Daily Standup Weekly Top Stories
Russia’s Shadow Fleet – 24 min Bloomberg Video – “Ships aquired by “We don’t know who; and insured by who knows?”
ENB Pub Note: Michael and I have talked about the “Shadow Fleet” for several years. Iran had been ahead of Russia in avoiding sanctions, but both have successfully made the United States irrelevant after the […]
We no longer need the Cop circus – technology and markets are already solving the climate crisis
ENB Pug Note: The author from the Telegraph raises some interesting points about the COP Circus. I agree that the baton has been passed to big oil and that money is now available for green […]
Major grid operator warns legal agreement to shutter coal plant will devastate electric reliability
A major power grid operator that oversees electricity supplies across the mid-Atlantic repeated its warning that the looming shutdown of a coal-fired power plant in Baltimore will threaten the region’s grid reliability and may have devastating impacts […]
The Geopolitical Problem of the US—a German-Russo-Japanese Connection
ENB Pub Note: George McMillan III, ENB Contributor, and geopolitical energy expert, wrote this article. He was on an earlier podcast where we covered a fantastic global overview, and are tracking around the world in […]
Chevron CEO cautiously optimistic on Venezuelan-Guyanese border dispute, downplays military conflict risks
(Bloomberg) — The border dispute between Venezuela and Guyana is unlikely to escalate into a military conflict despite the growing hostile rhetoric between the South American nations, says Chevron Corp.’s top executive. “These things are […]
Bitumen beyond combustion: how to triple oil sands value, reduce emissions, and create an advanced material industry for 2% of a battery plant’s subsidies
What if some phenomenally large energy/materials breakthroughs were right here in front of us, vastly more accessible than experimental aspirations, but held back by an image problem? To help ponder that question, it is necessary […]
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
01:40 – Russia’s Shadow Fleet – 24 min Bloomberg Video – “Ships acquired by “We don’t know who; and insured by who knows?”
04:16 – We no longer need the Cop circus – technology and markets are already solving the climate crisis
06:35 – Major grid operator warns legal agreement to shutter coal plant will devastate electric reliability
11:16 – The Geopolitical Problem of the US—a German-Russo-Japanese Connection
13:14 – Chevron CEO cautiously optimistic on Venezuelan-Guyanese border dispute, downplays military conflict risks
17:00 – Bitumen beyond combustion: how to triple oil sands value, reduce emissions, and create an advanced material industry for 2% of a battery plant’s subsidies
20:00 – Outro
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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Michael Tanner: [00:00:14] What is going on? Everybody. Welcome into a special edition of the Daily Energy News Beat. Stand up here on this gorgeous Saturday, December 16th, 2023. As always, I’m your humble correspondent, Michael Tanner. How many from an undisclosed location here in Dallas, Texas, joined by executive producer of the show, the purveyor of the show and the director and publisher of the world’s greatest website, Energy News Beat.com Stuart Turley, my man. How we doing? [00:00:37][22.2]
Stuart Turley: [00:00:37] Today is a beautiful day in the neighborhood here in Dallas. I love it. [00:00:40][3.2]
Michael Tanner: [00:00:40] Absolutely Love to be close with you. I’m glad to have you in town all week. But we have our weekly recap coming up. Still, what we cover at the top segments from the week is an absolutely great week. We had two solo shows from you and myself, and then we spend a lot of time breaking down. What happened at COP 28? Some good opinion articles from some of the long time friends of the show. So absolutely Wild Week. I’m going to leave it up to the team to decide what the top segments for the week was, guys. But before they give you that, as always, the news and analysis you are about to hear is brought to you by the world’s greatest website www.energynewsbeat.com The best place for all of your energy news doing the team do an absolutely outstanding job keeping that website up to speed with everything you need to know to be the tip of the spear when it comes to the energy business. Follow us. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube. Wherever you get your podcasts at Energy News, you can also check us out Dashboard@EnergyNewsBeat.com You can hit us up questions@EnergyNewsBeat.com But I’m kind of a brought those do I’m going to kick it over to the weekly recap we’ll see you guys on Monday. [00:01:37][57.1]
Stuart Turley: [00:01:38] Russia’s shadow fleet. Michael and I have been talking about this for a very, very long time. The shadow fleet is old tankers that are being bought by Iran, Venezuela. There’s an estimated 500 to 600 tankers in the fleet. They take their transponders, they turn them off. They’ll meet with a legitimate tanker. Here’s the catch. These tankers are not insured through the normal insurance companies for oil. If something happens and these rust buckets have a problem. Let me bring up this one right here, this rust bucket. One of the best movie lines that’s out there says, I think I need a tetanus shot just from looking at it. That was from Up Periscope with Kelsey Grammer. This is an amazing movie. It’s a Bloomberg video that they have had a excellent aging discussion or of the aging fleet that’s out there. And they’re a direct response to the weaponization of the U.S. dollar that has gone on. This weaponization of the U.S. dollar is going to come back and bite the U.S. in the market. It is not going to be pretty. So in this article, it says this little piece of paper on a dark ship may say that it’s insured, but it’s not worth the paper it’s written on, said Simon Lockwood, a marine executive with the insurance broker. Two thirds are carrying Russian crude are now insured by unknown source. These tankers are registered to, I don’t know, and they are insured by unknown or who knows. So this is a Abbott and Costello scare waiting to happen. I was planning on that today. Michael is out on assignment. We’ll have to come up with that again some other time. So with that, how this plays in and this is an excellent video, it’s worth all of your time to watch it. The key thing is this plays into OPEC and Opec+ because they’re worried that all their OPEC members are producing more than their quotas, their quotas that are imposed on them that they’re allowing or they’re going to do. In fact, Brazil says, oh, we are now in the OPEC. And, oh, by the way, we’re going to go ahead and produce everything that we can anyway. The CEO of Petrobras just basically put that out last week. This is an interesting article saying that we cop no longer needs the cop circus. The U.N. has been putting this on for a very long time. I couldn’t agree more. But when we sit back and say that humanity and the markets, no, the best path has it’s kind of a misnomer from the standpoint that they are still printing a lot of money. The energy hypocrisy from Bill Gates and BlackRock is out there. BlackRock is saying that ESG funds have lost billions of dollars. They lost over $5 billion in their ESG funds. It’s now okay to invest in oil and gas. There’s a little bit of energy investing hypocrisy. Bill Gates came out and said, oh, by the way, climate change is not going to kill us. He’s now rescinding that I saw an interview with. I’m saying, Oh, no, it’s not bad. Somebody must have got to him. So I’m not totally sure that it is 100%. They are saying that we are seeing the oil and gas companies. Let’s take Saudi Arabia and Dubai. Saudi Arabia is using their oil profits in order to pay for green energy. Again, as I’ve always said, Saudi Arabia, I don’t agree with everything socially that they do, but I applaud the leadership for taking care of Saudi Arabia first, taking the oil and gas profits and then moving to renewables and funding both. That is actually an implantable thing to go forward with. And so the fact that there were so many oil companies there and so many of the green agenda folks that were not pleased by that, the best thing about was nuclear. The 22 countries that signed the nuclear deal is phenomenal. We need all forms of energy. You hear me say this all the time, but we need it nuclear. We need natural gas. We need oil. Because, as you know, you sit back and think, Ronald keeps telling me, you know, you can build an iPhone from a wind farm. You have to have oil. The just stop oil. Folks need to check their living standards. [00:06:34][296.3]
Michael Tanner: [00:06:35] Major Grid operator Warns Legal Agreement to Shutter Coal Plant Will Devastate Electric Liability. This is a really interesting, interesting article here. We have in a follow up letter obtained by Fox Business this week, PJM Interconnection, which oversees the electric supplies across the mid-Atlantic, repeatedly warned of a shutdown of the brand and shores coal plant is warned that the shutdown of this brand occurred in the Maryland area will result in 1 million customers having, quote, degraded grid reliability, which includes the entire city of Baltimore. The plant’s operator confirmed that they are deactivating that Brandon Shores coal plant in June 2025 as part of an agreement with, you guessed it, the Sierra Club. I mean, that’s the crazy part. We’ve we’re taking our grid reliability advice from the Sierra Club. This is an interesting quote from PJM president. I see you, Manitoba. As you are aware, Talon is currently prevented from continuing to run without a conversion beyond its stated actually date under a reliability. Must one framework do a private agreement it entered in with you either PJM, the federally designated regional grid operator in charge of maintaining grid Larry nor the state of Maryland is a party to this agreement. I mean, are you kidding me, folks? So the owners of this coal plant, were they again, Texas based talent, energy. They made a private agreement with the Sierra Club. Not government, not the EPA, not another actual government jurisdiction, the Sierra Club, again, the Sierra Club. He goes on to say this situation requires immediate attention, failure to come to a resolution. This could result in the degrade grid reliability of over 1 million Maryland customers during peak hours, including the entire city of Baltimore, four years and four years between the state, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Point of the matter is, guys, this is what happens when you let non I would say non-experts because anyone’s an expert now and experts are always wrong. We’ve seen that time and time again. But when you let people who are so far detached from the actual ground operations to make sure Clippers know what’s going on in Maryland or Baltimore, they could care less. You know, there’s they’re sitting somewhere probably in their really nice New York City penthouse conference suite that they’ve got, you know, pretending to be, you know, care about the environment. But really what they’re trying to do is you shut down and increase the grid in reliability. It’s absolutely unbelievable. We’ve got an issue now with so much solar that we can’t get and wind that we can’t get hooked up to the grid. But now we’re shutting off coal exactly when we need it and we can’t necessarily get the same grid reliably. It’s absolutely unbelievable. Again, I’m all for shutting down coal. It’s clear that there’s a huge amount of emissions that come from coal over to natural gas. Where is the solution on how to transition this source? They’re just going to shut it down? Well, Sierra Club is going to shut it down. Do you live in both? It’s clear they’re not they don’t live in Maryland. It’s clear the headquarters of the Sierra Club are not in Maryland. It’s absolutely unbelievable. The letter further goes on to say that both the Sierra Club and Talon Energy should amend the agreement to allow the coal to continue providing power for customers and the necessary transmission projects are completed, according to the PJM prematurely closing brand sure sparks the need for new infrastructure to transport electricity from other sources, but such transmission upgrades aren’t expected to be finished in Maryland until 2028, three years after the plan. Brandon George goes, Well, it’s only three years, guys. You’ll survive. I mean, now you’ll be fine. It’s your pay. Does it snow in Maryland? I don’t even know. Probably on snow. You’ll be fine. I mean, I’m actually. I’ve gone the other way on this one. Shut it down. I’m kidding. But, I mean, in all reality, folks, this is again, the problem. When you mix ideology with common sense, obviously these people have the ideology of shut coal down. The problem is they’re not thinking the second order effect. You know, the PJM, you know, again, this is a federal grid operator. Okay. So this isn’t you know, this isn’t necessarily, you know, some, you know, crazy, you know, Republican style, you know. You know, it’s not the Electric Reliability Council with. Yes, of course, they’re going to say the grids unreliable. It’s part of their job. The interesting part of the matter is, though, is that this is, again, a fairly nonpartisan. They just want to deliver energy to as much people as possible. It’s why we have these grid operators, these large scale grid operators. It’s pretty interesting. They operate 65, they serve 65 million customers and sell and coordinate movements of wholesale electricity in 13 states. So they know what they’re doing here and they’re not necessarily in it as much as you would think for profit, but they are for grid reliability. So just like that, we’re shipping off coal. Again, not a bad thing, but we’re doing it without the idea, thanks to the Sierra Club. Got to love it. [00:11:15][280.6]
Stuart Turley: [00:11:16] George MacNeil. Let’s go to George. I’ll tell you what, this one has been going off around the world. The article is the geopolitical problem of the U.S. a German Russo Japanese connection. He’s talking about segment connections in our podcast that Jordan was on. I go listen to that. For some folks, it’s a one hour, 50 minute podcast. And I tell you what, George is a academia, energy geopolitical guru. And what we’re talking about here is energy. You may have a country that you think is your ally. If you can’t support their low cost energy, they are not your ally. We may be losing Japan to Russia in order to get these pipelines done, and the U.S. is not going to allow that to happen. Ah, this is a problem. The reason why Germany is more important than Japan is that Germany world consists of Switzerland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, which shares a border with Germany on the Danube River. If the German oil and gas pipeline network is connected to Russia by any pipeline, then it could not only supply all the German world, but the Danube River and Slavic world as well. You see why the Nord Stream was blown up. [00:12:39][83.3]
Michael Tanner: [00:12:40] Yeah, I mean, this series that you’re rolling out and and will be rolling out with George McMillan is is absolutely incredible. I think you highlight some well I thought it was the Ukrainian seals. [00:12:49][9.6]
Stuart Turley: [00:12:50] Yeah and on a sail a sailboat they went out on a three hour cruise to blow up the pipeline and only got three out of the four. So no. And that was such a deep a deep water and then a sailboat ain’t going to get the men in there and back. So what are they? Kamikaze pipeline bombers. I’m not buying it. Chevron CEO Cautiously Optimistic on Venezuelan Guyanese Border Dispute Downplays Military conflicts. Thank goodness. Now, here’s the thing. I was on the energy transition on Monday talking to Armando David Blackmon And Tami, that’s a heck of a panel. And you get some Scooby like me on there. It’s pretty much an honor. But here’s the problem. Chevron is the only oil major to have operations in Venezuela. The company recently agreed to buy Hess Corp for 53 billion, which would give it a 30% stake in the Guyana offshore oil development. Michael, as an investor, when you’re playing with your phone, would you sit back and take a look and only calculate out, is that deal actually going to go a good thing now that this is going on or is it wasted money? Wow, that’s a 53 bit dollar retro. Yeah. [00:14:14][83.1]
Michael Tanner: [00:14:15] Here’s the thing. I think clearly Chevron did some due diligence on this and if they didn’t, shame on them and they deserve to lose that investment because you should have you know, it’s not hard to hire a couple consultants to map out the geopolitical risk of, you know, purchasing this asset. What did they do? They have boots on the ground. They have to be I would be shocked if they did it necessarily take this into account. I think this is having talked with the few people closer to the situation. I actually have a friend of mine who’s very close, who’s from Venezuela, and he said this is nothing more. And then I’m quoting him, I’ll leave him anonymous. But the word I got from him is this is nothing more than show from Venezuela. They’ll never actually invade. This is more so that Maduro can come back to his people during a an election and say, well, the reason why we don’t have any electricity is because the Americans cut us out of Guyana, which I’m sure maybe there’s some territorial dispute there, but that’s not going to change how this will, in my opinion, outside of a military. Conflict. Nothing’s going to change hands. And again, as Mike Wirth, CEO of Chevron said, that’s unlikely. So I’m with him. But hopefully they did their due diligence on this. [00:15:18][63.7]
Stuart Turley: [00:15:19] I think there’s a little more to this story than your friend is then concerned. And you have Venezuela, who used to have a gigantic oilfield equipment and everything else. They have destroyed it. And so instead of taking $1,000,000 the way that he has has kept control, the dictator there, he pays his generals extremely well. Million bucks here, million bucks there. The generals then turn around and pay the colonels. Colonels go around there and then the sergeants go down the street, beat the snot out of the Venezuelans to keep everybody in line. That is how it’s been done. The money has been coming from the Venezuelan oil, and they have not been putting CapEx back in. They don’t have the talent. They don’t have the offshore hands. They’ve got rid of everybody. And so this is a problem. They’re just skimming any money that they can do. And that in Guyana, Shell has gotten in the game and they’ve got it. You’ve got the old diamond back out there, you’ve got Hess, Exxon’s there, got Anadarko, Exxon’s there. I mean, everybody is sitting over in Guyana drilling. This is a big deal. I, I think it’s. [00:16:38][79.3]
Michael Tanner: [00:16:38] One of the last few unexplored or hot new offshore. [00:16:41][3.0]
Stuart Turley: [00:16:42] Target. Absolutely. And I think it’s going to be a bigger problem. And it’s because Putin has been to his team, he’s been talking to Maduro, and there is a bigger statement going on there and is between Putin in China. And. Bitterman beyond combustion, how to triple oil sands value, reduce emissions and create advanced material industry for 2% of battery subsidies. This is crazy. First, let me give Terry Etam a shoutout. Michael, if you’ll scroll down to the bottom of the article and Andy, producer Andy, if you could roll the picture out. Terry sent me a book and he says he signed it. Stu you are the best podcast host in the industry. Grumpy Terry Etam. That was so nice of him to sign that book that it was really, really pretty cool. You know, I have to say I was the best podcast host. Notice he didn’t put your name on there. Okay, so let’s go over here to this article. What is some phenomenally large energy material? Breakthroughs were right in front of us. Dude, I don’t care. I’m energy agnostic. I’d love to say let’s do it. Beyond combustion to how to triple the. Let’s see here. We might get more comfortable on nuclear energy. The world seems hell bent on carbon free energy. And the only way that’s going to happen is if we make up a billion is nuclear power. Well, I agree that nuclear has got to happen. Let’s go where he is talking about this. Okay. So coming out of the oil sands, just a real quick update on the oil sands. Oil sands. When they get done with that, it is the cleanest land on the planet. So, I mean, Canadians do a great job regulatory issues up there on that. So the barrel regimen as a whole, the BBC White paper estimates the following benefits If 1 million barrels per day measurement is sold to refineries at $50 per barrel. After diligent removal, the revenue is 18 billion per year. If the same volume was used to create BBC products, the potential revenue is 42 billion. The number includes the value is plus the value of the light ends remaining at 14. Unbelievable. If you take a look at how all of this could come back around and. [00:19:21][159.6]
Michael Tanner: [00:19:21] It seems like they’re they’re funding it at just 30 million a year. That’s how much is coming in the Canadian government. They could they could have 40 billion on the table. And instead they’re like, we’re just going to invest 30 million. Zain. [00:19:35][13.0]
Stuart Turley: [00:19:35] It is. Terry Etam, I just want to give you a shout out. Don’t tell him that was my Biden imitation again. Don’t tell Terry that he’s a good guy. I mean, it doesn’t make sense. Here’s some energy technology that makes sense. [00:19:51][16.4]
Michael Tanner: [00:19:53] And it’s a way to sustainably make sure. I mean, if if we’re all about ESG folks, this is stuff that can help. So we love Terry bringing that up. [00:19:53][0.0][1170.4]
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