The U.S. is not in the top 10 ocean polluters; King Coal is “not dead yet,”; The EU looks to increase U.S. oil imports; and Shell in the Gulf of Mexico
This is a great Monday show, and the full transcription is below. If you are a Energy Industry CEO/Thought Leader, please reach out to be on Stu’s interviews. We want to talk to all energy market leaders.
Europe’s Thirst for U.S. Crude To Stay High In 2023 – Good for U.S. markets
First oil flows from Shell’s deepwater project in U.S. Gulf of Mexico
Climate reparations are not going to be helpful, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham says
Main Topics for this Podcast
00:00 – Intro
03:29 – Which countries pollute the most ocean of the most ocean plastic waste
17:09 – The coal industry is back from the dead. Quote, I’m not dead yet. I’m getting better, says King Coal
21:59 – First Flows from a shell’s deepwater project in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico
23:17 – Europe’s thirst for U.S. crude to stay high in 2023
11:08 – Climate reparations are not going to be helpful, says Lindsey Graham
29:18 – Outro
Follow Stuart On LinkedIn and Twitter
Follow Michael On LinkedIn and Twitter
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
ENB Podcast Daily Stand-up Episode 64
Michael Tanner [00:00:15] What is going on? Everybody, welcome in to another edition of the Daily Energy News Beat. Stand up here on this gorgeous Monday, February 20th, 2023. As always, I’m your humble correspondent, Michael Taylor, coming to you from an undisclosed location here in Dallas, Texas, joined by the executive producer of the show, the purveyor of the show and the director and publisher of the world’s greatest website, Energy News Beat, Stuart Turley, my man, how are we doing today.
Stuart Turley [00:00:39] This beautiful day in the neighborhood? And we’re filming this on a Sunday. But I’ll tell you what, it feels like a Monday to me already.
Michael Tanner [00:00:46] Yeah, I know. I was just literally comedy you that Monday. But, but we’re here, guys. The goal is to make it as fun of a Monday as possible, but I don’t know, speaking truthfully Monday. So, I mean, don’t get me started on the Monday AM meeting. They should be outlawed Monday meetings before noon should be outlawed. You’re not even awake.
You don’t even know what’s going on yet. You’re still dealing with the problems you should have dealt with on Friday. Yet we’re going to now set a 9:30 a.m. Monday meeting. One of my biggest pet peeves, but I’m off topic, hopefully in a bright spot of your day is this podcast in which Stew has found some pretty banger articles. First one we’re going to cover is which countries pollute the most ocean of the most ocean plastic waste. I’d recommend looking at this article on energy news because the graphic in the in the header is actually pretty, pretty alarming. Next article we will cover. Against all odds, the coal industry is back from the dead. Quote I am not dead yet. I am getting better, says the coal king. We love to hear that make coal great again. Next article will covers first oil flows from Shell’s deepwater project in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. I think we’re going to see a lot of these are turn on is as we come off as a lot of these who are starting to be drilled during $100 oil are now really starting to flow back. So we will get some updates from that project next. Europe’s thirst for U.S. crude to stay high in 2023, That’s extremely good for U.S. markets. Dual cover, what that means. And then finally, So we will cover the blind mice finding the cheese every once in a while. Hamsters will then kick it over to me. I will cover rig counts what happened to oil and gas on Friday and some kind of overview what to look out for this week. And then we’ll let you get out of here and unfortunately get back to your Monday about before we start the show, guys, as always, check us out. World’s greatest website, Energy News Beat all of the articles that we reference are available on that website, and we’re also available via the description below. Our team and editing team does a great job of making sure that that description is always up to date with what’s going on. You can check out a transcript. Check us out. www.EnergyNewsBeat.com Dashboard on EnergyNewsBeat.com Hit that, bookmark it, do whatever you want. Look at it right before you go to bed. Right when you wake up. We’re always adding new features. Good things will happen to you. A you will get cool if you look at our website. So depending on what you think of that, you will enjoy that. So enough of the pleasantries though, Stu, Where do you want to begin?
Stuart Turley [00:03:14] Well, let’s start out with which country. I found this one shocking and it goes along with the Lindsey Graham article as well, too, is why I was like.
Michael Tanner [00:03:23] We got to talk about.
Stuart Turley [00:03:24] Both of these and let me pull the article up here just a sec. And okay, which countries pollute the most? Michael, did you figure this out when you took a look at this?
Michael Tanner [00:03:35] No, I mean, I it’s see, I’ve seen the list, but if you had asked me before I saw the list, I would have said the United States. Yes, I would have said China. I would have said China. Number one, United States is in the top three. I probably would have guessed India, which I’m right on. We’ll get to the list. And I don’t know. I mean, maybe you know, I don’t know. I mean, those would have been the three that I would have had in my top three. The order, I don’t know.
Stuart Turley [00:04:01] Right. Here’s where I was totally stunned. Let’s just read through it. Number one, the Philippines metric tons, 350,000 metric tons. India, this is a time out.
Michael Tanner [00:04:15] I think we have to put that number in perspective. That’s 360 or 360, 356,000 metric tons of annual asked explosion. The total ocean plastic, the increase on a yearly basis, 1 million tons. So there are legitimately 30% of all ocean was. It’s crazy to think about just a little small island. I mean we love the Philippines but that’s a little insane. I wonder if they are and this is what I need to know. Are they buying or are we sending plastic waste from elsewhere around the world to the Philippines? And then it gets credited to them, much like China is sending a lot of their plastic waste to Africa.
Stuart Turley [00:04:54] But who knows? But when you go down just a little bit in the article, you will see that the there’s two dead zones in the Pacific that go through in the western garbage patch near Japan. And. Then the eastern garbage patch near California, in between California and Hawaii. That’s where like I think it says, 80% of the ocean’s plastic ends up.
Michael Tanner [00:05:25] I wrote a paper on this and an undergrad on the great Pacific Garbage Patch. It’s pretty crazy. But then, you know, part of the reason why it’s ironically much better to eat and I only eat farm raised fish versus ocean fish because, yeah, there have been massive global studies done in. If you eat anything out of the Pacific Ocean, even the Atlantic Ocean has it has its own garbage, you know, what we would call the garbage patch. But specifically if you eat anything in the Pacific Ocean, you’re eating somewhere between a credit card and a piece of paper worth of microplastics. Because what happens is there’s this garbage patch goes more than 15, 20 feet deep, and the stuff that’s reset is on top. But the more is it get the sun beats down on it, the salt in the ocean begins to biodegrade. It breaks down and goes and begins to fall down and eventually becomes what we talk about. And everyone’s fearful. There’s microplastics. So ironically, sometimes eating farm raised fish is safer for you than eating Pacific caught fish, which is crazy to think about.
Stuart Turley [00:06:28] But you know what’s even sadder is the poor folks up in Scotland with all of those wind farm problems that they’ve had, they are now all hang on, all the animals are having plastic and fiberglass in their bloodstreams for the same reason. It’s they’re coming up it’s a now a major ecological disaster. Let’s go back to this list, real ecological.
Michael Tanner [00:06:53] I’m going to start saying it that way now.
Stuart Turley [00:06:54] Ecological, logical, a.
Michael Tanner [00:06:56] Ecological.
Stuart Turley [00:06:57] Ecological. You know, I got a Texas, Oklahoma accent. Yeah, let’s go to India. You said one third was the Philippines. 120 626,000 million. Is that million? Million?
Michael Tanner [00:07:12] Basically 12%. India is 12% of the overall plastic waste because it’s about one. The convenient part is because it’s about 1 trillion. We can very easily or excuse me, 1 million metric tons. We can very easily just do the math. You just roll the decimal over. So like in the point 6%.
Stuart Turley [00:07:30] All right, Malaysia seven 73.3%.
Michael Tanner [00:07:35] China, this is crazy. I would have thought China would be far and away. The biggest plastic producer. They only check in at 7.07%.
Stuart Turley [00:07:44] Which you have to look at their coastline. Philippines is an island and yet there’s a lot to it. We have a lot of research to do on this. But here’s the crazy thing. The rest of the world is 176 metric tons, 176,000 metric tons. So when you sit back and say, you know, that’s that’s a significant chunk. Now, the United States didn’t even make the top ten the they’re in the rest of the world at 176,000 Philippines. Let’s go through that 300.
Michael Tanner [00:08:19] I think I think we have to couch that okay time out we we got to, you know, steel, not steel, man. The other argument, we got to couch that by saying the United States definitely has a recycling problem, a over a landfill crowding problem. One thing we do a good job of is not letting the waste reach river systems. But that doesn’t mean our landfills are too full or recycle. There’s all this shenanigans with recycling, but we do do a great job of stopping it from getting into our water supplies.
Stuart Turley [00:08:47] But for the most part, until we have a train wreck. But the. Sorry.
Michael Tanner [00:08:52] Good morning. Good point.
Stuart Turley [00:08:53] But, you know, you sit back and think are we do 38% of our plastics do get recycled. That’s a huge number, Michael. Okay, So let’s go on to the next one here. So I thought that was amazing. Michael I just did not realize that.
Michael Tanner [00:09:09] Yeah. And what does this mean going forward? I mean, it’s enlightening to understand that from a U.S. perspective, we should we our focus should be on solving the issues that are acutely our problems, a.k.a., you know, you know, we don’t need to worry about we don’t need to raise our flags, We don’t need to have speeches. We don’t need that much. We don’t we’re not polluting the oceans anyway. We don’t need to. You know, what we need to do, if there’s any money to be spent, is figure out how to help these countries who are in the top ten reduce their plastic waste. And I don’t know what the I don’t know what the good answer is, because the goal is you should we shouldn’t be worried about scooping up what’s in the ocean. Yes, we need to do that, but we need to stop this push 1 million metric tons flowing into the ocean every year. It takes pretty long to biodegrade, you know, a bag of Cheetos.
Stuart Turley [00:09:56] How all this fits into energy is the more energy we use to recycle. We then like Denver. Well, it’s always been talking about recycling and things and how much we use ethanol uses more and it’s by you know, there’s. Whole renewable uses energy. But we have to. Okay.
Michael Tanner [00:10:18] But we’ll. We’ll. We’ll stop there.
Stuart Turley [00:10:20] I can talk data maybe all day.
Michael Tanner [00:10:22] Let’s go to the next article. Okay.
Stuart Turley [00:10:24] Now, let me go to the next one here. I don’t know why I’ve got a mouse handicapped today. He must be, like, not real happy with me. So let me.
Michael Tanner [00:10:33] Well, while you’re pulling that up, it was pretty interesting. I was listening to. I hear you’re listening to a podcast on the Civil War, and there was a whole episode dedicated to you. I did not know you fought in the Civil War.
Stuart Turley [00:10:42] Oh, absolutely.
Michael Tanner [00:10:43] Pretty crazy.
Stuart Turley [00:10:44] Me, me and Lincoln were buddies, man.
Michael Tanner [00:10:47] Lincoln The Colonel Stuart Turley.
Stuart Turley [00:10:49] Was a.
Michael Tanner [00:10:50] Union colonel. Now I’m just. I’m just being me. I am listening to a Civil War podcast, and it is kind of funny to think that you might pop up at some point.
Stuart Turley [00:10:57] Oh, well, you know, there are time travelers. Have you seen that? Okay, let’s go to the next one and let’s do Lindsey Graham here. Lindsey Graham, Climate reparations are not going to be helpful, says Lindsey Graham. I’m not a Lindsey Graham fan, but my, my, I’m shocked.
Michael Tanner [00:11:17] I’m I’m absolutely floored. You don’t like Lindsey Graham. Wow. I might have to take a second to process that. Go ahead. Okay.
Stuart Turley [00:11:25] He is a Republican, but I don’t like politicians, so we’ll just leave it there. This article is eye opening. The US is not in the top ten, just like we talked about in the other one. We’re not in the top ten for the oceans, but climate and energy hypocrisy are bringing the U.S. consumer and taxpayers to their financial needs. This is because they’re now Gore and Kerry were out talking and saying we need to give money for climate reparations to the rest of the world when we need to focus on reducing what we can control. And China is building two coal plants a month and is the biggest polluter in the world. It’s going to be passed up by India. Why are we paying for that anyway?
Michael Tanner [00:12:16] Yeah, I think I think to couch this, you know, I’m though Lindsey Graham.
Stuart Turley [00:12:20] I do like the way he said this. He said climate change is real. Let’s find rational solutions to the problem that are win win. Graham stressed that during a panel of CNBC his Hadley gamble Geopolitics of Carbon border adjustment. I sounds.
Michael Tanner [00:12:36] Fine. That sounds like a fun segment. Spotlight Geopolitics of Carter Carbon Border Adjustment.
Stuart Turley [00:12:41] Oh well, that’s where I’m going to call them Chowder Heads. Chowder Head. Kerry and Chowder Head Gore. These two knuckleheads need to be run out of town right next to George Soros. But we’ll leave all that. They should all be put on the same garbage patch boat and stay put. Okay. That was funny. I don’t care who you are. Okay. Now, Michael, what we’re seeing in this goes along with the same conversation. Cole King Cole ain’t dead yet. Mike.
Michael Tanner [00:13:12] Oh, you. You got to like, you got to let me you got to let me respond to this, okay? Climate reparations. You’re just you’re just you got to give me a chance to respond to this.
Stuart Turley [00:13:20] Okay, Let’s respond. I want to hear what you say.
Michael Tanner [00:13:21] Well, no, no, I think we have to we are one, you know. Yes. I think they want they haven’t explicitly come out and said they want climate reparations yet. I think there’s a little bit of what he’s doing is jumping to the conclusion that he knows where everybody wants to go but haven’t outright said it. Remember, what did you know, Chowder head Kerry, as you like to call him, who’s technically the U.S. climate envoy in November. All he said was we’re going to basically allow corporations to fund renewable energy projects in developing countries that are attempting to transition away from fossil fuels. But here’s the part that’s interesting. Fossil fuel companies cannot participate in the program right now. Here’s Jerry. So so that’s as far as they’ve come out publicly and said, do they? So I think he’s getting out ahead of the issue a little bit. But let’s be mindful of no one’s actually proposed specific climate reparations.
Stuart Turley [00:14:12] In the World Economic Forum with our that was done in Chowder Head was there? Yes.
Michael Tanner [00:14:20] That’s that’s that’s the World Economic Forum. I’m telling you, the United States government. Quite. Yeah. I mean, it’s close. It’s not.
Stuart Turley [00:14:27] That low, but it is the EU and it is in that.
Michael Tanner [00:14:31] Point and.
Stuart Turley [00:14:32] They were proposing it for Africa. And Chowder heads the brothers Siamese twin chowder heads stood up and said, We’re in. I will put that in the show notes that one check me.
Michael Tanner [00:14:44] So I mean I agree I agree with you. There it okay it’ll be very hard and I doubt you could ever get climate reparations passed. I don’t care how far they want to go. That’s something where I would it would be hard pressed in my mind to see something like that actually pass.
Stuart Turley [00:15:03] Okay, I’m going to say this. I interviewed a doctor Friday afternoon. That podcast is coming out on. Sunday night. It will be available Monday morning. This doctor said how bad this train wreck actually is. The train wreck is horrible. I’m going to have stats on this. How much energy is transported by our rail systems, our rail systems, our energy and commerce. Now, this nuke that’s like a nuclear bomb went off in Palestine, Ohio, and our government is absolutely giving them that double metal finger. Now, how much money are we giving to the rest of the world? And we can’t take care of an atom bomb, a nuclear dump site. Nuclear is easier to clean up than poly chloride. I’m not kidding. This is what he says. You can eliminate the dirt. You cannot burn off poly chloride. Poly chloride can even be burned out.
Michael Tanner [00:16:11] All right. Oh, it’s it’s. It’s a it’s a national disaster what’s going on in Ohio. And I don’t think anybody is talking about it. So we will continue to pound that. We’ll continue to pound the table and go check out that podcast. As you listen to this, it will be out. Dr. Matt Chalmers, We love him. You can check it out on this podcast or I’m sure it’ll be available on his podcast, The Dr. Matt Chalmers Show, produced by none other than Sandstone Media. And so I got to give a shout out to the I got to give a little self-promotion. What’s next?
Stuart Turley [00:16:38] Do a couple of things. In coal. Coal has made a gigantic comeback because of the energy crisis. Got a lot of me, some coal. I wanted some for Christmas. In fact, I went around and I started short sheeting my sheets with my wife and I was trying to do everything I could to absolutely just destroy our relationship. So she’d give me some coal. I mean, it’s a good investment right now.
Michael Tanner [00:17:01] And do what I said. Smart.
Stuart Turley [00:17:04] Oh, yeah, absolutely. But right now I got a video. The article is called Against All Odds. The coal industry is back from the dead. Quote, I’m not dead yet. I’m getting better, says King Coal. So let’s go ahead. And this is a rare it’s a 47 second clip, but it’s critical. I’m just in there, sir. So, Mr. Producer, can we go ahead and have you play this clip? Okay.
[00:17:30] Bring out your dead. Guess wha t. I’m Not dead
[00:17:35] Nothing is going on, but I’m not scared. Yeah, he says he’s not dead. Yes, he is not. He isn’t. While he will be soon. He’s very. You getting better? No, you’re not. You’ll be stone dead in a moment. Oh, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations. I don’t want to go the car. Oh, he should jump, baby. I can’t take him. I feel fine. Well, do us a favor. Okay. Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? You won’t be long. I’ve got to go to Robinson’s. I lost nine today. Well, what is your next run? First, I think I’ll go through. You’re not fooling anyone, you know. Look, there’s no something you can do.
[00:18:09] I feel happy. I feel happy. Oh.
[00:18:15] He’s very much of okay now.
Stuart Turley [00:18:17] Wasn’t that great? Don’t you just love Monty Python bring out today? I’m not quite dead yet.
[00:18:24] I’m not quite dead yet.
Stuart Turley [00:18:25] Like now. King called this whole climate thing. Okay, let’s leave climate change after thing. Energy through geopolitical stuff has caused coal to come back into favor around the world. It is now increased in price and everything else. And our coal is not up in the U.S. It is the coal producing, though, is being exported. Let’s go through some of these numbers. Michael, you want to go through some of these coal. Now, this is also talking about investments.
Michael Tanner [00:19:01] I think this is also why I think, yeah, coal stocks are up huge.
Stuart Turley [00:19:05] Exactly. And so you take a look at Alliance Resource Partners or LP and Warrior met coal. They are strong buys again we are we do not go through and recommend anything but this is from the other financial institutions look at this they are up more than 300% with son coke coal They are doing the Coke coal as one of the leading exports. Because Michael, as we talked about on the past, you got to have coke, coal for cement, You got to have coke, coal for steel. So we’re not going to be getting away from Coke Coal any time soon now.
Michael Tanner [00:19:46] No, I think it’s you know, you also got to point out you’ve got other public coal producers, Arch Resources up 283%. Yes. Alpha metallurgical Resources, ticker symbol, AMR up a mind blowing 1000 percentage points. Right. I’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Peabody Energy. I have couple buddies that work there out of their Wyoming coal plant, so shout out BTU energy. They are in a number. They are in a strong buy from street. Insider. Zax. I mean, everybody is is all over these cool stocks do.
Stuart Turley [00:20:16] Oh yeah even BlackRock. I’m serious. BlackRock is in the article is that as a registered buyer. So as we sit here and we talk about cannabis. Oh, I’m sorry, did I mention cannabis? No. Okay. That’s the ESG investors are now going through and they’re saying, hey, I got so much pain, I got to invest in coal, okay? They’re not going to lose another trillion or two. All right. Give me your last thoughts on this one. I’ll go to the next one.
Michael Tanner [00:20:42] Well, I think it’ll be interesting to see where coal goes from here. If if you’ve been in the coal game since 2021 in terms of stocks, you’ve made a great return. The question is, where do coal stocks go from here? If you are on the bull side and are under the assumption that we’re going to continue to generate and there’s going to be a demand for coal, you’re still you might as well buy now. Personally, the way I look at going forward. Oh, there might be some other industries if I were to get in on, you know, there might be other industries. The problem is any we’re coming on to a a massive global recession which is going to take every so.
Stuart Turley [00:21:16] And and we’re not going to be able to afford to go to the new technologies. And so. KING Coal ain’t dead yet because people are going to need energy.
Michael Tanner [00:21:25] We should start buying tons of coal.
Stuart Turley [00:21:27] Oh, absolutely. But here’s not a.
Michael Tanner [00:21:28] Financial advisor, but buy coal futures.
Stuart Turley [00:21:31] Right. The other piece of that is we are retiring as many of our coal plants as we can. And and we’re going to try to go to natural gas. But those areas that are trying to put in wind are going to go bankrupt. Okay. Let’s go to the next one. I snuck that one in on. Yeah, I’m surprised I didn’t get a squirrel from you, man. Usually I get a good job.
Michael Tanner [00:21:53] Sometimes you just got to let it go.
Stuart Turley [00:21:55] Oh, yeah.
Michael Tanner [00:21:56] Guy on that hill.
Stuart Turley [00:21:58] Next one first flows from a shell’s deepwater project in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Got a lot of me. Some good Mexico stories. But you sit back and there was some veto. Petroleum was shared by Shell’s partner in the project. Norway’s Equinor on Thursday had a 36.9% interest in Nest. I’ll tell you it, Norway’s equinor and the whole Norway is one of the main reasons that Europe is going to be okay eventually. So let me say Norway. I think that they are following it the right way. Following a final investment decision in April of 2018. Veto was initially expected to start production in 2021. The platform for the veto was built in Singapore and Sembcorp Marine delivered to Shell in December 2021. Those things are amazing technology.
Michael Tanner [00:22:57] Well, you’ve got to think about it. These 31,000 feet of sea between Nam and Bedrock.
Stuart Turley [00:23:03] Oh, yeah. I don’t know. Good. Unbelievable. I’d be sitting there with a little, you know. Have you seen those old drills? You know, you go in a circle and you go by hand. Yeah, that’s me. I’d be drowning. Okay, let’s go to the next one. Europe’s thirst for U.S. crude. This is actually a van tastic article for the good old United States M.P. operators. And I’ll tell you what a key change in U.S. flow is U.S. crude going to Europe for this year? I’m pretty confident Europe is short of Russian oil and we’ll see more U.S. crude there, said Colin Parfitt. He is with Chevron, I believe. Let me go look at the article directed.
Michael Tanner [00:23:46] At VP of Midstream, Colin Parfitt. Yes, you have Chevron.
Stuart Turley [00:23:51] But anyway, the band is this whole Russia is about to drop off into a big. They’re still going to sell theirs. Russia will still have income, but they have lost all the brain trust in their fields. All the Halliburton’s and everybody, all the oil field service have left. So Russia has capability of coming up with new IMP is been really hurt by the companies leaving it’s not sanctions haven’t heard them it’s the MP operators leaving that has actually hurt them. So that’s going to be something else. In conjunction with this article, OPEC and OPEC plus both came out and said their tight supply is going to be tight. They’re not going to need to cut production. So they say prices will go up anyway.
Michael Tanner [00:24:43] They’d love prices to go up.
Stuart Turley [00:24:44] Yes, they would. But that also means they don’t have to change their quotas.
Michael Tanner [00:24:48] It does indeed. You know, this does bode well for the demand side of the equation that your Europe will still be needing that U.S. crude. It can only help us. The problem is exporting. We’ll still tankers. Who cares?
Stuart Turley [00:25:00] Oh, yeah. I’ll tell you, I got to go get on my bike ride like 50 miles. After this conversation, I’m, like, worked up. I’d like to have a discussion. I would love Alan. Gore. If you are listening or John Kerry, you have an open invitation to come on my podcast at any time. I’ll even fly to D.C. to interview you. Please reach out. I will love to visit with you.
Michael Tanner [00:25:27] I hate to say it’s do. You are on the no fly list, though?
Stuart Turley [00:25:31] No, I’m on the fly list, baby.
Michael Tanner [00:25:33] If if John, I don’t know what would be more surprising you interviewing John Kerry or finding out that John Kerry listens to this podcast. Both have a chance of zero of being true.
Stuart Turley [00:25:44] No, but the offers there and by the way, the offer is for anybody that is an energy expert, I want to visit with you. I want nuclear. I want wind, solar. I want energy discussions.
Michael Tanner [00:25:58] So we just pitch our fans. Anything else?
Stuart Turley [00:26:01] No, I’m quite chilling now.
Michael Tanner [00:26:03] I’ve seen you next year. I’ll send you a Nexium after the show is over. You know, there’s not much to talk about in the crude oil side. Markets have been closed currently, 76, 55 on the crude oil side, natural gas down to $2.26 really off the back of some pretty incredible warm weather that should be sweeping in storage. Seems fairly strong considering we are in a winter draw season. Only 100 Bcf draw compared to about a 200 Bcf draw last year that we saw on Thursday. So natural gas falling to our low haven’t seen in over two years. STU So things are just just not looking good. If there’s ever a time to pause to buy some call options or options on, you know, long term natural gas futures, now might be the time continue to load up. But again, we do not give investment advice. We are idiots. You should take everything we say with a grain of salt.
Stuart Turley [00:26:56] You’re going to lose money. It’s a.
Michael Tanner [00:26:57] Good point. Want to lose money? Take my advice. I think we also should point out rig counts. We found out on Friday they dropped by one to only 760 for the week of February 17th. It was sort of couch by, hey, we’re up 18% year over year. But, you know, it is a you know, there is a little bit of a pullback in the number of rigs. We’re we’re sitting at that 700 mark peak rigs. Remember, we’re over 1000. We’ll never get there. I think the fact that over 500 is a good sign. Really interesting to see what happens, though. I think we’re seeing natural gas rigs Taylor off. I think we will see the number of new natural gas permits fall off, but we will come back with some more analysis there once we sort of kind of see the numbers. I got to dive into that a little bit. It still looks confused. So I think we’re going to go ahead and just let you guys get out of here. Are we missing anything?
Stuart Turley [00:27:39] Yes. No, I want to ask you a question, because as the rig counts have come down, Harold Hamm, I was in a luncheon with him several years ago, and no, I wasn’t sitting next to him, but I got to like, get within an arm reach. I mean, cool, dude, you know. Anyway, he was saying he even predicted the rig counts and everything else, but he was talking about the rig efficiencies. So the rig efficiencies and I don’t know this, which is typical for me, but when you sit back and take a look, let’s say it’s 500, is it that it used to be 700 rig value? And so everybody’s saying, I mean, I don’t know, is it 600? Do you know that number? Because the efficiencies of horizontal drilling versus vertical and then the enhancements of the drilling, it’s not the same as it was in 2014 versus now. But everybody still oh, we got, you know, 500 rigs. But is that actually 600 rigs in the old standards? Is the production easier? I’m gone. It’s significant, but I don’t.
Michael Tanner [00:28:44] Do but I have no idea. I would assume it’s it’s more but I would have no idea. All I know is the rigs we’re working with still are not up there. Should one.
Stuart Turley [00:28:52] Maybe we need a number.
Michael Tanner [00:28:54] Give me the number of those efficient ones. We could use a.
Stuart Turley [00:28:56] Lot of funny. Maybe we need our intern to go number of rigs versus output.
Michael Tanner [00:29:01] Yeah, but I don’t know who that intern is, but we’ll find somebody with that. Guys, I think we’ll let you get out of here, get back to work, start your Monday or hopefully finish up. We beat you guys. Check this out. We hope you had a great weekend. For Stuart Turley. I’m Michael Tanner. We’ll see you tomorrow, folks.
