Daily Energy Standup Episode #300 – Wind Farm Challenges, Global Warming Solutions, and Oil & Gas Finance Market Analysis

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Wind Farms Are Overstating Their Output — And Consumers Are Paying For It

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Michael Tanner: [00:00:13] What’s going on, everybody? Welcome in to the Monday, February 5th, 2024 edition of the Daily Energy News Beat stand up. Here are today’s top headlines. Wind farms are overstating their output and consumers are paying for it. Next up, this one scary folks. Climate scientists want an umbrella the size of Argentina to block out the sun. Man, I hope this is a parody. Next up, can Germany meet its ambitious wind energy targets? Well, then move on to Orsted. Their strategic shake up has investors worried. We’ll then finish up with an opinion piece by Lauri Goldstein out of Toronto. Trudeau government doesn’t know how much its carbon tax reduces emissions. Stool. Then toss it over to me. I will quickly cover what happened in the oil against gas finance markets on Friday. We did see oil post really a first losing week. You know, considering a lot of the gains that we made over the past week, we did see rig counts coming at then we did see Chevron and Exxon earnings drops. We’ll do a little compare contrast. And then finally we’ll finish up with actually a little bit of a dive into in an interview you just did with with the one and only Michael Yon. You can check all that out on Twitter. As always though, I’m Michael Tanner, joined by the premier of the show, Stuart Turley. Let’s get it going. Where do you want to start? [00:01:30][76.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:31] Hey, let’s start with our buddies over there with the wind farms. Wind farms are overstating their output and consumers are paying for it. Hey, Mr. Producer, if you could pull in that picture there, it looks like it’s a wind farm. That’s actually kind of like doing the backstroke, you know? I mean. [00:01:48][16.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:48] Manic version of wind. [00:01:49][1.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:50] Farms. Yeah, it’s a Titanic. So, yeah. You know, if you, Michael, if you can’t make it work, lie about it. I think this is actually what they’re trying to do. Here is where it is. Bloomberg News analyzed 30 million records from 2018 from June to June. 2023. They said, of the 121 wind farms, 40 overstated their output by 10% or more on average. And 27 of those overestimated those by 20%. Wow. [00:02:26][36.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:27] That’s some predictions gone wrong. [00:02:29][1.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:29] Oh, retro. I mean, that is absolutely, spoken. Fred Olsen said statements that the firms were to take compliance with market regulations very seriously. Right, right. The average error should close to zero. They should be under. They should be right on the money. This is what’s happening folks. If graft and greed it gets into energy. This is where it shows up. [00:02:58][29.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:59] Well, you know I come from the oil and gas finance side of things. So I’m very familiar with how things can look great in a spreadsheet, but in reality not be not have that effect. I mean, anybody can sit down, open up Microsoft Excel and Pencil whip themselves a good investment scheme or pencil whip the model to make it seem like, oh, this is a great investment versus this is a bad one. If I just carry the four move where CapEx is coming out, oh, all of a sudden there’s free cash flow. And in reality you have to understand the business. And that’s what’s funny. I mean, a lot of this stuff that we’re going to talk about specifically in today’s show goes, goes to show you that people aren’t actually modeling the, or are just now becoming aware, and understanding that their models that they built around these, around a lot of this renewables energy goes back to what Warren Buffett said 4 or 5 years ago. Well, if it wasn’t for the wind tax credit, we wouldn’t be building them. Well, I mean that, you know, it’s helping. Exactly. Oh, in a $10 million tax credit, it’s going to make most stuff look profitable, especially when your your investment threshold is only somewhere between like eight and 14%. I mean, that’s not necessarily a big hurdle rate. I think the funny part is, is, you know, I came out and I’ll take an L on this one. Do I came up out about a month ago and said, hey, if there’s anything that I’m seeing from my vantage point, from the renewable side that’s holding up its wind, it’s offshore wind, that’s clearly not the case. We’re about to see or stand. I don’t want to tip it off too much, but we’re seeing a few things we will see. Ever since I said that, it was also like, oh, well, now here’s these 12 articles showing us that it they it’s actually could be holding up worse. So I got to take an early l on that one. [00:04:38][99.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:39] No, but it’s pretty funny. So let’s go to the next one here, dude. And, climate scientist. I interviewed a cool guy. It’s we’re going to, release it here in a little while. He’s a data scientist in the data scientists, are finding that they have been misrepresenting the numbers in climate, warming and and global warming. Stay tuned for that one. But here’s another one. Climate scientists warn an umbrella. The size of our Argentina. The block, the sun I have to give Tammy name is a shout out for this. She sent this over and it is. Who? Doctor Yoram Rosen, a physics professor at the Asher Space Research Institute at Technical Israel Technical Institute of Technology, is leading the team of scientists. We can show the world, look, there’s a working solution in case it’s to increase it to the necessary. Duh. [00:05:41][61.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:41] So let’s be clear here. So what exactly do they want to do here. So the underlying idea is that they’re going to take these huge you know they call them parcels. But they’re basically things that are somewhat transparent that can be positioned somewhere in space to attempt to marginally reduce the intensity of the sunlight, therefore, quote unquote, mitigating the threat of global warming. But here’s, here’s, here’s here’s what you got to realize in order to block out enough radiation, a single sunshade, the single sunshade would need to be approximately the size of Argentina. Really, it’s 1,000,000mi² weight 2.5 million tons. So that size. And so they’re attempting to see if this idea could work on a 100 foot square. And it may only the hunt. The 100 square foot prototype is going to cost between 10 to $20 million. I mean, I’d like to get on that bill of materials. When where can I put in a bid for that? [00:06:36][54.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:37] What this is, is a continuation of the climate scheme. Well, transfer is all that. Is there going to be getting handouts and that’s all. That’s all that that is when you take a look at being able to put that out in space. Guess where this episode was? This was an episode out of The Simpsons and it is now real. [00:06:59][22.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:00] It’s it’s absolutely insane how much they are going for it. But, you know, they’re estimating that a full size product would cost trillions of dollars. And it’s I mean, what’s hilarious is, is this is what we’re spending our time. Yeah. This is what we’re spending with the limited intelligence that the human species has left. I mean, it’s it’s small. The limited amount we’ve got left, we’re spending it on. We need to build something to block. I mean, this is literally this is stuff that, like you said, it’s out of The Simpsons. It’s something I’d expect to see the Babylon be right about. But now, now all of a sudden it’s it’s real and we’re fighting. And if you’re in Israel, your hard earned tax dollars are going towards it. [00:07:44][43.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:44] Oh, I think it’s just this big. I’d rather feed. I would rather put the trillions. Let’s get all the energy, low cost energy to Africa and let’s elevate several billion people out of poverty. That’s where I would rather go. All right, let’s go to the next one. Germany. Can Germany meet its ambitious wind energy targets? This one’s pretty tough, Michael. They’re doubling and tripling down on stupid. Not only did they kill their last two nuclear reactors in the past six months, if we managed to achieve what we set out to do. This is a quote. German chancellor, old slouch seems optimistic about governing his coalition. He says if we manage to achieve what we set out to do, I am confident we will then break with 200 years of industrial tradition and prosperity built on coal, gas and oil, said Schultz, speaking in in Potsdam. [00:08:42][57.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:43] Is that Sergeant Schultz? I think he’s heroes. [00:08:46][2.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:46] It’s his great grandson. I think it’s I see nothing there. Boom. [00:08:51][4.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:52] But not seeing anything? [00:08:53][1.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:54] No, but money in my pocket. Currently around 30% in Germany. Electrician electricity is generated by burning coal and gas. Wind turbines, meanwhile, generate almost half the country’s power. But their price is the highest in the world and they lost more GDP than just about anywhere else. So far, some 1500 turbines, 300m, nearly thousand feet tall, have been installed out at sea. Now they’re trying to increase it. [00:09:28][34.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:29] Well, and and this this article also points out something that, that someone like, if you’re going to go all in on wind energy, fine. You’re going to have to do it. You’re going to have to do it offshore because there’s just so many limited locations. The issue is not and this is where a lot of where my my analysis went wrong. The issue is not in this article brings it up, not the actual production of the wind energy. Sure, if you can throw up a wind farm and theoretically spin it 24 seven, you might be able to squeak out a 5 to 8%. You know, I I don’t know what the numbers. I’m just throwing out a slim margin, something that’s barely beating inflation. The problem is getting that offshore. The grid from where it’s. [00:10:06][37.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:07] Produced to. [00:10:08][1.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:10:08] Onshore is absolutely. Terrible. [00:10:10][2.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:11] Exactly. [00:10:11][0.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:10:13] And then this article says that, you know, in Germany specifically, they estimate that an area the size of 270 soccer fields need to be made. And I don’t know what the square mileage on this is. Probably two three square miles will soon have to be made in German, bought in order to support the wind farms offshore that are already there. So it’s we’ve got them. We just can’t turn them on because we don’t know where to connect them to. [00:10:36][23.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:37] Exactly. And, when you sit back and take a look at the money, he says that money is not going to be there. Let’s take Texas. Texas had to spend $3.4 billion to get from the West Texas wind farms, the transmission lines coming in. So just because you think that a windmill is going to be, $100,000, but then you try to nobody’s also in the U.S. or in Germany is saying, what about these things when these get decommissioned in ten years? Who’s going to get it? You know, the reclamation out of it. [00:11:13][36.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:14] Well, speaking of that, we’ve now got some. I’m teeing up this next article for you. This article actually puts a number on the life. You weren’t too far off. [00:11:23][9.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:11:24] Okay, sir. [00:11:24][0.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:24] Minus two years on the plus side. But you weren’t bad. What’s this next? [00:11:28][3.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:11:29] I’m always a. Let’s go to the next one here. Orsted strategic shakeup has its investors worried either. Michael, if you’re going downhill, you either just speed up and keep going downhill, or you try to hit your brakes and slow down. They don’t know what they can do right in here. The wind farm horse that will present its new strategy on Wednesday. It faces a serious cutting edge targets, either cutting dividends or asset sales, or how are they going to price themselves out? So, Michael, let’s go through some of these numbers here and see here the numbers. The 50 gigawatt target has to be removed in the market knows it. This is a quote from their financial markets guy, the Bank of America analysis said recommending Orsted shares by arguing the company can avoid the need for new capital by selling half of its U.S. businesses, reducing capital expenditures by 20%, and cutting dividends by a quarter. Either they’re going to have to keep hitting it and really producing it and then keep going, but they’re going to lose more money. So do you want to go, this is like the worst Ponzi scheme I’ve ever seen. Keep getting new money so that you can sink it into killing whales and then try to do this. So if they cut the losses, they cut their expenses. They’re not going to be a very good investor. Yeah. [00:13:05][96.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:13:05] So they’ve got their earnings coming up on Wednesday. It’s part of the reason they leaked this. You know if if you get bad news you might as well leak it prior to the announcement so that when you hear it you’ve already settled. And what they did say and they passed this along they’re now seeing and the wind farms, they’re divesting in gas. Guess what they’re selling a man. Well, years. Why? Because the maintenance is coming up. So you were, as I mentioned, you were close to you were plus minus two years. You were close. [00:13:33][27.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:34] No, it’s eight years. And the the 12 years is when you buy the extra four years of time with the tax incentives and subsidies that are on there. So the eight years is actually the only amount of time those things can actually work. I can guarantee if you took a look at some of those fields, they didn’t weren’t operating for the first couple years while they were trying to spin them up and get cable now. [00:14:01][27.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:02] So and and remember, why is there this big shift in strategy will remember, you know, in November, or, you know, over the last two years they’ve set this pretty insane target of 50GW of renewable capacity, most of that offshore wind, by the end of the decade. Now. Right. You’ve got a portfolio manager. I’m trying to find his name here or whoever this person is. But regardless, the quote is the 50 gigawatt target has to be removed and the market knows it. But they also need to cut their financial goals so deep that it hurts. That’s the quote. An investor wants to see them hurt. That’s when an investor says that that means things drastically need to change, because that’s going to cause it. Their stock price is going to take a hit, not like their stock price with his announcement is going to go up per se. It may it may not continue to fall. It may level out the falling because they they understand that people are coming out, but this isn’t going to hurt it regardless of whether or not they’re leaking it now. [00:14:58][55.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:59] Oh, absolutely. They, they need to invest 69 billion. They hit that. [00:15:03][4.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:04] I, I well I yeah I got no you got no help over here, guys. Sorry. [00:15:08][3.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:15:09] No, it’s out of my. Credit card limit. Let’s go to the next one. Laura Goldstein put this one out. When Trudeau’s government doesn’t know how much its carbon tax reduces emissions. You have to buy some serious entertainment on Monday to read this one. Our producer. This is absolutely a hoot. You take a look at this guy. He’s got the Ukrainian flag. That he’s in solidarity with his Canada’s minister of Environment and climate Change, Stephen. Go bear. So this. [00:15:43][34.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:43] Is, this is John Kerry’s counterpart. Sure. He’s brilliant. Sure. [00:15:47][3.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:15:47] He’s pretty. Is. He looks like he, has got the brain power of a potato bud, but we’ll just leave that alone for now. They don’t know. And I let me read you some of this in here. He boasted. Trudeau’s radical environment minister admits the government does not measure how many emissions are reduced by their costly carbon tax. Why? Because the carbon tax is not an iron environmental plan. It’s a tax plan. [00:16:13][26.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:14] Well, this is the quote. So this this comes from the John Kerry of Canada. Okay. Just to put that in perspective, if this is the quote, the government does not measure the annual amount of emissions that are directly reduced by the federal carbon pricing, retroactively attributing specific GHG reductions to a specific action, such as carbon pricing, a discrete regulation, or a discrete regulation, or in in specific incentive is difficult given the multiple interacting factors that influence emissions, including carbon pricing, taxes and fundings, program, investor premise, and consumer demand. And that came out via the National Inventory report. This is what the the people who are supposed to be overseeing and understanding at the minute level, how their policies are affecting the economy. I mean, he’s literally the minister of Environmental and Climate change. I mean, that’s I mean, talk about waste, the environment minister. Oh, absolutely. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. But but but they they don’t even know it’s it’s it’s actually insane. [00:17:17][63.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:18] All it is, is a wealth transfer again. [00:17:20][1.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:20] It’s it’s like the government or any government coming out and saying, oh, well, we don’t actually know how much money we’ve sent overseas to help support this war. Oh, wait, that’s the United States. Considering we send an extra 6 billion to Ukraine. Remember the accounting error that that’ll be next in for Canada. They’re going to take a playbook out of us and say, oh, well, it was an accounting error plus or -6 billion. [00:17:42][21.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:42] Well, that’s almost like the accounting error in the, Pentagon. They lost $2 trillion. And then the following Monday was 911. And then the Pentagon was blown up where their records were. Go figure that out. [00:17:56][13.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:56] So here we go. The the the estimate net cost for people living in provinces under the federal carbon tax regime. Okay. So right here you basically got it starts at $65 per ton of emissions. And then the set. And then it’s going to then increase to 170 come 2030. But what’s crazy is if you adjust that for living standards, you’re talking it could be $700 in Alberta, $2,700 in Ontario. Or excuse me, for hunt, excuse me at 710. And Alberta right now could go up to 2720 30. Ontario’s 478 could go up to 1800. Saskatchewan for ten could go all the way up to 17,000 or $1700. Manitoba three. I mean, basically everything’s about to triple come 2030, but they don’t even they don’t even know how much it’s help. [00:18:45][49.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:46] It doesn’t help any. All it does is pass the buck around and then it again. It’s another tax in is a direct in, impacting of inflation and destroying the lower and middle class. [00:18:59][13.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:00] Yeah. I mean, you said it best. [00:19:02][1.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:03] Oh, yeah. You gotta love today, though. It was fun. [00:19:05][2.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:06] No. Absolutely. Well, before we move over to finance, guys will quickly pay the bills here. As always, the news and analysis, that you’ve been here is brought to you by the world’s greatest website, energy news. Become the best place for all your energy and oil and gas news. Stu and the team do an outstanding job of making sure that website stays up to speed with everything you need to be need to know to be the tip of the spear when it comes to the energy and the oil and gas business. You can also email the show questions at Energy News b.com. You can check us out. Dashboard dot energy newsbeat.com. That is our data news combo product. Really pushing that hard. here in V1 are in Q1 Q2. So really exciting stuff come around the corner. You can email us, and check out the description below for all the timestamps, all the links to the articles that we just heard. And again, you can get in contact with the show there. You can follow Stuani on LinkedIn, everything in that description below. But let’s quickly move over now to a to what happened in the markets. I mean, I mean Friday, we mean this week in oil was kind of a bloodbath stew. But but we’ll start with the overall market. They actually finish strong on Monday. S&P 500 up a full percentage point. Pushing all time highs. They’re 49,000 or 4958 for that S&P. Nasdaq actually up 1.7%. We got a lot of earnings dropping both in tech and and non-tech energy’s got a lot to cover. Chevron and Exxon earnings. But most oil and gas earnings come later in February. You’re seeing the beginning of February. We get a lot of tech a lot of banking. So that’s mainly why we’re seeing the Nasdaq one a little bit. US ten year yields up 3.6 percentage points. Dollar index stays basically flat 0.0% increase. We did see Bitcoin stay fairly flat. Still $42,800. Crude oil took about a 2.1% hit on Friday. Down $1.54 7228. That’s down about $5 more. Was trading just on Thursday sitting or excuse me on on on Monday or excuse me February 1st. That would have been Tuesday or Wednesday. It was trading midday overnight. Absolutely insane. Did you see the absolute just just falling out of the table again? We were we were sitting there on Tuesday, a little above 7650 currently as the market closed, 7241. The market will open here, in about an hour and a half here as we sit about 415 as we record the Central Standard Time here on, February the 4th. So, Brant, what’s interesting is Brant was only down 70, or about a percent or a little less than a percent, about a half percentage point 78, 34. You know, I think really we saw part of the reason the market was big on Friday, mainly the overall markets, not the oil and gas, sector continues. We did see some strong jobs numbers. Now or you know, mainly there was we added a lot more jobs in Friday or on Friday coming out of the US, which is funny because that means that we may not then cut rates, because if we’re adding jobs and have been raising rates, why would we cut rates when the job of the fed is to support on him is to maintain employment versus inflation? So if we’re raising rates and theoretically jobs are coming back, we can debate whether or not we actually believe that or not. But if jobs are staying strong, well, there’s no point to cut rates, which is going to hurt overall markets, specifically the US dollar. And then again, the oil and gas, you know, there’s some easing tensions going on in the Middle East despite us or you know or that’s what they say. Again, if you if you read Reuters, you know we did see rig counts drop by two. And it’s just very interesting. I had a lunch about a week, week and a half ago. And we were just we were talking about how, you know, this is the exact same macroeconomic factors that we had about a year ago. Take away the, you know, take away, obviously what’s going on in the Middle East. We are sitting about $70 a year ago, and we had 140 more rigs at the same oil price this year. What does that tell you? Why just tells you from a macro perspective, people are extremely pessimistic, whether or not they’ll tell you or not, they’re pessimistic about where or who are or where oil prices are going. Now they may. And those are the people that matter. These are the people making the drilling schedules. These are the people expanding the CapEx. They’re not too optimistic that prices are just going to run, despite a lot of bloviating by talking heads like stew. And I you know, we’ll tell you oil going to go to 120. The guys buying the rigs are a little bit hesitant or we’d see that or you’d see rig count higher than last year. If you thought again, if you thought prices were going to go up and that’s your thesis, you should be buying as much rig time as you can right now because it’s going to go it’s going to just increase as prices go above 90. So it’s a little bit of like, you know, hey, prices are going to go up, but we’re not really actually going to invest that way. So it’s very interesting. You know, Canada, we saw two rigs come up internationally. We saw a bump of ten. But what I think the big thing we saw on Friday specifically was Exxon, Chevron dropping their earnings. We’ll start with Chevron, you know, pretty good earnings for Chevron. They, they pop three percentage points, up on this news mainly due to the fact that they had any, really big, non upstream growth in their chemicals business. So, I mean, when we look at the earnings between Chevron, Exxon and those super majors relative to, you know, some of the other ENP shale companies that are publicly we look at, you have to remember that there is a whole nother business or business unit that goes into Chevron. And with Exxon, there’s there’s multiple Chevron specific they’ve got a large refining business, and that’s about 30, 35% of their net income, specifically comes from their, refinery business. So that’s a lot of what you’re seeing reflected in these numbers here, obviously. Yes. Upstream did lead the way, with about 6.4 billion and in fourth quarter adjusted earnings, that came down to, about 2.3 billion in terms of a net number. So we, you know, you got a net adjusted earnings. You know, just, the these are the link energy news be.com. They’ll have all the numbers here, but we’ll quickly run through the highlights. This is specifically reported, reported by Chevron. So as remember guys, there was about $1.8 billion of U.S. upstream impairment charges that they took. That 1.8 billion specifically comes from California and their, and their assets around Bakersfield. They also have a $1.9 billion decommissioning obligation from some previously sold assets in the Gulf of Mexico. So that’s your big difference between your six point, four net earnings and then all at then what you came out to be or excuse me adjusted earnings at 6.4 billion. Then your actual reported earnings of 2.3 billion. That’s due to a couple impairment charges that we just, went over right there. Some quick highlights from again, they did, sell some assets in Gulf of Mexico and took some impairment charges in California. You know, they set annual records for for net oil equivalent. They went ahead and closed their acquisition of PDC energy, which is a Colorado company. That’s mainly due to they were that’s mainly the reason why they were up 4% year over year. Added a bunch of reserves, again, mainly from that PDP or PDC acquisition. CapEx is interesting, still up 32% year over year, primarily due to most to to to an increase of about 500 million of capital invested, specifically in PDC assets. A lot of that is in Colorado, and it’s an interesting part. You know, why is someone like Chevron able to acquire PDC while they have the ability to handle the regulatory environment that’s going on there right now, and they you got to invest a lot of money in there. We know a lot about that. They also eliminated about $4 billion of debt. And they’ve actually gone ahead and reduce their debt, write net debt ratio and retired all of the debt that was assumed via the PDC acquisition. Part of the reason, though, we saw the stock price, increase specifically in this go round, is that they decided to go ahead and and release a dividend. That dividend brought the record amount of cash returned to shareholders in 2023, 26.3 billion, again that split between dividends, and share repurchases, which sat at $14.9 billion, 33%. Absolutely insane. I mean, you know, we can talk the merits of share buybacks all we want, you know, but again, hear them coming out, we you know, we should talk about this. A few years ago nobody was saying they were doing share buybacks. They were just they were keeping it quiet. They’re coming out and saying this 8% dividend quarterly dividend increase. It’s coming around. So again, that’s a lot of what we’re seeing in this, in this bump. But but all around Chevron really, really solid earnings. You know, the other thing that they finished the year with was that agreement to buy has it’s going to really diversify them both in the United States gets them into onshore specifically gets them into North Dakota in the back end with has being very active there. And then they consolidate, their, their Guyana infrastructure and their Guyana position. Remember is primary non partner there. with Chevron. Go ahead and and snatching that up specifically kind of just goes ahead and dime kind of locks a lot of that stuff in place. You know the other 400 pound gorilla in the room. You know if you if you thought the earnings for for Chevron were big Exxon, they’ve even got a bigger chemicals business. They’ve got a bigger refining business. They’ve got a bigger shipping business. You know, they also have more. Yeah. Got more gas stations that they that they’re leasing their name out to. So they generated earnings of 36.1 billion. Now that’s in 2023. So just to give you an idea it’s in fourth quarter is 7.7 net earnings. specifically you know they go ahead and and I mean it was an okay it was an okay earnings report. Then they actually dropped about a half a percentage point, mainly off the fact, that they went ahead, and didn’t decide to increase their dividend. They went ahead and just, kept it the same. They did they did, announce a, that they were going to go ahead and buy back a little bit more of their stock. Looks like trying to find the number here. I think it was in the $10 billion range. Excuse me, 17.4 billion of share, buybacks. Absolutely incredible. Again, you know, that’s what the I mean, you know, if you if you’re going to own a super major, you better hope they’re giving you a dividend or else there’s no reason to invest in that. You know, a lot of cash flow $13.7 billion. You know, they you know they had $2.3 billion of asset impairments. But they also what’s interesting is because they have they they’re such an international business, they, you know, with the dollar relative to the rest of the world’s currency, they actually saw an impairment mainly on that currency arbitrage, because they try to get a lot of that stuff back into the United States. The other interesting that they did was start, drilling their first lithium well, which is over there in southwest Arkansas. Apparently, supplies have a bunch of lithium deposits. We will see if they went ahead and took off. And in the fourth quarter took off the table. As you guys know, Pioneer Natural Resources, that was in October of 2023. You know, we’ll see if that closes. I mean we’ll see if it closes. It should. Close in 2024. I’ve heard some, you know, interesting regulatory news on that. I don’t know if you have any if you’ve heard anything new, but I’ve heard that pioneer acquisition, it may not be good or not that it’s not going to be good, but that the the FTC is really looking into it. And oh yeah, they’ve been oddly quiet. We haven’t heard anything about it recently. [00:30:26][680.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:30:27] I think it’s about to get political. I think that they’re going to start monkeying around with it. So buckle up. [00:30:33][6.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:30:33] Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s it’s you know, again, Exxon also has a big position in Guyana. They go ahead and not not you know they were the other company that that would have made sense for Hess. I think, you know, I love reading the the merger agreements. Once the merger is official, you have to release kind of a merger agreement where they actually walk through the timeline of the M&A process. And there’s always company A, B, number C is the company they bought. And and D and there’s always these things. My guess is you know depending on how many companies they name my guess is is has is going to be one of them. Because if you’re Exxon and didn’t look at Hess specifically to see that you could tie up again some of that Guyana stuff where growth is really going to now come off shore. I think, you know, a lot of people have come to the conclusion that, yes, there’s a lot of stuff to do on shore specifically, but that real huge growth from an a production standpoint, it’s really going to come off shore if you’re these larger companies. So absolutely incredible. You know, you got to remember these guys, Exxon’s a lot bigger. They’ve got, you know, you’ve got a net, they got an upstream business they call an energy. They have an energy products business. Chemical products business, they call it specialty products. And, and and that kind of rounds out their business unit. So a lot, much, a lot more going on. But you know, good earnings for them, I wouldn’t say, you know, Chevron seem to have come out on top, or at least the analysts liked it better. We saw their stock rise tremendously. But both continuing to truck on. That’s really all I’ve got to do. I want to hit on something real quick here. You just released actually today as we record this on Sunday. A really an episode that’s kind of going viral with Michael on the overview that. Well, where can people watch that? [00:32:13][99.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:32:14] I released it on, X, actually, and I did not put it on YouTube. And it’s, I think at about 50,000 views. And that’s just within a few hours. So you sit back and go, that’s a two hour episode. Michael Yon is a war correspondent. He and I were talking about the energy on the grid in the crisis at the border. What does that have to do with each other? And it’s actually pretty frightening when you consider that, the article that just came out, Michael, that we also talked about last week, was the FBI head of the FBI saying that the Chinese have the capability remotely controlling and taking the grid down. So you and all these things in there that Mayorkas, our secretary, event as, Homeland Security, Michael Yon saw him at the Chinese camp. Another article comes through and ours goes off like you wouldn’t believe. People are hungry for that kind of information. [00:33:14][60.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:33:15] No, it’s got over, you know, 25,000 views, and it’s only been up for a couple hours. So we’ll highly recommend checking Stu out, on Twitter. Great. Follow. I mean, follow me. Hurry. I, I will say you follow me on your behalf. Sometimes I gotta, I gotta not look at his Twitter because it’s so it’s so scary because Stu’s really at the tip of the spear, making sure that you’re staying is, again, up to speed. But it can be a little scary. You you you know more than you’d care to know. Sometimes we wish we could just wipe your brain clean and get a fresh slate, because you got so much rattling around up there. [00:33:46][30.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:33:47] Yeah, the only thing about that, Michael, is so many people who reached out to me from around the world to talk, about things. So I have some great resources. And, my wife is always hear me saying, I wish I didn’t know what I know. [00:34:00][13.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:34:02] I say the same thing sometimes. I wish I didn’t know any of this stuff, but we got to. Before we go, guys, next week, February 7th through ninth, we’re going to be at N.A. really excited about that. We’re going to be coming to you, live Wednesday. I’m not live, but we’re going to have podcast that we’re doing there, Wednesday and Thursday. If you’re there, come check us out. Booth. And Friday, come check us out. Booth 1957. Say, you heard you heard about this through the podcast, and Stu will give you some. Stu will give you a hug. So actually, you may not want to say that I just lie and say you walked by. I wouldn’t want to touch me either, but come check us out. It’s going to be really fun. We got myself, Stu, Artie Trevino. Who’s running? Paco’s operating. We love them. David Blackmon, probably one of the better energy influencers out there right now, specifically talking about all things the grid. We’re gonna have lots of other companies. We got lots of interviews going on. It’s going to be fun, guys. Really excited. And just come check us out again. That’s February 7th through the night. So it’s that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. If you’re walking the floor Thursday or Friday morning check us out. Booth 1950. Seven. It’s going to be fun. [00:35:09][67.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:35:10] It’s going to be a great time. Thank you Mike. [00:35:11][1.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:35:12] Absolutely. So with that guys we’re going to let you get out of here. Start your Monday. Hopefully it’s only a couple meetings you got to attend. Don’t stab your pencil through your head. Wait to do that till you after you listen to Michael Yawn episode two. At least you can be informed. But then we’ll, read for those of you make it through Monday. We’ll see you Tuesday, and we’ll, we’ll make it happen. So appreciate it, guys. We’ll see you tomorrow. [00:35:12][0.0][2061.7]

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