Oil and Gas This Week | January 2026 FFQA

This week podcast with the first one. LeCore and Paige Wilson. Who quickly? Here listening to the Oil and Guests This Week podcast. This is a show for busy oil pros who want to quickly keep their finger on the pulse of the industry. Thanks for joining us for episode three hundred and ninety six and it's January first ride Q and A. How's it going, Mark? It's cold. I yeah, I'm not a fan.

If you're in the US or Canada and you're listening to this and you probably just got over the really frigid cold weather, interesting number to throw at you. Hmm. That part of North America, US and Canada, when you look at what's kept everybody warm for the last week or so, kept people from freezing to death, pipes from freezing and bursting schools up and operating hospitals and everything else.

Eighty nine percent of that energy came from natural gas. Woo. So if you're warm while you're listening to this, think the brave men and women that are out there building those pipelines, keeping them running, drilling those wells, because without it you would be much colder than you are today. So big shout out to our natural gas brothers and sisters out there keeping the heat on for all of us.

Speaking of all of us, we got a review. You want to read it? Uh yeah, sure. I guess that's what I get paid to do. It's from Andrew Malwick. Malwick. I hope I I said that right. Oil broker for Amorex Singapore. Four stars, love the podcast and think that the catchy theme music is as good as the Barney Miller theme. Andrew, you're dating yourself. Most of our listeners probably don't even know who Barney Miller is.

From the nineteen seventies network TV. However, Mark, you lost a star for your November nineteenth podcast where you said twice that India had a larger GDP than China. Population yes, GDP nowhere near. Prefer podcasts from the studio where the finished product is cleaner. Keep up the good work. We're in a studio. I don't know if you know that.

No, he's still not the last couple of episodes at the end of the year we did events and they were allowed. Oh yeah, and events. Oh, we can't help that brother. Yeah, Andrew, it's what we do and we do know that the audio quality is less than perfect when we're at an event, but the events are important part of the industry, so Thank you for the review. And you're a hundred percent right. I for some reason cannot get it in my head.

That India has a larger population than China, but not GDP. I get those two mixed up. However, Bet you ten dollars, Andrew, that before I pass away that India will pass up China and GDP. It's coming. So but anyway, appreciate the review. And if you want a big shout out like Andrew, simple thing to do. Leave us a review on the air. About you dying. Let's not, okay. Let's not. I got too many should. Yeah, exactly. All right. So first off we have Ludvik as always.

So what is happening with Greenpeace USA? Are they bankrupted? I must admit I love it. Feel bad for the employees. Yeah, so back in March of last year, Energy Transfer won a lawsuit against Greenpeace on the Dakota Access Pipeline, and it was a major win. And we talk about it a lot while it was going on and then when the judgment was rendered. Because of the verdict and the jury found Greenpeace liable for defamation, conspiracy, trespass, and a whole bunch of other charges.

Energy Transfer was awarded, I believe, about six hundred and seventy million dollar verdict. And that's enough money to bankrupt Greenpeace US, which is not Greenpeace Global. However, they're still going back and forth in court. So Luthic, it hasn't been settled yet. And I expect it's gonna probably stay in court for a couple more years. At some point I think they will probably reduce the fine, but they're not gonna reduce it enough to keep Greenpeace solid.

I expect that when it does finally get settled and there's no more appeals left in court, that when Greenpeace is forced to pay this, that the parent company will come in and give them some money to keep them from going bankrupt. However, this is a lesson to all of the environmental companies.

or organizations out there, you have the total right in whatever country you're in to protest or free speech or whatever that country allows you to do. However, when you put workers at risk This industry has now decided they could bring you to court. Which is the right thing to do. And if you happen to put enough people at risk that the court decides that we need to find you enough that bankrupts you, that's what's going to happen. It's called consequences for your actions.

So Luthwick, no complete answer yet, but it is really gonna hurt Greenpeace US. It's just gonna be a couple of years for it actually hits.

Alright, next up is from Amuda. I am a Libyan citizen who is interested in oil and gas. Right now there's all this fuss on the upcoming bidding rounds of the 22 blocks of exploration and development. This hasn't happened since 2008 in some expert. I no doubt this bidding round is going to pass. Even the two thousand eight bidding round wasn't successful and the industry has much more stable

Then I wonder what you think about this. Yeah, so the funny thing is the bidding round was announced last year. I think it was March, but they actually don't open till February of this year, February 26th. And listener, you are 100% right. There's a lot of things that needs to happen in Libya. And I have some firsthand experience in Libya a million years ago. Great people, sometimes not great government.

Anyway, bunch of things need to happen. So you need investment in the infrastructure. In order for that to happen there's to be political stability, which hasn't happened in a while. The other thing is quite frankly, let's be real, the corruption that's going on.

As this licensing round gets underway, you have some very big companies that are coming in, companies like ExxonMobil and and their peers, their competitors, they're gonna want to bid for some of these blocks out there. However, they're not going to bid if they're worried. about an extensive amount of political instability, operational challenges, and then corruption still a major risk. We need some infrastructure to be built that takes capital.

We need investment in some engineering. Once again, that takes expertise from the very large supermatures or nationalized oil companies. So what do I think's gonna happen with all of this? I think it's gonna be good for Libya and its people. However, I don't think it's gonna be overwhelming successful. That licensing round that went on in two thousand seven, two thousand eight you talked about was quite frankly a dismal failure.

I think this one would be better, but Libya still has some work to do around both the infrastructure, the geopolitical stability and the corruption to really attract and have companies compete for the investment here. Now, with all that said, everything else is just about beautiful.

the environment to be able to drill, the access to deep water to be able to move those hydrocarbons around. All that stuff is prime. It's A plus type of stuff. So I have a lot of hope for Olivia. I just think this round's gonna be okay. It's not gonna be great. All right, next up we have question from Daniel O.

As a financial analyst for the investment advisory firm, I deeply appreciate the foundational role of the petroleum industry and the economy. Even though I'm not in the industry, I'm a faithful listener to both Oil and Gas This Week and Oil Ground Up.

From what I have been learning, it seems that as though rig count is no longer the key measure of activity and should be replaced by bore length. Is this a sensible and practical idea? I don't know enough about what gets measured and reported things. Audience, should we play a joke on Daniel and tell him the best thing to do is to get a bag and a flashlight?

And you go out after dark and find a culvert over a lease road and you hold it and shine the flashlight in the bag so that when the snipe runs through, he can catch it. And that's the best measurement of drilling activity. Daniel, I'm joking. Don't do that. All right. So a couple of things. You're right, rig count isn't connected anymore. And Daniel, everything I'm about to tell you is gonna be focused on the upstream part of the industry. There's other indicators for midstream and downstream.

So a couple of things. So yes, even though we still talk about the recount, we do it because it's kind of tradition and historically it was very important. Now it's not so much. Bore length is super critical. The other thing you need to track though, Daniel, is frack crews. You need a certain type of equipment and a certain people to run that equipment. Those are in limited supply, even today's oversupply on the market. Even with the layoffs that went on.

Track a total feet of drilling, so border length, and also track where the frack crews are. There's actually several services out there. If you do a quick Google search, that'll actually give you a map and show you where these frack crews are working. That's probably one of the best indicators of the work that's going on because

Operators companies aren't going to spend money fracking a well unless they're gonna go in production. Right. That tells you a whole story right there. So hopefully Daniel, that was helpful to you. Yeah, you can check and see what they use on frack focus too. Oh, good job, bae. Yeah.

All right. So next up we have Ryan E. Hello. On Tuesday, we announced the latest round of HPC Innovation Excellent Award winners. Your listeners would find value in the guest lift. Optimization project. either the press release or perhaps through an interview with the team member and they'll work judge. How do you think? Thank you, Brian. Yeah. So Brian, this is obviously uh entered this

Question last year 2025. So we've passed this. The link, however, folks, are in the show notes. If you want to see the winners, there's some really cool stuff they're doing around gas lift. And Brian, reach out to me directly. Happy to get your winners or the judges on the right podcast for interviewed. I think our audiences would really appreciate this. Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, audience.

If you have somebody, a great story that touches the oil and gas energy in some shape or fashion, if you go to the website, OGN.com, there's a place for you to enter. your information so that all of our different podcast hosts see it and they can decide if they want that person or that organization on their podcast as a guest.

If you're doing it for yourself or your company, there's a very minimum charge. I think it's ten dollars because we have to pay somebody to do the background research, reach out to the host, track all stuff. If you're doing it for profit, such as you're a PR company getting paid by another company to place their people on the podcast, we charge more.

'Cause quite frankly, you're getting paid but you don't have the network that we have and then we have to spend more time and more of our employees' hours making sure that's the right person and doing the background check and everything else. So go to OG and website if you want your people or your company your present whatever on one of our podcasts is an easy way to submit it. But Brian, thanks for this.

All right. Next up, Alfrieda A. So my organization, KissFlow, is hosting an exclusive hands-on AI and low-code workshop on December fifth at the Ion in Houston. Exclusively for oil and gas developers. The format is basically morning live demos of AI-powered oil and gas application, midday team-based. Build sessions with KISS flow experts. Afternoon present your working prototype. Here's the link to the event.

And I would like to know what's the procedure to promote events. Yep. This is legacy two. However, we put you in our monthly events newsletter. So we did promote this event for you. Once again, if you have an event that you'd like to promote, there's actually a place on the OGGN webpage. I think it's called events, where you can go in there and you can enter your event to be not only promoted by OGGN, but listed in our calendar, which by the way.

We have built a calendar on our website. It's not completely where we want it yet. It's getting close, but what we're trying to do is list every single oil and gas event, trade show, conference, whatever in one place.

For free. That's valuable. That's valuable. Yeah. So it's on the OGN website right now. Like I said, I think the events are up to maybe May, but the team's working to fill out for this year. It's something we're gonna do moving forward. So if that's useful to you, go check it out. Yep. Yep.

All right. Next up we have Brandon C. I work in northeastern Utah. I wanted to ask you guys, have you heard of our Unita Basin Railway project? Is it more feasible to bring a railway or currently truck the crude out of the basin. I enjoy the show and getting a dose of what goes on in the industry. Keep starting to the right. So if you had a railway already built, it would be ridiculously cheaper than trucking it and much safer for the people in the environment.

However, this real rate is still being built or being decided being built. There's been some pushback with the environmentalists, issues with funding. This isn't anything that is 100% legit yet. But, Brandon, they will probably complete this railway because it just makes the most fiscal sense. Rail is if you can't move it by pipeline, rail is probably one of the better ways to move hydrocarbons or anything, quite frankly, over land. Much less risk for the people and for the environment itself.

I think the railway project in uh Utica is actually not only go through, but I think it's gonna be a hugely successful. The people are putting the money behind that know they're putting money in something that is going to be used in turn of profit for a long time. And that tells you a whole story in itself. So hopefully Brandon, that was helpful to you. All right. Next up is Audriana R.

I have been listening to your podcast for years, big fan, keep up the good work. I would like to suggest that you do a podcast about women in the industry. That is a big, barely untapped opportunity often affected by downturns and layoffs and highlighted in the NGS D Gs. Check the work from Christina Williams from UTE Austin. If you are positive and opt for a panel, I would be happy to contribute.

I know a lot of very senior women in this industry and I've known a lot of them for a very long time. I've interviewed a bunch of them. Yeah, and quite frankly, Paige, please slap me if I'm misquoting or misstepping here, but

Quite frankly, all of the women I know in our industry don't want something that m separates I don't know women from the men. Yeah. As far as leadership, they don't want to go to a separate women's leadership conference. They want to go to a leadership conference that includes everybody. what people's gender are shouldn't affect their opportunities, their training. However, with all that said, I am very aware that historically, for a very long time, this was a male dominated industry. Here's a

interesting bit of information. The last four years, SLB, which used to be Slummerjay. Fifty two percent of the new hires are female. So the more women are entering the workforce and oil and gas with a service company than men, that's a great trend. Cause when I entered this industry, that didn't happen.

So maybe this, Andrea, I love this idea. We're not gonna launch a women specific podcast on the network just'cause I think it's biased in itself and the fact that we're segregating women against men. However, we would love to have you on one of our shows, or maybe even Paige's industry leader show. Reach out to us and let us have a conversation. And that we would love to get you on one of the shows and share your experience.

Yeah, no, actually there is an existing podcast that we used to host on our network called Women Off Shore, which is founded by Allie Torino. Check her out. The reason that was founded because it used to be so hard to be a woman and work offshore. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Next up we got Danny. He says, best podcast ever. By the way, I love your sponsors, Cognite. My brother in law works for them and

The work they do is absolutely amazing. What is your frack outlook this year and next? Bonus question Will more completions consultants be needed? Let me know who's hiring LOL. We love Cognite too, and I'm glad your brother-in-law works it up, Danny. Frack Outlook. All right, so let's be real here. The first half of this year is gonna kind of suck.

Hopefully things will start picking back up. If I would look at 2026 as a whole from January, beginning of January to end of December, I'm gonna basically say it's got the frack industry is gonna remain flat compared to 2025. Now

Once the price of oil gets above, say$58 a barrel, which I think is gonna happen in the third quarter of this year, things are gonna change and we're gonna have the opposite problem. But right now, operators are prioritizing capital discipline. They're focusing mainly on their tier one assets. They're leveraging different technologies like Simuel Frack, uh all that's just to reduce cost.

However, I think starting in the middle of 2026 and going out for the next say 10 years, eight to ten years, the global, and I don't mean just in the US and Canada, I mean the global hydraulic fractory market is gonna grow like crazy. I think right now it's about a twenty, twenty one dollar twenty one billion dollar year industry in the world.

I think that's gonna change and it's gonna end up being about a fifty billion dollar year industry. So I think it's gonna grow almost a hundred percent uh in the next ten years. So I think there's a lot of long term growth. I think you have a lot of innovations in the frack world with AI monitoring. Simulation, the fact that digital twins are accelerating and the marketing dynamics in North America especially are prime for more frack jobs.

But those same market drivers are also in other countries like Argentina, which I think we're gonna get to here somewhere. As far as consultants. The first half of this year I think it's gonna be kinda rough. If you have a job now as a consultant, uh keep them happy.

By the second half of this year, you can be mean to them because you can have so many offers in your back pocket, you're not gonna know what to do with it. Don't be mean to them. Don't be mean. Don't tell people that. I'm joking. Don't be mean to your employers. All right. Next up is from Sabrina P and she says, Thanks for the show. It's a great way to stay informed on global energy trends.

Being from Argentina, I can't help but smile every time you mention how much you enjoy a Malbec, Mark. When investors or operators look at Argentina's energy potential, the focus is often on well known macro and policy risks. From the perspective of more sophisticated investors or operators, what second order effects or less obvious signals tend to matter most when assessing whether growth can actually materialize?

And by the way, you work for one of my favorite companies, a little company called Chevron. Let's see. Well, you always give me grief about talking about Exxon Mobile. I love Chevron too. A couple of things. The oil production and fracking Argentina from the shell formation has been crazy, especially in 2025. It looks like it's gonna be great here in 2026. I think Argentina's gonna end up being a major regional exporter. I think that'll actually start happening this year.

But there still needs to be a bunch of investment infrastructure, especially things like pipelines. However, Production targets or hitting production targets. I think some of the other factors that you mentioned, infrastructure expansion is huge. The investment and the policies is a super important, especially to outside investors outside from Argentina. The R A GI framework seems to be working, which is basically the cost out pulling more foreign investment.

The exports is the key. The more Argentina can export uh its hydrocarbons, the world will wake up and want to buy their hydrocarbons, which then feeds the cycle of growth. We also have to look at what some of the future challenges are. Let's be real here. The infrastructure is super important, especially pipeline capacity. Argentine also needs to build some ports. And then the final thing once again, as always in a lot of places, is the corruption.

The corruption has been managed, I think, reasonably well, but it needs to be continued managed. And the problem here is we're starting to have a lot of significant revenue generate in Argentina. And historically, when you have that type of cash coming into a country, the corruption goes up. If Argentina keep a handle it, I think things are gonna be boomy for Argentina. And yes, I do love a good mallback.

And for all my Brazilian friends out there, I hate to tell you this, but I sort of like our Argentinian beef better than Brazilian. Although they're both fantastic. I would not turn away either one of them. Sabrina, thank you for the question. All right. Next up we have Matt S.

Oh I think I've seen his name a couple of times. Yeah. Mark Page, happy twenty six. With the closure of Philip sixty six and Valero's California refineries, will the impact on supply and prices increase? be contained to the west coast, can this loss of capacity affect national supply at all? Good question, Matt. It will affect some national refined products capacity, but probably not fuels. Fuels have a

Short shelf life. So jet fuel, diesel, gasoline. You got the Phillips 66 refinery closing, the Valero refinery closing. The thing to remember, Matt. is that it's that's just not gonna affect California. It's gonna affect other states that don't have refining capacity. Nevada, Arizona and some of the other parts of the west coast, Oregon. They're gonna have fuel shortages. There's gonna be a shortage in supply.

This is going to drive up gasoline prices, which is going to drive voters to vote a different way. You could see a lot of unrest. Anytime the price goes up at the pump and stays up at the pump, it's not good for whatever political power's in place. Now remember, California supplies I think over eighty percent of the fuel in Nevada, so everything I just rattled off is also gonna happen in Nevada. You can see price spikes, you can see shortages, you can see

Lawmakers try to implement laws to control that, which they can't because it's basically supply and demand. You'll see an increase in imports, which could also be more expensive. And then the closures and then shifting environmental policies just make it almost impossible for somebody to come in and reopen these refineries. So I don't see it happening pretty soon. I do think it will affect the nation on some of the refined products, just not refined fuels. Like I said, fuels have a shelf life.

So it's gonna be in the immediate west coast where the shortage of refined fuels is gonna cause issues with the economy. Some of the other products, think like Napa, benzene, some of those type of things. we'll cause shortages or a lower supply in the rest of the country, in the national supply, but very quickly those will be backfilled by somebody else that's cheaper. So it'll self adjust. Hopefully that was um

Helpful Matt. And by the way, thank you. You've been a friend for the show for a very long time. Very long time. Speaking of one of my favorite companies, uh it's also Matt's uh works at Chevron as well. It must be Chevron Day at all I guess this week. I guess so.

Now for everybody's favorite part. Which is this week in petroleum history. I love this week in petroleum history. All right, a couple of cool things. Soap. How about January 18th, the 1921, by the way, after reaching a depth of over thirty seven hundred feet? Drillers in Lamar, Oklahoma hit a strata that they had never seen before. The geologists freaked out. They had a blowout.

And what came out of well was this dark green oil that as soon as it hit the atmosphere turned yellow and it turned into a paste. They call it the Vaseline Blowout. I'm not touching that. Literally. Literally, it was like Vaseline blew out of the well. They couldn't clean it up. They couldn't pump it out in pipelines because it was too thick. So they had to spill this build a special pipeline that was heated with four-steam pipes.

Around the middle pipe to even pump it out. They couldn't keep it in storage tanks. And as far as I know, something like this has never, ever happened. Again. So great baseline blowout of nineteen twenty one in Oklahoma. Whew. Only in Oklahoma. Only in Oklahoma. Nineteen thirty one, East Texas farmers drilling right after the Great Depression in what is now known as the Permian.

hit a massive well which produced over seven thousand barrels of all day under its own pressure. They thought they had found another oil field. They didn't realize it was just another big part of the Permian Basin. And then finally, January 19th, 1850, Canadian geologist Abraham Geisner received a U.S. patent for a gas manufacturing process. to produce something that he called skilled illumination gas. What was it?

Kerosene. Yeah. Right? Which us and the rest of the world used to light their homes and their businesses for years until They figured out whale oil was better, it was brighter, and it didn't have as much smoke. Unfortunately the whales did not appreciate us killing them with their whale oil. So eventually we came back to kerosene. But the second time we came back to kerosene, we actually came back from it not being generate from a gas, but actually produce some crude oil.

When at that time the byproduct was gasoline. They put gasoline in these big ponds that evaporate in the air'cause it was a waste product. Who'd have ever thought that kerosene was that much more valuable than gasoline? Right. Oh, you should talk about the Houston Petroleum Club being founded on January thirty first, nineteen forty six. And you just did.

Speaking of stuff like that, we love to give away cool stuff on this show. So if you would like a very collectible and sought-after OGG and hard hat a laptop sticker and a bonus temporary tattoo, very simple thing to do. Go to the OGGN YouTube channel. So go to YouTube, search for OGGN, look at any video you want and comment on it. Snap a screenshot of your comment so we know you actually typed in a comment in our YouTube channel.

Email it to marketing at OGG.com and we will send you an OG and hat top laptop sticker and a temporary tattoo. The link will be in the show note for our YouTube channel. It's a fun thing to do and it's helping us grow our YouTube channel. Speak it helping us, you haven't signed up for our LinkedIn.

company page yet, go do that. We have sixty thousand of your peers signed up. Go join them. First place you'll learn about all the new stuff we're doing. We have a bunch of new shows coming out this year and we're investing in video as much as I hate to do it. Google dragged me into it, kicking and screaming.

Weekly rig count page, where are we? Well, the US is up one, so at five forty four. Canada's up five, which makes a lot more sense. Two thirty one. Internationally we're down eight at ten sixty five. Perfect. By the way, people, years ago we started a street team and I will take full responsibility. I Mark Lecour.

The whole purpose was to build a community of people that enjoyed this podcast and our other shows and have them do stuff together and get special recognition prizes become part of a community that the normal population is a part of. And the whole process failed.

'Cause we didn't put enough effort into it'cause we It wasn't about effort, it was about time and how many people we had there and they were doing that for free sort of thing. We're gonna pick the street team back up. It will be housed on LinkedIn this time, it was originally housed on Facebook. Ben, our conference director, is going to run that. There'll be more details coming soon, but this time we have some rigor and some people dedicated to this. So

If you like this podcast, you like our other podcasts, you want to be part of the community, get some exclusive swag, some insider stuff, get invited to events for free that other people have to pay for, just pay attention, which by the way, the first place we'll announce this will be on our LinkedIn page. So like I said, sign up. So that you know what's coming next.

As far as myself or any of our experts coming to speak at your event, just reach out. We'd love to share the details. 2026, I'm filling up with keynotes already, but we have a bench of talent here that can address almost anything that your company needs.

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