In the Midnight Hour she cried “MOAR! MOAR! MOAR!”
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Unknown
You know, it's wild in an industry that powers the world. We still struggle to find the right answers when we need them most. That's why we built collide. Collide is where energy professionals go to solve problems faster. It's a community completely focused on oil and gas. Whether you're out in the field making deals or just trying to keep up with the industry, collide connects you with the people, knowledge and tools you need all in one place.
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Unknown
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Unknown
Energy moves fast. Don't get left behind.
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Unknown
Talk about this. Talk about that. Chuck Yates needs a job. I had a point. I don't know where it's at. That Chuck Yates needs a jab. Hey, everybody, welcome to Chuck Yates needs a job. The podcast. Pretty cool stuff today. We actually have more drilling on today. And in the long lines of a Non lives Matter, we'll, we'll stick to that.
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Unknown
But more welcome into the, podcast. Good to have you. Yeah. Thanks for letting me be here. It's going to be fun. Or not or not, everyone will just figure it out as we go. Yeah. So let's start off with this. Not not trying to the docs and all, but what can you tell folks about yourself in terms of just, you know, who you, who you are, where you come from, background stuff?
00;01;54;02 - 00;02;19;01
Unknown
What are you comfortable sharing? Sure. You know, my background is primarily been on the operator side and the service side, through, you know, mid, mid to late 30s, started my career, international for almost a decade, deepwater exploration. So, you know, when I, when I came back to the U.S., the concept of shale was incredibly foreign to me.
00;02;19;04 - 00;02;41;18
Unknown
No pun intended. Yeah. And, you know, still is to some people, apparently, and, you know, then worked my way, into different roles and positions, both, you know, being dropped in down through private equity and then back into other companies. And so, you know, had an interesting mix of of being, you know, some engineering life and a bit more on the exploration side.
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Unknown
And then now a much more focused, I would say, on the, on the technology side, both on conventional oil and gas. And, you know, as we expand out into some other avenues, too. So, you know, I can say some of my actual questions where I'm looking at that and trying to pry out on Twitter, you know, doesn't get nearly the responses that some of my other things.
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Unknown
So we'll, we'll, we'll keep trying to to poke the bear on what's next for for energy. So for, for EFT, you're gonna have to like carry the oil field service banner here on the, chuck pod because, I'm getting DMs saying, hey, man, these finance guys are great that you keep bringing in, but we want real oil filled out there.
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Unknown
So, no pressure here, dude. Yeah. No. And that's, if that was sort of the origin story of my account, right. You know, trying to always talk it up and be there forever. Optimist. It was something after I can't remember which year, Nate, but, a friend of mine saw me there, and I think I had, you know, 2 or 3 phones out, and I was in the lobby and he said, oh, man, there he is probably talking to somebody about how he invented the cube.
00;03;49;10 - 00;04;14;14
Unknown
And, you know, there's there's not enough stack pay in the world he can't handle and things like that. So that was sort of the birthplace of the idea of being that forever optimist, especially, especially more so in the ops and services side, the you know, because what I found interesting about about you is and I'll kind of go back to a previous podcast, I had t Sean Shannon on who's a standup comedian, he wrote for Saturday Night Live.
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Unknown
And one of the things he talked about on that pod is, you know, you have sort of like popular comedians and stuff, and it's always cool to go to those guys like Seinfeld when whoever and say, all right, who makes you laugh? And I won't give away any secrets from DMs because what happens in DMs stays in DMs.
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Unknown
But, you know, popular folks out there on f t if you're always like, all right, who's the funniest person out there time and time again, all the big guys, always say it's more drilling. I mean, more drilling is hysterical. So you are you are the comedian's comedian. That's high praise. If I could, you know, steal a line from inside the cage.
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Unknown
You know, it it it really begins with just sort of what I think is funny. I mean, I've never really approached it to to to try and gain a lot of followers or, you know, make my mark per se. It's just a it was an exercise to, to make myself laugh first and foremost and just, you know, hopefully make others laugh and just a different way to look at ourselves across the industry.
00;05;22;08 - 00;05;42;06
Unknown
And, you know, sometimes if you're not laughing, you're crying. Right. So so it was just, you know, it's a it's a fun way to poke fun at yourselves and, and the industry you work in and in a way, almost to have, you know, some, some self-reflection and, and reverence to it because I think, you know, the, the best type of comedy comes from something you do care deeply and passionately about.
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Unknown
And you know, you know, you're so ingrained into that you have the material and the know how to, to to really, really poke at it. And, and I think that's where a lot of that comes from. It's a, it's a, it's a place of love. But you know, you can really take a good swing at it from time to time.
00;05;56;28 - 00;06;23;28
Unknown
But you know, I mean, serious artistic creators talk about that. It's something inside them they need to get out. And that ultimately winds up being what is the most cherished of art, whether that song, painting, you know, any of that stuff. And you see time and time again that the quote unquote artist that tries to write to be popular never moves you, you know, and all that.
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Unknown
And so it's amazing that we're like talking about NFT memes and, you know, borderline dick jokes, you know, about artists and expressing and stuff. But, you know, it's it's been an very interesting community. And, I mean, there are some, some, some incredible accounts or, you know, the, the meme lords of NFT or, or whatever you want to label them.
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Unknown
But, I mean, it is it's it's incredible to see people you know, either DM you or messaged you, hey, how did you do this or what did you use to make this? And, you know, just from people's own credit and, and that's that's what I get back in my DMs a lot and I'll say, oh, I use this or, or I thought about this and I'll get a lot of messages back or saying like, man, the personal satisfaction or me laughing throughout myself.
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Unknown
Doing this was much more rewarding than I thought, you know, it would be. And so I think it's a it's a different tool and a way for people to be expressive, whether it's a single image, a video, you know, now we've got people, you know, paying to make, you know, some, some cameos, some iconic. So, so God knows where that avenue is going to go because you could open up a whole new you know, I would I'm trying to see how much it might be worth to get, you know, maybe Snoop Dogg in so we can finally put an end to Pound gate.
00;07;37;05 - 00;07;59;29
Unknown
You know, that that if, that would be awesome. You know, one night for the major wine flex, I drank Snoop's wine, and I, I, I sent that out just multiple times. Pictures of it now. And I was always tagging Snoop in the hope that he'd reply. And, unfortunately, he never did. But if Snoop makes it on cameo, that's our thing, man.
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Unknown
We gotta go put Pound Gate and Snoop sans, I think so, I mean, maybe I mean, Cheech and Chong might be on there, right? I mean, you oh, yeah. Let's go old school with it. Yeah. You you must be able to get somebody on there. If not, you know, we'll see where that goes. But I mean, that that really opened it up to who knows how much potential, right.
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Unknown
Because I mean, we saw the fundraising power NFT has for a good cause. I mean, to to throw shade at people could be even higher. You're you're, you're absolutely right at that. The, you know what's interesting, though, about the whole throw shade thing about it is, I mean, there's no question public company CEOs get the brunt of it and all that, but at least what I've found is if you're in the community and you're mixing it up with folks and and making points and the like, I mean, I get shade thrown at me all the time, but I, generally speaking, also get a DM at the same time.
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Unknown
Hey, did I go too far? Check. I'll take it down if you want. And I'm always kind of like, you know. Good grief. I've had worse. Don't worry. I appreciate you saying that, but leave it up and stuff. So I've actually found the. For all the outsiders who aren't on Twitter mixing it up with NFT every day of them.
00;09;17;14 - 00;09;45;12
Unknown
Those guys are just trolling me. Baba baba Baba is said no. It's got a pretty big heart, you know, it does. And that's that's almost what I, you know, if you call it a shtick or a persona. But that's really what, I think I've been called the Happy Meal or the PG rated version of creating memes because it's more, you know, it's it's more of just a wholesome look or even a different play on commentary that you see across the space, but with that sort of persona of, of more drilling.
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Unknown
When we talk about throwing shade at it, I've almost created a monster because, you know, you'll get tagged on the people that are really championing it, whether it's from a different aspect, or they want to see activity go bananas or, you know, it'll be tagged on like, oh, here it comes again, right? You know, we're not going to practice, discipline or I had no chance.
00;10;04;01 - 00;10;18;15
Unknown
And hell, these guys are going to stick to their guns like more drilling. Drilling will return. So I get to play on sort of both sides of that avenue, because I'll just get tagged into it and, and, you know, just see which way is probably more really to make myself laugh more and then see which way people like stuff.
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Unknown
So do you do you actually go into the search and search IMO? Because I bet you're getting not tagged, but just more is said multiple times that you miss. Oh, I'm 100% sure it does and I don't go actively out looking for it. There are some people who will tag me religiously. There there are some people who now use it like they would spelling, like it's not even, you know, I'll just get tagged into the sentence because it's spelled like that, which, and then there's sometimes or not, but people will spell it the same way.
00;10;49;09 - 00;11;06;27
Unknown
And if I do find it, I'll usually throw something up that'll make, you know, make somebody laugh or it's, or it's the alternate sort of gif or message from what they were hoping for, right? Right. And, you know, I sometimes I'll get a DM after they're like, I don't know how you pop up when like, I write this, I'm not even tagging units.
00;11;06;27 - 00;11;32;23
Unknown
I well, sometimes I'll see it or people will send me stuff like, oh, you got to reply to this. Yeah. Right, right. And so it's, it's, it's an interesting, you know, character I've developed, I guess. So do me this two, 325 I don't care how many. What are the funniest memes that you've done. You've seen whatever kind of what what what's made you laugh the most?
00;11;32;25 - 00;11;52;20
Unknown
I guess we could start with myself. I think, you know, the, the first one that that really made me laugh, that I think took off the whole thing and why I get tagged for every cube or stacked photo ever created now was, you know, I had, I can't remember where it was from. And it was a hard energy pick where they had, you know, a single well, next to a full cube.
00;11;52;22 - 00;12;18;04
Unknown
And I wrote on the single, well, old and busted and then on the cube new hotness. Right. And, and and I just posted something like, you know, I drive the new hotness and, and it was one of my, I think I think, Chris from Atherton used it at a conference once, too, and just made me laugh so hard to see, like my memes up on a conference slideshow so that that that was one of my first ones.
00;12;18;04 - 00;12;40;01
Unknown
And then I think, you know, I did one, two for for nape that again really made me laugh. I don't know if other people really got into it, but it was some promo photo where, you know, the stereotypical two guys badges talking to somebody, and they seemed really excited. And I had something like, man, our Cisco formation, Wells return 90% IRR like within three months.
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Unknown
Right? And the other guy said, Cisco dude, love that song. Dumps like a truck, am I right? And and so you know, that one made me real chuckle. But I guess I guess my big ones, right? I mean, I've kind of really built a relationship with some people who, will send me stuff for rig counts or frack spreads.
00;12;57;17 - 00;13;18;24
Unknown
And so some of the Friday mood videos have, have been really, have been really fun to make because they'll either take on a theme or, again, the forever optimist of, of rigs going up. And, you know, I think I've, I've mentioned with you a few times when like that'll come out and you're like, don't you dare. And it's like, you know, look, you know, we're we're still what, like 43% down year over year.
00;13;18;24 - 00;13;45;02
Unknown
And so it's like, Chuck, we can add a couple. All right. Come up. And so you know that that for those have always been fine I, I the most requests I ever had. We had talked about it through you know either people I know or some of the DMs and EFT was was probably got to be the, the, the BP don't go full renewable video that, that we, we work through and it was a based on Tropic Thunder's, you know, don't go.
00;13;45;04 - 00;14;04;04
Unknown
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. So so that one that one was probably one of my favorites too, just because they were, you know, there was there were a lot of unsung heroes on in terms of input and, and people were really kind of we had been throwing the idea around for a while. And, you know, when I did one scene, somebody was like, you gotta you got to make it.
00;14;04;04 - 00;14;28;01
Unknown
And then I saw somebody do a report that said, like BP, you know, I think David said, like, don't go full retard. And as soon as I saw that actual report, I was like, all right, we can make this one. Like, I can do this. We can, we can do this. But I mean, there's the in terms of other accounts and memes like, I mean, there are so many you you had bomber on he's he's really come to his own in some of the video stuff he's made.
00;14;28;01 - 00;14;44;16
Unknown
And now, you know, him and him and Colin are doing cameos. So like we said, God knows where that goes. But you know, some of the other guys too. I like deep sea oils. I mean, he's I mean, those guys churn out stuff like nightly, right? So I mean, they, they, they really put in the work, if you will.
00;14;44;16 - 00;14;59;12
Unknown
And so it's just interesting to see how that blossoms and gives people a different creative outlet to do their stuff. I mean, like I said, that's the most of my DMs aren't really about, you know, maybe even work related stuff for the field, but should be minute. We want to make some of these, like, you know, how do you go about it?
00;14;59;12 - 00;15;16;09
Unknown
What's the best stuff to do? And so you know, just helping people discover that and build a voice for their own. Like, you know, that the top three accounts might change in terms of what you're looking after and what you're going, you know, going for here in the next couple months. Who knows? Because I mean, people people are getting creative.
00;15;16;11 - 00;15;36;07
Unknown
Well, you know, what's so funny is, I mean, how many of us sent out now 75 memes about Frank Scott being short? Sure. The funny thing is, he's not actually short. He's like 510. I'm so so it's just the fact it could be true that I think that I think makes it funny and makes it kind of fair game.
00;15;36;09 - 00;16;04;01
Unknown
But of those 75 memes that I've sent out, I've probably created two of them. People are maybe six and, you know, hit frack, slap up with this or Chuck reply with this. Yeah, that is something I find as well, whether it's some big headline or something we know is just so ridiculous. And that's, that's when I'll see some DMs blow up, like, man, you got to make a video of this or oh, what about this idea?
00;16;04;01 - 00;16;20;00
Unknown
So, you know, like I've talked to New Hire a bit or whether it's bomber and some of these other guys were just like, you know, and it's also about time management, right? I mean, we always joke sometimes with like, God, real life is getting in the way of my meme tech side. But and so some guy, you know, that sometimes will do is like, hey man, I've got this idea.
00;16;20;00 - 00;16;41;10
Unknown
I've got zero time to put this together, like go, go roll with it. So it's a it's an interesting, you know, community in that regards. But also to you, I mean I find it really interesting because whether it's a picture or a vid, I mean people, people share the living hell out of these things. And if they're, if they're, well done, you can tell a lot in a single picture, you know, or, or a video.
00;16;41;10 - 00;17;00;29
Unknown
And so, you know, in some instances it's just a different way to convey information and, you know, have a little fun at the same time. So, yeah. No, it's, I've joked that I need an intern to run my social media accounts because it's tough to kind of keep up with because, you know, promoting the podcast. I have no idea what I'm doing.
00;17;00;29 - 00;17;21;25
Unknown
Right? I mean, I just like what I've kind of settled on is during the week because I drop one every Wednesday morning about twice a day. I'm going to shoot out a link to it, and I'm going to do it at different times each day, you know? Yeah. And I always try to put something different each time so that people actually take a look at it now.
00;17;21;27 - 00;17;39;23
Unknown
But just the number of times you get tagged, if I go into a meeting, it's three hour meeting. You come out and you're like, Holy crap. Yeah, I never even thought, you know, a year ago or two years ago, I would never understand any of this, but I fully feel you there. Where and I don't post as much as you do.
00;17;39;23 - 00;17;57;22
Unknown
And like some people have said, I think I've seen they're like, man, you you know, my my frequency is a very high. I don't reply to a lot of stuff. Again, it's it's more of just happy to put it out there and know people like it. They they like it. But I have no idea how some of these people with larger accounts and I know they're very engaged and you get so many responses.
00;17;57;22 - 00;18;24;09
Unknown
I mean, I throw my phone in a river. I think if it if it ever got to that level because, you know, it is, you know, it is addicting to some degree. It's an engagement community. And you want to try and do some things that are around. But, you know, I have a limited number of followers. And so the, the I completely understand the need when people say, or somebody manages my social media or my Twitter account, because if you, you know, it is that BS can be as big as an ugly, as hairy as you want it to be.
00;18;24;09 - 00;19;04;18
Unknown
Right? Right. And, and if and it will consume most a lot of your time. No, it's totally right. If there was, if there was something you wanted to change or something you wanted folks in FP to know that's more serious than than just, the jokes, the memes and all that. Is there anything like that? You know, I, I think, again, kind of going back to the persona of, of what I put out there in terms of the optimist side is I think, you know, it it it morphed a little bit to, to become a champion a bit more.
00;19;04;18 - 00;19;21;20
Unknown
I think on some of the other sectors, we don't poke fun of about or realize some of the harsher aspects of what the things we're screaming for means. Right? I mean, one of the biggest things that, you know, we we talk about the high oil price. It's great. You know, some of the things we've seen consolidation is, is, is awesome.
00;19;21;20 - 00;19;38;00
Unknown
And, you know, these operators might actually, generate some cash for once and start to shore up stuff. But, you know, when you, when you look at sort of wide discipline, what does that mean for the service sector? How much of that is still, you know, going to be materially depressed? How does that grow? Things of that nature.
00;19;38;00 - 00;19;57;29
Unknown
You know, we we don't talk about that as much, I guess on EFT it much again, it is energy finance, Twitter. So it tends to lean more towards the the capital and financial element to these things and really focus on some of the bad actors in the empty space. But, you know, I think I think as more people do get involved because I know we have an unbelievable amount of lurkers in that community.
00;19;58;01 - 00;20;23;19
Unknown
You know, as more people do get involved, it'll be interesting to see how, you know, people get vocal about other sectors of the, of the energy industry. I don't know if I really answered your question there, but yeah, what are the, that's always the, the great politician. Whenever they get a question, what you do is you rephrase the question, you give a bridge sentence, and then you give the answer you wrote six weeks ago with your, political consultant.
00;20;23;19 - 00;20;52;20
Unknown
You know, here's what I'm going to say. But the, No, because, I mean, and it's also difficult because it's 140 or 280 characters, whatever it is these days, it's hard to have something of substance kind of beyond just a meme. Funny and and that. But I will say, and this is going to sound so hokey, and, you know, we can cue the Bruce Springsteen song up in the back, and I'll get on my soapbox and all.
00;20;52;22 - 00;21;13;17
Unknown
I kind of feel a little bit of a responsibility as the old guy to just try as much as I can to share what life was like back in the, you know, 80s and 90s in the oil business, because I think, you know, I don't think there's an appreciation for the younger folks of you can grow a dry hole.
00;21;13;20 - 00;21;37;19
Unknown
I mean, we we drill uneconomic wells today, but we don't turn it on and nothing comes out. And that used to happen. And that's how I started my career. Yeah. And and what's crazy to me and not ended up here but it, I see the, the headlines 11 put for things happening in Guyana where it's like big swing and a miss or you know, really, you know, didn't achieve the objective.
00;21;37;19 - 00;22;00;09
Unknown
I was like if they're if they're really like poking around the outside of the play and they trail and they find a section and it's on economic bio, you know, offshore standards, that's, that's a part of the program. But you know, you like it's so strange that whether you see certain headlines or people of almost forgotten that where it's like, you know, hey, not you're not hitting dingers every time, especially offshore deepwater exploration.
00;22;00;12 - 00;22;20;10
Unknown
And so it's it's very interesting to see, like how people even spin narratives on that. And it's like, did you just not know that because you've only grown up maybe covering onshore shale, which I might lose some followers here, but for is is relatively boring compared to, you know, some of the larger big drilling programs that happen offshore in true exploration work.
00;22;20;10 - 00;22;38;19
Unknown
I mean, where we're at now, you know, I mean, I can't I'm, I'm, I'm personally pretty tired of hearing the term, you know, mow the lawn and some of the things we do onshore in manufacturing the process. Right? I mean, yeah, you know, no, it's it's exactly that one of the, one of the things I'm, I'm working on and, I hope to get it done.
00;22;38;19 - 00;23;03;26
Unknown
I don't know if I will, but I want to do a podcast, the documentary, Something on Clayton Williams, because, I mean, talk about just old school wildcatters. I mean, if I think the younger folks had any sort of appreciation, the risk you had to take to find these big oil reserves and all, you had to go through the limited amount of science.
00;23;03;28 - 00;23;36;02
Unknown
I mean, you know, I don't want to sound like people are out there with the divining rod trying to find things, but, I mean, you shot 3D seismic, you saw a structure, but that was it. It can be full of water, you know. Oh, yeah. I mean, I remember deep deepwater Gulf of Mexico, if anyone knows, you know, you've got a huge salt layer that, you know, depending on what seismic stuff you're doing, that salt layer makes everything, you know, it's you best be out there with a divining rod, because until you get down there and actually get to calibrate that stuff, you know, you don't know if stuff is five feet thick or 500ft
00;23;36;02 - 00;24;08;26
Unknown
thick. And so, you know, there's there's I mean, I'm always going to be probably a little biased to, to super exploration and deep water stuff, just given my background. But, yeah, I mean, it's Yeah. No, I mean, it it, I always joke that that we kind of went through, call it, the 90s, particularly with the advent of 3D seismic and maybe let's call that 95, 97 somewhere in there where, where we really started hitting that pretty hard.
00;24;08;28 - 00;24;29;12
Unknown
I mean, that was the age of the geologist. I mean, it really was the geologist was the rock star. I mean, today, I guess the drilling engineers used to be the rocks are we don't have any more rock storage right now in the business. Although this is really funny. I was, a buddy of mine that's a GP at one of the private equity firms called me the other night, and I'm like, hey, dude, what's up?
00;24;29;12 - 00;24;51;24
Unknown
And he goes, I'm fucking smart again. I'm like $65 oil to do, this. Somebody once told me the rock is the rock star. Yeah. Where, you know, if we drill, if we drill a good. Well, it is, you know, all praise to the rock, right? You drill a bad well, right. And it comes on bad, right. Oh, it's it's the completion engineers fault.
00;24;51;27 - 00;25;15;20
Unknown
Right. Exactly. So it's always, you know, you're or you always praise the rock. That's muddy. That's good stuff. Well, let's roll it in. So I haven't had a well filled service, person on and, tell me about the industry. What's gone on there. We've had, you know, a lot of finance folks on I get DMs all the time that said, you know, get some real oilfield in here.
00;25;15;23 - 00;25;41;16
Unknown
And I know empty land. I don't know a lot about service, except that it felt like historically it was always empty on steroids. And so so what's going on out there? I mean, current current environment, still a lot of pain because, you know, with the service sector as a whole is is lagging on consolidation and really shoring up things, you know, as opposed to empty land.
00;25;41;18 - 00;26;10;15
Unknown
I think last year, specifically North America did a really good job of just stemming the bleeding. Yeah. Right. And so you saw, a lot of people make very, very quick decisions that were, you know, unfortunate but necessary to, you know, preserve companies. I mean, no cost, had a very large human capital component to it, which is on an unfortunate but, really sort of necessary based on where we see the future of the North American land market.
00;26;10;17 - 00;26;30;25
Unknown
And so from, from a standpoint of where we're at is, you know, I think the the sector itself has just kind of wrapped its head around, okay. Like, you know, we're we're we're treading water now, what's next? And so, you know, I always use the analogy of, okay, so we we tore the house down last year just to, to, you know, rebuild something we could live in.
00;26;30;25 - 00;26;52;22
Unknown
But, you know, what is that build out? Look like going forward. And, and that's really I think what the, the, the broader sector because, you know, we, we use the office term very loosely. And when we talk about oilfield services, right. There's what 8080 publicos probably, you know, 200 and call it the top five major divisions. But there's hundreds if not thousands in the in the broader spectrum of that.
00;26;52;22 - 00;27;14;00
Unknown
And so the biggest question is what's next? Right. And so I think you'll hear every, you know, major, executive leader or CEO say, you know, M&A has to happen, right? Where we're we're massively lagging behind our customer base. It has to happen both from, you know, our ability to reduce the amount of people that are out there.
00;27;14;07 - 00;27;41;26
Unknown
Maybe, you know, you get some pricing pressure and and margins back because you've taken out some of that. And and really just right size for where we're at. And I'm, I'm using that across everything drilling, completion, pumping, you name it. Right. Because there's, there's still some stuff that is you know, I think we, we reacted very fast to in terms of cold stacking and things of that nature that it's going to be a challenge, maybe from a personnel and equipment standpoint in certain divisions to really ramp back up.
00;27;41;29 - 00;28;06;23
Unknown
But looking at the broader area of how, I would say how far certain companies have gotten diverse and spread themselves, let's say for the last eight years, really, or maybe even ten. So, you know, when we look at what's next for the sector in terms of either activity or the type of development, you know, I think you're going to see a lot of, people really hone back in on what they're good at or what is needed.
00;28;06;23 - 00;28;30;18
Unknown
And you're going to see a lot of divestitures and, and, you know, people shedding certain divisions of companies that, you know, might make sense elsewhere. It just doesn't make sense either with what they have or, you know, what they foresee moving forward. Right? I mean, if you look at some of the big guys like, you know, you know, Schlamme did a big job of that and really what they pulled out of North America and then, you know, then moving over to Liberty, and, and that type of trend will will continue.
00;28;30;18 - 00;28;55;17
Unknown
I mean, you'll see it publicly in the big guys and you'll see it to some degree, throughout the private sector as well. And so, you know, I think one of the main driving factors there too, is, is just synergies are a lot harder. In the service space. Yes. You've got some maybe, you know, back office capacity and there's some complimentary things either on a, on a manufacturing side or, something else that you can capitalize on.
00;28;55;17 - 00;29;20;24
Unknown
But, you know, there are a lot of different segments within, you know, the broader office that might not stack well inside a company or make sense at all. And so, you know, does it does it sort of niche ify a bit more maybe. So to that point and it's never happened. And I use I always say this, but I always hate when people say this time it's different, isn't there fucking different?
00;29;20;24 - 00;29;46;09
Unknown
Right? I mean, but is there any chance this time it's different because there's been a nerf in the way of beating our heads against the wall and having our heads beaten against the wall on both sides, that the EMP community could sit down with the oil field service community and say, look, when I have pressure or when I have the leverage, I beat the shit out of you.
00;29;46;11 - 00;30;25;19
Unknown
And then when you have the leverage, you beat the shit out of me. Can we call a truce? Because it, you know, because it does seem like we're going to have way less in the way of drilling, at least for the foreseeable future. Debatable. Yeah. No. That's fair. Go more. But, you know. No, I mean, you know, and so, you know, in terms of projects and all, you probably have more predictability, I would think in terms of maybe the the needs and not the holy shit, we found a new play and, and, you know, the back in and we got to move all the rigs up there and we got to move all the
00;30;25;19 - 00;30;44;26
Unknown
service equipment. Any chance the two sides get together and sort of rationalize and come up with something better than just, let's beat the shit out of each other whenever we can? And trust me, I asked that question, having grown up with three brothers. So I get the answer is going to be no. But I was going to say, in a perfect world, yes.
00;30;44;28 - 00;31;04;10
Unknown
But you know, there's there's too many players, there's too much ego, there's too much money. Right now where that would actually really happen. I mean, because that's the thing you're, you're, you're still seeing from an operator perspective outside of material cost inflation that we're seeing, you know, you, you there are a lot there's still a lot of competition out there.
00;31;04;12 - 00;31;28;22
Unknown
And, and and we're you're seeing a lot of people still execute irrational pricing strategies, burning inventory and stuff to stay alive because, you know, you as a company, depending on you know, what, what your real exit potential is or merger potential or something, you know, you're going to stretch how far you can potentially kick that can down the road because, you know, it might not be different two, three, four years from now.
00;31;28;22 - 00;32;02;20
Unknown
And so, you know, you pair that with, I think companies real ability to stretch it out versus, you know, collectively coming together. I think in a real world, not so much. I mean, it's historically you look way back, right? When when MPs controlled a lot of that in terms of innovation and technology and then really kind of diverse the way to, you know, the power of innovation or tech to, to service companies, you know, 20 years ago or 30 years ago, you know, some of that's coming back, right, with, with, I would say, whether it's an internal venture fund or some of the things that they do, but it's nowhere near on the
00;32;02;20 - 00;32;24;21
Unknown
level that I think will be, you know, the sort of bridge that you talk about, especially now you pair with how much of that focus is being diverted towards maybe some of the the greener or the energy transition tech. And so they're I think they're going to rely on the service side. And I think it's going to be the service side on itself that, you know, makes an effort to get stronger.
00;32;24;21 - 00;32;58;08
Unknown
Right. So yeah. So I've always had the take on oil and gas that were literally the most inefficient business on the planet. Like the DMV is more efficient than us, except. And the big except is always the big. Except, as always, if there's something we can do that in effect gives us a big, huge magnifier in value. We spend money on it, we get amazing technology on it.
00;32;58;15 - 00;33;23;10
Unknown
I call it the lottery ticket. If I can buy another lottery ticket with my money, I will do it. So I'm thinking, you know, 3D seismic. I mean, the technology there, late 90s was amazing in terms of what it did. You know, the shale revolution, horizontal drilling, multi-stage fracking, just amazing. The technology, you know, and what it did.
00;33;23;12 - 00;33;53;17
Unknown
So two kind of things to and take it wherever you want is one is there a next technology that in effect gives us a lottery ticket. Are there things that when we're back here in three years, five years that I'm going to be gone? Dude, kudos to you. You called it that. That was the next wave. And so if there are run with that, if there aren't, what does that mean for the service companies, you know, and the EMP companies.
00;33;53;17 - 00;34;13;22
Unknown
Do we for the first time ever see you know, digitization of all land files. And we get rid of clerks and stuff. So so what's happening over the next three years? Is there a technology? If not, what are we doing. Well, I think you hit one of them right off the bat, whether it's digitization or automation, and it's just not, you know, land files.
00;34;13;22 - 00;34;31;29
Unknown
It can be from, you know, controlling more, let's say existing infrastructure and artificial lift or something like that, that, you know, you can much more effectively do it through machine learning or computers versus, you know, having eight different people only cover 100 wells. You can have one guy with the best computing power in the world cover 10,000 wells.
00;34;32;01 - 00;34;47;11
Unknown
Yeah. Do we really have to have a pump or drive by a well, every day? The same thing, right? When you have machine learning, looking at rod where over time or predictive analysis to think, hey, this world is going to fail. And x amount of, you know, time more so than, you know, Billy Joe out there going to, figure every single well out.
00;34;47;11 - 00;35;17;21
Unknown
And so it's both, you know, manpower intensive and time consuming. So you know that that you can apply to every single aspect of, oil and gas for the most part. And so a lot of that is coming. That also comes with a, you know, a major different skill set than traditionally a lot of our industry has had, whether that's, you know, programing, data analytics, machine learning guys, you know, AI, people that, you know, it's it's it's drastically changing, I would say much more of the traditional, hands on engineering role.
00;35;17;21 - 00;35;39;03
Unknown
And so, you know, that's there's there's going to be some shortcomings of skilled personnel and like, you know, that's a whole nother rabbit hole of how we attract those people, into our industry as well. And, and keep them here to you know, really work and achieve some of these really digitization goals. The other some of the other things like, let's kind of take this, down its logical time path.
00;35;39;03 - 00;36;08;16
Unknown
Right? So I mean, we talk, you know, there's, there's, there's a million different comments. You can see on inventory and, and what's our run rate actually and call it even, you know US shale. And how much time do we have left from a primary development point or do we start, you know, infilling the infill and, you know, just getting even closer and and so, you know, I think a lot of, a lot of the, you know, big people with crystal balls and are really thinking, okay, so what's the what's the secondary or tertiary life cycle of shale?
00;36;08;18 - 00;36;26;09
Unknown
You know, we, we, we haven't really seen it for the most part. Like you've seen some strategies like huff and puff or, you know, some, some things have gas saturation and, you know, some other methodologies that have that have really looked at how do we improve that with the existing infrastructure. And by infrastructure, I mean wells already in the ground.
00;36;26;11 - 00;36;41;20
Unknown
You know what does it look like as opposed to, you know, a more conventional based asset. And so, you know, there's a lot of people putting time and money into that sector because, you know, we feel like inherently there, there there could be something there because we we've we've got the best oil and place calculations in the world.
00;36;41;20 - 00;37;12;00
Unknown
Right. And we see what recovery factors and total ERS are from shale development. You're like okay, it's still there. Right? We've got wells in the ground. You know, is there anything we can do. And you know I've we've seen ideas whether they're, you know, using something with CO2 or miscible gas that also has a, you know, a carbon aspect to it that's, you know, gaining a bit of momentum, seen a lot of new solutions in the chemical space, trying to, you know, solve some of these things, whether it's per modifiers or, you know, something like that.
00;37;12;00 - 00;37;34;10
Unknown
And so there's, there's there's a lot of things out there. I would say that, that that focus on sort of what's, what's the real you are or Iowa potential of shale. And then you see a lot of, I would say another bucket is is more so on on the right side potentially. Right. You know, is is that a route we have to go down to, I would say a larger scale than what we've done historically.
00;37;34;10 - 00;38;00;25
Unknown
Because anyone I'll tell you, right. You can have the greatest refractory complete budget in the world. Things change a little bit. And you're going to get from the top roped from, you know, your your normal exploration or your normal primary development team. And so as those areas start to dwindle, whether it's inventory or economics, maybe, you know, geographic differentials or something, you know, you might see certain things shift and then it's a whole nother ball game of what does that look like?
00;38;00;25 - 00;38;30;07
Unknown
So, you know, without really going down a whole lot of other paths. Those are some of the top three areas that are at least interesting to me, you know. And and let me throw three things at you that I see as impediments to that. And number one, just volatility or oil price. And what we do as an industry in terms of oil's at 100, we hire everybody under the sun.
00;38;30;07 - 00;38;54;00
Unknown
Oil's at -37. We fire everybody. Right. And so every time every time. So if I want to walk into Stanford, Harvard and my alma mater rice, I'll go ahead and just throw that out there. You know, you want to, walk into that and get the smartest person there. Silicon Valley at least says, hey, you come to a startup, we fail.
00;38;54;00 - 00;39;18;04
Unknown
You get skills that apply to your next startup, you know, and there always be a next startup. Microsoft, Google, Facebook all say, hey, we big corporate culture. You can work your way up here. You know, there's a lot more in the way of stability. Just learning to write code and the like. Then come over here to the oil and gas company and you know, what's the joke about, McDonald's in Midland?
00;39;18;04 - 00;39;38;22
Unknown
We only hire geologists with a master's degree, you know? Right. So it's Chick-Fil-A. Get the PhDs. Yes, exactly. By the way, I'm just going to say this because this is one of my favorite stories of 2021 so far. And I don't know if you've heard it. And I believe it was North Carolina, North Carolina's vaccinating people on a drive thru basis.
00;39;38;25 - 00;39;58;26
Unknown
And the average wait time was an hour and 15 minutes. A chick fil A general manager on his day off went down there and just said, hey guys, do you mind if I help out a little? I mean, just on his own accord makes total sense. Yeah. At the end of that day, the average wait time was 16 minutes.
00;39;58;28 - 00;40;20;16
Unknown
In terms of he just revamped the system. And I just love that story because that's so America, you know? So anyway, I didn't mean to change it, but one, we've got volatility and we've got to we have to provide more stability to attract talent. Kind of in light of that. Number two is I think what you just said was great.
00;40;20;22 - 00;40;44;17
Unknown
I all that sort of stuff to sit there and make things better. I think at the day, at the end of the day, though, what that is making better is nickels and dimes and quarters. I don't think it's like wholesale Benjamins $100 bill, which isn't bad. I mean, because we all need to do that in a low margin business.
00;40;44;19 - 00;41;11;10
Unknown
The first thing you do is automate. You know, that's Business School 101, right. And I think the issue we have on implementation and all that is you walk in with your AI, based lifting technology company and you say, here it is, ROI, you know, 3X5X. Whatever it is, pay back six months a year, you know, whatever it is.
00;41;11;12 - 00;41;31;08
Unknown
And somebody goes, great, we have no one here that'll do that. So I think one of the things we need to see in this industry is, in effect, the Anderson Consulting. You need somebody that is an expert in that technology that can walk into the company and say, we're going to implement this for you on a test basis.
00;41;31;08 - 00;41;48;18
Unknown
Give me 200 wells. We'll take the learnings from that, and then we'll implement a company wide if it makes sense to do it. And oh, by the way, we're going to we're going to put in the systems. We're going to train your folks so that it's in effect a turnkey. And that might even need to have financing with it as well.
00;41;48;21 - 00;42;29;28
Unknown
So that that was kind of to volatility is number one. And then number two was we need some sort of financing, or some sort of Andersen Consulting model to, to help implement all this because folks are sitting around without people. And then I think, I think number three just has to be management has to get out of this mindset of we only manage towards the big lottery tickets, the home run and we day today try to squeeze a penny out of everything and digitize it all.
00;42;30;00 - 00;42;56;10
Unknown
And the only reason I have hope on number three is one you have, you know, bomber in here for that matter, you young folks sitting there saying, hey, we can do this. We understand it. We grew up with iPhones, but when I joined the board of Cottonwood Ventures and now they're called Mantra Line, and I'm on the advisory board, they're 4 or 5, like old school CEOs texted me and said, hey, Chuck, you got to come buy me a beer, grab lunch.
00;42;56;12 - 00;43;24;26
Unknown
Is this technology shit really real? Because my people are talking about it. So there may be some some receptivity there to do it. And you know, some of that will happen with time, too. I mean, as either people who are last year I just yeah. That's right. I mean, it's because like, I've been in some meetings where it's like everyone bangs their head against the wall to try and, you know, always figure out what is potentially the best, the best way forward.
00;43;24;26 - 00;43;48;09
Unknown
And, you know, you kind of get to the bottom of the flow chart and you're like, Father Time is the answer, right? Because, you know, look there there are a lot of people that, are either set in their ways or, you know, it's it's difficult for, for for some people. But I'll put it in a different perspective, maybe where, you know, you're you're maybe towards the twilight, it's a bit towards the end how much time and effort do you really invest to to get yourself up to speed?
00;43;48;11 - 00;44;06;18
Unknown
And, you know, I think the best people do, but, you know, there's there's a lot of people who it's like, man, I can coast this out and just kind of stick to what I know because I don't see, you know, I, I don't see where it's going to maybe impact me for the time left. And so it's it's also going to take that sort of same mentality to the bigger picture.
00;44;06;18 - 00;44;37;19
Unknown
You know, when people ask, well, why would you focus so much on maybe some alternative methods or some of the energy transition or these green ventures, as you know, let's say the service industry as a whole. And it's like, well, it's not that, you know, anybody in that industry believes where we're dunzo in ten or 20 or 30 years, but it's like you can start to prep and look at, you know, the following 30 or 40 or whatever, because I, you know, I think most of the people that I engage with both on, you know, the operators Service, even the financial side, like it's not going away and, it's got enough invested capital and
00;44;37;19 - 00;44;57;09
Unknown
enough tailwinds now to where, you know, you can start to start to plan for that. And, and if maybe because your call it spreading your wings a bit further across the energy spectrum, maybe it helps, you know, alleviate some of the financial constraint or allow some of the new ways to attract things that, you know, you might have the guise of, we're building this for the energy transition, etc..
00;44;57;09 - 00;45;24;23
Unknown
But, you know, internally, your business model is going to blanket both what you've developed it for and attract capital and push it back into the oil and gas sector. Well, it's interesting you say that. So by the time this drops, this podcast drops, the Digital Wildcatters Evolve conference will have happened. And what they did is they, they got me and Alan Gilmer to sit down and chat and be the old guys.
00;45;24;25 - 00;45;40;05
Unknown
And I don't even know if you've seen the ads. They're running for it, but it's literally the Sesame Street old guys up in the theater. You know, I haven't seen that one. Oh, you haven't seen it. Yeah. But you know, those two old guys that used to comment on stuff about Sesame Street and yeah, they're using that as the picture, wasn't it.
00;45;40;05 - 00;46;11;12
Unknown
Check it out. And, and and so we talked for three hours and I don't know what's actually going to make it onto the conference yet. But one of the things we talked about and I'm really serious about this and I'm kind of adamant about this, is we lost the narrative in oil and gas. And I take this from the perspective of number one, you look back over the last 200 years, what are the greatest things that have happened to humanity?
00;46;11;14 - 00;46;45;10
Unknown
Clearly vaccinations, clearly antibiotics, clearly hydrocarbons. I mean, nothing has done more for life expectancy, life quality than hydrocarbons. I'd say it's number one, but I, I would give somebody vaccinations, antibiotics. Right. So we had the moral high ground. What I don't think the young guys on t realize is way back in the day, like in the 70s, in the 80s, energy prices were countercyclical to the economy.
00;46;45;10 - 00;47;15;13
Unknown
And so when oil was high, gas prices were high. It tanked the economy. So Texas was doing great, Oklahoma was doing great. And the rest of the economy would suck and vice versa. And instead of oil prices being high, the rest of the economy tanking and us taking the narrative of, okay, we're going to cut, you know, gasoline prices $0.25 or $0.15, because we know America's hurting.
00;47;15;15 - 00;47;43;12
Unknown
We printed up bumper stickers that said Freezer Yankee. I mean, we were so obnoxious. J.R. Ewing is a documentary. That is that is not a parody. And unfortunately, this obnoxiousness and look, exhibit number one right here, I will I will take blame on this. We lost the narrative. We lost the ability to tell our side of the story.
00;47;43;15 - 00;48;09;00
Unknown
And so now what we have is we have a 16 year old talking about climate change that people believe people like, and they hate us. And the reason they hate us was self-imposed. I mean, we did it to ourselves by losing the narrative. And so what you just said and where I was going with this and what I would say to young people out there is, look, you need to capture the narrative back.
00;48;09;03 - 00;48;31;20
Unknown
It's about the good things we've done. You need to embrace that. Less carbon is our future. That is not the government saying that. Dan Pickering came on to our clubhouse. Jeff Davies and I energy credit one to a clubhouse every Wednesday night at 9 p.m.. Pickering came on and said, hey guys, this isn't the government. This isn't regulatory.
00;48;31;22 - 00;48;53;06
Unknown
This is companies, investors saying we want less carbon, period. It's a tidal wave, you know, that, that is not going to be stopped. So it is happening. And quite frankly, I think the science is uncertain. You don't have a model that's predictive and all that. But I can say this less CO2 is not going to hurt us.
00;48;53;08 - 00;49;13;04
Unknown
Right. And let me say one more thing and then I'm going to let you roll with this. It's just so we need to embrace that. And where the narrative needs to go is we are the oil and gas companies. We have done all this great stuff with hydrocarbons. We're also the people to take you to less carbon. And here's how we're going to do it.
00;49;13;06 - 00;49;36;05
Unknown
We're going to start injecting CO2 instead of emitting it. We're going to do this. We're going to do that, and we're going to lead that change. And we got to win the narrative back. Because if we don't win the narrative back, it almost doesn't matter if we're 100% right about the science. Yeah, I, I agree with you on the narrative aspect.
00;49;36;05 - 00;49;56;10
Unknown
I don't see a lot of people doing it, though, in terms of winning it back without a heavy level of compromise in terms of what you're not necessarily caving to, but you are really positioning yourself in a way that you know, they they know what they're doing, that in terms of spinning the narrative on the non-carbon or what's next, or playing to their audience.
00;49;56;10 - 00;50;27;04
Unknown
Because like you said, a lot of the science is unproven. The the methodologies themselves are massively untested. Look how much, capital is gone into the new tech there. That deal may or may not work, but they'll spin all of those same narratives of you know, for for the future. So, I think, you know, anyone in the industry is is definitely not oblivious to to like you said, one of the monumental achievements that, you know, hydrocarbons giving those same people the ability to discuss and bitch and moan about it, you know, because of all of the accomplishments it's done.
00;50;27;04 - 00;50;48;07
Unknown
And so, you know, I think that's a great question of how do you take it back, you know, and B, maybe take a harder stance on it and reemphasize all the good things it does. You know, without without being relabeled number one. I mean, it's a, it's a fine line and it's a, it's a push and pull that I think a lot of large companies are trying to navigate right now.
00;50;48;07 - 00;51;07;06
Unknown
And some are, you know, more heavy one way or are the other. Right. But I mean, the kid, can you think of an example that like a single one that's taking a hardline stance, maybe back on just, you know, sole hydrocarbon? No. But that being said, and Pickering brought this up, so I need to give credit where credit's due.
00;51;07;08 - 00;51;29;26
Unknown
If you're a $5 billion EMP company staring at this tidal wave, what do you do? I mean, are you. Hey, we're just an oil and gas company. That's all we're going to do. Blah blah blah, blah, blah. And you potentially are riding into oblivion at some point. I mean, I'm, I'm in the Charlie Munger camp, but if we're going to burn every hydrocarbon.
00;51;29;26 - 00;51;52;17
Unknown
No, I think you I think you pull an Exxon. Right? I think they they know what their core business model is. And and, you know, Exxon's just the biggest example that's, you know, very visible. Right. They know reality, right? I mean, you can, you know, and and they'll they'll turn the rest of it into, you know, what I like to call a traditional marketing exercise where, you know, yes, we've got some decarbonization programs.
00;51;52;17 - 00;52;21;25
Unknown
Yes. We're not, you know, oblivious to the investor sentiment and the headwinds and, you know, the potentially even, regulatory pressure. But at at its core, you know, they're they're still sticking to their guns. Now, could they potentially do a better narrative of, you know, to combat some of those things? Yes, but that's it. I mean, it's sometimes difficult from I would, I would say a, a PR perspective to do, you know, to have these two sort of devil and angel hands of, of how to put them both together and come up with the, with the perfect solution.
00;52;21;25 - 00;52;41;03
Unknown
I mean, counter to that, though, there are companies that have maybe gotten a little further out over their skis and almost, you know, really forgot where they come from and are trying to buy their way into the future, if you will. And that could end terribly for them. Yeah. And the, the way I kind of think about it and rationalize things because I agree.
00;52;41;03 - 00;53;13;13
Unknown
I mean, BHP's just being reactive, right? Sorry, I didn't mean to do that while you're drinking your coffee. But, you know, it's just, you know, if it feels like I surrender, I surrender, you know, what's crazy, too, is I mean, it's just not damn either, right? I mean, I know there are like, you know, I've I've I've been part of some internal conversations to where, I mean, people depending where they're located or or they're, you know, executive teams depending their age or their, their backgrounds are, you know, they get even jealous of that strategy, like, oh, look how look how progressive and look how Ford they are.
00;53;13;13 - 00;53;32;28
Unknown
And so you get both sides of the coin, right? Depending if it's a company, a person, you know, the type of people you have a culture. And so, you know, I've seen complete opposite ends of the spectrum. And you know, but I'd say the majority are still somewhere in the middle, right? I mean, I think the level of recognition has come a long way in five years, even maybe ten.
00;53;33;01 - 00;53;55;24
Unknown
Right. But I mean, really, I think within I'd say even in two. Two. Yeah, that's where we're going. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's, it's, it's really amplified. And so, you know, look as in anything with any type of change, whether it's cultural, you know, technology, you name it, right. You're going to have some people who are laggards and you're going to have some people middle of the road watch and see what the other two people do and, you know, and make their things accordingly.
00;53;55;24 - 00;54;19;05
Unknown
And you're going to have some people who step on the gas and go for, you know, go pull off, pull a BP, because I think what the compromise could be and, you know, call me Pollyanna and a little bit of wishful thinking, I actually think what the compromise could be is, hey, let's do as much of this production as we can in the United States.
00;54;19;05 - 00;54;44;12
Unknown
Let's not kill our business, because if we're here in the United States, one, you've got the US government looking at us. She got state governments looking at us. You got the media looking at us. So you do have oversight there. The market is telling us they are willing to pay higher prices for less carbon. I mean that that is what investors are saying.
00;54;44;12 - 00;55;06;29
Unknown
That's what companies are saying and the like. And if we could create an I am a free market guy, a free trade guy. But, you know, if we could say, hey guys, let's do as much of it as we can here, you're going to have to pay a higher price for it. But oh, by the way, I'm going to, you know, seal my well site so that there are no emissions.
00;55;06;29 - 00;55;32;04
Unknown
I'm going to, you know, re inject the CO2. So that doesn't I mean tick on down the list. I'm going to plant this number of trees now by the way can we please have some data on exactly trees and what they do. I think the fact we don't have any data there says trees are more effective decarbonization. Instruments than we really know, but.
00;55;32;06 - 00;55;46;26
Unknown
Well, I mean, aren't there? I mean, there are some carbon credit companies. That's all they're doing is they're selling you offset carbon credits on like X number of acres that they have for trees, like that's actually a business model, right? So, you know, it might either benefit or, you know, negate them of what they're doing. So maybe they're right.
00;55;47;02 - 00;56;04;15
Unknown
They're the ones holding the data. But you know, to that point, I think, I think the best operators will do that. I'm in terms of navigating that, you know, whether it's a regulatory spectrum or what, you know, in a very harsh investor sentiment, I think the best ones will be able to run both of those strategies side by side.
00;56;04;17 - 00;56;28;10
Unknown
They will able, you know, you'll be able to look at decarbonization efforts. You'll be able to really tick the boxes on your efforts, whether it's, you know, for for leak detection and then mitigation. Right. You you can take all that down here. You can figure out how to reduce your overall carbon footprint. You can do some of the full decarbonization, whether it's, you know, carbon capture and secret like sequestration, which, you know, as a as a broader thing is still kind of up in the air of, you know, is it even worth it?
00;56;28;10 - 00;56;49;05
Unknown
But that's a that's a whole nother podcast. But I, I, I you will see this happen in parallel. And we are seeing that happen now. Right now. You know do do you see some people stick to their guns and maybe some of the guys who have a better profile get maybe that puts a better buyout target on their back because they already have it, and it becomes so paramount that, you know, it makes somebody look a little more attractive, maybe.
00;56;49;07 - 00;57;19;15
Unknown
But, you know, I, I think that's, that's going to happen. And so with that, I mean, not just always to look at maybe what's next, I mean, that there is some opportunity and avenues there. And I think, I think that's one of the things that we've done, sort of on a narrative perspective that's been difficult too, because like you say, when you want to get the narrative back, it's yes, I, I think we do a horrible job of, you know, as an industry and a whole of really emphasizing all of the, you know, the, the luxuries and, you know, your standard of living.
00;57;19;15 - 00;57;50;03
Unknown
Now, based on what we've done, you know, putting that aside as, oh, not not putting it aside, but assuming we can amplify that and, you know, increase that narrative. Tyus, you know, how do then we merge it with everything else? Because like you just said, it's not going to go away. And so I think whether it's from a technology perspective, whether it's a new company structure, you know, some of these things that could go side by side and, you know, maybe there is a different version of, you know, an energy operator or an energy technology company, right?
00;57;50;03 - 00;58;09;23
Unknown
I mean, there's there's a huge number even in the service sector, right? They you're not an oil field service sector company anymore, right? Right. You're an energy technology company, right? Right. I mean, I mean, I mean, there's no drilling info anymore, right? Like that's that's always so funny is, you're a technology company when you can't pronounce the name, right?
00;58;09;23 - 00;58;43;29
Unknown
Yes, but but I think if we could literally just win the narrative of. Hey, guys, if we're going to use a hydrocarbon, let's have it produced here under our rules and regulations, that will eventually lead to less carbon in the air. Because if we don't do that, if we kill our industry off, it's going to get produced in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Russia, take on, you know, Libya took on down the list and those guys don't care about the pollutants.
00;58;43;29 - 00;58;59;16
Unknown
Oh yeah I know I'm just so well that was like the biggest I mean, that was the thing when you saw a lot of the European super traders who obviously have you know, much more pressure than, you know, some of the ones here stateside. But, you know, when they all started to look at their big divestiture programs, it's like, oh, and, you know, we're going to do this.
00;58;59;16 - 00;59;18;22
Unknown
And so as a you know, net net on my company, I'm really reducing my overall footprint. I'm like, yeah, but you just sold everything to Kinnock. And now like you know, they're going to rip it through the roof. And so like as a whole you're potentially up 10% globally or something like that. Right. And so you know so there is a lot of pass the buck that that is going on.
00;59;18;22 - 00;59;42;15
Unknown
And, and you know, I, I just wonder is it, is it something as simple as capturing back the narrative or, you know, do we do we really shift it to something to where it's like, you stop touting so much about the things that you've done, and you almost try and build a strategy that that's inherent, right? Where, look, you know, those people that we would win it back from you might never win it back.
00;59;42;15 - 01;00;04;28
Unknown
And so that's the thing. Do you try and reshape it I think and and this is, you know, in my mind to where it's much more complimentary, not necessarily to green or whatever, but you, you build it to where, you know, the hydrocarbon aspect is a very given model. You know, you assume it's where it's at. And so you, you see a lot of the, the additional marketing or pressure to, to appease sort of the other vocal base.
01;00;04;28 - 01;00;26;08
Unknown
And so it's I think, you know, it's that's what you're seeing across the industry. I, I would say as opposed of more of an appeasement and redirection strategy than you are a take back strategy because it you know, I'm not a huge Trump fan. I'm a libertarian. I've only voted for the libertarian presidential candidate my whole adult life.
01;00;26;10 - 01;00;57;12
Unknown
So I know I'm going to lose every year when I get a vote. But I think one thing Trump has right, that goes against my belief, and I think Covid nailed this home is there really does have to be a baseline kind of manufacturing infrastructure in the United States. We can't be dependent on China for all our generic drugs, for our N95 mask and all that.
01;00;57;14 - 01;01;18;16
Unknown
And and I think people are starting to buy that as a whole. If you just talk to the average American, hey, would you pay a little bit more? But we're going to have it here in the United States, and we won't be held captive to China. That's what I kind of think. It's just like it's it's like less than a pitching wedge, a way to say, let's do the same thing with energy.
01;01;18;18 - 01;01;38;18
Unknown
We're going to pay a little more. We're going to be able to decarbonize it better, because look, at the end of the day, sell on it to, not it's going to pollute. And at the end of the day, you know, it's still China and building, what, three coal plants a week or two a month or whatever it is.
01;01;38;18 - 01;01;57;15
Unknown
I mean, that's still I mean, to and China, India, they're they all have a, a good number coming in too. But I mean, I think one of the funniest things I saw in that, was was that I was at some conference and, there was something about looking at the, you know, in terms of power generation versus total electric hybrid or I.C.E..
01;01;57;18 - 01;02;17;20
Unknown
Right. And it was like, if you follow this timeline on I.C.E., you know, we're we're okay. We can do the decarbonization. And it actually looks relatively okay. In if you followed it fully on electric based on current power grid power generation, that's like a global study as well. I mean, they kind of looked at that profile, and it was it was on par only like 2% better.
01;02;17;24 - 01;02;37;04
Unknown
And then if you looked at hybrid was the best, it was like the outperformer by a long shot because that kind of model and that usage is in line with what we have today in terms of power generation. And I think you've probably nailed that on some other aspects in our other, podcasts or things you've mentioned in terms of, you know, if you tried to go full EV tomorrow, but, you know, where where does it come from?
01;02;37;04 - 01;02;54;08
Unknown
And so, I think that's where I think you might get some narrative capture back and really had a fight to fight, not necessarily say, you know, like, you know, everything we do. You know, one of the guys is awesome is that. But really, really how to point the conversation to both sides of the spectrum, the supply and the demand side.
01;02;54;10 - 01;03;19;17
Unknown
We seem to do a very good job of, you know, only talking about one or the other or the market will attack one or the other narratives. And so, you know, taking taking maybe both avenues down that road is something in the future. But, you know, I, I that's, that's almost beyond me. Right. Yeah. It's several definitely above the, Chuck Yates Needs a Job podcast where we talk about Buda Gate and send pizzas to people going on dates.
01;03;19;17 - 01;03;46;24
Unknown
So when is the Buda Gate follow up, by the way? That's it. Yeah. No, I it was funny because in December, EOG permitted a reentry into a Buda well in Madison County. And I was going, oh my gosh, what if this is it? But, supposedly there has not been the big land grab yet. But some brokers have kicked around, so we'll see what that happens to.
01;03;46;25 - 01;04;07;24
Unknown
I'd be interesting to see if, you know, let's say let's say our, our industry does clean itself up and maybe some of these plays are areas you haven't heard of in a, in a in a long time start to come back and, you know, I've been awhile since I've looked at a smack over, well, or I think I used to say all the time, it's like you look, you know, every now and then, you got to you.
01;04;07;26 - 01;04;23;25
Unknown
You got to plow through, you know, a four to get a ten. So it's about that time we go to tactic at times. Well down the line. Just so just so we can remember, you know, people are like, oh, the water cuts in the Delaware and horrible. And it's like, look, go, go go go go drill a quick TMS well and figure it out.
01;04;23;25 - 01;04;47;15
Unknown
Or just go go go try and d water the hunting again. That's another that's another good one. But, when I was at Kane, we probably drilled 20 or 25 more wells. You know, that's kind of the Oklahoma, panhandle type formation because it would just periodically you'd have this massive well right there and you'd offset it all.
01;04;47;17 - 01;05;10;23
Unknown
You know, all four ways and just nothing like literally dusters and, so every time it would always be like, man, we're drilling this well, but if we could just go down another thousand feet or 2000ft, we'll get to see the morrow. And we always did it, and it was always a duster. And so the joke was, the geologist guys goes to heaven sitting with Saint Peter.
01;05;10;23 - 01;05;30;28
Unknown
You've been such a good person, my son. We will grant you one wish. And the geologist goes, Will you just show me the fucking moral map? I want to see it. It's, I mean, there yeah, there's so many plays and so many areas that you could say that about. Like, oh, it was all it. Yeah, it was always the kiss of death to drill a great.
01;05;30;28 - 01;05;51;15
Unknown
Well on the first. Well could you. I had no idea why it was a great. Well, you know, you had a theory and you tested it. But theories are never right on the first time, you know, that's why we have science. We run experiments. That's why we run placebos. Because you got a sense that I don't know what's worse, because I've been a part of both.
01;05;51;17 - 01;06;12;11
Unknown
Where you drill the absolute banger right off the start, and then it's six in a row of just there, you know, or I've been a part of, you know, you drill 5 or 6 in a row, just absolute, you know, dogs. And then on that last one where it's like, you know, I mean, there's plenty of operators who it's like, this is it, this is the last one we hit this.
01;06;12;11 - 01;06;29;19
Unknown
We're on a well by well because we get it and you kind of get that last one. I don't know which one's better, like in terms of a personal experience because, you know, ones of sheer bliss, you know, stepping up to the plate and you knock it out of the ballpark on the first pitch, the other ones bottom of the ninth, two outs and you have to get it.
01;06;29;19 - 01;06;47;09
Unknown
So and what it always happened to us is, is with each, well, you wouldn't hit the home run or score the run, but you'd have just enough in the way of improvement that you got a couple of guys on base in the next inning. You're like, all right, we're going to score the run this time. And it never happened.
01;06;47;09 - 01;07;09;02
Unknown
So it's almost you know, I to some degree I wish and I'll make the distinction here. I wish us unconventional development played a little more small ball. Right, right. Yeah. Because I mean I think that's what, you know, when when you see some of the differences between, you know, let's say Canada and the US or just individual company or engineer styles of what they've done.
01;07;09;02 - 01;07;34;13
Unknown
Right? You know, the, the optimizing development or certain development strategies has been wildly varied. And, you know, you, you see people go from, you know, absolutely kind of like where baseball is at now, just trying to uplift and swing for the fences every time versus, you know, some of the small baby steps on, you know, hey, our first mission is to get somebody on base, you know, use those returns change in small patterns, but you know where you know it.
01;07;34;16 - 01;07;52;22
Unknown
And from a time scale perspective, you know, we've it's been very black and white. Some people say, no, that's not true. Like more what are we are now Gen seven eight maybe. But you got to think like that's happened in an incredibly fast time period in terms of like share, right? I mean, yeah, all of that in under a decade.
01;07;52;24 - 01;08;11;07
Unknown
And so it's like, you know, could have we done a little, you know, maybe things have been would have been better with some some more incremental steps and some small ball. So it's so funny you say that because we would sit in board meetings that came with portfolio companies. And, you know, at the end of the day, you would never back a CEO.
01;08;11;07 - 01;08;35;10
Unknown
That's 100% pessimist because they'd never get anything done. Right. You know? And so generally speaking, the way it works is the CEO is the optimist. Sitting there as the private equity guy on the board were the pessimist. And usually the answer is right or closer to right. The the interplay between the two. I used to always tell this story.
01;08;35;10 - 01;08;56;26
Unknown
I'd say, hey, we need to play small ball here. There have been more three run innings or more. So three runs or more in an inning without a home run. Then with a home run in Major League Baseball history and everybody would sit around, nod their head and all that sort of stuff. About a week later, I'd call the CEO and say, I have no idea if that's that's true or not.
01;08;56;26 - 01;09;23;24
Unknown
I just made it. I just made it up, you know? I mean, I just I had to get nail of my points. Well, more one of the things we've been doing on the podcast here the last, I think basically in 2021. So I think we've done 6 or 7 of these so far, is I asked all the guests to give me a playlist and you take that, you take that, wherever you want to go with it.
01;09;23;24 - 01;09;51;05
Unknown
I've had some people give me 2 or 3 songs. I've had bomber give me two hours and 15 minutes. I told them, I said, hey, bomber, I'm, I'm going to listen to your podcast on the peloton. And so he damn near killed me with that. So give me your playlist however you want to do it, tell me what the songs are, what it means to you in the case of bomber, in the two hour, we didn't talk individual songs.
01;09;51;05 - 01;10;27;00
Unknown
We just talked the theme that he put together with so So Lay It on Me when Moore's hanging out, when Moore's thinking music, what comes out. Yeah, it's, it's pretty fragmented for me because I have two major sort of areas that I love. And one is, I think heavily influenced by, my father, because, you know, we didn't, you know, everything growing up in my house between either my parents was, you know, a lot of Diana Ross or, you know, a lot of Warren Zevon or Frank Zappa, you know, LED Zeppelin, Beatles, stuff like that.
01;10;27;00 - 01;10;47;26
Unknown
So a lot of that, is really on my playlist, like I would say, you know, talking heads of Warren's, you honor probably two of my favorite bands. Okay, cool. And, you know, that's that's always sort of my, my, my go to driving stuff or, you know, even even working, like, I'm one of those guys that I almost have to have music on to, to, to read.
01;10;47;28 - 01;11;13;05
Unknown
So, I would say for sure, talking heads like I think stop making sense is probably, you know, my favorite album ever. If not definitely the best live maybe, you know, recorded concert documentary or, you know, performance that, that that, I did first music video I ever saw, was, talk, you know, because that was way before MTV, right?
01;11;13;05 - 01;11;48;08
Unknown
You know, and, and, when things go by, that was the first music video I ever saw. Did you see David Byrne on Saturday Night Live? Like, within the last two years I did, yeah. Was that not amazing? Was it? Was it ever was I, I always tell my wife like that I would, I would love to see some sort of reunion show with them because their songs I know, through the back of my head and I think when I first met my wife too, and we were going through, you know, my, my albums and, and, she, she saw a couple of these and had no idea, like, like Warren Zevon.
01;11;48;08 - 01;12;03;11
Unknown
So a perfect example went to where she had never heard, you know, a single song. Maybe you had heard where was the London, like at a bar somewhere. But, you know, some of the other stuff, like, you know, rolling the Headless Thompson gunner or lawyer, guns and money. Some of these are there, you know, she'd never heard.
01;12;03;11 - 01;12;19;00
Unknown
And now I think she can sing everyone along along with me. And so, you know, that was, that was something that, you know, I, I'd never gotten to see him either. And, you know, he's he's deceased as well, but, you know, so you're lawyers, guns and money was on bomber's play. Yeah. It's a great song. Like those are.
01;12;19;00 - 01;12;40;17
Unknown
Those are two of my just absolute go tos. And then, bizarrely enough, I think everything else is, is, it's Houston rap. No way. Yeah. You know, everything from, as old as some of the, some of the old screw tapes or pimp C or DJ DM'd, you know, an fat pad like that is that is actually probably more than my always go to stuff.
01;12;40;17 - 01;13;00;25
Unknown
Some of that that, that, that mid 90s to early 2000 when, you know, Houston what's really on the map is the Third Coast. Like some of that stuff is out there that I just, you know, I listened to it when I was younger and it, it was kind of perfectly right there at the time when, when things started to peak and there was a lot of it and it got more national recognition.
01;13;00;25 - 01;13;17;14
Unknown
And I think why it it's so ingrained in, in me is because right after that, like when I said I, I left the U.S. and didn't come back for almost a decade. And so it was kind of the last thing that was on. My God, I don't even know if it was an iPod at that time. Right. But but Sony Walkman.
01;13;17;14 - 01;13;35;07
Unknown
Yeah. Something I mean, it was the busted hard drive that I, that I took from school. You know, and then, you know, that was just the playlist that I had for almost ten years bouncing all over, you know, the world. And so for, for probably half a decade, I was just stuck with what I had listened to, like, in college.
01;13;35;09 - 01;13;58;17
Unknown
And so that's why I mean, those things are like still in my mind, I would say. So, you know, you know, when you sit around in a bar with some buddies having a beer and you go down the rabbit hole of Greatest American athlete or whatever, and, and you try to have an answer that's outside the cliche, just so you can kind of start a debate and all and ooh, that's a good take.
01;13;58;17 - 01;14;23;21
Unknown
Or something. Texas music. You know, if you say greatest Texas song, obviously you go to like Willie Nelson, Robert Earl keen to Gonzalez. Mine is always mind playing tricks on me by the ghetto boys. Nice. That's the one. I thought that's a great. Yeah. You know, arguably the greatest Texas song. I, I mean, Geto Boys, I think are, you know, any point especially we talk about Houston.
01;14;23;23 - 01;14;45;06
Unknown
I mean, they get they got to be top three if not won. And, it it was almost sometimes a, a binding factor that you'd be, you know, you'd be deepwater off the coast, the middle Africa or, or somewhere and, you know, if, if you had someone who was relatively your age or something like that, we, we, we would do a lot of bonding over that where, you know, you would steal it or you'd steal the PA system.
01;14;45;06 - 01;14;59;03
Unknown
And then all of a sudden you know, like Mr. 25 eight comes on from, you know, DJ DM'd and you're just like some of the guys on there who, you know, will absolutely jam to it. And so there was a while there were like there were a couple of us, I know that I bounced around the world with that.
01;14;59;05 - 01;15;20;29
Unknown
You know, there there are some unique parts of this planet that were introduced to, you know, Houston rap through, through through a couple of us drilling like we're drilling records. Yeah. It was because, I mean, that's that's that's all there was like, I have, you know, I been to to it, fortunately. And that's another thing, I think, you know, when people, people do talk about why would you get into oil and gas or why would you stay in it as well?
01;15;20;29 - 01;15;49;07
Unknown
I mean, you know, I've been fortunate enough to visit you know, almost 70% of this planet. And because that is the this is the one industry that will take you to places you never knew existed and never could identify on the map. I mean, I've been to a lot that I couldn't probably point out, right? Right. And, you know, that is that is something to show like the, the, the breadth and what we've done to give people the resource and, you know, the, the lifestyle they have through some of those exploration efforts.
01;15;49;07 - 01;16;09;01
Unknown
And, you know, there's, there's, there's the part of me that wish, you know, we would get back to some of that because, you know, those, it's, it's an incredible experience. And, you know, for, for people that are looking to, you know, and and it is still there because, like you said, like, I mean, global demand isn't going to go any way that we sometimes tend to forget how global of an industry it is.
01;16;09;03 - 01;16;30;13
Unknown
Right? I mean, you it's very easy to look at some of the bad players and shale or some of the other things that are going on between, you know, the environmental aspects of different parts of the world and, and oil companies. But it is really, truly a global industry. And I think that is one of the things that will keep me in it forever, because you won't get to travel, you get to work with people from all over, the world.
01;16;30;13 - 01;16;43;25
Unknown
And I think, you know, one of my first mentors I can remember is, you know, there's something I love more than this industry in any other industry on this planet, is that you get to work with the dumbest and smartest people on the planet at the same time.
01;16;43;27 - 01;17;02;19
Unknown
More drilling. That's awesome. Dude, you're cool to come in and do this. Thanks, man. Well, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate you coming into the Audio Realm Studios in Richmond, Texas. Yeah, I was a little worried coming in right after roll call, but, you know, we did it. We did. The breakfast tacos got us through. Yeah. Cool, man.
01;17;02;21 - 01;17;44;18
Unknown
Really appreciate you doing it. Thanks for having me.
