael. One of them I believe is Senate Bill 177, I believe I’ll have to fact check that here in a sec. But that one is going to eliminate. Free speech in California and anybody in the United States can be sued by him if he signs that into law. So all of a sudden we can’t call him hairball, greaseball, Newsom anymore.
Michael Tanner [00:12:48] That we, yeah. And it’ll be very interesting to see if he decides to do this actually was around the Sacramento area this weekend for a wedding. Shout out to a Jack and Emily Bevin, but it, I can, I, I tell you, you can see the grease oozing from the Capitol as you drive by. It’s he’s got, he’s gotten barrels. We he’s wheeling barrels up just to make sure he’s got enough product for himself, whether or not you’re, I’m with you. I did not have Phil Mickelson, energy advocate on my bingo card. And this goes to show you, you know, when you make $500 million from the Saudi Arabian government, you may come out for oil production. You might.
Stuart Turley [00:13:26] Exactly. I don’t know. But I liked his thought process. Let’s go to this last story, speaking of hairballs. Texas oil driller taps Trump’s team to save California crude project. The same one that we were talking about, the Sable one. Houston-based Sable Offshore Corp is turning to the Trump administration National Energy Dominance Council for help in reviving a stalled offshore oil project in Santa Barbara. For our podcast listeners, There is this is very critical. I’m reached out to Jim Flores to make sure to see if I can get him on the podcast, Michael. But this is critical because he’s going to federal. This is federal. And there’s a pipeline that can tie into the main artery in California right now. That main artery for oil transportation in California is losing. Michael, are you ready? $2 million a month is what it’s losing that cannot stay open now now Hairgel Newsome has already put out that he is going to allow Kern County and he’s gonna put about 2,000 new drilling permits which are gonna get slow-walked by the deaths deep state in California So it’s gonna be slow-walled and not done. They’re not gonna have the volume that they need. It is a real fuel problem. I think Gavin Newsom may have done a real number on California’s oil and gas industry.
Michael Tanner [00:14:57] Well, I mean, he absolutely did. There’s, there’s no question about that. Do I, I think it’s smart for, for Sable to appeal to the Trump administration. The question is, is there, what legal action then comes around? Because when we live in a federalized democracy where states do have rights. So if a state decides they don’t want oil and gas production, as dumb as I think that is the real question is what’s the Supreme Court going to say? You know, that’s where I think. It gets interesting.
Stuart Turley [00:15:24] It is going to get dicey and here’s why, because the Chevron refinery is going to be starved and they’re going to be bringing that one back online. That’s 40% of the jet fuel in the military bases for California. So as soon as Trump can’t defend the United States, you’re going to see federal involvement dropping in.
Michael Tanner [00:15:48] Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, let’s jump up because we have to talk about what happened on Friday with oil prices. I mean, unbelievable. But first, let us pay the bills. As always guys, the news and analysis you just heard is brought to you by world’s greatest website www.energynewspeed.com. Stu and the team do a tremendous job making sure that website stays up to speed. Everything you need to know to be the tip of the spear when it comes to the energy and the oil and gas business. Go ahead and hit the links in the description below. Links to the timestamps, links to the articles and specifically subscribe to the show on YouTube. Subscribe to the show on Apple iTunes. Give us a follow there. Subscribe to our show on Spotify. Please leave comments there and subscribe to our substack, theenergynewsbeat.substack.com. That’s probably the best place to support the show. Stu does a great job of releasing, you know, two to three articles a week that really encompass the big themes that are going on. We also drop all of our podcasts there, which give a little bit of a breakdown. We just had a great, great podcast, so I highly, highly recommend everybody subscribe to our Substack, theenergynewsbeat.substack.com. We’d also like to thank friends of the show, Reese Energy Consulting for supporting the show guys. Reese Energy consulting is the foremost midstream expert. Guys, if you at all are dealing with issues in the midstream space, whether you’re an upstream company and need help with your first purchaser’s contract or renegotiating your gas contracts or figuring out where you’re gonna tie in your next pad, because you’ve got multiple different options and you’re trying to break it all down, Reese Energy, consulting and help. 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Check out investinoil.energynewsbeat.com Fill out our portfolio survey and our tax calculator and guess what you guys, you guys are going to get and get a nice ebook that tells you here’s what you should look for when you invest in oil and gas and also figure out what your tax burden is and figure out how much you might save relative to your tax burden. If you did invest in Oil and Gas guys, we practice what we preach here guys. We do this stuff ourselves. Invest in oil.energynewsbeat.com. Don’t give your money to Uncle Sam, figure out and find out if Oil and gas investing is for you. Depending on if you qualify, we will again send you all that information and we may or may not point you in the right direction. Again, invest in oil dot energy newsbeat.com. All right, an absolute thrashing on Friday for the entire stock market in general. We saw the S&P 500 drop 2.7 percentage points, NASDAQ down 3.5 percentage points. Two and 10 year yields killed it. Oil down 4% and natural gas down 5% all because mainly Trump’s retaliatory 100% tariffs on China. Now we can, you can agree or disagree on whether or not we need to be tougher on China What, in my opinion, this chaotic nature in which things are being rolled out is making it extremely unsustainable. For American companies to figure out what to do. I spent this weekend while I was on the flight, Stu, going through the re-reading the Dallas Energy Fed survey. It’s clear people and executives in the oil and gas business have no guidance and no idea what’s happening when it comes to the geopolitical environment, when it becomes to being forewarned about these things or have any ability to plan for the future because they don’t know what the future holds. Candidly, they don’t know what President Trump’s going to do? We can say that you could argue that’s a good thing, you could argued it’s a bad thing, the point is we don’t know. And I do find it interesting, there was a quote, Trump was giving a press conference and he specifically pointed out that we got, his quote was something around the point, I’m not quoting him, but he essence was, we got oil below 60, gas will be below $2. And so. This goes back to a theme I’ve had for, been talking about this for months now. Oil and gas people have to be extremely principled because oil at $55 is devastating to the business. Death is stating people will lose their jobs. Drilling rigs as we saw rig count dropped by four or was it two or four? I think we dropped four oil rigs, gained two natural gas rigs. So it was a net of two. We saw the frat count straight drop by four. This price environment that we’re about to enter is going to get nasty. And it’s going to be nasty for big companies. It’s going get nasty for the small operators if they do not have their balance sheet in difference. And again, I’m gonna keep pounding this on the table. Oil and gas folks are some of the most principled people because time and time again, they vote against their best self-interest. Again, it’s really true. And to be honest, there comes a point. If I was a political strategist for President Trump, it’s probably a good thing I’m not because I’m wrong about a lot of this stuff. But if I was called on the phone to give my advice, my advice would be, maybe don’t go so hard at saying $50, $45 oil because you will get the business to turn against you. You’re seeing that in the Dallas Energy Fed survey. You’re see that in this sentiment. People aren’t dumb. They know what this means in the business. So yes, from a global standpoint, having lower energy prices is awesome. Now the question is, does the business feel like they have somebody in the White House that’s fighting for them or using them as a tool to accomplish something that may or may not go against their best interest? It’s really fascinating.
Stuart Turley [00:21:54] I agree. And if he just did that and realized that, oh, by the way, it is the oil and gas markets are now fungible across the global markets. And he’s doing the best he can with the way the geopolitical and cleaning out of the deep state and the Schumer shutdown in which he’s going to be able to get rid of 90% of the Deep State, I think is going to absolutely wonderful. But it is frustrating from the standpoint of trying to balance out how you’re going to do it. But you have to understand sanctions don’t.
Michael Tanner [00:22:29] No, absolutely. And I think, I just think the chaotic nature in which some of these policies are rolled out, what feels like on a whim, is devastating to the market. Now, I’m not going to lie, market’s down 2.5%. It’s probably a good time to maybe just buy a, quickly pick up a couple more shares of the S&P. I mean, I mean I’m limiting in on Monday. I can promise you that as you guys listen to this, trust me, I am limiting into some more S&Ps 500 allocation because at the end of the day, not that this is an investment show, but over the long term, you’re gonna dollar cost average. I just think it’s the chaotic nature in which I think energy policy has been communicated to the business is becoming scary. And for Trump from the standpoint of he may lose, he’s not gonna lose the energy business, but he risks really alienating them. And you know, this idea of drill baby Joe, this is what I can’t understand. Do you think, like, what’s Secretary Chris Wright doing? Is he in there when Trump’s talking about, we need to get prices to 50 and everyone’s drilling? You think he’s sitting there like, oh yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. He can’t be, he’s got to be saying, hey, President Trump, this is a commodity-based business. You drive prices down too low, you’re only then on the backside gonna cause prices to go up to $100, and there’s no way you can artificially keep oil prices down domestically if you shut down production. It’s clear that Saudi doesn’t have enough spare capacity to actually move the market as much as they thought. So I find it’s really interesting. I’d be very fascinated to know what those conversations look like, and maybe it’s 5D chess. Much like I don’t put malice when incompetence is really the case, I tend not to put genius where misunderstanding might be the case. And I think in this case, there’s probably some misunderstanding. I think the last thing we need to cover is Batex considers 3 billion Eaglford asset sale. This is pretty interesting. So BateX Energy, they’re actually a majority Canadian oil producer, entered the Bakken shale in 2018. They’ve reportedly put their US Eagleford assets up to spiel for up to $3 billion. This was actually first reported by Bloomberg actually had Batech shares up about 4%, which kind of can tell you what the street thinks about this. They actually, I lied, these specific assets which are part of a slightly larger Eagle Fork position, which they started gathering in 2018 was actually the bulk of it was through Ranger Oil Corporation, which was a purchase they did in 2023. And what’s funny is they actually bought Ranger. For $3.4 billion or about really that’s Canadian. So $2.5 billion USD at the same time. So not maybe the greatest accretive transaction that everybody talks about. Oh, we’re going to, you know, every one of these mergers too, it’s all accreted. Trust me. It’s all accreting. We’re doing it right. Maybe, maybe not pretty interesting here. You know, the report goes on to show Bloomberg says that Baytix is working with advisors to gage interest and there are multiple entities looking to purchase this. My guess is you’re going to see some private equity companies step in. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kimmeridge Texas Gas, who just rechanged their name to something stupid. I don’t know what it is, but Kimmerge Texas Gas just rebranded into something stupid, I don t know what is. My guess is they’re looking heavily at this considering their position. In the eagle fur, but it’s going to be interesting. Great show today, Stu. My favorite segment of the week. What are you scared about?
Stuart Turley [00:26:06] I’m really not scared. President Trump put out on Truth Social and said, China is okay and they’ll come to their senses. I think what this is going to do is it’s going to onshore our critical minerals, which we need to do anyway. So I think we’re going to get there. You can’t get there in 15 minutes. So, I’m feeling pretty groovy.
Michael Tanner [00:26:28] Absolutely. And as you guys listen to this, if you’re listening to this on Monday, October 13, get ready, because on Tuesday, October 14, we are releasing Stu’s interview. With Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. It’s going to be great. I’ve got a chance to listen to it. It’s awesome. We’ve got to little teaser video that’s circulating right now. Let me know and let us know what you think that will be available in the morning sometime 8, 9 AM on all podcasts and YouTube platforms. So please check that out. It’s great interview. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get a couple more with him. But there was no Hunter Biden Burisma questions. I was a little depressed. I was hoping you’d slip in there. What was it like? To you manage to cut some of it out? Well, of course, because I’d like to stay in business. So I don’t need the feds knocking on our door. No, not much of it was bad. So it was a great interview. We’re excited for everybody to take a look at it. But With that, guys, we appreciate you checking us out to start your week. We will be on Substack, a YouTube podcast covering everything you need to know about the energy business. So stay tuned, guys. Appreciate it. But for Stuart Turley, I’m Michael Tanner. We’re out. We’ll see you next time, guys!
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