The Changing World of Energy
You won’t want to miss this episode of the Energy Realities Podcast with David Blackmon, Irina Slav, Tammy Nemeth, and Stu Turley as they dive into the major shifts shaping today’s global energy landscape. From geopolitical tensions and critical mineral shortages to the ongoing tug-of-war between renewable ambitions and oil and gas realities, the hosts unpack how policy, production, and politics are redefining the future of energy.
As markets react to new trade deals, environmental directives, and economic divides, the team breaks down what these changes mean for consumers, investors, and nations alike. This episode brings powerful insight and candid analysis on the forces driving the world’s transition and why understanding them has never been more important.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:01 – Introductions
03:32 – Promises Made, Promises Kept: Trump Keeps Another One in ANWR
12:06 – The momentum on trade is with the United States
22:23 – Greenpeace and the Net Zero Followers are Wrong – The World is Bifurcating into New Trading Blocs
29:49 – Europe Faces an Economic Reality Check on Its Climate Agenda
31:47 – Europe struggles to catch up in race to stockpile critical minerals
38:54 – U.S. Energy Secretary and Qatari Energy Minister Send Letter to EU Regarding Proposed Corporate Climate Regulations
45:44 – Household electric bills to change with the weather
54:22 – Spain Reconsiders Its Nuclear Phaseout as Utilities Seek Almaraz Extension
55:53 – Secretary Chris Wright has a plan for Rare Earth and Critical Minerals – What is the timeline?
01:00:00 – Closing Thoughts and Takeaways
The Changing World of Energy
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Stuart Turley [00:00:12] Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the energy realities podcast. My name’s Stu Turley, President CEO of the Sandstone Group. It is an absolutely wonderful, uh, Monday morning here. Uh, just having a lot of fun. We’re getting ready to wind up and, uh start getting people on the podcast. We’ve got Irina Slav over in Bulgaria. How are you? You’ve been busy this morning, uh writing articles all over the world. How are you?
Irina Slav [00:00:39] I have been better, you know, I survived dental surgery last week and I still can’t speak normally But I will be better and yet writing stories is what I do still So that’s just a regular day for me. It’s a lovely autumn day raining cool. Very nice
Stuart Turley [00:00:58] I love it and do you get any help from your cat on the keyboard because you actually make sense. I need to figure out how to do that
Irina Slav [00:01:06] No, no, he’s not helpful at all, I’m sorry to say.
Stuart Turley [00:01:11] And then we have Tammy from the UK and she is the head Cabano over there at the Tammy Nemeth. She’s the head Cabano at The Nemeth Report. How are you today?
Tammy Nemeth [00:01:26] I’m doing well, thank you. It looks like you need more coffee. It’s early for you. Yeah, it’s a lovely autumn day in the UK, windy and rainy, and I could use the rain, so that’s good. Happy to see the leaves changing. It is always really pretty. And we had our time change on the weekend, so it’s actually an hour earlier. And I heard that maybe the United States wants to get rid of daylight savings time. So that’ll be interesting.
David Blackmon [00:02:02] Yeah, it’s it’s kind of like dissolving the EU. It’s an idea that comes up every year for the last 30 years and never happens. I wish it would happen though.
Tammy Nemeth [00:02:13] I don’t mind it. I don’t mind it
David Blackmon [00:02:16] And by the way, I’m David Blackmon. Stu is busy doing something. I don’t know if he’s frozen or something there.
Stuart Turley [00:02:21] No, I’m trying to share it out on the social media here. So just bear with me, Dave. This is David Blackmon. He is the head cabana over there at David Blackmon, uh, energy absurdities, uh at blackmon.substack.com. How are you sir?
David Blackmon [00:02:38] Well, you look like you’re about as adept at multitasking as I’ve become in my old age, you know, and just that talent is one of the first to go.
Stuart Turley [00:02:48] But we have a heck of a show lined up here, how is Texas this morning?
David Blackmon [00:02:54] It’s just beautiful. Look at that sky in the background. That’s Austin, the Capitol building is a live shot. I’m here on the Capitol grounds, recording this today. And it’s everything’s beautiful. Really I’m in my office, but
Stuart Turley [00:03:08] And I’ll tell you what, what the cool thing is, is there’s no chemtrails in that picture. So you got to like that. Let’s go ahead.
David Blackmon [00:03:15] No chemtrail during the government shutdown
Stuart Turley [00:03:19] Isn’t that kind of fun? Uh, let’s go ahead and jump over to you, David, while we’re going to roll over to your stories here. We’ve got two stories. We want to tee up these two articles that we want to talk about.
David Blackmon [00:03:31] Yeah, I’m going to take ANWR first, uh, because it’s probably the lesser important of the two, um, ANWR, of course, has been a political punching bag in football in the United States for 45 years since the USGS, uh did its initial resource estimate way back in the early 1980s, playing off a study that had been conducted, I believe by BP during the seventies development of Prudhoe Bay. Um, and you know, the estimate that the official estimate is there’s 8 billion barrels of oil beneath the coastal plane of the Alaskan national wildlife, Arctic national wildlife refuge on the North slope of Alaska. It’s a gigantic place. That’s, I believe about the size of South Carolina. The Trump administration has opened up a sliver of that or wants to open up a slither of that to leasing and, um, drilling for oil. In this wildlife refuge that was set aside in the 50s by President Eisenhower to protect the pristine nature of this region of the world. If there’s an 8 billion barrel initial resource estimate by the government, that means it’s very likely to be many multiples of that beneath the ground under ANWR, as we’ve seen from other resource estimates USGS does. For example, their initial resource estimate. Of the Wolf Camp shale Wolf Camp Wolfberry play in the Permian Basin was 3 billion barrels. Current estimates are well over 30 billion barrels and it’s probably going to keep going higher as the oil continues to be drilled out. So it’s a lot of oil. It’s a big prize. The question is if the president opens it up for leasing in which they plan to have a lease sale and they’re soliciting bids from companies interested in it to specify exact acreage they want offered for lease here in the coming months. The question is going to become what companies are going to be willing to risk $10 to $15 billion capital upfront to not just go in and drill wells, but you would first have to install the infrastructure pipeline processing, refining infrastructure up on a north slope to get this all to market. It’s a massive enterprise. It would be on the same scale as developing the Staybrook Play Offshore Guyana by Exxon and Chevron right now. It would take years and years to get the first oil, probably seven to 10 years before you produce a single barrel of oil. And in that seven to ten years, the United States is going to have at least two more presidential elections and at least three or four more midterm elections. Between now and then, now and the first barrel of oil. And so the risk these companies would be taking would not just be billions and billions of dollars that you gotta put in play upfront to get it done, but also the risk that the next Democrat president would be like Joe Biden and would come in and use his pen to cancel out whatever you’ve invested so far on the first day he takes office, which is what Joe Biden did to TC Energy. Um, and the, uh, Oh my God, I’m drawing a blank on the big pipeline.
Tammy Nemeth [00:07:02] Keystone Excel.
David Blackmon [00:07:03] Keystone XL pipeline, which TC Energy had already spent, invested seven to $8 billion in that thing and just got canceled. With the stroke of a pen, it’s a huge risk. I don’t know if any companies are gonna be willing to do it. It would be nice to have additional oil production up there because the Trans Alaska pipeline is less than half filled now. So you really need more oil coming into that pipeline to justify its ongoing. Existence here in the coming 10 to 15 years. But I just don’t know. I mean, I’m pretty ambivalent about ANWR. Personally, these companies have a lot of places to invest their billions of dollars in capital and maybe this isn’t going to be a top priority, but I wonder if the group has any suspicion somebody might actually come in and take the risk.
Stuart Turley [00:07:57] I wrote an article on it and, uh, I said, I’m going to be watching who actually buys the leases. It’s going to be a huge tell on who buys the lease is Conoco Phillips is up there. And I’ve said this before, my granddad was one of the chief geologist discovering the North slope, loved all my trips up there, actually got to sell equipment to the Aliesca pipeline years and years ago. Here’s some of the key things that are going to be some of that. I basically have said drill baby drill sounds good till you have to pay the bills and $60 is the new $40 oil based on inflation. That is not enough to even keep the lights on in the Saudi kingdom, let alone putting in all that new equipment. So David, you are spot on. I don’t know that it’s going to a All a drill baby drill does not happen at $40 doesn’t happen at $60 and it’s about $80. They’ll start waking up.
David Blackmon [00:09:02] Go ahead, Tammy.
Tammy Nemeth [00:09:04] I would just jump in that when I was a grad student, I wrote a paper on, and I participated in a Canadian foreign affairs round table on the international implications of opening up ANWR because of the porcupine caribou herd. And the herd crosses the jurisdictional boundary between Canada and the United States. It’s always moving back and forth. And that has been a real sticking point, at least in Canada-U.S. Relations up there. Because of the implications where the main oil leases would take place is in the calving grounds. And so there’s of course the environmental argument that this will disrupt the calbing of this really big herd which would impact its migration to Canada. And this is where the environmental groups put up their resistance and the Gwich’in nation up there also the Inuit sort of go against this as well for that reason. So I don’t know, there’s a lot of roadblocks. I think you’re right in the sense of whatever they approve now, unless you have Congress and the White House for the next, I don’t know, 12 years, it will just get removed right away. And so, as you say, what company wants to take that kind of risk when there’s other plays out there that aren’t as sensitive, I suppose, is one way to do that.
Stuart Turley [00:10:31] The Alaska pipeline is actually a marvel in engineering and has not hurt any of the migratory processes at all. So, you know.
David Blackmon [00:10:42] You heard is definitely prospered with the pipeline, right? Because it provides warmth in the winter and then it’s five times the size. It was in the seventies, but, but you know, this is a different thing in a different place. It’s three or 400 miles to the East and yeah, you know? I mean, the ecological concerns and of course there’s the reputational concern for the company. Uh, if you’re the one out there, you’re going to be taking all the. All the invective from the environmental community and, uh, you, and you’re also going to have a hundred different challenges in courts that you’re going to have to overcome in the United States and international courts, most likely, if you go into there as well. So it’s a, it’s big deal. Irina. Anything to add?
Irina Slav [00:11:28] I don’t think so, I think you’ve covered everything, especially the political uncertainty that everybody talks about. We don’t know who will be in charge in five years, so why make long-term spending decisions now? It’s really too risky.
Stuart Turley [00:11:46] Oh, I president Trump joked on air force one on the way over. He says, I could get another term in a run as a vice president and then go ahead and pump the other guy out because that’d be kind of mean. So, you know, let’s, let people get a little excited over that.
David Blackmon [00:12:06] So the other one is, of course, the president’s trip to Asia, which is ongoing as we speak. He’s making all kinds of deals, which Donald Trump tends to like to do when he’s on an international trip. A lot of it’s related to rare earth minerals and other critical energy minerals and not just the mining of them, but the processing and refining and manufacturing of the. Military-grade magnets that go into every modern-day weapons system. And he’s making these deals with all the countries that kind of halfway surround China and sort of isolating China at least to some extent in that part of the world with these agreements with Malaysia and Japan and other countries, Thailand that he’s visiting. And, Stu, we have a clip of Scott Bessent talking about this, right?
Video Speaker (Scott Bessent) [00:13:01] Can see the arc of where these trade deals are going. I won’t say that the Chinese are on their heels because they’re very composed, but Vice Premier Hu Yifeng is a seasoned politician, but it’s clear that the momentum was with us, that when you get the EU, the world’s largest trading bloc, when you got that deal inked, We had Japan. We had Indonesia, we had Vietnam. So not only did we have the EU, who has a very large trading relationship with China, we also had three of their neighbors.
David Blackmon [00:13:44] So, One of the things, one of the criticisms about these trade deals is that, uh, what typically they’re agreeing to is a framework for further negotiation. It’s not a final trade deal and that’s a valid criticism. So there’s a lot of details to be worked out in the deal with the EU, for example. Uh, we see this constant back and forth with Canada, you know, I mean, they ran a bad ad using Ronald Reagan last week and the president. Slapped another 10% tariff on Canada. That’ll go away sometime soon when he when he is in a different mood. So there’s a lot of uncertainty around all of this. But I think the point we need to make here, there’s several one is this is a vitally important issue at the moment with rare earth minerals. It’s vitally important not just to the United States and China, but to everyone on earth, because this is These materials are key to the making of every modern gadget we have. We use these chips that are manufactured in part from some of these minerals. Every modern military weapons system that provides national security for the Western world is made with the magnets and the chips that are manufacturer from these minerals Uh, China controls 65% currently of global production of these minerals, 80% of the supply chains for these minerals and about 90% of the refining capacity for these metals. So I go back and every time I talk about this, I go back to 2001, June of 2001. President Biden’s handlers propped him in front of his teleprompter and had him read a script. Talking about what a national emergency it is that we’re dependent on China for 80% at that time, and I think it’s still about that, of our rare mineral needs. And he promised four years ago, more than four years now, to mount what he referred to in that text as a whole government approach to on-shoring supply chains and friend-shering those supply chains. With other countries that are friendly to us and, and getting out of the Chinese sphere of influence over them. Literally nothing happened for the next three and a half years of that administration that anybody can tell me about. I mean, I’ve asked the question repeatedly. I’ve gotten zero evidence that they did anything to resolve this issue. So now the Trump administration has inherited a major bleep show. On this issue and is having to scramble around in an emergency situation. And that’s why we saw them last week do the deal with Australia related to rare earth mining and processing and refining in Australia that we will import to a United States. We saw the Pentagon entered into an equity agreement with MP materials, which is the only sizable US maker of those magnets. It’s also mining. Refining operation there in Southern California. It’s amazing to me that that plant is in Southern California, given all the emissions it’s creating, but it is. And, you know, we’re going to see a lot more deals like these here in the near future. And it’s really a big piece of these trade agreements that are being negotiated with these specific RIM countries during this presidential trip. So the point is that if we don’t do this… Then we’re all going to be facing an energy crisis that potentially could make the 1973 Arab oil embargo look like a walk in the park. Because these minerals are, it’s a highly complex system, vastly more complex than that oil embargo was. There’s so many moving parts. And it is a true emergency situation. And I think, you know, Mr. Besant and, Energy Secretary Wright and the other Trump officials and the president himself deserve a lot of credit for taking it seriously and moving as quickly as they, you know, it’s hard to move the gears of the U.S. Federal government in any single direction, and this one is really highly complex, but it’s vitally important to everyone that they’re successful in this. I’m tired, somebody else.
Tammy Nemeth [00:18:22] I would add that, you know, at the same time that Trump is on his Asian trade mission trip, so is Mark Carney of Canada. And Carney is also making different announcements and whatnot. I feel like the Air Force One lands and then Mark Carney comes along like five minutes later or whatever. But I mean, it’s time to be with the ASEAN. Meetings at Kuala Lumpur and the APEC meetings in South Korea, so it’s part of this sort of larger international gathering of Asia-Pacific trade. And as much as I criticize Mark Carney, this is the one area I agree with him, is that it’s important to diversify trade and Southeast Asia from the World Bank is showing that it is going to be the the largest growing economic region in the world. Over the next 10 to 15 years. So it makes complete sense to try and have better trading ties with this region that is slated to grow the most in the world, especially with Canada being stagnating, in fact, probably negative growth. I find that funny, negative growth, yeah, like Germany, you know? And so I agree that this is the right thing to do to go to Asia and try to make these trade agreements and whatnot. What I find so interesting with this whole friend-shoring thing, you’re absolutely right, nothing happened. Canada jumped on board, friend-shoring, friend shoring, and whatnot, and so what I found so fascinating in Mark Carney’s comments at one of these trade meetings this past week was that The EU doesn’t have a Pacific border, but that’s okay, because Canada will be the bridge between Asia and the EU. And so the EU can be a minor partner or something in one of these larger Pacific agreements that Canada’s in and Canada will the bridge. I’m just like, oh my gosh, what is this? This is crazy, what are you talking about? But that’s all right, that’s Canada just kind of IN THE- the tale of what America’s doing, Canada’s there too.
David Blackmon [00:20:44] Stu, didn’t George Costanza refer to negative growth as shrinkage?
Stuart Turley [00:20:50] Yes he did. That was right after he got out of the cold ocean.
Irina Slav [00:20:55] The hot tub.
Stuart Turley [00:20:56] Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:20:57] Could I just make a note about the EU? And I have to respectfully disagree with Sekwetri Besten because really getting the EU to commit to buying hundreds of billions of US energy and not just US energy is not really something to be proud of because this commitment is going to hasten See you soon. Break down or the collapse of the European Union and you’ll be left with nothing. I mean, it is a very big trade bloc, but it’s not doing particularly well because it doesn’t grow economically, it cannot keep affording these imports that it has committed to buy. Yeah, and it cannot grow economically because its energy bill is too high and about to get higher because of these commitments to the United States. So I think Asia is definitely a safer but for anyone with long-term perspective on anything, really.
David Blackmon [00:22:12] Stu that’s kind of a signal for your evolving trading blocks narrative, right?
Stuart Turley [00:22:19] That was one of my stories that I had here. And, uh, Greenpeace and the net zero followers are wrong. The world is bifurcating into new trading blocks. I had fun writing this article. And when you sit back and take a look at, at Grok, I really enjoyed said, Hey, could you put Ed Miliband as a Wallace and Gromit character and poof, here it comes. And it was actually a real shot of him. So I think Grok had a headache that day. But the key thing is, and the fundamentals to this article are all about trade. And when you sit back and take a look at net zero equals deindustrialization. And when look at deindustriallization, we saw over this past few days, Germany taking down their two towers of their last nuclear. So here’s green energy people in a green new deal. And they take down all of their nuclear that does not have any emissions, you can’t buy this kind of stupid. And so net zero is absolutely horrific. You take a look at California’s cautionary tale, California is the same as Canada, the EU and the UK. And when I talk about is here are the the in this article on energy newsbeat.co We’ve got the growth. And the main block problems that were each country. But you take a look at the great bifurcation. It’s going to be green blocks versus growth blocks. And what I envision out of this is I think that the war in, in, uh, Europe and Ukraine is going to over fairly soon. And I think you’re going to see. Russia, India, you’re going to see Asia being the biggest growth pattern. The biggest non-growth pattern is Canada, EU, and the UK. So you’re gonna break up into these and it’s going to be very interesting to see how this rolls around. Really?
Tammy Nemeth [00:24:29] I like how you categorize that as green versus growth blocks because it because it’s basically been doing this since 2020 when the EU introduced its green deal then you had the the auto pen era in the United States and and how that was really pushing the United States to join that that EU green deal global we’re going to redo the global economy And then you had the rise of the BRICS nation saying, whoa, whoa, we wanna grow, we don’t want to do all this green stuff. But now that that bifurcation was happening then, it seems to sort of be, I would say, fragmenting a little bit because the US was originally in that green camp and now it’s like, we want to be in the growth camp. So I’m not really sure how that’s gonna play out in the long-term, at least in the short-term America is like, whoa whoa whoa, we wanna be growing, we don’t want to be. Embracing all this green stuff. But that puts the EU into a precarious situation because it’s full in on the whole green stuff and now it’s like, uh-oh, we can’t, how are we gonna pull everybody else into this green, sort of global green initiative and the rejection of, or at least the delay on the vote for the international shipping carbon tax, that was a big blow to the EU’s ambitions. And what happened with, which I’m going to talk about in a second, the corporate sustainability due diligence directive and all of this climate accounting stuff, that they really hoped that this was going to reshape global trade and make it be in this sort of green formation. And China is interesting because they have their foot in both camps because with the way they have their social credit system for them to monitor what everybody’s emissions are. And to have algorithms sort of, how do I say this politely, present the data in favorable terms, in favorable ways in how they do the reporting and stuff, that’s really easy for them. So for them to jump onto that bandwagon and say, yeah, okay, we’ll do net zero, we’ll the carbon accounting stuff, because they have the means in which to present themselves in a more favorable light than people think. So, you know, they have their foot in both, and it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. I don’t know, what do you think of that?
David Blackmon [00:27:00] I think you’re right. Absolutely right. And they dominate the manufacturing of all the material needed and components for green energy. So you know, they get credit for that. And at the same time, they’re they’re continuing their massive expansion of coal fire power plants and, and are double the emissions, I believe, of the United States now, at least double.
Stuart Turley [00:27:22] Are you talking about China?
Tammy Nemeth [00:27:25] China’s emissions
David Blackmon [00:27:28] So anyway, it’s it’s quite quite quite the shell game they have going on.
Tammy Nemeth [00:27:35] It’s part of that green versus growth blocks and what do you see is happening in the mid
Irina Slav [00:27:43] Well, it clearly is, even though the EU insists it can do growth and green together at the same time, which I really don’t know why they insist on it, but it’s breaking down the whole narrative. You mentioned the CSDD, and now they’ve agreed to review the internal combustion engine ban. Meaning they’re going to walk it back, because it’s not going to happen. There are too many member states that do not want it to happen, and it’s going to just accelerate this momentum. I’ve been saying this for years, we have all been saying it, we’ve been discussing it forever. There is no other way things could happen because there is only so much reality would allow to be pushed against. You know, and at some point it will reassert itself and it is reasserting itself. Germany already has some of the highest energy costs in Europe and possibly in the world. And now they’ve destroyed their last nuclear power plant, just to make sure, as you’ll get views. Just to make sure it would never be reopened. This is not the same action. This is NOT the action of people who are rational. And if you’ve got irrationality, it will inevitably lead to disaster. Sooner or later, but it will be a disaster.
David Blackmon [00:29:25] And that’s more, I took up half the show. We got, we gotta move on.
Stuart Turley [00:29:30] And you can be found at…
David Blackmon [00:29:33] Uh, yeah, uh, Blackmon.substack.com come see me.
Stuart Turley [00:29:38] Boy, I think I had a problem this morning. Holy smokes. Okay, here we go. We got Irina.
Irina Slav [00:29:43] I’ll be really quick because it’s related, really. Europe faces an economic reality check on its climate agenda. We just discussed this. I wrote a feature article for oilprice.com today on this topic. It’s what I’ve been saying and we have all been saying. They are discovering that the net zero transition… Is quite expensive and they’re starting to run out of money and they are starting worse to run out of ways to find money to keep financing this transition. So yeah, they’re calling it a reality check. It was long overdue and it’s good to see it finally being acknowledged by mainstream media. They need to find a way to ease the cost burden of the green transition. Well, good luck with that. How? How? Except admitting that you need cheap hydrocarbon based energy, which also happens to be reliable, until they acknowledge that.
Stuart Turley [00:30:51] Subsidies.
Tammy Nemeth [00:30:54] But where do you get the money from?
Stuart Turley [00:30:55] Yeah, the rich.
David Blackmon [00:30:59] But wait, but wait, wind and solar are cheap. They’re the cheapest sources.
Tammy Nemeth [00:31:04] The cheapest ever,.
David Blackmon [00:31:05] Right? Weren’t they?
Irina Slav [00:31:05] Yeah, that would be a cost at the time, yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:31:08] Irina, this morning I wrote in the article that there are 11,900 insolvencies in Germany this year and 940 manufacturing firms filed for bankruptcy in 2025.
Irina Slav [00:31:25] Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It’s going to get worse because they bring electricity costs down, not without heavy subsidizing of all forms of electricity. And they’re not going to do that because that’s essentially subsidizing natural gas and coal. And related to that, Europe struggles to catch up in the race to stockpile. I will quote from this article because I couldn’t put it any better than it has been put by the Financial Times. Now, Brussels will launch a consultation on stockpiling before year end on funding and what minerals should be acquired. They will launch consultation people, they will talk about what. Exact minerals we need to stockpile and then we’ll probably continue with consultations on how exactly are we going to acquire these minerals and who are we gonna acquire them from because who is the dominant power on all these critical minerals it’s China and there’s the US Which is also stockpiling Yeah Competition in a race with the u.s Guess how that race is going to end. It’s just disaster after disaster. I thought it was exhausting a year ago. I was wrong. It’s been getting worse and they’re launching consultations and discussing joint buying as if it’s a magic solution to all problems. It didn’t work for natural gas. It is not going to work now. How are you going to mandate companies to buy critical minerals from, I don’t know, Australia?
Tammy Nemeth [00:33:16] I don’t know why they need the consultation because in 2023, they produced the critical minerals list with 34 of the critical minerals and that includes like copper, antimony, arsenic, bauxite, beryllium, helium, heavy rare earths, light rare earth, lithium, magnesium and so on and so forth. So they’ve already got the list. So what the heck are they consulting on? And the other thing that I- That’s a bureaucracy. Right. A bureaucracy. Of consultations and discussions. And then nothing happens. So it’s talk, talk, and nothing happens, because I thought that one of the sticking points was, depending on where you store it. So let’s say Germany stores a bunch of critical minerals. How do other countries access it? Because it’s in Germany. And then it was, oh, what if Italy does? Or what if France does? And what’s the mechanism for the EU to distribute or disperse the critical minerals that have been stockpiled in which locations? Um, so. Yeah, I’m trying to imagine siemens trying to get critical minerals that are stored in in spain held by the spanish uh socialist government or something and then they’re like no we don’t want to give you access to that that could you know how is that going to work
David Blackmon [00:34:34] Possession’s 9
Irina Slav [00:34:37] Sorry, this brings up a very, very worrying development caused here by Mario Draghi, who recently said that Europe should move towards pragmatic federalisation to solve all its problems. I really, really don’t like this idea.
Tammy Nemeth [00:34:59] Then if they federalize, the same way that maybe Canada is, it’s just, it chips away at all the, of the powers of the states, the member states. And it’s already bad chipping away at, trying to say that Hungary can’t do X, Y, Z, and we’re just gonna withhold funding. Well, how can you do that? You know, they keep changing the goalposts. And then if they create themselves as this federal entity, I think that would just be disastrous for the rights and the powers of the member states.
Irina Slav [00:35:39] It will be for everyone, except those in charge. That’s why they want it, that’s the way to cement their power.
Tammy Nemeth [00:35:48] Of the all these unelected people. Elections are risky, as we know. Well, except when they interfere.
David Blackmon [00:35:59] Right, especially when they’re rigged, yeah.
Tammy Nemeth [00:36:05] Those are great stories, Irina, thank you.
David Blackmon [00:36:06] Great stories on the stockpiling is just my, I saw that headline almost fainted. I thought, oh my God, if you haven’t been stockpiled for the last 30 years, you’re, I mean, it’s too late. I don’t know how you catch up. I, it it’s hard to see, um, particularly with the slow moving bureaucracy at the EU, it really hard to say how there’s a successful effort there.
Tammy Nemeth [00:36:34] Yeah, it’s like what their recent announcement about, they’re creating this consortium to compete with Starlink. And it’s all these, the big EU level companies like Talis and Airbus and somebody else. And they’re gonna combine in order to compete Starlink and just like, you guys take forever to do anything. How is that?
David Blackmon [00:37:01] It’s like NASA trying to compete with, with, uh, with a space X, you know, such a pretense.
Tammy Nemeth [00:37:09] I mean, it’s great, you need competition, but having this sort of federally or the EU involved in trying to compete with a private entity, it is just…
Irina Slav [00:37:24] Typical, yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:37:26] And your substack is?
Irina Slav [00:37:29] It’s Irina Slav on Energy and I try to write regularly. Apparently I write too much for some readers, but I’m not going to stop.
David Blackmon [00:37:39] Yeah, I have that problem too.
Irina Slav [00:37:42] It’s not your problem, it’s not my problem, it’s the reader’s problem. I mean, you can read the articles later. Or unsubscribe, of course.
Tammy Nemeth [00:37:52] Right. Yeah. I mean, I get the emails for all the different substackers that I follow, and I just get to them when I get to them. Yeah, it’s some of it’s timely, but other stuff, you know, it lasts a long time and can just help give background information and understanding. And I really appreciate all the work that substack is due to try and shed light on different world developments and definitely grateful for it.
Irina Slav [00:38:22] Yeah, me too. It’s a great place to be as reader and writer.
Tammy Nemeth [00:38:27] Yeah, yeah, because you get control over what you’re writing and whatnot. And I think that’s really important. And then there’s, there’s room for engagement there. People wish to have their comment and I’m all for open discussion. So All right, I guess we’re on to my stories here. So I’m going to go with the one that’s really big and bold there. And that is the letter last week from the U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the Qatari Energy Minister. And they sent this letter to the EU regarding the corporate sustainability due diligence directive. And what’s really, I think, frustrating for Qatar is. They have communicated their position to the EU on several occasions and have received no response whatsoever. And you know honestly I think they’re being kind of generous in this letter because they’re like we think you should reconsider these four particular articles of this directive and What was interesting is that the EU had made some minor adjustments supposedly to accommodate Qatar’s complaints and they put it into this omnibus legislation. And the EU process of reviewing things is Byzantine and it takes forever and whatever. So then it went to the juridical committee and they made a few more tweaks. But they kept the one that bothered Qatar the most, and that was you have to have transition plans. And a transition plan in this context is that you’re basically putting out a plan if you’re an oil and gas company of when you’re gonna be out of business. And it’s like how you’re phasing yourself out till 2050. And in the transition plan, you have targets. So with those targets, every five years or something, we’re going to re reach this. Milestone and that milestone and so on. And so that’s the expectation with the transition plan that you’re laying out the steps in which you’re putting yourself out of business because you have to have net zero emissions from your operations, your supply chain, and people using your product. So zero by 2015 means no one’s using natural gas and no one is using oil. So Qatar said, no, we’re not doing transition plans. That’s stupid. We don’t want to have to report on our supply chain and all this human rights stuff. Why should we have to say that anybody who works for us must be unionized, because that’s one of the elements. And so they pushed back and said, no, we won’t do this. So the EU tweaked some stuff and said well, you know, okay, you just have to account for people in your immediate supply chain. But if you hear a rumor that someone down, the supply chain that you’re not directly dealing with, maybe having bad practices, you still need to kind of investigate. Otherwise, people might get mad, investors will be mad, there could be court suit, court cases launched against you and so on. And so the US said, actually, we don’t like this stuff either. We don’t this transition plan stuff. We don’t like all this labor stuff. And also tracking methane emissions. So that is another big one where you have to account for all the fugitive emissions from pipelines and other stuff.
Tammy Nemeth [00:42:08] And reduce them right by 2050. So they tweaked some stuff and said okay you have to have a transition plan but you don’t have to put steps in for how you’re going to reach your your outcome in 2050. But of course that’s all open for litigation where come you know activist groups will say hey but you you need to have this the these steps we need to know blah blah blah. And interestingly as a bit of a side note Total Energy’s lost a case in France last week that said. By just making a general statement that they’re committed to reaching net zero by 2050 It’s greenwashing and they’re liable for misleading the public and investors by just making it general statement That we agree we’re gonna try to get to net zero by 2050 so that should be have a chilling effect also for what these transition plans are because even if they say well It’s not required. We’d like you to do it, but it’s not The NGOs will take you to court and you’ll have to be forced to do it anyway and run that legal gauntlet. So they wrote this letter, then they voted and said, we’re not going to accept the changes in the omnibus. So now it’s going back to the drawing board. And then by November 13th or something, they’re going to have another vote on whether they move forward. So basically the US and Qatar are threatening that they will stop LNG exports to the EU unless substantive changes are made or the legislation is repealed, the directive. So who knows where this is going, but I think their complaints.
Stuart Turley [00:43:51] You know what’s not in there, Tammy? What is not in there is what is happening to the solar panels and wind farm blades as they come off and get replaced. The boneyards and the pollution that wind farms and solar panels do. In the United States, less than 5% are, I believe, is the number that is recycled in the United States for solar panels. So you’ve got nine, let’s say ballpark 95%. It’s $2 to throw it into a, a landfill, which we ship off site, uh, and out of the, out of the way and out a mind. And then it goes into the ocean and kills everything. So that’s not in there. What a bunch of hip, hip, hypocrisy folks there. I think Yoda said it best hypocrisy is deep here. So you sit back and kind of go Yoda is right. When he says. Hypocrisy is strong with this one
Tammy Nemeth [00:44:57] That’s a good point because you’re right, it’s selective application of these different laws and there’s definitely double standards where wind and solar companies get a pass. The battery, electric, you know, backup systems, whatever, they get a past for whatever environmental damage that they do. But oil and gas companies are held to the, you know, not even to the letter of the law, but beyond the letter of the lot to whatever judges feel like interpreting on that day. If they, you know, if the environmental groups or the activists get an activist judge. So that’s not the way to run a country or an energy system. Which then brings me to the UK story. So the article there was in the Telegraph and I love the headline on this. Household electricity bills to change with the weather. So this is. The UK has been trying to get people to take smart meters for a long time. It’s a mandate, but it’s been slow. I think right now it’s 60% of households have smart meters. And whether Octopus Energy has trialed this already, but now Eon, which is the other big energy supplier in the UK is rolling it out of the ground where they will be, and right now, if you have a smart meter, um you will for the most part just pay a monthly average right so whatever your consumption is for the month you’ll be charged a rate you sign up for a rate and that’s what you get charged but now they want to monitor your usage every 30 minutes and then the rate will change every 30 minutes depending on whether or not the wind is blowing really strong or if it’s really sunny or if it’s shady or if there’s a dunkle flout if it’s still. If it’s still then wow you’re paying a whole lot of money trouble. Yeah, you’re in trouble and one of the interesting aspects of that article is The the author writes The change is intended to lower electricity usage So it’s not So it is not just over going to make because they’re trying to spin it that it’s going to be cheaper for you and you’ll be able to charge your EV or maybe you can You know, do all this different stuff with the smart meter and smart appliances. You can schedule your washing machine to run overnight. I’m like, oh my gosh, that’d be so loud. And what if it ruptures and there’s water all over in the middle of the night? Anyway, so, but they’re spinning it that you’re gonna save money. But then the reality is mentioned in the article that actually they wanna lower your usage. Well, how are they gonna lower your use? By making it prohibitive to actually use it when you need it. And I think the most important point made in the article was from the shadow energy minister who said… That the whole point of the grid and the smart meters is for people, not the grid. But now we’re supposed to reorganize our lives in order to accommodate the grid, and.
Stuart Turley [00:48:13] And Tammy, how come they do not advertise the fact that smart meters are radiating out very harmful things to humans? And it is now a known fact that those things are a health hazard on your house.
Tammy Nemeth [00:48:31] Good question. I don’t know. It’s not being mentioned.
David Blackmon [00:48:36] No, that’s the quiet part. We have to be quiet.
Tammy Nemeth [00:48:41] So, excuse me, that’s kind of what the UK is doing, which is sort of falling in line with what the EU Green Deal is. The UK has its own Green Deal, really, which they call the Net Zero Act and whatever. So yeah, I mean, they want this mandatory in every British household by 2027. So yeah it’ll be interesting to see if they’re able to do that. But that’s linked to This new announcement where the government here in the UK is going to fast track 400,000 training positions to try and encourage kids who are finishing school to go into the clean energy jobs. So because they need people to install the meters and they need people to hook up all the solar and wind that they’re putting onto the grid. And doing all this, maybe probably cleaning off the solar panels, maybe that’ll be a job too.
Irina Slav [00:49:45] You don’t have to do this every day, so once the smart meters are installed and panels are put up, what are these people going to do?
Tammy Nemeth [00:49:54] Clean the solar panels, maintain them, cut the grass, I don’t know.
Stuart Turley [00:49:58] Wait for a hailstorm and then
Tammy Nemeth [00:50:03] Right, so, and then because they’re also mandating that everybody put a heat pump in their home and the manufacturers, the heat pumps are saying, well, we don’t have enough installers. So they’re gonna rush people through training to install these heat pumps, which aren’t necessarily going to be installed in the correct fashion. There’s already complaints that the installers aren’t doing a good job and there’s leaks and mold and various other things. So. Yeah, apparently all these young people are gonna be trained to install heat pumps and plumbing for the heat pumps and installing the smart meters. I’m sure there’s gonna need maintenance because the smart meter are prone to breaking down and reporting incorrectly. And then the other thing they announced. Yeah, it was a new ombudsman.
Stuart Turley [00:50:55] Tammy, your, your other article here, clean energy jobs that we’re talking about right now, boom to bring thousands of new jobs or 400,000 by year 2030. How many people are employed in the oil and gas industry? A lot more than that.
Tammy Nemeth [00:51:10] Well, I mean, they’re going to be put out of work, right? Because, you know, North Sea is being shut down, refineries are being closed. So, yeah, I don’t know. And are they going to retrain those people for these green jobs? I don’t know.
Irina Slav [00:51:25] There is close to one million young people out of work in the UK, a reader told me, 928,000 or something like that, many of whom are out of working, out of education, due to mental problems, which is very interesting.
Tammy Nemeth [00:51:45] Climate anxiety in the UK, I suspect, is quite high.
Irina Slav [00:51:47] I don’t know if the anxiety or social anxiety or whatever else is trendy or I’m being unfair, young people do suffer, they have trouble adjusting to living in society because of online addictions and all that. But it raises the question, how are you going to train all these necessary technicians? How well are you gonna train them as you pointed out? And what happens if these young people don’t want to become solar or heat-bombed technicians. Can’t force them.
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:21] So part of the the announcement made was that they’re going to establish five new clean energy technical excellence colleges. Oh my goodness come on. Yeah so they’re now going to right now that Tony Blair when he was in power back in the early to that late 90s early 2000s it was to push all the young people into universities because you know until he was there. You only went to university. There were like engineering jobs, doctors, lawyers, if you’re gonna be an academic or whatever. And so there was a smaller percentage of students who went into universities. But then he said, I want 50% of all students to go to university. So the universities expanded like crazy in the UK and they pushed a whole bunch of people who probably shouldn’t be going to university into universities and now they’re like, we need, we don’t need more sort of social justice Warriors we have enough We now need people who can actually physically do stuff because they’re like plumbing, electrician, welding, and so on. So that’s the direction that they’re going and to set up these new colleges in order to train. But again, what’s the quality of that training, especially if the people don’t necessarily want to go, but they’re they’re, like, what option do I have? It’s horrible.
David Blackmon [00:53:51] Stu, the problem with being the moderator is you end up with the last five minutes of an hour long show.
Stuart Turley [00:53:58] No, I am quite happy. You guys know an awful lot of it. No, is this part of we’ve already talked about this
Tammy Nemeth [00:54:05] Yeah, we’re done. We’re done, yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:54:07] Okay, and how do people find you?
Tammy Nemeth [00:54:08] You can find me at thenemethreport.substack.com.
Stuart Turley [00:54:13] Alright! And then we have David, we have, let’s roll over here. I had, you know, Spain reconsiders its nuclear phase out as utilities of Almares extension. Do you think they’re going to wake up and, and you smell the holy cow, Batman, the net zero deindustrialization of a once great Germany shows up on their doorstep? I’m not sure, but at least they’re filing to do that. And we’ve talked and we’ve covered today, and speaking of Germany, I put in that article that I have on energynewsbeat.co, a picture of Germany saving the climate after blowing up its perfectly fine nuclear plants, a coal mine.
Tammy Nemeth [00:55:03] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:55:04] The amount in, in how this relates to this article, Spain’s use of natural gas since the major blackout over this summer, uh, has dramatically increased and the amount of natural gas that they’re buying and the power generation has really, really increased. Uh, that goes back to the age old Turley’s law. The more we go in more money invested in wind and solar and hydrogen, the more fossil fuels will be used. And it seems like it’s holding true. Um, the rare earth we’ve covered very nicely on, on all of this kind of stuff. So, but I’ll tell you, you sit back and take a look at secretary Chris Wright. On the interview that he had with that’s on energy newsbeat.co as well. And I’ve got the whole video on there and secretary Chris Wright hit it out of the park with Larry Kudlow and Larry actually asked a very succinct questions in a nice orderly way. And I’m got the hole video there. And, and so take a look at it. And Chris Wright says, I would love to have all the minerals and, or taking care of in 12 months. That’s not likely. Uh, let’s w let’s target 24 months. Well, we’re already gallium is a very major, uh, issue for military. And we are now producing in the U S and estimated 50% of what the U S military needs right now, which is not 50% percent of everything we need. But, uh I got to hand it to the secretary, Chris Wright and Lee Zeldin and Doug Burgum for all hands on deck, they’re doing the best they And. So at least they are really working out and we saw with Malaysia, we saw with, uh, Japan, Japan is going to lead the Asia markets in the new bifurcation with their new prime minister. She is a rock star. Uh, I, I had never heard of her until she won. So hats off to the new prime Minister of Japan. I think that, uh she’s going to do them very well.
David Blackmon [00:57:22] Looks like they don’t rig their elections in Japan, right? Um, otherwise she’d have never been allowed to, to be.
Irina Slav [00:57:31] They will be in contact with the European Union prior to the elections.
David Blackmon [00:57:34] Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. WEF hasn’t gotten embedded in the Japanese government.
Stuart Turley [00:57:42] No, and, uh, we already talked about, uh green, green piece and the net zero followers are wrong, uh in this article, I do have all of the, where the trading blocks and the growth patterns are going to be, and I like the way of saying it is either going green or growth. So in, and it’s a new trading block world and, uh, as President Trump has said many times, it’s either central casting or many people may not like the way this story ends. We will probably be doing business with Russia and Russia will be doing business with India and India will be business with the United States and you can either be going after fiscal responsibility and growth or you’re going to be left in the
Irina Slav [00:58:36] Well, the only people who are not going to like this is people who think that reality is a Hollywood action film, which it isn’t. Well, I’m sorry, but it’s fact a lot of people see the world in precisely that way. It’s an action movie, there’s good guys who can do bad things because they’re the good guys and they’re justified in doing bad things. And they’re bad guys who could never ever do anything good at all because they are the bad guys and whatever they do. It’s bad, because it’s not doing it. This is literally the perspective on the world that I’m seeing on social media all the time. It’s a bit scary, but I do keep hoping that it’s only characteristic of a small minority of people.
David Blackmon [00:59:30] Irina froze. Oh, goodness.
Stuart Turley [00:59:33] Her dental, her dental implant hit.
Tammy Nemeth [00:59:39] The EU censored her.
Stuart Turley [00:59:40] That’s right. Uh-oh. Um, well with that we’re about out of time and we sure had a great discussion here. Um David any last words?
David Blackmon [00:59:51] Um, just that my cap is my Charlie Kirk tribute cap. It says truth is not hate speech by the same token. Reality is not denialism. Keep that in mind as you go forward.
Stuart Turley [01:00:06] Hmm. Truth is strong with you today. Hmm. And then we have Tammy. Any last thoughts?
Tammy Nemeth [01:00:13] I thought we covered a lot of ground today and I’m grateful for all the people who got up early to tune in. Yes, thank you.
Stuart Turley [01:00:20] All right. With that, this was the Energy Realities podcast. This will be out on all of our substacks and thanks. And let’s have an absolutely fantastic week. You can always reach me on energynewsbeat.co or the energynewsbeat.substack.com. Have a great day guys. See you.
Tammy Nemeth [01:00:37] Thanks, everybody.
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