Ending “Energy Poverty” is a passion of mine. Elevating out of poverty requires low-cost, sustainable kWh delivered to homes. The global push to destroy the energy sector in the name of gaining more control is, in a word, “despicable.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Doomberg, the global energy leader, on Substack two other times before today’s episode with Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy. We covered some great topics, and I am very grateful for their time.
A little inside baseball, I had met Chris Wright several times in Colorado and was truly impacted by his passion for ending energy poverty. It totally has changed the Energy News Beat podcast and website’s mission. The Liberty Energy program “Bettering Human Lives” is a fantastic resource; please read it HERE: https://libertyenergy.com/esg/bettering-human-lives/.
Chris and his team have done a phenomenal job with Liberty Energy’s total energy package. Check out everything on Liberty Energy HERE: https://libertyenergy.com/
Please follow Doomberg on his Substack https://doomberg.substack.com/
His Substack is one of the best I follow and read. His thought-provoking industry leadership has to be shared. I loved the live interview with David Blackmon at NAPE. A lot of people asked for Doomberg’s autograph and wanted to meet him. This is an absolute blast, as the Doomberg team is anonymous and makes podcast interviews available with the cartoon branded “Green Chicken.” It is classic!! You have to watch our podcast to believe it.
Thank you again, Chris and Doomberg, for your industry leadership, and keep up the great work. Your impact on humanity is important, and you may never know how many lives you can impact, but rest assured, you are running down the right road. – Stu
A shout-out to David Blackmon, Michael Tanner, and Rey Trevino for their leadership and bringing some sanity to our mixed-up energy world.
Highlights of the Podcast
02:35 – Advocating for zero energy poverty by 2050 due to current challenges.
06:00 – Concerns raised about censorship in energy discussions.
11:37 – Financing Net Zero poses challenges, emphasizing diverse energy sources.
15:23 – Critique of Germany’s energy policies for causing de-industrialization.
21:08 – California’s policies lead to high poverty rates despite potential.
22:30 – Electrification and shifting to natural gas offer cost savings and cleaner options.
24:05 – The Shale Revolution, particularly in natural gas, transforms US energy.
25:52 – Switching to compressed natural gas addresses oil shortages and emissions.
28:51 – Streamlining US regulations can create jobs and decarbonize.
31:08 – Challenges hinder India’s energy growth, while Mexico offers manufacturing opportunities.
33:41 – Geopolitical risks impact the energy market’s future.
34:52 – The US can increase energy production in hydrocarbons and nuclear, solidifying global dominance.
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Automated Transcript: We disavow any errors unless they make us smarter or better looking:
Stuart Turley [00:00:07] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy News Beat podcast. My name Stu Turley, president CEO of the sandstone Group. If you’ve listened to even one of the episodes, you know that I care about humanity first, eliminating energy poverty. And I mean, we’ve got a long way to go on understanding how to get that done. I’ve got a third time guest today, Mr. Doom Burg, who is, I believe, the number one Substack in the energy and investment area. Is that correct, Mr. Doom? Bert.
Doomberg [00:00:40] Hey, good morning Steve. Great to see you. And nice to see Chris as well. You’ll introduce next I’m sure. But yeah, we’re actually in the finance category on Substack and we’re the number one paid finance Substack in the world, which is crazy to say, but, there you go.
Stuart Turley [00:00:54] And I want to give you a shout out. Just we were talking before the show and you did so well at Nape. There were so many people that came up to the booth and said, we heard doom. Berg’s going to be here. And they all lined up to get your autograph, sir. So it was absolutely way cool. Hey, absolutely. On today, old friend, Chris. Right. Chris and I met years ago, and Chris is the CEO of Liberty Energy. And Chris is, definitely a master of what I always look at in investing for a good company, good management, good numbers, and not Chris. Not only do you lead your company when you line them up and drink your own frack fluid, years ago, I thought that was pretty cool. Well, you and you sit back and kind of go, I lead by example. That was a funny YouTube video. But Chris, thank you for stopping by.
Chris Wright [00:01:55] Glad to be here, Stu, and honored to be on a podcast with Jimmy for the first time. So good to go.
Stuart Turley [00:02:03] I’ll tell you what. Let’s get started on a couple topics here. Chris, you just released out your, updated, bettering Human Lives report, and there are some key takeaways out of this. And I thought that we would just visit about your thoughts on on this and your key takeaway number ten. I mean, I’m having that tattooed on the wall behind me. It is, is zero energy poverty by 2050 is a superior goal compared to net zero 2050. How cool is that? I’m sorry. I’m I’m going to borrow that one.
Chris Wright [00:02:44] Well, I mean, it’s kind of a summary of the whole report, which is just trying to put climate change in context of the challenges with energy access, which are not just in the poor world. You know, a quarter of Americans struggle to pay their energy bills and 10% don’t heat their homes to safe temperatures. The problem with net zero 2050 sort of is twofold. One, it’s it’s nowhere remotely achievable, but the efforts trying to achieve it have been quite destructive. As we show in the energy additions section of that report, the fastest growing energy source in the planet the last 12 years is natural gas. Second is oil. Third is coal. Wind and solar are fourth and six, and they’re in double. They’re in single digits. So we’re nowhere near even the start of an energy transition, let alone finish one by 2050. And we have much more urgent problems on the planet. And you can’t solve any of them without reliable, affordable, secure energy.
Stuart Turley [00:03:38] So when we get back to your your, also in this report, they can go to your website, Liberty energy.com, and take a look at the entire report, because there’s some great stuff in that entire report, Chris.
Chris Wright [00:03:52] Thank you. Yeah. Bettering Human Lives 2024. So yeah, definitely expanded meaningfully different than, than the previous two versions.
Stuart Turley [00:04:01] Now, Bloomberg, you came out yesterday with a great article. And I’ll tell you when you talk about, changing how we eliminate energy poverty, and then you take a look at the regulatory actions going on. Your article yesterday was Climate News speak. Can you tell us what you were thinking on this?
Doomberg [00:04:23] You know, really interesting to hear both you and Chris’s framing of the issue, which is consistent with ours, which starts with a human centric analysis. So, the big disparity between the net zero crowd and the net energy poverty crowd is one puts humanity and humans at the center of their analysis, and the other puts nature or the planet and almost views humans as a cancer on nature and something to be limited. I mean, that’s in all transparency, the foundational Malthusian thinking of the of the climate change crowd, doesn’t view optimizing human flourishing as a worthy objective, and I think that just needs to be stated. Now. Chris also said something that I wholeheartedly agree with is that net zero by 2050 is is impossible, literally. And, it’s not going to happen. And as the realities of physics are beginning to sort of. Present themselves. That’s sort of the, the, the, the quantum, equation is collapsing, and we’re going to find out whether the cat is alive or dead when we open the box. The hysterics amongst the climate crowd are beginning to reach extreme levels and dangerous levels. And so in the piece we published yesterday, we wrote about, this crazy move in Canada to make it a crime to speak positively about fossil fuels. And then followed that up with a really dangerous report by some outfit called, the center for Countering Digital Hate, which formulated a it’s literally the Orwellian phrase, quote, new denial. Which is meant to associate people who are critiquing wind and solar energy, basically as the equivalent of Holocaust deniers. The word denier and denial is offensive. I mean, let’s be very clear. It is a form of minimizing Hitler’s, atrocities, if you think about it. Long enough and I find the word deeply offensive. But, having said that, it’s in the vernacular now. So, basically this report from this nonprofit in air quotes, led by a very interesting character, is pressuring YouTube to demonetize basically anybody who has center right, on energy, including a who’s who of basically every, libertarian slash conservative think tank in the US and in Canada. Frazier Institute was on there. And, many podcasts that I’ve been a guest on, for example, were also called out. And then we ended the piece by saying, how long before they do a giant exposé on Substack with the green chicken? At the heart of it, because that’s what’s coming next. And so, we we wrote that piece basically to highlight the absurdity of what’s going on in the echo chamber of the of the extreme environment, the left, but also to front run and get ahead of what we believe is just inevitable.
Stuart Turley [00:07:20] Chris, you have. You look like you’re about to say something there.
Chris Wright [00:07:22] Yeah, well, I started a little more than a year ago. I made a 12 minute video. Just be honest. Just giving it was sort of a summary of the last better UN Human Lives report in 12 minutes. You know, just some basic facts about energy and climate change and energy, economic, climate economics, all condensed into a brief thing. And YouTube took it down three times for misinformation and then frauds and scams. Wall Street Journal ended up writing a piece on it, saying, oh, what a controversial video they called around climate scientists. I said, please do. They found one guy who disagreed with one thing I said in the 12 minute video. It turns out he was wrong as well on that point. And I wrote a I wrote a correction after the fact pointing out how he was wrong in the one thing he said, I said wrong, but yet just being candid and honest about energy and climate change. As as do me and I do all the time. Like that’s controversial. People said, are you afraid to say those things? I’m like, how can you be a public intellectual and not be honest? You can’t you can’t spin what you say and be dishonest to align with, you know, the fashion of the day. That’s as as we just heard Orwellian.
Stuart Turley [00:08:37] It’s really frightening. And when you take a look at exactly what do me, as you say, as as Doom Newburgh is, you got to have your own, channel out there or you’re subjugated. And I’m just going to brag for half a sack on my staff. Last year, we had 26 million people on our news site. We had 7.5 million. Article reads of our, podcast transcribed reads. We had 1.2 million downloads of the podcast. But guess what? I can go to Google Analytics at any point and I’ll see two people on the site. I go to my firewall and I see 5000, and it’s they intentionally are shutting me down because I’m talking about humanitarian, and I figured out a way around it. Now, how much further would my story get out there? Chris, this is just like you got hammered. I’ve even seen my YouTubes, drop 100 in 1 day or up two. Down ten. So.
Chris Wright [00:09:47] In the end, truth in physics will win.
Stuart Turley [00:09:51] Physics and fiscal responsibility. Doing work when you were sitting here thinking, we were also talking about, your financial modeling and stuff. And when we take a look at the regulatory issues coming up, how can we finance to net zero? You had said it’s impossible. How can we get to lower cost energy with moving forward? It has to be. It can’t be wind and solar only. There’s no way.
Doomberg [00:10:20] Well, it’s worse than that. So we developed something a few months ago called Bloomberg’s Postulate, where we said, every molecule of fossil fuels produced will be consumed by somebody, somewhere, and local restrictions only shift. Who gets to enjoy that privilege? So if you’re actually wanting to minimize the amount of coal, oil and natural gas consumed, you have to actually stop its production. But the vast majority of its production does not exist in places like Europe. And it exists instead in places like the Middle East and the US. So. For example, take coal. Indonesia is going to produce as much coal as it can consume domestically and sell, on the open market. And Europe, for example, produces no fossil fuels of consequence. So there’s a bit of coal production, Germany and so on. And Poland so consumes a bit, but they don’t produce any oil and they don’t produce any natural gas. Fracking is illegal basically in Europe, for example. And so Europe can wean itself off fossil fuels all at once. It’s not actually going to change the amount of fossil fuels being consumed. It’s just going to make it slightly cheaper for other people to do so. And so unless we’re talking about outlawing the production of natural gas and oil and coal in the US and in Canada, in Australia, then the amount of fossil fuels that is going to be consumed, will be consistent with what is produced and any additional energy we bring online, be it intermittent energy like wind and solar or hopefully high density energy like nuclear will be additive. If you actually look at the total primary energy consumption using the what used to be known as the BP Statistical Review of Energy, it just goes up. It goes up at a 1 or 2% per year. And that is the gating factor for global GDP. The more energy reproduce, the more energy we produce, the more, standard of living. We could help increase and then try to share that equitably. Last point I’ll make is there’s 5 to 6 billion people existing, probably on an average of 20% of the BTUs per capita that we enjoy in the US. Who are we to say that they can’t climb Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? And to, obtain for their friends and family the the similar creature comforts of modern life that we have been able to achieve in the West. It is a deeply anti-human position to take. And as they are losing, they’re becoming more dangerous, in using the powers and the levers of government to shut things down. Last point, I’ll say, even if you develop your own channel, you can’t escape them. Payment processors, they will attack Substack, they will tap, they’ll tech people, they will attack your bank. It’s a very dangerous time. We wrote a piece about, about the the the British politician whose name escapes me, the Brexit politician. And in being debate like this is dangerous. This is this is very, very dangerous. And and freethinking people need to stand up and do something about it before it’s too late.
Stuart Turley [00:13:11] Yeah. And that way you hide your green chicken suit, you know, at the cleaners. They’re not going to find it, so.
Doomberg [00:13:18] But they will come after Substack next. And it’s Nigel Farage. His name came back. Yeah. And Nigel Farage. But they will come after Substack. They’re not going to stop at YouTube. They’ve already done Twitter. And they’re just going to keep going.
Stuart Turley [00:13:30] You bet. And Chris, you had something rolling. Rolling through.
Chris Wright [00:13:33] No, I was just going to throw in Nigel Farage as well as the as the guy Brexit. Yeah, a lot of it debates or arguments we talk about here. They further along in Europe. So we have somewhat of an indication of what’s coming here. I talk a little bit about that in bettering human lives. Two quick points. Like there’s a quick case study in Germany. They spent spent a year counted somewhere between a half and in a $1 trillion in an economy less than the eight the size of the United States economy. They more than tripled their electricity prices. They’re exporting their industry and blue collar jobs. They’re impoverishing their low income people because they can’t afford to consume as much energy. And they moved their hydrocarbon consumption from 80% of their total energy to 74% of their total energy consumed. So I don’t know that I I’d call that an energy transition. The United Kingdom brags about being the biggest percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in any country. 100%. That’s true. Roughly a 40% reduction. What they don’t tell you is they’ve had a 28% reduction in energy consumption. Over three quarters of their decarbonization is just less energy consumed in the United Kingdom because their industry is left. Instead of being a natural gas powered factory in the Midlands of England, it’s made in a coal powered factory in China or Vietnam and loaded on a diesel powered ship and bring the same goods back to the United Kingdom. That’s not decarbonization. And the other driver of reduce greenhouse gas emissions is just impoverishment. If you make energy more expensive, yes, people will consume less of it. They’ll have less. Less long. Less healthy, less opportunity rich lives. But indeed, if you make it very expensive, people will consume less. But that’s the only mechanism to make people consume less energy, as do me. Make the point. Everyone wants a better life, a safer live, a healthier life, and they’re going to pursue it. And and of course, most of the countries of the world are going to do these nonsense policies because you can’t export industry from everywhere. It’s got to go somewhere. And of course, developing nations, China have welcomed the ability to be the, the the shot maker, the workhouse of the world.
Doomberg [00:15:42] So it’s even worse in the UK than Chris alluded to, because a big chunk of their quote unquote, decarbonization arises from the fact that they count the burning of wood as having zero emissions, right? Even though they clear cut forests in the US southeast. These giant, beautiful trees that are actually urbanizing. Yeah, in Canada. And they burn it. And because we called it. I think we wrote back to the future was name of the piece we wrote on this maybe 18 months ago. I have a good memory for the names of our pieces, but, it’s literally it’s the immaculate combustion. It shows up, and.
Stuart Turley [00:16:14] I think, like combustion.
Doomberg [00:16:16] Yeah. All of the carbon emissions that directly go up the stack and all of the reduced carbon abatement, opportunity costs that goes into it are just ignored. And we get to count that as, quote, green, and carbon free, when, in fact, as we all know, burning wood produces far more CO2 per BTU of of usable heat, than does even burning coal. It’s a true farce. Let’s call it what it is. I mean, it’s it is it is a cult, driven by lies, that they tell themselves.
Stuart Turley [00:16:46] You know, and, Robert Bryce, with his new series, the, juice, the series, I believe it’s juice, the series.com. I visited with him yesterday, and, I absolutely love Robert Bryce. And I believe you were at a showing, weren’t you, of juice the series or anything? Just recently, weren’t you, Chris?
Chris Wright [00:17:07] Yeah, I hosted it. Yeah. I’m a partner with Robert in, in, putting some of these things together or supporter of him and bringing a group in it absolutely held an event at the museum for it, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s the same kind of thing. Robert. Robert’s a very thoughtful, numbers based energy guy, partnering up with the guy who’s, a high end filmmaker to try to communicate these truths about energy. And again, they will win in the end. But I do think these efforts to be clear and engage in this dialog now, sooner than later matters, because the collateral damage of sort of foolish, anti reality energy policies that that that damage that we used to be mostly over in Europe. It’s arriving right here in certainly in California and New York. It’s starting right here in Colorado. But right away it right door in next door, neighboring Nebraska, they have the second cheapest electricity in the country. Fourth or fifth, I mean, second most stable electrical grid in the country and fourth or fifth cheapest electricity in the grid. And what’s. Nebraska. They’re massively expanding their electrical producing capacity because industries want to locate where they have affordable, reliable energy.
Stuart Turley [00:18:19] The, the deindustrialization of Germany and, the West is happening. So goes, Germany, so goes the EU. And it’s terrible. You just mentioned that, number. And when, you know, on the how the deindustrialization, you don’t have high, you have high energy costs, you lose. What do you guys see about California? With its high energy in New York? What do you see happening in the deindustrialization there?
Doomberg [00:18:48] Well, I think it’s largely happened. I mean, you’re seeing this, exodus out of California to New York to, states like Florida and Texas. Let’s hope they they don’t bring their energy policy to those, to the to the states, especially Texas, I think is a serious threat, by the way, like Texas produces an enormous amount of natural gas and oil. And if the state were to flip from red to blue, even temporarily, they could throw a serious, serious, wrench into that whole machinery. I don’t think it’ll happen, but it’s a significant threat. And I think in California. In a way. And New England, they’re they are sort of they’re slightly behind Germany in their journey. So that the way this works is crazy. Stuff happens in Germany, California, New England, copy it. They try to impose it on the rest of the country and they get significant pushback. So you mentioned Germany and deindustrialization. I think a very serious thing that’s going on there that is underreported in the West is the crackdown on liberty, which is really, really a big deal. The AfD, which of course, is considered far right. There’s talk of banning that party. They’re using the full power of the state to, take away people’s ability to work and bank who have supported or donated to such causes. And I believe the current borders of Germany are not necessarily permanent. I think we could see a re split. AfD is very popular in East German states. This is a reaction to being mismanaged, you know, by their overlords in the West. And I think we could see significant populist uprisings and, and a potential, German, bifurcation back to the old east West Germany divide.
Chris Wright [00:20:23] Well, do you think it at the same dad, like with my son, that when you have these sort of top down oppressive policies that if you make energy expensive, not only does it make it more expensive for people to live, but blue collar jobs tend to be energy intensive. And then you export those jobs and people get angry about this because you’re hurting the quality of their lives. And the and the response to that top down, very illiberal policies is not a swing back to classical liberalism that probably all of us embrace here about free people and free markets. It’s angry populist movements. Where’s we’ve we’re seeing that everywhere. Now. That is the inevitable result of bad top down policies that squelch human opportunity. California’s driven all the way to the highest adjusted poverty rate in the nation, a state with everything going for it. And my fear, I’m sitting right here in Denver, Colorado. We are going the same direction in Colorado. I got a business I founded 13 years ago based here in Colorado. We’re building a new manufacturing plant right now. Are we building in Colorado? Of course not. We’re building it in Oklahoma. You know who’s going to build the new energy intensive manufacturing of anything in Colorado? And if no one will do that, where are the high paid blue collar jobs to give middle class lifestyles and opportunity for families?
Stuart Turley [00:21:51] Now that’s pretty impressive. And I want to give a shout out to you as a leader, Chris. I’ve been evaluating companies, on finances and financial statements and things and good management, good numbers is what Michael Tanner and I always talk about on our podcast on things. And, you’ve done an outstanding job. I’m sorry for being polite to you. To your face. I usually wait to you leave the room, but, what is coming around the corner for Liberty? You’ve got some first class things going on.
Chris Wright [00:22:25] Well, at Liberty, it’s a team effort, you know, it’s. It’s not me. I’m just one of the members of the team that’s quite passionate about energy, quite passionate about innovation, quite passionate about finding better ways to do things. So the biggest development we have, it’s often called electrification, electric fleets. And that’s part of it. But that’s not the key part of it. The key part of it is moving from combusting diesel to combusting natural gas. And look, there’s multiple reasons that it’s better to shift your power source, if you can, from diesel to natural gas. The biggest one by far, natural gas is far cheaper than diesel. It’s just you don’t have to do much to it. It’s just DRI. Natural gas or diesel oil’s more expensive than natural gas. Then you get to process it into products. Diesel is awesome. It powers the industrial part of the world. So I’m not anti diesel, but if you have the ability to burn natural gas instead of diesel, it’s cheaper. That’s advantage number one. Advantage number two is it burns cleaner meaning less not clean by meaning less. Generation of NOx and particulate matter. Next generation of emissions that impact human health in the in the local neighborhood right away and maybe a distant third. It’s also lower greenhouse gas emissions. But but that’s until it’s viewed as like people will pay for it for that reason. But I think the, the, the honest reason is natural gas is much cheaper than diesel. And if we can produce energy cheaper and of course with smaller pollutant impact, that’s a good thing for everyone. And look, I’ll go the last plug on, on our business will really pump on the shale revolution by. Good luck. I and some of my colleagues at Liberty were involved in the start of the shale revolution, which is a natural gas, in the very late 1990s. Now it’s shifted over to oil. But in the the evolution of that shale revolution, we covered that in the report. You know, there was no meaningful commercial production, 20 in the year 2000 from shale. Today, it’s 58% of total US primary energy production, not natural gas production. Total energy production in the United States, it’s about 10% of total global energy production is just from U.S shale. You know, commercial, not subsidized, not top down. It’s very flexible energy that’s used for electricity in transportation, making materials, heating homes. But it’s innovation can prosper, can continue to drive better and nicer energy. But when you get top down government picking winners of losers, you put regulatory barriers in place. You will slow innovation. We couldn’t have a shale revolution if it was starting just today.
Stuart Turley [00:25:05] No, there’s no way. You know, when you sit back and take a look, I have to hand it to the Biden administration for not being, racist, against, energy. They’re they’re holding up even, wind and solar farms. There’s 24,000 projects attached to the grid or something horrible like that, but, so at least they’re horrible on their permitting. I’ll just leave it at that. But, number. Where do you see, the next, phases in the industry, you and I and Chris, we’re talking about Toby and and some of the things that they have going on. Where are you seeing the US, oil and gas market going?
Doomberg [00:25:47] So I just want to build on something Chris just said because it’s really important, you know, in our journey down the rabbit hole of this cheap oil movement. And our position, of course, is that cheap oil is is is a myth. One of the pieces we wrote was called Compressed Air Time, where we talked about the fact that we will simply switch out the engines, from diesel to compressed natural gas, from gasoline to compressed natural gas. And this not only will take advantage of the energy arbitrage, which is unbelievable today on an energy content basis. Natural gas in the U.S. was trading for $10 a barrel. Oil. That’s not going to stay around forever. And as you switch out these heavy diesel engines in mining, in, long haul trucking and even in passenger vehicles, you are effectively, arbitrage ING natural gas into the equivalent of oil and freeing up that incremental barrel of oil to be used in other applications. And therefore, you know, it wouldn’t take much in the way of engine switching in order for us to abate a one or. 2% shortage of oil in the global markets, and we will do that. And as Chris said, it will happen spontaneously because the arbitrage is there. It costs you 8 or 9 times as much to fuel a tractor with diesel than it does for natural gas. That payback period on getting a Cummins engine that runs on CNG is pretty damn short, and it will be great. The to your question about what we see coming, obviously we have the glut in natural gas, which will work itself out. Mark, it’s always clear that I suspect we might be near a bottom. I, I do think that the big challenge here is the geopolitical premium that is currently placed on oil that is keeping it at $80 a barrel, sort of the the blended price between WTI and Brant, is driving incremental production ambitions in the Permian, which is saturated with associated gas. And they don’t really care about what they do with the natural gas because the primary driver is producing that light, sweet crude. And so we’re going to have to see curtailments in the the dry gas fields or the other gas primary fields, particularly say, in Marcellus, which we’re seeing, going forward, the market needs to balance. You can’t have, natural gas at $2 million BTU forever given its utility. So we will see a combination of, demand destruction, a production destruction and, demand increases and even increased exports to Mexico, which is something we’re writing about soon where the market will eventually find its stable medium.
Stuart Turley [00:28:23] Cool your thoughts, Chris.
Chris Wright [00:28:25] Yes, sure. What a thing on the on that same thread is. I was in Washington recently. One of my messages was because many people are very hopped up on decarbonization. One of the biggest needle movers there could be to beat to resource industry in the United States. No, I’m a free market guy, so I don’t want I don’t want bans on imports. I don’t want to be forced to make things more expensive. Therefore we’re driven to produce some here. But if we change the regulatory environment so it was easier to permit and build, energy intensive facilities in the United States, you could have an enormous rise in blue collar industrial jobs, and you could have a giant decarbonization. The U.S., for 100 years was the largest industrial powerhouse in the world. Today, industrial production in the United States consumes 25 jewels a year, roughly a quarter of U.S. energy consumption. In China, industrial energy production is 70 x joules a year. They’re not a little bigger. They’re giant, bigger in energy intensive manufacturing. It just concentrating in China. It’s all done there. Their primary industrial fuel is coal. Our primary industrial fuel is natural gas. If you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and raise American wages, put industrial energy intensive manufacturing in the United States at large scale, massively bigger climate impacts than all the wind and solar and subsidies of the IRA. Massively cleaner air. But globally, by burning natural gas instead of coal, you know, that would be a climate blue collar wage policy. But of course it was. It was somewhat recognized. Most things justified in the name of climate are not really about incremental reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This this is a name for why we have to have top down design of society and get to pick winners and losers. It’s a political movement, not really an environmental or greenhouse gas movement.
Stuart Turley [00:30:23] Let me ask both of you, because you bring Chris a fabulous point, right on the from fabulous point. And that is with, China. And there is a movement to India. India. You know, I gotta hand it to the Indian leaders there, at least trying to like, you know, get as much power. They they’ve been buying the lower Russian crude. And I applaud them for doing that, getting the lowest amount of energy that they can, everything that they possibly can. Do you think the India is there? The industrialization of India is happening and companies are more moving to India because of the climate. What are you guys his thoughts on that? Because that that’s a huge issue.
Doomberg [00:31:07] I can have a stab at it. India is a very challenging place to operate and a very challenging place for Westerners to invest in. I think they have serious governance issues and, local and regional and national, government permitting mosaics that are incredibly complex and frankly, corrupt. I do think that, India’s energy growth will continue. It’s just very difficult for outsiders to participate in that. And I think actually, the bigger story is, as Chris alluded to, offshoring here in the US and French pouring into Mexico under the NAFTA umbrella is probably going to be something that’s just as interesting and more tangible for, listeners to ponder how they might, invest in such a thing. I just don’t. And I’ve sort of soured on India through personal experiences and, and knowledge of how that country operates.
Stuart Turley [00:31:54] But Chris and number Chris, you I’m sorry Chris, you’ve you’ve electrified your fleet. But they are still driven. But what about even the Chinese putting in a EV plant in Mexico to sell to the U.S.?
Chris Wright [00:32:11] Yeah, to to put a qualifier. Like, to me, my pitch is we should have a lot of blue collar, energy intensive jobs in the US. I believe that realistically, it’s more along the lines, what do Burke said? Those more of those jobs are going to be in Mexico. They’re going to be powered by U.S. natural gas imported down there, U.S. energy, you probably growing electrical infrastructure so they can also have affordable, lower cost energy than China. We can do that in Mexico. And the environmental regulations and the desire for jobs there is going to be stronger, more of that energy intensive manufacturing, I believe, is going to be friends short in Mexico. Then it’s going to be placed in the United States. But it’s good to have as much as possible that in the United States. Certainly petrochemicals that’s already happening in the Gulf Coast in the United States. I had a friend of mine who works in the refining industry said the coast of Texas in Louisiana is the only place in the Western world you can build, large scale manufacturing today. Nowhere else can you permit, you know, a large scale, energy intensive manufacturing, but you can on the Texas and Louisiana coast. And, of course, a lot of that is happening.
Stuart Turley [00:33:19] That’s great. Well, Newman, thank you so much. We got about, two more minutes here. What are your thoughts on what’s coming around the corner in the market?
Doomberg [00:33:30] Yeah. I think, the thing we’re keeping a close eye on is how this natural gas glut resolves itself going forward. Also, of course, geopolitical risk. I think we’ve been studying a lot lately that we probably won’t right about as a military conflict in Ukraine and just how, frankly, disastrous that seems to be unfolding for the Western powers and Europe in particular. There’s a real catastrophe over there that is being minimized in the Western press. They only admit the minimum they have to to keep a straight face. But we’ve made a colossal, potentially fatal error, in our adventures overseas. Obviously keeping a close eye on the military conflict in the Middle East as well, because that if it should escalate to, say, a kinetic war between the US and Iran. You know, it’s really just amazing how our adventures abroad, when we have so much we could do at home. Last point I would say is the US energy miracle. We produce 20% of the world’s crude and petroleum products, and we produce 25 to 30% of the world’s natural gas now, depending on the latest numbers. This is all been done with a hand and a half tied behind our back, as you just mentioned. You know, you look at Louisiana and Texas because of the peculiarities of the state regulatory regimes and those in those states, we’ve been able to have this boom. Imagine if we in Colorado and in California and in New England, actually got serious about producing hydrocarbons at scale. We could really, really be the world’s. Well, we are the world’s sole energy giga power, and we could probably do twice as much as we’re doing today. If we got serious about it. We eventually will. Such politics, will eventually be swept aside, especially in the face of, say, the next energy crisis. And so deep down, ultimately, we’re pretty optimistic.
Stuart Turley [00:35:05] And Chris, up to you. The last words.
Chris Wright [00:35:07] A Stuart. I’ll put an explanation point on. Do Burke’s point there. The United States produce roughly twice as much oil, which really means liquid fuels. Then number two, Saudi Arabia and Russia, and over twice as much natural gas as any other country on Earth. So it’s hard to overstate the enormous energy powerhouse and advantage the United States has. And as I said, look, hydrocarbons market share isn’t even shrinking over the last 12 years. But if you look at 50 or 100 years, what could be a meaningful addition to a hydrocarbon dominated energy system? And man, that list is short. But the top of that list by far is nuclear. So small modular reactors, energy dense production that can not just generate electricity, which delivers 20% of global energy but can also deliver process heat. So they’re not going to replace hydrocarbons, but they could be a meaningful addition in allowing us to grow the total energy pie. So the other 7 billion people that aren’t among the lucky 1 billion people can live lives like all of us in the next few decades. That’s that’s the goal. More energy. Better energy makes better lives for humans.
Stuart Turley [00:36:13] And, Chris, I just want to give a shout out to, Doug Sandridge. You know, I, I’m a big, oil, executives for, nuclear, fan as well. I’m all about, nuclear. And I really want to visit with you, Chris, as well, about the nuclear ideas on modular reactors. And so for that doom. Thank you again. I’d give you a hug, but, the ink would run off. So again, thank you. Chris, I do appreciate both of you so much.
Doomberg [00:36:43] Great to be with both of you.
