Week Recap: Nuclear Revival, Wind Power Issues, and LNG Growth

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

Lebanon Faces Power Blackout as Clashes With Israel Intensify

Novatek Set to Dock Second LNG Unit at Sanctioned Arctic Plant

House Hearing Reveals U.S. Could Experience 48 Wind Blade Failures Per Year

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

Stuart Turley: [00:00:09] Hello, everybody. Welcome to Energy News meet Daily Standup. Today is Saturday, the weekly recap. I’ll tell you what. I have never been so tired. Keeping an eye on all the news for you. It is absolutely crazy what’s going on around out there? I mean, after our last podcast came out on Thursday, then we’ve had Ford scraps, another SUV, 1.9 billion in EV ambitions. Unbelievable. Then we have even more stories on the Texas grid. We’ve had another tanker hit in in the, Red sea, and, the Houthi hit a grease tanker. I’m not sure what’s going on, but, hey, turn this over to the staff, and they’re going to have put together our week’s best story. So sit back and get caught up on the whole week. Subscribe. Like, share. And if you’re a trader and you’re wanting to buy or sell oil and gas assets and or crude or LNG, let me know. Go to energy news, beat that go forward slash trading desk. And I want to hear from you. And we’ll put you right in touch with the right folks to get you, taken care of on all that. Thanks. And have an absolutely wonderful weekend. [00:01:26][77.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:27] The new era in nuclear power in the US. 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 in 2022. But it was due to cheap, abundant natural gas. Hey hey, hey, hey, you got a. [00:02:02][34.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:03] 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 has 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 owners regulations, I’m not sure what good that does. [00:02:45][42.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:45] Well, half the cost is the original installation. And so when you sit back and say, hey, I’m going to read. [00:02:51][5.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:51] About that. [00:02:52][0.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:52] Though. New. [00:02:52][0.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:52] Well, we can’t forget about that though. [00:02:54][1.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:55] 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. [00:03:25][30.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:25] 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 think runaway costs. [00:03:40][15.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:41] 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. [00:04:00][18.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:04:01] 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 centers 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. [00:04:28][27.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:29] 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. [00:05:04][35.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:05] It’s well, I think 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 the, you know, all the citizens right there. Because that’s always as we always point out, that’s who takes it in the short. [00:05:39][33.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:39] Exactly. I don’t care what country from its citizens that we care about. And and let’s keep a level head on here. Novatek. Do 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 crane coming on and this thing is going to be pumping it out. And you take a look at that 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. [00:06:41][61.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:41] 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 just in 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. [00:07:11][29.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:11] Hey, 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. [00:07:33][21.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:34] I mean, you can’t disagree there. I mean, it’s. [00:07:36][2.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:36] 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. [00:07:56][19.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:56] Well, Canada’s moving solely to solar. So they’re they’ll be out of the picture soon. [00:08:01][4.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:01] Holy smokes. [00:08:02][0.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:02] No they won’t because they’ve got too much oil there. Trust me. It’s sweet. We could get into all this. You got anything else? [00:08:08][5.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:08] 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. [00:08:17][8.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:18] 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. [00:08:22][4.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:23] I’m going to avoid some donkey pox. I do not need to be anywhere near. Oh. Monkey pox. Excuse me? Not donkey pox. My apologies, but I just saw two really funny tweets. They’ve already got bricks lined up for the 100,000. And for people, they’re expecting it. Instead of a gift bag with cookies, they’re handing out gift bags with breaks. [00:08:45][22.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:47] U.S. House hearing reveals U.S. could experience 48 win blade failures per year. This is pretty unbelievable. This all goes back to what happened in the Vineyard Wind development earlier this year, as one of the blades fell off, scattering fiberglass and all this stuff everywhere. You know, basically what happened was people started freaking out. Two U.S. Representatives, Representative Jeff Van Drew, a Republican from new Jersey, and Representative Scott Perry, a Republican from Pennsylvania, decided to hold a hearing to develop to, you know, basically determine the impacts of wind on the East Coast. And there were some really interesting things that came out. So here’s a few quotes I’ll read. This is from Representative Van Drew himself. These would be the largest wind turbines in the world. He’s speaking of the Atlantic Shore’s wind project, which was approved in July. Basically, there’s going to be 195 new wind turbines at 850ft tall. These are off the coast of new Jersey. Quote. You’re back to the quote. This would be the largest wind turbines in the world. We will be an experiment for the world right here in your home at the Jersey shore. Dozens of these turbines will be highly visible and maybe even audible, particularly in Burlington. It’s just, you know, we’ve got a Amy disabled. She’s a board member for a a for a c k for whales, a Nantucket based environmental group who’s opposed to offshore wind development. See, we’ve got something in common with these. She testified that in that in 2014, an offshore wind insurer estimated that out of 700,000 blades operating globally at the time, 3800 failed each year for a range of causes, including lightning damage, human error and manufacturing defects. She also estimated that there are 3000 operating off the East Coast, or 3000 wind turbines operating off the East coast. So we could see as much as 48 blade failures every year like the one we saw in Nantucket. Pretty unbelievable. But this is also interesting. So with an average wind power or an average power about ten megawatt per turbine, it’s going to take about 3000 turbines to meet that offshore wind goal. What she said the difference is what her analysis doesn’t take into account the fact you have three blades per winter. So that number could be as high as 130. If we’re actually talking about, you know, scaling this up, you know, as we know if this, you know, back what happened in Nantucket was pretty unbelievable. You had, you know, foam, fiberglass epoxy being scattered all over the place. I mean, we also we’re talking about, you know, we were also talking again about what happened when it came to the whales. We know, you know, for a long time listening to show, you know, this is the one thing I like about wind is that it’s disintegrating and actually decimating the whale population. Get rid of them. I don’t hear clearly a joke, but let’s go with it here, folks. You know, this is also interesting. You know, this blow. Who’s ahead of this? This this whale program, which we don’t need? She brought a piece of the blade that actually washed up near her home to the hearing. She testified. And I’m reading out straight from the article, it even has greatly shifted the public sentiment towards the offshore wind industry on Martha’s Vineyard. That community depends on tourism, which debris from the broken glass is impacting will go down and and we gotta worry about the whales, I guess a little bit in 2022. A Save Right Whales coalition, which raises awareness of the impact of offshore wind development on the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, documented a number of these unfortunate events. You know, nobody wants to actually cover these, which I mean, rightfully so. I mean, this is this goes anti-environmental you’re just out killing the whales in again, offshore wind is horrible. I mean, there’s very there’s little good about offshore wind. It’s inefficient. It’s an eyesore. It’s harmful to the environment. It’s the exact opposite of trying to be environmentally friendly. Maybe it’s renewable, but it’s not really renewable from the standpoint of there’s a lot of, you know, discharge capacity only when the wind is blowing. I mean, offshore wind, in my opinion, is one of the worst forms of quote unquote, renewable energy. You might as well I’m more here to rank what I think is like the worst renewables. Offshore winds at the top onshore is pretty, pretty bad. I mean, solar is not as bad as this because at least solar you can work around all other, you know, you can work around stuff. It’s unbelievable. It’s pretty unbelievable. These you know, one of the quotes is these underwater Powell driving hammer blows are gonna be able to do blasts from 155 millimeter howitzer cannon or cannon in the air. Such noise bursts are far too loud to be permitted anywhere near whale habitats. I mean, it’s pretty unbelievable, actually, building these things. You know, the Rand Acoustics LLC has produced two studies that find these impacts are extensive when it comes to just, you know, noise pollution for these. I mean, it’s pretty unbelievable if people if people are in favor of offshore wind, you know, one, they even haven’t done their research. Two, they’re just ignorant and don’t want to know and don’t want to take the time. Three don’t really care. They’re just in it for the money. So it’s one of those three. But when you’re when you’re offshore wind, I’m telling you, it’s one of those three buckets. If you’re into offshore wind, you fall into you’re ignorant. You just haven’t done your research, which hey, you, you, you know, research. That’s fine. But ignorance bucket one actually refuses to do the research because you don’t want to know the answer for your bucket number three, where you’re just you don’t care. You’re just in it for the money. You don’t like it. Oil and gas donates to the right side of the aisle. You’re on the left side of the aisle. So I’m going to stand up for offshore wind. It’s because it’s environmentally friendly. Because I can make money off it. It’s the worst kind of people. [00:14:02][315.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:03] Diary of a mad Natural Gas producer man. This one. It was kind of funny in that without. And when you sit back and say Terry Etam is author of a great book, you’ve got to run out and the his link to his book is in the show notes. He’s a good friend. I’ve had an interview with him many times, and this is from the BOE report, but I did on X take a look at his title, the first paragraph. With all due respect to Ozzy Osborne, a guy that lived the rockstar life who drank enough alcohol to float, an aircraft carrier, who took enough drugs to stun a small nation who survived all that raised the family survived to 76 and counting and is worth 200 million. That’s not a mad man. That’s a genius. Well played sir. I thought that was pretty funny. I took it one step further in, Terry. I went out to egg and went to grok. Can I said creative picture on the floor of an oil Derrick working. And Ozzy Osborne is the oil rig hand and that’s not a bad picture. Well done. He won. And Grok I thought that was a pretty good picture cover story. But as we dive into this one, you take a look. And what industry would you consider producers accelerate production at such a rapid clip while simultaneously driving prices into the toilet? You. It’s what’s happening with natural gas today. It’s like $2.10. It’s unbelievable. When you take a look at this, it is the cheapest form of energy that the U.S. can possibly produce right now with the least amount of impact on the environment. When you take a look at the technologies of fracking improvements over the first with growth, but don’t completely explain the steepest part when you take a look over the four year, the U.S. added 27 BCF per day, which is about 1.5 times Canada’s entire output, while the prices fell from about $3 to $2. That’s the sort of antics the guy like. Warren Buffett would like. But when we sit back and take a look. Whatever, something will come out of this out of the blue to send the gas in the gas market into more spasms in a year. Gas prices will probably be $0.50 or $12, or maybe both in one day. Don’t look behind the curtain. We’re not well, and I love the way that he’s phrasing this discussion, is that there are things that are not making sense in our entire energy pricing matrices. I’ve been talking with folks about why in the world is that the OPEC and OPEC plus cannot control their pricing models. For Brant. And taking a look at it, well you have 700 ballpark’s in the dark Fleet that are outside of sanctions. How much of those 700 tankers are running around the world buying and selling oil that is outside of the OPEC and OPEC plus pricing matrices? That’s normal. Well, LNG, as I’ve been reporting on this has stepped up and we now have a dark side of the fleet two LNG tankers. LNG tankers now are going through and they are outside of sanctions are Russia. Michael and I talked about that on the on Monday show. [00:17:34][211.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:35] Enbridge CEO Egbo says colossal air power use U.S. LNG doubling. I thought this was an outstanding article. It was from Bloomberg and it was with an interview. And when we take a look, he came to the Enbridge in the $28 billion takeover of natural gas transport to Spectra Energy Corp in 2017, and he became the CEO last year. Those comments were on a variety of energy topics. In an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York on Tuesday. He was asked, how do you see the role for U.S. and global oil markets? The future of oil in North America is through it and out of it. You see that on the export side, just in the last 3 or 4 years, we’ve gone large into oil exports. At Enbridge, we own the largest facility now in Corpus Christi called NGS line, which is hits record after record every quarter. The Permian continues to pump a lot of oil and associated gas, and that’s going abroad. So I’ll go with the trend and I’ll say the trend is more oil demand year on year. I like what you’re saying. Here’s another question from Bloomberg. Are you anticipating the rise of our artificial intelligence will affect natural gas and electricity demand? His answer? We’ve had electricity demand largely flat for decades here in North America. Our view is that it will add somewhere between a half a percent and 2%, which might not sound like much, but per annum through 2030, that’s a colossal move. I will said 45% of all natural gas fired generation in North America is within 50 miles of its pipelines. That is a huge note for investors and EMP operators. When you’re sitting there taking a look, how is your offtake when you’re when you’re drilling a well? And then you have Enbridge with the pipelines and the power plants being built near their pipelines. So if you want low cost power, here’s here’s an anecdote. You want low cost power, live near a Enbridge pipeline. Not a bad idea. It’s kind of fun. [00:17:35][0.0][1031.0]

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