In this episode of Energy Newsbeat – Conversations in Energy, Stu Turley sits down with Adam Hirschfeld, SVP of Workrise, to discuss the evolving landscape of the oil and gas industry. They dive into the impact of AI on energy demand, the challenges of permitting reforms, and the future of natural gas, microgrids, and decentralized grid management. Adam also shares insights into the growing role of midstream infrastructure, the shift towards AI-driven data centers, and how the energy sector is adapting to meet the increasing demand, all while navigating regulatory hurdles and workforce challenges.
While we evaluate oil and gas deals at Sandstone and Energy News Beat, E&P operators doing the work rely on Workrise to help get the projects moving on time and on budget. We hear great things from our oil and gas companies about their performance and hard work in keeping project deadlines.
This is an unsung and often overlooked critical cog in the Energy Dominance push by the Trump adminstration.
Connect with Adam on his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-hirschfeld-09403ba/
Check out Workrise: https://www.workrise.com/
One thing to note for our Substack subscribers: you can listen or watch without commercials here on Substack, unlike other channels.
Huge Guests Covering Energy Dominance
I’ve just interviewed Ron Gusek, CEO at Liberty Energy, and I’m also interviewing General Flynn on September 3rd, among others we have lined up. We have arranged for 10 books and 10 movies of the General Flynn movie to give away to listeners in a contest that we will start on Sunday.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
00:00:41 – Workrise and Its Role in the Industry
01:34 – AI’s Impact on the Industry
02:19 – The Growing Demand for Natural Gas and Energy
04:13 – Behind the Meter Power Generation and Midstream Challenges
06:11 – The Changing Energy Landscape
08:11 – Challenges in the Supply Chain
10:32 – The Shift Towards Localized Power Generation
12:09 – The Role of People in the Energy Industry
14:36 – Regulatory Challenges
16:43 – California’s Energy Crisis
18:55 – Preparing for Future Energy Demands
20:25 – Securing the Future of U.S. Energy
22:57 – Adam’s Final Thoughts
23:15 – How to Connect with Adam Hirschfeld
Full Transcript
Stuart Turley [00:00:07] Hello everybody, welcome to the Energy Newsbeat podcast. My name’s Stu Turley, president CEO of the Sandstone Group. We are in an absolute, just fabulous time in the oil and gas space. And you have to sit back and think. What was President Trump thinking cutting such a huge deal with the EU when we’ve got billions and billions of dollars coming into the United States that we may or may not be able to deliver? I’ve got a huge guest for the show today. I’ve Got Adam Hirschfeld, and I mean he’s got a few answers and some talent in the oil and gas space. How are you today?
Adam Hirschfeld [00:00:42] I’m great Stu, thanks for having me.
Stuart Turley [00:00:44] I’ll tell you what, thank you for stopping by. This is a huge topic. Tell us a little bit about where you work there at Workrise.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:00:51] Yeah, thanks for the opportunity here again, Stu. So we have a platform that enables vendors and workers to connect with upstream clients, EMPs, exploration production companies, OFS companies, as well as midstream transmission. Companies, we actually have a strength in ensuring that we can, they can meet their talent needs. That’s our core business has been our business for the last 10 years. And we’ve expanded that into an aggregator type model for large clients like Chevron and Exxon. And so at the end of the day, we are right at where the road meets the road for construction projects. That’s going to be down hole or your, your midstream infrastructure, which we’re in dire need of way more. So.
Stuart Turley [00:01:34] And so if you’re mentioning midstream, you’re also talking Williams, you’re talking Enbridge, you talking all those cats.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:01:41] Yes, sir. We’ve had an opportunity to be able to partner with them for the last decade, like mentioned earlier. Over the last years, you can imagine we’ve seen a lot of potential tailwinds here with permitting reform. And so, yeah, America is kind of getting back to work in energy again, by the way.
Stuart Turley [00:01:56] Well, let’s say, how are you seeing permitting reform working with AI? Because AI is a good news, bad news, good news AI. It’s driving the largest demand for natural gas we’ve ever seen in electricity, but yet it could solve a lot of the problems. How is, how is workerized working with a I right now?
Adam Hirschfeld [00:02:19] That’s a great question. It’s not easy to answer. It’s, it’s not an easy answer because you’ve got the, the narrative that you’ll hear on almost every earnings call that every company will call out that they’re utilizing AI, right? Right. But from a project management planning design capability standpoint, AI is supporting that and we’re continuing to implement that, implement that in our business today, when it comes to permitting behind the meter power gen, that is where we’re seeing a lot of additional like new demand. So, like, from our perspective, we’re seeing two main paths of demand for our services, which means that our clients are working again. That is for construction project management for behind-the-meter power gen build-out. Companies that would be included in that would-be a Williams, as an example, with this deal with Meta in Ohio. So, that large project, we have people on that job site today managing. An element of gas being transported from A to B to build out that power gen facility behind the meter. And that’s a big deal in a regulated space. We’re effectively moving off the regulated grid and Williams is supporting at large scale. We believe that’s going to happen at a wide scale, but it hasn’t yet. So that’s why it’s a tough question to answer. The other element of our business that we’ve seen really pick up is just large transmission lines. We’ve got orphaned gas or gas that hasn’t been able to get out of the field for years and it was hard to build pipelines during the last administration because there’s regulatory risk or sovereign risk of some sort is what we’d call it. They’re going back to work and building transmission. And that’s going to be the real key behind supporting our power gen in the future. Because behind meter on-premise will not necessarily be the answer of these data centers, which they’re actually calling AI factories here in the future, by the way. And they’re starting to shift the narrative a bit as they move more into inference.
Stuart Turley [00:04:14] You know, the whole thing, this is, I’ve never seen such a change, we’ve kind of stagnated for 20 years on electrical growth demand. And now all of a sudden, it’s just like, Holy smokes, Batman, you know, get a jumpsuit because you’re now going into a F-35 or better yet a SR-71 Blackbird because it’s now approaching that kind of speed. When we sit back and go, OK, behind the meter, I’m seeing that decentralized management of our grids is going to break down into micro grids. And we’re going to either have those that can afford their own generation sources and those businesses that are smart enough to employ guys like you. To sit back and kind of go, and I hope I’m not putting Adam words into your mouth, but I’m going to say, I’m gonna get what’s 1-800-ADAMS number right now. Because if I’m a CEO of a business and I’m sitting here kind of thinking, the DOE, I absolutely love our Department of Energy right now with Secretary Chris Wright, one of the greatest humans on the planet, they came out with a report that said, we are about to have 100-fold blackout potential. Because of the wind and solar, the drain on the grid and the lack of resources. And, and just as my next question, we’ve got about 200 gigawatts of nuclear and natural gas turbines for the public sector, ready to roll. We have a hundred and eighty. Gigawatts of wind and solar, which is actually may or may not happen because of the big, beautiful bill. So we don’t know about it, but we need a hundred gigawatths in order to meet normal demand. Now in Texas, the math ain’t math. So, you know, this is like, Holy smokes. You’re going to need you more now than I’ve ever even thought of in the past. Did I articulate that fairly well?
Adam Hirschfeld [00:06:12] Absolutely right. What we’re finding is that you’ve got an incredibly potent power source, and that is in natural gas. Like we all know natural gas is an answer to bridge the gap. It may not be the only answer, nor am I saying that, but it is an answer. We have an abundance of it. Right. What is the only way to really leverage that now is to get generation. Where you need it in field, closer to the wellhead at the end of the day, because that’s it. Thankfully with like with Starlink as an example, you can get data in and data out without needing that fiber optic infrastructure as much as you’ve needed in the past. And so there’s an opportunity in areas like West Texas to take less burden on the grid in solving their and getting it closer to the wellhead. We solve for a large part of that engineering design and build phase that clients don’t have in their office and capability. And so we can be that call out as they’re starting to partner with clients to figure out how do we build it and where are the people.
Stuart Turley [00:07:11] That is extremely cool because Steve Reese is a dear friend and he has said that it wouldn’t surprise him to see Metta or Google or any of those start owning their own oil companies and then dropping data centers right on that, like in the Haynesville or any of those others, just dropping them right in there and owning their own Liberty Frac or any other Liberty in Virginia or those. So it’s pretty crazy to see our backwardation buying your supply chain.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:07:39] Yep, absolutely right. That would be an eternal advance, wouldn’t it, Sue?
Stuart Turley [00:07:42] It would be kind of wild. I, in fact, I just interviewed James Walker this morning and that interview went out, he’s the CEO over at nano nuclear energy and they’re going to be trying to build their goal is a hundred reactors a year is what they’re going to be trying be building. That’s what we need, but we ain’t going to get there. We’re going get to natural gas a lot faster than we are going to get to a hundred reactors, considering we used to take 20 years to build a actor.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:08:11] That’s absolutely right. So and I think that that’s that’s one of the main reasons it’s going to be a key driver for us now. And of course, it may not be forever, but it’s gonna be a key contributor for a long time.
Stuart Turley [00:08:22] So when, when you’re sitting down and visiting with like, say the CEO of Williams or the CEO of, of that, what are your comments or concerns to them and saying, we need more pipelines and we need more takeaway. But what I’m hearing is it seems like if the gas is stranded, Put a power plant there
Adam Hirschfeld [00:08:43] That’s absolutely right. One of the main issues we’re hearing from the clients is certainty of take away. And so, for example, if you have a southern Delaware Basin, which is west of Pecos, Texas.
Stuart Turley [00:08:53] Right.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:08:54] Rater that is used to going into Waha where they’re getting almost zero or nothing or negative for their gas or they’re having to flare it they have to know that they’re not going to be shut down and so it comes to like what is the concern for an operator that owns that gas commodity they have, to know they’re going to have no downtime right so when they’re working with a midstream operator like a Williams let’s call let’s say that in that case it may not be but they have to know like EMP has to know if I’m going to deliver my gas and I’m going to be paid on the electrons produced as opposed to the gas molecule. I need to know that I’m not going to have downtime and there’s an issue there Stu so I will say that that’s our biggest gap today which is interesting to me though. And this is where I think we will drive the conversation over the next six to 12 months is these AI factories and data centers are more valuable with certainty and ongoing power. So when you have backup on top of backup, they can charge higher rates for the data and the use of that data center. And so if you go into like a core weave pricing model, when they have redundancies built in, they’re charging more. And so like, I believe that that gap will get closed, but at the moment, your hyperscalers, your data center, property, digital reality, the companies that own those, they’re not, they haven’t cut enough deals to set the precedent yet in our space. We know it’s happening though. It is getting very close. So like, if we look at Stargate, they are pulling that gas directly off of a large interstate transmission line. That is not the most effective way of doing this in the future. That gas is going to be selling at retail prices.
Stuart Turley [00:10:32] Right.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:10:32] Is the best way to do this get closer to the wellhead cut out they can
Stuart Turley [00:10:36] Let me throw this. Let me ask this, because this is a cool question. I love the Stargate is because it’s an anomaly. If it’s in intrastate, you say intrast state or did you say inter?
Adam Hirschfeld [00:10:47] It in interstate.
Stuart Turley [00:10:48] It’s okay. So it’s only in Texas. Yep. Okay, great. Because if it was intrastate, they would have a whole different animal. And that would be other regulatory issues. And it would be tax. But if it’s interstate, they have a better chance of keeping it behind the the meters themselves and having better control of that gas. Is that a fair assessment?
Adam Hirschfeld [00:11:11] It is a fair assessment.
Stuart Turley [00:11:12] Okay. Nice. See now they’re having to put in jet engines running along and they’re going to keep those for backup because we’re now in a four year wait for some larger gas turbines because of the supply chain issues that are going on. Is, I mean, that’s part of something you deal with.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:11:31] It is that the acquisition of the equipment and the materials needed is is currently an issue as well
Stuart Turley [00:11:38] Wow.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:11:38] Talking about business models, part of that issue is that we cannot get all of the materials and equipment needed. Yep, so that is an issue.
Stuart Turley [00:11:48] Okay. You’ve got it for our podcast listeners, you know, Adam’s got a beautiful head of hair compared to mine. And so I know that he has not lived through some of my frustrations by pulling my hair out in dealing with problems and things. So you must be a better problem solver than I am because there’s that’s a big problem coming around the corner at him
Adam Hirschfeld [00:12:09] it is a big problem. Yep, it absolutely is. And so that’s, that’s going to be an issue where we have, we’re going to, we’re gonna have a throttling mechanism in our ability to win in the AI race because of that alone. Right. And, so I don’t know how to solve for that one yet. I have been researching it with clients, we don’t have a solution yet.
Stuart Turley [00:12:26] How many folks are over there at
Adam Hirschfeld [00:12:28] that work, work rise approximately 250 in the office and going back to your comment, I couldn’t do it without the team, you know, none of us could.
Stuart Turley [00:12:37] Oh, no, I would be talking to myself if I didn’t have a good team. So it would absolutely be just absolutely worthless, but that’s a lot of folks on the entire team over there trying to make things happen. And one of the fun things is I was in Shreveport, Louisiana three weeks ago on some business and I was checking into the hotel and the. Guys from Liberty energy had a whole team there and they, I could tell that they were working on wells and things and they had their trucks. They were checking in quality, quality people. And I mean, they were wonderful guys. They were all, you can tell when employees are happy. And for our podcast listeners, you ought to see Adam’s eyes light up when he’s sitting here talking about his team, his people and his job. That tells me a couple key points about what you’re doing and A that you like it. And B that you believe in what you are doing that is incredibly important.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:13:35] Yeah. I appreciate you calling that out. We are filling a gap that I’m proud to be part of filling the gap. And I’ve always been proud to being in this business. And, I know that we in the United States do it better than any other country in the world when it comes to developing our oil and gas resources, conserving those resources and protecting the environment and stewarding our assets. And so, I’m thankful to be in this. I’ll tell you.
Stuart Turley [00:13:59] I’ll tell you, Chris Wright, Doug, I did not have, when President Trump won, I did not Chris Wright Doug Burgum and Lee Zeldin on my bingo card. You know, what a trio in energy. And we’re about to see some gigantic things change with the regulatory processes. In fact, if Doge gets their regulatory changes processes done here, they could save trillions of dollars of regulatory headaches. How much of a headache are regulatory processes for you right now? Thank you for asking.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:14:37] That painful question. They’re down substantially. I will say that. And it is a significant improvement on the upstream EMP side of the business. We’re able to get drilling permits within a reasonable amount of time. Whereas in the past it had gone from approximately 90 days on federal lands to 180 days, which was almost not economic in some cases. Now we’re back into the 30 to 90 days for a drilling permit. But really, Stu, it comes down to midstream. Midstream is able to it. Right away agreements and permits with FERC and they’re getting the support they need to be able to do these large projects. So when they run their open seasons to fill the line and get commitments, once they’re fully committed, they can have a level of confidence because Department of Interior has stated there’s a sovereign risk premium, and as far as they see it, there should be an insurance payout if they pull permits after they’ve already awarded them and your mid-project cover damages. It actually enacts that. That would be a game changer for this business. It would give them certainty that they won’t be left hanging like those, like TC had been left hanging for.
Stuart Turley [00:15:44] Absolutely. That was horrific. This is huge. And you sit back and take a look at this. What do you see? I know that the three horsemen running this are absolutely just rock solid running down the road with Doug Burgum and Secretary Wright and Lee Zeldin. And as we try to achieve energy dominance… You’re I think more critical and work rises more critical than people understand. I mean, this is a unsung hero that if you’re not paying attention, if you burp, we all burp and that, and now California speaking of burp is going to be horrific. They went from 3000 wells a year. They’re down to like two and they are now importing 70% of their oil. And Gavin Newsom has single-handedly turned that to a national security disaster. I’m assuming you’re not doing much out in California. I’m making an assumption.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:16:43] We’re doing as much as they’ll allow us to do in California.
Stuart Turley [00:16:46] Which ain’t much.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:16:48] Pre-COVID, we had a fairly substantial position over the CRC, but yeah, it was just not very active anymore. But I appreciate you calling that out, Stu, because winning in energy is winning in AI. Winning in AI is a national security risk. We have to win there. That was why President Trump signed those three executive orders last week. It was all about that. Part of winning in AI and energy is winning with people. You need the right people. In the right place at the right time and we close that gap. So what we find is all of it comes down to the people. We hear about AI getting rid of jobs. Sure, there are going to be some redundancies. I believe it’s a job creator, not a job killer over time. Right. Especially in our business, we have to have more in our businesses. We need more people wanting to get into oil and gas energy.
Stuart Turley [00:17:38] You bet.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:17:39] We are the ones that are the backbone of this business. We have over 7,000 active billing consultants or contractors in the field today, and we expect that to double over the next three years. And part of it’s going to come from us upleveling and training to meet the talent gap that’s needed. Wow. This isn’t an absolute imperative. It is we hear about people losing jobs. We are here to get you to work. This is our. It is, it feels so good. And at the end of the day, our clients need, need us and we need them. And our country needs our clients.
Stuart Turley [00:18:12] We need to get micro on here next. I’ll tell you what, because we need people that are like the Liberty energy guys I saw in Shreveport, Louisiana, classy, hardworking, happy, well-paid employees. Speaking of that, I get to interview Ron, the CEO of Liberty here next week. So, uh, just want to give him a shot out. You know, it’s like management starts at the top. And it filters all the way through. And I can see by the shining in your eyes, when you’re talking about your team and everything else going on, man, you must have an absolutely fantastic team. What do you see coming around the corner as some of your biggest hurdles in the next quarter?
Adam Hirschfeld [00:18:55] It’s that’s a great question. So we still have relatively low commodities for the upstream business too. So rigs continue to come down. So I see us converging on a decrease in production nationally with a need for more, right? And so the question is going to be, are we going to move more rigs from oil focus to natural gas really? And then how much associated gas decrease is going to come from less oil rig oil wells being drilled. All this comes to the apex of the point I’m trying to make is, we’ve committed to sell Europe, or we’ve had them committed to buy from us a certain amount of energy every single year. And when we look at these numbers, we have to add, I’m looking at it now, it’s about 20 BCF a day in volume that we can deliver to Europe. And to President Trump’s credit and the team, they have fast-tracked LNG facilities that account for about 7 BCF per day. We’re typically delivering 24, about five BCF a day. So that means we still have about 13 BCF a day we need to deliver to Europe to meet their need if they’re in fact gonna honor that obligation. So we all know that that’s gonna be something that is handled over time and we don’t know what the solution is gonna be there but what we know is that we need to produce more natural gas, but it has to be done orderly. And so we’re here to partner with clients, we’re here to facilitate that transition. And we don’t quite know how this can happen, Stu. How’s it going to happen, right? And
Stuart Turley [00:20:25] And I love your phrase, Adam, it has to be done orderly, even as you even as you and I are kind of joking about the regulatory issues that we’ve been facing in the over burdensome of the, I’m going to say Obama and Biden era of I’m gonna call it the deep state regulatory machine that put trillions of dollars of weight on the economy. We’re going to need to make sure we go through this. And I loved your statement orderly. We need regulations i’m all in on good regulations and we gotta do it right so that there is enough money cuz you know as a fungible asset you gotta have enough money to bring the rigs back on but then you gotta having enough money because you know yes she is not a great thing for governance for the oil and gas operators they’re giving money back to investors. You want to invest in oil companies now, you get money back. That’s a great thing, especially in the private sector as well, too, because there’s lots of great investments out there. I know I work on a bunch of them. And when you sit back and kind of go through there, but this is such a great, I’m hoping this is the first of a few that we have, because I can see some other updates that we’re going to need to talk about here as they come around. What are some of your last thoughts as we get closed out here?
Adam Hirschfeld [00:21:48] Last thoughts are that this industry has innovated more than people know, our oil and gas industry in the United States. We have shifted from what you would see in the show Landman, which by the way, I do like Landman. There’s less cowboy out there than people would think, but those are the cowboys of today. I do agree with you on that. This industry has shifted to one of stewardship Yep, and conservation and. That is inclusive of not only the resource, the surface area, but also the balance sheets. And so that is reflected in the payouts to shareholders and it’s reflected in their capex budgets. And so, that has positioned us well to meet the demand coming. So what does this mean? Never before have we seen companies. Well, at least in the last 20 years, since the shell revolution, we’ve not seen these companies so flush with solvency to the end that they can meet the energy demand that is coming. And that is absolutely imperative. We won’t need government funding or handouts. We do need clients. We do you need customers to sell our money to come back into this space because they deserve it.
Stuart Turley [00:22:58] We’re short $4 trillion just to meet normal decline curves for oil and gas. I mean, just normal decline curbs, assuming demand stays normal. I don’t think we’re we’ve seen peak oil or peak natural gas yet. We’re not even close. So how do people find you?
Adam Hirschfeld [00:23:16] So you can find me on LinkedIn and you can dig into WorkRise on our website, www.workrise.com. Obviously my name is spelled Adam Hirschfeld, I think you’re probably going to have it in there.
Stuart Turley [00:23:27] We’ll have it in the show notes.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:23:29] Yeah, yes, you can ping me directly on LinkedIn if you have any questions and I’m available anytime.
Stuart Turley [00:23:33] Well, fantastic. I really appreciate your time. And this was a fantastic discussion because I am in my day job. I’m not, we actually analyze oil and gas deals. And so we take apart, is it a good investment or a bad investment for folks? And we’ll actually figure out whether or not we want to invest in that ourselves. So that’s my day job. And that’s how I actually make my money. And I do this for fun. So you sit back and take a look. I am very encouraged by where things are going.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:24:06] I am too.
Stuart Turley [00:24:07] All right. Well, thank you very much for stopping by the podcast. I appreciate you.
Adam Hirschfeld [00:24:10] Thank you, STu.
