OPEC Plus Add It Again – ENB Weekly Recap

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Oklo Commences First Phase Construction on Nuclear Fuel Recycling Facility

September 5, 2025 Clark Savage

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

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Michael Tanner: [00:00:00] OPEC Plus at it again next on the Energy Newsbeat weekly recap. [00:00:04][3.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:12] Oklo commences first phase of construction on nuclear recycling facility. This is huge and a significant step towards advancing U.S. Nuclear sector. Oklo on the New York Stock Exchange, OKLO, Oklo has announced commencement of the first phase construction on the nuclear fuel recycling facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This initiative marks the initial stage of what to become a $168 billion advanced fuel center. That’s huge. I like this. Oklo CEO and co-founder Jacob DeWitt has highlighted the full transformer potential of the fuel is the most important factor in bringing advanced nuclear energy to market. And I think this is phenomenal. [00:01:02][49.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:02] No, I think it really is. And if we’re going to advance the nuclear segment of the energy infrastructure, this whole recycle aspect is absolutely huge because as you mentioned this article, the ability to recycle used nuclear fuel into multiple other usable material that can be used for advanced fact reactors like their powerhouse, really I think sets these guys apart from other players in this space and really pushes the industry forward. If we can’t recycle all this nuclear fuel I mean, let’s just be honest, at some point, we’re just gonna have all this spent nuclear fuel lying around. And I don’t know if we necessarily want that. Now the footprint’s a lot smaller. Either way, this is a great, great step forward for the nuclear business. And it’s great for Tennessee. You see the Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, he praised this development, noting that Tennessee is well-positioned to lead America’s energy independence. Not sure if I agree with that, but we got some PR guy of the week right there, which is why we created the Nuclear Energy Fund to support and expand our state’s nuclear infrastructure. We are proud to partner with Oklo and innovate in the future while bringing continued opportunity and prosperity to Tennessee facility. So we, Hey, it’s already Monday and we’ve got ourselves an idea. [00:02:11][69.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:12] IR guy of the week quote. So a governor is the IR honorary IR guy of the weak. I absolutely love it. Let’s go to secretary. I love secretary Besant. He is an absolute hoot. Secretary Besant says Fed must change course, demands an entire review and a bold op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal. The US secretary, secretary Scott Besant has issued a scathing critique of the Federal Reserve calling for a sweeping overhaul of the central bank’s operation. I love what he’s got to say, come amid growing tensions between the White House and the Federal Reserve. And again, I am not a fan of the Fed. I think the Fed needs to be disbanded. The Federal Reserve for its part is preparing to initiate interest rates cut this month to support a softening labor market, though officials have not signaled support for the deep reductions Trump has demanded, such as one third percent from the current and four or three percent Walter or the other finalist for the chair positions. I personally think the one lady that is committed, that appears to have committed fraud on her home loans needs to step down and she needs to go away. That’ll give Trump two picks that he can help get people in there. But I want to take it one step further. I think the Fed has lost their ability to be trusted by the U.S. Citizens and needs to be disbanded. [00:03:35][83.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:36] Yeah, I’m going to, I’ll go halfway down that road. I think what, what, instead of disbanding the federal, the federal reserve, I think what Scott Besson laid out in his article, which is some critiques and changes that are needed to make to the fed. I completely agree. So what did he? Basically say he would like to happen. So first, what he wants is that basically misallocation of public funds. And what he says that is, is basically you’re spending all this money on your own police force. You’re spending this money on, you know, revamping your headquarters with, Hey, at some point we need to update headquarters of these places, but is now the right time to do that. He also suggested that bank supervision responsibility should be left to other agencies who might be more in necessarily with what some of these banks need from a regulatory standpoint and I think the critical piece that he brought up was limit its bond buying activity to crisis situations. Now the issue with that is what constitutes a crisis? If the crisis is in the, you know, crisis is in the eye of the beholder, meaning everything could be a crisis. So that’s where it’s like, if we’re just gonna throw out words like crisis and worst ever, and we need this to happen now. It’s like well, those don’t mean anything. Those are just words we can take and use that on anything. We’ve seen, you now, we’ve seen a lot of this stuff. So I think the key with this though is what implications does this have specifically to the oil and gas sector? Higher interest rates harm highly capital intensive sectors, both oil, gas, renewables, infrastructure heavy sectors need lower interest rates in order to attract long term capital. Because if you’re going to go build a $50 billion LNG facility, if you are going to go make a large pipeline investment, you’re gonna primarily need to access debt in the short term, almost like a bridge loan, to be able to get this going before things roll back in. I mean, look at the real estate business. The real estate business has been absolutely harmed by this. You know, the other thing to point out is that the quantitative easing that has happened or what we call QE12345 really brings instability to the commodity sector, specifically oil price futures, because now all of a sudden with this cheap energy, the supply and demand, you know, specifically the supply side can become out of whack because all of the sudden we don’t know if, you know if it’s easy to get debt, it’s hard to sort of model. Is this company going to go out and get all this debt to go drill a new oil field? Are we going to increase offshore drilling? So I do think specifically when he’s talking about the instability that it’s led to the commodities market, I think is spot on. [00:06:07][151.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:07] Let me ask this question. So if Congress, the, the rhinos, the Republicans have failed to curtail spending since Bush, and you have nobody spending anything, and then the Federal Reserve, which is a privately held company that is making all the money off of the interest, off the interest rates that they charge. This seems like a scam and a Ponzi scheme that these people are not trying to cut the budget. These people are making all the money. Where’s that money going? [00:06:41][34.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:41] Yeah, I mean, again, I believe that there’s a need for a lender of last resort, so to speak. We saw and we’ve seen it a few times now where it’s been necessary. I believe like any organization that has authority that can’t necessarily be quashed. Because it was set up in a way to not allow that you are, it is going to always at some point sway from the original. I mean, look at the, look at the office of the presidency. If you dropped a George Washington today and looked at what power the president and the executive branch has, he’d roll over in his grave and say, we’ve gone, this isn’t America anymore. He, we need to rename it something else. So I think the problem is we always stray so far from the original meaning. And I think that’s the issue with, you know, this, you 13, which established the Federal Reserve, was written under the idea that we were always going to have an economy based in the early 1900s. Well, clearly we’re not there anymore. So yes, I think reform needs to come. I’m not going to go as far as saying I think we need to end the Fed. I do think we do need to audit the Fed, like our friend Goodran Paul says. But I do think on some level, having a lend me after resorted. [00:07:52][70.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:52] Very helpful. I like the way you say that, but after we audit, you will probably be so offended at what you find. You may want to get rid of it. OPEC plus agrees in principle to increase production in October in a move signaling strategic pivot towards reclaiming market share amid softening global demand. Opec plus has reached a preliminary agreement to boost oil production starting October, 2025 and key members of the allowance, including Saudi Arabia and Russia are set to discuss and likely approve an addition of approximately 137,000 barrels per day during a video conference held on Sunday. The decision marks the beginning of the unwinding of the 1.6 million barrels per day voluntary cuts that were originally stated. The alliance which controls 40% of the oil global supply has gradually been easing restrictions. And Michael, I’ve got a real question for you, because I’m seeing there’s a lot of people saying there’s lot of surplus out there that I’m not seeing. And then there’s a lot people saying out there, that OPEC does not have the spare capacity. I don’t think OPECs has a lot spare capacity, and in this graph, I put in a chart from Bloomberg, there’s only one country that has 2.5 million barrels per day, and that’s KSA, but they don’t have the capacity to be able to do it. So that’s a false number. So you sit back and kind of look at this. They don’t have a lot of spare capacity. [00:09:20][87.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:21] No, they don’t have a lot of spare capacity. And I think it’s, this is an interesting move. This sort of plays against my theory of market share in terms of, I’ve always been in the camp of, I don’t think they’re really doing this from a market share standpoint. I think they are doing this from a revenue standpoint because they’re all looking to pivot away from revenues from oil into other sectors. But the problem is you have to increase production in order to get those higher revenues to dump into other things. So it’s sort of a short term dump for sort of longer-term diversification. I think this has a little bit to do with market share. Now, the other side of that equation is prices have fallen to the point where you need to make up those incremental barrels or dollars by… Producing more oil and there’s a given a, and there is a given a take relative to how much oil we produce versus how much it drops. So I think the waters are getting a little murky here. I also think, you know, you know, to, to be clear, I think. Saudi Arabia is probably in the back of its mind saying, well, you know, not only can we increase a little bit of revenue by doing this, maybe there’s a little bit of market share we can gain back, but also President Trump really wants lower oil prices. He says he wants oil at 50, $55. Maybe this isn’t a bad idea to go ahead and put more oil on the market. Maybe a side, side, sideside side benefit is that we get on President Trump’s good side. I mean, it’s clear. [00:10:37][75.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:37] Yeah, I’m not real sure. But when you look at the members that are in the OPEC group, you have Iraq, Iran, and Russia, and Venezuela, I believe Brazil, I have to go check fact checking myself as we do this. But you take a look at those, and every single one of those countries use oil as their fed. And when they need money, they drill oil. So it’s they it’s a it’s a not a market share issue. They just produce more oil. And you’ve got India and China that are willing to buy just about everything that’s been out on the on the market. [00:11:15][37.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:16] No, it’s absolutely true. I think it’s fascinating. And I think this is, this is we’re going to enter a really interesting time for oil prices. And, and I think going to be interesting. [00:11:24][8.4]

[00:11:25] We’ll be right back to the show guys. But first I need to tell you about our friends at Reese Energy Consulting guys. They make this show possible by supporting our show guys, if you at all touch the midstream space, I promise you guys, Reese Energy consulting can help you. They are one of the most experienced, if not the most experienced midstream consulting company out there with hundreds of years of experience and clients ranging from two people in a garage up to the largest publicly traded companies in the world. So if you’re wondering if you are fit for them, the answer is yes. If you need any help, whether it’s in the permitting side of it, whether its project development, whether It’s A&D work in the midstream space, FID analysis done, whether you’re in the upstream space and you need first purchaser contracts renegotiated You need um your midstream contracts reviewed guys They can help you and do so much more take the guesswork out of interacting with the midstream space call Reese energy consulting Reese energy Consulting calm also guys all the news and analysis you heard brought to you by the world’s greatest website WWW energy newsbeat.com subscribe to our sub stack the energy news beat sub stack calm a great place to get a couple of Great weekly articles straight from Stu and my brain myself if you don’t get enough of that already Please please great way to support the show And finally, guys, I am already starting to think about my own tax bill for 2025. And I know what I’m doing. I’m looking to invest in oil and gas. And the reason I’m doing that is to lower my 2025 tax bill. And so if you have a large tax bill, if you are a high net worth W2 individual, you’re a business owner that has a liquidity event, or you’re worried about cutting your checks to Uncle Sam, don’t give your money to Uncle Sam, invest in a product that can save on taxes, give you a little bit of distribution and diversify your portfolio. Because I bet you haven’t quite invested in the business yet. You’ve probably invested in stocks. You’ve not directed directly in the wellhead, guys. Invest in oil.energynewsbeat.com. Go there, fill out our portfolio survey, fill out or tax analysis slide, which is gonna tell you what your tax burden is, and based on the results of both, we will send you a bunch of information. And consider your investment in oil and gas. And if you qualify, we may or may not point you in the right direction. Guys invest in oil.energynewsbeat.com. Let’s get back to the show. [00:13:33][128.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:33] California in talks to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to Valero to stave off refinery shutdown. In a dramatic turnaround, California is escalating energy crunch. State legislators are reportedly negotiating to hand over hundreds of million of dollars to the Valero Energy Corp to prevent the shutdown of its Valencia refinery in the San Francisco Bay Area. Michael, this is absolutely hilarious. The facility, which processes 145,000 barrels per day, was slated to cease operations by April 2026, but the proposed bailout aims to cover the hefty maintenance costs and they’re not going to take it. That’s like trying to buy off somebody that says, no, I’ve had enough. When somebody does me wrong, I just say, hey, I’m out. And that’s exactly what they’re going to do. They’re destroyed the fossil fuel business, the oil and gas, the backbone and the blood of California, and it is absolutely gonna be devastating. When the other plant, the Phillips 66, the 139,000 barrel per day Los Angeles facility set to shutter late this year and early next year, it is going to be 17% of their refining capacity. We’re going to see. Diesel and gasoline starting at $8 going to $10 and if there’s a $15 they’re already seeing lots of tankers lining up out in the bay that is not eco-friendly dude this is from governor Newsom’s net zero failure of a policy, and it is absolutely abysmal. [00:15:20][106.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:21] Well, I think Gavin Newsom woke up and realized he’s running out of hair gel. If this thing shuts down. So he’s like, Hey, throw hundreds of millions out of it. I think the funny part is, is that you said this, Valero doesn’t want the money. That’s the funniest part is they’re like, Nope, we are out. I mean, if you, if, if listen to the podcast at all over the last couple of years, you know, we’ve been on this like a fly on manure from the standpoint of something was going to happen. They were going to run up against all of these so-called timelines to implement net zero, run up to the red line and back off it. You know, it’s a little bit like what, what’s kind of been happening with the Russia Ukraine negotiations. Everybody streaks up to the redline talks all tough and then backs up. And it just is what it is. So this is absolutely predictable. It’s absolutely hilarious from the standpoint of Gavin Newsom is now, you know, going to have to figure out a way. And I’m be interested in how he actually plays this from a marketing PR standpoint. How does he sell this to his quote-unquote base? I mean, because it’s clear he’s running for president, and now he’s going to have to run on a policy of, well, I actually am sort of not for net zero, even though I’m signing more of these egregious net zero bills. [00:16:31][70.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:33] He said, Oh, I’m going to be drilling more, but I’m still, he is such a hypocrite. He, he deserves to be run out of town on a rail, but they can’t make a rail high speed rail. In fact, they got less than a foot made. So it’s going to a short ride out of town. Tomorrow I am interviewing George Harmer as well as Steve Hilton, who’s running for Governor, and this is going to be on that topic for that podcast I’m recording tomorrow. Job cuts rock global oil and gas sector. The global oil& gas sector is facing a downturn with widespread job losses and investment cuts. Falling crude prices exacerbated by OPEC plus output increases are making it difficult for Western majors to fund projects. And here’s where I think this is kind of interesting. The Financial Times says the sector’s under pressure to as crude prices, which spiked after the Russian invasion, which has dropped by half. OPEC plus has shifted its strategy, increasing output. I don’t know how much everybody’s worried about their 130, 37,000 barrels per day that they’re going to put out. I don’t know that they can even produce that much extra. I don’t have it see it. I don’s see the glut. I don ‘t know that. [00:17:50][77.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:50] Yeah. I mean, it’s really a, I mean the oil and gas business. It’s one of the reasons I love the business is because they’re extremely principled because this is an industry that votes majority conservative. Let’s throw out who’s the president and just go conservative liberal. I mean, the oil gas business routinely probably going back to the Reagan administration voted conservative yet every time, if you just overlay oil price and what who’s in office, whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican, if you just color code the chart, it is obvious that under a Democratic administration, oil prices go up, and why? Democrats and liberals are more opposed to oil and gas. So what do they do? They restrict the industry’s ability to do work. They make it harder to permit wells. They, you know, things like what’s going on with the Willow project up in Alaska, get hung up and are unable to necessarily be permitted. You’ve got offshore drilling, which is really one of the key drivers of U.S. Global oil production, makes it a lot harder. And what happens? We then have an imbalance between demand and supply. Demand continues to go up. There’d be supply then stagnates or does an increase to keep up with rising demand. And we see a what? An increase of price. Well, the exact opposite has happened and the most obvious example is President Trump right now. I mean, why do you think he’s has this phrase of drill baby drill? Well, it’s not because he loves the oil and gas business. It’s because he knows that energy underpins inflation and he wants to bring down inflation for all of America. And if you can bring down the cost of energy that that factors into every facet the economy, whether you’re talking about food prices, because food prices are driven in part by energy costs that it takes to move your bananas from Florida or your oranges from Florida to Texas where I consume my orange juice every morning. So that it’s so integral into the whole economy that he understands that if we lower the energy price, we lower the oil price, it’ll work its way through the economy. The problem is it does exactly what this article is talking about, which is it devastates the oil and gas business Because at the end of the day, the oil and gas business makes less money. And if they make less money, they don’t need as many people. And we’ve seen this been coming now for five years. I mean, Stu, the theme of the podcast when I talk in the finance section is consolidation, consolidation, consolidation with rising costs to produce shale, declining reserves. And I don’t want to say declining reserves, but wells that maybe aren’t necessarily as productive as people thought. We’ve got, you’ve got higher input costs, which is also, you know, there’s some things along there, but rising cost to drill a well and flatlining production numbers make it really, really, really difficult to begin to squeeze more. You begin to be able to squeeze less and less margin. And at some point you just have to lay your staff on. I mean, ConocoPhillips, we talked about this last week, 20 to 25% of their workforce is getting laid off. And I love this quote from Kirk Edwards. He’s over there at Latigo Petroleum. He says, This isn’t just a conical problem. It’s a flashing red warning light for the entire US oil. In gas industry, and it’s really sad. [00:20:54][183.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:20:55] I agree. Let me add this because I like Chevron’s Mike Worth. The way we protect most jobs for the people is by remaining competitive. And when you take a look at the Financial Times chart in there, as an investor in energy and oil, US oil companies are always better to invest in than in the European oil companies. So, you know, it’s always good to be able to make sure you got to protect the shareholder’s rights in the oil company so they can live and fight another day. [00:21:26][31.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:21:26] Oh, okay, this quote from from Mike Worth, you just said it, I’ll read it again. The way we protect the most jobs is by remaining competitive. [00:21:33][6.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:21:33] What does that mean? It means if you have to lay people off, you have to lay people off. But it’s also doing best practices and drilling the best fields and everything else. So I mean, I, I agree with it. You’ve got to do what’s best for the investors and watch the bottom line. It is not ESG has done a good thing for the investors, the governance watching the bottom line. If you, if you don’t have, if don’t need the people, You’re going to need to lay them up. This is going to rubber band back, and as the world needs more oil, it’s gonna snap back up. There’s gotta be a different way so you don’t need to let go people, bring people, let go of people. It’s just gonna bounce back. [00:22:15][41.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:22:16] I agree. In my opinion, this is more a shot at the administration than it is a signal to the investors. How do we remain competitive as an oil and gas as a commodity based business? You see higher prices. And I think the rhetoric coming from the administration, drill baby drill, isn’t helping. And again, I can agree with President Trump in that energy drives inflation. And again it’s one of the reasons I love the oil and gasoline business because I believe they’re some of the principled people on the planet because time and time again, they vote against their best interest. I mean, you saw if you were, if you’re an X, if your on X, I had a, there was a huge debate that went on at the end of 2024 on X about, well, if actually really want to make more money as an oil and gas company, shouldn’t you be pro com alum? Shouldn’t be running around the street with Harris waltz flags because that’s going to drive oil to a hundred bucks. I mean obviously we don’t want to do that because there’s a country at stake. So we don t necessarily, You know, it’s what do you put my job or the country ahead of it? And again, it is why I love the business because I feel like oil and gas folks are some of the most principled in the business. [00:23:21][65.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:23:22] You bet. Peak oil production, oil majors, exploration, capital tumbled since 2013. Michael, I’ve been saying for a very long time, if China and India remain stable, global oil demand, the demand side of the equation would remain strong. I did not have the UK and the EU failing and possibly going into recession and social disruption and them going down further. So now my story is. If China and India can outpace the failure of the EU and the UK, we will have a steady demand side on the equation. But look at this chart from Bloomberg NEF. You take a look at peak oil exploration, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP, nearly half from $88.7 billion in 2013 to significantly later on. That is a huge drop. It’s a 71% drop. So you take a look at that amount of money that is drop out cap X spending and exploration. We are going to have to be spending a lot of money to be getting back into oil. There’s going to be a certain time when oil prices are going be going back. [00:24:47][84.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:24:47] Yeah. I think this is a really interesting chart. If we can pull this up here, it’s this Bloomberg NFE chart, which basically shows that they’re, like you said, their exploration capital has tumbled. I mean, I think that’s one of the unfortunate byproducts of what I would call the financialization of the oil business really since 15, 16, 17, where you can really see the drop is that, you know, I’m not that I’m going to take personal blame for this, but when the finance bros really became huge in this business, which was the advent of shale, the 2013 to 2016 was kind of the financialization revolution of the business. You know, obviously we all heard of the Lynn energies of the world that, Hey, we have a new way to financially engineer an oil and gas company. What you saw was them. Financially engineer. Risk and exploration out of the business. Now, the funny part is we live in it, we work in an industry where our workspace is 10,000, I learned this in college, our workspace 10,00 feet below us. It was pounded in and we don’t know what our workspace is so there’s always, always risk in our business. There’s never not risk. And so you can never financially engineer risk away. So when you try to do that, you leave out exploration. Without exploration, Guyana would have not been found. There was a great article, I think it was like a year ago on how Guyana was actually discovered within Exxon. And Exxson is one of the few companies that still has a exploration risk appetite and actually does true exploration work. I mean, I, and so that is where from a finance bro standpoint, when you try to financially engineer everything, you’re going to optimize for what you can put in a spreadsheet and you cannot optimize exploration risk in a spread sheet. I talk to Stu, I talk to our clients all the time about this. That when people ask me, you know, well, what do you think about this prospect? Or, you now, how do you think about analyzing deals or putting together due diligence packages? I say it’s a science, but it’s also an art. Because you have to understand what to attribute weight to. You have to understand when someone says there’s X risk profile, well, where did that risk profile come from? Are they just pulling a number out of their backside? Is there, is there some science behind it? What’s the reasoning that and being able to attribute weight to certain things that tip the scales one way or the other is a little bit of an art and a skillset and not necessarily a hard science. So I love this article that you wrote because I think it, what it does is it exposes the concept of peak oil requires new oil to be found. And if we’re lowering exploration capital being spent to find new oil, we’re eventually going to plateau because we found all the oil in the Permian. Sorry guys, we found it all. Now we’re trying to figure out how to economically produce it and I will always bet on the oil and gas business to come up with technologies to increase recovery factors, but it’s not like there’s a new exploration play out there that we need to get or that we need to find within the Permia. We just know where it is. We’re just waiting for right opportunity to go get it or the right technology to get it. It’s that pure exploration capital that you talked about and that quote trillion dollar gap that we need to fill. [00:27:49][181.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:27:49] Yep. And lower on in the article, no glut in sight is $75 oil reasonable. I put this in here on purpose. Current forecast warn of a potential glut. I think it’s a very minor muffin top hanging over somebody’s pants. Supply outstripping demand and pushing Brent prices to the 50s by 2026. Goldman Sachs sees Brent at 53 to 56 per barrel amid 1.9 billion over to apply while JP Morgan predicts 66 in 2025. In 58 and 26. I don’t see that. I only see those numbers if the UK and the EU totally stop buying any oil. And I don t see that happening. I see them buying a lot less from the industrialization, but I also see India and China buying a whole lot more. So The answer is, I think these guys are smoking some funny stuff. [00:28:42][53.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:28:42] Yeah, hey, send it our way. We’ll see if it changes our opinion. [00:28:42][0.0][1702.0]