ENB Podcast from Bear Country – Can the oil and gas run continue? – we talk to Enverus

On the ENB Podcast from Bear Country, we have the opportunity to visit with Jessie Mercer,  Senior director of Crude Market Analytics at Enverus. We had fun and talked about the Bulls in the China Closet. No animals were in/or harmed in this podcast, and some of my other guests would be grateful.

A Delicate Balance focuses on oil and gas’ current winning streak and includes the company’s five-year market outlook, current view of the oil, natural gas and NGL markets, and the financials supporting them.

“Crude oil prices have had a good run over the past several months and the backwardated structure in futures markets is encouraging continued inventory destocking. Improvements in demand for key motor fuels like gasoline and diesel have certainly played their part, but ultimately the key factor behind the continued tightening of physical markets has been production cuts enacted by OPEC+ members. OPEC+ cohesiveness though may be put to the test if the United States and Iran reach an agreement in ongoing negotiations about reconstituting the nuclear deal the U.S. withdrew from in 2018. If this happens, we could see up to 1.5 MMBbl/d of Iranian crude re-enter the market starting as early as this summer,” said Jesse Mercer, senior director of Crude Market Analytics at Enverus.

Thank you Jessie for stopping by the Energy News Beat Podcast! It was a blast. Check out the report: A Delicate Balance

Jessie can be reached at his LinkedIn profile:

 

The ENB automatic transcription is below. If there are any errors, we hope that they are funnier and more informative.

How long can the oil and gas winning streak continue, an interview with Enverus

 

Stu Turley [00:00:04] All right. Hey, everybody. Today is the podcast and I have a very, very special guest today, Jesse Mercer, and he is with Enverus and he is the senior director, Crude Marketing Analytics for investors. Hey, welcome, Jesse. We sure are glad you’re here.

 

Jessie Mercer [00:00:25] A pleasure to be here. Thank you,

 

Stu Turley [00:00:26] A.J. And I’ll tell you what, Enverus is just an absolutely wonderful company. No, a lot of people over there, they know data. So if you ever need data, you guys are definitely the place over there. And Jesse, you said you’ve been at Inverse about two years, right?

 

Jessie Mercer [00:00:43] Right. That’s really Phillips 66 originally.

 

Stu Turley [00:00:47] Oh, yes. In the Houston office. Right?

 

Jessie Mercer [00:00:49] That’s right.

 

Stu Turley [00:00:52] Oh, how do you like living in Houston?

 

Jessie Mercer [00:00:55] Houston’s a great town. I love it. I’m not originally from there. So I happened to find the city actually quite nice. And I’m now in Denver, which is also an excellent place to live.

 

Stu Turley [00:01:04] I’d rather pick Denver. Everybody says it’s a wet heat down in Houston and you die when you walk outside. Right?

 

Jessie Mercer [00:01:12] So anyway, my glasses fog up every time I step outside of the grocery store in Houston. You’ll get that so much in the dry air.

 

Stu Turley [00:01:20] No, I love Denver. Hey, a couple of things. You just had a report come out with a delicate balance and you have some really important feedback on this. And as we go through this in various, you know, we just said means data. And when I was going through this report, there’s some way big cool nuggets in this report. And if you wouldn’t mind, just give me a little bit of an overview of how you guys do your reports and what makes what how it makes up a report, if you don’t mind.

 

Jessie Mercer [00:01:53] Yeah, sure. Well, you know, this is more than just data. Also a software as a solution company. Software as a service company. Sorry, we’re focusing on, you know, high-tech insights and predictive analytics. Empower our customers to make decisions that increase their profits. So just, you know, hard data, you know, not just a shop for data, but we’re also developing some very, very highly technical, technologically advanced tools as well. And we use them in all of our products, as well as all the research reports, publications. There’s a saying you eat your own dog food. And we do exactly when we put our money where our mouth is and we use our products and all this analysis. So the other fundamental edge report comes out every month when we do a deep dove every quarter on the global market fundamentals, but also with a particular eye on the United States and what the global fundamentals mean for the US, in particular for operators here, as well as for other market participants in the midstream and downstream space.

 

Stu Turley [00:02:51] Oh, I noticed that when I was prepping for this interview that you had some stuff in here and Iran will go through that here in a little bit. So when you talk about knowledge for the U.S., you guys consider the whole marketplace around the world when you’re looking at that kind of stuff. So pretty impressive on that. When you take a look at crude oil and then gas, we also kind of hinted on our early prep on this for the Colonial Pipeline. Holy cow. Can you imagine the hackers coming in and saying, hey, by the way, and then taking a 5000-mile pipe out? What are your thoughts on that?

 

Jessie Mercer [00:03:33] Yeah, it’s I’m actually surprised it didn’t happen sooner to go with that because, you know, it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort anymore to get studied up on the US oil and refined products, pipeline systems. I mean, there are some great blogs out there you can follow on a daily basis, really outline these systems in detail. And so, you know, if if, you know, I suppose this was a criminal gang and not an extension of a Russian intelligence agency. Right. You know, I have some doubts about them being just entirely in the criminal enterprise of not being straight back. Right. They wouldn’t have to do a large study on where our weaknesses, weaknesses are in terms of our energy system. And Colonial was a great example of that. I mean, this is what happens when we become an increasingly bloody industry. The refining industry becomes increasingly concentrated in a few areas and where the key markets are dependent on one or a small number of major arteries for fuel gets into the street. And we saw an extreme case of this in the southeast, New York, and New York Harbor. The Northeast fared a bit better because they have some local refining capacity to get a few refined products in from the Midwest as well through a couple of pipelines across Pennsylvania. And of course, there’s that St John refinery over in Canada and that’s constantly bringing in material into the northeast. But southeast was was an energy desert, essentially, and technically, there was enough refined product on hand. But, you know, you get people scared and they you know, they want to protect their families, protect themselves. They go out and they fill up gas cans and they run down the storage units, baschiera storage. It’s held up fueling stations. And, you know, the tanker trucks, you know, they don’t carry about eight thousand gallons each. Yep. There’s only so much good you can do. And you get a truck driver shortage because so many were laid off last year when demand. So, you know, it was like a perfectly timed, targeted strike in a way. Well, the hackers involved, the dark side usually claim that next time they’ll do better social impact study or something like that of their crimes. But these are folks that shut down hospitals and schools and police departments and things like that too. So you don’t believe them on that one? Oh, no. You know, Colonial was just an extreme case. You know, the Northeast. Oh, yeah. But there are cities out west, you know, Phenix Tucson supplied by one pipeline out of California.

 

Stu Turley [00:06:01] Yes. And I saw speaking of the dark side, you know, I saw actually one quote from the dark side and it was kind of funny, said they said in their saying, next time we sell our virus software or our hacker software will be more mindful that we don’t sell it to Russians. I’m like, you got to be kidding me. That’s so. So they were now trying to divert, you know, saying that they sold the hackers off where I thought that was good funny. But the Meems came out of that wild and that is I saw people filling up with trash bags and everything else. And it was

 

Jessie Mercer [00:06:41] just people here in Denver doing that,

 

Stu Turley [00:06:43] filling up and trash bag. Garbage cans, garbage cans. Oh, my gosh.

 

Jessie Mercer [00:06:49] Yeah, it also showed, you know, frankly, just just how little we as Americans know about where our energy comes from right now in the supply chain issues. And you really should be more knowledgeable of these things, you know, and where we get our fuels from. I think this was a good opportunity for Americans to really learn about that and understand truly just how dependent we are on fossil fuels.

 

Stu Turley [00:07:12] You know, I saw an interesting comment that somebody said that why don’t we have these oil refineries closer to everything and we need to go ahead and build new refineries so that they’re smaller and closer. And I’m kind of like they won’t let us build a pipeline. How in the world are they going to let us build the refineries?

 

Jessie Mercer [00:07:36] So I was also reversing, you know, a 40-year trend towards consolidation in the refining sector, you know, increasing the economies of scale to reduce the, you know, the marginal cost of production. And so we’ve seen, you know, the heavy concentration of refining capacity in and around Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, Lake Charles, southern Louisiana. We got a little bit new on that little corridor between Philadelphia and New Jersey. Chicago’s got a good bit packed in there. California is an island and has all its own refineries are right there. No pipelines going in. So we’re kind of doing that right now. That’s the trend over the last 40 years. Georgia at one time had a small asphalt plant that also produced diesel. They shut that down a couple of years ago and the Venezuelans backed out of a supply contract with them and they couldn’t economically source heavy crude oil from Canada by rail. Right. And so, you know, at one time, you know, we actually did have refineries. There were like three in New York and five in Ohio. And know they’re all over the place except the Southeast. We had mostly asphalt plants there. But, you know, at one time we did have refineries in around most major metropolitan areas. And today we went with a heavily concentrated refining industry with the large long haul pipeline systems carrying those products out to far-flung markets across the continent. You know, it was that colonial pipeline to the northeast and to our eastern seaboard, you know, going up the Midwest. There’s the Magellan system coming up from the Gulf Coast and spreading out. We get some of our fuel here in the Denver area from that, as well as from two refineries on the northern Texas border and McKie pipelines running up here. So that’s why you see so many Phillips 66 stations, for example, in in the Denver market, is because, you know, we had that direct shot up from that border pipeline. So what are your thoughts, this trend?

 

Stu Turley [00:09:32] What are your thoughts on new pipelines? You know, as we sit here and we need that infrastructure and then the cancelation and the keystone and the in that line five mess, I mean, holy cow, then how are we going to get new pipelines is a whole nother animal and.

 

Jessie Mercer [00:09:49] Yeah, the outlook for new pipelines is going to be very challenging inline five is a completely different issue, you know, shutting down a that’s a strategic artery for crude oil and it doesn’t really affect us Americans that much. But, boy, it sure affects the Canadians in Quebec and Ontario because without line five, you’re not going to have the refineries in Sarnia or Quebec or Montreal running. And because of environmental opposition, it doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to get that. Montreal, the Portland Montreal pipeline right back up and running again. It’s basically moving a barrel a day or something like that. It’s really small because it’s not really getting any volume anymore. Right. And you can’t get it. You can’t get two hundred thousand barrels a day down the St. Lawrence River. That’s a big problem. There you get some congestion. But yeah, that would cause a major energy crisis in the industrial heartland of Canada and would also affect consumers of refined products in some northeastern states like Vermont and New Hampshire, and Maine. You know, we really have to think about these long term sort, these knock-on effects of shutting down a major artery like line five,

 

Stu Turley [00:11:01] you know, that I saw in there the job impact on the U.S. was, I believe, 33000 estimated would line fire being shut down, 33000 jobs in four states. And I was like, holy cow. I mean, that’s a lot of jobs if that thing got shut down. So, you know, it would make more sense if a governor’s not shutting that down and then having a wouldn’t that be an international kind of thing for the administration to deal with? Just a thought.

 

Jessie Mercer [00:11:30] Well, Gretchen Whitmer, I think, believes she lacks the authority to actually shut that pipeline down. And so it’s going to be up to FEMSA. It’s going to be up to the federal government to determine that. And, you know, I don’t think the Biden administration has any, you know, any appetite in and strangling our closest neighbor and ally of petroleum fuels because that’s going to cripple their economy. Right. And it would hit us back to pretty hard.

 

Stu Turley [00:12:00] Oh, you bet. And Jesse, that’s what those are all excellent points on that. When we take a look at the gas prices coming up for this holiday weekend with a colonial, those are probably going to go through the roof because we did have a big draw on things just this past week and things were. So what are your thoughts on just the gas? Is it going to come back out around in price? Is it going to go up? What do you think? This is a ballpark guess there?

 

Jessie Mercer [00:12:27] Yeah, there are a number of factors going on. Aside from just colonial course, Colonial is going to have, you know, a localized impact in the markets on the East Coast. And, you know, like I said before, particularly in the southeast, where you don’t have very many other options for resupply. You know, no other incremental swing volumes. I can quickly come into that region and resupply them. So retail prices in that region may be more elevated than others know. The colonial pipeline is back up and running. It takes them about 15 days to get gasoline up to the northeast by 19 days to get diesel because it’s denser, they’re going to have to replenish inventories. And we’ve got we have summer driving season coming up here, too. So people are going to want to get out. They’re going to want to drive to go places, see the world. International travel is still, you know, still a bit iffy. Got a jet fuel demand is still a bit weak. We don’t really see that recovering until maybe the fourth quarter of twenty. Twenty-three you take it’s easier to ease up on domestic travel restrictions than it is to ease up on international ones, especially when you have, you know, bubble wrap around certain countries where you can’t enter unless you’re part of that bubble or you have a vaccine passport or something in place. And there are still quarantine restrictions and nobody likes to sit two weeks of the hotel room before they even step out of them and actually enjoy their vacation. So people are going to be getting in their cars and driving a lot more this summer. So we have higher demand while at the same time refinery throughput is still pretty low, notes about two million barrels a day below where we were before the pandemic hit. And so that’s that has impacted gasoline supply. If you look at gasoline, crack’s to take the blipping during the know the colonial shutdown out from here, go back to where we were before then. And Gourrier thinks we’re heading, you know, in in the summer, gasoline cracks are pretty strong, around twenty-five dollars a barrel. Right. That’s pretty good for the refiner. And so we’ve been seeing refining margins, you know, strengthen back up again since the Colonial shut down. You got to think of that. We went East Coast not getting gasoline. That means the gasoline and diesel that’s being produced in the Gulf Coast doesn’t have anywhere to go. So we started seeing refineries floating extra supplies to Mexico. So that really hit them pretty hard then. But things are going to get back to normal here. But refineries around the world are not running at their pre covid levels in the. Long term, that’s a widespread impact across the value chain, not just for fuels, but while a lot of the things that we use in everyday lives know everyone’s been tracking, the price of lumber has been going up and it was like six hundred dollars per thousand board feet six months ago. And now we’re looking at seventeen hundred dollars. You know, I had a plan. I wanted to redo my deck this year. I’m not doing that. It’s absolutely insane. But, you know, PDC prices spiked to polypropylene polyethylene. It’s hard to get many of the basic materials that we use in our everyday lives, you know, things like pens and chewing gum, things like that. So if you look at that, you know that producer price index for plastics in resin, I mean, since May of last year, it’s gone up 40 percent. Just because the feedstocks that go into the refining go into the petrochemical plants that turn these things into these wonderful polymers that we use all the time, well, it’s gotten very tight and some of the supplies had shut down.

 

Stu Turley [00:15:49] So the impact the end-user is priced on everything is going to go up.

 

Jessie Mercer [00:15:54] Yes, I can I can affirm that. You know what? We had that freeze off in that heavy freeze in Texas back in February and that really did a number on our petrochemical industry. We’re still trying to bring up facilities that were shut down because of a lack of power. Takes a long time to get these facilities up and running because of the risks involved while starting from a cold start. And that’s a good

 

Stu Turley [00:16:17] Jesse

 

Jessie Mercer [00:16:18] Williams. You know, the paint manufacturer had to shut down a plant in Texas because they couldn’t get the raw components they need to make paint. So you’re going to go out and paint your house this summer, for example. Oh, my goodness. Did last year automotive manufacturers, you know, Honda, Toyota, slowed down their manufacturing of cars in North America because they use a lot of plastics and polymers. And, you know, in the interior of your car, the Underwood sound dampening all that stuff is a synthetic material. The tires on your car that’s made from butadiene, you know, that’s not rubber, that’s butadiene. It comes from butane. Also, we actually make that stuff. And, you know, when the petcare facilities aren’t running and not up to full capacity and that’s going to hit our supply chains. And we were.

 

Stu Turley [00:17:02] Boy, this is kind of frightening, almost, you know, I’m I’ve got a team building event and we’re building a shed this weekend. I bet it’s going to be a five thousand dollars spread

 

Jessie Mercer [00:17:13] and you’re probably going to be a bit more shocking than the prior projects. You mean the bill

 

Stu Turley [00:17:20] and Jesse, you brought a fantastic point up about floating storage. And our buddies over in Iran have been very entertaining over the last several years. And they’ve been planning and they’ve done a great job preparing for the sanctions and those kinds of things and getting that contract with China for 25 years and all that kind of stuff. In the report, you had a slide on Iran’s numbers there as well, too. Can you tell me what your opinion is on some of the production coming around on that, or does that make sense?

 

Jessie Mercer [00:17:56] Yeah, yeah, sure. So, you know, look, currently at about two points four, close to two point five, seven million barrels a day of current production. Right. And, you know, if we have an agreement to restore the major principles of the 20, 15 nuclear deal, they could ramp up their production to somewhere around four hundred thousand barrels a day by the end of next year. It’s just a matter of timing. It’s kind of hard to predict precisely. Once barrel hit the market. If they had that floating storage, they can put that into the market really fast, most likely heading into China or India. But you know how to time it will eventually have some impact on oil prices. It’s just a matter of timing. I think we’re pretty good this summer because it’s got to be kind of starting out at a low point, raising it gradually over the fall. And we see oil prices, you know, this, you know, over third quarter WTI averaging around sixty-eight dollars a barrel. Brant averaging some around seventy-two. But then you get to the first quarter of next year, the Iranians are back up to that four million barrels a day and OPEC plus has been dialing back their production cuts. Something’s got to give and that’s a low demand period. In the first quarter, typically you see things drop off around. Oh, wow. And so I don’t know if the plus group is going to be completely complacent while prices start to drop again. Want to exit this deal, but they may not be they may not have the opportunity to do so.

 

Stu Turley [00:19:37] Wow. So OPEC coming back up, speaking to OPEC, coming around a corner here. Do you think the Saudis are going to increase theirs? I’ve got a bet on it that they are going to they’re not going to take any more cuts. Just as the friendly wager there. I got a one-dollar bet on it. So, you know, I’m a high-dollar investor there. They are going to claim some of their cuts back. You know, they’ve pretty well done a number. And they were putting out some hints that demand’s coming back. So they’re OK to go ahead and release some of their increased productions. Are you going to be on that dollar bet?

 

Jessie Mercer [00:20:19] Well, I think they are right, actually. That demand is coming back or we’re expecting about five point four million barrels a day of global demand growth this year versus last year. Now and last year, we lost eight point seven. So we’re not going to be back to record levels. This year, in fact, is probably going to be around twenty, twenty-three when that happens. But, you know, the Saudis, they essentially carried OPEC plus this last six months. You’re right. Of extra voluntary cut of a million barrels a day, just essentially to keep the Russians at the table. Right. And in the Russians, meanwhile, have been wanting to increase their production. And, you know, if we get Iranian the Iranian barrels coming back onto the market, putting pressure on prices. Right. Saudis are going to go start getting testy again with the Russians, whom the Russians want to be seen as equal to Saudi Arabia. But the Russians aren’t doing the same amount of work as the Saudis in last April. You’ll remember that the market share war with the Saudis went ahead and they actually made all their customers take one hundred percent of their contractual volumes, knowing that it would end up pushing the Russians out of those markets and really left the Russian barrel stranded on the market, really punishing Russia hard right for their transgressions of trying to back out of the OPEC plus agreement and that flex by the Saudis, you know, got the Russians back to the negotiating table really fast. I mean, I think, you know, from a diplomatic standpoint is probably the most embarrassing things the Russians have seen since the loss of their eastern territories in the. Tosca. Oh, my God. After World War One, it was a pixelation on their part. And my big concern is when we start to see this pressure re-emerging market, new one. Q 20 22. That kind of scenario can be, you know, back on back and back and play again, right. And so it’s something we have to monitor very closely. And this is the kind of hard thing about markets, is that you just can’t put out a spot forecast one day and say, this is my prophecy for the future. You have to be on top of it every day. We’re also going to get run over.

 

Stu Turley [00:22:37] Sounds like what happens when I go to the kitchen, you know, sorry. You know, Jesse, when you sit back and take a look, the Russians and I believe that was Iraq, I kind of kept saying when the Saudis were sitting back going, we’re going to go ahead and take the high road and take some of our production off. Russians kind of kept inching. There’s we want Novak is a tough cookie. I mean, he is I think he’s the prime minister of energy over there. And they’ve got I think you have to fact check me on. I have to fact-check myself every day anyway. And what 30 percent of their GDP is energy export, something like that out of Russia? It’s a huge amount, whatever the number is. So that he’s a cool cat. I mean, I wouldn’t want to get into an argument with him. I mean, that whole mess, when we take a look at we’ve covered a lot of your kind of stuff in here. When you take a look at hedging, what do you think is a good bet for hedging? And tell me a little bit about your thoughts on finance and all that kind of good stuff coming around.

 

Jessie Mercer [00:23:50] So producers last year, hedged quite a bit of their forward production at much lower prices. And so this is part of the reason why so many, especially the publicly traded operators, have not raised their forward guidance for production this year. Even though we have WTI, you know, in the 60s, we should be well over breakeven economics. But they locked in no large portion of their production last year in the forties. And so that’s affecting their economics for this year. Now, they haven’t hedged as much for next year, but we’re not really seeing a lot of pressure on the back end of the forward curve, which means they’re not really selling forward. So, you know, so there is some scope for the back of the curve to come down. If there was ever any concern that the market may be heading back into a, you know, into an oversupply scenario. But so far they’ve been quiet. And also, you know, if you look at you can see the non-operators, you know, the commitment credit reports that come out every Thursday. We haven’t seen them get overextended either on the futures markets. You know, right now at about seven longs every short, you know, typically when you get above ten longs for sure, you’re kind of setting yourself up for a kind of a porthole type scenario where, you know, the market starts getting a little bit weak. But there’s only one small window in the room for everybody to climb out of. So everybody tries selling the positions all at once. And so it causes the market collapse. So those things don’t seem to have a pretty good fundamental support for flat prices. Are there different prices? You know, we’re going into a back-related market so it doesn’t make sense to store barrels anymore crude. And so right now, know all things look pretty bullish at the moment, which is why we know we have confidence in our third quarter price forecast, you know, of sixty-eight dollars a barrel for WTI and so 68 for Brant.

 

Stu Turley [00:26:01] Is that where your dollar bet is over or under? At sixty-eight somewhere in there, we’re going to go high finances year Jesse. High finances. So you know. So is that the number you’re thinking about.

 

Jessie Mercer [00:26:14] Yeah. For the summer now things start getting like I said, a little bit weaker. I think we’ll, we get to the third-fourth I’m sorry, the fourth quarter of this year, the first quarter of next, we start to see the demand seasonally drop. And then there are reading materials sitting on the market. So that means that there’s going to be some sunspot volume that has to go someplace likely back into storage again. And, you know, that’s going to have an impact on the prompt.

 

Stu Turley [00:26:38] OK, I’m going to put you on the spot here. And the spot is where is the Jesse Mercer crystal ball? And if we take five years out of the road, so go ahead and have a panic attack and then tell me, what do you think going to happen long term with oil? I mean, you got BP trying to become an energy company. You got Shell backing off and going this way, and then you have the Russians. I mean, it’s a mess out there trying to figure all this out. You have fewer people doing MP. You have everybody saying they’re going green and it’s actually taking a lot of oil and carbon fuels in order to make. Everything green, I have no clue, so I’m just trying to ask, what are your thoughts on that mess coming around the corner in five years?

 

Jessie Mercer [00:27:25] Yeah, I’m an I’m kind of want to put me in the camp with the demanders. You know, I’m among those, you know, in the short term, up until twenty, twenty-five, you know, we’re still going to get that recovery in demand that we lost during the pandemic. You know, I mentioned jet fuel be sometime around twenty, twenty-three. Finally, you know, on an average basis, you know, it’s twenty, nineteen some time by twenty-four. Right. But we’re seeing motor fuels pick back up distillates as well. But one thing that we’ve really been keen to point out to folks is, you know, going back to that PVC and, you know, plastics discussion we had earlier is just how much more of the incremental demand we’re seeing is going towards petrochemical feedstocks. You know, by 2025, we think that you know, you have that yearly growth in total liquids consumption, you know. Twenty-eight percent of that will be from the petchem feedstocks and continues to grow all through the next decade as well. Right. Your transportation fuels are stagnating. You know, we have, you know, of course, heds, but there’s also already planned vehicle efficiency standards that are going up demographic changes. You know, people are or are not driving as much because they’re staying home or, you know, demographic issues over in China now taking do affect, you know, eventually China is not going to be the engine of global oil demand. That it is right now is going to pivot over to Southeast Asia eventually. But the OECD countries, you know, the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan, all these countries, we’re nearing the point now where we’re just not going to grow or demand that much anymore because of all these different changes are going on, you know, in technology as well as in society. If we are on a Zoom call, even though I spent the entire last year working from home, not driving my car. Right. And so many other people are in my position as well. And of course, a large number of folks didn’t have that opportunity as well. Right. But, you know, the fact that I don’t have to get on a plane anymore to do a business trip, I can just on a call and talk with a customer on a resume. And then you don’t have to worry about driving. They’re going through their security, finding the room, getting everything set up. A lot of people are finding it more convenient now. Oh, yeah. And that’s going to weigh on demand. Of course, people are going to want to go places. All right. But it’s not going to be like the good old days anymore, I think.

 

Stu Turley [00:29:57] Oh, no. I think that there is a major change. I would not want to be in the office space rental business. I think companies, even if they go to 50/50, I think all of the space is still going to go down. But, you know, what do you think is coming around the corner for investors? I mean, you guys are rock-solid, running around the corner doing everything. Any insights that you can give us non-disclosure? Because we’re going to tell nobody on this podcast. It’s going to absolutely stay in the game. I’m kidding. But I mean, if you got anything coming around the corner that you want to share with us for inversed.

 

Jessie Mercer [00:30:32] You know, we have a lot of things in the works right now, not all of them. Am I able to speak on it publicly, but we’re doing some very interesting things with artificial intelligence and relaunching several new products. And we have a user-defined forecasting tool for four tight oil and gas unmentionables in Canada that pretty much lets users essentially drop in their own forward strip of prices. And it generates a career based on an economic dispatch. We have an existing version of it, but the next version that’s coming out is going to be well above and beyond. I happen to manage a product called Obdulio Flow Crude, which matches up refineries with different grades of crude oil across a myriad of pipelines and other modes of transportation across the North American continent. So those are some very fascinating tools there to personally speak to. But they’re certainly not a great number of other things that inverses working on as well, including moving into electric power and renewables, too, with recent acquisitions made with energy acuity, for example,

 

Stu Turley [00:31:38] in that fun. I’ll tell you what, I may have to have you back on the talk, your podcast about that Flomax, and everything else with your group there. So that would be a fun conversation as well. And Jesse, it’s fantastic talking to you. You know, Jesse Mercer with investors. You are one. Shafqat, I do appreciate it. And thank you for stopping by our Energy Newsbeat podcast. Thank you very much.

 

Jessie Mercer [00:32:04] Well, it’s been fun. Thanks for having me.

 

Stu Turley [00:32:06] All right. Thanks.

 

About Stu Turley 3230 Articles
Stuart Turley is President and CEO of Sandstone Group, a top energy data, and finance consultancy working with companies all throughout the energy value chain. Sandstone helps both small and large-cap energy companies to develop customized applications and manage data workflows/integration throughout the entire business. With experience implementing enterprise networks, supercomputers, and cellular tower solutions, Sandstone has become a trusted source and advisor.   He is also the Executive Publisher of www.energynewsbeat.com, the best source for 24/7 energy news coverage, and is the Co-Host of the energy news video and Podcast Energy News Beat. Energy should be used to elevate humanity out of poverty. Let's use all forms of energy with the least impact on the environment while being sustainable without printing money. Stu is also a co-host on the 3 Podcasters Walk into A Bar podcast with David Blackmon, and Rey Trevino. Stuart is guided by over 30 years of business management experience, having successfully built and help sell multiple small and medium businesses while consulting for numerous Fortune 500 companies. He holds a B.A in Business Administration from Oklahoma State and an MBA from Oklahoma City University.