Oil and Gas This Week | January 22 2025 | Ep 366

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. So thanks for joining us for episode 366.

So our last episode we talk about being in Vegas and we brought something back with us from Vegas. Apparently, yeah, what happens in Vegas doesn't necessarily stay. And we brought back a whole ass virus. Yes, all three of us, Andrew Page and myself, all caught it.

And I'm sure we got it from Vegas'cause it all hit us at the almost the same time, but just a bad cold. So if I sound deeper than normal, that's what's really going on. But considering we all got a little sick, still had a great time in Vegas and big shout out to the Consumer Electronics Show for inviting us and for Everybody that participate in that. We have a bunch of videos coming out around some of the stuff we've done and some of our partners over there. It was a good time.

Speaking of a good time, we don't have a review page. So I guess that is a good time for everybody else so they don't have to hear about it. Yeah. So come on people. We don't ask for a whole lot. Someone else pays for this show. The one thing we do ask is leave us a review.

Takes a couple of seconds and it allows your peers when they discover this show to figure out if they want to listen to it or not. It helps us out. So please except for that one lady that hates my laugh. Well, even if there's something that you don't like about the show, let us know. But we just appreciate all reviews. Let's get the news stories. Well, first up, I mean, we're starting strong. Cognite recognized as leader in

Industrial data management solutions. Yeah. And we are not intentionally doing this because Cognite sponsors this show. This popped up in our news articles. But this is a cool article. from an independent research firm showing how Cognite's data fusion platform is basically the best in the world around its data modeling capacities.

So if you're looking into ways to help model your data, if you're into AI, big data analytics, any type of data modeling, check out Cognite. There'll be a link to this article for all your geeks out there in the show notes to go in deep on why Vertantics gave Cognite props for being the best in its space in its data management.

solutions. The good thing about this is the more technology we have like this in the oil field, the better we are at stuff. The better we are at producing, the better we are at protecting the environment, the better we are at lowering costs. And I just love this type of stuff. I've been in this industry for over twenty five years.

And probably for twenty of it have been screaming we need new technology in the industry. It's finally starting to happen. So love this sort of stuff. Looking for more future successes from Cognite and their team and helping the oil and gas industry do what we do best.

All right, next up we have Petrobras refinery output hit record high in twenty twenty four. Yeah, this is actually pretty impressive. Considering they cut CapEx funding in twenty twenty three, you wouldn't think they would increase production. Bunch of good pieces of information here. One of the things they talk about is their refiners hit a all time high thanks to record production of gasoline and S ten diesel. And no, if you're a Chevy fan, S ten diesel is not diesel made for old S tin trucks.

S ten diesel basically mean has I think it's ten parts per million of sulfur. Getting rid of sulfur or lowering the sulfur content in diesel fuel goes a long way in helping improve emissions. Their gasoline output was twenty four point four billion liters, which is amazing. And their annual refinery utilization rate was ninety three point two percent, which is

Great. Typically refineries run around ninety percent utilization rate. So they're really tweaking the capacity of this refinery. Bunch of good forecasts in here. They're actually expected to increase refinery production. 31% by 2030. That's an amazing growth streak. The other thing is. They're gonna actually increase the oil production in Brazil or that's projected by seventy five percent by twenty thirty.

And the reason that's important is you can't do a whole bunch with crude oil until you refine it. So of course Petrol Bruss has to grow its refining capacity to keep up with the demand for refined products and also to do something with this in huge increase in crude that's gonna happen in the country.

Love Brazil, always have on our list of things to do is a Brazilian Portuguese podcast on the Brazilian oil and gas space. If you're listening to this and you'd like to help us with that, reach out to me directly. Love what Petrobras is doing, and I hope to see continued growth in the refining space.

Yep, yep. Next up we have fire at huge California battery storage plant forces evacuations. Yeah, something we don't want to see a growth in is fires anywhere. The good thing about this is they were able to evacuate, nobody was hurt. They're actually still working on putting the fire out, so they haven't been able to actually start the investigation. Unfortunately, Paige, this is not the first time.

This plant has caught on fire. Oh really? Yeah. And the local county supervisor said there's no way to sugarcoat. This is a disaster. The fire is not expected to spread because it's contained by the actual building constructor. So hats off to the engineers that ought this thing out in case something bad ever happened. Like I said, the cause of fire hasn't been figured out yet.

They had a fire in September of twenty twenty and February of twenty twenty two. Both of those two fires were caused by malfunction in the sprinkler system. Now when you hear that you go, Oh, that means the sprinkler didn't put it out. No. What happened is the sprinkler went off and the water that was laid on top of these lithium-ion batteries caused them to overheat, causing the fire. The opposite of what you would think.

I am not throwing shade at battery and battery storage. I think there's a huge future in it. We've advanced the technology tremendously. We've a bunch more to go. I love the idea of solar and massive battery storage if it makes economic sense. However, this is just showing you that we don't have all the kinks worked out. And like I said, in this case, luckily nobody was hurt.

Let's hope after this third fire, this company sits down and figures out what the root cause actually is and actually does something to prevent that from happening again. Yeah, no, no. Because I can't imagine lithium fires are hard to put out, which by the way, people, if you don't know this The lithium battery has been around for a while, but it was dangerous as heck. It literally would blow up and kill people. So the world needed a safer lithium battery.

And a company cited, you know what, we're gonna do this. And they put their best scientists and engineers to work on making a better lithium battery. And that's where the lithium ion battery came from. The lithium ion battery is much safer than the lithium battery. And the company that did that work, ExxonMobil. A lot of people don't know that. Wow, actually I didn't know that either. You know what ExxonMobil did?

They could have held that patent close and sued a lot of people and kept that money and that profit for themselves. They gave it away to the world. A lot of people think Exxon's destroying a planet. Exxon literally gave away the patents and the rights to lithium-ion battery to make the world a better place. So that's off them doing that years ago. But we'll keep an eye on this as more and more

Battery storage gets funded. In this case, I know this was funded by the IRA, which is going to be interesting to see what happens in the future. But you're going to have more and more of these types of incidents and we just need to learn from them and make sure that everybody stays safe, including the environment. So we'll keep an eye on this.

All right. Next up we have BP slashes jobs bolsters oil and gas operations. Yeah, you and I were talking about this just a couple of days ago. Yeah. So if you read through this article, they cover all the major points, which is basically BP made a gamble, Shell did too. years ago and decided to put a lot of resources into renewables and it didn't pay off for them. In their sector, unfortunately, they're lagging way behind, especially shareholder value.

Both Chevron and Exxon shareholder values went up, Shells has gone up a little bit and BP's has gone backwards. It's declined, which when you're a public company is that's not something you can deal with. So they're cutting a lot of jobs. They're cutting they're saying it's five percent of their workforce.

But I believe they're skewing that number a little bit because they're talking about their actual employees. So they're laying off forty seven hundred employees, but they're also laying off three thousand contractors. So the five percent of the workforce I think number is actually a little bit higher than that. And this is all cost cutting measures to actually get them back in line.

The other thing they've done a whole bunch of is cut back on their investments in the renewable space. Oh imagine that. Didn't you say something about that last year? Yep. I told you it's just gonna happen. And it did. I don't like to see anybody lose their job. Yeah.

The kind of good thing is our industry is really strong now globally and that strength is to continue to grow. So hopefully a lot of these people can pick up another job in the industry that they know and well and they have experience in. Yeah. But there's a tension here between what the public thinks they want the super majors to do and what the super majors actually have to do to stay in business and stay competitive.

And that difference is a lot of times unfortunately weighed in the court of public opinion. We talked about this earlier where I'm seeing a lot of stuff on social blaming the oil and gas industry for things that we have nothing to do with, like the fires in California. B P has tried to stay.

in the middle of that space, but now they're just realizing that they have to go back to their roots, which is the production of hydrocarbons. They actually expect to increase a bunch of world production with this is crazy, but with Iraq. But I'm telling you right now, I'd rather have B P operating deals in Iraq than the Iraqis native oil companies if you care about the environment. Right. This is their new CEO doing what he has to do to keep shareholders happy, to keep the company competitive.

And they're still saying their CapEx spin is aligned with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. I it's not. Not that I think the Paris Climate Agreement is something we need to worry about. But this is uh B P making an about face or still doing an about face and recovering from some bad decisions they made. a few years ago, love B P and I would like to see this company succeed However, I'm already starting to look at my predictions for 2026. It's only January. Yeah, I suspect that.

In the near future, B P may not be around anymore. They may get picked up by somebody else. Oh really? Ooh. Ooh. I like that. Okay.

Moving on, Republican-led states sue Biden administration over offshore drilling ban. This is a natural reaction. I like how they term this a group of Republican-led states. No, let's say what it really is. It's a group of states that depend on oil and gas generate to generate revenue that just happen to be Republican. It has nothing to do with Republicans. It has to do with the states that depend on the production and transportation and refinery hydrocarbons.

generate revenue so they can have schools and hospitals and roads and everything. So this is a group that's suing this is gonna be an interesting space. You know our new president Donald Trump has said that he's gonna overturn us the first day in office. The way this decision was made and the laws that were used to be a good thing.

makes it really hard for the president to come back in and use executive privilege to fix this or to basically reverse this ban. Well of course it does. So this falls under the seventy year old Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

Which was written to help protect the environment, but it's 70 years old. It needs to be rewritten. And basically the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act says that the president can carve out pieces of federal land that you can't drill on with his authority, his single authority, but if you want it to reverse it, you have to have Congress reverse it.

I don't like the way that law was written, but of course our exiting administration used it to their benefit, which even though I disagree totally with what they did, I see why they did that. But between the states going to court, between our new president Santa Huska overturned it, which she can't legally

But let's see what he does anyway. And with the fact that the Congress probably will support him if he does need to go to Congress, I expect this to be turned around. I'm still really aggravated, Paige, that our outgoing administration did this. It accomplishes nothing but eating up time and cost Especially costs. Especially costs. Whereas a nation we could be moving forward with this and now we have to stop and go backwards a little bit. Well he doesn't know he even did it. It's fine. Childish.

Things will change for the better. It's definitely the administration. It wasn't him. He doesn't know. All right, anyway, US F T C r finalizes consent order for fifty three billion Chevron Hess merger. Yeah, you've been hearing about this since last year. This is something that The Federal Trade Commission has approved. Almost everybody else has approved. There are some caveats of this. So basically, John Hess, the CEO of the old Hess, can't sit on the board.

over quite frankly stupid allegations, but it is what it is. What are the allegations? That he basically had conversations with OPEC during pricing changes to see if they would curtail production to keep prices up. So they singled him out because of this merger. Or really it's not a merger, it's an acquisition, let's be honest here. However

Every president of every major oil company, independent, super major, had conversations with Obeck at that time. And he didn't do anything wrong. What would have been wrong would have had this conversation in private and say, look, if you curtail production to keep prices up I'll write you a check for X. Right. That's not what he did. He just asked him to curtail production. Speaking of our past administration, within a week of him doing this,

Our past president, Joe Biden, did the same thing except he asked them to increase production. And he didn't get barred from anything because he wanted to keep price at the pump low. Anyway, don't want to get too much into all of that. I will say this much. Y'all know my romance with ExxonMobil. I think they're the best project management engine. I think they're the best project management and engineering company on the planet, bar nut.

However, there's only one thing left still standing in the way for this merger between Chevron and Hesh. You want to know what it is? ExxonMobil. They're challenging this deal. Interesting. Well, of course, because this gives their competitor a leg up. If I was ExxonMobil, I would challenge this deal too. However

The writing's on the wall at ExxonMobil. You're gonna slow this deal down a little bit'cause you have to go to arbitration for the judges to decide what you do. But you're gonna lose this. So I'd really prefer if you would just bow out right now gracefully. However, Exxon's never taking my advice. I don't think they ever will. So we'll see.

Oh Okay. Shell reaches first oil at whale in Deepwater Gom. Yep, Gom, Gulf of Mexico. Last episode we talked about how Chevron is partners in this project. We went through the details of how this project is so freaking cool. New technology, new processes, super safe. A large amount of hydrocarbons were recovered from the Gulf of Mexico. And this is the story from the shell side.

This production platform is in the Alamos Canyon Block seven seven three of the Gulf of Mexico. It's about ten miles from Shell's Silvertip Field, which is in the Pareto Corridor. They finally made a final investment decision, which basically means they're gonna write you a check. to do the two subsidy tie backs, which is how they're gonna be able to bring those hydrocarbons back to market. This platform is semi summercial, eighty six hundred feet of water.

And it's just kicking buttons, taking names, and it's doing stuff really, really cool. The emissions from this platform is dramatically lower. The security and the redundancy of everything on this new platform is amazing. The safety is amazing. And it's gonna continue to produce probably for another twenty, twenty five years. That's a great yeah. That's great to see. So Shell has sixty percent interest in this, Shevin has forty percent.

And I think Ecuador has a small portion in here as well. But this is just great news. Love to see what Shell and Chevron are doing this. And like I said, this article tells a story from the Shell side. Great job, guys.

Woop whoop. All right. Next up, EIA extends five key energy forecasts through December twenty twenty six. Yeah, so if you listen to me for any length of time, a long time ago I had a ton of faith and I depended on EIA numbers. And at some point they became politicized and I now have almost zero faith in their numbers.

Page. Uhhuh. They're starting to move back to being more truthful about it. I don't know why. Maybe people are worried about say their jobs. Maybe they're being called out or who knows? I like a lot of these numbers. One of the things they're talking about is the increase in electrical demand or electrical consumption. For last year in the US it grew two percent.

and it will continue to grow by two percent according to the EIA for twenty twenty five twenty twenty six. I slightly disagree with that. I do think it'll stay around two percent for twenty twenty five. I think it'll actually be three and a half, maybe even close to four percent by twenty twenty six. Let's see who's right. The fact that demand's going up is what's the important part, not the percentage.

They also talk about solar in the US is supplying more in this increase of electrical demand or electrical consumption, which is a hundred percent right. The EIA expects the electrical power sector to increase solar generation by about thirty five percent between now and twenty twenty six, which I think is about right.

And by the way, people, don't hate on solar. Solar has its place and when it's done right, it is amazing for the environment. The problem is it's not a cure all, right? But in the right circumstance, solar is fantastic. So is wind, geothermal, nuclear, everything. They get into global oil consumption. Here's where I have a slight disagreement with them, although the difference is very minute. They're doing a much better job, I think.

They think that the global consumption of oil, of basic liquids, is gonna go up by one point three million barrels per day in twenty twenty five and then another one million barrels in twenty twenty six. I think that's slightly low. I think we're gonna do about one point five and about one point five again in twenty twenty six. But we'll see. It all depends what's going on in the rest of the world, especially in Asia.

And then they talk about U.S. crude production. We're at a record of 13.2 million barrels per day in 2024. They're expecting that production to increase to 13.7 million per day this year. And then they expect it to start leveling off. I don't think it's going to start leveling off. probably for another thirty or maybe even fifty years.

We'll see. But like I said, EIA, you're doing I think a much better job. Now, their numbers on LNG on liquefied natural gas, I think, are spot on. They're seeing an increase in LNG exports. They're seeing two new LNG export facilities. being lit Plaquin LNG and Corpus Christi LNG stage three. And they expect that the amount of exported LNG to rise to 18.6 billion cubic foot by 2026. So I think that number's spot on. I don't know what happened. I don't know if this is LUT

I don't know if something's changed within the EIA, but I'm starting to have more faith in their numbers. Like I said, these numbers compared to my numbers are almost spot on. So good job, EIA. Can't believe I just said good job, EIA. Long time coming, huh? Yep. All right. Colonial pipelines main US gasoline artery likely shut until Friday. Do you remember it was almost two years ago when this Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I do remember that. It also delivers through those states as it goes up.

When this pipeline was taken down by cybersecurity incident that caused gas prices to spike immediately. It got ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of state governors had to step in and go, if we catch you spiking prices on purpose, you're going to jail, which unfortunately

I can't believe you had to pass a law because that's just being price gouging. Yeah, for price gouging, right? Anyway, clone it this pipeline this exact same pipeline is down. It's down because there's a leak of gasoline. So instead of trying to

continue to generate money. They decided the right thing was to go ahead and kill the pipeline, which they did. They're in the process of figuring out where this leak is, uh figure out what they need to do to repair it. They're hoping that this pipeline would be back up in production by Tuesday, though we're recording this on a Sunday. It's January eighteenth.

However it's a Saturday. We have I'm sorry, you got a Saturday. It's eighteenth is right. It's a wrong day Saturday. However This part of the US between Texas and Florida up to the Carolinas is getting ready to be slapped with one hell of a cold front, which hopefully

Colonial pipeline makes a decision to not have their workers out in that stuff or if their workers are out there, make sure they're protected. Yeah. I'm not sure it'll be back up on Tuesday. It will be back up this week. I'm I'm positive of that. But when you pull sixty five million barrels of gasoline offline instantly, it's gonna affect prices and it's too early to see what's happening. Monday is when we're gonna see what happens with pricing and availability for gasoline.

If you're listening to this and you're in the affected area, actually by the time you listen to this it'll probably be over with, but If you're listening to this and you're in an affected area and in the future Anytime you hear there's a shortage of gasoline where you live, the one thing I don't want you to do is rush out and go fill up all your cars because that creates a more of a demand, which makes the outage even worse. Yeah. If your car is three quarters full, don't go fill it up.

And if you do go fill it up, just fill it up once. Don't keep it topped up. And if you have multiple cars, just fill up one car, leave gasoline for other people that need it. Yeah. I completely agree with this. Unless the hurricane's coming. But even then the shortage is always temporary. It's always temporary. Yeah. The reaction of the market, which are the people that buy gasoline

can make a huge difference on whether the shortage is short and nobody even notices it or it's catastrophic. Well it's gonna be an interesting week to say the least. It really will be.

Okay, next up we have the eighth U.S. Liquefied Natural Gas Export Terminal, Plachman LNG ship's first cargo. Amazing stuff. The more of this LG export market we can capture, the better off the entire world will be, and the better off the companies that are doing this.

So this is Placman elegy. And by the way, if you read this article and you don't know how you could pronounce that word, it's because Paige and I are both from Louisiana and we know where Plackman is, so we know how to pronounce that word. It's not spelled how you would think it would. That has nothing to do with the education level in Louisiana. And we can make jokes about it because we're from there. It has everything to do with actually the Native American tribes who

words got intermingled with the Creole and the Cajuns. So you end up with If you really know what you're talking about, I wanna hear you pronounce New Orleans. Street names. Like Chapatulas? Yeah, exactly. Look up Chapatulas how it's spelled, people, and see if you can pronounce it. Anyway, back to the news article. This is the second facility after the Calcoshoe Pass LG that has come online.

Both of these terminals came online very quickly, which is amazing. Both of these are different phases. So there's more construction going on. Each phase of this one has nine blocks. Each block has two liquefication units. And that's what you call trains.'Cause you drive by'em at the right angle. They sorta look like a train. Yeah. Placum L and G shipped its first production, its phase one cargo.

And then Venture Global, which is one of the investors, made its final investment decision to go ahead and build the next train at Calcashoe Pass L and G. The Gulf Coast of the U.S. is kicking butts and taking names as far as exporting LG because you'll have to remember we have Corpus Christi LG right down the street. Love this. Looks like this year the U.S. will produce around 15 to 16 billion cubic feet.

of liquefying natural gas. Most of that will be exported. And if you don't know why I said this is good for the world, The world is switching from coal to natural gas for electrical generation, which automatically lowers emissions by sixty percent. I mean there's a bunch of other environmental perks to use an LNG. And it really is the fuel of the future. So love seeing this stuff going on. Would like to see our brothers and sisters on the west coast of the US.

Get into the LNG market, it's not going to happen because of politics. They have everything they need: abundant natural gas that's close by, deep water ports. They need jobs. Now on the East Coast, it's interesting. I do think you're gonna see some more LNG activity on the East Coast. I think it's a little way out there. Right now the Gulf Coast of the US is ruling this. The Third Coast. Yep. The Third Coast. So good job, Placement LNG. Keep it going.

All right, last one. Trump's likely first moves on US energy policy. Yeah. One of the first things I expect him to do is withdraw us from the twenty fifteen Paris Climate Agreement. Again. Again. Regardless of what you think about the agreement, the first thing is most people don't understand is it is intentionally non enforceable.

Which means if you're a country that you agree to this, there's no repercussions if you don't meet anything, which by the way, nobody's gonna meet anything. They keep kicking the can down the street as far as emissions. I don't think we should involve this. It's a waste of time and money. If you care about the planet, there's more realistic things you can do than

be a member of the Paris Climate Agreement. Aren't we putting a bill on that anyway? What do you mean? We normally pay for like all kinds of things like NATO and all this. Yeah, so we're not that involved in the Paris Climate Agreement as far as money come out of our pocket. But it's just a waste of time. It's a sidetrack, right? It's a pipe dream. There's better ways you can use your government to increase the quality of our planet.

environment and for our people then the parents like a facade. It's what happens when you get a bunch of politicians together and allow them to do stuff and give them a budget. They're trying to get reelected, trying to make sure they stay in power and Yeah, that makes sense.

As usual, they're not actually doing anything. Like I said, this agreement's non enforceable. There's no repercussions if you don't do what you say you could do to the agreement, which is what type of contract do you sign that has a clause that says no matter what, it doesn't matter what this contract says. JK J. Basically what this says, right?

Next thing I think he's gonna happen he's gonna lift the moratorium liquefied natural gas export permits. That'll happen on day one and that's stuff that should happen on day one. The next thing that may happen is The whole thing going on between Russia and Ukraine has driven the European governments to do things they really shouldn't have to try to keep their economy moving, try to keep their people warm. I think Trump's gonna step in

and figure out a way to get more LNG to Europe. Not quite sure how that will happen. It may be a tax thing or a tariff thing. And if people think I'm crazy when I say this, he may declare a national emergency page. He has the ability to do that as president. And if he declares a natural energy emergency in the U.S., he can do everything from fast track permits to fund new power infrastructure, fund new oil and gas projects.

That would fit in right to his broader agenda to help with energy production in the country and in the world. I'm sure Chris Wright will have some safety Chris Wright will make sure that he can actually do what he's promising. That's what we need is yeah. Somebody that's run a energy comp that is an engineer that understands energy and physics and

biology and chemistry, which is all Chris Wright. Plus he's just a funny guy. We've had him on a bunch of our shows. We actually used to do our Colorado mixer in his Liberty Office there. First place I ever saw wine on draft. That's gonna be my memory of the secondary energy. He had vital draft in his audience. But go through this article, there's a bunch of really cool stuff.

Like his whole drill baby drill mantra, there's not a whole lot he's gonna be able to do in the next year. Although if he does make an energy emergency, he can actually clear the way for things like faster permitting, more federal money and construction infrastructure and all that. It also's gonna be interesting to see what he does with Terrace. Of all of our presidents since I've been aware of politics, and my favorite president was Ronald Reagan.

Because he has a business background, I like how he uses tariffs. Most of our presidents, they don't understand. Even their own cabinet and their own administration don't really understand it. We're gonna see what happens. Now the one thing I'm a little worried about is he's thrown shade at offshore wind development.

And I have too, but I'm throwing shame at the fact that some places is not practical and it's gonna cause a rebound effect where people are gonna be anti offshore winds, which is what I don't wanna have happen. We'll see what happens with this. His present team probably can tamp him down a little bit on really not liking offshore wind.

Where it makes sense like everything else, we should do it and pursue it. Where it doesn't make sense, we should not allow it to happen. I just don't want him to go overboard like he's tend to do and kill all offshore wind. We'll see what happens with that. But absolutely ready for our new President Trump to step in and start making changes in energy policy. Lord knows we need it.

Yep, that's it. That's it. What about AI, Paige? What about AI, Mark? First thing about AI is AI can make a big difference in energy, boosting productivity and safety totally across the board. But you know, getting it up and running throughout operations isn't easy. Born from industry for industry, cognite helps you improve troubleshooting, turnaround, field operations, and more with AI faster, more efficiently than building it yourself.

If you need help with your next AI wind, visit www.cognite.com forward slash EN forward slash OG podcasts. See people. This is why I put the link in the show notes. Which by the way Last couple of times we did this read, the link was wrong and it didn't work. And the missing part was that E N in the middle. So I've changed that. So if you clicked on the link in the past and it went nowhere.

Sorry for that. Now when you click on the link, it should take you directly to the Cognite oil and gas page featuring us and what they're doing in the oil and gas space. So if you want to see why the industry trusts Cognite and why we trust Cognite to power digital transformation, go to the show notes, click on it. I'll try to do it again if you want to write it down. It's cognite.com forward slash EN forward slash OG podcast. And the link is in the show notes.

You know what's else is on the show notes? Hmm. Links to sign up for our two newsletters. You hear me say this every week, just go sign up. I tell you what, I'll make a deal with y'all. If I can get a hundred people to sign up between those two newsletters in the next week, which is not a big ask. I won't mention it on the next episode'cause y'all keep complaining. I keep mentioning them. I just ignore'em, it's fine. Igly recount, where are we? We are as of January tenth on my birthday.

Five eighty, down four in the United States, up thirteen in Canada at two twenty nine. I mean as of November internationally we're down ten at nine oh nine. Yeah, happy birthday. I think you got some Legos. I think I got a bunch of Legos. What's it feel like to be thirty? Oh man, I wish. Speaking of wishing, go check out our merch store. We're gonna totally revamp the merch store. Speaking of big data analytics.

We are applying big data analytics to our merchandise store and stuff that has not sold we're gonna get rid of. Stuff that has sold well, we're gonna have other items along those lines. And so if we're not careful, it's gonna be a baby store. And if you don't know why That's what we most of our merch is baby stuff, which I think it's awesome, right? Unexpected but awesome. I need to go buy something for Lauren for her new daughter. Yeah. Hey Lauren if you're listening.

Speaking of speaking, do you want myself and my experts to come to your event, your sales and marketing kickoff, do a keynote, do some education, reach out, happy to share the details. My favorite thing

And I'm really looking forward to this, although it's gonna sound like I'm making a joke, is I'm actually speaking in front of the National Frozen Food Association this year. And I can't wait to do that. Something completely different for me. And you go, why the frozen food wants Mark Liqueur to speak? You know what their biggest cost is?

Energy energy. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I think is really cool is we're starting to get more companies outside the oil and gas that will be participating stuff. A year or two ago I did basically a kind of a leadership

presentation which don't normally do and it's the oil and gas guy in Hurricane Katrina. And you don't know this page, but I had somebody that was in that presentation a year ago, New Orleans reached out to me. They want me come do it'cause it was so powerful and it moved them so much. I'm not a motivational speaker. However

I do have one story, one presentation that shows the power of leadership when things really hit the fan and that's what this is. So reach out to us if you want us to share and help you the other thing is this is the time of the year where I go out and talk to sales and marketing organizations that sell market into oil and gas on what is different in twenty twenty five than twenty twenty four. What do you salespeople need to be aware of? What are trends?

what are techniques that didn't work before that will work now. So happy to share all those details. And it's almost conference season. Yeah, we're doing our podcast pavilion at six conferences. The first one is Nate, which is I think the first week of February. Yeah. And I can't remember the other five, but it's all the big So if you're going to'em come find us, we'll be someplace but we'll be somewhere. You can't miss us. First Friday QA.

The same person that was spamming our other contact page has now found a First Friday QA. Yeah, cut it off. Because all I do is cut it off for a week and then they lose interest and they go find something else. So if you need to leave us a question for first Friday QA and you go to the OGGN website. And you can't find the form field, just hit us up on social, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, well, maybe not Facebook.

Hit up Mark. Don't hit up me. All right. A lot for this episode. Looking forward. Speaking of First Friday QA. I think that might be the next one we do. Awesome. Ready to get out of here? Yep. Remember folks, do great work, pay it for it, 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.

This show, 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 This show has been a production of the Oil and Gas Global Network.