Energy Realities Top 10 Issues hitting the Energy Markets this Week
On this wild episode of Energy Realities, we had way too many topics to choose from, so someone shouted, “Cover them all.” Well, ok, here are some of the issues we are organizing….
*BP is out of wind.
*Exxon and Chevron embark on a beautiful friendship in Guyana.
*Ed Miliband just keeps getting crazier.
*$92 billion in private investments for enormous Pittsburgh AI development.
*New coal plant permitted in Tennessee.
*German Green Party Wants Price Controls;
*How will 16-year-old voters move energy policy in Canada and the UK?
*EU goes all in on next sanctions package.
You have to start your week off in the Energy Markets, getting fired up by the team from Bulgaria, the UK, Canada, and the great State of Texas.
With David Blackmon, Irina Slav, Tammy Nemeth, and Stu Turley, you will be shocked at the newest updates.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:01- Introduction
02:19 – BP Exits U.S. Onshore Wind Business
04:17 – UK Drops Locational Energy Pricing—For Now
07:32 – EU Sanctions Russia—Again
14:34 – AI Project in Pittsburgh
16:25 – China’s New Mega Hydro Project Sparks Concern
18:00 – U.S. Grid Reliability Concerns Escalate
22:29 – UK and Canada Consider Lowering Voting Age
28:23 – California’s ESG Push Could Backfire
34:35 – German Greens Want Ice Cream Price Controls
36:39 – U.S. Considers Withdrawing from the IEA
43:04 – Real Reform After Texas’ 2021 Blackout
45:11 – Fort St. John residents challenge the SuzukiFoundation over misleading Montney image
47:50 – UN Report Seeks To Outlaw Climate Skepticism, Punish Fossil Fuel Defenders
52:38 – Pittsburgh Plans to Become a Major AI Powerhouse, Fueled by Gas and Nuclear
52:48 – WATCH/READ: Mike Rowe Lays America’s Jobs Crisis Out For All To See
56:55 – China Will Make Almost a Third of the World’s Cars by 2030
00:15 – Can India Replace Russian Oil if Secondary Sanctions by President Trump?
01:00:51 – Wind and Solar’s Day of Reckoning is Approaching.
Energy Realities Top 10 Issues hitting the Energy Markets this Week
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Irina Slav [00:00:13] Hello and welcome to the Energy Realities Podcast. I’m returning from a week off during which I did nothing. I read almost no news, but some of it kind of trickled to my attention. So I gather a lot of things happened last week, which is why we’re going to talk about all of them today with David Blackmon in Texas. How are you today, David?
David Blackmon [00:00:39] Just lovely. It’s a beautiful day in Texas.
Irina Slav [00:00:42] Isn’t it really, really very hot and climate change-y?
David Blackmon [00:00:45] It is hot and climate changey. It’s probably going to be 100 degrees in our town, which I am informed by the Daily Mirror today would cause entire cities in the Middle East to shut down 100 degree weather. So it’s just mind-boggling the climate propaganda that goes on every day.
Irina Slav [00:01:02] It doesn’t happen in the Middle East, yeah, it’s not 45 degrees Celsius in April, which I experienced personally about 30 years ago. We have Tammy Nemeth, how are you today Tammy?
Tammy Nemeth [00:01:16] I’m doing well, thank you. I’m so glad to hear you had an awesome vacation. That’s great. Nice and rested.
Irina Slav [00:01:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did rest. And we have Stu Turley. Where are you today, Stu? Oh, are you not going to say?
Stuart Turley [00:01:32] Oh, no, I’m in an undisclosed location here in my bunker up in Oklahoma and it was about 95 degrees here and I enjoy working on my property with a backhoe and love it and my wife is inside thinking I’m nuts.
Irina Slav [00:01:52] Which you are as we all know but in a good way okay where do we begin let’s start with the bp news that bp is out of winter i just love it BP is selling its onshore wind business in the U.S. For an undisclosed sum, interestingly. David, what do you think about that?
David Blackmon [00:02:19] Yeah, I love the undisclosed sum part, you know, that is a clear indicator they’re selling at a loss, but you know anything to get out of wind, I guess, these days, BP and it’s embattled CEO Murray Auction Closs has decided to get out of the wind business after 25 years, 30 years, really a virtue signaling starting with Former CEO John Brown, who was also chairman of the board back in the late 90s, changed their logo to the big sunflower, big green sunflower, and started buying wind and solar farms all over the world. Now they’re out of it, because why? Because their investors are tired of losing money on renewable energy. Go figure. Who could have-
Tammy Nemeth [00:03:04] But wait, I thought it was supposed to be, you know, an unstoppable thing. Antonio Gutierrez had a tweet this morning saying tomorrow he’s releasing some amazing thing to show how the transition is unstoppable.
David Blackmon [00:03:20] Okay. Well, I guess that’s probably a response to our last item on that list that we’ll get to later from Chris Wright. And BP, the other big news with BP in addition to selling out of wind because they have activist investors now who want them to completely change their strategy is that they now have new chairman of the board, a fellow named Albert Manifold, who has been In the past, the chief executive officer of an Irish building material supplier called CRH, and he will be the new chairman of the board, and we’ll see how that affects strategy at PP.
Irina Slav [00:04:02] Interesting, yeah. Tammy, I see your list that Ed Miliband just keeps getting crazier. I have no idea what it means. Did he get any crazier? What’s he done last week?
Tammy Nemeth [00:04:17] Last week. Hmm. Well, they the one good thing sort of is that they decided that they weren’t going to do Locational pricing so because they were going to this idea has been floated by octopus energy and Dale Vince and everybody that if you live closer to a windmill you should pay less for your energy and They they want to do this in the in the hopes that it would make industry move closer to where the electricity is being produced instead of distributing it where companies actually are. So thankfully, they decided right now that they’re not going to pursue that, but they’re going to be investigating overall pricing changes. So what that means for the future, who knows? And then the National Energy Systems Operator put forward this futures kind of projections and whatnot. Um which is you know giving lots of excuses for Dave for Ed Miliband to um double down on net zero and they actually he actually said we’re doubling down on net 0 it’s like okay i i guess that’s just yet another crazy position oh and by the way all high prices or due to gas.
Irina Slav [00:05:41] Obviously, which is why I think he said at some point, was it last week, but he admitted that the UK still needs natural gas.
Tammy Nemeth [00:05:50] Yes, absolutely. Thank you for reminding me. That’s right, because on the one hand, gas is responsible for high prices. But then he said, in order to have stable power, we’re going to need more natural gas power plants.
Irina Slav [00:06:06] Yeah and I remember some wind installation operators complaining about the zonal pricing because it’s going to make electricity cheaper and they’re not okay with that. They played the investment card that if electricity from wind turbines gets a lot cheaper that people won’t investing in more wind turbines, essentially admitting that… Has to be expensive by virtue of them having to turn off the turbines when there’s too much wind because it can’t be placed. If there are transmission lines that can place this electricity with consumers, they won’t be getting money for turning off the turbine. They said it openly and I have found these really, what was the word? It’s a loss for words, but they were really open about it.
Tammy Nemeth [00:07:07] It was actually a rare glimpse of honesty that you know that how they’re profitable is the money they they get paid for dumping their electricity for not providing it to people, which then makes the price higher for everybody. Yeah, yeah. The UK is a basket case and we have four more years of it.
David Blackmon [00:07:30] My goodness.
Irina Slav [00:07:32] Or hopefully less, but I’m not holding my breath to be honest, sadly. And still, the EU just passed on Friday, it’s, was it 18th or 19th, 18th, a sanctions package after assuring Slovakia that they will continue to be able to buy Russian gas. And of course the most severe. Part of the sanctioned package was banning Nord Stream.
Stuart Turley [00:08:05] Irina, this wonderful, wonderful lady that I’ve known for several years is absolutely a hero of mine and her quote, which is t-shirt, is sanctions don’t always work as intended, is absolutely applicable more now today. In fact, I want to ask the audience that’s listening. Is this actually a sign of insanity when you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result? This is the 18th package. Russia’s GDP has grown over the last two years. The average EU has declined in the leading EU Germany, maybe facing their third year declining. So Is it insanity? I’d have to go with insanity.
Irina Slav [00:09:05] It is a kind of insanity i believe yeah because they keep hoping this time it’ll work me i’m waiting for the 27th package i can’t wait to see what they will sanction unless of course of course they start sanctioning people individually i mean there are quite a few million people living in russia if they start you know ticking off each and every adult individual that could make for a few more dozen sanction packages. That will have about the same effect as the 18 packages up until now.
Stuart Turley [00:09:41] I actually wrote an article on the next wave of potential secondary sanctions from President Trump on India and China’s refineries, LNG, and it didn’t affect Qatar. It is a disaster by him threatening President Putin. I guess we’ve got 40 days now, ballpark 42 days before that, the end of that one. That is an absolute disaster for the president Trump presidency. And I believe that Irina, you will be right again on this one. Sanctions don’t work as intended when president Trump steps into that landmine. He is going to find out how bad it is because not only is it going to affect the EU, how much diesel and gasoline are shipped from India to the EU is considerable when you start looking at the secondary sanctions on refineries is going be bad. They now have the EU in this one, they have four hundred and forty four of the seven hundred and fifty dark fleet tankers that Russia has under EU sanctions. What has that done? Wait for 20 seconds as Russia gets another tanker from somebody else, reflags it, puts new paperwork on it, and then they’re off and running again. So this is absolutely a joke.
Irina Slav [00:11:22] But wait, wait, now, my impression is that Trump talks a lot, but he doesn’t always act on what he says. Having said that, why should he care about the energy security of the EU?
Stuart Turley [00:11:39] Uh, he is just trying to get president Putin to the negotiation table.
Irina Slav [00:11:46] Yeah, he’s not going to do that, not with this behavior, and it’s a very difficult one, but, I mean, he has his own agenda, and he really doesn’t care about the EU.
David Blackmon [00:11:59] Yeah, and the EU doesn’t seem to much care about itself. There was a chart over the weekend, I think it was from the Wall Street Journal, it showed 20 years ago the combined GDP of the EU and the UK was 90% of the United States GDP. Today it’s 65%. Yeah. I mean, they’re committing economic harikari with all this obsession over net zero and these green policies. They’re deindustrializing. It’s cost them dearly. They don’t lead the world in any kind of technological innovation whatsoever. They’ve destroyed their high-tech industries. They’re not friendly places for big businesses to come and locate plants, you know, and industry. And it’s really sad. It’s just a self-destruction of an entire continent, a guided virus of Lavender land and lunatics like Keir Starmer, you know, and it’s, it’s really sad to watch.
Stuart Turley [00:13:00] Did you just compare leaders of the EU to the panel on the view?
David Blackmon [00:13:12] I mean, although Ursula would be kind of out of place, you know, she’s, she is rather soft-spoken. I don’t think she’d ever get a word in edgewise with Whoopi Goldberg and the rest of that creature.
Tammy Nemeth [00:13:23] She’d just work behind the scenes.
David Blackmon [00:13:25] Yeah, she just undermined them behind the scenes until they’re canceled, you know, by ABC news. By the way, the view is actually a news program, uh, at ABC. It is part of ABC news, not the overall network.
Stuart Turley [00:13:41] Wait a minute, this is just in, this just in. Thank you, the producer just let me know. We have a clip here from a AI generated view. Hang on.
Video Speaker 1 [00:13:53] Some say it’s controversial, but I don’t think so. Look, it’s not that strange. Everyone, and I mean everyone, could benefit from a little movement.
Video Speaker 2 [00:14:04] But encouraging people to move their bodies. That’s literally violent. This is the same mindset that leads to gym class trauma.
Stuart Turley [00:14:14] Okay, AI is just getting crazy, guys. That is absolutely nuts. But I love seeing Bigfoot as President Trump. That was absolutely hilarious to me.
Tammy Nemeth [00:14:26] If I could.
Irina Slav [00:14:28] In private investment, sorry Tammy, for enormous Pittsburgh AI development. 92 billion?
David Blackmon [00:14:34] Ninety-two billion, all private. All private dollars, no subsidies, no government money. And what are they going to do? They’re going to develop the largest AI data center campus on the face of the earth over the next five to ten years in Pittsburgh. What’s going to power it? About 80 to 90 percent of it will be powered with natural gas power plants. You’ve got some hydro in there, a little coal, and eventually nuclear. Very little wind and solar involved anywhere.
Irina Slav [00:15:05] So, to build new gas power plants?
David Blackmon [00:15:10] Yes. Oh, yeah. In fact, they’re converting an enormous coal-fired power plant, the Homer City plant, which was retired a few years ago. They’re going to convert that. It’s going to cost about $4 billion, I believe, to convert it to the world’s largest natural gas power plant. It is going to be four gigawatt natural gas. Power plant is going to be enormous. Tammy, you keep getting interrupted. Sorry.
Tammy Nemeth [00:15:36] That’s okay. I was going to ask the same question about where they’re going to get the energy from and what that will do to consumer prices. I mean is this going, are they going to be tapping the grid or are they, is this gonna be standalone and whatever excess power is generated will be put onto the grid? I mean how is that working? I haven’t read the details.
David Blackmon [00:15:52] Yes. Well, it’d be a combination. Yeah, but most of it’s going to be behind the meter. Most of it isn’t going to from the grid, but there will be some power taken from the grid, which in that state is mostly natural gas power grid. There’s nuclear, and there’s several still coal plants in Pennsylvania that are still on curational. They do have one in solar in Pennsylvania, but not like we do in Texas and some other places.
Irina Slav [00:16:25] new hydropower project that China damming the river at more pronounced is a major security threat to India’s fresh water. Yeah, that’s a problem, potentially. It’s going to be the biggest hydropow power installation in the world. Why do they need it with all this wind and solar?
David Blackmon [00:16:49] You got me. I mean I mean, we’re told China leads the world in wind and solar, which is true. Manufacturing the panels and the turbines and everything, it’s all made in China. They lead the world and install generation from both, but they also lead the world in coal and hydro and everything else in terms of power generation.
Tammy Nemeth [00:17:15] They’re planning for the future.
David Blackmon [00:17:16] Yes, but you know they’re just like anywhere else in the West, right? We build all this wind and solar to virtue signal that we’re on board with with the green plan and the energy transition and then we continue building natural gas and coal and nuclear because we want to keep the And every, you know, consumer is paying the cost of having to fund two separate grids. And that’s been the game now for how long? I don’t know how long, 30 years at least. And it just keeps getting worse and worse everywhere, except the United States, apparently, where the Trump administration is well down the road and hamstring in the wind and solar industries for better or worse.
Stuart Turley [00:18:00] I want to give Secretary Chris Wright a shout out. The more I delve into the grid in the United States and the danger that they have called in the last two weeks, again, we have 200 gigawatts on the books ready to come on that are projects that are going on. Only 22 gigawattes of that is nuclear or natural gas. What’s all the rest of it? Wind and solar, they’re not gonna happen. We’ve got a real problem on the United States grid for growth and I’ve been talking about this for about six months. And this is absolutely going to be a real problem but I am so thrilled that we have a secretary of energy that is already aware of it as opposed to waiting for the lights to go out.
David Blackmon [00:18:55] Yeah, he’s a godsend. I wake up every morning just kind of pinching myself that we have Chris Ryan at the Department of Energy. It’s just kind amazing. It is really almost beyond belief given what we’ve had in that role in the past. I mean, we’ve some good ones like I think Governor Perry did a fine job as Trump’s first energy secretary. I I mean, there’s been some others who were good, but mostly that job has been. Occupied by a collection of, you know, people just pointed like ambassadors for, you know, as a political payoff or something else. And then we’ve had a few actual scientists in that job who don’t really know much about energy practicalities. You know, there have been professors from MIT and elsewhere who are great theorists and great scientists, but don’t really haven’t ever really been in the real world. Where Chris Wright has spent his whole life in both the nuclear and oil and gas industries. I mean, he’s not just an oil and guys guy. First decade or more of his career was in nuclear and he’s really, I believe, maybe the most effective spokesperson for this whole administration. I mean he’s limited to energy, but he’s incredibly effective and just doing fantastic work.
Irina Slav [00:20:20] His. I’m angry for him. We all should.
Stuart Turley [00:20:28] Exactly. You know, it’s pretty amazing when you consider Ed Milban versus Secretary Chris Wright.
Stuart Turley [00:20:37] Quick quick, which one am I? Yeah Band as a what is a Wallace and Gromit character?
Tammy Nemeth [00:20:46] Yeah, but the thing is with a parliamentary system, the secretaries or whatever, however you wish to describe it, have to be pulled from the elected representatives. And there’s no guarantee you’re going to get a good energy person as an elected representative. It tends to be lawyers and activists and whatever. And so the same problem is in Canada with their parliamentary system. Whereas the American system you’re fortunate because The president can pick and choose people from outside elected positions.
Stuart Turley [00:21:20] We got Fettergram last time, you know, I mean, Granholm, excuse me, Fetteragram is if he married Fetterman, but no, I’ve.
David Blackmon [00:21:31] Hello, Jennifer Granholm. She was special. The short kind of special. Yes.
Tammy Nemeth [00:21:41] What’s fascinating about what’s happened with Trump’s election is that it sent a signal to other states, like to the individual states that they can do things differently now, which is why we have the new coal mining. Coal mine permit in Tennessee. So, I mean, that’s like the first one in who knows how long, a new coal mine. That’s incredible. And I know that the coal can be used for both power and for steel production. But it’s still significant because there’d always been these roadblocks and regulatory morass in order to try and get anything, a new mine or whatever approved and run through the EPA gauntlet. So this is some good news as well.
Irina Slav [00:22:29] It’s making a- politicians and politics, what about this decision in the UK and in Canada? Did they lower the voting age in Canada as well?
Tammy Nemeth [00:22:38] There’s a petition by a parliamentarian, one of the MPs, to lower the voting age to 16. And they tried this in the last…
David Blackmon [00:22:50] You’re talking about.
Tammy Nemeth [00:22:51] Last term.
David Blackmon [00:22:52] Yeah, you’re talking that in Canada. Yeah.
Tammy Nemeth [00:22:53] In Canada yeah the UK uh starmer said yeah we’re gonna do it yeah so I mean I think that should be a referendum question or seems like it the key things in an election I don’t think it’s right that someone can change the law like that before an election with it before people can
Irina Slav [00:23:14] I agree, and without referendum, I think this is indeed a referendum issue, but we’re not going to risk it, are we?
Tammy Nemeth [00:23:24] No. And you know, they can say, well, the students will be able to make up their own minds. And I’m just imagining how the teachers will help them get information. I saw what happened at my daughter’s school when they were leading up to the last election and the information that was provided and they did mock elections and everything. And anybody who supported in any way the conservatives were berated and blacklisted and stuff. So what’s that peer pressure going to do? And what information are the teachers going to provide that’s fair and balanced or whatever? Because it isn’t. I know for a fact it is.
Stuart Turley [00:24:04] This is such a horrifically bad idea. Do you know how bad of an idea this is? It’s like if there’s alligator, the question remains, is this a bad idea or are there alligators in the water in Louisiana? And I think I have a good test to see if this is a bad idea. Let’s go ahead and play this clip. Are there alligaters in the Water in Louisiana.
Video Speaker 3 [00:24:30] You can tell they got gator in that water so you you go come on down come down a little more come on to the water you know any body of water it don’t matter which body of water it is you just go to that body of what and this you grab that water like that and you pick up some and you do like that if that water wet it’s got gators in it that’s How you know you gotta get us in that water in Louisiana?
Stuart Turley [00:24:57] I absolutely love that lady. She is a great, great spokesperson for voting for 16 year olds.
David Blackmon [00:25:07] Yeah, I mean, think about it. I, you know, I like think back to when I was 16 and, and, you know, literally my, my every waking thought was around girls and where my next six pack of beer was going to come from, you know, you, you knew I was, I was just the thought of being able to help choose our political leaders at that age. And I was actually… You know, kind of intelligent for my age, right? And I mean, compared to something like space, it’s just mind boggling to me that, that anyone would think it’s a good idea to lower the voting age. I mean I think it ought to be really around 30 or so. I think that’s your, until you’re about 30, you really don’t know much about the world and shouldn’t be making decisions like this, but that’s just me.
Stuart Turley [00:26:02] 30 and a tax payer.
Irina Slav [00:26:05] Yeah, that really changes your perspective. And then there is something else, that when all of us were 16, there was no social media. There was no huge channel for campaigning. That kids are really going to trust whatever that TikTok community or X community or whatever community tells them. Yeah, and I think this could be tricky for the ones pushing for it because they might get appointed The kids may vote against them instead of for them, they kind of really, they assume that kids are all idealistic, which is true to an extent. These are different ideals and probably not all kids believe in the green ideal.
David Blackmon [00:27:06] Right. Yeah. And so, I mean, we’ve seen that change in young people’s attitudes in the United States. In 2008, 12, 16 presidential elections, young people below the age of 25 were probably 70% liberals, right? But in the last election, Donald Trump got a majority of young voters. And so attitudes have really changed in this current generation of young people. It’s been rare though through our history, I mean really through my lifetime, if you’d uphold that you would found 60-70% of young kids in high school were considered themselves to be liberals because that’s what was popular to do, right, and that’s where their teachers were teaching them.
Irina Slav [00:27:55] But I think the popularity of liberal ideas among young people depends on their material status. It depends on whether their families are secure if they can pay their bills with the kind of energy poverty spreading in the UK. The liberal policies are so popular.
Stuart Turley [00:28:23] Yeah, the liberal policies in California, I’m now up to about 17 different articles in the last three weeks on California and their energy crisis. And it’s unbelievable the traffic that that is getting. I was working on another one and Doomburg actually beat me to it. I spent hours working on the stupid article and here it comes rolling in from Doombur and I’m like, dang. Yeah, so here’s Senate Bill 253 and Senate Bill 261 might be, this is a huge problem. But I also see this as a bigger topic for this group and that is they’re very related to all the EU mandates that the United States oil and gas firms are going to have to either man up and say secondary, third, and… Uh, all the kinds of reporting that is going to be done. California is trying to impose that on the rest of the United States and the rest to the world. And there’s got it. This is one for the Trump administration to watch. And so anyway, I’m going to have to rework my thanks a lot, DOomberg for being a great author.
David Blackmon [00:29:41] It’s like California’s government is our own US version of the European commission trying to impose its will on the rest of the country, right?
Stuart Turley [00:29:50] It’s, it’s really pathetic.
Stuart Turley [00:29:51] It really is. But I think that that is a bigger topic for us as a panel in the future. And that is, how is the EU’s policies going to go down? And ESG investing years ago all had these mandates flow over into the United States. And it did do a good thing in the United States, and that was it prompted the oil and gas. Uh, exploration companies to do good things for governance and they are committed to being fiscally responsible and giving money back to their shareholders, which was a good thing. That’s the only good thing that came out of the EU’s ESG movement, financial side.
Tammy Nemeth [00:30:38] Yeah but it’s not going away and I mean the the California thing is really about the emissions accounting. I think Duberg talks about accounting carbon and I wrote I’ve been writing about this since 2022. You know a long time doing reports on this and whatnot and You know, for example, Canada wants to increase its trade with the EU and assign these partnerships and everything else. But there’s these strings attached, the carbon accounting strings attached. Whether it’s the carbon border adjustment mechanism or any of these other things that are coming in, the corporate sustainability and due diligence directive and so on. So. Even though they don’t, the amount of detail that’s required has been diminished, you still got to do it, you got to start. And so that’s what they’re really pushing. And they’re hopeful that with the anchor of California doing it, it’ll force all the American states to do. And I would say to the companies, maybe stop doing business in California, if this is going to be, you know, this massive amount of Costs for compliance, because you got to start hiring these consultants, you need the software, you have to be monitoring all this stuff, you have an audited, confirmed, and so on. That’s a significant cost for companies. So, you know, with all the other crazy that’s going on in California, maybe just stop doing business with them.
Stuart Turley [00:32:06] Wait, Doomberg brought up, Tammy, you bring up a fantastic point that Doomberg was also talking about, and that is your supply line for Scope 3 emissions. Not everybody has the capability of tracking their carbon footprint. I’m going to go out and go into the front yard and go, nope, got a lot of trees. Canada is net zero anyway with the amount of trees that you guys have, and their Nutty! There’s no way that you guys are carbon, you know, positive, you guys are carbon neutral from day one with the amount of forests you have.
Tammy Nemeth [00:32:44] Yeah, but it doesn’t count to like it’s a there’s a limited accountability for the overall global carbon budget. Canada has been given a certain amount and and it doesn’ necessarily take into consideration all the forests we have and there then there’s been these new activist studies that say actually all the forest fires that Canada has has made it even worse and it’s It doesn’t matter who started the fire or how it started, the fact is the forests are burning and then they claim that the forestry companies and the provinces aren’t it aren’t accounting for it properly.
Irina Slav [00:33:25] Wasn’t there an idea, or was it a satirical idea, to just cut down all the trees so there are no more forest fires? No more fires. I mean, it’s a simple solution to this particular problem, just get down the trees if they’re not contributing enough CO2. Absorption, just cut them down. This is where we’ve come to. I actually expect someone to come up with this as a serious idea.
David Blackmon [00:33:57] Yeah, you’re giving them dangerous ideas. They might adapt them.
Tammy Nemeth [00:34:01] I thought Bill Gates came up with that idea last year, that we have to cut down trees in order to save the trees.
David Blackmon [00:34:07] He did. Yes. Yes, yes, he did.
Tammy Nemeth [00:34:09] The trees are too old.
Stuart Turley [00:34:11] He got that idea from Scotland because they cut down, what, 20 million trees to put in
Tammy Nemeth [00:34:21] And now they want to blame the sheep they say the sheep is causing deforestation so they got to get rid of the sheep in scotland so trees can grow but yeah
Stuart Turley [00:34:31] Oh, that’s so bad!
Tammy Nemeth [00:34:35] But the the other absurd story there is that the dream the German Green Party wants price controls but what they want price controls over is ice cream ice cream it’s too expensive in Berlin apparently and I’m sure that zero has nothing to do with the high price of ice cream change obviously obviously obviously it has nothing to do with the increased cost for refrigeration. For the input costs, you know, like the milk and all that kind of stuff, I’m sure has nothing to do with any of that.
Irina Slav [00:35:12] And if they reduce the number of cows, of dairy cows, because they emit emissions, milk is going to become cheaper. Although they have no idea what they’re doing, do they?
Tammy Nemeth [00:35:26] Well, the funniest bit about the Green Party proposal was that it has to be for poor people. And I don’t know how you demonstrate that you’re poor to get a discount on your ice cream. I have no idea you wear a badge You wear tattered clothes is that it you know?
Irina Slav [00:35:48] No, you wear a badge. It’s never been done before in history, especially in Germany.
Tammy Nemeth [00:35:53] Especially in Germany!
David Blackmon [00:35:57] They can use that new social credit system they’re fixing to implement after they do the digital currency and then they’ll be able to track it that way.
Tammy Nemeth [00:36:08] Yeah. With the digital ID and the digital currency in the nice little EU digital wallet, it’ll be great. And then the last story, I think there is Chris Wright’s threat, which you guys kind of mentioned last week to Tom Nelson, that they’re threatening to pull support from the International Energy Agency or if it doesn’t reform significantly. Irina, what do you make of that?
Irina Slav [00:36:39] I say go for it already, don’t just talk about it, just do it, let’s see what happens. I have no idea how the funding system of the IEA is, but I expect all the members contribute proportional sums, and if we’re talking proportional then the US is giving the IEA a lot of money.
David Blackmon [00:37:02] A lot.
Irina Slav [00:37:03] It’s my time being stopped because the IEA is no longer the reliable source of energy information that it used to be. It still does have factual information, the kind of information that is based on physical data reported post-factual, but in its regular monthly reports, it’s nothing to do with facts. So please, please. Do it.
David Blackmon [00:37:35] Yeah, I would love to see it. You know, I don’t think the IEA deserves our support as long as Fatih Birol is running it. They’ve obviously strayed from their mission. Their reports are often quite laughable, like the 2021 report they leased in May of that year, I believe, that said it’s not necessary for any more investments in finding new oil resources globally. And then two months later, Fatih Beraw was. Begging U.S. Producers to produce more. I mean, it’s just a joke.
Irina Slav [00:38:09] No, let’s be fair, it wasn’t two months later, it was in October.
David Blackmon [00:38:14] Okay, four months later after five months later. Wow, a lot of time went by before he completely did a 180 on that.
Tammy Nemeth [00:38:23] But, you know, he was, Fatih Birol was appointed right around the time that the Paris Agreement was decided. And I think there was a lot of hope in the United States that Hillary was going to win. And that therefore the United State was going be full on part of implementing the Paris agreement. And Fatih was there in order to ensure that the IEA provided the right information for that the net zero transition. That’s my theory. I don’t know. What do you guys think?
Irina Slav [00:38:56] You’re providing the right information and the man is, I believe, an economist by education.
David Blackmon [00:39:01] Hard to believe, but economy, yeah, they’re, they are theoreticians and IEA’s reporting is mostly theoretical these days.
Stuart Turley [00:39:16] I love Secretary Wright’s pose here. He says, we will do one of two things when we reform, we will reform the way the IEA operates or we will withdraw. I prefer to work with him. I absolutely respect him and love his statement on that. I thoroughly enjoyed putting that article out, by the way, just thought I’d share that one.
Irina Slav [00:39:41] We should have invited him to the podcast before he became secretary, now it’s too late, he’s too busy.
Stuart Turley [00:39:48] Um, we, I’ve interviewed him four times and, uh, I’m working on getting to DC to interview him, so we’ll see how that happens and I’m dragging David with me. So we’re often, uh.
Tammy Nemeth [00:40:02] Oh, that would be fabulous.
David Blackmon [00:40:05] I have avoided Washington, D.C. Like the plague for really almost a decade now, almost 10 years. I haven’t been there in nine years, but I would go if I could get an interview with Chris Wright.
Stuart Turley [00:40:20] I’m working on that. So we’ve got a lot of big, big folks working around here. And I thoroughly, I want to give Tom a shout out. I know I don’t want to interrupt. And we’re running out of time here on the, for the stories, but Tom Nelson was cool cat. Uh, that was a really good interview. Uh, I know, uh, Irina was out. Uh, so it was.
Irina Slav [00:40:44] Why is life so unfair? I missed Katherine Paul for the first time, now I missed John Nelson.
Irina Slav [00:40:48] I’m talking to him.
Stuart Turley [00:40:51] This was not intentional.
David Blackmon [00:40:53] Well, we need to invite them both back so Irina can participate next time.
Irina Slav [00:40:57] Yes
David Blackmon [00:41:04] I guess that’s Travis Lynn, LinkedIn user with the question here. I guess it’s Travis.
David Blackmon [00:41:15] No sheep for Scotland, I like that. No sheep, no sheep. No cows for America, no sheeps for Scotland. Bill Gates as his wife.
Stuart Turley [00:41:23] And, and I just get tickled at Bill Gates and then Gayle, good morning, Gayle. Uh, EU, California and Canada. I know I’ve said this before, but the only time I’ve met Bill Gates, I thoroughly made that man so mad that a big blood vein came across his head and absolutely, I really treasure that moment that I made him that mad.
David Blackmon [00:41:51] Hey, I once had that same effect on Ted Turner when I gave a presentation to the company that I worked for, Board of Directors, he was on board. And so you and I are even.
Stuart Turley [00:42:03] Okay, I like it. I actually shook his hand and I firmly shook Bill Gates’s hand and I said, would you like to see how an operating system really works? And he did not like that comment at all. So anyway.
Tammy Nemeth [00:42:25] I agree with Gayle here. Gail said, Doomberg also said that California may just need to have a crisis before things will change. I’ve long thought this may be the only way things will changing in Canada. It’s the same anywhere where they’re doubling down on net zero. There has to be some kind of, unfortunately some kind of crisis before people to snap out of what net zero is doing. Is there another way to? Uh, to look after the environment without putting people into poverty. I believe there is, and we have to work towards that. But the way that the current net zero is going, that isn’t what’s happening.
David Blackmon [00:43:04] Yeah, but you know, in Spain and Portugal, they just had their crisis and the Spanish government is just doubling down on failure and falsifying the reasons why it happened.
Irina Slav [00:43:14] Now it wasn’t Christ, it was a blackout.
David Blackmon [00:43:17] Yeah, exactly.
Irina Slav [00:43:18] Lasts longer. So let’s have a black out for a week, see what happens then.
Stuart Turley [00:43:23] How many people died?
Irina Slav [00:43:26] I don’t know.
David Blackmon [00:43:27] I don’t think any died.
Tammy Nemeth [00:43:28] No, a few people died because they were trying to run a generator or something in a closed area and died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Irina Slav [00:43:38] Yeah, but that’s, that’s just bad, bad planning.
David Blackmon [00:43:44] Well, we had our crisis in Texas in 2021 with that winter storm on our grid, and our government did react, has made some truly excellent reforms in how our grid is managed and incentivized the building of more natural gas, and that’s going to be coming online soon. And so, I think our government here in Texas has… It wasn’t easy to convince them to do this because so many of those politicians get so much money from the wind and solar business. So they deserve credit for doing the right thing on behalf of the state, which they had failed to do in the wake of a similar winter storm in 2011. But finally, the second crisis convinced them back.
Tammy Nemeth [00:44:36] Which is good. And now that there’s changes at the EPA, I think those kinds of alterations to how they’ve been doing the grids are able to change now.
David Blackmon [00:44:48] Yes, exactly. And that’s going to I think a lot of states are going to really reorganize their energy mix here in the coming few years.
Tammy Nemeth [00:44:59] They’ll have to, yeah. Okay, so quickly my stories. These are the ones I had last week that we didn’t get to, but I thought they were really important. The first one is, Fort St. John residents challenge the David Suzuki Foundation over misleading Montney image. And so they were doing lots of fundraising off of the whole natural gas fracking is bad and the Montney region in Northern BC and Alberta is really huge. A lot of natural gas gets produced from there. And in order to help do their fundraising and to create the usual activist anger, whatever, they were using photos from Wyoming and then saying it was the Montnie region. And it was pointed out to them and they said, oh yeah, we fixed it, we fix it, but they didn’t. And so eight residents of Fort St. John, who were from that area, where they have the different fracking wells and so on, filed a competition bureau complaint against the Suzuki Foundation for misrepresenting the fracking by using these Wyoming images. So. Finally, someone’s making a complaint. There’s so much misleading information that these environmental groups producing Canada, to create the activist activity and also to raise money. And I’m just glad somebody is finally doing something.
Stuart Turley [00:46:34] I want to give a shout out to the Canadian EMP operators that do a phenomenal job in Canada. They do the oil sands is the cleanest group second to a lot of the US people, but they’ve reduced their costs in order to remain Uh, profitable. So a business perspective of an oil and gas EMP operator, they are phenomenal. Hats off to the Canadian EMP operators. Sorry, Tammy.
Tammy Nemeth [00:47:06] Yeah, thanks for that shout out, Stu. I mean, the Canadian operators do, they’ve really improved their operations, I would say, since the massive drop in prices that happened, I think, around 2014, 2015. And they had to rejig how they do things in order to stay profitable. So yeah, they’ve done some incredible things for the environment and for getting their costs down.
Stuart Turley [00:47:30] And then their profitability is now down into the forties, they can sustain profitability and that can’t happen in a lot of the plays in the United States.
Tammy Nemeth [00:47:43] And then the second article there, which I think is what Irina was talking about today on her substack, right, is the UN report that seeks to outlaw climate skepticism and punish fossil fuel defenders. And so this UN person, I’ll let Irina talk about it because she wrote an excellent substack on it today.
Irina Slav [00:48:07] Deranged text.
Irina Slav [00:48:09] That talks about the defossilisation of the economy and the defosalisation of knowledge, meaning that not only should we stop producing oil, gas and coal and selling what’s already introduced, I imagine, but we should not talk about them being in any way useful. We should ban the people who, basically the people who question the narrative. We should all be banned because this is what the fossilization of knowledge constitutes. The author of this report does not know how language works. This is what it comes down to. She has no idea how language work. And the reason that English, the fact that English is not her first language is no excuse because she graduated law in London. I keep noticing that there is a lot of that people just stringing words together because they sound well, don’t make any sense. What What the hell does it mean to de-fossilize the economy? What the hell does it mean mutual learning across levels of what? I can go on about this for hours. It still wouldn’t make sense but the greatest, the most charming part of this whole report is the idea that the report proposes protecting and upholding human rights by limiting human rights, by taking away the literal right of freedom of speech and expression of opinion as in the article whatever in the declaration of human rights. They’re upholding rights by removing rights, which is typical of the net zero crowd.
David Blackmon [00:50:19] Yeah, they’re totalitarians.
Tammy Nemeth [00:50:22] Well, like they wreck the environment to save the environment.
Irina Slav [00:50:25] Exactly, as the climate skeptics from whose sub-sacai got the report, it’s paradoxical and they don’t care.
David Blackmon [00:50:38] Well, when you believe with religious zeal that your position is right and everyone else is wrong, you’re willing to subjugate everyone else and to force them to agree with your religious zeals.
Irina Slav [00:50:53] Thank you.
David Blackmon [00:50:55] That’s all of human history.
Irina Slav [00:50:57] You don’t see the paradox but honestly I’m not very knowledgeable about the big religions of the world but I don’t think there’s so many paradoxes I mean yes that paradox in the Bible it’s a really big book written by a lot of people there will be but not like this not So blatant. That’s because they’re a bunch of incompetents, they don’t know what they’re doing. That’s the hill I’m going to die on. They are incompetent and stupid more than they are evil.
David Blackmon [00:51:32] Well, I will die on the other hill and you and I can continue to.
Irina Slav [00:51:36] We’ll die facing each other, David!
David Blackmon [00:51:40] They’re both wide-facing, each other.
Tammy Nemeth [00:51:44] You can check out my stuff at TheNemethReport.substack.com and where I write about the UK, Canada and the crazy stuff going on.
Stuart Turley [00:51:59] Where was that article?
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:00] Which article?
Irina Slav [00:52:06] Paradox.
Stuart Turley [00:52:06] UN climate report, it was on, IRINA’s is on IRINA.
Irina Slav [00:52:11] There’s a link to it. I took it from the link from the climate skeptic also on sub-set. I guess if you just google UN plus de-fossilization.
David Blackmon [00:52:25] Yeah. Or you could Google IrinaSlav.Substack. Her Substack will come up and you can you can get to it from there.
Stuart Turley [00:52:35] Mr. Blackmon.
David Blackmon [00:52:37] Okay, so we’ve talked about the Pittsburgh thing. It was a wonderful event, $92 billion in private investments, no subsidies required. Also at that event, one of my heroes in life, Mike Rowe, who has for over 20 years hosted the Dirty Jobs Program and it’s one of the most entertaining things I’ve ever seen on television, spoke as well about America’s jobs crisis and the jobs crisis. Doesn’t relate to petroleum engineers anymore. It relates to welders and all the trades, electricians, blubbers. We have incredible shortages of skilled trades, people in the United States, we’re probably half a million electricians short of what we really need. And his speech was about, you know, how are you gonna build this amazing development without the skilled workers you need? Really well worth a read. Mike Rowe is just a tremendous mind. He’s a blue collar guy, as I used to be, my whole family was. I just think he’s one of the smartest people communicating today in the media. His message is well worth paying attention to, because it is a very real crisis that the country is going to have to solve one way or another.
Irina Slav [00:54:00] In the US, by the way, same in Europe.
Stuart Turley [00:54:05] Yeah, I sent him a note or yesterday after reading your substack. So I hope we can get him on
Tammy Nemeth [00:54:12] Well, you know, he has an amazing foundation where they try to get into high schools to tell the young people that this is a way to go for a future. And they help do scholarships to do welding training, electrician, all that kind of co-op work and so on. His podcast is phenomenal. Lots of really great people that he talks with, some small companies, even celebrities and whatnot. But he’s always coming back to that point that They’re short of tradespeople.
Stuart Turley [00:54:49] I’m thinking about going back to trade school myself.
Tammy Nemeth [00:54:53] Hey, I saw you on a digger.
David Blackmon [00:54:55] Yeah, you can go to backhoe school. My substack is energy realities. You can read the micro piece there if you want to.
Irina Slav [00:55:09] All right, it is very quickly because they’re really self explanatory ministers in the UK said to admit size well seed nuclear plant price tag has soared to 38 billion pounds, which is what happens when you do not plan ahead. But when you go all in and double down and triple down on wind and solar before someone tells you that you need. Base load electricity which is when you remember about nuclear because high electricity prices are because of natural gas and you want to build nuclear now take this raw material price inflation everything inflation not least because you’re not producing anything locally because you’ve outsourced everything because you don’t want the emissions and you’re closing down factories continuing to close down factories. And this makes me really mad because I thought Britain was a sensible country, but that’s no longer the case, which is why it’s now going to cost, what was that, $50 billion for our American listeners? Probably. Where’s that money going to come from? Taxpayers.
Tammy Nemeth [00:56:34] Apparently they’re going to sell their Bitcoin stash.
David Blackmon [00:56:38] Apparently they’ve sold most of it already.
Tammy Nemeth [00:56:41] Oh, really?
David Blackmon [00:56:42] The Biden administration apparently sold most of our Bitcoin reserve kind of secretly behind the scenes, typical of the Biden administration.
Irina Slav [00:56:54] And then we have China’s car manufacturing overcapacity, because China, if you think about it, and I’m sure you do think about addressing the audience, they have an overcapacitive of everything. They have an overall capacity of solar panels. They have another capacity of, I don’t know, batteries and turbines and everything, but especially cars. So this makes Chinese-made cars. Really really cheap even with import tariffs in other parts of the world which is why Bloomberg believes that China will be selling a third of the worlds cars by 2030 but yeah we’re totally weak I mean not weak the west is totally going to beat China on anything
David Blackmon [00:57:44] Yeah
Tammy Nemeth [00:57:45] Well, you know, maybe if they stop the whole lottery for license plates, more people in China would have a car.
Irina Slav [00:57:55] I think plenty of people in China have a car and they probably have two cars because they’re buying hybrids and EVs because they are so heavily subsidized but they’re producing so much, this is my impression, they’re produced so much they can’t even place the whole produce, the whole output on the local market so they want an expansion because they’ve invested billions the state. And state-supported companies have invested billions in that manufacturing capacity. They have the raw materials, they have the processing capabilities, they have covered the supply chain. Volkswagen can never compete with that.
Tammy Nemeth [00:58:37] Yeah, exactly.
Irina Slav [00:58:39] But did anyone think about that? No. Okay, I’m done.
David Blackmon [00:58:47] Stu, isn’t China kind of solving its own oversupply, overcapacity problem by, what is it, only six of the 400 AV makers in China are actually profitable or over 300 of them have already gone out?
Stuart Turley [00:59:02] 400 of them, 400 of the 500 have gone bankrupt.
David Blackmon [00:59:08] So they’re going to solve that problem their own way there
Stuart Turley [00:59:12] Yes. Now, I think that, Irina, you bring up a fantastic point, and I’m sorry for being nice. I know it’s not in my nature to be nice, but I still think that we are about to see the trading blocks change in the world, and I’ve mentioned that a lot, and i think that this is going to be huge. The US is not going to be a major trading block with the EU or Canada if they keep going down the net zero path. And they’re going to going down offloading to China to keep them afloat. So it’s really not, I don’t see anything good. And I love your Substack by the way.
David Blackmon [00:59:59] It’s wonderful. They’re all wonderful.
Stuart Turley [01:00:03] Mine, here we go, energynewsbeat.co, and then my substack is theenergynewsbeat.substack.com. Can India replace Russian oil of sanctions by President Trump? I found that one very interesting when you sit back and consider 40% of the Indian oil is coming from Russia. And so this is going to be a gigantic problem, especially when you do the math on the tankers that go from India back to the EU and the UK for finished petroleum products. This is going to be a gigantic problem. I had a lot of fun ranting on the wind and solar day of reckoning is approaching. That was a lot of fun on my Substack, theenergynewsbeat.substack.com, and with that…
David Blackmon [01:01:03] Before we go and end your second segment, did you see the story about Lisa Murkowski being sad that her deal with the majority leader to stick that language into the big, beautiful bill to save women’s solar didn’t work? I love that. Did she cry? Did she cried like Rachel Reeves? Well, I don’t know if she cried, but she she was very sad over the weekend in an interview with the Anchorage newspaper. Yeah, it didn’t work. There’s going to be huge capital flight out of the wind and solar businesses.
Stuart Turley [01:01:37] Good! We end on a positive note!
Tammy Nemeth [01:01:43] Thank you, everybody.
Stuart Turley [01:01:46] See you guys
David Blackmon [01:01:49] Bye,.
Irina Slav [01:01:49] Have a lovely week. Bye bye.
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