Weekly Daily Standup Top Stories
Pushback Begins Against Trump’s Oil Agenda
West Texas Intermediate has been trading around $70 this week after posting two weeks of declines. The last time shale producers pursued a flat-out production strategy, crude prices tanked to the $40s. Cheap oil may […]
Iran Says Trump’s Maximum Pressure Will Fail to Drive Its Oil Exports to Zero
The new U.S. Administration’s maximum pressure campaign on Iran will fail – again – and will not achieve its goal to drive the Islamic Republic’s oil exports to zero, Iran’s Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said […]
BP shares pop 7% after reports activist hedge fund Elliott has taken a stake in the struggling British oil major
BP shares jumped on Monday following weekend reports that activist investor Elliott Management has built a stake in the struggling oil major and could pressure the energy company to shift gears on its core oil and gas businesses. […]
How has green energy policies impacted the environment, society, and our financial systems? DOGE found that the Inflation Reduction Act was funding change.
But what change you ask, well let’s start with the Inflation Reduction Act and what the huge “Porkulus Bill” as Dan Bongino has called it and see some of the line items. We will then […]
US stuns European allies, opens Ukraine peace talks with Russia
BRUSSELS – Donald Trump said on Wednesday he and Vladmir Putin had agreed to open talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine “immediately”, after his defence secretary said it was “unrealistic” that Ukraine’s pre-2014 […]
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
01:21 – Swiss Voters Reject Emission Curbs Over Economic Concerns
03:49 – Pushback Begins Against Trump’s Oil Agenda
08:21 – Iran Says Trump’s Maximum Pressure Will Fail to Drive Its Oil Exports to Zero
10:44 – BP shares pop 7% after reports activist hedge fund Elliott has taken a stake in the struggling British oil major
12:31 – How has green energy policies impacted the environment, society, and our financial systems? DOGE found that the Inflation Reduction Act was funding change.
15:58 – US stuns European allies, opens Ukraine peace talks with Russia
17:30 – Outro
FollowStuart On LinkedIn and Twitter
Follow Michael On LinkedIn and Twitter
– Get in Contact With The Show –
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter
Stuart Turley: [00:00:10] Welcome to the Energy Newsbeat Daily Standup. This is the weekly recap where the staff will pick the highest stories of the week and roll them into a bundle. This is just an absolute crazy week for news on the news desk, and I couldn’t be more happy with everything that’s going on around right now. Sit back and think about where we were for the last four years, where President Trump is really knuckling down. We’ve got Pam Bondi rolling around. We’ve got hopefully a lot of folks going to be arrested. I’m tired of paying taxes and finding out exactly what USAID has been doing. And I even put out on our substack an article thinking that President Trump was not going to be able to get a negotiation and a meeting with President Putin. One hour after I put it out there, he’s had a phone call with him. Do not ever underestimate President Trump and sit back and enjoy, and we do appreciate their consulting for being the sponsor of the Daily Energy Newsbeat Show. Thank you all very much and have an absolutely won derful day. We’ll talk to you all soon. Over fears it would stymie the economy. Look at this. This is yes, was only about 30 percent. I mean, this is a while. This is Switzerland, which is not a huge economy. It’s a bellwether, if you would, for people are tired of climate activism in shutting down economies. [00:01:55][105.3]
Michael Tanner: [00:01:56] Yeah, it’s well, I mean, it’s it’s it’s really difficult when the climate policies are really a way to just shut down energy use. Everybody wants a clean economy, but they also we need to constantly. Everyone’s also aware that we need to constantly be growing our energy availability. And the problem is, I think a lot of these policies, specifically what they’re trying to do in Switzerland or this proposal in Switzerland was trying to put the two at odds with each other. [00:02:25][28.7]
Stuart Turley: [00:02:26] Oh, yeah. And so I think we’re going to see some of that with Lee Zeldin, with President Trump saying for every one new regulation, Lee, you must eliminate 10. [00:02:36][10.0]
Michael Tanner: [00:02:36] So what exactly did this plan demand? Well, that greenhouse gasses that was emitted through consumption, which is a vague term anyway, exactly reduced to 10 percent of their 2018 levels within the next 10 years, which is is pretty interesting. Again, a lot of this was was submitted by the younger crew over there in Switzerland, which is which is interesting and was something that’s fascinating. And then this article points out, Stu, about Switzerland was that they have a direct system of what’s called quote unquote direct democracy in which citizens as often as four times a year vote on different policy issues, which gives the more junior politicians in their parliamentary system a lot more influence than they may have even though a lot of these proposals are kicked out at the ballot box. It is a very interesting, interesting quote. One quote here before we move on, Stu, from what’s this guy’s name? Leg, Leggy, Leggy. I forget what his full name is, but I apologize. He said it’s common in Switzerland and the different political funds launch vote campaigns for extreme demands because even if they fail in a vote, this is a way you get a topic on the agenda. So again, it’s interesting, but this definitely got shot down quick. Yep. [00:03:46][69.9]
Stuart Turley: [00:03:47] I think we’re going to see more of that around the world. Let’s go to the next story here. Pushback begins against Trump’s oil agenda. Michael, I believe that I think drill baby drill is a great campaign speech, but the industry is not ready for just unleashing before. Let me give you this one quote out of here from Ron, I guess, from Liberty Energy. I love him. He is absolutely a cool cat. It’s all about the price. Of course, it’s always about the price. This goes for OPEC and the U .S. shale drillers alike. What you’re seeing is a huge amount of positivity. The president of Liberty Energy told the New York Times late January commenting on Trump’s entry into office, but it’s too early to say that it’s going to translate into change into actual activity levels in here in North America. Ron Gussick told the New York Times. I agree with Ron. This article came out of oil price from Irina Slav. I think the discipline is there and it’s not drill baby drill anymore. It’s drill baby drill when fiscally responsible. I think that the only way that President Trump is really going to have a huge impact on increasing oil production is if he can lower the costs and that lowering the cost is going to be through supply chain savings as well as reduction in regulatory demands on EMP operators. R .T. Trevino, a great EMP operator, said, yes, get rid of the regulatory issues and we can save a lot of money. So you can get by with less than $70 a barrel and make more money. You’ll see more drilling. Make sense? [00:05:30][103.8]
Michael Tanner: [00:05:31] Yeah, we were having a conversation with Ann Bradbury, the CEO and president of American Exploration Petroleum Council. She stole this quote from the former CEO of Liberty, now Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, where he said in his confirmation hearing that drill baby drill is really build baby build. That’s where I think that sentiment is going towards is infrastructure to hold that. Do I think Trump is going to be able to lower oil prices? It’s possible. I don’t think you’re going to see much lower than $65, $60 a barrel, if only because that’s equivalent to $45 a barrel four or five years ago when Trump was back in office because of inflation that we’ve seen. I tell everybody who will listen to me on this that specifically in the United States, people have went through the wave of growth production at all costs and they learned the lesson. Maybe they were too late to the party to learn the lesson, but everybody learned the lesson. We’ve seen bankruptcies through the roof over that end of the 2010s. What does that mean for right now? Well, you talk to E &P companies, they’re not drilling not because of regulations. They’re not drilling because of a focus on profitability and a focus that we need to make sure that the wells we drill actually give us a payout and give our downstream partners a payout and not just worry about where that stock price is relative to where production growth. I do think Trump is going to have a really, really hard time lowering prices. As you recall, when last time prices were $45 a barrel, it was because Saudi Arabia declared war on the United States shale business. Well, they can’t afford, their economy is based on profits from oil and gas. They can’t afford $45 oil over in Saudi Arabia. Maybe 10 years ago, they were able to do that because of where they were situated from a sovereign income standpoint, but now they can’t. All of these investments that they’re making to try to diversify away from oil requires them to need a high profit margin on their oil. I disagree that we’re going to see super low oil, $40, $45 a barrel. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Specifically, Trump’s re -engaged the sanctions on Iran. There’s 2 million barrels a day. Depending on what happens in the Russia -Ukraine area, obviously Trump wants to end that and you might see more exports out of Russia, but I think the market is also realizing that Russia is just exporting oil anyway. It’s just going to places it may not normally have went, or you’ve got countries like China and India buying so much and just storing it. Maybe even when the sanctions come away, they actually stop buying that much. I think there’s some very interesting stuff going on. I don’t think we’re going to see a huge price in oil. If I had to put my number on it, I would say the floor is somewhere in that $60 to $62 range. [00:08:19][168.6]
Stuart Turley: [00:08:20] Well, cool. [00:08:20][0.4]
Michael Tanner: [00:08:22] Iran says Trump’s maximum pressure will fail to drive its oil exports to zero. Pretty interesting in this war of words now. We’re about two, three weeks into the Trump administration. Lots have happened. Tariffs. Iran trying to take all this oil off the market. There’s been multiple rounds of that and Iran now seems to be openly responding and Iran’s oil minister, Moshan Pakjad has this quote, the maximum pressure policy has failed and Trump’s dream of reducing Iran’s oil exports to zero will never come true, according to the Iranian minister, as he was quoted in this article yesterday. As a quick reminder, Donald Trump last week issued a memorandum that would seek to restore maximum pressure on Iran and he directed Secretary of State to modify or rescind sanction waivers, particularly those that provide Iran any degree of economic or financial relief. He also instructed the Secretary of State to quote, implement a robust and continual campaign in coordination with the Treasury and other relevant executive departments or agencies to drive Iran’s export of oil to zero, including Iranian crew to the People’s Republic of China for this presidential memorandum. To go back to what the quote that the Iranian oil minister said, this is a wish for them, but they will never achieve it. The more restrictions imposed on us, the more sophisticated our measures will become. This is a failed policy. It has been tested before and yielded no results. If they try again, they will fail once more. So pretty heavy words. Basically what he’s saying is go ahead and sanction us all you want. Go ahead and put maximum pressure on us all you want. This will not work. He’s right and wrong. We’ve definitely seen about two million barrels, one to two million barrels come off the market throughout all of these different Russian sanctions. We did see Iran increase its exports under the Biden administration following the first Trump administration where there was kind of this maximum pressure on it. So from this standpoint, I agree with the intent of the Trump administration is let’s drive their exports as low as possible. I do agree with the Iranian side of this. They’re always going to be able to export some. The question is how much and can you cripple them financially enough? I think that remains to be seen, but we will be keeping an eye on the Iranian crude exports because I think as we cover in the market segment today, the markets, I think responded to this fairly positively in light of all this tariff stuff. BP shares up about 7 % after reports that activist investor and hedge fund manager Elliott management has taken a stake in the struggling British oil major. These shares, again, were up about 6 .8 percentage points off this news while they’re set to unveil fourth quarter earnings the day you listen to this and its broader strategy on the 26th. Part of the reason why Elliott I think has jumped in here is that BP has lagged relatively lower than its competitors, both in British and the US. Shares are down roughly 9 % year over year, while Shell, its closest competitor in the UK, is actually up 6 percentage points. I think this comes back to part of the idea that the bigger a business gets, sometimes what these activist investors see is the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. As you get so diversified as a large multinational conglomerate, there are opportunities that these hedge funds, specifically these activists see that probably make it attractive to say, we’re going to come in here, we’re either going to talk about spinning out some of your businesses, shut down some of your non -profitable businesses. Because as you know, if you have certain business units that aren’t doing well, that’s holding down your business units that are doing well and impacting your overall stock price. Elliott management led by Paul Sanger has about $70 billion in assets and has been involved in all sorts of activist stuff. They’re used to doing this all the time. Their previous intervention was in Suncor, which is a Canadian energy company, and basically a note by RBC analysts says that the hedge fund could press to actually change BP’s chairperson, which would be a fascinating switch. All that’s to say is BP, I think, is due for a slight change in their overall corporate structure. What that looks like, I think that remains to be seen. [00:12:31][249.0]
Stuart Turley: [00:12:31] How has green energy policies impacted the environment, society, and our financial systems? Doge found out that the Inflation Reduction Act was funding the change. This is a very interesting story that I wrote. I used GROKE to come up with some numbers after finding a very good post from our Senate. This is from Josh Dunlap on X. $50 ,000 in un -audited U .S. taxpayer money in one month alone went to a pro -terrorist group disguised as a climate change organization. The group was called Climate Justice Alliance. So they went to the website and saw the bulldozer that went through the fence when Hamas attacked Israel. They have other renderings of the decolonized Palestine with the same bulldozer. If you go through more of it, you can see that they were also defunding the police. So when we talk about the millions and millions of dollars, right now, as of the time this was filmed, Doge was saying $63 .39 billion has been saved by Doge. But I think that this is just the tip of the iceberg when you start taking a look at what they are doing. This article really goes through and tries to show that the Inflation Reduction Act, and as Dan Bongino has always called it, the Porculous Bill, has funneled the money through into the EPA and into other organizations. So it’s about a four -step process into graft and greed and corruption. And then you take a much money has been spent. It is just amazing. So I took a look also at some energy numbers. And so when you take a look at the energy numbers, wind energy investments in 2024, the executive figures aren’t specified as part of a large investment, but they’re thinking it’s around a trillion dollars. But when you take a look at solar investment in 2024, exceeded $500 billion. And what Michael and I have been talking about, we’ve been doing this for about four or five years, and we’ve seen the more money that is spent in quote unquote renewable energy, it is not renewable, and it is not sustainable, the more money spent in the category of wind, solar, and hydrogen means that more fossil fuels will be used. So it is neither good nor for the environment, nor is it fiscally stable. So I also took a look at higher energy prices. So when you take a look at higher energy prices, Texas has half the cost of the energy for New York and California. And you take a look at that as a simple fact, but take a look at Germany. Germany is totally de -industrializing right now. And so is the UK. The UK and Germany are in full on board meltdown for de -industrialization from bad energy policies. So anyway, this was a fun article to write and lots of good stuff in there. US stuns the European allies and opens Ukraine peace talks with Russia. Donald Trump said on Wednesday, he and Vladimir Putin had agreed to open talks on Russia’s war with Ukraine immediately after his defense secretary said it was unrealistic that Ukraine’s 2014 borders would be restored. Both leaders agreed to start negotiations immediately on the war in Ukraine in a lengthy, productive phone call, Trump said on Truth Social. The encounter is in the first publicly revealed between the two leaders. President Putin then released in an interview that he is looking forward to interviewing President Trump in Russia, as well as in the United States. I think this is phenomenal. I actually released on our energy newsbeat substack an article in which I did not see that this was even going to get happening. So I produce it within an hour. He’s on the phone talking with President Putin. The key is, is that I still don’t think that there’s foreign policy is taking a look at the missing data that is in the war colleges and a lot of the industry leaders that are out there, the information he needs for geopolitical things have been stripped out. So I’m going to be watching it and really keeping an eye on it, but hats off to President Trump and negotiations moving. [00:12:31][0.0][735.6]
