First Friday Q&A | February 2025 | Ep 368

This week Pod Mark LeCour and Paige Wilson.

You're listening to the Oil and Gas This Week podcast brought to you by Cognite, the global leader in AI for the industry. This is the show for busy oil pros who want to quickly keep their finger on the pulse of the industry. Thanks for joining us for episode 368 in its first Friday QA. We love the NAPE conference so much where we recorded our last episode that we decided to come back and record the episode again. See, this is the magic

of tiny when you podcast. So the truth is we recorded those two episodes back to back. We haven't stayed here a week. Which would be kinda weird. It wouldn't be weird. Anyway Got a review, wanna read it? Uh yeah, five star review, great show. Great weekly review of the energy markets for employees and investors. MPH has an absolutely wonderful laugh. MB Conway, thank you. Thank you, MB Conway. You do have a great laugh. Thank you.

Alright, speaking of not jealous It's always time for our first question and it's always from Ludvik. Bear with me people. Uh likely I'll hold my barbecue party on the first weekend of April. On the barbecue I'll make something fun, likely chicken with something else, like short ribs and frum beef or Ludwig's version of Texas style spare ribs.

Would Mark and Paige be available to drop by? It's in Europe, around one hour flying from Aberdeen, close to Brussels, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Dusseldorf Airport, or to Lisbon Airport. Also, what drinks should I ensure? Beer, red wine, white wine?

Let's answer the drink question first. That's the easiest one. Red wine for me, Luthwick, and a sweet white for Paige. Yeah. Number one, we're not laughing at you. This is great. This is very nice and literally sweet of you offering to barbecue for us'cause you heard we're gonna be in London.

We don't have that nailed down yet. We are one hundred percent doing our industry mixer in London. I've had so many people I'm laughing'cause I'm hungry now. Yeah, well I've had so many people from the UK reach out looking for that. And Ludwig, when we make our plans, if we can manage to swing by and come see you, we will. You've been a fan of the show for a very long time.

Not so sure about your Texas version of spare ribs since we are both from Texas, but I'd be interested in trying it. Thank you for the invitation. And if we can make it to your house, we will.

Okay, well this episode I'm gonna be struggling yet some of y'all have some names I'm going to butcher so I'm just gonna go ahead and apologize in advance. So the next one is from Melith. Paxoy, a lawyer in offshore industry. Hi Mark and Page, I'm a longtime listener from Turkey. I work as a lawyer in the freshly created offshore sector here in Turkey and would love to take a look into Turkey's petroleum's exploits in the Black Sea.

As of last year, we had a great discovery in the Black Sea and some Western contractors are trying to perforate our old wells. in the South Acoca sub basin. As far as I know, we are one of the new players on the field and would love to hear your great insight. Yeah, so that's an interesting play out there. So the Turkish Petroleum Corporation discovered huge natural gas reserves in the Black Sea.

And these are enormous reserves, Paige. These have the potential to make Turkey a net energy exported and literally reduces energy import bill to zero. No, it really is. A lot of work to be done. They need a lot of investment infrastructure. They also need some of the European or American engineering expertise. But that's happening literally while we speak. So what is he asking? Yes, so they did go back and purchase some old wells.

As far as I know, we are one of the new players in the field. And actually you are if you'cause I haven't heard of your company. So you absolutely are one of the new players in that field. And then they don't say if they're working what drill ships they're working with, but there's a couple of big drill ships out there drilling literally as we speak.

So I hope you and your company do extremely well and thank you for the question. Awesome. All right, next up, ooh, this is an easy name, Rachel Patterson. A roly pony equities. Do you have any idea when the energy companies operating the Appalachian Basin will begin production in the Trenton Black River formation? And will they use enhanced oil recovery as part of their production method?

Three vertical test wells into the TBR have been drilled on three separate pads by EOG over the last few years, but nothing is being done as far as more wells with laterals. Yeah, so this is a extremely old field. If I'm not mistaken, Rockefeller, I think, produce that. That's how old this field is.

So it's old, it's mature. There's only a handful of wells that are still produced right there. I think it's less than 20, and none of them are big producers. I mean, we're looking at like 500 barrels probably a day per well, maybe even a little bit less. And they're not actually that deep a well. So number one, Rachel, they will have to use some type of enhanced all recovery because those fields are older, the pressures have been depleted in those reservoirs. Three vertical test wells.

by E. O. G. So I don't think there's gonna be a whole bunch of activity in this area of the Appalachian, unfortunately, Rachel. Probably for four or five years. Now our new current administration is gonna remove a lot of roadblocks and those roadblocks have also removed costs. And one of the issues in this field is it has some additional costs involved. So it could be that if a new administration

gets these done right and the cost of operating in these older fields in Appalachian come down, you may see some more activity and I guarantee that's why EOG has done some test wells. They're trying to make sure that their numbers, they know what their numbers are, their production numbers.

so that if costs do get lowered, they know whether they want to throw capital at the Appalachian and start going production. So I don't think anything big's gonna happen. I don't think you have any major operators move in there. However, I think in a couple years you will see production go up. Hopefully that's helpful to you.

Yeah. Okay, next up is Josie Poirier or Poirier. I'm not sure. I'm go with it. engineer from Rotoelliptic Technologies. Hi Mark and Paige. Love the podcast. As someone passionate about my work, I strive to stay updated on factors affecting artificial lifts, such as regulatory changes, market updates, and projects. What are some good resources to stay informed about?

pilot or R and D artificial lift projects that companies are working on. Currently I'll use Oil and Gas Journal, World Oil, JPT, and of course OGGN's podcast. Do you have any other resource recommendations? And I love this sign off so hard. I'm gonna have to steal it.

Live, laugh, love oil and gas. I love it. So Jose, thank you for saying that you listen to our podcast to help you with artificial lift. I think it's Josie. Josie, okay. We don't really do a lot around artificial lists, so I know you're being nice.

Now, I don't know if you listen to our upstream podcast. That's Elena Minthart, 30 year veteran Department of Energy. She talks about artificial lift a lot. So if you're listening to this show, thank you. But you may want to go check out our upstream podcast as well.

Resources. See, I'm doing a keynote at the ESP Electrical Smirchal Pump Symposium here in Houston in a couple months. That would be a good place. And if you come to that for some reason, come find me and say hi. I'll be the guy on stage with a microphone in this. I might be around too. Yeah, you'll be around too. As far as learning, man, there's all kinds of different things that you could do. Different places you could go. There's a bunch of engineering courses a lot of colleges offer for free.

And the reason they do that is the sucker rods and the pump people actually pay for those courses because they're trying to get more people interested in artificial lists so they can hire them. I know there's a bunch of online courses. Check out Petro lessons. My buddy Bramio, I think, still runs that check out PetroSync.

SPE has a ton of training courses on artificial lift. In fact, so much will probably bore you to death. And then there's so much now on YouTube that wasn't there just a few years ago. So a whole bunch of resources out there. And like I said, if you really want to learn from the OG and Suite of Podcasts about artificial lift, go give a listen to our upstream podcast. And actually if you do that, let me know what you think.

Yeah, yeah. Next up we have Nick, automation engineer from Conico Phillips. Hey, Mark and Paige, I'll always mention how renewable energy has its place. What exactly is its place? Because from what I can tell it's a place to power our rigs and pump jack. When I read this, I started laughing so hard that I replied to him immediately saying, dude, you just made me laugh out loud. And the funny thing is.

I was in a meeting, a lunch meeting, so then I laugh in front of a bunch of strangers. Like, what is this guy laughing at? Well, I'm laughing at Nick in Chronicle Phillips. He did respond. He said, thanks for getting back so quick. I'm glad I could make you laugh. It was a bit of a facetious question, but I am curious about what exactly you think about renewables. Okay.

When I say renewables, I'm really thinking of solar and wind. I'm geothermal, nuclear. I know sometimes it'll lump under renewables, but in my head, I just don't put those two there. So when you look at solar wind, a couple of things. First thing is you know this, you work at Conico, we operate in the middle of nowhere. So when you operate in the middle of nowhere, sometimes you need a way to power up sensors or valves or a way to communicate. All that requires electricity.

So we've used solar in our industry forever. In fact, solar cells were invented by Mob Bell, the phone company, but the oil and gas industry quickly adopted to make them better. Now once you generate electricity to run your sensors or your pumps or your valves with solar It doesn't work at night. So you got a way to store that electricity. And for the longest time it's done with lead acid batteries.

later nickel cadmium hydride batteries. And then somebody invented a lithium battery. Now listen, not lithium ion, but lithium. The lithium batteries were great on paper. They blew up and killed people. They were not good in real life. Somebody had to take the potential of the lithium batteries and make it safer for the world. And that somebody was ExxonMobil.

ExxonMobil invented the favorite company. Yep. Well I'm just saying that renewables have their place in circumstances that does not require Reliable inexpensive energy. Very unique cases. Now I know I'm gonna get hate mail because I always do every time I mention anything that's negative about renewables. However, it's the truth. And they do have their place. Now I know you made a joke about operate rigs and pump jacks. I think that's one of the great fits for it.

Because we operate in the middle of nowhere, I love the idea of having solar and wind powering our industry. I love the idea of offshore wind powering a production platform. I don't want offshore wind powering up drilling platform, right? They need high horsepower, immediate demand, a lot of electricity, and I'd rather that be provided by Gen Sets to make sure the project stays on time and on budget.

But once you finish actual drilling over production, offshore wind I think is great for a production platform. And then the surplus energy can be sold back onshore. Same way with solar. In the right circumstances, it's a great way to keep sensors up and running, especially when you have a battery. So renewables absolutely have their place.

The final place they fit is in emerging economies. We're spoiled. So I live in a 3,000 square foot, 3,200 square foot house, something like that. We have probably eight tons of air conditioned. We must have six TVs and computers and refrigerators and I got a freezer in the garage and all that stuff. That consumes a lot of electricity, but I can afford it because I live in the US where electricity prices are cheap. And we have the infrastructure. And that infrastructure has a cost.

You go to some of the emerging economies and we talked earlier about Vietnam. So in Vietnam, they don't need that massive amount of electricity that we use here. They need enough electricity to recharge a cell phone, run a refrigerator, a light bulb or two. And I'm telling you, a small solar array with a battery is a great fit for that. Now it doesn't build infrastructure, so you can share it. But it's a great fit for that. So renewables absolutely have their fit, even with large consumption.

Here in Texas, in the middle of the day, we produce more wind energy than any other state in the country. Right. And I love that. That's a great use of natural resources. However, it's too expensive to store it in batteries. We don't utilize it to the best rate that we can. But it absolutely has this place. But Nick, you did make laugh out loud.

Okay, the next one is short and sweet. It's from Anwar Mahir. Mayher from Skim, how can I improve my skills in the oil and gas industry? Anmar, this is such a generic question that it's really hard for me to give you a good answer. The biggest thing is read. And actually let me back you up. If you go look at my calendar, I block out time to learn every month. That's a different behavior. So if you really want to learn, I think you need to start with changing your behavior.

I don't know what you do for a living. I don't know how many hours you work. I don't even know where you are in the world. But take some time that you can dedicate this. Block it out every month in your calendar or every week. and make that a learning time. read. There's actually tons of great videos out there now.

If you watch on YouTube, if you don't have the bandwidth or the internet speed to be able to watch videos, there's podcasts like this one consume very low bandwidth so you can listen. And there's not just the OG and Suite of Podcasts, there's all kinds of other oil and gas and energy podcasts. So that's where I would start if you just want to improve your skills. Now if you want certifications.

That's a different conversation. And quite frankly, I can't help you with that unless I know what you want certifications on. But take advantage of all the free information that's out there in our information heavy world. Just remember that some of the information that's gonna be out there may not be legit.

And it may be wrong and it may be wrong accidentally or on purpose. So just take a grain of salt or trust but verify type of stuff. But so much free resource out there now in 22 to 5. You should have no problem improving your skills.

All right. My guess this next one is from the entire state of Texas. It just says Texas. So Hello, I'm a natural gas trader from the UK, currently living in Korea. I love your podcast. Thank you so much. Do you ship merchandise to Korea, Taiwan, or the UK? Well, Texas? Yes we do. Our merch store ships to almost every single country on the planet. There's a couple of countries that quite frankly

I think we actually had our first order to the UK a couple weeks ago. That wasn't our first order. We did have one come through. Oh okay. Well there are a few countries that we don't ship to because they're on sanction list. None of the countries you mentioned are on sanctioned lists.

Uh unless you're in North Korea. Oh if you're North Korea there's no way you could have sent this message so you can't be in North Korea. Or even listen to this podcast much less. But yeah, our merchandise store ships everywhere in the world and it even gives you the price of what that shipping's cost. So when you go to check out

Once you put in your address, it will tell you how much it'll cost, it'll tell you when the order will get there. So yes, we ship everywhere in the world. Because why? We're the number one all I guess merchandise store on the planet. Thank you, Texas. Next up's from Joseph Brody. Hello, Mark and Page again. Ooh, second time to write in, I guess.

While we all know that we will never stop using hydrocarbons, I want to point out that the plug-in car sales in the US have not peaked in twenty twenty-four. though twenty twenty-four Q three in the United States, plug-in cars sales are up sixteen point five percent and that trend will probably continue for Q four. Sales are being driven by incentives and lower cost plugins.

What has peaked is gasoline car sales which peaked circa twenty seventeen are now down eighteen point seven from that peak. Turn it to the right. Joseph, number one, thank you. Number two, you're right about everything you said, but I do want to kind of put this in perspective. The first thing I want to put in perspective is what I actually meant.

I don't remember what I said, but I'm pretty sure what I said aligns with what I'm about to say now. I'm not saying electric cars or as you say plug-in cars will disappear or that sales have stopped or have they peaked. I'm saying the growth has peaked.

So the percentage that went up every year of electric cars has now leveled out and it's starting to go down. The percentage, the growth is continuing. However, we all know and it we've seen it all in the news that every single manufacturer of electric cars, including Tesla, is hurting right now. and their suppliers are hurting and governments around the world are removing the subsidies, which is one of the incentives to buy.

Now when you talk about your numbers that they went up 16.5%, that's 100% true. But remember this. If I have one electric car that I sold today, and then I sold another one next year, that's two electric cars, that's 100% growth. So even though they're up sixty point five percent, it's a very small percentage of the mix of automobiles. The reason I've told this before on the on the podcast and also my yearly predictions

is that it's just not a great market fit for everybody right now. Number one electric cars are expensive. In order to incite people to buy them because they're expensive, governments have to offer subsidies. That money from the subsidy comes from your pocket. So Paige and I and every listener here that's in the U.S., your tax dollars have paid other people to help them buy electric cars. That's not a long-term strategy. And the early adopters have already bought their electric cars.

the mass majority of the next wave of buyers need to be wealthy enough to own their homes so they can install recharging stations in their garage'cause the only practical use of electric car is where you can charge it up at night and then wake up have a full tank. And I know I'm gonna get hate mail around this, but I'm telling you, this is what's driving the market. And the market for electric car demand has leveled off.

I'm not saying sales have leveled off. I'm saying the future demand growth has leveled off and the percentage of increase in sales has leveled off. It's a black and white fact. Now, you're also right that gasoline car sales peaked in 2017. Actually I think that was 2018, but I haven't fact-checked you, so you you're probably right. And that's down around 18.7 cents from that peak.

But what you also have to throw in there to put it in perspective is less people are driving any automobiles, less people are buying any cars. with our shared economy, things like Uber and everything, with the young people not really want not to have the desire to drive anywhere.

They're just not buying cars and they're not buying any car. They're not buying electric cars, they're not buying hybrid cars, they're not buying diesel cars, gasoline cars. So let's keep this in perspective. My whole point of that, my prediction

was not to condemn electric cars. I actually love electric cars. They have so many advantages. They don't waste all that energy on heat. They have 100% of the torque at one RPM, so you don't need a transmission, which means you don't lose all that energy through friction. My problem with electric cars is the battery.

As soon as we get something better to provide electricity to electric cars, I think they're gonna rule'cause it just makes sense. But A hundred percent I'll stand by this today I die. the growth of electric cars has stalled and flattened out. You still may see a growth in percentage, but like I said, if I have one electric car and I sell another one, that's 100% growth, that's only two cars. So thank you for writing in. I'm not anti-EV people. I'm just calling it like it is.

Okay, got that out of the way. Next up we've got Salm Da, chemical engineering student. Hi there guys, I'm a chemical engineering student from Mauritania. Did I say that right? Or did I butcher or did I butcher that too? I watch your episodes regularly and really appreciate what you're doing. As you know, BP announced on december thirtieth the launch of production for the GTA product between Marietania and Senegal and I would like to know.

How this project could affect the global oil and gas market and what opportunities it presents for both countries and their population. All right, so this is one of the deepest projects I think has ever been done in Africa. Oh really? Yeah, I also think it's one of the deepest projects the BP has done. This is a very technology challenging project. So

The basin is world class. Recoverable hydrocarbons are there. We know what they are. As far as what this is, and there's the liquids too. So I'm gonna talk about gas because this play is predominantly gas. They're also getting liquids. But the gas is where the story is.

So number one, there's a lot of countries in Africa. Actually I described this earlier our last episode with Recon Africa, how poor the people were there and how the operator Recon Africa helped them before they started drilling for oil. There's a lot of poverty in Africa. And that leads to things like people burning wood and cattle dung for fuel. When you burn wood, it has to come from somewhere, you chop down trees, which isn't good for the forest, blah, blah, blah.

One of the first things is this is gonna allow this area of Africa to have natural gas for its people. And it really should almost be free. It won't be free because they have to build infrastructure, but it's gonna be cheap. But the bigger benefit to both Africa and to the world.

is this is at some point could turn into an LNG project. There is so much natural gas here that to me it only makes fiscal sense that extremely soon somebody's gonna start building an LNG train to take this natural gas, turn it to LNG so they can sell around the rest of the world.

Now you're talking about benefiting the world's environment, because when people burn LNG to produce electricity instead of coal, you reduce air emissions by 60%. But you're also talking about jobs and prosperity. And remember this.

Fertilizer that feeds the world, about 60% of the world's fed fertilizer, made from natural gas. So this is gonna provide the raw feedstock to make ammonia to feed the world. How cool is that? Then if you know what an ethylene cracker is, basically turns natural gas into plastic. This is gonna be another opportunity so I think once the L and G phase start.

and we start making money from exporting LNG, once the African, local African population have access to natural gas to cook their food and heat their homes, I think the final thing will happen is petrochemical projects predominantly around plastics. So I think this is gonna be good for Africa. I think it's gonna be good for the local communities there, I think it's gonna be good for the world. Now, when is that gonna happen? They're producing now.

They're very aggressive. If you've seen what the BP CEO said just recently, where they're gonna start taking their resources and moving it back into their hydrocarbon business, because they know that, I suspect they're gonna accelerate this. So like I said, this is still a bit of a new field, but I could easily see this thing in a couple years producing, I don't know, three, four million tons of liquefied natural gas, which would be incredible. So I'm watching this myself.

I think the future of the oil and gas industry is Africa, and this is a prime example. Awesome. Next up is from Lucas Lambert.

Mark just found your podcast. I have a background in oil and gas land surveying with it experience in operations management, upstream site layout, and midstream pipeline routing and design. I'm currently exploring Career opportunities in oil and gas related roles. Let me know if you have any guidance on career paths that align with my background or any insight into continuing education or certifications that could strengthen my candidacy for such roles.

Thanks. So Lucas, there's so many different things you could do with your experience. There's two that I'm gonna mention to you that you may not have thought of. I don't know if you've seen the show Landman. Let me tell you, Lucas, that's not really what land man do all the time, but it's sorta close and it's entertaining. I think in the next couple of years there's gonna be a huge shortage of landman in the industry.

Your background and land surveying with your experience in operations, you make a great landman and you can make good money. It's some local certifications. I think there's an apprentice program that you have to do. You don't have to have a college degree. And it's a great career. Now let me warn you.

that as the upstream industry cycles, like it does no matter what anybody says, there are times when it's tough for landman to find work and there are other times when they make so much money they don't know what to do with it. So just know that ahead of time. But Lucas, you know what else you could do with your background which I think would be amazing? Go find one of the drone companies that are doing drone work for like BP and Chevron and Exxon. Your background would be amazing.

You understand land surveying, which is gonna help the 3D model with the drones. You understand operations, so you can understand what the drone needs to be looking for. You understand pipelines, that's where a lot of the drones surveying is because they're looking for distressed vegetation and other signs of leakage. And then you understand that whole midstream world. So look at the drone companies that are doing work for the pipeline companies for the upstream side of the industry.

See if they need an insider, which I'm telling you right now they do. They're not going to be able to do that. They have the best guys to build the drones. They have the best tech guys that are programming it. They don't know the oil and gas industry. And yet they're making money from it. So I would start there, both those two places. I actually start with the drones. That would just be such a cool role. And your experience, which is somewhat common in the oil and gas industry.

is super uncommon in the drone space and you would be a rock star. So check this out. Hopefully Lucas, that helps you.

Okay, next up we have Shannon Lean, Marketing Director, North America for Capspire. How do you see the role of ETRM systems evolving as the oil and gas industry continues its digital transformation and integrates AI, blockchain and real time analytics into trading and risk management? I don't know who caps. Something makes me think they're a ETRM company. Anyway, ETRM is energy training and risk management. It's basically software that helps oil and gas companies manage energy trading and risk.

It's come a long way. It's come actually extremely long way. And then you talk about AI. Man, AI is making a huge impact to energy trade and risk management software. And it will continue to do that to the point. that not that far in the future. I think a lot of the risk is would be removed from the trading world, which means you're not going to need to be as an experienced trader. And I hate to say that.

'Cause then it sounds like anybody could be a trader, which is not true. No but I think it's gonna really help the traders keep from making really bad decisions, think multi-million dollar bad decisions. So it's just gonna continue to grow and transform. Where do I think this is going? I have no idea.

The world is so exciting right now. I mean, even us in the podcasting space, there's now AI that produce podcasts. No people are involved. So it's even affecting us. So it's a really interesting space. Companies depend on ETRM. There's a handful of big players and a ton of small players out there. The nice thing is with everything that's going on, this is the time for the small players to grab some market share from bigger players. So hopefully Shannon, that was useful to you.

Okay, so next we have Philip Lindauer, reporter and news anchor for Oil Field Network News. Loving the podcast, new at this genre. When you say you want comments, is this in the ask a question section? Yes. In fact it is. I put together a training on lithium batteries including accident reviews and this is something not talked about a lot.

fire and storage. You said thanks to the engineers who built the building so it did not spread. That's architects and material guys and engineers. Gotta take a poke at the guy who put water on a battery. That's the opposite of good engineering. So Paige. What you don't know, because I haven't had time to tell you, uh-huh, is Phil Company is now part of OGGN. Oh, really? So Phil does something amazing. Imagine sitting in like, let's say Halliburton's waiting room, right?

And you're sitting there and they have TVs telling you and on the TVs could be a game show, the local news, or it could be a Halliburton news segment where the news anchor is going, Halliburton stock is blah blah blah. A big shout out to their wireline division who's had no lost time instance in 372 days. Oh, and Amy just had their first baby boy. Congratulations, Amy. That's what Phil's company does. And when I saw what he did, I fell in love with it.

We had coffee a couple of times. We shook hands. We have a business deal. So we're now gonna be selling Phil's services. through OGGN to all and gas company. So if you're listening to this team Phil and you want something really cool in your waiting room instead of boring stuff, if you want to showcase your safety record In that sort of stuff, reach out to me. I'm happy to talk to you. This is a new product line for OGG, and I'm really excited about working with Phil. And you are right.

Phil. It really wasn't the engineers. It really probably started off with the architects who knew the materials guy. The material guys came in and said this is what you need to do. And the engineers did all the calculations to make it work. But yeah, don't put water in a lithium battery when it catches on fire. But Phil, welcome to the OG and family and thanks for writing in. Awesome. Okay, so you guys have already heard this review that we got.

Hey guys, love the show. I'm second year finance student in the University of Calgary over in Canada. I know you guys briefly talked about Trump's plan for tariffs on Friday, but was wondering what your thoughts on Trump's decision to elect Scott Bissent for the Treasury Secretary. As his position will be at the center of the entire economic agenda for Trump, what might this pick signal for the US economy.

It's really interesting. Who said this? We don't know. It's one. Oh 1284 Amper Stamp. 1284 Amper Stamp. One of the things about uh Treasury Secretary Bisnet is he wants to bypass the Fed and he wants to lower interest rates. To a lot of people, that sounds like a great thing to do. And I have people that disagree with me on this, but I just 100% firmly believe in this.

I think our Federal Reserve is one of the best agencies that this country has ever put together. It's not connected to politics. Yes, I know people that it sorta is, but it's really not. The members serve a longer term, so they bridge over political administrations. And they're focused on one thing and that's keeping American currency strong. But instead of me talking about what they do and why I think it's good, let's just talk about the results.

If you go anywhere in the world, their currency is measured against what? The US dollar. Right. Yeah. Why? Because the US dollar is the stronger currency in the world. Why? Is that because we're great? Is that because our dollar bills are prettier than anybody else's dollar bills? No. It's because our Federal Reserve controls the amount of money that is out in circulation. It controls interest rates.

And regardless of whatever political administration wants to do with any of that sort of stuff, they do the right thing for our currency, for our economy. A lot of people disagree with me with on this. A lot of libertarians hate this, our Federal Reserve. I think it's great.

So what do I think is gonna happen with uh Bissident and Trump? I think it's Bissent. Oh Bissent, okay. I'm not so much worried about that today in February. I'm more worried about Besent and Elon Musk and Doge. They've already got into it a little bit. They have two different end goals in mind, which means they're probably always gonna have disagreements on things. I'm hoping they can kind of work that stuff out. Musk is too hard headed. But he's also not

A bona fide member of our administration. He's a hire. Yeah, he's an advisor. Right. But Bassett is actually the seventy ninth, eighty thecary treasurer. He's literally fifth in line for presidential succession. Right, right. So it's too early for me to tell 1284 Amper Stamp what I think is gonna happen with him being elected. I'm hopeful. My biggest reason being hopeful about him coming in as Treasury Secretary is this. Trump cycle?

I really think it's gonna be different. I really think Trump's learned to tone it down. I really think he's learned to hire the right people, but not piss them off. If you remember the first time he was elected He built what I call the dream team as far as Cad they couldn't stand to work with them, they all quit or they got fired. I think it's so early. Well it's so early. He's gonna fire some people. That's what Trump does. Well he's already doing I know. Yeah.

So I'm not sure what's gonna happen. We will revisit this. Give us a couple months. So we can see at least where we think some trends are going and who's getting along with who and who agrees with who and who doesn't. I had to go figure out who this guy was anyway. I had no idea. I was more looking into who we hired as far as energy went, so

Oh, well speaking of hiring, you know what Paige, if you have an AI project, you know who you should hire? Cognite. Cognite. Without even thinking twice. You understand that AI can make a big difference in oil and gas production, energy production. It boosts his productivity, safety across the board. But you know, getting up and running isn't easy.

Born for the industry, from the industry, Cognite helps improve troubleshooting, turnaround, field operations, and more with AI, faster, way more effective than you could do doing it yourself. So if you need help with your next AI win, Visit cognite.com forward slash OG podcasts to see why the industry trusts cognite like we trust Cognite. And I'm just telling you people, don't try to remember the URL. Just go to the shows and click on it.

Reach out to them. If you have an AI project, if you're thinking about an AI project, if you're already plugged in with an AI vendor and you want a sanity check or a third party input, reach out to them. They're not gonna try to sell you anything, they're just gonna try to help you. Yep. Guess what? Next. I don't know what it's First Friday QA. What's the best part of First Friday QA?

Uh This week in petroleum history. Oh. I forgot about it. How can you forget about this week in petroleum history? It's the best week. It's the end of the day. I'm hungry. I'm hungry. So listen to this. 1868. All of the refineries in the US, which was two in Pennsylvania, said, you know what? We don't like this civil war tax. They had an uprising to demand the end to the civil war tax. on refined products. So this was the test.

A 42-gallon barrel of gasoline or diesel, any refined product, including kerosene, which is hot right there, had a tax of a dollar. Ooh. And that was way too much money, so they repelled the tax. Buffalo Bill, everybody's heard of Buffalo Bill. Everybody doesn't know is besides his Wild West show, he was one of the founders of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Pack.

So 1910, Buffalo Bills start exploring for Wyoming oil and they brought home reservoir that bears his name and he ended up giving away 7500 shares of his company that he farmed. to his kids who later became congressmen. It's a great story from somebody that was basically in the Wild West version of Hollywood. Then in February nineteen twenty,

The Breckeridge field joins the North Texas oil boom. So 1920 was one of our many oil booms we had in our home state, but this is another giant oil field that was tapped into. The interesting thing about that is three years earlier, the experts said there was no oil to be recovered.

three years later they found it. That shows you that throughout history people think there's not oil and it's everywhere. I love this. And then finally, uh fortunately, eighteen seventy three A guy named Andrew Dappleme. was out in Pennsylvania. He was actually dropping nitroglycerine on a well, which is how they used to frack the rock then. Oh no.

While he was dropping nitroglycerine, one of the ranchers thought he was blowing up dams that controlled the water and shot him. Oh. This is one of the first illegal deaths of an off hill worker that was ever recorded. So before OSHA. sad way to end it, but that's this week of all fill history. I didn't do it on purpose, people, but it just came up that way.

Let's change the subject quickly. Like, our two newsletters. Sign up. I know our Sunday update hasn't been out for a while. By the time you hear this, it'll be coming out again. Both links are in the show note. Weekly rig count, where are we? We're the same as we were at last episode'cause we just recorded that one. Don't tell people, I just read the numbers, they don't know. We told'em at the beginning of the show.

We're up six at five eighty two in the United States, up thirteen at two fifty eight in Canada, and down ten at nine oh nine internationally. Good numbers, like they were an hour ago. Uh this is First Friday QA. You know the drill. Leave us a question. If we use your name, we'll give you a big shout out in the air. If I can pronounce your name properly. If you want myself or an experts to come speak at your events, let me know. Happy to share the details.

You ready to get out of here? Yeah, I'm hungry. Remember folks, do great work, pay it forward, and we will see you next time. Thanks for listening to OGGN, the world's largest and most listened to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. If you like this Leave us a review and then go to OGGN.com to learn about all our other shows. And don't forget to sign up for our weekly. This show has been a production of the Oil and Gas Global.