This is a wild discussion with Irina Slav, author, international podcast host, Substack author, and comedian. (Just read some of her articles, and the humor permeates your views on the world.)
One of the things that are so fun talking with Irna is that she has such a breadth of knowledge and global contacts to get the facts. She gets the details on how energy decisions impact consumers and other markets.
Run of Show
00:00 – Intro
02:45 – Attacks on the Dutch farmers, on the farmers in the U.S
05:40 – 30 tons of Ammonium Nitrate went missing in the United States
07:32 – When pigs fly
08:33 – What’s going on with the EU leadership?
12:41 – Ursula is being Investigated about a deal with Pfizer about Covid Vaccines
17:47 – What do you see coming around for this next week in Energy?
20:11 – Are you seeing all of the Oil traders going away?
20:53 – When you Weaponize the dollar, people will go away from it
22:29 – Energy Transition, the weekly conversation
23:56 – Outro
Please follow and subscribe to Irina on her Substack HERE, OilPrice.com, and the Energy Transition podcast with Armon Cavahna, Tammy Nemeth, and David Blackmon. That podcast is available on all major podcast channels and is shot live every Monday morning.
Full Automated Transcript Below – We disavow any mistakes unless they make us smarter or better looking.
Stuart Turley [00:00:11] Hey Welcome, Everybody, Today is just not a great day it is Friday, but I get to talk to my favorite Bulgarian we have Irina Slav. My name is Stuart Turley, President and CEO of the Sandstone Group. And Irena is an international star, she is a contributing author in Oil Price I’m her biggest fan out here and if not a cheerleader. So Irina Slav Thank you so much for coming to the podcast.
Irina Slav [00:00:40] Thanks for having me Stu
Stuart Turley [00:00:43] You and I have been talking for quite a while now, and I just have enjoyed getting to not only be one of your biggest cheerleaders, but you are who I mean, absolutely love your sense of humor when you’re writing on your substack and I believe it’s IrinaSlav@Substack.com is that correct?
Irina Slav [00:01:06] Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:01:08] Okay. So it’s pretty sad that I know your substack address better than you.
Irina Slav [00:01:14] Yeah, well I can’t remember everything you know, something will fall through the cracks, including my substack address.
Stuart Turley [00:01:24] I highly recommend people go out and subscribe to your substack because your humor, you put out some just funny stuff and your sense of humor. I love your one let me go see if I can find it here the one that I really batshit crazy.
Stuart Turley [00:01:42] Okay. You know, you go through this sense of humor and then we put out on Twitter this morning, the other one where if pigs could fly, I mean, they’re going to burn them in the engine I thought that was absolutely hilarious.
Irina Slav [00:01:59] Those are not my words it was something about animal fats and sustainable aviation fuels and how this would actually lead to more palm oil production, which will be devastating for the environment.
Stuart Turley [00:02:17] I don’t get it.
Irina Slav [00:02:18] How basically we’re trying so some people are trying to save the planet by destroying the planet I find this idea really charming, don’t you think?
Stuart Turley [00:02:27] Charming is a word that I would use.
Irina Slav [00:02:32] I know.
Stuart Turley [00:02:32] You know? What’s the guy’s name? Schwab and four in charge is the World Economic Forum. It sounds like something he would do.
Irina Slav [00:02:41] Maybe his supposed I don’t know.
Stuart Turley [00:02:42] I don’t know but I mean, it seems like the attack on the Dutch farmers, on the farmers in the U.S., we look at all these attacks in they’re saying that they’re doing it in the benefit of the environment like you say and it’s really stupid. How do you know, what’s going on with their thought process on this? What are you Seeing?
Irina Slav [00:03:07] I really have no idea. I have been wondering about this for months and I don’t know. I mean, one explanation is that their their mental faculties have been affected by indoctrination, that they’re incapable of thinking rationally because they are so, you know, so involved in this emissions narrative and they cannot see clearly anything besides it.
Irina Slav [00:03:39] I mean, this this drama, it is dramatic with the Dutch farmers they’re they’re actually fighting the government. The previous government was fighting nitrogen emissions.
Stuart Turley [00:03:53] Wow.
Irina Slav [00:03:54] What are you doing? I mean, the soil needs nitrogen. I’ve taken up gardening, you know that and just the other day, I went and bought five kilos of nitrogen fertilizer because my tomatoes needed.
Stuart Turley [00:04:09] Right.
Irina Slav [00:04:09] Now, my peach tree needs it, my other plants needed because they’re growing. And in periods of intensive growth, they need additional nitrogen and my soil doesn’t have enough nitrogen in it. I don’t care about the emissions I don’t even know what nitrogen emissions are. I mean, how, how does it, uh, I don’t know. Does the soil generate it somehow ignorant about it? But, you know, they’ve just focusing on one tiny little thing and they don’t care about the consequences that dealing with this one thing, nitrogen emissions.
Stuart Turley [00:04:49] You know, you.
Irina Slav [00:04:49] Know, we’ll have on things like food security. So
Stuart Turley [00:04:53] Yeah, it goes as far as food security goes right along with energy security.
Irina Slav [00:04:59] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:05:00] And, you know, night nitrogen and or nitrates for the soil are essential for growing. Just like you said in there, the fertilizers made from natural gas. You got to have natural gas in order to do it. And I think they’re going after it.
Stuart Turley [00:05:19] I mean, if you’re going to ban stoves in a hot water heater. I mean, we’re talking some rocket science around here. We ought to be going to the moon with as many rocket scientists as we say you know, if somebody’s supposed to be really smart, they’re rocket scientist.
Irina Slav [00:05:35] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:05:36] And but, you know, did you hear about the 30 tons of ammonium nitrate that went missing in the United States?
Irina Slav [00:05:47] No, I didn’t. How did this happen?
Stuart Turley [00:05:50] Well, if I knew, I’d be probably in jail now but it happened on a train coming out of one of, like, Idaho or something where they manufactured it, I can’t remember where it came out of. And it was on the news yesterday, and it was on a smaller news station last week and it actually happened last week.
Stuart Turley [00:06:14] But the 30 tons of ammonium nitrate, if you remember, the Oklahoma City bombing years and years ago, yeah, there’s 18 times more nitrate. So ammonium nitrate that is in this train load, you can have 18 Oklahoma City bombings.
Irina Slav [00:06:40] Oh, how how did it disappear?
Stuart Turley [00:06:45] Well, you combine that with the other story that came out three weeks ago, that the U.S. has 400 to 500,000 miles of the grid under attack. I mean, this is all in the news. I didn’t sit here and make it up. And I’m like, you put those two together that’s a lot of damage.
Irina Slav [00:07:07] Wow!
Stuart Turley [00:07:08] Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:07:09] You like to live interesting lawyers in the U.S., don’t you?
Stuart Turley [00:07:13] I like just living in the woods.
Irina Slav [00:07:17] Yeah, I think I can understand this better now.
Stuart Turley [00:07:20] Yeah. I just want to be left alone I don’t want to have anything to do with that. But all that being said, having pigs fly. We need to rename that article when pigs fly because I’ve always heard that phrase you know it’s going to happen when pigs fly. Well, they’re going to be flying and I think the article Irina said it takes 8000 pigs to make one trip from Paris to summer.
Irina Slav [00:07:48] Oh, I don’t know but it was a little but lets be fair just part of the pigs.
Stuart Turley [00:07:53] Oh, okay.
Irina Slav [00:07:55] Just the fact.
Stuart Turley [00:07:58] I was sitting there how do you pour a pig into a, you know, in the in the oil field, in pipelines? Pigs are actually what we call what you put in the pipe and you’re putting a pig in the pipe and then you put pressure behind it and it cleans out the pipeline. We had to do that and you’re you’re putting a pig in the pipe. Well, now that we’re putting the pig in the airplane.
Irina Slav [00:08:22] Yeah. Pig farming is not going anywhere yet.
Stuart Turley [00:08:27] Oh, no.
Irina Slav [00:08:29] Yeah,.
Stuart Turley [00:08:29] Well, Unless the EU get a hold of it what’s going on with the EU leadership? I mean, they’re just as bad as our leadership, good grief
Irina Slav [00:08:39] Oh, they are worse common you can be best at everything to let us have something like the stupid politicians. Nothing good is happening nothing good. I mean, Ursula von der Leyen is talking about degrowth. European member members of Parliament were applauding her it’s going in the usual way. No sign of any lucidity returning, unfortunately. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:09:11] If. Ursula you know, I mean, I hope I can call her Ursula because I don’t know her, but, you know, you know, we talk like we know her I guess that will make a difference, I don’t know. If she is that rocket science, you know, kind of fun. Do you think she’s actually trying to dis ban the EU? I mean, if you got that stupid of a policy going on, it would meet.
Irina Slav [00:09:42] No, no, I don’t think so I don’t think it’s a it’s an effort to to destroy the US. I think they’re trying to centralize power in the hands of the commission which she leads. Yeah and on the brink of overplaying their hand with this whole transition push.
Stuart Turley [00:10:02] Wow!
Irina Slav [00:10:03] Yeah. And everything for Ukraine nothing for anyone else in the European Union. I think they’re they’re really, really stretching themselves and sooner or later, things will snap. I’m afraid. Well, I’m not afraid. I hope that’s not because this this is effectively a push for centralization, for the centralization of power over the whole European Union.
Irina Slav [00:10:29] I don’t know if you remember a while ago, there was a proposal that on matters of foreign policy, they wanted to drop the. You know, the 100% agreement by all members they wanted to replace it with a qualified majority or something like that, so they can do whatever they want without everyone in the Ukraine.
Irina Slav [00:10:57] And that’s not nice that’s a centralization of power over decisions that will affect everyone. So these decisions will affect every member then remember, they should have a say. Doesn’t work with a qualified majority this is not your average national parliament you know, this is an international bloc.
Irina Slav [00:11:20] But yeah, I’m kind of hoping they continue pushing in this direction so they really do overplayed their hand and people have enough. I don’t know what will happen I don’t know if the European Union will break down or just, you know wobble a bit and stay together, but under different terms.
Stuart Turley [00:11:41] Yeah,.
Irina Slav [00:11:41] And something will need to change because the direction things are going now, I mean, all the good for the people like us, the normal people, the regular people, people who have no say in the decisions being made by the European Commission within the led the European commissioners we only elect members of European Parliament.
Stuart Turley [00:12:03] In Bulgaria.
Irina Slav [00:12:04] In every member country.
Stuart Turley [00:12:07] Oh, okay. Um. Wow. Now, did you see that Joe Biden fell yesterday at the United States graduation? Yeah, he fell Yeah so the the the poor man does not need to be president of the United States.
Irina Slav [00:12:26] No, no, no.
Stuart Turley [00:12:28] He needs to be in a nursing home.
Irina Slav [00:12:30] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:12:33] The poor man bounces so is Ursula, a few years away from that but I think they’re on the same mental leadership capacity.
Irina Slav [00:12:44] I don’t know maybe she’ll end up in prison before she can do too much damage. You know, she’s being investigated about a deal with Pfizer, about COVID vaccines?
Stuart Turley [00:12:56] Oh, I didn’t know that.
Irina Slav [00:12:57] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah some European authority launched an investigation into her due to the deal. She she actually closed with Pfizer, and she has a really active communication exchange with the CEO of Pfizer in the days or weeks leading up to this deal. She’s crooked, and in a word, she’s crooked and I don’t think this investigation will lead to anything because it will be massive scandal. I mean, imagine.
Stuart Turley [00:13:32] Oh, yeah.
Irina Slav [00:13:34] They’re both like ten times will do European Union needs and, um, nobody is vaccinating anymore. And and Pfizer are insisting that they get the payment for these vaccines that the European Union ordered under Ursula von der Leyen’s leadership it’s really stinkin business.
Stuart Turley [00:13:53] Wow.
Irina Slav [00:13:54] Yeah yeah, she’s been busy she’s been really busy.
Stuart Turley [00:13:58] Wow.
Irina Slav [00:13:59] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:14:00] You know, and you sit back and you think about big pharma, the big pharmaceuticals in the U.S. There’s a lot of scary money that went back and forth between Fauc our goofball excuse me, our supposed, you know, see the two top.
Irina Slav [00:14:19] Experts top, top health experts. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:14:22] He’s back this tall to me.
Irina Slav [00:14:26] So am I. So what?
Stuart Turley [00:14:28] Well, no, I didn’t have nothing to do with it, but it’s kind of
Irina Slav [00:14:31] Yes, it does.
Stuart Turley [00:14:33] Yeah, you know, it’s kind of fun but Chris is taller than you, isn’t he?
Irina Slav [00:14:38] Oh, yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:14:39] Okay, Well, see, they go now you know, you’re picking on your husband? Oh, that’s funny. But now when you sit back and take a look at the big pharma, anybody that goes up against Big Pharma gets taken out.
Irina Slav [00:14:58] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:15:00] I hope those legislators or those investigators that are bringing her up can have a good security system.
Irina Slav [00:15:09] Yeah, well, see. Well, there hasn’t been any news I mean, any big news with regard to this investigation ever since the news broke that she is being investigated. So maybe they’ll just somehow cover it up, how she hit up. But we’ll see.
Stuart Turley [00:15:26] Oh, my goodness.
Irina Slav [00:15:27] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:15:28] If I jaywalk, I’d be in jail you know,.
Irina Slav [00:15:33] People in jail for jaywalking?
Stuart Turley [00:15:36] Well, yeah. I mean, if you’re a illegal U.S. citizen, you get free everything but if you’re a U.S. citizen, then you walk across the street incorrectly, not at the crosswalk. You get thrown in jail and you’re dead but it’s just about the same thing.
Irina Slav [00:15:53] So double standards, a healthy didn’t you know that they’re good for you?
Stuart Turley [00:15:58] Well, we have double standards in my house you know, my wife gets to do anything she wants and I’m limited by her.
Irina Slav [00:16:07] And it’s good for you, see?
Stuart Turley [00:16:09] And yes, dear, are the two words that have kept me married 37 years. Yes, dear. Even if I don’t understand what that poor woman said yes, dear gets me by.
Irina Slav [00:16:21] Smug. Smug that’s how you build a stress free a low stress life. Yeah. Skills so it’s good to have as little event as possible.
Stuart Turley [00:16:33] Yeah. You’ve been on in the video and she comes in and sticks her head in and waves and everything, but.
Irina Slav [00:16:40] She is a really sweet lady, I don’t know what you want.
Stuart Turley [00:16:42] Oh, to the public.
Irina Slav [00:16:46] Arent we all?.
Stuart Turley [00:16:48] Oh, no, absolutely maybe that’s where Ursula gets it she’s really sweet to the public.
Irina Slav [00:16:54] She’s not sweet at all, I mean, you can see the fascist in her it’s in her eyes.
Stuart Turley [00:17:00] So what makes people that way? I mean, do you think it’s power?
Irina Slav [00:17:07] Probably I mean, there’s a lot of, you know, words of wisdom saying that power corrupts. It probably does. I’ve never been in a position of power and I can’t speak from experience, but it’s either that or somebody is telling her what to do. I mean, she’s not acting on her own that’s that’s obvious she’s not that powerful.
Stuart Turley [00:17:29] Right.
Irina Slav [00:17:30] There are people behind the scenes I don’t know who these people are, but there always are. I mean, the faces you see are not the faces actually making the important decisions. They are just the figureheads.
Stuart Turley [00:17:43] Wow.
Irina Slav [00:17:45] I don’t know.
Stuart Turley [00:17:46] All right, so what do you see coming around for this next week in Energy?
Irina Slav [00:17:54] As you’ll be probably OPEC, You know they’re meeting on Sunday to decide on future production. We don’t know if there will be cuts additionally or not cuts additionally and I just saw somewhere that the United Arab Emirates actually want to produce more.
Irina Slav [00:18:09] I don’t know it’s it’s all kinds of boring already, because every month there’s a notebook meeting up at last meeting. And yeah, they sure surprised everyone in April when they said they’ll be cutting more but oil prices didn’t go much higher and they didn’t go higher full time.
Irina Slav [00:18:32] You know and there was this Debt Ceiling deal and your own capital I just saw the funniest headline, how this bill helped us avoid the first ever default. Yeah, but it’s been like this every single year over at least the last five years. It’s negotiations and negotiations and fears of a default until the last few days when they clinch a deal.
Irina Slav [00:19:06] I mean, seriously, this this TV show is not interesting just like the old big TV show, it’s it’s all a bit boring, but people continue to get excited about it they read news about it, wonder where Oil prices will be tomorrow nobody knows.
Stuart Turley [00:19:23] You know what the difference between Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. is.
Irina Slav [00:19:29] Is there one?
Stuart Turley [00:19:31] There’s no difference we have we have one political party they’re all hacks. I just don’t like politicians. And they say we’ve we owe $34 trillion.
Irina Slav [00:19:47] And you’re going to owe more over the next two years.
Stuart Turley [00:19:51] It’s just.
Irina Slav [00:19:52] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:19:54] We need to cut a lot of social programs because the only way that we can continue doing this is to go bankrupt and then try to claw our way out. Who’s going to buy the dollar? Especially with BRICS coming around the corner?
Irina Slav [00:20:09] Yeah. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:20:11] Are you seeing all of the oil traders going away? Like the all the deals that just happened with Iraq, Russia and Saudi Arabia is just not I mean, the oil is actually being traded outside of the U.S.. Petrodollars. And, you know, there’s a ton of it going away.
Irina Slav [00:20:34] Yeah, well, it’s it’s all the sanctions we’ve talked about it before I’ve written about it abundantly again. You overused something that you like using and you get blowback.
Stuart Turley [00:20:52] Sanctions don’t work and when you weaponize the dollar, people will go away from it and.
Irina Slav [00:20:57] You can’t continue weaponizing it forever that’s that’s the thing. That’s what politicians in the last couple of administrations or even Obama have apparently failed to realize. I mean, I was surprised to hear that Bill Clinton, once upon a time in the nineties, actually warned future administrations about that. He said that sanctions should not be overused because they lose their effectiveness, which is what we’re witnessing today. Yeah. And there’s a boomerang effect.
Stuart Turley [00:21:30] Right? I mean,.
Irina Slav [00:21:32] In the U.S., I find it amusing personally.
Stuart Turley [00:21:35] Absolutely.
Irina Slav [00:21:37] Sorry, Because I don’t follow any one global block you know me. But it’s bad news for the U.S. and the Western look. So I would have seen it coming.
Stuart Turley [00:21:47] Oh, I know. I didn’t vote for Bill Clinton and but he was a lot better than what we got now.
Irina Slav [00:21:55] It’s always like this you can only realize how not bad someone was in hindsight.
Stuart Turley [00:22:02] Oh, yes.
Irina Slav [00:22:03] At the time and say, oh, this is the worst it’s like the books I translate. When I get to the book, I find boring and badly written. Oh, this is the worst three books later, it wasn’t so bad, actually. That was pretty decent.
Stuart Turley [00:22:17] Wow.
Irina Slav [00:22:18] Which tells you how popular young adult literature is progressing.
Stuart Turley [00:22:25] That’s funny, Well Irina I want to give your shout out to the Energy Transition, the weekly conversation that is going ballistic and going off just nuts around the world. Your YouTube channels going up you have Irma, Armando Cavanha.
Irina Slav [00:22:42] Cavanha
Stuart Turley [00:22:47] Cavanha Thank you I got to have my Brazil accent on there. He’s he’s cool, dude and then you have David Blackmon, who’s even cool dude and he’s got the Energy Question and then you have Tammy Nemeth, who is in Europe she’s cool and then you for instance.
Irina Slav [00:23:06] Really cool, Really smart.
Stuart Turley [00:23:08] Incredibly cool the four of you on those Podcast, I love it when I can jump on to your lives and pick on you guys.
Irina Slav [00:23:16] Your LinkedIn user you
Stuart Turley [00:23:19] I don’t know when that comes out that way, but you know.
Irina Slav [00:23:23] It’s funny.
Stuart Turley [00:23:25] And when I started picking on you guys David ago that Stewart you.
Irina Slav [00:23:31] Know, we, we recognized you the moment you say morning.
Stuart Turley [00:23:37] Anyway, I we will have those links in the show notes Irina and because that is a fabulous weekly podcast. So thank you so much for stopping by.
Irina Slav [00:23:47] It was my pleasure as always.
Stuart Turley [00:23:50] Thanks. All right.
Irina Slav [00:23:51] Thank you.
