In this episode of Energy Newsbeat – Conversations in Energy, Stu Turley hosts Steve Reese (Reese Energy Consulting) and Matthew Hill (fire suppression expert) for a powerful conversation on the future of energy, natural gas demand, AI data center growth, and energy infrastructure. They unpack the collision course between LNG exports and power-hungry data centers, highlight the coming turbine shortage, and explore mobile microgrid and modular refinery innovations. Topics span from CNG applications, geothermal crossover, and battery fire risks, to U.S. refining bottlenecks, regulatory barriers, and California’s energy policies as a national security threat. The episode is a dynamic mix of industry insight, policy critique, and forward-looking solutions—driven by a call for energy dominance, regulatory reform, and American innovation.

When I get to visit with CEOs and industry leaders, I learn, and today is no exception. Steve and Matt are fantastic leaders.

You will want to connect with Steve Reese on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-reese-185a86/

And Matthew Hill is a must-connect for safety: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewhillknightfirespecialists4055682742/

Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro

00:00 – Intro & Guests

01:03 – Gas Demand: LNG vs. Data Centers

01:53 – Turbine Shortage & Microgrids

02:43 – Big Tech’s Unreal Gas Expectations

04:05 – Mobile Data Centers on Well Pads

05:16 – Frac Firms Becoming Tech Giants

06:41 – ROI of AI Infrastructure

08:20 – CNG & Mobile Midstream

09:42 – Gen Z & ESG Pressure

10:17 – Failed Solar & Gas Reality

10:52 – SMRs & Powering AI Boom

12:20 – Flynn, California, & Business Exodus

15:09 – Regulation Creep & Safety

20:32 – Illegals & Hydrocarbon Transport Risks

21:30 – CA Imports Dirty Oil While Shutting Local Supply

23:21 – U.S. Refinery Gap

24:57 – NIMBYs & NatSec Risk

26:03 – Gas Price Outlook

29:55 – New Modular Refineries

31:38 – Operator vs. Political Disconnect

33:02 – Reese’s AI & LNG Training

33:45 – CNG/LNG Use on Pads

34:52 – Battery Fire Safety & BESS

36:47 – Mobile Power Best Practices

38:34 – Lithium Battery Threats

39:02 – Wrap-Up & Outro

Key points:

1. The tug-of-war between natural gas demand for LNG exports and data centers in Texas, and the challenges around securing enough natural gas supply.

2. The shortage of turbines and the need to find alternative solutions like fuel cell technology and mobile data centers to power these large data centers.

3. The potential for oil and gas operators to become data center operators themselves by leveraging their existing infrastructure and gas supply.

4. The growth of geothermal energy and its potential synergies with the oil and gas industry in terms of technology and expertise.

5. The challenges around building new refineries in the US due to regulatory hurdles and NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) opposition.

6. The national security implications of California’s energy policies and the need for more reliable energy infrastructure.

7. The potential for natural gas vehicles, particularly CNG and LNG, to help lower emissions compared to diesel.

8. The fire safety concerns around lithium-ion batteries, especially in electric vehicles and data centers, and the need for specialized fire suppression solutions.

Thank you again, Steve and Matt! You made my day! – Stu.

https://reeseenergyconsulting.com/

Stuart Turley [00:00:07] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy Newsbeat podcast. My name is Stu Turley, president and CEO of the Sandstone Group. Today is just not a fantastic day. It is a great day. I’m here with the Steve Reese. We’re here to talk about oil, gas, natural gas, AI, data centers and what’s coming around the corner. And I got a special guest. I got Matthew. You know, he is over here with fire suppression and he is going to put this fire out today. How are you guys?

Steve Reese [00:00:34] Right. My bud, my friend,.

Matthew Hill [00:00:35] I don’t want to put out your fire. That was a, you came in with a lot of energy there. I’m not, I don’t, I didn’t want to put that out at all. I also own a flame thrower. So, you know, after this, if you want to keep that energy going, we got, we got room so, so what are you both seeing in the energy spectrum now? Cause I don t want to call it gas anymore. Just we’re energy only gas people are energy people, you know, so where are you excited about? Reese has a lot going on.

Steve Reese [00:01:03] The thing I see the most right now, and it affects us and is good for us and all that, is the tug of war for natural gas demand between LNG to export and data centers. People want to put these data centers in Texas, cheaper natural gas prices. Obviously, the LNG market is fed from Louisiana and Texas, and we’re working on some really large projects. To where these specific data center operators don’t understand that the gas isn’t there for the volumes that they need to generate power. So it’s really interesting, and I still think we’re going to see a three and four handle on gas prices here relatively soon.

Stuart Turley [00:01:43] Steve, we were chit-chatting the poor while we were setting up the gear, and you brought up a huge issue, and that is the shortage of turbines is about four or five years out.

Matthew Hill [00:01:53] Can you hear that turban people?

Stuart Turley [00:01:56] Figuring out how to build microgrids ahead of time, and putting in natural gas turbines to get your plant up and running, your data center up and run. Tell us a little bit about what you’re hearing there.

Steve Reese [00:02:07] Same thing, you know, we’re working on one that is massive, that the three server farms, each of them are half a million square feet, nothing but servers. And when the developer came to us, National Gas Supply showed us the numbers that they needed. I mean, it was pretty comical. You know, it’s like it’s this BCF a day isn’t just going to show up in West Texas. And so now what we’re seeing, they’re having to layer these things in, and also looking at fuel cell technology, because buying any of this power off the grid, it’s not going to work. I mean, Urquhart’s going to laugh at them, and so…

Matthew Hill [00:02:43] We’re going to go drill to spec is what we’re going to have to do, right?

Steve Reese [00:02:48] Guy that within a couple of years that Microsoft will be filing drilling permits.

Matthew Hill [00:02:54] Okay. So we had the same discussion. I was in Ohio last week, we, you know, with all the leaders in Ohio, energy and operators and first responders. And, you, I just kind of take him to the side and kind of put my arm around their neck and I go, look at this pad, you guys drilled six wells. Now look at that side of the pad. There’s nothing on it. Have you ever thought about you operator having a small data center out here? Like you could become a data center company to tomorrow. You come in and, and nowadays you can have mobile data centers. You don’t have to put it on, you know, you do not have to put it in a slab, you can build them on chassis. You can build the turbines on chassis and then you tap these wells, but this whole side of the location. Now the infrastructure is the build out. You, we’ve got the pad, but the, but the data center and the chassis for the both things on chassis, you roll in with it and get them going because you can get the gas over to them from your wellheads. But the, the build outs will be pulling in the fiber optics because we don’t have, you know, we had to have fiber optics.

Stuart Turley [00:04:05] This is bringing out exactly what General Flynn and I talked about, and that is we are in a boom for energy. You mentioned that. I changed what I was doing before from just oil and gas to energy, newsbeat. And so we are in, and I can see us going after, let’s say, countries are needing to go after their supply lines. Japan is investing in basket. You have Saudi Arabia investing in LNG. So Germany, oh, I know somebody that’s working on that route. So yeah, I happen to know somebody. And so when you sit back and look, the countries are investing in their energy streams. So it makes sense that companies are going to be investing in there. So you’re gonna have the Amazons of the world become oil drillers. Interviewed Ron Gusick over at Liberty Energy. We love Ron. Ron is a class act, and he and Secretary Chris Wright had taken that to they are moving to the data center side. So they are going from a frack company to an energy company to a data center.

Matthew Hill [00:05:16] Would you prefer that Microsoft start filing permits or would you prefer Microsoft having a rent rack space on a well site that’s a data center?

Steeve Reese [00:05:26] Yeah, I think it’s a good point. I think however the economics drive it, seriously.

Matthew Hill [00:05:32] I just think we have the know-how to make it happen faster.

Steve Reese [00:05:35] Will we do in, in, and Microsoft, you know, file some billing permits, but they’re not going to, they’re not going turn into an operator tomorrow. Right. They not be the major working interest. Maybe they buy an operator. Well, or they drive where the commodity is going to go. But I’ve got a client in Idaho. We’ve talked about this, a small producer in Idaho that’s raising money and a really nice gas play. It’s about 30,000 acres and Williams is right there. And you know they said. We talked about marketing gas, and they said, we’re not going to marketing gas. We’re not even going to talk to Williams. We’re going to do a data center. Now my question is, being a natural gas guy, is that’s awesome. And I understand the concept, but the one thing I’ve never seen out of any of these data center developers is a spreadsheet of the wrecking ball. So where’s the return? So you’re going to build a server farm that’s two million square feet of servers. Is it going to help my phone get faster? Is it gonna be my TV faster? Am I going to have to be paying more? How do they get a return on these? And I really haven’t heard a real solid answer.

Matthew Hill [00:06:41] I mean, you’ve seen what 5G has done for us. My phone has never been worked better or faster.

Stuart Turley [00:06:47] Yeah. Right. Especially with a 5G chip. So it’s marketed.

Steve Reese [00:06:55] You’re right. The big one in West Texas is a $500 billion all-in Capex project. Where is the return on that fund? When we started working with them on the gas supply and saying, well, we can go to this pipe, we go to one of them, we could go over here, we should lay a line, whatever. This might save you about 20, 30 million and 25 cents an end. They’d go, we don’t care. Savings? We don’t. Where do we write the check? And it’s, it’s almost, it, it it’s a little, it a little frightening.

Matthew Hill [00:07:27] And that’s why in my head, I love these micro grid ideas for you roll in with your on wheels data center and your on-wheels turbines, and you set up as an operator, like you’re renting rack space from us at our data center. But the payout for us as an industry is, Hey, We’re going to build this out to where it’s mobile, except for the fiber optics being run into the, you know, into the pad, but at least we have our own butts covered and we sold the gas and we made that turbine and that data center profitable in six months.

Stuart Turley [00:08:09] Your bonkers covered is important, especially at our age.

Matthew Hill [00:08:12] Well, I just, I mean, what are we going to do? Ask the whole market to sustain another shell boom that was a shell of idea.

Steve Reese [00:08:20] It’s no different than the, what I call mobile midstream. And we’ve worked with some clients that initially chased the flares in the bucket. And then they had a little JT plan on a skid. They had tankage, et cetera. They’d roll it up, they’d take care, they’d process the gas. And no, they wouldn’t tie it to a pipeline. They create C and G cylinders. They take the residue gas, the C and g, turn around and take it to the guys to use for drilling through. And it was all mobile. This, this Wells ready to finally be connected, go to the next one. And so it’s really no different than that.

Matthew Hill [00:08:54] And a lot, and some of that for me is also reading the room on, you know, my son and his, you, know, people below his age, like, okay, well they, they have a real fascination and a keen eye for we’re now working really hard to teach them about, well, we’re the best stewards of our resources. I can just say that to them, but they don’t take anything and face value at that age, like anything. So if I’m telling them that we are environmentalists and we do care about the environment, wouldn’t it make sense for us to be mobile and when I move off that pad, everything comes with me and I can return it to nature as pristine as I can, you know, so there’s that aspect that runs through my mind as well. Like, okay, we can do that too. There’s nothing we can’t engineer.

Steve Reese [00:09:42] I can preach so long about solar and wind being anything but environment. And if you notice the giant, if you ever flew to Vegas in the last 10 years and you’re flying over the desert and this thing blinds you, if know what I’m talking about, the huge mirror project that just shut it down after spending $4 billion of our money on it didn’t work. I grew up out there. Killed 10,000 birds a year and… We didn’t eat them. You know, and yeah, so I don’t know. I always go back to natural gas. It’s hard for me to be objective about it because it speaks to my family.

Matthew Hill [00:10:17] But it’s, it’s the most environmentally friendly molecule we have to produce energy right now. It is.

Stuart Turley [00:10:24] You know, you sit back and we take a look at where we’re going now. We are not going to have AI data centers or China is going to win the race. If we don’t get coal, we don’t get natural gas online. Because we’re 10 years away from having enough megawatts being produced. Even with all of the micro, the SMRs coming online. I’ve interviewed several CEOs from nuclear companies. Love it. It’s fantastic.

Matthew Hill [00:10:52] But aren’t we really in true t- are we ten years or further?

Stuart Turley [00:10:56] It depends. I mean, it depends on how fast, like, Jay… You, who is the CEO of Nano Nuclear, they’re building two plants, right? Two nuclear reactors, one in Canada, one in the US. And each one of those has a plant. And each one is hopefully going to be building 100 micro reactors, nuclear reactors a year. I just found out that the Department of Defense has been building micro reactors to be rolling out on US Air Force bases soon. I think that’s phenomenal. I think they need to power up our Air Force bases in our military bases using nuclear. Way to go, Department of Defense. But let’s also put that into the commercial.

Matthew Hill [00:11:40] More.

Stuart Turley [00:11:41] Thank you.

Matthew Hill [00:11:42] The oath of America, Department of War.

Steve Reese [00:11:44] I’ll just say our Pete is different than what their Pete was. I’ll leave it at that.

Stuart Turley [00:11:48] I love the secretary of war, he is a cool cat. He is. Speaking of war. I really appreciated my interview with General Flynn that aired yesterday. It was pretty cool. He is a Cool Cat. And man, our government went after him. Yes. Like you wouldn’t believe. So I’ll tell you what, we’ve got a big chore ahead of us because he brought up some great points, even about California. Boy, Californians, you better get a new governor and go get Steve Hilton out there. Man, we need Steve Hilton in there.

Steve Reese [00:12:20] Yeah, especially if you’ve seen the one that’s running against him. I don’t know where that came from, but that’s not of this earth. She’s unhinged. It’s really sad.

Stuart Turley [00:12:29] If he used any other word, this would be demonetized.

Matthew Hill [00:12:34] Unfortunately, I was able to go meet up with Stitt in Oklahoma this week. We went down to the Capitol. He gives a, we have a big oil and gas, oil-filled prayer breakfast. We’d love for you to attend, but the oil-field prayer breakfast is coming up. And if he can be there, he’ll come, you know, and speak, you just for a short time. We have keynote speakers, but you know he loves and appreciates our energy industry here. And he gave, you know, he will give us a proclamation. So we go and meet him. We get to pray with him, you know, really it’s just like, let us, we’re, we here, we want to pray, with you for you and your leadership and the people in this building and my partner, Steven went out to California with governor Stitt little under the radar goes out there under the radar of Newsom, so he doesn’t even want to visit with the, our governor did not want to, visit with their governor. He wouldn’t, he went out there and rendered out a sportsman’s club and had business leaders from California to come meet him privately to see if he could poach them from California, to Oklahoma and said, Hey, you know, I’ve got this deal going on all day, you, know, we’re going to be out here. Let’s, let’s just have a chat and see if you guys might want to come to Oklahoma and I, you now, and I heard about new, some finding out about all this and trying to shut down the whole deal and all that. But I asked him, I said, Hey, you know, what, what is all this? And he was very candid and said, well, they’ve passed some legislation in California to essentially make it to where California can sue all the business leaders out there through their labor laws. So that’s in the best interest of the government to go out and find anybody with some kind of grievance about their company to file something. And the government gets like half the money of the winnings of the person who takes action against their company.

Stuart Turley [00:14:38] Fair and

Matthew Hill [00:14:39] lawfare against, against everybody out there that has employees. So they will, they will go find any kind of labor law violation possible.

Steve Reese [00:14:51] And they’ve got to find revenue.

Matthew Hill [00:14:53] This guy didn’t let me take my crayon break in the, you know, my safety and security time in the in the peace room. Well, let’s go sue them and they get, they get a big chunk of the process. They, the state government will get a bit chunk of their proceeds, whatever it is.

Stuart Turley [00:15:09] You see, Secretary Chris Wright is absolutely one of the best energy secretaries we have ever had.

Matthew Hill [00:15:16] We’ll probably ever have at the right time at the right place in history.

Stuart Turley [00:15:21] I think between Lee Zeldin and Doug Burgum and Chris Wright, I call them the horsemen of the energy apocalypse dominance, because they are going to achieve energy dominance through being getting everything done. But we have got to get the regulations changed in order to bring nuclear on. We’ve got to get the regulations changed in order to get pipelines because New Jersey, New York is lost to businesses without pipelines. I did not realize that the electricity in New Jersey has gone up 235% and they have 80% natural gas and nuclear. It’s because of regulations and they can’t get any more natural gas in there because of the pipelines and everything else. Go figure this one out.

Steve Reese [00:16:09] Well, it’s interesting to see Newsom trying to flip to the middle now that he’s going to run for president. It’s well, I don’t think we really want to shut these refineries down. And you know, we might even let a drilling permit now, you know for the first time in 10 years and he’s trying to and boys and girls sports, well, all of a sudden these guys try to flip, but a lot of them I think it’s too late. And I think, I’ll be very honest, I almost hope Madhami wins in New York. To wake people up because that place will go straight to a head.

Matthew Hill [00:16:42] Hole if he’s in. Lord, don’t let that happen. I have friends that live out there.

Stuart Turley [00:16:48] There are the two refineries that are about to close, and they just had the Chevron refinery actually catch fire. They’re going to lose 20% of their refining capacity.

Matthew Hill [00:16:59] Yeah, stop that. I’ve got fire suppression equipment, guys. Like, there should be no fires in oil and gas on the news ever. Yeah. Well, they’ll find me on LinkedIn.

Stuart Turley [00:17:07] It’ll be in the show notes because you got to get a hold of this guy. He’s got flamethrowers, but he can put the fire out.

Matthew Hill [00:17:13] I mean, it doesn’t make you, I mean I, I was talking to a guy, I was talking too, a big safety leader in Ohio. He was, you know, gracious enough to call me today and say he was setting me up with some other people out there, but our industry hasn’t done a great job about protecting our assets once they’re utilized. You know, I’m in the big chunk of the AFE is on drilling and completion and once it gets facilities, those poor guys are like, Hey boss, I need to replace this valve. It’s how much $25. Like you just spent $7 billion on the website. Yeah, but it’s all gone now and you know, we’ve got returns coming in those tanks. Like, so yeah, like, I don’t want to spend $25 on it. So fire suppression on the backside of that, it does take a backseat. But I still want to somehow wrap it around our industry. Like, like let’s do it a wholesale at the, you know, at the end of the day and think 30,000 foot view, keep it from becoming regulation, keep it from become some kind of insurance, you push on this. I don’t, I don’t want regulations. I want us to do ourselves.

Stuart Turley [00:18:16] Is to get to the Lee Zeldin and the EPA and then get to their regulatory body because what’s happening right now is regulations and insurance are changing even the EV market. EVs are causing homeowners insurance rates to double. Car insurance rates for EVs are doubling, it’s the same thing with fire suppression.

Matthew Hill [00:18:40] That’s, that’s why I want, I want us as an industry for anything we do that we see as an eyesore right now that will become a regulation. We have the engineering and technology and mindset to cover our own problems ourselves before it becomes regulatory, before it comes insurance. And the reason being for me in my head, okay, we are very fortunate to have the leaders we have right now and they will stay off as much regulation from us as they can. And so we have this room right now to take care of our own problems, what if on the worst case scenario, we get another set of another bunch of crazy people. To now become leaders again, and they come and stuff it down our throat, all the things we’re not doing. And it becomes over-regulated again. And then again, prices just skyrocket for no reason other than somebody had, you know, that pervy.

Steve Reese [00:19:39] Have to look at was the MV pipeline to West Virginia. And what went through, and of course, the guy that ended up being our enemy and the Senator. But if you’ve ever seen the approval process, even for an extension or a big compressor station or something like that, I have a friend that worked at FERC for a while back in the 90s. And he said, You know, these pieces of paper will… Go through 15 desks, and some of these guys have nothing on their desk. And I think we’ve really got to carve it down, make it a lot easier. We have enough history of safety with pipelines versus other modes of moving commodities.

Matthew Hill [00:20:22] Governor in our state, along with, you know, law enforcement agencies just stopped lanes of traffic and arrested.

Stuart Turley [00:20:32] 40 illegals, and 100 of those came, 44 of those from California, 32 of those come from New Jersey and Illinois. Holy smokes, 90 of those were truck drivers.

Steve Reese [00:20:47] And it said, no name given on the…

Matthew Hill [00:20:49] See the way, I mean, wake up world. Do you want your gas and hydrocarbons and energy resources put in a safe pipeline designed by oil and gas engineers? I mean we don’t want to lose a drop at all. You know, it’s in our best interest. So environmentally always equals financial responsibility. So it’s two things going hand in hand or put it on a truck. It’s mind boggling.

Stuart Turley [00:21:16] Poor saps in California that are running California. I love Mike Umbro and Georgia. Fantastic people. They the pipeline.

Matthew Hill [00:21:25] We only have two people in California that are celebrating us. Yeah, Mike. Thank you, Mike

Stuart Turley [00:21:30] And I had to, George Harmer, I interviewed him and Steve Hilton, but the pipeline running the backbone of California is losing $2 million a month because it doesn’t have enough oil. And it’s physics. The grid and oil transport require physics. And you don’t have

Steve Reese [00:21:54] the heavy oil, it’s a different deal out there. My COO worked that area back in the 80s a lot, and he said the efficiencies were different. And then the way you move things around are different. There’s steam floods and all that to thin some of the oil out. And that makes a lot of sense. And it’s just bizarre to me that that state will import the dirtiest oil on the planet, yet they have so many reserves there that we could produce it so much cleaner.

Stuart Turley [00:22:22] Import from, they used to import from Alaska. The pipeline, which I happened, I loved working on up there and selling equipment up there to them. And that is you’d love the fact that we, I would rather buy from Alaska, Alaska would rather sell to California than have it. The molecules come from Russia, then get transported to India. It’s refined and then and then diesel.

Matthew Hill [00:22:45] You probably know the numbers and I, I do a terrible job. I should keep up with, I should keep up a lot more with Brian and Bill, Energy Rogue, because I should memorize more numbers before I come on with esteemed leaders like you. But how much of our oiling, just our oil goes overseas to be refined.

Steve Reese [00:23:06] Well, it’s mostly the oil that can’t be refined here is some, and the other is lack of markets and lack of regulatory help in building more facilities.

Matthew Hill [00:23:21] Do you think we could build out to refine our own oil in the United States?

Steve Reese [00:23:27] Projects now in South Texas, these guys, one is 80,000 barrels a day, another is more boutique, 20,000 barrel a day. There’s guys working on that. And we… I mean, do we need… Probably at least half a dozen. More sizable ones, yeah.

Matthew Hill [00:23:41] But look at how long that project’s gonna take because of regulatory.

Stuart Turley [00:23:45] 50 years, 1977 was the last big.

Matthew Hill [00:23:49] You’ll be the first one in 50 years.

Steve Reese [00:23:51] Yeah, they’re about to get their funding. It’s a great guy, named David Billings with South Texas Resources, really nice facility. They’re actually, I believe it’s his that they’re taking a formal renewables plant and tweaking it to be an oil refinery. And so we need so many.

Matthew Hill [00:24:10] And how long is this project from the time you began it until it will be finished and operational and putting out product? For three years. So we need, it’s been from the time three years ago.

Steve Reese [00:24:23] I say now if they have their funding and they say green light today, it’s about three years.

Matthew Hill [00:24:28] But when did you start this journey?

Steve Reese [00:24:31] He started it probably two years ago, so that’s five years old.

Matthew Hill [00:24:35] It’s a five-year, Hey, I’ve got an idea. I want to, I want to build out a facility and you’re asking that, Hey everybody out there, we need a dozen of these, see what I mean? And we’re talking about our, our energy needs are going to double at least in the next 10 years. And we’ve just now thinking about a five year project.

Stuart Turley [00:24:57] Biggest problem is NIMBYs, not in my bag. And it’s going to be a problem. California is only just one huge example, because it is a national security risk at this particular moment. Gavin Newsom has driven that state to become, I think, one of the single biggest national security risks we face right now.

Steve Reese [00:25:20] There’s no doubt it is. And I do not know how you change the mindset of the politicians out there from this… Education, I would hope. But the simple fact, yeah. But the sample fact is, is, you know, they’re scared to death that they’re losing voters right now with what’s going on with ICE.

Matthew Hill [00:25:38] I should be scared that they’d lose lives.

Steve Reese [00:25:40] Yeah. And it’s all virtue signaling. And then it has nothing to do with taking care of the country or taking care their consumer’s needs. It’s how can I stay in power? And that’s where the NIMBY things comes from. They got a virtue of saying, oh, it’s going to be horrible. But we’ll put up a bunch of wind turbines that are a million feet high, and don’t worry about those.

Stuart Turley [00:26:03] Where do you see us going in the next two years in natural gas? You see us at $5, $4, $3.

Steve Reese [00:26:09] We’ll see some of it. I mean, we’ll see $5 bumps unless something happens. But, you know, as you well know, we’ve spent a lot of time in Europe calling on CEOs over there, especially in Germany and Poland, and to 100% of those guys, plus Amazon and Microsoft and their big units, they’re 100% what American Shale Gas. They have flipped. The wind stuff has destroyed their economy. When we first started, BASF laid off 10,000 in Germany. It’s because they couldn’t afford their electric bills from all the wind. So the electric bills are still cheaper than California. What’s going to drive us and our prices over here eventually is going to be Western Europe. LNG is going to be a ubiquitous global commodity and it’s getting there already.

Matthew Hill [00:26:57] Well, as I was, I was on the call. So the AAD fluids conference is coming up and we start preparing for that on the national board. And one of the things that came up is like, Hey, should we, you know, maybe have some geothermal guys come and talk to you for, you know, furbovo and Hey, I mean, there’s a, well, I, I have seen some great speakers on geothermal and how quickly they are adopting our and gas practices to eventually, and I forget the name of what they’re going to call, you know, we have BCF in natural gas, but they have, you know, a different moniker, but essentially. It will be on par with natural gas and price.

Stuart Turley [00:27:40] Two days ago, Secretary Chris Wright just put out a post and said geothermal will be growing by X number of percent. I can’t remember what it was, but geothermal is on their radar. Yeah. I mean, it is too.

Steve Reese [00:27:51] It should be in certain areas. Why not exploit the resources that are there, but in a conservative way, that help the consumer, that bring your bills down, that are safe and effective.

Matthew Hill [00:28:02] Good to the environment, getting natural gas out of some of those well bores as well. So, I mean, everything we do in natural gas is a big part of, you know, geothermal as well, I mean it all ties in together with at the end of the day we have. More abundant energy, more affordable energy, more reliable, but I was, I am fascinated by that. So we’re on that board this morning, you know, people brought up like Fervo and other companies out there pushing because the only thing I haven’t seen a whole lot of yet is a lot of operators becoming geothermal operators. There’s geothermal companies grabbing a lot of experienced people in operators, bringing them to them. But that geothermal really hasn’t been funded by traditional oil and gas companies yet. You know, it’s funded by a lot of green energy kind of initiatives, if you will.

Steve Reese [00:28:54] That’s fine. We don’t care. Yeah, I don’t hear either. But there’s a lot of crossover between the drilling technology and the way you move product. It’s a little like CO2. Okay. In the early days of the CO2 floods in New Mexico and in West Texas that we worked on, Texaco was very similar in nature to what they’re thinking about in geothermal. The technology’s there and I’m excited about it. I think it’s great.

Matthew Hill [00:29:18] Okay, so Reese gets to be a part of this. You build out, you know, your first refinery in 50 years. That’s terrifying. That will refine our products here from US, you know, minerals. Do you get, is there some kind of like trust slash seal of approval kind of underwriter laboratories where, hey, look, we know Reese does this right. Will you see a boon to at least your process and your people and the way You do it to be able to say, Hey, we’re going to call on you. Can you get more of these done quicker? And what would that look like?

Steeve Reese [00:29:55] Possibly. I mean, it was interesting. What transpired, the whole thing was at NAEP last year, I hosted a big dinner and I wasn’t able to attend and Kimberly hosted this big dinner and Mr. Billings had contacted me and let me, he goes, you know, we’re looking at project. We’re going to need help in marketing the project, the product, buying some gas for the facility. I want you guys involved. And then it kind of evolved from there, and they’re in the money-raising phase. I think it will hopefully just be a way to start the engine of some other refineries. And now’s the time to do it while you have a friendly atmosphere in Washington. You say the word refinery in the last 20 years, and it was, oh, my God, you’re going to kill everybody.

Stuart Turley [00:30:40] Refineries and critical minerals. Those are the two biggies. You can drill all you want and you can drill baby drill. And there’s a disjunction between President Trump. I love President Trump, but he doesn’t understand that it’s a global market yet. So, you know, when you sit back and think $60 oil is actually $42 oil in the old days, as far as costs go. So we’ve got a higher than $60 oil.

Matthew Hill [00:31:04] I think that’s all in the, I mean, all our leaders say things like that, you know, it’s, it’s good publicity. It’s, you, it makes headlines. That’s all on the trading room floor. I mean even on the trade room floor, a lot of that doesn’t translate to what you see right now in oil and gas is as far as operations anyway, you there’s a huge disparity from our reality. And the re operator service companies and trade room floor in Washington, DC. It’s just like it’s everybody has a completely different story of what’s really going on.

Steeve Reese [00:31:38] Chris is the first one in a long time that really has a clue.

Matthew Hill [00:31:41] Can translate it all to our leadership, yeah.

Steeve Reese [00:31:44] You mentioned Rare Earth Minerals, recent energy training that the line has been for 25 years where we’ve teamed and with our own AI stuff with a partner and those are going to all be online soon and now we’re developing a Rare Earth minerals school. We’ve got our LNG one of course ready. My Gas 101 will be online to buy here really shortly and the AI portion of it is Fantastic. The bot has a lot better voice than I do. They don’t have to look at my face. It’s cheaper. I mean, it’s wonderful. So, but the rarest minerals is one we’re really going to tap. We’ll start tap these classes here pretty soon. That’s exciting. Yeah.

Matthew Hill [00:32:25] I need to take all these classes and I get a certificate with my name on it signed by you, right? I’m coming to your house and using your printer.

Steeve Reese [00:32:32] You know, you started talking about all these years, I would every year, I’d have to go to the CPE education credits, and you pay your fee and they give you a certificate. We’ve talked to these guys about these new courses, and I said, you know what, I’m gonna develop my own certificate. I said I’ve got more credibility in these guys that just charge you a fee and put CP on the thing. I said we’re gonna have it like a Reese education credit. So we’re developing it right now.

Stuart Turley [00:33:02] Why not go to reeseenergyconsulting.com, reeseenergyconsultting.com.

Matthew Hill [00:33:09] What are we missing? What part of energy have we not covered?

Stuart Turley [00:33:13] Here’s kind of hanging tight. I think that they grow with natural gas, the molecule. Steve, you talked about this with me on one of our last podcasts, and the molecule demand in the oil and gas space is changing. And again, we’re seeing more natural gas CNG trucks, LNG trucks in China and other parts of the world. I think the way to lower emissions, guys, is to really push for CNG type trucks, because you can still use a combustion engine, but you’ll lower, instead of using diesel, you CNG.

Steeve Reese [00:33:45] Yeah, the downside is something that my friend Aubrey tried about about 20 years ago was you’re going to have a large tank in your trunk and it’s larger with the larger vehicles. Right. And it’s scary. It’s, you know, it’s 800 pounds pressure. It’s a little scary, but CNG definitely has started to work in mobile applications in the field for fuel and compression and things like that. We’re starting to work on some projects on the small unit containers of LNG.

Matthew Hill [00:34:16] Okay, so I was hoping.

Steeve Reese [00:34:17] And there are about 9,000 to 15,000 gallons of LNG, and they’re very mobile. There’s a big plant in Fort Lauderdale we’re working with, and people are starting to use those for drilling fuel.

Matthew Hill [00:34:30] So I can put it in ISO for a frac site. Yeah. And so that’s a sway. It’s about an 8,000 gallon tank.

Steeve Reese [00:34:37] So a potential fix early on for the smaller data center power generators are the ISO containers.

Stuart Turley [00:34:47] Matt, how about people get you then on LinkedIn? What do you see coming around the corner?

Matthew Hill [00:34:52] I have, I know so many people doing so many amazing things right now, you know, for us, I’ve got the, probably the only liquid out there that will stop thermal runaway and the lithium ion batteries aren’t going away, you know, despite there being a plethora of other battery technologies being built out that particular type is the trenches are dug in there’s a whole network of, you know, procurement to end user now for a long time. So lithium-ion battery fires will be seen more and more, you know, especially as some of these EV cars, you know, lengthen in time. I mean, we need, you know, they, they have to bring them over here in container ships or whatever these battery packs is we’re not building these battery packs in the U S you know. Not really. I mean we, we are building some lithium-on. Batteries here, but yeah, for the most part, we either assembling them or they’re coming from other areas of the, you know, of the world. So they don’t, they don’t ship them over here fully charged. You know, that’s part of the shipping industry standards, yada yada. And then they get here and they charge them up. Well, it might be a while before, you know, it’s installed. So it sits at a certain high temperature and then goes on the next place and the next place, but all these high temperatures. Then all of a sudden it’s in a are in Dallas, Texas, and it’s another 100 degree day. And then it gets sold and it’s sitting in parking lot waiting. You know, so you see these really high temperatures that they’re not being controlled and then you get these off gasses from the batteries and then you get spicy incidents. So we’ll see that, you know, I’m not, I don’t worry too much about the lithium-ion battery cars. I mean, at the end of the day, if there’s not life involved, our solution’s available, but I think first responders should just like, let that sucker burn, burn as hot as possible. You know, and let the, at least all the terrible compounds in the smoke go away.

Stuart Turley [00:36:47] To protect you if you’ve got a Tesla so you can put it in, it’s just kidding.

Matthew Hill [00:36:52] You can’t say I don’t want to say Tesla because I had great meetings with people from them and they just don’t wanna fire and Tesla and EV cars to be interchangeable.

Stuart Turley [00:37:03] Let me rephrase that. On your EV, I’m looking at it a beautiful lot. And Steve, if you go buy an EV, I’d recommend putting that sucker out there.

Steeve Reese [00:37:12] Yeah, I understand.

Stuart Turley [00:37:13] Do not put it here at this beautiful home, put it out there, put a barn out there and put it in a barn by itself. So many homeowners are so, they’re finding out the hard way.

Matthew Hill [00:37:25] If it, if it was, so we talked about like that, that pad I was on in Ohio. I think another neat mobile application would be, well, you also bring in a mobile best system, okay. Because if I have my natural gas powering my turbine, well any generator, it’s got that cycling. If you’re powering a battery pack, you could have a lot cleaner amperage powering your data center. So your equipment will last longer. Your electronics are very sensitive. Power fluctuations. So if you get that clean, steady amperage, which would come from a battery pack, we can all work together in on the same pad. However, I want everybody to understand like those battery packs, they need to have a deluge system in them. Like if something gets spicy in there, it is like fill the sucker up with, you know, a solution like ours that will extinguish it immediately. You, you, you yes, you lost a you know, small portion of your investment, you lost that best system, but it didn’t, it didn’t t spread. You didn’t lose your data center, you didn’t loose your turbine, you didn’t use your well heads, you know.

Stuart Turley [00:38:34] South Korea. South Korea, they had almost several departments, seven government agencies were taken out by lithium batteries that were alleged as cyber hacked and then kicked off to overrun.

Matthew Hill [00:38:48] Yeah, that propagation is no joke. You know, you have one bad battery that mechanically has failed and that he will get the next one and they get the next one.

Stuart Turley [00:38:58] I think we just solved the world’s energy problems today. It’s all done.

Steeve Reese [00:39:02] It’s time for lunch.

Stuart Turley [00:39:02] It was great seeing you guys and so for that, my name’s Stu Turley President CEO of the Sandstone Group. We were here and this is going to go out on a couple different channels so we’re going to have some serious fun. Have fun!