Daily Energy Standup Episode #74 – Oil prices look bullish through 2023 and 2024 – Chevron boosts share buyback – BP rolls back renewable – Russia looks to next steps.

Daily Standup Top Stories 

---

Highlights for this Podcast

00:00 – Intro
03:44 – Forget peak oil, demand a thirst for barrels puts $100 a barrel on view
09:17 – The Chevron Boost, an annual share and hikes US spending.
09:35 BP’s rolls back climate ambitions, which actually sends their stock climbing higher.
16:12 – Russia set to mothball damaged Nord Stream pipe gas pipelines
19:17 – Subsea Seven and Cem offshore and Kongsberg take aim at floating offshore wind. Will, this impact more whale deaths?
20:51- Power shortages coming too soon to America
26:29 – Outro

---

 

Follow Stuart On LinkedIn and Twitter

Follow Michael On LinkedIn and Twitter

ENB Top News

ENB

Energy Dashboard

ENB Podcast

ENB Substack

---

Video Transcription may be 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 another edition of the Daily Energy News Beat Standup here on this gorgeous Monday, March 6, 2023. As always, I’m your humble or respondent. 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, energynewsbeat.com, Stuart Turley, My man. How we doing today?

Stuart Turley [00:00:38] A beautiful day in the neighborhood. In fact, it’s best day I’ve had up here, except I still have a river running through my house.

Michael Tanner [00:00:44] Yeah, no kidding. We know you are struggling with some infrastructure problems over there, so we hope that all got solved. It is a gorgeous day here as we actually record this on Sunday, the day before here in Dallas. I mean, I’m in flip flops and shorts. I got the windows open. It’s awesome. So we hope you guys had a great weekend. We hope you’re fighting off some of those Monday scaries And we hope to bring you a great show. We appreciate you guys sticking with us as our loyal fans do. A has a great, great show lined up for us today. Guys, First article we’re going to cover is forget peak oil demand A thirst for barrels puts $100 in view. So this will be an interesting article on sort of the bull case for oil and gas. We’ll see if I agree with it after Stu gives us an overview next to Chevron boosts annual share buybacks and hikes US spending, kind of highlighting the fact that we’ve seen these companies are out there and really, really pushing share buybacks. And again, I think that the reasons for that are mixed. We’ll cover what this article talks about next. Opinion is an opinion article. BP’s rolls back climate ambitions, which actually sends their stock climbing higher. So Stew will dive in on what BP sort of pivot back into oil and gas means for them and the overall markets next. Russia is set to mothball damaged Nord Stream two gas pipelines. Who would have thought, you know, after some random guy on Substack told us that the U.S. destroyed it, which is probably true. Looks like Russia is set to mothball it, doesn’t want to get turned back online. So Stu will cover what that means next. Subsea seven semi offshore and cogs berg which are three of floating offshore wind terminals. They will take aim at a new floating offshore wind development. The real question is will this have an impact on the marine life? Stu will cover what that means. And then finally, power shortages are coming soon to America. And as Stu’s likes to say, quote, A balanced power of diet could stop the crisis. Stu will cover the electrical markets. He’ll then kick it over to me. I mean, it’s really a great day on Friday for the markets. We saw green all around. Oil peaked and is currently sitting about 7985. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. As you guys listen to this Monday morning, we did see our first $3 natural gas spike, which is good to see. I’m just for the long term bullish. It’s not gas Intel claims we’ve got some new signs of demand but I will cover all of that and a bag of chips, guys, and then we’ll let you get out of here. But first, check us out online at the world’s greatest website, EnergyNewsBeat.com Dashboard.EnergyNewsBeat.com The best place for all your data and oil and gas and energy news hit out the description below. You can find all of the articles that are courtesy of our website in the description below. We’ve spent a great deal of time making sure that that description has everything you need to be able to click and find out what we are talking about while you listen. So we appreciate our team who keeps that up to date. I am out of breath. Those two. Where do you want to begin?

Stuart Turley [00:03:31] Okay. Hey, let’s go ahead and start with the one that I’m a little confused on as far as everybody is jumping up and down and saying China’s demand is going to change world oil. This article is forget peak oil, demand A thirst for barrels puts $100, $100 a barrel on view. Now remember, that’s Brant, not WTI. And so, Michael, I think that it’s really the demand is going to be there. But I a minister CEO of Saudi Aramco, says the demand from China is very strong, but I don’t think it’s going to drive it to the $100. I think I like the way that he is positioning this. My view shorthand is maybe people are underestimating, demand is overestimating US production. Chief economist at Trader, Different groups.

Michael Tanner [00:04:29] Trafigura.

Stuart Turley [00:04:30] Trafigura. Thank you. Bless you. And I. I don’t know what are your thoughts?

Michael Tanner [00:04:37] Oh, but yes, it’s Trafigura is one of the largest like physical oil and metals traders in the world. There’s a great book called The World is a for Sale by Javier Baez and Jack Faraci. Great, great book, which covers the history of Rich Inco Trafigura Vitol, all of the big oil and metal trader. So it is kind of funny, though. You know, the guy who is chief economist at Trafigura, in my view, shorthand is maybe people are underestimating demand and overestimating US production. Bro, you get paid to be bullish. Your literal job is to convince the world that we should. Buy more oil and they should buy it from you. So I’m going to change anything. Saeed Rahim I’m sure he’s brilliant, but he’s literally is paid to be bullish. So that’s it’s a backhanded way of saying, yes, he’s probably in to see that. I mean, on the Brant side, here’s this You can make it you can make an argument for both. I think there is a set of facts that when you look at them, you can come to the conclusion of, oh, wow, yeah, we probably are underestimating what China’s China’s demand is going to do once they come back and start really ramping up their needs. What’s that going to do? And I think they point out specifically the U.S. production, that’s a very valid point. And we’ve seen this. There are all sorts of studies that you can go find and we’ll link a couple in the descriptions below of and I’ll send them to our team so they can make sure they link it. Showing that outside of the Permian Basin oil overall, oil and gas production has declined. New oil and gas wells are coming on not as productive as they used to. We’re running out of really, really good Tier one acreage. Where is the growth going to come from in the U.S. market to keep up with what will be, regardless of where you fall on the bullish versus bear side, we do know demand will grow. The question is how much? And if China accounts for more than we expect and we see a higher demand spike than we expect, things could get tight. I tend to agree with the facts on the other side that say things are pretty balanced right now and already at a pretty inflated level. I mean, as we sit now, WTI is $79, basically $80. Brant is at 8674. Right. Is there a $14 on Brant room to run north? Is there is that much excess demand? Is there that much sentiment on the demand side coming from China? I don’t know. I don’t know. And I do know that there are lots of oil projects coming online in the Gulf of Mexico. I think about $100 oil is a.

Stuart Turley [00:07:11] Huge.

Michael Tanner [00:07:12] Huge spurn for these large integrated oil companies. They go out and really where the needle moves is that Gulf of Mexico production. But you have to think about these are six month projects. So you turn a well, you go start drilling a pad in Gulf of Mexico in July of 2021 when that or 2022 and that project gets greenlit at $110 oil. You’re not seeing production on that for six months, eight months because of the entire book. You’re probably just starting to flowback some of these bad boys and just now starting to realize and see some of that real uptick in production. So I’m a little bit mixed on this analysis. I mean, you know, obviously, Trafigura is going to agree, I am going to say, but I mean, me, I would do the same thing if you were paying me as much money as this guy’s getting paid.

Stuart Turley [00:07:53] And pay us. Let’s find out.

Michael Tanner [00:07:54] Cheap.

Stuart Turley [00:07:55] Yeah, we are cheap, but better looking, I bet. Hey, here’s. Yeah, well, maybe I haven’t looked in the mirror lately. Hey, one of the. One of the things, though, that really concerns me, my hesitancy to put a number on China is out there right now, you know, and saying, hey, it’s going to impact us this much. OPEC just came out and said that they’re really they’re really not sure. There are over 30 tankers a month right now that are going to the dark in the gray fleet. So that is something that opaque in that everyone else is really not considering is Russian and Iranian and Venezuela inputs to China and India. Everybody is saying those demands are going up. How much oil is going to be supplied by the dark fleet? That to me tells me that OPEC is more afraid of that in in trying to figure out pricing. I have no clue on how to figure out the pricing anymore. But that dark fleet is going to be substantial.

Michael Tanner [00:09:02] I’m not surprised that you gravitate towards the Dark Fleet.

Stuart Turley [00:09:08] Yeah, me and Luke Skywalker, we know how to find that dark side. Okay, What’s next? Okay, let’s go to Chevron. The Chevron Boost, an annual share buyback hikes US spending. I really want your opinion on this on my account because I really applaud Chevron. They did not. And that goes hand in hand with our BP article here right up after this. The title and on Tuesday raised its share buyback program and reaffirmed its production guidance of more than 3% annual growth by 2027 ish, 17% to 17.5 billion a year.

Michael Tanner [00:09:49] I mean, that’s more than it’s more than a lot of companies make. That’s what they’re doing, buying back their own stock. Here’s here’s what I would say his thoughts on what and again there’s there’s probably multifaceted reasons they’re doing this one reasons one reason companies just buy back stock in general is it’s the easiest way to inflate is not the right word, but it really what it is inflate the price of your stock is the supply of your stock. Goes down because you are now currently buying it. The overall value of that stock inherently is going to rise slightly because that supply is much lower. So that’s partially why you see share buybacks and specifically when you feel like your stock is undervalued at a company which Chevron probably does, it probably does forecast internally much higher levels of oil prices, which going to significantly raise their valuation. And they feel like buying their shares now specifically is probably a good deal. Now, on the other hand, you could say, well, Michael, it’s a $75 million share buyback program which is mapped out per year. So they’re forecasting oil prices for years. No, not really. So, yes, there is a little bit of, hey, we’re just committing to buying shares in order to build a value for our shareholders. But I think some of it has to mean 70 billion in the first year is a lot. That’s more than most of the other companies that we’ve talked about. I mean, all the companies that we talked about outside of ConocoPhillips, remember, buried their share buyback program in sentence number, in bullet point number half of sentence two in bullet point number three on their share. So they kind of took a different approach of all these other companies. This is a much larger move for Chevron. I think it’s I think it’s interesting, You know, they have enough liquidity right now to be able to do all of this. They can kind of have their cake and eat it, too. Right. Can do the share buybacks. They can still increase their US spending where they have some really good Tier one Permian acreage that they can go out and continue to drill up without and continue to see the productivity levels, levels that sustain continual investment. You know, I think they’ve done a good job over the last three years of trimming their fat. They’re really probably one of the better run. I mean, I think them and Exxon clearly are two of the better run oil majors. I do like ConocoPhillips from a standpoint, the moves that these big oil companies are making, I think they’re making all the right moves. You’re seeing them dive not specifically into renewables, but stick with the oil and gas. Me Think about it. The only the only supermajor right now that really seems to be having issues is what we’ll cover in this next article. BP They’re the only one that really dove headfirst into ESG. Them and Shell are two companies pulling back right now. Think about who the only two companies worth that dove headfirst into. We’re going to become a windfarm company.

Stuart Turley [00:12:12] And well, there’s another one that goes into that same thing. We’ll go then that next. When you go to the next one.

Michael Tanner [00:12:18] Yeah, we might as well.

Stuart Turley [00:12:20] Next article. Dude, this is pretty funny. This is an opinion piece. And BP’s Beyond Petroleum rolls back climate ambitions. It sends a different kind of message. Michael Now, we’ve been talking about this for several weeks now, but I like this one because it really fit in with our other stories as well, too. BP drank the Kool-Aid. I mean, if they were in was where was the thing where everybody was drinking the Kool-Aid and get killed?

Michael Tanner [00:12:52] Oh, I James down in Cuba was Jim Jones, Jim.

Stuart Turley [00:12:56] Jones and Jamestown or whatever.

Michael Tanner [00:12:58] Yes, Jamestown.

Stuart Turley [00:13:00] Yeah. So anyway, they all drank the Kool-Aid, their religion there. And here’s here’s what the problem is. They went Chevron stayed the course. They were The poster child is really holding on tight. Then you take a look at, you know, it’s the fringe total energy. You know, that’s the Oklahoma way, the Taj Mahal. They said, don’t give me that. You know, I gay man, I can’t handle it. I’m just, you know, both of our fans just threw up. But when we sit back and take Total is now actually increasing their drilling programs, they’re they’re going, well, you know, if BP can do it, we can do it as well, too. They just announced an increase in their drilling. Shell is doing the same thing. They are now rolling back. And this goes back to when you and I were talking a little while ago about the CEO who’s in front of Congress and they stood up to Congress go us big oil CEOs. I’m proud of them.

Michael Tanner [00:14:07] I think there’s a really important quote at the bottom of this, and I’d recommend reading this whole article again, you can click a description and see and check this article out. One of the final sentence The big oil companies figured this out years ago and generally avoid tech based climate solutions. Why? Because they know how to drill for oil and gas. You start getting into these other business models. It’s tough. I mean, I was just I just listened to a podcast with the former CEO of IBM, Gina. What’s her last name property or whatever. She was the CEO of IBM from 2012 to 2020, a period where they had to completely shift their business model from, oh yeah, beautiful infrastructure to now cloud based. It’s not easy. It’s not hard. And one of the few reasons companies are companies able to do that is slow change in progress and all this stuff. It doesn’t happen overnight. BP decided two years ago they want to be a wind farm company. You want to be a wind farm company? Cool. It’s going to take multiple decades in order to completely roll out and really rebuild a business. I mean, because they’re to be different business models, not to get on a total side rant here. But there’s they’re used to you know, I you know. Four years ago. And and right when I was getting into grad school, one of the projects they had me work on was, Oh, we need to try to build education programs to take people who work in oil and gas and train them to work in renewables. And what you realize real quickly is there’s no transferable skills. The only trains fills that are skills that are transferable or transferable to all other industries. Project management experience, understanding how to hit deadlines, budgeting. But that goes to any deal, not just what a wind farm looks like. Everything else about understanding and building like exclusive, like an offshore wind development has very little to do with it. You need a structural engineer out there. You know, petroleum engineer is designing how an offshore wind should shoot. We’re not qualified for that. So I ran the idea that you can just pivot your whole, Oh, we’ve got smart people here. We’re going to teach them the offshore wind farm is ludicrous.

Stuart Turley [00:16:01] Yes. No, that would be hideous. But, you know, hats off to the US big oil. All right, let’s go to the next one here. And nice rant, dude. I liked it. Okay. Russia set to mothball damaged Nord Stream pipe gas pipelines. Michael, as we’ve talked about this Nord Stream one and Nord Stream two are actually for pipelines that run from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea. Three three of the four were damaged. Arthritis gets me so much for my our blood gas listeners. I had to hold one of my fingers down. So three of the pipelines have been destroyed. One still works. And so what they could do is still sell some and 50% would be better than nothing as far as Germany is concerned. But that’s another play for Putin to shut it down. That’s the significance of this. And I truly think that it was going to happen anyway. So I just thought there was not an explanation in there that there was still one working pipeline. So.

Michael Tanner [00:17:14] Yeah, so give me an idea. It says it says so one of the quotes is your Gazprom has said it. It is technically possible to repair the ruptured lines. But two sources familiar with the plant said Moscow saw little prospect of relations with the West improving enough in the foreseeable future for the pipelines to be needed. So you got to help me out here. These 110 Bcf per day that can be swiped through these lines. That’s a lot of money that Russia’s missing out on there now.

Stuart Turley [00:17:40] Yes.

Michael Tanner [00:17:41] But hey, why is Russia cool with three of these pipelines being off? They’re losing 75% of the revenue they could be making. Right.

Stuart Turley [00:17:48] Here’s where Qatar and China just signed a 27 year contract with China. Guess what? China and Russia are signing 2730 year natural gas pipelines. Why would Putin want to do anything? Because he’s going to attack on pipelines instead of coming down out of through the Ukraine and everything else. They’re going to roll them right on through. And he’s getting gas to China.

Michael Tanner [00:18:17] So I see. So he’s so he’s taking a short term hit to build out a long term infrastructure elsewhere and find new actual long term buyers.

Stuart Turley [00:18:26] Absolutely. And so he is actually playing it smart China with that long term contract. That’s coming up. That’s why the EU got into a situation, Michael. They did not do long term contracts with Russia. This whole thing would have been avoided with long term contracts. So with these long term contracts, China will be supplying Russia with arms and ammunition and and weapons. And then Putin is going to give them all the natural gas they can do. So why would he want to mess with the West? There’s no reason.

Michael Tanner [00:19:02] To go point.

Stuart Turley [00:19:04] So anyway, there’s a little subheading in there, if you would, that was not explained in the article, but that’s why you pay me the medium bugs.

Michael Tanner [00:19:13] Okay, what’s next.

Stuart Turley [00:19:14] From here we are. Michael. The article is subsea seven and Cem offshore and Kongsberg take aim at floating offshore wind. Well, this impact more whale deaths in the article. We are losing a lot of whales around the world. And for our podcast listeners, take a look too in the show notes. I have the link here, but look at the story and look at the way those all those lines, even though they say they’re floating wind farms, those things are all tethered to the ground, the vibrations are going nuts and it’s driving it’s killing the whales through all this mess. So think of there’s thousands of windmills. Then you have all the cables, you have all this mess. It’s going to be killing some serious whales. And I find it all disturbing that there’s hypocrisy. Seeing. Nobody’s even following along with it.

Michael Tanner [00:20:13] So, yeah, I mean, there’s this memory of understanding that there’s that they’ve signed to jointly look at the optimism of marine operations for floating wind projects. I mean, this is a industry funded study. I mean, I doubt they’ll come to any real conclusions. And, oh, your offshore wind farm is great. It’s not going to kill any whales.

Stuart Turley [00:20:31] Well, you know, Free Willy is now dead on the beach. They can’t even dream now revive Willy.

Michael Tanner [00:20:37] That’s the new. I mean, I revive Willy, baby.

Stuart Turley [00:20:43] For my podcast listeners, I’m holding up to mice.

Michael Tanner [00:20:46] What have you got next to?

Stuart Turley [00:20:48] It’s a defibrillator. Okay, next one, power shortages coming too soon to America. A balanced diet of power could stop the crisis. The subheading on this one, Michael, as all of this makes Americans more dependent on the electric grid at a time when utilities are accelerating the closure of coal and gas fired plants, leaving the grid increasingly reliant on intermittent wind and solar, this has sparked warnings from utility infrastructure experts that America’s dash to renewables could be driving our own electric grid instability. Starkman writes This is critical. Finally, the there there all of the balancing authorities, as Meredith Angwin says, you know about shortening the grid. The author there she is brilliant. And when she was saying the honest the balancing authorities are having to be really, really critical on this, this key point in here. The analysis shows that 40 gigawatts of existing power generation is at risk of retirement by 2030, accounting for 21% of its current installed capacity, meaning 290 gigawatts worth of new power supply is seeking to connect from PJM Grid. It’s the expanse, stupid, and it’s the consumers They get to pay for all this, and the price for energy is just going to go through the roof. We cannot retire coal. We cannot retire natural gas until the technology and the physics align. But people are just stupid. I said it. Sorry.

Michael Tanner [00:22:40] Tell us how you really feel. No, I agree. I think that the fact that, you know, we don’t have a clear outlook on where our you know, if we don’t have a clear energy outlook, last thing we should be doing is retiring reliable fuels and switching to unreliable fuels. But that’s unfortunately an issue that we’re going to have to deal with for years to come.

Stuart Turley [00:22:57] Right. Exactly. And I’m going to see if I can get on my train or, you know, the training wheels on the back of it. I’m going to have an electrical thing so I could be like a squirrel on there and try to generate a loan house.

Michael Tanner [00:23:10] And who are you? Are you ESG?

Stuart Turley [00:23:13] Oh, I am, yeah.

Michael Tanner [00:23:16] You got anything else?

Stuart Turley [00:23:17] No, I’m good, baby. I had a good role. Thanks for your input.

Michael Tanner [00:23:20] Yeah, I’m just trying to keep our views up. I think looking at how financial outlooks made a really good day on Friday, markets were up about 1.6 percentage points in the S&P 500, two and a half or not two and a half, 2.04 percentage points. You’re on the Nasdaq. Crude oil and natural gas both saw about one and a half percent gains. Crude oil currently sitting at 79, 85, natural gas, $3 and one cents. You know, with some colder weather looking like it’s moving in, are the prospects of some exports on the natural gas side, specifically out of Freeport, have sort of buoyed natural gas prices in the short term. It’ll be interesting to see on the long term how things go and if we can stay above that $3 mark or as we move forward, if we do do see a dip back down to two crude oil, as we mentioned in our opening segment, you know, is does have some bullish tendencies on the back end. Do I think that we’re going to see $100 brant, which is sitting at 8674? Probably not. You know what does that mean for WTI? I think 85 is probably your max that and then that’s enough to pay bills. Trust me, all that is enough and should be enough to pay the bills at every company and twice on Sunday. So let’s not be confused about 79, 80 and $85 oil. That is really good. And if you can’t balance your books with those type of numbers, watch out. Now, again, it’s going to be interesting to see how service companies continue to react to this price. Do they keep $100 oil pricing or do they come back down and give us a little bit of a break? So it’s going to be interesting to see how things played out. I think we’re rolling out of earnings season, which is really the last good earnings, not good earnings. We’ll see. But it’s going to be interesting to see this Q1 earnings report that’s going to be rolling around here in about a month, month and a half. It’s not I mean, it’s the outlook is going to be good. It won’t be maybe as great as Q4 was, which was specifically looking at that roll back when we did see. They started all oil. So I think we’ll be looking at that. There are a lot of whispers around the M&A space that are continue to pick up. I think it’ll be interesting to see. You know, obviously pioneer name was floated around last week. It’ll be interesting to see. Obviously, they’re in the market for something. The question is who is it and is there another player in the market sniffing out something? You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if if we did see a company like ConocoPhillips on the Supermajor start start sniffing around. They’ve already gone out and bought Concho. Is there something else around the Permian Basin that they can swoop up and consolidate? I don’t know. PE obviously made some moves. We saw bison oil and gas about a week and a half ago come up with their fourth fund specifically focused in Colorado. We saw the Double Eagle guys announced Double Eagle five rolls out, rolled out about three, four weeks ago. So it’s going to be extremely interesting to see how the private equity market moves forward. I know there’s a lot of activity being talked about and we will make sure to be the first place to cover all of that here on this podcast. Do anything I got. Anything else for these people. We’ve got to probably let them get back to work on a monday, unfortunately.

Stuart Turley [00:26:09] Oh no, they want to hang with us because it’s more fun than going to work.

Michael Tanner [00:26:13] So it’s a good point. So we’ll in we can sit here and talk about Stu’s Civil War experience. Another time, though, but I haven’t seen it. So we need to get out of here, let you guys get back to work. Hopefully you don’t have too many meetings, but we agreed. Thanks for checking us out, guys. For Stuart Turley, I’m Michael Tanner. We’ll see you tomorrow.