Daily Standup Top Stories
Evidence says offshore wind development is killing lots of whales
The recent deaths of seven whales off New Jersey, mostly humpbacks, got a lot of attention. The federal NOAA Fisheries agency is responsible for whales. An outrageous statement by their spokesperson got me to do […]
India Coal is Back in Business
India’s coal industry celebrated the return of its major conference after a three-year pandemic hiatus by presenting a bullish view of demand, rising supply from new mines and strong demand for imports. “King coal is […]
World needs ‘collaborative competition to capture US$4 trillion long-duration opportunity’
Long-duration energy storage (LDES) was firmly on the agenda and one of the main talking points among attendees at last week’s Energy Storage Summit EU in London. As the global transition to renewables-based energy systems picks up […]
Mexico approves new Tesla plant in northern Mexico
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has announced that the electric car manufacturer Tesla will open a large plant in northern Mexico, marking an investment that could be worth up to $10bn for the region. […]
SLB New Energy to Target Billion-Dollar Opportunities Only
SLB – known as Schlumberger until three and a half months ago – is aiming for billion-dollar business opportunities only under its New Energy unit. “We look for two things: impact and scale,” Gavin Rennick, […]
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
02:54 – Evidence says offshore wind developments killing lots of whales
06:07- India Coal is back in business
09:17- The world needs collaborative competition in order to capture USD 4 trillion long duration opportunity
12:07 – Mexico approves new Tesla plant in northern Mexico.
15:12 – SLB New Energy to target billion dollar opportunities only
Follow Stuart OnLinkedIn 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. – Check out the YouTube or podcast for the actual language. (I am from Texas and Oklahoma, so I talk funny).
Daily Energy Standup Episode #72
Michael Tanner [00:00:14] What is going on. Everybody, welcome into another edition of the Daily Energy News Beat Standup here on this gorgeous Thursday, March 2nd, 2023. As always, I’m your humble correspondent, Michael Tanner, 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 Web site, energynewsbeat.com, Stuart Turley, my man, how you doing today?
Stuart Turley [00:00:38] Beautiful day in the neighborhood. Lots on the news desk.
Michael Tanner [00:00:41] Yeah, you do have a great show for us lined up. We’re going to start off talking about how evidence says offshore wind development is killing lots of wells. That’s the title of our first article. And as I will say, that’s a comes as a shock to nobody that when offshore wind is killing a lot of wildlife. The next article we have lined up for today’s show, guys, India coal is back in business. It’s again comes as no shock to anybody that India is buying as much cheap energy as possible. And India, the new slogan is Make Coal Great Again. Next article We have this world. It’s collaboration or collaborative competition to capture USD 4 trillion long duration opportunity. I don’t quite get the title of this one, but basically what it’s talking about is how this clean energy deployment is going to happen. Who’s going to fund it, where the money is going to come from. Still, we’ll dive into what this article says next when we have, as Mexico approves, new Tesla plant in northern Mexico, Elon Musk diving into the Mexican economy headfirst, Steel will cover what that move means for all parties. And then finally, Schlumberger new energy to target billion dollar opportunities. Only if you were to go look at and specifically this is their new energy division. So now celebrity is going to be building wind farms, you know, So it should be fun. We’ll see how it lasts. So that’s what Stu’s got on the article front. I will go ahead and quickly cover what happened in the crude oil and natural gas markets. Um, crude being up to 77, 75 as we record this the night before is pretty good. Natural gas trading at $2.78 again I will cover all that and a bag of chips guys but first check us out world’s greatest website EnergyNewsBeat.com Dashboardenergynewsbeat.com Is our other place for data news combol we are hard at work at V2, so stick with us. But all of the articles that we graphics, you can hit the link below and check us out and check out the articles. Email us questions@enegrynewsbeat.com If you want to just roast what Stu’s doing, please feel free for me, by the way, on those. But but yes, that is in all your thoughts. I’m out of breath. Those too. Where do you want to begin?
Stuart Turley [00:02:49] Hey, let’s always start with my one of my favorites. I’m an ESG kind of fan. Evidence says offshore wind developments killing lots of whales. This article’s different. We’ve had several in Michael. The articles on the whales going are going off on energy. Newsbeat The results are appalling. The evidence seems clear that the offshore wind development is killing whales by the hundreds. I’m looking at the article. Did somebody put in a picture of the view all the women lined up is No.
Michael Tanner [00:03:22] I don’t see it in there.
Stuart Turley [00:03:24] You’re not seeing the whales in the view?
Michael Tanner [00:03:27] I’m not seeing an image.
Stuart Turley [00:03:28] Okay. All right. Here’s the statement. Is it Noah says that it has been studying what it calls usual mortality events involving 174 humpback whales along the East Coast since January 2016. Holy smokes. The unusual mortality data is astounding. Basically, the humpback death rate at roughly tripled starting in 2016. And here’s the part that Noah, that everybody’s just ignoring is they had three seven in the first two months of this year. And Michael, everybody was saying, oh, it’s only two, it’s only seven now. All the evidence is now showing it’s hundreds. This is a problem.
Michael Tanner [00:04:18] I love the I love the classification unusual mortality event. I mean, that’s a nice way of saying like this. This reminds me of the way they were just classifying people. If you just showed up for the hospital, you had COVID, right? You know, this this screams similarly. You know, it’s all come it’s all come from the same funding source. I’m only half kidding. I mean, this I mean, I said it in the open. Stu. This comes as a shock to nobody that you put up these huge offshore wind platforms in primary habitats of these whales. You’re going to have some incidents. I’m sorry, just conveniently, there’s no whales in the Gulf of Mexico. We just luck out. I mean, if that was a big issue, you know, you don’t hear about any of the offshore wind in Gulf dealing with this because conveniently there are no whales there. Now, there is other wildlife. You’re probably impacting the birds. But I mean, oil and gas deals with that, too. I don’t want to just say, oh, we’re better than everybody else. And. We are, but we’re not flawless, you know.
Stuart Turley [00:05:16] So the key difference, though, is the vibrations of floating windmills, of the vibrations mess with their directional systems.
Michael Tanner [00:05:30] There she all the birds. She.
Stuart Turley [00:05:32] Okeydokey, bless you. Okay, let’s go to the next one here. And you don’t see a picture of the view in that article?
Michael Tanner [00:05:39] I don’t.
Stuart Turley [00:05:40] Somebody is messing with me because when I. It’s right under the quote. The results are appalling. The evidence seems clear that offshore wind development is killing whales by the hundreds. And then there’s Whoopi. There’s all the other members of The View. That’s nuts.
Michael Tanner [00:05:58] I have to reach out to the editor and tell him he’s doing a horrible job.
Stuart Turley [00:06:01] Oh, yeah, it’s terrible. Bunch of whales on The View. Okay, let’s go to India. Coal is back in business. Michael, we just ran this story about King Coal last week again, and now we’re running another one. King Coal is coming back with a big bang, said Anil Kumar Jha, the chairman of Jindal Power. Holy smokes. There’s no talk at all of phasing down coal at the event. Rather, the debate centered around on how just high coal’s demand will rise, with the consensus that it will jump to 1.4 billion tonnes per annum by 2030 from around 1 billion tons currently. How in the world, Michael, I want to ask you this one right now. How in the world can India make there, quote unquote, climate goals by increasing their goal from now on?
Michael Tanner [00:07:05] I think everything is a trade off. I think if they don’t increase their energy output to continue to provide low cost energy to their billion plus growing population, they’re going to find themselves in a position of very negative growth or not negative growth, but but slowing growth, I mean, they’re one of the fastest growing economies right now. I mean.
Stuart Turley [00:07:28] You know, just China in population.
Michael Tanner [00:07:30] Yup. And from an economy standpoint, they’re booming right now. And if you we’ve seen it here in the United States, what’s the easiest way to trigger a recession? Make the cost of energy skyrocket? Europe, energy prices have skyrocketed. So, you know. Right. India’s continued to buy Russian crude. Why? Because they support the Russians. No, but they like cheap oil. They like cheap fuel. And so they’re going to lean that way as long as the incentive structure remains the way it is. I mean, you can commit anything to I’m going to commit to going on a diet starting tomorrow, but we’ll check in in two months, see how I’m doing. You know.
Stuart Turley [00:08:08] I’m holding my breath.
Michael Tanner [00:08:09] Yeah, exactly. So you hold your that’s about as long as the die will last. But if if you can keep if, if, if there’s no incentive for me to have, you know, you’re not going to pay me for one month, which you know who it may encourage me to go on a diet. But so I say all that to say they’re doing the right thing for them. Exactly. Necessarily be mad about it. What? I wish they were buying our LNG. Sure. But where would the LNG come? We can’t export it enough to satisfy their need quite yet. They’re going to go get it from Qatar.
Stuart Turley [00:08:43] Right now, here’s the thing. Yesterday we talked about China, how much they are building. They produce unbelievable amounts of energy via coal. They’re doing to week, you know, just by that. So anyway, I just wanted to shout out I mean, you’ve always heard me say this. I love India. I love the leadership for trying to get low cost power. And I know you’re shaking your head. Yes. You’re already tired of saying it. Okay. I’m going to the next story. Don’t kill yourself yet, okay? The world needs collaborative competition in order to capture USD 4 trillion long duration opportunity. Michael, let me give you a little let me use my title. TRANSLATOR Devi, let me open it up here. Kind of like a spark. What do you call it? The communicator Boo Boo, boo, boo boo. You know, I’m going through this here. The long duration energy storage was firmly on the agenda in the storage energy storage summit in the UK, in the EU and and talking points. Here’s the thing. Some grids have already passed that mark and our far more and for the most part where the biggest market for battery storage tend to be found. Here’s what like dry battery is doing they. They’re putting in plants. They’re coming in to Georgia. They’ve already bought land and they’re coming in to get some of that or trillion dollar investment money or subsidies from the infrastructure bill or the Porkulus bill, as Dan Bongino would call it. So there is a really big problem going along in the world is does energy and does manufacturing leave Europe to come to the U.S.? Because we’re printing money. Towns like that’s what everybody wants besides, you know, going to the border and coming on in, They’re coming in after that free porkulus money.
Michael Tanner [00:10:55] Michael, they should be tied to this article because it are retitle the article because it’s extremely confusing to the world needs capitalism to capture $4 trillion U.S. long term storage market. I mean, that’s really what they want.
Stuart Turley [00:11:07] It is it’s a poorly.
Michael Tanner [00:11:09] Conceived unleash capitalism on. It’s like, wow, you’re brilliant now. That’s what we’re paying you all this money for, to tell us. Maybe capitalism might be the best way to create the correct incentives to drive prices down for the consumer in order to create new technology, open up new markets. You’re are you fair enough? Not how well, how can I how can we get ourselves in one of these committees? Do I need to be I want to be on one of these committees. So I just go out and say, Hey, guess what’s to go on Fox News. Supply equals demand. Oh, he’s brilliant. He’s brilliant.
Stuart Turley [00:11:41] You know what I think we ought to do is try to figure out how to do that. I got some contacts that I can reach out to. Michael and let’s start taking polls. Who’s that pollster that always makes bazillions of dollars and he’s always wrong.
Michael Tanner [00:11:56] Frank Luntz.
Stuart Turley [00:11:57] Yeah, Thank you. He’s. He turns out to be a klutz.
Michael Tanner [00:12:00] So break the Lutz. We love it. What’s next?
Stuart Turley [00:12:04] Let’s go to Mexico. Love me some Mexico. Mexico approves new Tesla plant in northern Mexico. I actually like this article, Michael. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. How do you pronounce his last name? Obrador.
Michael Tanner [00:12:23] I’m going to pretend to know how to pronounce that.
Stuart Turley [00:12:25] Yeah, I’m going to hold my pinky out. Obrador That almost sounded like it has announced that the electric car manufacturer Tesla, will open a large plant for $10 billion for the region would be up to worth 10 billion for the region. This is as of yesterday we talked about in Germany. Tesla is now moving there, making manufacturing 4000 a week in Germany. This will represent a considerable investment in many jobs. This is huge. I welcome a plant going to Mexico. And I’ll tell you, it’s just it’s refreshing to see trade with Mexico. What are your thoughts?
Michael Tanner [00:13:11] Yeah, I mean, it’s you know, Tesla wants to be a global auto manufacturers. So what they’re doing is they’re going around to you know, they went to Europe, went to Germany, they went to China, They started obviously in the U.S. Now they’re moving to Mexico again. I think it’s interesting that, you know, it’s in northern Mexico and maybe not somewhere that’s maybe more centrally located to South America. You know, a lot of these cars are going to come back to the American market. You know, you know, no one’s screaming about outsourcing, you know, except and that’s, you know, one of the big things that everybody’s worried about is are we going to create jobs in America? So I’m all about it. I just think it’s interesting that the selective outrage of not hearing that this Tesla plant is not coming in America does surprise me a bit.
Stuart Turley [00:13:54] Okay. Here’s why. Let me give you the inside baseball. What’s not in this article, okay. The inside baseball on this article and having that 10 billion worth of a plant going into northern Mexico is because there are we supply a lot of natural gas. Low cost natural gas and energy is cheaper in northern Mexico than it is in the southern part. The other piece of this puzzle is president of Mexico has stood up against the Biden administration and he is being held in disdain for not increasing his energy prices. He’s trying to reduce his energy prices. So Iran is actually doing a phenomenal business decision by getting his plant down there in Mexico where they’re trying to keep the costs down. I thought that was pretty cool.
Michael Tanner [00:14:50] No, I’m I think I think I’m not going to bet against Elon Musk. I’m just saying I think it’s interesting he’s not catching much flak for this when, you know, build the plants at home.
Stuart Turley [00:15:00] Oh, yeah. Yeah. But then our president can’t even build a bear. You know, those little things where you go in and build your own teddy bear. Okay. Let’s go to. It’ll be new energy to target multi billion dollar opportunities only. SLB is Schlumberger, SLB, known as Schlumberger. That’s one of the few things I can actually pronounce correctly until three and a half months ago is aiming for billion dollar business opportunities under its new energy unit. It’s going after carbon, hydrogen, geothermal, geo energy, energy storage and critical minerals. Boy, are they breaking out into it. The unit is expected to bring in around 3 billion by the end of this decade and at least 10 billion by the end of next decade. Focusing on these five areas. CC U.S. carbon capture Utilization. Sequestration is the fastest growing opportunity with the Inflation Reduction Act. Michael, can you see why I picked this article with the other one?
Michael Tanner [00:16:07] Yeah. I mean, do you want to add another opportunity to bring up the Inflation Reduction Act?
Stuart Turley [00:16:11] Yeah, the Porkulus bill.
Michael Tanner [00:16:13] It’s it’s, it’s there. And I think it’s laughable. I think Schlumberger.
Stuart Turley [00:16:18] Do you I want to ask you your opinion, Michael, because BP made the switch. Looney He was out there. He was leading the charge on the renewables saying he this went one step below world and said, hey, we have got to be a renewable company. Several months ago, investing hypocrisy hit him about the eyes and face and he said we’re going to start investing in oil and gas and less in renewables because how many billions did he lose in that?
Michael Tanner [00:16:50] He lost a lot. So President Gavin Rennick, he’s the president of SLB New Energy. I mean, this this just air guy of the week right here. Air Guy of the Week right here. Okay. Sassy question. He gets asks the new Energy focus area because remember, this is a Q&A with Bloomberg so they’ve got the article. Then at the end of the article, they do a little Q&A. The question is the new energy focus areas. You have identified lithium, geothermal, geo energy, low carbon. Hydrogen carbon captures each equation in South Asia, where seem to be the preferred sectors for many other players. Where do you think your winning edge is? Here’s his answer. We have a number of things that we can leverage. We are fundamentally a technology developer. What? What are We are fundamentally a technology developer so we can bring to market a new technology and deliver it to over 120 companies in the world. I did not know Thomas Edison was working for Schlumberger. No, I’m fundamentally a technology developer. Yeah, and I’m fundamentally a software engineer.
Stuart Turley [00:17:50] Hang on. I’ve got Shaggy on the phone.
Michael Tanner [00:17:55] Well, I mean, he’s our guy of the week.
Stuart Turley [00:17:58] I mean. Oh, my God.
Michael Tanner [00:17:59] Put him up with the candidates. We’re fundamentally techno.
Stuart Turley [00:18:01] Oh, my goodness. Anyway, you can’t buy this kind of entertainment on the news desk today.
Michael Tanner [00:18:06] Now, I can’t wait til slumber J goes bankrupt trying to do energy critical minerals, mining. I can’t wait. I can’t wait til they try to buy a mine. It just. It all goes south. Quick, let.
Stuart Turley [00:18:16] Me throw this squirrel in the Brier patch. And that is when you sit back and take a look. Russia is just now opening up several lithium mines and some other things. They’re going to start cornering the market on a lot of this stuff. So it’s going to be really ugly. We’re going to be left holding the ugly baby at the doorstep.
Michael Tanner [00:18:37] Admit the baby’s ugly. I’m starting that movement. It made the babies ugly. Ugly.
Stuart Turley [00:18:44] That’s what my parents did.
Michael Tanner [00:18:45] Well, yeah. I mean, it’s pretty easy with you.
Stuart Turley [00:18:47] Thank you very much.
Michael Tanner [00:18:49] Moron. Boom. Anything else?
Stuart Turley [00:18:51] Now I’m after you.
Michael Tanner [00:18:53] I’ll keep it short, folks. Overall markets, we’re actually down today about a half a percentage point. Nasdaq come on a 10th of a percentage point. Everyone is still kind of just awaiting the Fed’s decision. I think until that that date, which is in, what, two weeks, three weeks, I think is when the Fed will come out again, is all likelihood we’ll see a 50 basis points increase in the interest rate. And I think you’re just going to see a slow, ever so slightly half a percentage point off, half a percentage point off as we kind of roll into whatever that ends up being on a crude oil side, We’re actually trading it at about a day and a half highs here, 7772 as we record this at about 715 the night before. Hard at work for you guys. So not to pat ourselves on the back here. I think one of the more critical things holding prices up again is China demand. We did see the EIA report come out today and actually it was a little bit lighter than the API expected. We were expecting about a build of about 6.2 million barrels out of the strategic or out of the commercial Cushing stocks. We only got about 1.2 million barrel build. Now we do see a adjustment of about 2.0 excuse me, there is an adjustment about 200,000 barrels. So in around that number up, you’re looking about 1.4, 1.5. So a little you know, you’re talking four or 5 million barrels less than we were expecting. That definitely is going to help support prices. Specifically, we’re. And, you know, the you know, to swing it back, the EIA swinging back a little bit more into the Bulls side where it sort of, you know, each of these stories reports it really act as a laggard on prices so it’s welcome news. We did see the split between WTI and Brant continue to widen. Brant currently trading right now at 8585. So, you know, you know, the dynamics are different. Yes, crude is a global market, but there are some different dynamics that are causing Brant to go up. And one of these shows, we’ll dive into it more closely, but $2.77 over on natural gas is the current trading price. Again, as we record here about 715 the night before. I think the big thing we’re looking for is the natural gas storage numbers. They will drop while Thursday as you guys listen to this. But for us it will be tomorrow. Range of expectations anywhere between 66 to 84 BXP draw in the natural gas storage. Last year we had about 137 Bcf drop and the five year rolling average is somewhere around 134, so significantly less again due to that warmer weather coming in. I think the short term forecasts do look a little bit colder. So that’s what’s supporting prices in the short term. We have seen Freeport ramp up a little bit, so there is a little bit of LNG starting to get exported. But again, it’s a little bit wait and see mode as natural gas goes. The unfortunate Range Resources pioneer deal there is I’ve been hearing some interesting things on the back end about what’s going on there. I doubt anything will end up coming true. But I do think pioneers in the move and attempting to buy somebody. I do think there’s a few more M&A deals out there. So we will be covering all that. Earnings season is about wrapping up. I think this is probably the last fun earnings seasons we’ll have, I think quarter, you know, Q1 earnings that come out in though to about a month. Ooh, ooh, ooh. It’ll be interesting, you know, especially with, you know, natural gas prices being so low.
Stuart Turley [00:21:58] Yes.
Michael Tanner [00:21:58] Specifically, I think there’s going to be some players like Chesapeake, you know, Comstock were you know, we were interested these Appalachia players, those the prices got even down to below $2 for them, especially on their netback pricing. So very interesting to see our boy, our Boy Scout over. It connects you know, it could be a spicy Q one, but I think a lot of those people it’s interesting to see what their hedge positions were. Were they able to hedge when prices were high. So they’re maybe making something a little bit, you know, at that 350 mark. But it’ll be interesting to see how many of these unhedged players get kind of a slammed.
Stuart Turley [00:22:29] I you know, my old saying or are old saying good management, good numbers and Nick is one of the good ones out there.
Michael Tanner [00:22:36] Absolutely. So hopefully they hopefully hedged out there in Appalachia. Hopefully. You got anything else for today’s show?
Stuart Turley [00:22:43] It was absolutely fantastic. The ugly baby is on the doorstep.
Michael Tanner [00:22:46] Yeah. So with that thought, guys, well, listen, we’re starting to finish up here day. We appreciate you guys checking this out. Energynewsbeat.com for Stuart Turley. I’m Michael Tanner. We’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe.
