On the ENB podcast, we talk with Irina Slav an energy expert from Bulgaria. Irina’s work in the international energy community is well known and she holds nothing back. In order to get out of the world energy crisis, we need to talk and even listen to each other. Energy policy officials need to check their egos at the door and make policy that is best for their citizens and the environment.
Follow Irina on Oilprice.com, Substack, or on LinkedIn
Thanks, Irina for stopping by the ENB podcast I had a blast! See you next time.
The following is an automated transcription. We disavow any mistakes unless they make us appear smarter, better looking, or funnier.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:00:05] Hey, welcome everybody to the Energy News Beat podcast, and I’ll tell you, this is really exciting. You know, if you listen to us that I’m a political geo news junkie and today we have a very special guest. We had an arena Slav from Bulgaria. And I mean, I’ve been such a big fan of her writing on oil price dot com and now her Substack, a newsletter and coming out. So welcome this morning arena.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:00:34] Hello. Nice to see you.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:00:36] Oh again, thank you for jumping on and I just got so much. I looked up your LinkedIn background and you’re in Bulgaria. And what prompted you to be an energy writer?
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:00:51] It wasn’t really a deliberate decision. I was working as a daily newspaper, just a regular daily newspaper, and I got a proposition from one news agency to start work there. And my work there included covering energy news from Russia and the former Soviet Union. So that’s how it started. It was oil and gas and mining. And I found I was interested in this topic. And later on, when I went freelance, I left the corporate world with a sigh of relief. It was, yeah, yeah, it was fate. Really?
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:01:39] Well, then. So as a freelance? Tell us how that works. You write for, I believe, oil price, dot com, and a few others as well, and that looks like it’s doing well.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:01:51] It is going well. It’s going really great. Well, I was contacted by an editor from Oil Price to start writing articles for them, and it’s been going on for what is it? I started in 2016, at least. So yeah, occasionally I have written for other publications and now I’ve started my own newsletter on Substack for my more opinionated pieces because I needed an outlet for my more, shall I say, controversial opinions.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:02:26] Oh, we’re going to get into that in a minute. But, you know, I want to give a shout out to you for your I want to say in this industry thought leadership. And if anybody, we’re going to have the Substack how to sign up for our newsletter because I’m enjoying it and I don’t I make comments on there and I have fun doing that.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:02:48] So I really appreciate
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:02:49] this and everybody needs to sign up for your opinions and thank you. So thank you. And as we go through, you know, we just had the CLP 26 in your article last week or excuse me, your newsletter last week from Substack. I thought it was really good. Do you want to give us your opinions on CLP 26 or
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:03:12] is it tell you to mean honest opinions?
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:03:14] Absolutely. Absolutely.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:03:17] To me, I’m going to be very blunt. It was a failure from the start. Good, it was. There was no other way. They did talk a lot about making commitments, including, importantly, financial commitments. But what it boils down to is that Europe and the US and Canada won’t really go all-in on green energy, on renewables, on electric vehicles, and all that. They happen to have the money now to do it. But the rest of the world, which includes some of the biggest polluters, cannot really afford to do this. I don’t I don’t even think that Europe can afford to do this. Not with all these ambitious emission reduction targets. So to me, it was basically all talk and not really anything substantial because they even included coal in the end in the final agreement. They admitted that countries such as India, cannot go all-in on the green transition without coal, and they will need coal for decades, not for years, but for decades to come, as does, for example, Bulgaria. Because if I may give my country as an example, we only have coal only locally. We do have some natural gas production, but nowhere near enough of what the country needs. But right now, during the energy crisis in Europe, we are exporting electricity to all of our neighbor’s thanks to our coal-fired plants.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:04:59] Wow. I did not know that.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:05:01] Yes. So, yeah, even in Europe, countries like Bulgaria, Poland, Poland is big coal consumer. We still depend on our energy independence. Yes, it emits carbon dioxide. It emits more than that spring but is the only resource natural resource that we have locally and we don’t have to really rely on imports, which I think is very important for every country.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:05:29] Wow, that’s critical. And you think about I do a lousy Burton imitation. I almost sound like an American gangster, eh? I’m going to supply gas, you know, that’s horrible. I mean, that’s Texas, and it doesn’t
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:05:46] talks like that. Yes. Have you heard them speak? No. Gives a very soft-spoken, literally soft-spoken person.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:05:56] Wow. I did not know that he carries such a very large personality. When we’re out looking at his actions in America, he comes across as a gangster. So I,
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:06:09] I know he does,
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:06:11] But I do a lousy imitation of a gangster for Russia, so I don’t know. And so the Nord Stream two pipeline, you know, so much gas comes through Russia, and I believe it is going through a lot of the countries to get to there. In this past, I believe month the gas started going negative and going the other way back to Russia. And I personally think that was a little boy for from then saying, Oh, by the way, oh, if you don’t, you know, get us signed up and certified on the mainstream plane to get the gas going into Germany and help get that volume off. He’s pretty much a lot of control of the price for natural gas as
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:06:57] well, yes, but there was also a lot of speculation on markets. I mean, sure, everybody’s blaming Putin and Russia. But you know, I remember the deputy PM, Russia’s deputy PM Novak, saying there is enough gas in Europe. Somebody is speculating on the markets. You can just singularly place the blame because you like it placed it on Russia, right? He said. If you want more gas, then tell us you want more gas. Don’t just expect us to deliver it. So really, it’s not as simple as it may look great on mainstream media reports.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:07:42] That is crazy because we hear, I think, filtered news and the only way for us to get true opinions is to listen to great authors like yourself. And so when you take a look at the energy crisis in Europe and Bulgaria and coal is such an important piece. How’s the price for energy or kilowatt per hour or for the consumers in the coal versus the renewable cities and state? It’s a lot higher in renewables, right?
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:08:17] Yes. And it’s been higher for a while. Germany, for example, has one of the highest utility bills electricity bills because they pile on renewable energy-related taxes. Add these to people’s bills to stimulate more renewable energy capacity. But when there’s a wind drought or not enough sun, what do you do? You still have the coal-fired plants, which is, well, the U.K. Then they actually reopen. I shut down coal plants.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:08:54] Yeah, and that’s what’s happening in India and in the U.S. and in California. They have gone greener if you would. And you know, they’ve used just sit there like Germany is, you know, the very leader in their high kilowatt around
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:09:12] Germany of the United States.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:09:14] In the end, they are the thank you. They are that Germany of the United States and their price to the consumer is out of the park. And it is horrible for the consumer. And that money that brings up. I wrote things about a year ago and I said the more renewables we use, the more fossil fuels we use in the adverse effect is like people wake up. And it’s true. We find out that California is using more coal now than when they were
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:09:50] because there they are forced to use more coal.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:09:53] Yes. And it’s because also cement requires so much coal. And in our infrastructure bill, we are putting in all the. Asphalt and cement. Well, you got to use coal in order to do cement and you got to use oil to do asphalt.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:10:11] You do need oil to make asphalt quickly if you’re willing to repair all those roads. Yes.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:10:17] You bet. And so what? How do you see you’re fixing this issue? I mean, because if Bulgaria is able to export energy through selling kilowatt per hour, how how do we fix this issue? Your opinions on
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:10:35] that. It’s a question of if you want to be delicate. I’m not going to be delicate. I believe that European politicians, EU politicians need to dial down the ideology. They need to basically get real about things because do you know which ones are the greenest countries in Europe, in
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:11:01] Germany
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:11:01] without question? No, no, no, no. And these guys know the greatest countries in Europe are Norway and Sweden.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:11:09] Oh, yes.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:11:11] And both are very, very environmentally conscious. Very good is renewable energy. But they have got both a lot of hydropower, which is not exactly solar and wind. And Sweden also has a lot of nuclear power, as does France, and France is greener than Germany because of its nuclear power.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:11:34] But aren’t they shutting down some of their nuclear plants and they’re trying to get rid of them?
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:11:39] Is Germany shutting down its nuclear plants? Wow. Yes, because they want to be. I really don’t know what the problem is saying it was because the political risk of a meltdown, however small it may be right now, have a really strong anti-nuclear lobby. Is all they shutting? France is not going to shut down its nuclear power plants because they supply more than two-thirds of its energy and make it an important exporter of energy.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:12:08] You see that to me. I don’t think we can make the energy transition to renewables without nuclear
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:12:15] armed with guns.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:12:17] And I think in California, they just shut down their only nuclear reactor. They’ve announced they’re shutting it down 10 years too early.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:12:26] Why are they doing it?
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:12:28] They’re politically morons.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:12:32] Well, it is clean energy. I mean, I understand the fear of a meltdown, but this is not Chernobyl, right? This is what a lot of people tend to forget. That Chernobyl was a horrible accident, right? As was Fukushima. Yes. But you have no 100 percent risk-free energy or anything, really. You have to live with the risk if you want to be low emission.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:12:59] You know, and I don’t think it’s fair to impose our way of life or our energy structures on Africa or any of the poorer.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:13:10] Oh, definitely, yes.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:13:12] I think that that’s criminal, and I firmly believe that everybody in the world deserves the lowest amount of price for clean energy to get them out of Harvard Energy, gets people out of poverty and help their health in the
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:13:28] energy
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:13:29] race. Yes. And so what are your thoughts on the wind? I’ve heard you and I want to correct it. I have to fact-check myself all the time. You know, I have. My wife tells me that I’m wrong all the time. So I had heard, and I just want to make sure that it’s the same in Europe. And that is. The return on investment for a wind farm is about 10 years. By the time you get the reduction because you had the cement that goes into it, you have the steel, you have everything else, and all that takes CO2 and everything else to build in the CO2 break. Even point is about 10 years. They’re supposed to last 20 years, which is nothing in the meantime between failure. You know, they’re failing at 10 years. So it just seems in the U.S. they’re abandoning windmills. I mean, wind farms and things. So it just seems kind of weird to me. Is that the same
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:14:29] that they just abandoned them?
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:14:32] They have abandoned some because they can’t they’re not economically feasible to keep going the repairs.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:14:40] Well, I haven’t really researched the return on investment period, but I think what we saw earlier this year, all of the major wind turbine producers warning about lower profits because there isn’t enough wind, right? I think that’s a big risk factor. Forget about. I’ll return on investment, what happens when the wind doesn’t blow as much as it should? Oh, and this is what a lot of people I think get, but they’re just too focused on, oh, it doesn’t emit while it operates. Yes, but as you said, there is the question of return on investment because this is an investment. It is done by businesses and businesses exist in order to make profits so they could continue existing versions supported extremely simply. And by the way, you mentioned Africa. This is actually the reason. Solar and wind are not really taking off massively in Africa. There’s a lot of talk about Africa has huge potential lots of sun, lots of wind, lots of space, right? But it’s not taking off because you have to invest not just in the solar farms and the wind parks. You also need to invest in transmission lines in a grid. There is no grid, and this investment becomes so massive, like the potential for renewables that it will be too expensive for the people there, and the investor will never get the return on that investment. So do you think
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:16:18] easy solutions, localized energy then and localized energy plants, so they build smaller grids?
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:16:27] It sounds. It sounds more sensible and more sensible than a mini-grid option. I think yes,
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:16:35] when we talk about going renewable, we always hear energy storage and you’ve got to have
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:16:41] batteries, you have got to have the batteries. Otherwise, there’s no point to do utility-scale solar and wind. There’s no point because you’re dependent on the weather all the time.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:16:55] And so has the rare earth minerals and the precious minerals in Europe. How’s that market going? Because we all know that China has a good chunk of rare Earth minerals. And how are that the rare earth minerals? Because you need rare earth minerals or have them for building grids? You need all of that material in order to go there. What are you? What is the market in Europe for that stuff?
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:17:22] I think it’s nonexistent in Europe as an importer of rare earth. Yes. Well, China has cornered the markets and it’s nobody’s fault, but everyone’s who slept through it. I’m sorry, but really, you have to think ahead. This is my biggest personal problem with all these renewable energy plans. Nobody is thinking ahead. They’re gathering, talking, saying, OK, we’re doing this right now. They’re talking about net-zero goals by 2050. How will we get there? It sounds so simple. We’ll just build more solar and more wind. You can’t just build more solar or more wind because you will need batteries to store the energy. To replace the baseload of the fossil fuel plants. If you can’t replace the baseload,
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:18:13] you’re
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:18:14] not doing anything. You get blackouts.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:18:16] Is there a movement in Bulgaria to go any kind of nuclear at all? Is there a waltz or a move-in? Is there any talk of, Oh,
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:18:25] we have
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:18:25] nuclear? How much of yours.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:18:29] A quite a lot. Actually, even though under pressure from green interests, we were forced to close a thing full blow for reactors. So we only have two functioning.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:18:43] This is something they did in California and New York, the other side of high end there. They’re all there. I think they’re in Germany. One of them shut down two reactors. I think it was 15 years to. I don’t get that
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:19:02] and they probably clapping themselves on the shoulder for a job. Well done. I don’t
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:19:07] get this. I really don’t. In France, to me, always was the leader in green because of just like what you said, they were ahead of the curve on
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:19:19] that, but on nuclear and now it’s paying off. I don’t think anyone can force them to close their nuclear plants and replace them with solar farms. This will be insanity.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:19:31] Insanity in 20 years of bad energy policy has got the world into this energy crisis now covered COVID. How has that affected Bulgaria and what are you? What are your thoughts on how that’s impacted the energy demand?
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:19:49] Oh, well, we are. We’re doing badly in terms of the total casualties of the virus, but I believe there is no single reason for this. But in terms of energy demands, well, it’s is the same as the rest of the world’s lockdowns led to a drop in energy demand. Then once the lockdowns were lifted, everyone started traveling at all different than the rest of the world.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:20:18] In Texas, we’re all cowboys and we’ve thrown away our masks and everybody has walked around like normal around here.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:20:25] So how are you doing on casualties?
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:20:28] I’ve had COVID twice,
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:20:30] but it was five at a
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:20:32] time and I had the vaccine. So, you know, I have had I got it. When it first came on, I sat next to a gentleman from Italy on the plane. His name was Antonio and he was sick. I was in the end of January when it first started. Then I got the vaccine and then I got it again. So but I see the point. You’re right. The vaccine was worthless to me. So, you know, it’s like, why take it? But anyway, your last thoughts? Give me your energy opinion, and I want just as open as you can possibly be on your thoughts on it.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:21:13] Well, I think we can survive without fossil fuels. Not now. Not in 20 years. I can talk about more than 20 years from now. I think there’s a severe shortage of common sense and plain common sense among decision-makers, and this is a problem because they are decision-makers and our livelihood, our well-being, our electricity bills depend on the decisions they made. I think there is way too much ideology. I think the net-zero narratives are turning into something like a religion, which is actually religion and ideology are pretty similar in their principles and the effects they have on, obviously when they become extreme. And I’m afraid this is what we’re seeing. The narrative is becoming more extreme. Mm-Hmm. You are not allowed to question the right party line and this is dangerous. We have seen this in Eastern Europe in a totalitarian state, which is why I think we’re really well-placed to have a good look at the actual situation. We don’t buy the narrative so easily as between Western Europe and much of the US. I guess I do not believe that climate change is the biggest problem that humankind has right now. I think poverty and conflicts are much bigger and much more immediate problems.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:22:50] Oh, you bet.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:22:51] Yes. And I think we should start by solving these more immediate problems. You know, before we start thinking about our carbon footprint. Oh, and also, if we may not underestimate nature, the planet has been here before us, it will be bigger after us. There have been five or was it six mass extinction events before we appeared on the scene and they weren’t brought about by fossil fuel caused climate change? Right? Oh yeah, we’re being really arrogant about it.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:23:26] You know, the one thing that I truly appreciate is your comments, and thank you. I really appreciate your writings, and we are going to put a push out all your contact on LinkedIn, as well as how to get ahold of me on Substack. I recommend your writings for everybody and thank you for being a thought leader out there. And then I
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:23:50] haven’t been called this. Thank you very much.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:23:54] Common sense is something that is missing around the world. I want to take care of the disproportionately impacted people, the people that pay the bills, the people, the people that can’t afford it. It just doesn’t make sense to me to have energy policies that don’t take care of people. Yeah.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:24:14] And anyway, politically right? Yeah.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:24:16] What’s next for you? What’s around the corner? Are you just enjoying being a freelance writer?
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:24:22] Oh, yes. That’s enough for now. I have plenty of work and I love it, which is the most important thing, which is why I went freelance. To begin with, I wanted to do something I enjoyed. Yeah, because this is the only way to do a good job, I think, well, enjoy what you’re doing.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:24:41] Oh again, thank you so much, Uri, and thank you for having me. Your information for Bulgaria is absolutely fabulous in your European information. I learned a lot from you today. I hope you can come back again sometime.
Irina Slav, Energy Expert [00:24:57] I’m happy too. It’s been a pleasure to see you.
Stu Turley, Sandstone [00:25:00] Thank you very much.
