Daily Standup Top Stories
Solar Shares Rise as Trump Hit to Credits Softer Than Feared
In a surprising turn for the renewable energy sector, solar stocks have surged following the Trump administration’s latest guidance on tax credits for wind and solar projects. Released on August 15, 2025, the new rules […]
Britain’s net-zero scheme is being derailed by opposition to solar and wind projects
ENB Pub Note: Robert Bryce is a true American hero in the energy space. I enjoyed talking with him last week on the Energy Realities podcast. This article really does a great job pointing out […]
Trump Moves to Open 82% of Alaska’s Petroleum Reserve for Drilling
In a bold push to bolster domestic energy production, the Trump administration has advanced plans to open approximately 82% of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) to oil and gas leasing. This move, announced in June […]
Trump to Hold Off Hiking China Tariffs Over Russia Oil Purchases – Straight to Peace Treaty
What were some key outcomes from Yesterday’s Alaska Summit?
Tariffs and Energy Costs Could Spark an Economic Crisis for Germany
ENB Pub Note: This article from Zerohedge is very timely. What also is in play is the additional costs associated with NATO, defence, and Net Zero that the EU is enforcing. Energy policies have effectively […]
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
00:13 – Solar Shares Rise as Trump Hit to Credits Softer Than Feared
02:25 – Britain’s net-zero scheme is being derailed by opposition to solar and wind projects
04:26 – Trump Moves to Open 82% of Alaska’s Petroleum Reserve for Drilling
07:23 – Trump to Hold Off Hiking China Tariffs Over Russia Oil Purchases – Straight to Peace Treaty
12:15 – Tariffs and Energy Costs Could Spark an Economic Crisis for Germany
17:16 – Markets Update
18:48 – Rig Count Update
18:51 – Frac Count Update
19:16 – Civitas board bumps CEO Doyle, agrees to $435 million of asset sales
23:36 – Outro
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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Michael Tanner: [00:00:00] Can you make money trading solar stocks? We’ll find out next on the Energy Newsbeat stand up. [00:00:05][5.2]
Stuart Turley: [00:00:13] Solar shares rise as Trump hits to credit softer than feared. What was that all about? In a surprising turn in the renewable energy sector, solar stocks have surged following the Trump administration’s latest guidance on tax credits for wind and solar projects. This was released on August 15th, the new rules from the Treasury Department. Michael, I did not have this on my bingo card. When you take a look at Solar and investments, I did not think about that, but you take a look at recent gains as of August 16th, 2025, I put this chart in here, first solar up 12.77%, first run up 39.17%, solar edge technologies up 24%, end phase, I’ve been tracking this bad dog for a long time, up 11%, the bottom line is, I’m not quite dead yet. I did not see all this going on Mike [00:01:12][59.1]
Michael Tanner: [00:01:12] I think you have to remember this, whenever the government comes in and regulates an industry, the incumbents always win. We’ve seen that over the years with the pipeline industry, where pipeline manufacturers had tremendous gains in the market, if only because you couldn’t build new pipelines, leading to a surge in the people who actually had pipelines, giving them quote unquote, monopoly power. So I think this idea that all of a sudden now with these tighter solar regulations, all of a sudden, I think the incumbent players are going to fare very well because there’s going to be a segment of the economy who still wants, quote, unquote, clean energy. They’re still going to desire solar, still desire wind. And those companies that have those projects up and running or have those project in the works are going to benefit from that versus the people that eventually want to do that. So I think this is a oddly unintended consequences from what I would call mandates or regulations from the government, which in this case is not really a regulation. It’s more stripping away the ability for new projects to be developed based on the tax credits. [00:02:14][61.9]
Stuart Turley: [00:02:15] Yes. And so I thought I got a tickle out of that because I was watching on my day trading there, you know, sitting there kind of going, whoa, these charts were going off. And that’s why I put that story out there. Let’s roll over to Britain. You can’t buy this kind of entertainment. This story, Britain’s net zero scheme is being derailed by opposition to solar and wind projects. Robert Bryce is just a class act. He’s a true American hero in the energy space. And I enjoyed talking to him last week. Britain’s plan to achieve Net Zero Michael by 2050 won’t be derailed by high cost, even though Brits are now paying some of the highest residential electricity prices. Nor will the effort be derail by lack of support by the Labor Party, which has a manifesto claiming Britain will be, listen to this Michael, are you ready? The clean energy superpower. Suddenly I feel like Starmer is in a Superman outfit with a red cape in a foggy day. I’m just trying to put this he’s standing on the Thames in a superman outfit. This is absolutely bonkers but everybody is opposed to all of these things and the land that they’re stealing is the same problem the United States is having as the farmland. Over the last 15 years, Robert interviewed dozens of people from numerous countries have fought solar and wind projects, and they’re tired of having their farms stolen to go on to these wind farms. [00:03:41][86.0]
Michael Tanner: [00:03:41] Well, yeah, I mean, I think the problem with eminent domain is that it very rarely is actually used under this concept of actual eminent domain. And now obviously we’re talking about the UK, which is a little bit different in the United States, but the concept still saves the stain. You’re right. Robert Bryce, great friend of the show, has been, quote unquote, tracking this rural backlash in what he would call all energy project for about 15 years now. Here’s a great stat that he shows the renewable rejection database shows that there have been at least eight hundred and 778 rejections or restrictions of wind and solar project in the US since 2013 which includes 82 This year, which is pretty unbelievable when you come to look at it again. We talk about NIMBYs all the time Oh, we love wind just not in my backyard [00:04:24][43.0]
Stuart Turley: [00:04:24] Oh, absolutely. Hey, let’s roll the next one here. Trump moves to open 82% of Alaska’s petroleum reserve for drilling. And I absolutely love this. Love me some Alaska drilling. I got the next story. I’m just teeing up the next when I did a, uh, sub stack article on the events that went on in Alaska on Friday, but I want to cover this one first, Michael, the NPR spans roughly 23 million acres and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and has long been eyed for its hydrocarbon potential. You and I have talked about this on the show from before, but now that we know that they’ve got even more of this opened up, the timeline that I have in here is I wanted to make sure that people as investors start looking at Conoco, Hillcorp, Exxon, and Chevron and how they play into Alaska, especially with some of these bigger projects coming around corner because we always want to take a look wait a minute here’s an announcement how does this play into what is how do you make money at this and you take a look at the total recoverable oil listen to this 2.7 to 10 billion barrels daily peak production 200,000 to 500,000 barrels per day natural gas 114 trillion cubic feet That’s more gas than Jerry Nadler. [00:05:48][83.9]
Michael Tanner: [00:05:49] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hee hee hee! That’s a lot of gas from Jerry now that that’s a good one to kind of answer, at least in my opinion, the question that you posed of who is this going to be good for, from an investing standpoint? I mean, one, obviously you mentioned Hill Corp. The problem is you kind of got to put them to the side because you can’t invest in them. They’re a private company, but you can get in on Conoco Phillips, which is the owner of the Willow project, who is most likely to benefit from the opening up of this because they not only have a, are going to have a strong foothold with this Willow project, which was actually approved under the Biden administration. So it’s a little bit of them talking out of both sides of their mouth, but the fact that they’re going to have a deep understanding. Exxon and Chevron do not necessarily have a huge footprint right now. We obviously know that they’ve been in Alaska before they could maybe reenter via some joint ventures to help develop some of this acreage. But I do think it’s going to come down to ConocoPhillip leading the show. I mean, most of the production right now in Alaska comes out of Prudhoe Bay, which I mean was developed 50, 60 years ago and has been declining as a resource ever since, and that’s what happens with oil fields. We tap them, we use them as a. And then they eventually began to decline and we need to shift elsewhere. So I think this is a great, great move by the Trump administration. It’s truly the only thing he really can do if he really wants to hammer this drill baby drill, we could talk for hours about what drill baby drill means to the oil and gas industry. But from a political standpoint, there are very few places where you can just add millions of barrels to the Oil and Gas Market, Alaska being one of them. So if you’re going to talk the talk, you better walk the walk and open up places like Alaska. Exactly. [00:07:19][89.9]
Stuart Turley: [00:07:19] Speaking of Alaska, let’s go to Alaska on Friday. Trump to hold off hiking China tariffs after the oil purchases. Straight to peace treaty. This was a Substack article that I wrote after the summit and I actually loved this summit. I thought it was fantastic from the standpoint. President Trump is waiting on the tarmac and then here he is waiting for President Putin on the red carpet and then he times it. Michael, he times for the B2 to fly over President Putin and President Trump’s head and my dad who retired as chief of staff of the 8th Air Force was telling me how difficult that is to time a walk in a speech for that type of an event. And how cool is that, that when President Putin left, I saw from RT him looking outside his beast, the Russian beast, at 2B2 Bombers Park. And I tracked those B-2 bombers the day before. I knew there was going to be a show, but this show, let’s go into some of the details on the show, a great and successful day in Alaska. The meeting will be held with Vladimir Putin went very well. And this is a quote from president Trump on his truth. As did a late night phone call with Zelensky of Ukraine and various other leaders. It was determined that by the best way to end the horrific war in Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a peace agreement which would end the war and not a mere ceasefire agreement which oftentimes do not hold up. This to me is great news. Now this comes on the heel nobody was really paying attention, but this was also a trade delegation. You had our Secretary of Treasury there and you had a ton of Russian business leaders there ready to shake hands and everything else. President Putin wants to do business with the United States. This is important. So Russia before the meeting declared that he wanted to open the door for Exxon to return to the Sakhalin-1 project. Now Exxons may have a little bit of a bad taste in their mouth because they did some of their gear stolen and some liabilities. But if President Trump is using this as a gigantic carrot instead of a club, I’m in improvement with this because energy as an export as a service is going to happen in order to be energy dominant. We’re going to be exporting our great service from our great oil and gas companies. So I know when I [00:09:55][155.6]
Michael Tanner: [00:09:54] No, and I mean, we could talk for a while about the effects of what this summit’s going to have. I hope something actually happens from this summit, other than just a great show of force. I mean I agree with you. I think from a, you know, from a I’m trying to think of what it is from, you know, from a branding and a marketing standpoint, the… The meeting went great. The question is, will Putin actually do anything and actually want to come to the negotiating table? Let me finish here for a second, but I think you hit it the nail on the head when it comes to the effects of the energy market, the fact that this 90 day extension or the pushing off of the sanctions that end up on China, I think is going to obviously in the short term going to. You know, not necessarily support the bull case for oil. I think we’ll see is that as the market opens here shortly, as we record this Sunday afternoon, that we’re going to see a probably a slight rollover when it comes to where prices are going, because now all of a sudden that oil that theoretically may be off the market is now going to be on the market. You know, I think a lot of people say that, well, if China wasn’t able to buy it, even if these sanctions don’t work, India will be able to pick up the slack. India might be able take up a little bit of slack, but they’re going be able to pick up the whole slack. So I think from an oil price standpoint, this actually plays into Trump’s thesis on keeping oil prices low. We know he wants oil prices lower, so I think the fact that he’s pushing and kicking this can down the road actually then supports that. [00:11:12][78.0]
Stuart Turley: [00:11:13] There’s a couple of things. Zelensky is supposed to be in the White House on Monday. President Trump also said, by the way, Zelenski show up in a suit and tie because this is the White house and we conduct formal business meetings here. So that’s Monday. That’s today. When this releases, we’ll find out more about that on Friday. This next coming Friday, president Trump is wanting to have a meeting with Zelenske and president Putin. He’s moving fast on this. So I think that this has a very good opportunity to be successful, and I think the only one that’s going to screw this up is Zelensky, who is a puppet that was installed. [00:11:54][41.5]
Michael Tanner: [00:11:55] Yeah, I mean, I don’t disagree with that. I, I, again, I think from, from a political standpoint, it’d be interesting to see where this ends up. If we can actually get an agreement, great. If we’re able to, but it’s clear as we’ve talked about on this show, many times sanctions don’t work. And I think Trump knows that. And I thinking he’s again, like you said, using it as a carrot or carrot and a stick. What do we got next? [00:12:14][19.7]
Stuart Turley: [00:12:15] Let’s go to this last story. Tariffs and energy costs could spark an economic crisis for Germany. Have you heard me say this before? But this is absolutely a fun one. This is from zero edge and it is extremely timely, especially because we’re talking about also the UK and net zero energy policies equals deindustrialization and fiscal collapse. German industry is being hit hard with new U.S. Tariffs, high energy costs, and strict EU climate policies. The EU trade deal imposes 15% on deal exports, many firms to scale back U. S. Operations. Political leaders remain unwilling to challenge the Green Deal despite mounting economic and social costs. The new survey by the German Chancellor of Commerce and Industry confirms what was already obvious. The EU-US trade deal will especially hurt Germany’s export-oriented economy. If Germany fails, Michael, the EU fails. It’s just as simple as that. They were the biggest manufacturing and biggest part of the economy that they had in there. So, they’ve got to retool, they got to rethink, and they’ve gotta do other things in there, Because NATO, at 5% spending, their additional tariff fees to the United States, those two things, that’s 10% of their GDP. I mean that is like, holy smokes, Batman, that is a lot of money. [00:13:48][92.8]
Michael Tanner: [00:13:48] Yeah, if your economy is solely based on exporting goods to the United States, and now all of a sudden you’re in the crosswinds of a president who feels like tariffs are the best way to go about, you know, increasing revenues at home, which so far in the limited data set that we have, he’s actually proved correct from the standpoint of These tariffs have seemed to have done more positive than they have negative. So when you’re Germany and now you’re looking at how are we going to continue to increase your GDP, increase the things going on there while being a primary export, it makes things really difficult. And, you know, considering the high energy costs that the German people are dealing with, I mean, it only makes it more difficult. Oh, it is. Hey, off to you now. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s go ahead and jump over to oil and gas finance guys before we do that. [00:14:29][41.3]
Michael Tanner: [00:14:29] Let’s go ahead and pay the bills. As always, all the news and analysis you heard is brought to you by the world’s greatest website, www.energy newsbeat.com. The best place for all your energy and oil and gas news. Stu and the team do a tremendous job keeping that website up to speed everything you need to know to be at the tip of the spear. Hit the description below for all the time stamps, links to the articles that we cover, and also links to our Substack. One of the best ways to stay up to speed with the show is subscribe to our Substack, theenergynewsbeat.substack.com. A great daily brief goes out every day covering what you need to know in the energy business, specifically from the desk of Stu. It’s really great guys, highly recommend subscribing. It’s a great way to help support the show. If you also do feel so inclined, go ahead and sign up for a paid subscription. I’m going to get a bunch of great free paid subscriber content, access to all four like archives and direct access to Stu and myself, which people may or may not enjoy, but either way you can get inside our minds even more next step guys really, really want to shout out great friends of the show, Reese energy consulting guys, if you are working in the oil and gas space right now and you. Need help within the midstream space. Guys, Reese Energy Consulting is your go-to firm. Whether you’re an upstream company who needs help with marketing and your first purchasers, whether or not you’re a midstream company that just has a project that you can’t fit in with normal staff. Reese Energy Consulting has the knowledge, the expertise, and the team to be able to get this done. They have clients ranged from two people in a garage all the way up to the largest publicly traded company. So if you’re wondering, are you a fit? The answer is yes, guys. Hit them up, reeseenergyconsulting.com. That’s reeseenergyconsult.com and finally, guys, it’s never too early to start thinking about your 2025 tax bill. Guys, I promise you, the end of the year is going to come up soon. You’re going to be scrambling on your with your CPA saying, whoa, I owe the federal government $75,000. I don’t want to give it. I don’t my money going into solar farms. I want to invest or I want it to put it somewhere where I don’t have to fund what’s going on with all of this clean energy movement. Well, guess what, guys? You can do that by investing in the United States American gas economy. Check out investinoil.energynewsbeat.com. It’s a great, great resource where you can figure out what tax liabilities. Figure out how much an oil and gas investment might save you. And when you sign up, we will send you a bunch of information on how to think about investing in oil and gas from it’s a great ebook that one of our partners wrote, Paul Graham, highly recommend you guys get a hold of that. Fill out our oil and gas portfolio survey at investinoil.energynewsbeat.com. And if you qualify, we’ll consider pointing you in the right direction of some of our trusted vetted operators that do this on a day-to-day basis. Guys, again, that’s investin oil.energy newsbeat. Com. [00:17:15][166.1]
Michael Tanner: [00:17:16] But let’s go ahead and look at some top line indices. S&P 500 on Friday down about three tenths of a percentage point. NASDAQ dropped about a half a percent. Two and 10 year yields jumped 0.5 and 0.77 percentage points. Dollar index dropped about three-tenths of percentage points. A Bitcoin. Dropped on Friday up over the weekend $117,700. Crude oil lost about $1.16, down to $6,280. Brent didn’t drop as much, dropped about $0.14, down to 66.50. Natural gas actually spiked a little bit, up about 2.64 percentage points, $2.91. XOP, which are EMB Securities Contract dropped about a half a percentage point, as really what we mentioned on Friday, everyone was sort of waiting to see what would happen with the President Trump and Putin meeting. Clearly, he went ahead and said, we’re going to pause a. That are going to go on China relative to the Russia-Ukraine war. You know, obviously if those sanctions had gone into place, we would have probably seen a short-term spike in oil prices relative to there would have been a decent amount of oil that’s on the market. I mean, India and all these other buyers of Russian crude can’t quite absorb that Delta that China is purchasing on a daily and monthly basis. So Trump came out and said he’s going to hold off imposing those tariffs on China specifically for that Russian oil. Who knows when that will happen? ICIS analyst Aja Parmer said, quote, This will mean Russian oil will continue to flow undisturbed, and this should be bearish for oil prices. It is worth noting that while we think the impact will be minimal, and prices will likely only see a small dip in the very near term as a result of this news. And I would most likely 100% agree with that. We saw a rig count stay flat week over week was really interesting, but we did see frat count spread jump by four. So last week, two weeks ago, we saw a drop of four frac rigs. This week, we actually saw an addition of four frac rigs, which again, I think is, you know, why I think a lot of what’s reflected in those numbers is the fact that frac prices have gone down so much that there are a lot of companies that may or may not be sitting on some ducks that could possibly now find pricing attractive enough to actually go in and start fracking those, which is really interesting. But I want to bring up this too, because You know, this happened about 10 days ago, but it really didn’t make much news. Civitas went ahead and dumped their CEO, Chris Doyle, in a little bit of a kind of a Friday news release, Sky Civitas Resources, a Denver based oil and gas company, they’re the brainchild of, of Kimridge and Bendel over there. They’re the combination of extraction and Crescent Peak Resources who ended up rebranding and turning into Civitas. Chris Dola has led them since May 2022 after taking over from the chairman of the board, Chris Dell, and basically oversaw a pretty strategic move away from their Colorado DJ assets into the Permian Basin via about three acquisitions worth about $7 billion. But over the past years, dude, that company’s stock has lost about half of its value and at the end of last year for the CEO Chris Doyle or I should say former CEO Chris Doyle to launch about a hundred million dollar cost savings plan but even those weren’t enough to save his job interim or chairman of the board and what’s his name here it’s something something German water van Kempen something like straight out of Hogan’s heroes here we got Colonel Clink now leading Civitas used to be I shouldn’t make too much fun of him because he used to be the former CEO of DCP midstream basically through for about a decade from December of 2012, all the way to December of 22. And before that was a VP or was the president over at Duke energy. So it’s a, it’s pretty interesting. He was also the lead director of engine. Number one, an activist firm that made it. And this is the interesting part. He’s, he’s the lead director of the board of engine. Number one. If you remember, you remember this too, this is that activist investor firm that made waves in 2012 by getting three climate change focused candidates elected to the board. Of ExxonMobil. So very interesting to see who the selection was maybe a little bit of hand waving over there by Kimmeridge. Now has announced that he’s only going to be temporary. They they’re going to launch a full CEO search. So, Stu, I’m officially throwing your name into the hat to take over CEO of Civitas. So we will see if we can make that happen. I think it’s very interesting, Stu, a lot of anecdotes coming out of Civitas from this. I’ve heard from multiple folks that I know that have been in and out of that company, that it maybe wasn’t the, let’s just say the nicest place to work. It was very top down, authoritative. Obviously, when your stock gets cut in half after $7 billion of acquisitions over the last year, well, really over the three years, but your stock over the last year has gotten pounded by over 50%. Obviously, something’s going to happen. You know, again, we also saw EVP and CFO Mohat Singh of Expand get canned last week. So lots of changes going on in the management front. I think what this is showing is that the difficulty of maintaining growth from a public oil and gas standpoint. I think it’s going to be really tough. And I think if you’re the CEO of a publicly traded company, you’ve got to really be thinking hard about how you’re going to continue to drive growth because the end of the day the the capital markets don’t care if oil prices are down. They don’t if capitals has dried up. What they wanna show is year over year growth, but growth not just in oil production, growth in margins, growth in EBITDA, growth in things that actually mean you’re generating more cash on a business than you were last year. And that’s hard to do when prices go down and you’ve already basically driven up your inventory or drilled up all of your inventory. So this is gonna be very interesting. Civitas makes a move. Probably long overdue or relative to the fact that we’ve seen this depreciation of their quarterly earnings over the past probably two years, but really their stock price has really gotten hammered over the last year. So really interesting. So, Stu, I’m throwing your name in the hat. We’ll let you know whenever you end up getting an interview. So very, very, very interesting. But that’s all I’ve got, Stu. Now’s time for my favorite part of the week. What are you worried about? I’m not worried about anything. I think… [00:23:03][347.0]
Stuart Turley: [00:23:03] Everything is going to be fantastic. Getting ready for our contest. We have general Flynn contest coming out and I’m about to interview him on September 3rd is when I’m interviewing him. And if we’re going to have a landing page for you to ask questions of what you want me to ask general Flynn in the interview. And so of those that ask questions, we have 10 signed copies of the book to give away. So we are gonna be running a really cool contest. Stay tuned for that kind of update. [00:23:33][30.3]
Michael Tanner: [00:23:34] Yeah, absolutely. It’s going to be great, guys. So you can check and keep up to speed with everything by subscribing to this podcast, subscribing to us on YouTube and subscribing via Substack, theenergynewsbeat.substack.com. But with that, guys, we’re going to let you get out of here, get back to work, start your week. Appreciate you starting with Energy Newsbeat for Stuart Turley. I’m Michael Tanner. We’ll see you tomorrow, folks. [00:23:34][0.0][1401.1]