Daily Standup Top Stories
Larry Fink lashes out at BlackRock’s political critics: They ‘continuously lie’
BlackRock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink lashed out at political critics of the world’s largest money manager in combative new comments Friday, saying they “continuously lie.” The remarks came as his firm continues to face heat […]
Japan to retain oil and gas interests in Russia
Japanese companies hold minority stakes in Russian fuel projects in the Far East Japanese companies will continue to participate in Russian energy projects on Sakhalin Island due to their importance for Tokyo’s energy security, […]
Oil Plummets over 3% as Stockpiles Override Iran-Israel Conflict
Only two days ago analysts were predicting oil over $100 a barrel, but by Wednesday midday, crude prices were nose-diving by close to 3% as demand concerns heavily outweighed the prospect of a wider regional […]
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
01:07 – Larry Fink lashes out at BlackRock’s political critics: They ‘continuously lie’
05:26 – Japan to retain oil and gas interests in Russia
09:16 – Oil Plummets over 3% as Stockpiles Override Iran-Israel Conflict
12:09 – Outro
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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Michael Tanner: [00:00:14] What’s going on, everybody? Welcome into the Thursday, April 18th, 2024 edition of the Daily Energy News Beat stand up. Here are today’s top headlines. First up, Larry Fink lashes out at BlackRock’s political critics. Quote they continuously lie. Interesting one there. Next up Japan to retain oil and gas interest in Russia. Hmhm very interesting comments there. I will then jump over and quickly cover what’s going on in the oil and gas markets, as we saw oil plummet over 3% today, mainly off the back of of some interesting geopolitical news. And then we will also lightly touch on what the EIA said, in terms of crude oil reserves. I will cover all that and a bag of chips. Guys, Stu is out on assignment today, so I am rocking a solo show, so we will get you in and out of your quickly on this Thursday. All right,. [00:01:07][52.8]
Michael Tanner: [00:01:07] Let’s kick this off first with Larry Fink lashes out at BlackRock’s political credits. Quote they continuously lie reading straight from the article here. You know, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink has, quote, lashed out at political critics of the world’s largest money matter in new combative comments Friday, saying again, quote, they continuously lie. These remarks come as the firm continually faces heat from hot button political fights around this country. Here’s the quote from the first quarter earnings call. We we have done a better job now of telling our story so that people can make decisions based on facts, not lies, and not on misinformation or political ization by others. He goes on to say, unfortunately, there are still out there who continuously lie about these comments. Obviously, what he’s referring to is Texas doing a lot of their the Texas political ride. Oh gosh, it’s the Texas, I think, teacher pension fund that pulled out, a few weeks ago and basically said, hey, we’re not going to continue to invest with you. He lashed out specifically then to tell them, hey, we don’t like that. You know, they they came out with this big press release saying, you know, we like, do you know, we’re not a, quote, woke investor. But he’s been Blackrock has continually been cast by the Republicans as a quote unquote purveyor of woke investing. And what I find funny and what I think, you know, Larry Fink, you know, we’ve done a bad job of educating. We have you go back and read your last two yearly investor letters, you know, letters that you write to investors. It’s chock full of stuff that says, we need to transition. We need to go to ESG. We need to be do sustainable investing, ESG investing. You’re the ones with all those funds. You’re also the ones that are still investing in oil and gas. So sure, you may not be investing in oil and gas, but you’re missing. You, my friend, are misrepresenting exactly then what your investment strategy is. If you’re telling people you’re investing in ESG, quote unquote ESG funds, but it’s really all being pumped into oil and gas companies. It’s not us that’s spreading the misinformation. It’s you, Mr. Fink, that’s spreading the misinformation. So I think he needs to kind of look inward a little bit versus outward and say, what are we doing here? And, you know, we know it’s not an education problem on your end. It’s a you need to have a different PR strategy, because if you’re going to invest in oil and gas, you’re going to have a hard time passing it as often as an ESG. But if you do, you’re the one that’s lying. So that’s my that’s my call to Larry Fink. You need to be more honest and upfront with people that you’re after. You’re after fees. The more money you can raise, the more fees you can charge. And that’s really all what it is. I mean, the game’s not hard. They want to raise more money. The more money they manage, the more fees they get. So if they feel like there’s a sector of the economy that’s stopping, that’s going to stop investing money in them, aka the pension funds, well, that’s less fees. I mean, I know that second home in Florida is expensive, okay. But we can all we, we can be honest and get the second home at the same time. Maybe the fourth level isn’t needed. Maybe you don’t need the indoor ice rink in Palm Beach. You can maybe live without that and just start using the rec center. But you know, wouldn’t want to bump into anybody who might call you out on ESG. So I find Larry Fink’s position here kind of hilarious. You know, I love if we can, you know, Mr. Producer, we can. We throw up the the cover image on this. I love this little, look he’s got going on here. Of course, he’s sitting at the Clinton Global Initiative, so we we won’t even have to talk about that. But that’s my that’s my call to Mr. Fink. I do not believe you’re the one or you are the one spreading all this information. Not necessarily everybody else spreading it about you. I think you need to be a little bit more upfront about exactly what you’re doing. Because if you come out and say you’re betting only on gas, all those people that you’re trying to raise money from on the Democratic side are going to like you, so you can’t have your cake and eat it too. My friend, at some point you have to have more. So this is an interesting, you know, conundrum of, you know, Larry thinks got no morals because his morals, his money, if he’s having morals means you have to say no to things. And if you’re not willing to say no to things, it just means you’re after the money. So. That’s really my my push here. I think everybody who listen to this podcast, you know, that Larry Fink’s talking about both sides of a mountain. But if by chance, somebody who doesn’t know much about what Blackrock does, listen to this. It’s the problems with Blackrock, not the problem with the way we’re interpreting their information. [00:05:25][257.9]
Michael Tanner: [00:05:26] Next up Japan to retain oil and gas interests in Russia. Super interesting. So I’m reading straight from the article here guys. Japanese companies according to their foreign minister announced on Tuesday Japanese companies will continue to participate in Russian energy projects on sand Clay Island due to their importance to Tokyo’s energy security. They said that on one side, then on the other side of the mouth, Tokyo will also continue its close cooperation with the G7 to pursue policies of tough sanctions on Russia. On Russia again, according to their country’s foreign minister. So pretty interesting. They’re going to they’re going to retain their interests in the same clean two LNG project and the same clean one offshore oil and gas venture in Russia’s Far East, according to the the foreign minister. Here’s the quote from that foreign minister. In the light of it, or in light of ensuring stable supplies of medium and long term gas, Japan continues to view these projects as important in the field of energy security, and intends to maintain its share. It could possibly, you know, and you know, this, this cycling one and two could be responsible for about 4% of the global market.So it’s not a insignificant amount. And this in again taking a step back of this project of this Tokyo and Japan a G7 country. So not even just not even the G7, which is the literally the and the kind of the cream of the crop when it comes to industrialized nations and the people that are pushing sanctions down Russian throat, a member of the G7, Japan needs and won’t get off Russian gas because they understand that power is related to energy security. And I love that they use the word energy security, because that’s the crux of it. Countries like Germany and Western Europe are going to find themselves in a very unique position by having no energy security, because they’ve painted themselves into a corner by ensuring that we don’t like what Russia’s doing, we’re not buying Russian gas. Newsflash they are buying Russian gas. What Japan is doing is just saying out in the open, hey, on one hand, we don’t like what Russia is doing. We’re going to sanction their oil and gas assets, but we’re also continuing to work with them because we need their gas, because we also would like to turn the lights on. You know, sanctions are are good. What is you know, everything. You know, everyone’s equal in a fight until you get punched in the mouth or you’re always prepared until you get punched in the mouth. You’re always secure until somebody cuts off your gas. So you need to make you need to make sure that you have gas flows coming in, especially if you’re in industrialized nations. I think this is a really interesting look at what some of these it’s the same calculus that India is doing in India is it isn’t necessarily part of the G7. So they’re looking in from the standpoint of we really, really, really need to make sure that the we have enough energy supply. We we can’t take a step back in production. So I think this is a sign of things to come as, as this stalemate in Ukraine keeps going farther and farther and the sanctions continue and continue, to be put on Russia. I think it’s going to I think it’s clear that you might be seeing more countries take this approach. Japan is just being honest. So you, you you can’t really fault them for that. [00:08:39][193.0]
Michael Tanner: [00:08:39] We’ll cover finance here quickly, guys, but we’ll just pay the bills again. As always, thanks for checking us out. www.EnergynewsBeat.Com. All the news and analysis that you hear is brought to you by said website. You can check out the description below for all links to the article that we covered. Time, timestamps and everything in between. Check us out. Dashboard.energynewsbeat.com and we will, appreciate everybody’s support there. Stu and the team do a tremendous job making sure energy speed stays upbeat. Everything you need to know to be at the tip of the spear when it comes to the energy and oil and gas business. Again, energynewsbeat.com. [00:09:14][34.6]
Michael Tanner: [00:09:16] Oil plummets over 3% as stockpiles override Israel a Iran Israel conflict. I mean overall markets today as in terms of oil and gas got slammed. We saw the EIA report, a build which we’ll dive into in a bit. But really this 3% drop we’ve seen in oil prices. And as we as we sit here now about 6 p.m. on the 17th, prices are 82, 25. Again, that’s 3% off where they were trading at during the day. Very interesting, folks. You know, the the the, you know, we’ll cover the air in a bit. It wasn’t necessarily out of line relative to what the API was expecting. But what a lot of this has to do is what’s going on geopolitically in the world. And I hate to say and and I hate to say that, you know, war is good for oil. That does not mean we want war at all. We we don’t. So the fact that we’re seeing a lot of the movement with oil be based upon what’s going on geopolitically, actually good to me because a lot of this dollars, you know, this $2 and 75 cent drop means we’re less likely to get nuked. I mean, really, that’s what it comes down to because, you know, this is the first time we’ve seen, you know, state on state aggression in terms of Iran and Israel. A lot of it’s through proxies and all that stuff. So very scary. But but we did see oil take that tumble here. Other top line indices S&P 500 shaved about a half percentage point off a Nasdaq down 1.5 or 1.25 percentage points. Two and ten year yields fairly flat. Two year yields down about 0.04 percentage points. Ten year yields actually stayed fairly fairly flat at 4.5 and 4.9. Or the two year yield dollar index down about 2/10 of a percentage point. Bitcoin down to 61. 68. That’s about 3.3 percentage point drops. And as I mentioned, crude oil down to 8227. Brant oil down 8769. Natural gas fairly flat, $1.71. Speaking of the EIA, we did see a 2.7 million barrel build from the EIA, excluding the SPR. We actually did see a 3.4 total million barrel build. So fairly much in line with what the API was saying. They were estimating about a 3 million barrel build. I know Reuters was expecting only a 1.4 million barrels bill. Newsflash. It’s why you don’t trust Reuters. No, I’m just kidding. We we love Reuters. But I’m I’m going to be much more specific about the API number than I’m about the Reuters number. So, a little bit higher based upon that API number. But obviously the street did not like it because oil took an absolute waxing today. We also did see, some totals. The, the total stocks in is just absolutely, unbelievable. Including a combination, of everything. So. Absolutely. You know, a pretty. Yeah. A tough day for oil. I’m not going to complain. Oil’s $82. We’re all still able to make money here, so I’m not too worried about that. [00:12:08][172.4]
Michael Tanner: [00:12:09] This is our last, you know, you’ll be listening this on Thursday, right? Friday you’ll get. I don’t know what stew has in the pipeline. We’ve got a few that really interesting ones that we that we just covered. You’ll hear our weekly recap on Saturday, and then we will back in the chair Monday. I’m at it. So appreciate everybody who’s check this out. I will let you guys get out of here. Get back to work. Start your day has always. www.Energynewsbeat.com For Stuart Turley I’m Michael Tanner. We will see you on Monday, folks. [00:12:09][0.0][710.7]
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