In this Episode of Conversations in Energy with Stuart Turley and guest Douglas Sandridge discuss the controversy surrounding the Osage wind farm, highlighting NL’s illegal mining of Osage rock and the tribe’s legal victory. They emphasize the importance of ethical and sustainable energy practices, touching on the global backlash against non-recyclable renewable energy sources. They also discuss the broader implications for land rights and the financial and environmental costs of wind and solar energy projects. The conversation underscores the need for the lowest cost and least environmentally impactful energy solutions.
Thank you, Doug, for stopping by the podcast! It was great visiting with you about your LinkedIn article!
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
01:31 – Renewable Energy Discussion
02:08 – Osage Winds Controversy
02:47 – Doug’s Perspective
03:31 – Responsible Energy Use
04:05 – Robert Bryce Video Introduction
06:52 – Bryce on Renewable Energy Opposition
09:46 – Doug’s Research on Osage Case
10:27 – Map of Osage Reservation
16:02 – Wind Farm Rights Issue
20:01 – NL’s Violation
25:08 – Importance of Land Rights
34:07 – Renewable Energy Lifespan Issues
39:14 – Ongoing Trial
41:00 – Ethical Energy Practices
46:37 – Closing Remarks
Check out Doug’s LinkedIn HERE:
The following is an automated transcript, and we disavow any errors unless they make Doug and myself appear smarter or better looking.
Stuart Turley [00:00:08] All right. We are live. Good morning. Good afternoon. And this is Stu Turley, president CEO of the sandstone Group. Today is a fantastic day. We’re heading into Memorial weekend, and I’ve got a special guest today. I’ve got Doug Sandridge, and he is one cool cat that I’ve had on the podcast before. Thoroughly enjoy all of my interactions with Doug. Doug, welcome to the podcast.
Douglas Sandrige [00:00:35] It’s great to be back. I love I love it. Never, never had more fun in my podcast than when you were a Stu Turley.
Speaker 1 [00:00:41] Oh, I’ll pay you later. And I can’t wait to give you a hug again. Hey, we’ve got an action packed show today, and I’ll tell you what. We’re going to tee this up. There’s some real backlash going on around in the world right now, and people are saying, renewable energy is actually renewable. I think the answer is until they’re recyclable and fiscally responsible, I would say no. But there’s a lot, things that are going on. And it make a fiery rage. And you know that when you hit back and kind of go where it was found, there was a tornado that just went around. Through, I believe, Iowa. And it was most it took out a whole, wind farm right there.
Douglas Sandrige [00:01:32] I saw the video.
Stuart Turley [00:01:33] Oh, it went in that now it had it looked like there were like 5 or 6 tornadoes in the middle of that. Now, you wrote a story about this topic that we’re going to talk about today, and we are going to talk about the Osage winds pushing back hard. This was on your Substack. Energy, ruminations.
Douglas Sandrige [00:01:59] Ruminations, energy. Ruminations. Yes. We’re both here from Oklahoma, aren’t we?
Stuart Turley [00:02:06] Yeah. There you go.
Douglas Sandrige [00:02:08] Yes. That’s correct. And I just want to go on the record. This this, this piece I did was not intended to be a hit piece on wind, energy or renewables in general. It’s really more of a criticism of NL, the operator of the Osage wind farm. So I don’t want to I don’t want to come across as this was intended to be a hit piece on wind. I just think this particular case was very interesting from my perspective as a land man. Right. And it’s also very interesting because I, I have a keen interest in Native American issues and, how this all, all the how this all played out was just fascinating to me. So.
Stuart Turley [00:02:48] Well, I want I want to go on record just for folks as well too. And that is I believe that we need to have the lowest cost kilowatt per hour delivered to everyone on the planet with the least amount of impact on the environment being fiscally responsible. That means using wind, solar, nuclear. We love nuclear. As you are the executive director for oil and gas executives, for nuclear energy. And also being sustainable through fiscal responsibility means not printing of money and then actually having everything. So you’re not printing money and causing inflation?
Douglas Sandrige [00:03:32] Yeah, there’s absolutely a role for renewables. And it’s going to be different in every location. It needs to be site specific. What works in, Portland, Oregon, works in the northwestern United States is different than what works in the southeast. What works in, Iceland is not going to work in Arizona. But yes, we need to use all of these forms of energy, as you said, in a sustainable way. And, they’re not all going to work everywhere, but they’re very sites with this site specific.
Stuart Turley [00:04:05] Right? I’ve got this one thing that let’s go take a look, and that is, this is about a two minute video, and we’ll get through, I think about one minute 40 of the it. I want to give a shout out to Robert Bryce. Robert Bryce is one of my biggest heroes. You know, I kind of I love Robert Bryce. Love his, juice. The series love is juice. The the documentary beforehand. And this one kind of tees it up a little bit. And then we’re going to roll through some of the slides. We’re going to roll through what you were thinking about when you wrote your article. That got my attention and got this thing going. So let’s take a look here.
Robert Bryce – Juice Series Video [00:04:49] Against wind and solar energy is real. It’s global and it is growing. I wrote about this in a piece that was published on Fox News last week. You know, I usually publish and only write on Substack, but I wanted to get this piece out to a wider audience, and it has reached a wider audience. In fact, the piece on Fox News has had over 3000 comments. And what did I do? I just documented the fact that all around the world, local communities are saying, we don’t want these solar and wind projects. Go take them and put them somewhere where the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow. We don’t want them here. So what are the numbers? As I’ve shown in the renewable rejection database, at least 639, rejections or restrictions on solar or wind energy here in the United States since 2015. In France and Ireland, since last December, courts have ruled that wind projects are a nuisance due to the noise pollution they create. In England since January alone, five solar projects have been rejected. In Canada, a remarkable development in Canada. In the province of Alberta. In February, provincial regulators, announced they were going to seek a 35 kilometer setback. That’s about 21.5 miles. 35km setback from, for of wind and solar projects from any pristine areas, parks, etc.. Here in the U.S., the rejections just keep piling up. It’s challenging to keep track of them, but I do keep track of them, of course, in the renewable rejection database. In February in Tennessee, in Shelby County, county regulators rejected a solar project that was being proposed to, help, fuel a data center owned by Facebook. And then, of course, Osage County, Oklahoma, where the Osage tribe has won a historic victory against Adele. And the judge, the federal court judge in Tulsa has ruled that Adele will have to take down 84 wind turbines that it built illegally. That’s expensive tribes, traditional lands. And because they violated the tribe’s sovereignty. So, I’m proud of this piece. And Fox News, you can find it there on FoxNews.com. And of course, you know where to find me on, Substack. Robert price.substack.com. Thanks a lot.
Stuart Turley [00:06:54] Hey. Thanks, Robert. You know, both of us, kind of weirdly. We talked to Robert yesterday.
Douglas Sandrige [00:07:00] Yeah, I love that. And this give credit here. Robert is who originally inspired me to write this story because he did a story about it. He’s been following this for several years. He did a great piece on it in January. And what happened is, is, to be honest, I was not following the story. So I have to give all credit to Robert for, for bringing this to, to everyone’s attention, including myself. And, I was listening shortly after that story came out. Yeah, I was listening to a podcast by, I’m not going to call out the name of the podcast, but it was a podcast about wind energy, and I listened to them every week just to kind of, you know, get a different perspective. And the people on this podcast were really coming down hard on the tri on the Osage tribe. They said they were selfish, that they, you know, that they shouldn’t have. They were mistreating and all the Italian wind developer. And it was clear to me that the people on the podcast did not know the facts, and they were speaking in an uninformed way. And it kind of made me a little bit angry. And so I started doing more research on this. I decided I needed to know more. And so as a MLA and man, and for those of you who don’t know what a layman is, a layman in the oil and gas business is someone who, goes out and facilitates the oil and gas development on the ground. If you’re going to drill a well, you have to have the rights to drill the well from the surface owner. But if you’re going to be developing oil and gas, you also have the right you have to develop the rights of a mineral owner. And so as a as petroleum land man, we’re keenly attuned to the laws of the surface, the subsurface, the mineral rights and so forth. That’s just, that’s that is our job to understand that so that we can negotiate the rights to develop oil and gas. And now those same skills that that I’ve been using for 40 years in the oil and gas business, those same skills translate to renewables as well. Because if you’re going to do a renewable development, you also have to site those wind farms or solar farms someplace. And so you need a competent land man, right? So this subject was just fascinating to me, maybe more than the average person, just because I am a, a land man by profession for for a long time. But the more I got into it, the more I realized that the tribe was very badly mistreated by N.L., and the tribe did not do anything wrong. And I thought it was very unfair that the wind industry was mischaracterizing, the tribe. And so I started reaching out to members of the tribe. A few weeks ago, I met with members of the tribe in Osage County, and it helped to help me develop the story. And so that’s kind of the genesis of it.
Stuart Turley [00:09:47] But, you know, I’ll tell you, I, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your story on this because it was very succinct and very well written. And I apologize for giving you a little bit of a compliment there. But as you as you take a look, here, the map in your article, this is a this is following the in your story, which is on your Substack, which is, Douglas Sandridge, dot subject.com. And that’s where everybody needs to find you at, on there. And also when, staff puts this out on the show notes, the article to the Osage, on their will will be out there as well, too.
Douglas Sandrige [00:10:29] Yeah. And so the Osage are very interesting. An interesting tribe. They are, of course, like all the tribes and or, bands in the, in the U.S, they have, have, kind of come down over time, originally, you know, as we all know, all the Native Americans originally, came over from Siberia during the last, interglacial period. And, and we had a land bridge between Russia and, and to present day North America. And then they’ve kind of subdivided into all these separate tribes. But but they’re they’re part of the Sioux tribe. Most people I don’t think, know that, but they’re, some people sometimes are called the Southern Sioux. And that map that you were showing there is kind of the historic area that was covered by the tribe in the last, you know, few hundred years. And, as you might imagine, over time, as, the whites started to encroach more, to the west and, and they got pushed out of Missouri and in the 1800, mid 1800s or early 1800s, they were pushed into a reservation in southern Kansas. And then, eventually more and more white settlers came to Kansas and there was pressure on the tribe. And eventually the U.S government bought the reservation in Kansas. And with the money that they got from the sale of their their. In Kansas. They actually purchased their own reservation in Oklahoma. Which is important to know because it’s different than, you know, not all the tribes did that. A lot of a lot of Indian tribes had reservations, but they didn’t necessarily buy their own reservation where they wanted it. But they had the money and they bought from the Cherokee tribe. They bought what is now present day Osage County. They’re in the northeastern part of Oklahoma. They bought that county. And so, they they have kind of a unique legal standing that’s different than most other tribes. You know, Oklahoma was Indian Territory. You had a lot of tribes that removed from southeastern United States there. You had a lot of native tribes like Comanche and, Apache and Kiowa that were already there. So it was Oklahoma Territory. And what kind of makes the Osage unique is, they they for a long time, they valued, education. They even requested that the United States government, enable the Catholic Church Jesuits to come in and set up schools on their reservations. Wow. So they early on recognize the value of education. And they also recognized that probably the better educated they were in the ways of the West, the better they were going to be able to, let’s say manipulate, negotiate the best deals for themselves when they’re dealing with federal government. Right. So, so in Oklahoma, you know, I went to University of Oklahoma a long time ago, and one of the classes as a land man, we had to take one of the classes we took was Indian law. And wow, in Oklahoma, there’s kind of generally, just generally speaking, three types of Indian law. And just so you know, I’m not these are not my terms. But there is the the law of the civilized tribes. Right. And and that’s not my term. That’s just what the, the legal term is at in the 1800s. The U.S. government felt like the tribes that it came from came from the Southeastern United States Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole Creek, those tribes, the civilized tribes. It was generally believed that they had been educated enough in the ways of the world, in the ways of the West, the ways of modern real property, that they could manage their own property, to some degree better than maybe the wild tribes. And there’s the law of the wild tribes, which is the Comanche, the Apache, the Kiowa, the Arapaho. And it was believed again, those are not my words. Those are just, legal terms of art. But the real tribes were believed that they did not know or understanding enough to deal with their own personal property. And so they when you deal with those tribes, you have to deal through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and because they are out to protect those people from being taken advantage of. Right. So those are the you have the wild tribes in the civilized tribes. And then the third type of law is the Osage. And now their law is different because they bought their own reservation from the Cherokee. And they their they went through the allotment process differently than these other tribes, and they negotiated basically, this comes down to a an unusual situation where they negotiated for all of the lands in Osage County to be the minerals, at least to be owned jointly by the entire tribe rather than allotted to individual tribal members. So the surface in Osage County is largely owned by non Osage people. It’s the Osage, it’s the Osage reservation. But most of those lands, a large percentage of the lands in Osage County are now owned by non Osage people. But the minerals underlying those lands was reserved for the Osage. So the Osage own those minerals. And that’s what makes them different than these other these other tribes.
Stuart Turley [00:16:02] Wow. So the wind farm coming in then applies to the royalties and how it coincides with the land man aspect.
Douglas Sandrige [00:16:14] Yes. So if you’re going to build a wind farm, you’re building it on the surface. It’s not it’s not like drilling the oil and gas well and oil and gas. This is we have to have the, the rights of the surface owner to locate a drilling rig. Right. And we also have have to have the rights of the subsurface to drill the well 1 or 2 miles down and produce the oil. So we have to have both rights. But on a, on a surface, right. You generally only need the surface if you’re building a wind farm or, or a solar farm. You don’t need mineral rights. As a general rule, you can just write what whatever you do over here with the mineral rights, that that’s fine. But if we own a surface rights, we can build a grocery store, or we can build a house or a hardware store or a wind turbine or a solar farm. So the NL, the Italian wind developer, when they came in, they bought the surface rights and they got all the permits from the county commissioners and all that sort of stuff. So they got that. And the question is, as a as when you’re building a wind turbine, what rights do you have to use the subsurface for the foundation? So you’re building this, you’re building the wind turbine on the surface. Right. That’s a big you know, it’s 400ft tall and you got powerful winds blowing against it. So you’re building a large concrete foundation which has to be constructed in the ground.
Stuart Turley [00:17:37] Exactly. I’m showing one of the pictures of their turbines.
Douglas Sandrige [00:17:41] So that’s that’s a foundation that that was it’s huge, as you can see. And, they, they’ve already laid it into the ground and now they’re building the foundation on top. But the thing is, is as a surface owner. You also have rights to use the subsurface in a reasonable fashion. So Stuart Turley goes to Tahlequah and you want to build a build a home and you buy a piece of the surface. And maybe the Cherokee still own the minerals I don’t know. But if you want to build a surface, a house there, right, you could still legally build a basement or a foundation or a swimming pool, because in most states, the surface owner has the right to use a reasonable amount of the subsurface. Right. For the for the enjoyment of the surface. Right. So inhale came in and they could have just built a wind farm, and they had every right to dig at, dig out a foundation. Right. Dig it down 30 or 40ft or whatever. Pour concrete. They had the right to do all of that with just a surface lease, even though they were going underneath the ground. But where they got crossways is right is if they had just dug the hole right and poured some concrete and some steel in the hole. That would have been fine. But instead they took the rock that they dug out of the hole. Right. It put it on a truck, took it to a processing plant. They crushed it, refined it, made it into commercial grade materials. And so now it did. It went beyond just.
Stuart Turley [00:19:23] You know.
Douglas Sandrige [00:19:24] They didn’t just dig a hole, they actually dug the hole and then mined and commercially used the materials from the hole. Wow. Well, those materials are owned by the Osage tribe, not by. And so the irony is, had they just. Used concrete from a concrete plant down in Sand Springs or in Tulsa and just poured the concrete. They’d been fine. They had the right to dig the hole, but what they didn’t have the right to do was to commercially use in mind and process the rock that they dug out of the hole.
Stuart Turley [00:20:02] That’s not ethical, nor right.
Douglas Sandrige [00:20:06] Well, you know, of course they’re claiming that they didn’t know or, you know, they didn’t believe it. They didn’t recognize the sovereignty of the tribe. I mean, there’s so many stories about why Intel did this. Because Intel was told from the beginning. Don’t do this. It’s not like they didn’t know. So immediately after they started digging their first holes for these first wind turbines, the tribe actually contacted Intel and said, hey, you do not have the right to mine our rock. If you want to dig a hole, you’re fine. But if you’re going to take our rock and make commercial use of our rock, you need a mining permit. And Intel basically said, we don’t recognize you. And they ignored the tribe. They just they totally ignored the tribe’s warning. So the tribe warned him early on. And I heard some of the wind. Some of these wind, pundits say, oh, well, had the tribe been up front from the beginning, this would never have happened. That’s baloney. The tribe told them at the very beginning of construction, you cannot use our rock. But they continue to use it. So the tribe feeling disrespected. They called the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., Department of the interior. They researched it and they came to the same conclusion. And then they said they wrote a letter. And I think you’ve got that as one of your one of your slides there. They wrote a letter to the NL stating you must cease and desist using the Indian tribe. There it is. You’ve got to cease and desist using their rock. Now, again, at this point, they get the letter from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They could have just continued building the the the wind turbines using outside materials because they were totally within the right to dig the hole, to build the foundations, to put up the wind turbines. It was totally within their rights to do that. But the minute they kept using the the rock illegally was the point. They were violating the law. And so they not only did they ignore the Bureau of Indian Affairs, according to several sources, including, some people that I have personally interviewed, they said as soon as that letter was received by NL, you know, apparently knew what they were doing, it would appear that they knew what they were doing was wrong because they just wanted to accelerate the construction because there’s a belief, you know, you can get it too big to fail. There’s a building. If you get it built, nobody’s going to make you tear it down. And so apparently, once this letter came out from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and l turned around and went to 24 hour operations building at night with lights so that they could finish the wind farm as quickly as possible. We can only presume the reason I can’t speak for why they did it, but it appears that they did it so that they could get the wind farm finished sooner before anyone could stop them, so they knew darn well they were on notice that they were violating the rule. So then they continued to build a wind farm. They put it in service, I believe, in 2015. And the United States government, on behalf of the Osage tribe, right, sued Intel and said, we’re suing you for for illegally mining the minerals, trespass of the subsurface, the state, blah, blah, blah. And this has gone through the courts for almost a decade. And then in December, I think the judge now, this is my take. This is just an opinion. But I feel like had the had the tribe had they had had email kind of. Stopped mining the rock illegally. Right. They probably would have, you know, basically got a slap on the wrist, maybe been charged for the use of the rock. Charge, sort of modest penalty or whatever. But instead they fought this for ten years. They were disrespectful to the to the Bureau of Indian Affairs from the Department of the interior. They were disrespectful to the tribe. They ignored the tribe’s sovereignty. They were disrespectful to the federal courts. They paid a lot of lip service to the federal court. And so I think in the end, the federal court was so disgusted by how they they treated the tribe that they probably got a lot worse penalty than they would have had they just, you know, fessed up to doing the wrong thing.
Stuart Turley [00:24:29] But it’s not right. I mean, it’s it’s unreal. I’m glad that they did get the penalties because you can’t treat people that way.
Douglas Sandrige [00:24:37] Yeah, it’s it’s a cautionary tale for anybody who’s, you know, doing work in the U.S. and I understand I some of the commentary I heard from overseas people, they don’t fully understand how our real property law works here in the U.S. if you’re in Australia and you go out and get a lease, you know, in the outback, you put up a wind turbine. Well, the government owns the subsurface, so you get a lease they own at all. And they don’t understand that there’s a there can be a differentiation between subsurface rights and mineral rights and surface rights and so on.
Stuart Turley [00:25:09] But the Doug is a land man. The reason the United States is such an oil powerhouse is because of the investment ability for individuals to invest in, the mom and pop, if you would, or the privately held oil and gas firms, which are the mineral rights, which is capitalism at its finest, is why the U.S. is the largest producer of oil in the world.
Douglas Sandrige [00:25:39] It’s one reason you’re exactly right. It’s not the only reason, but it’s not thing. And it’s a huge reason why we have have developed these massive shale plays in the US and their shale in other places in the world. But yeah, having private ownership of those shale mineral resources is very entrepreneurial. And so people want to develop their shale rights and, and.
Stuart Turley [00:26:04] And that tax incentive, rightfully so, is because a oil, as you know, and our listeners that are out there, a decline curve happens. And so it is an asset that is declining. And you need that tax incentive. And it and it turns out it’s become a it’s a good investment. And it’s kind of ironic that we’re seeing that Blackrock and all of the other ESG investors are now saying, oh hey it’s okay to invest in oil.
Douglas Sandrige [00:26:35] Yeah. Well anyway the the the finally after ten years in December, the judge not only said you have trespassed, you have illegally mined, but as partly as I believe this is just punitive because of their complete belligerent and brazen arrogance of NLW over this ten year period. They’ve now the court has ordered them to tear down the windfarm. So they’re going to have to tear down all 84 turbines, get rid of all the foundations in the ground, restore all the surface, reclaim all the roads, do all of that. And I’ve seen cost estimates between 250 and $300 million just to reclaim, the 84 turbine sites. And then in addition to that, the tribe has asked for punitive damages. And believe it or not, this week the trial is going on in Tulsa. The judge is hearing testimony about what are the damages, and we hope to know by next week. I think, you know, I’ve heard and so I don’t think this is for sure, but I’ve heard that the number the tribe has been asking for starts with a, B.
Stuart Turley [00:27:46] And rightfully so. And this brings up and, this brings up one of my biggest pet peeves. And that is I believe we need to eliminate, energy poverty. But we also have to be good stewards of the planet, and that is have the least amount of impact on the environment, whether you’re using fossil fuels or using wind or anything else. Land reclamation for solar farm and wind farm owners right now is in question because it is horrifically expensive, because the land reclamation for a single tower is, well, a million bucks per tower estimated. I mean, I’m hearing numbers all over the place just to haul it out. Yep. And include everything.
Douglas Sandrige [00:28:38] Else they’re talking about on this on this investment here, probably more than $3 million per. Tower to see, to reclaim it. And so and actually our mutual friend David Blackman. Great job. Did a wonderful post this week on the coming up. There’s going to be a reckoning where there’s going to be all these wind farms that are going to be abandoned, and you know that those are his words. But I actually happen to agree. I think we’re going to see in the coming years the, you know, in the oil and gas business. And let’s be honest, in the oil and gas business, in the past, there have been problems with companies who have absolutely taken care, plug their wells, restored their, you know, it’s a black eye on the oil and gas business. Yes. But most oil and gas and any jurisdiction that you’re working, including federal lands or private lands in the states, you’re required to put up bonding to assure that if something happens, if your company goes bankrupt and you don’t clean up that site, that bond will step in and reclaim that site. We don’t see that for the wind turbines. And so what I’m fearful and I’m working on my own story on this is probably going to be later this year. But I’m like David Blackman, I think that we’re going to see a rash of wind farms that are abandoned by unscrupulous operators. They get their tax credits, they get their money from selling electricity, and then once they can’t make any money anymore, they’re going to walk away.
Stuart Turley [00:30:06] Exactly.
Douglas Sandrige [00:30:07] And now I want to be clear. I have a lot of friends in the wind industry, and there’s a lot of reputable companies, and I’m absolutely positive those reputable companies will do the right thing. But there’s going to be a lot of companies who walk away and leave this farmer with 84 wind turbines on his property, and how is he going to spend $300 million to reclaim it? He’s not.
Stuart Turley [00:30:26] Well.
Douglas Sandrige [00:30:27] It’s a huge issue.
Stuart Turley [00:30:28] Terrific. And we’re seeing this and Douglas, one of the biggest pet, one of my biggest pet peeves right now about, the energy hypocrisy that is going on right now is you have the BlackRock’s of the world, that have been out there and they’ve been saying, oh, fossil fuels are evil. But yet this is the same time when they lost $1.7 trillion. And I believe the first part of 2023, they lost $1.7 trillion because of their ESG investments. Well, then in the second half, now they turn around. oh. They owned pipelines and oil and gas assets in the Middle East. And so they’re sitting there trying to bury their their things. Now, you have you know, the hypocrisy is horrific. And I really think that the farmers are going to be horrifically, challenged. Nobody can prove this different. And that is Douglas. Doug, what do you think the average lifespan of a wind farm is?
Douglas Sandrige [00:31:38] Oh, boy. Well, you know, they they always they always say they’re going to last 20 or 25 years. And I have personal knowledge of many wind farms. And most of them, are not, are not lasting that long. Now, in truth be known right now, a lot of there’s so much tax incentives to repower these wind farms under the IRA that they’re tearing down the old wind farm and putting up a new wind farm so they can get new tax credits. They can that, right? They can get more, federal tax money if they can put up a bigger wind turbine. So that’s kind of skews it. So some of these wind farms are being retired early to put up new, bigger ones.
Stuart Turley [00:32:20] You nailed it. It’s seven years and nobody can get me a different number. And so it’s fiscally irresponsible from day one. Warren Buffett said there’s no reason to invest in one unless you have the tax credits and incentives and subsidies. I mean, that’s a quote that’s from him. So then you take the seven years and then you roll the I.R.A. into that seven years, because the turbines are failing at such a horrific rate. The maintenance fees at that seven year to eight year mark, the they have to go out and get more money for their energy and rate increases and everything else. And then and when the IRA came rolling in all of a sudden. But what this did was push a ugly baby down the road of it’s now a 500 pound ugly baby. And it’s going to get worse because now they’re bigger, they’re uglier, and they’re going to fail just in that next seven years. But there’s not going to be any money at the end of that seven years.
Douglas Sandrige [00:33:31] Yeah. Most of these wind farms are not lasting anywhere close to the 20 years that they are being told. We’re being told that they last. And then a lot of these companies are not going to have they’re not. Putting aside enough money. They’re making their money, but they’re not putting aside money for the reclamation. And again, I want to I don’t want to insult my friends that work for reputable wind farm companies that are doing that. But there are a lot of companies that are not doing that. And they’re going to leave it. They’re going to leave those wind turbines standing out there as perpetual monuments to our futility. So it’s kind of sad.
Stuart Turley [00:34:08] I’m, we’ve got a new podcast, team member coming up, and, you know, it is going to be a lot of fun to be able to talk about, actually the recyclable, being able to recycle windmill and solar panel parts because that, to me is one of the biggest issues I have with the so-called renewable energy. I’m all in. I like wind, I like solar, I like the idea, but they’re not recyclable and they’re not sustainable under our current technology.
Douglas Sandrige [00:34:41] Well, I did see this week where they just, powered up the first, wind turbine with wooden blades in Germany.
Stuart Turley [00:34:50] Oh, I saw that. I. Oh, dog, that is such a hoot. So now we’re going to recyclable wood that’s not scalable. And at the it takes ten years for them to become carbon net zero. They can’t last seven years. Yeah. So now you’re going to destroy the forest that will absorb the CO2, and you can’t. I’m just kidding. Okay.
Douglas Sandrige [00:35:22] Yeah. It’s, it’s a lot more complicated than the average person realizes. If you get the scale and scope of the. This energy, so-called energy transition is very.
Stuart Turley [00:35:34] But let me ask this, because what happened? Your article was phenomenal and I really appreciate it all bringing all that forward. But what happened during this time, when Doctor Patrick Moore was out in front of the, you know, the oil tankers trying to stop the oil tankers with Greenpeace, and they were trying to save the whales and trying to be humanitarians. And, seeing Greenpeace with Doctor Patrick Moore try to stop the clubbing of the baby seals. Now we have the right whales that are endangered, and the offshore wind is absolutely, horrifically killing. And they have now, tags for more right whales than there are in existence so that the wind farms can kill the whales.
Douglas Sandrige [00:36:32] Boy, it’s a it’s a really tough subject, and I’m not a marine biologist.
Stuart Turley [00:36:37] But I’m not here. It’s not me, man.
Douglas Sandrige [00:36:39] But it, that the the the weight of evidence is increasingly looking bad for the offshore wind on the East coast. I mean, I don’t want to hold myself out as the expert on that, but more and more evidence that comes out, it appears that the wind development is having an adverse impact on those whales. And what’s so, so sad is, is that, you know, if the oil companies were doing that, boy, they would be vilified if, if.
Stuart Turley [00:37:06] They just they just put the lizard out there. Texas, railroad commissioner, they just said, okay, the the lizard, which there are bazillions of these lizards, there’s bazillions of these lizards out there. And now we’re having to hold oil and gas to a different standard. And then we are killing millions and millions of bats on land. We’re killing eagles like you wouldn’t believe if you.
Douglas Sandrige [00:37:33] Had an oil company kill an eagle, there would be hell to pay. There would be a lot of outrage about it. And yet these wind farms, you know, get licenses from the, US Fish and Wildlife Service to kill certain number of eagles per year because they know that’s going to happen. They go ahead and get a permit in advance to kill these eagles.
Stuart Turley [00:37:52] Let me show this one piece by Robert, our our buddy Robert Price here, if you don’t mind. I mean.
Robert Bryce – Juice Series Video [00:37:57] Critic of offshore wind for a lot of reasons. Cost, but also because of the impact on North Atlantic right whales. And if you follow this story at all, you know that the North Atlantic right whale is one of the most endangered species on the planet. Less than 400 individuals are left. So if we’re serious about protecting the whales, we have to be serious about protecting their habitat. And what is clear is that the offshore wind projects that are now being permitted, and in many cases being built, are going right on top of North Atlantic right whale habitat. But you don’t have to take my word for it. I can show you. So here’s the way you can find it yourself. Go to this website. It’s called Northeast Ocean data.org. You can navigate there and then go to this, tab on the right here at the top. It’s called Data Explorer. And it will. Take you to this basemap. Okay, so here’s Maine right here. This is the Bay of Fundy. And then you have New Hampshire. Here’s Massachusetts.
Stuart Turley [00:38:53] Oh, Robert. I just, I he has got such a great heart as well, too.
Douglas Sandrige [00:38:59] Yeah, he’s doing great work. And, I was so, gratified yesterday when he gave me a call to tell me, well done on the the article about the Osage because he was the he was the reason that this story came out originally.
Stuart Turley [00:39:14] I want to hear went next week. We need to get the story out on the remediation and what the judge says and and everything else. That is an an important follow along to this podcast as well as your your article as well.
Douglas Sandrige [00:39:30] Yeah, I just checked right before we got on, I googled to see if there was any news that came out of the court today, but they’re still having the hearing. So the rest of the story remains to be written. But there’s a lot of I think there’s a lot to be learned by this, because I think the the wind and solar developers, have had or have not necessarily fully appreciate the importance of a land man, the importance of retaining the surface rights, the mineral rights, the, you know, the subsurface rights. And I think that, you know, just put a silver lining on this Intel is really they’ve really messed up bad on this, on this one. But I think a lot of other renewable developers would do well to learn some lessons from this, to learn and and understand that you have to have not only a good knowledge of your surface rights, your subsurface rights, your mineral rights, but you also have to have, you know, a good relationship, a good, a, a license to operate, social license to operate, you need to have good, relations with the communities that you’re working with. And I think a lot of them do, but there’s there’s a lot that don’t. And I think that, Intel is going to pay a huge price for this. And I think a lot of the other developers should, should, you know, they’re not going to admit it out loud, but they probably need to study this and learn some lessons from Intel’s mistakes.
Stuart Turley [00:40:54] We need to do the right thing to deliver the lowest cost kilowatt per hour to everyone on the planet.
Douglas Sandrige [00:41:00] Did you read the, in that article, I quoted a, you know, a from a promotional video or promotional video of Intel where they talk about how important it is to do the right thing and how important it is to. And I think if you read that promotional video, the transcript of that video and read what they’re saying, this is, this is who we are and how we operate and basically everything, everything that they did was contrary, completely contrary to that.
Stuart Turley [00:41:31] So the marketing department didn’t actually, you know, the CEO didn’t understand what was going on. Hey, real quick, we got about one more minute here, but, last week we had 1,000,002 people. Last Friday, out of power in Houston, in Texas. I just want people to get prepared because of natural disasters or manmade, disasters or whatever it is. Get a small solar generator. I do like being prepared. Have it, 72 hour bag, have food for a month or two. Have, ability to have water, supplies and, make sure that you can take care of yourself and be a light for your neighbors and be out there so that you can support other folks that aren’t forward thinking in any natural disaster. Right now, we still have 37,686 people without power. One week later, hug a lineman. Did you see some of those towers that were taken out? Holy smokes, those were terrible.
Douglas Sandrige [00:42:47] Yeah, and I think that’s good advice no matter where you live. I mean, I don’t live in Houston. I’m not going to get a hurricane in, Golden, Colorado, but we’re going to have a snow storm or a blizzard or.
Stuart Turley [00:42:57] Exactly.
Douglas Sandrige [00:42:58] So no matter where you are, if you’re in in Norman, Oklahoma, and you’re going to have a tornado, you’re going to be in Houston for a hurricane. Whatever it is, you can assume that you’re going to have that level of risk wherever you are. And so we’re right. You’re right everywhere. You should have, water filters, stored water, stored food, if you can, if you can afford a generator, you need to every single household. And you need to not just assume somebody else is going to take care of you. Take care of yourself. Be self-reliant.
Stuart Turley [00:43:25] Exactly. But be a light for those that can. I just installed two to, propane generators. I’ve got solar on three of the buildings here. I’ve got, other ones. But I also travel in the car with a small jackery, solar charger. That’ll run my office all day and everything else. And then a tent. I’m not going to a FEMA camp. So if there is a disaster, I’m. I’m going to be able to survive. Out of everything that I travel with. And so you just have to be prepared.
Douglas Sandrige [00:43:58] I just want to make sure that none of those solar panels that you’re using are made with your slave labor, are they? You did get certified. None of your slave labor.
Stuart Turley [00:44:07] I’m a hypocrite, and I did not even think about that until I opened them up. And then I did a podcast and I goes, did you do that? And I’m like, oh, I am a hypocrite.
Douglas Sandrige [00:44:21] I didn’t mean to call you out. I was trying, you know.
Stuart Turley [00:44:23] I’m a I’m the first one to do it. Now, if I truly was made of money, I would send them back. But.
Douglas Sandrige [00:44:30] Well, I get people call me all the time wanting to put solar in my roof. And as it turns out, I live in a forest. And so I got all these trees. So I don’t have any sunshine on my roof. I’d have to cut down on my, Ponderosa pines if I wanted to have solar. But I had a little fun because whenever they call me, I know I’m not going to buy it because I don’t have any place to put it. But I always the first question I ask is, okay, well, where do you get your solar panels? And they of course, they don’t know. And then I say, well, I might be interested in, you know, looking at your product, if you can provide me a certificate that they’ve not been made with slave labor from China, and normally they hang up the phone. They’re not interested in going down that route.
Stuart Turley [00:45:08] I’ll be the first to admit that I was hypocritical, but I had no choice, as the supply chain is, 98% of the ones that are on the market are from China.
Douglas Sandrige [00:45:18] Well, we need to do better. And I got another article I’m working on on that because I think solar is fine. I think it’s hypocritical to, to use solar panels to be supposedly environmentally friendly and then have them made by slave labor using coal in China. That is not cool. So that’s I agree, that’s manufacture of solar panels here or in Europe or in Mexico or someplace.
Stuart Turley [00:45:45] And when I let’s add to this, and that is if there’s any way that they have to be recyclable, there needs to be legislation, about recycling these things.
Douglas Sandrige [00:46:01] Yeah. That’s another big problem. We talked about the wind turbines already, but the solar panels can be recycled. Unlike most of the wind turbine blades, the wind turbine and solar panels can be recycled. However, it’s not cost effective to recycle them, so it’s just easier to put them in a dump and all those toxic chemicals are going to eventually leach out into the groundwater. And so you’re right, we need to be accounting for the cost of recycling in the life cycle of the, use of those, those, so.
Stuart Turley [00:46:33] That’s right. Anyway. Well, then, thank you so much. How does everybody reach you?
Douglas Sandrige [00:46:38] LinkedIn is great. You can, that’s probably the best way you can go to, oil and gas execs, except for nuclear.com and email me there. Or, you can.
Stuart Turley [00:46:52] We’ve also got your Substack, which is Douglas send storage at Dot substack.com.
Douglas Sandrige [00:46:59] Yeah. Subscribe to our Substack. I don’t you know, I, I’m still a working stiff. I still work full time. So, any of this writing is, is, is a hobby and the part time and that article I did on the Osage took me nearly four months to, to write, so.
Stuart Turley [00:47:14] And I loved it. And I am so thrilled for your time in your industry leadership. Thank you.
Douglas Sandrige [00:47:21] All right. Any time. Let’s do it again.
Stuart Turley [00:47:22] We’ll see you soon.
Douglas Sandrige [00:47:23] Thanks Stu
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