New Era For Nukes

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A New Era for Nuclear Power in the U.S.

Lebanon Faces Power Blackout as Clashes With Israel Intensify

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

Michael Tanner: [00:00:09] Welcome into the Monday, August 19th, 2024 edition of the Daily Energy News Beat stand up. Here are today’s top headlines. First up, a new era for nuclear power in the United States. Staying along that nuclear threat will go over across the pond. Safety at Ukraine nuclear plant deteriorates after nearby blast, according to the IAEA. Ooh, spooky stuff. Folks will stay over there. Across the pond, Lebanon faces power blackout as clashes with Israel intensifies. Oh, my. Next up, can the West afford to build its own copper industry? I’ve got my thoughts. We’ll see what the article says. And then finally, Novatek set to dock second LNG unit at sanctioned Arctic plant. Love a good. The cover image here is absolutely unbelievable. Stool. Then toss over to me. I will quickly cover what happened in the oil and gas markets over the weekend, and we’ll touch a little bit on rig counts and then do a little mourning for the passing of endeavor founder Audrey Stevens. And then we’ll let you guys get out of here, get back to work. Appreciate everybody checking us out. As always I, Michael Tanner, joined by Stuart Turley. What do you want to begin? [00:01:16][66.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:17] Hey, let’s get rolling for the new era in nuclear power in the U.S.. Michael, this is really kind of ironic when you sit back and look at the U.S. Palisades power plant could become the first power plant to reopen in the U.S. after shutting down, potentially signaling a new era for nuclear power. Finally, we made it. This was shut down, and this was shut down 40 years ago, in operation in May of 2022. But it was due to cheap, abundant natural gas. Hey hey, hey, hey, you got a. [00:01:53][36.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:53] Yeah, I saw this one tweet today. I don’t have it up in front of me, but somebody said if we discovered natural gas today would be hailed as a decarbonizing fuel, the future. So it’s kind of unbelievable to see again the bait and switch they had in the nuclear industry. It’s been getting pounded. I love the fact that we’re actually thinking about getting this up and running. My only concern is going to be a lot of the ongoing costs associated with it. We know this stuff is getting regulated into obscurity. The real question is, are they is there enough is there enough money to go around? I mean, because the problem with nuclear right now is it’s actually not the lowest kilowatt per hour available because of all the regulations that are put on top of it. So if we’re going to turn this nuclear power plant on, keep all the owner’s regulations. I’m not sure what good that does. [00:02:35][42.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:36] Well, half the cost is the original installation. And so when you sit back and say, hey, I’m going to read. [00:02:42][5.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:42] About that though. [00:02:42][0.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:43] New what? [00:02:43][0.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:43] We can’t forget about that though. [00:02:45][1.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:45] Oh yeah. But you know, when you sit back, one 800 megawatt reactor could provide enough power for 800,000 homes or X number data centers. So would it is dispatchable on demand flat line power. I mean, you can’t you cannot buy flat line power at a what if you’re talking AI and you’re talking everything else just dispatchable power. Stream is what nuclear is. You love. [00:03:15][30.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:16] It. Yeah. I think it’ll be very interesting to know how much you know. I mean, you’re talking about 6 billion in funding to get a lot of these old school nuclear power plants up and running. I hope that’s enough money, because, again, the big problem with all this stuff. Well, let’s take runaway costs. [00:03:31][15.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:32] Okay. Let’s take a look at $6 billion. If it goes into wind and solar, $6 goes into wind and solar, and you may only get 15% of that nameplate that you put out there at any given moment. If you put $6 billion in a nuclear, you get 100% of that nuclear power. [00:03:50][18.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:51] Yeah. I’m not I’m not disagreeing with any of this. And I’d much rather this go to power homes than go to power some rogue data somewhere. I mean, I think if the tradeoff is we get an 800,000 homes powered, I’ll take that over. You know, some low cost data center, even though we need data centers. But yeah, I do love the fact that a lot of this was, you know, if there’s anything that was good that came out of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is just such a hilarious name, considering where we’re at. This is some good stuff. What’s next? [00:04:19][28.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:20] Let’s go to Russia and Ukraine. Zafira. Zafira say a hacker I dude, I have no idea how to say this thing. It is Zafira. Is it Z? Hell yeah. Almost sound like a trick a war. Yeah. Out of Oklahoma going Jigga wise y. Yeah. I have no idea how to say it. But anyway, that nuclear power plant that is controlled by Russia and Ukraine is bombing it. And then now the Russians are going, hey, we’re in control of this thing. Don’t bomb it. The Russian management of that nuclear power plant said a Ukrainian drone Ukraine drone dropped an explosive charge on a road used by staff. Yet again, we can see the escalation of the nuclear safety and security dangers facing the plant. This thing is a huge nuclear facility and it’s amazing. That they’re still fighting over. [00:05:10][50.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:11] Yeah, I’m. I have the last thing I want to see is people lobbing bombs at nuclear facilities. I think that, you know, especially in this part of the world. I mean, it’s I mean, this says it in here, you know, this is, you know, Russia’s been I mean, in control it again, I’m not saying whether or not that’s good or not. It’s just it’s it’s scary. That’s all I’ll. [00:05:32][21.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:32] Say. I just I hope everybody keeps a level head and not lobbing bombs around nukes. That scared. [00:05:39][6.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:39] Me. Call up your friend Putin and tell him to back off Lee. [00:05:42][2.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:42] Or tell em I can’t get. I can’t get past. Is his bodyguard there every time because they thinks I’m Putin when I walk up and go, hey, hey, you know, I say I do my Fonzie imitation. [00:05:53][10.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:53] All right. What’s happening. [00:05:54][0.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:55] Lebanon faces? Power blackouts as clashes with Israel intensifies. Michael, this is absolutely horrific. The whole Middle East is just going bonkers. The cash strapped Mediterranean country has been suffering from severe power rationing for decades. As political bickering stalls the overhaul to fail to overhaul the entire electrical electricity sector. It’s they still use diesel, they still use gasoline. I mean, it is just fuel in in Lebanon is critical. [00:06:29][34.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:30] It’s well, I think it’s it’s critical everywhere. I mean, it’s it’s right now it’s the only fuel that’s really working. I mean, you, you, you know, there’s not much wind and solar going on in Lebanon right now. This article does point out that they’re actually in the midst of their worst financial crisis in decades. Right now. That’s been going on since 2019. Government is defaulted on its international debt, and there’s not much support going around to support them. So they’re they’re basically rationing power of them. And you feel sorry for all the people that are, you know, all the citizens right there. Because that’s always as we always point out, that’s who takes it in the short. [00:07:04][33.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:04] Exactly. I don’t care what country it from. It’s the citizens that we care about. And and let’s keep a level head on here this next article as we move to the next article here. Can the West afford to build its own copper industry. And you know, you know, the this is from Irina Slav over. And she writes this for oil price.com. I don’t think we can and I at the amount of copper that we need in order to bring on all of the AI and all of the electronics and electrify everything and do away with all electric car, to move to electric cars, we need to double the grid by 2040. And it’s been 100 years to get where we are now. We don’t have that kind of copper in outside of the West. Copper. The key transition metal had a price of 11,000 per ton a couple months ago. Your buddies over there, Goldman Sachs, called just a few minutes ago and forecast could surge all the way to 12,000 as electrification really gets going. Holy smokes. No China, no transition wood, Mackenzie said in a blunt new report about the global state of copper. Wow. [00:08:20][75.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:20] Well, it’s it gives you reason to pause and it you know, it sends a little chill down your spine to think about the fact that, you know, in this new economy, in this new commodity economy, that we’re we’re going to China will be the dominant player. And, you know, copper is critical to a lot of this transition. It’s up there with lithium. It’s up there with all those other critical minerals that we talk about. And the issue is really the fact that you can’t just spin up a copper mine overnight. And even if you could just spin up a copper mine overnight, you actually have to have copper there. And that’s a little bit more about from the United States is how much copper we actually have here. [00:08:58][37.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:58] Oh yeah. I it’s it takes 20 years for I talked to David Blackmon about this the other day. 20 years for a mine to come online. Yep. So it ain’t going to happen. It’s going to last one I love me some good Russia stories. Novatek-. Do you you remember four years ago when I was at intercom and I met one of the head guys at Novatek. He actually came in to a New York conference and he was cool. Cat I enjoyed talking to him, and it was it was a lot of fun. But Novatek set dock at second LNG unit at sanctioned Arctic plant. They don’t care. They have a third train coming on and this thing is going to be pumping it out. And you take a look at satellite picture imagery. This thing is it took four months to drag the dock over from where they built it to where they’re installing it. And let’s see here how much are they going to be putting in it? It was originally designed to have three production trains with a total capacity of 19.8 million tons a year. That’s a lot of LNG, man. [00:10:07][69.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:10:08] Well, I think. Russia is realizing that I think they’ve seen Saudi Arabia and what Saudi Aramco and all of these Middle Eastern national oil companies are doing by locking in long term LNG contracts. It’s one of the few ways to make LNG profitable. And when you look around, certainly the United States right now, I mean, natural gas is not a profit. It’s a byproduct of what you want to get, which is oil. But in terms of what’s going to be long term future from power locking in these long term contracts is critical. I think Russia, they’re just giving everybody a middle finger and saying, hey, we’re doing this. [00:10:37][29.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:38] A we’re doing it, we’re doing this, you know, and I’ll tell you, we need to get Hank here. Henry Winkler on the show, the original Fonzie, to try to teach us how to do a better Putin. But when we sit back, Michael, and take a look, you know, Putin could care less. And he’s doing what’s right for Russia. He may be an animal and he may not be a good guy, but he’s doing Russia first. Yeah. [00:11:00][21.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:00] I mean, you can’t disagree there. I mean, it’s. [00:11:03][2.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:11:03] Just like Canada is finally, if they would take care of their LNG and they would export to Asia, the price for Asian LNG is going to double in the next few years. The demand for LNG in Asia and Canada could be a huge supplier there. [00:11:22][19.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:23] Well, Canada’s moving solely to solar so that they’ll be out of the picture soon. [00:11:27][4.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:11:28] Holy smokes. [00:11:28][0.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:29] No they won’t because they’ve got too much oil there. Trust me, it’s wait, we could get into all this. You got anything else? [00:11:34][5.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:11:35] We’re going to have a great week. Hey, by the way, the Democrats are gearing up for their convention today, so this will be a big, big day. Buckle up. [00:11:44][8.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:44] Yeah. Are you going to go. Are you are you. You’re not flying to Chicago? No. Man on the street interviews. You didn’t get the invite. [00:11:49][4.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:11:50] I’m going to avoid some donkey pox. I do not need to be anywhere near. Oh. Monkey pox. Excuse me. They’re not donkey pox. My apologies, but I just saw two really funny tweets. They’ve already got bricks lined up for the 100,000 anti-fur for people. They’re expecting it. Instead of a gift bag with cookies, they’re handing out gift bags with breaks. [00:12:12][22.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:13] All right, well, we’ll go ahead and jump into the finance section, guys, before we do that, we’ll go ahead and pay the bills. As always, the news and analysis that you just heard is brought to you by the world’s greatest website, Energy News Beat.com Stu and the team. Do a tremendous job making sure that website stays up to speed. Everything you need to know to be the tip of the spear when it comes to the energy in the oil and gas business. Hit that description below all the links to the timestamps links to the articles that we cover. You can also check us out the Energy News beat.substack.com. As always, we are also partnering up with our friends The Crude Truth, Pecos Country Operating and Rey Trevino to bring you exclusive access to pretty awesome oil and gas investment. If you’ve ever considered trying to get in and getting in on the ground floor of an oil and gas investment prospect, we have an awesome, awesome project that’s going on right now. Go ahead. And it’s in that description below there at the bottom. Or you could do invest in oil. energy News beat.com. For more information. We will get you hooked up with all of the info you need to officially become an oil man,. [00:13:17][63.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:13:17] But let’s go ahead and just dive in quickly. You know overall markets on Friday actually from a finance perspective did well. You know not only a commodities didn’t do great S&P 500 was up about 2/10 of a percentage point. Nasdaq fairly flat only up about 10th of a percentage point two. And ten year yields actually tumbled with the two year down one percentage point. The ten year was only down about three 7/10 of a percentage point dollar index, down about 6/10 of a percentage point. Bitcoin still below 60,059 500. Crude oil shaved off about three percentage points. We’re all the way up to basically we are slightly above 80. On Wednesday. Things tumbled all the way down to end Friday at 7554. Brant oil only shaved off about a half a or one and a half percentage point. So it’s at 8008 right now. Natural gas shaved three percentage points down to $2.12. I mean, really on the natural gas side, what we saw was a lot of, you know, cooler forecast coming in. I mean, if you’re sitting right now as I am in the Dallas-Fort worth area, today’s absolutely the hottest day that we’ve had in multiple weeks. Now, I think we’re going to see a 105 on the on on the scale. So I’m you know, I’m trying to I’m staying alive here guys. I still haven’t quite acclimated yet. So good luck to everybody who stands strong out there. You know I think a lot of this you know a lot of what’s tempering down on the oil side prices. But the fact that most people are expecting China to have a slump in demand relative from where their expectations are. On Thursday afternoon, China went and dropped some economic data, which shows that new home prices fell at their fastest pace in nine years, and also industrial output slowed with unemployment on the rise. So multiple, multiple people, you know, you know, again, as sentiment around that demand goes, it could be good. We also did see OPEC this week on Monday cut its forecast for oil demand this year, specifically citing the softness going. In China. We also saw the IEA cited that same weak demand outlook and slashed its 2025 forecast on Tuesday. So again this sentiment not going well Andrew Lip out. He’s over there with lip Out Oil Associates. It’s been a volatile week in the oil markets. On one hand you have fears of supply disruptions from a wider Middle East war. But on the other hand slowing growth in China forced revisions of multiple demand forecasts. We did see, you know, at the beginning of the week, we saw prices rally mainly as we were all bracing for retaliation by Iran over the Hamas leader being killed in Tehran last month. But I ran has it done? And he thinks do so on Sunday afternoon. The stuff I heard, the stuff you heard into Monday was Iran was coming full force with an attack. They didn’t do anything. Where does that stand right now? [00:15:55][158.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:15:55] Not sure. I think everybody sitting back and kind of going, we thought you’d already attack. There is so much going on right now. We have everyone is saying that this may be a coordinated bluff. And there are troops movement in Taiwan now. And now everybody’s sitting there going, think about it. We just pulled a ton of our fleet out, and it’s now circling in the Mediterranean in support of Iran. And we are now right on Taiwan. So if you want to think about a messed up world right now, I have no clue what’s going on. [00:16:36][40.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:36] Well, that’s not good when you don’t even have a beat on it. The other interesting thing we saw on Friday is rig count. We had two rigs in the United States down to 586. That’s down 56 from a year ago. Canada saw no rigs added. Still sitting at 217. Internationally we saw 23 rigs get shredded. So you know, it’s finally dropped below last year’s, high over there in internationally. So something’s happening here. I think the world is bracing. I think for, for from an international side, I think bracing for a lower overall Brant Price the United States, we haven’t seen rig counts rise relative to where you would expect it to be with $75 oils. I think, you know, people are trying to prepare for some crazy volatility. So there’s a lot to go on. Things are only going to get crazy. What should people be worried about this week, Stu? [00:17:23][46.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:23] Well, I tell you what. Let’s watch the Democrats go through their circus. I still have the firm belief that you cannot have 100,000 known Antifa members show up. And in the Democrat Chicago, it is now boarded up. I am serious that they have now issued a several locations for bricks for for them to pick up. I think that Kamala and her VP are going to be removed. I think you’re going to see a change. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Hey, she is an entertaining cat. [00:18:02][38.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:03] Yeah, interesting. Well, I have no insights into that. I doubtful that the. [00:18:08][4.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:08] Financial side of the world is what’s got me kind of really kind of worried is China is really they’ve got Japan has 40 banks that are in the process of failing Japan. China has a financial real big issue in their world coming around the corner. And whenever you have that kind of finance issue in Chip in China going on, they go to war. Historically it’s been a really bad sign to see this kind of thing matching up. Well, I hope I’m wrong. [00:18:41][33.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:41] Let’s hope I don’t have to broadcast live from the shores of Taiwan as I get drafted. Let’s just hope we don’t. It don’t come to that. [00:18:47][5.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:48] You’re too young and I mean too old could hurt you, tool. [00:18:51][3.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:51] I don’t know, I don’t know. [00:18:53][1.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:53] I would go for you. Yeah, if you could. [00:18:55][2.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:55] If you could walk you you they would ask you if you could walk. They’d get you. All right. So it’s all out. Well guys, with that we’re going to go and let you get out of here. Get back to appreciate you guys checking us out here on the world’s greatest podcast energy news beat.com for Stuart Turley, I’m Michael Tanner. We’ll see you tomorrow. [00:18:55][0.0][1103.4]

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