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For Friday, January 16, it's Brew Markets Daily and I'm Ann berry. Well, in 2013, I'm just setting the stage here. I was assigned to invest in oil field services. I had not really done much in the sector beforehand. So here's how I went about it. I sat in my office for a few weeks trying to talk to absolutely nobody, reading every piece of material I could on the sector and the companies in it. Then I called every research analyst I could find. And then I hit the road. I went to Houston, to Midland, to Odessa, to Calgary, to Lafayette, to Mexico City. I pretty much stayed on the road for the next four years doing deals in this space. If I look back to how I got started in this sector, which is a vitally, vitally Critically important sector, I.e. oil and gas and energy in general. I look back now and I just really wish that I'd been able to sit down with somebody insightful, engaging, dynamic, high energy, frankly, just to get me excited about it. Because I have a little secret. When I was first assigned to this, I wasn't super excited. My eyes tended to glaze over a little bit on the space, despite knowing just with an economist background how important it was. So the person that I really wish I'd been able to sit down with is Alex Steel. She's amazing, she's articulate. She's the energy reporter at Bloomberg. For a long time now she's working in IT with energy clients. And so I got an opportunity basically to have the conversation with her on the basics of the sector, the conversation I wish I had had earlier in my career. And we broke down together an update on what on earth is going on in the global macroeconomic environment for the energy sector right now. But first a word from our sponsor, Public. John, are you ready for this show to go public?
B
Well, Anne, this show has been live every week for months, so I don't know what you're talking about.
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I mean public dot com. It's the investment platform for those who take it seriously. You can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bond options, crypto. And now thanks to their new AI powered product generated assets, you can turn any idea into an investable index. Start with any prompt. For example say semiconductor suppliers, growing revenue over 20% year over year. And it'll get to work.
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Just head to public.com brewmarkets to see it in action. That's public.com brewmarkets paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosure in Podcast Description now my conversation with Alix Steel, energy communication expert at Drive Path Advisors. So I'm really excited about this. So Alix Steel, thank you for being here. Just for some context for everyone. Alex is the energy guru who has owned the screen at Bloomberg for the longest time, talking about everything, oil and gas, really deep expertise in the global business and energy sector. And you recently joined Drive Path Advisors. So you're taking your expertise now out of the media environment and into advising clients actually in the space. So I'm beyond thrilled that you're here. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for joining. Talk to us. Please, Alex, really break it down to paint the picture just for someone who perhaps hasn't spent this kind of time in it, just the global oil market.
C
Yeah.
A
Who's producing it, who's using it and who matters.
C
First of all, thank you so much for having me. This is my first appearance outside of Bloomberg and 20 minutes on energy is like, thank you for giving me this New Year's gift. If you buy anything anywhere or move or turn on your lights, you are a consumer of energy. And I know that everyone's eyes can glaze over when you say that, but energy is literally used in everything and particularly oil and gas. And how you power things will be key going forward. Obviously, if you're looking at data centers or the re industrialization of the US or say LNG exports, but it even goes further than that. Oil products are used in your clothes. Like if you buy a T shirt, you got oil in it. Right. So it's really important and it's very complicated and where the oil comes from and how it's mixed and then where it shows up after it's mixed is really a complex market.
A
So talk to us about where it comes from because this is a global industry. It's coming from the groundwater. But there talk to us about opec, talk to us about the United States and and then talk to us also about Latin America and where China and Russia stand in this equation. And I pick those because the news is all about these big players at the moment. But just lay the groundwork for us to help us understand who in that mix is producing, where are they producing and who's actually importing it.
C
Okay, so OPEC plus is an organization of oil producing countries really in the Middle East. OPEC itself is like Saudi Arabia, say Iran, Iraq, uae, Qatar.
A
Right.
C
Well, actually Qatar is not there anymore, but and then they have the plus, which includes Russia and some other countries. Right. And so they meet every few months and they talk about stuff in the oil market and they decide as a group if they're going to increase production, decrease production, or hold it steady. None of this is actually binding, so no one actually necessarily follows these rules. But the idea is these are huge producers, like 1312 million barrels of oil day, and they have a say in a huge chunk of oil. That's been the case for decades now. The US has always had some oil that we got out, but it wasn't enough. And we always were dependent on really the Middle east for oil. What happened about 20 years ago is the US discovered new technology that allowed us to tap more oil stuck in rocks. And it became a very advanced set of technology. And now we are. The United States is the biggest producer of oil in the entire world, period. Which may surprise many of you.
A
We're energy independent.
C
That's a different question. But we produce the most oil in the world because of all this really super cool new technology.
A
Do you watch Landman?
C
I've never seen Landman.
A
Oh, Alex, you've got to watch them. I had to ask. Okay, sorry I interrupt.
C
I have heard that I'm a bad person because I don't watch them.
A
No, but you are less. You're less culturally up to speak.
C
Not at all a surprise to anyone who knows me. So we basically tapped all this rock, we got all this oil, and then all of a sudden we wind up getting to a place where the super cool, juicy rock, we may be running out of it. Now, don't discount the US because we got super cool technology. We got really smart people who are looking behind it. But now we're seeing an emphasis on other areas of oil and that's where we get more to South America. So that's where we go to, say, Brazil. We go to Guyana, which is off the coast of Brazil, which has been a transformational oil project in just a few years because oil major kind of stopped drilling for stuff, like exploring for stuff.
A
Why did they do that?
C
Because it was expensive. They weren't getting paid for it by investors. There were tons of cost overruns. So Chevron had an LNG project in Australia that was overrun by years and the cost was jacked up. Sometimes through no fault of their own, sometimes through fault. But either way, investors didn't like that anymore. They liked the compact quick to produce oil of the US Lower, break even, so you can produce it for less. You can get the oil on faster. So that Became the trend then eventually. Now the trend is moving back a little bit now towards exploration, but still in very distinct areas. So the oil off the coast of Brazil, for example, has a really low break even. You can produce it for a lot less than you can in other areas of the world. And that's where we kind of are today. And then that brings into the case Venezuela. Now there's a super nerdy thing called oil grades which is actually really weirdly important to this story. But maybe I'll just pause there for a second before we, everyone's.
A
We are absolutely. No, we're going to go deep into oil grades because my eyes are lighting up at this. I love this conversation. Before we go to Venezuela, let's just talk about China. Talk to us about China in terms of where it sits in terms of consumption relative to production and who its most important or closest trading partners have been for China to get the oil it needs.
C
Right. So when China unleashed official fiscal stimulus after the housing crash for here in 2008, that really propped up the global economy. They were enormous consumers of anything that came out of the ground because they were building and scaling up really, really rapidly. And they definitely still are. They're the biggest users of coal in the world. They still have. Coal is one of the highest forms of energy that they use. But they also realized that they need to diversify. It can't just be coal, it can't just be gas, it can't just be oil. And they need to be somewhat independent. So they made a really big push into EVs, a really big push into solar manufacturing. And they become the largest solar manufacture in the world. And so they're transitioning. They got a lot of stuff going on. So they're still buying oil, but just we're not looking at the kind of pace that maybe we would have expected say 15 years ago and that we're used to where they buy it. They're very friendly with places like Russia, they are friendly with Iran, they are friendly with places in Africa. They are friendly with Venezuela. It's hard to know who they're buying from because the oil goes from one place, it goes different places and then it goes to China. So you don't actually know what crude has actually come in. It gets a little bit murky.
A
Interesting. Well, from that, letters indeed. Talk then about Venezuela, the president, you know, whether you say self anointed or elected, whichever position you take on that removed from power by the United States. And the narrative around Venezuela has all been that the United States wants To control the oil reserves, the proven oil reserves. 20% of the world's known. Apparently. It's a lot. What's your perspective on that? How important is Venezuela to the future of the oil market?
C
Right, okay, so follow me here on this, guys. So the actual oil, you don't use actual oil. It's not like I give you a barrel and that barrel turns on your light. So the oil is mixed with other stuff and then that creates the products. So like diesel, the gasoline that you put in your car, jet fuel, all that kind of stuff. Different oil is produced in different areas of the world. So there's like really light oil that you can refine and make certain products. There's like medium density oil that does the same and there's heavy oil. So heavy oil can make a lot of products, but it's heavy. It's like mud, it's like sludge. You got to mix it with some light stuff in order to move it. And refiners are the guys that do this. They take the oil they make, they have all the processes, and then they put the product out. So some refiners can do all of the above. They can do the light, the medium, the heavy. They're complex. Some refineries only process light. And in the United States in particular, because the oil we have in the US Is considered light, a lot of the refiners changed what they process in order to use just light crude, because that's what we have here. There's only a few refiners in the US that can actually process this heavy gross sludge oil.
A
So we've got Valero Philip, 66, they're in the Gulf. There are examples of folks who can.
C
Actually Chevron, for example, for some of their refinery as well. So Venezuela is very important for that heavy crude. It's cheaper. So you. And you can get a lot of products out of it. So economically, if I'm a refiner, I kind of want that heavy stuff. Canada has a lot of that heavy stuff too. So we've been using a lot of Canadian heavy crude. About 85% of Venezuelan oil that comes through stays in pad three. That's the Gulf Coast. And that's what you just said, like Philips 66. Some of the Chevron refineries, for example, will use that oil. The other people who have that oil are like Iran, so those Saudi Arabia has a bunch of it. So if you're looking at where you're getting their oil, you got Canada, you got Venezuela, and you got areas in the Middle east like Iran. So the question is, where do you want to be buying that from? Do you want to be buying from Canada? Sure. There are some issues there too. There's also transportation infrastructure issues. Venezuela, which is a lot closer, or Iran, which has a lot of political issues as well.
A
So let's talk about the ability to get it out of the ground in Venezuela.
C
Yes.
A
We saw last Friday President Trump hosted several executives of big oil companies, including ExxonMobil, including Chevron, which is the last man standing in terms of U.S. companies actually in Venezuela. CONOCOPHILLIPS the president explicitly saying he's looking for these companies to invest, which what could be north of $100 billion into Venezuela to get the extraction of the oil at the pace that you just described to be possible. Darren woods, who leads Exxon Mobil, said, quote, we've had our assets seized there twice. So you can imagine to reenter a third time would require some pre significant changes. He went on to say today it's uninvestable. Is Venezuela, Alex, uninvestable?
C
Yep, yep, he's right. Okay, but should he have said that to President Trump in a meeting in the White House? Maybe not.
A
Well, how does it change? How does Venezuela become investable? If you are Darren Wood, CEO of ExxonMobil.
C
Okay, so for the companies that are already in there, it is actually quite investable.
A
Talk about that.
C
So Chevron, for example, they can invest more in their current operations and get some out of it. The executive that was at the White House said they could get 50% more oil. They're getting about 240,000 barrels of oil a day and that they could 50% increase in like 18 to 24 months. Right. Because they already have operations on the ground to materially invest. Like to get to half a million and maybe even more than a million. That's going to take a lot more time and a lot more stability and we'll get to that in a second. For companies that are not in it at all. Godspeed. Not gonna happen. Really.
A
Okay.
C
Because you're looking at billions of dollars of investments in a politically unstable country with no guarantees at the end of the day, if the US Was subsidizing it, maybe that might be a little bit different. Or right now. Right. If the tax write offs might be a little bit. There were any of those might be a little bit different. But again, that has to, I mean, how close are we to that? Very far. Here are the couple problems. One, oil services industry there is a hot mess. So there's been the technological developments, the Infrastructure that's there to actually move the oil is not there, as well as the actual workers as well as infrastructure and high break even. So it's just real expensive and you're going to have to make a lot of investments in these things to actually make the oil flow. And that is going to be extraordinarily difficult when tomorrow things could change.
A
More of my conversation with Alix Steel in just a moment. And now back to my conversation with Alix Steel, energy communication expert at Drive Path Advisors. You've made reference to this term a lot, Alex, and I love to nerd out on the jargon, which is the break even, right? Which is literally the oil price at which it is possible for these companies to make money. So let's suppose we're at a point where Venezuela becomes investable and that's a big suppose for the reasons you laid out and we start to see oil prices happen that drop. What happens to domestic production here in the United States? What does that mean for all of the companies that have worked hard to build their presence here as the US has tried to figure out a way to reduce its dependence on its imports?
C
Then we get to the super nerdy moment where we talk about the oil curve.
A
Welcome to this place everyone.
C
So you have a beautiful thing called the oil curve. If you're ever on Bloomberg Terminal, it's CCRV Go. And it takes a look at current prices and then prices in the future from the next six months to the next say 10 years. What matters is the two to five year longer term price. So if that price is below 50 or 60, projects that require a lot of money like heavy oil is going to be tricky. Yeah, if the price goes to like 40, things are just going to stop. Now the good news for U.S. oil producers, and this is where the technology and innovation comes into play, is that it's going to be a little easier to restart their production. They can stop and start it a lot more easily than if you're working on a long term exploration project that cost billions of dollars. But you are not putting any money into the ground at all. If oil prices go below 50, period, you just cannot make any money off of it.
A
So why then? So when we think about how this plays out and you look at the US equity market and you, you've looked at this for a long time, who stands to gain long term if Venezuela ends up producing more and who, that's a public company is going to be standing there going, this maybe isn't such good news for us after all.
C
Well, Chevron for sure, because they already bring in about 1 million barrels a day of Venezuelan production, excuse me, 1 million barrels total in October to their refinery in the Gulf Coast. So they definitely benefit. They're going to have a nice little pass through there.
A
Right.
C
They're using the heavy crude. They can get that heavy crude, they're producing it. They're going to make the products. Right. Also removes a major risk from their operations. And just removing that headwind is going to be a huge upside for the stock Catalyst tbd. Right. That's where we have to kind of see about the infrastructure in terms of who it's good for refiners. If you produce heavy. If you are able to produce and use heavy oil in the United States as a refiner, boom, you are golden. Good to go nice on you other areas and other producers. It kind of depends. Right. So if Venezuelan oil does come into the US or on the market, what does it displace and then where do those crude flows go? Figuring that dynamic out now, do you have Iranian oil flowing more to China because the Venezuelan connection is shuttered and if so, what's the pricing of that? Is that good for a Chinese refiner? So there's a little bit remains to be seen in terms of flows for the US Companies. I don't see how it really impacts a specific US Company unless we see material downside for oil prices because they produce a different oil. They're not competing one on one. It's not a one to one ratio here with Venezuelan barrels versus US Barrels. It's the overall price structure that winds up mattering. And that's where those breakevens become really, really important and where that curve becomes really, really important.
A
And if you Saudi Aramco right now or one of the other Middle Eastern OPEC players, what are you thinking as you watch all this play out?
C
I'm thinking I'm definitely not going to increase oil production for a little bit because I'm going to wait and see kind of what happens and how much can come on and how quickly. Because Saudi Arabia's fiscal break even. So the oil price they need to be able to fund their government is like over 80 bucks. So they're hurting hard right now with oil in this place. The other interesting thing too you have to think of is like what kind of oil price do you need to maintain what you're already doing versus explore? And if you're, if you're not exploring, you're not drilling more holes, you're just kind of holding steady. What are you like, are you just like winding down your asset? Are you just pumping cash flow? Like what is that asset and how should it be valued? If you are exploring for future production, then you need a different price. So then, now you're bleeding cash. So it's a really tricky thing, particularly for us operators. But we heard from the Kansas City Fed, they had their economic pulse out over in the last week and you had some private oil people being like, we are hurting hard, we're hurting bad. We feel like we got screwed and we're suffering.
A
Well, one sort of piece that plays into that is if you look at the big oil majors, if you look at companies like bp for example, if you look back over time, they have diversified to now be some of the biggest players in renewables. They've led the push into wind, they've led the push into solar. Let's talk about renewables for a minute. Is that just over pencils down. Are they waiting out this administration and seeing what happens in the next election? Or are they quietly continuing to plug away at some of the big renewable projects they've been working on for a decade now?
C
No, no. I mean BP and Shell are actively paring back. For sure, you have total selling out of certain assets and buying more assets. In the US Particularly lng, the US oil majors never quickly diversified as much as ABP did. They're still involved, right? Like Exxon still involved in its lithium project. They're just pushing out timelines, they're maybe rethinking their budgets. Like they have hydrogen projects that are sort of going to be put on the shelf, but they're still there because it speaks to their expertise. So if you're an oil company and you went somewhere that wasn't your expertise, BP to solar, right, for example, that's different. Then you're putting that on ice and you're like, see you later, good luck. Let me sell you. If it has to do with your expertise, drilling for lithium, that's just like drilling for oil, even geothermal, right? It's the same kind of technology as it used in getting oil out of the ground. You're going to keep it, you're just maybe not going to prioritize it.
A
So let's just talk about some of these huge scale projects that have been underway. These are really capital intensive projects. A lot of money has gone into the ground for this. On December 22, the Trump administration halted work on all five wind farms currently under construction off the East Coast. President Trump has consistently called wind turbines ugly. It doesn't like them, they're an eyesore and then cause them expensive and inefficient. Today we saw one of the Dutch companies, I think all the Danish companies raise their hand and say, no, we're going to go to the courts to try and prevent this from happening. What do you think happens here? These are collectively worth $25 billion, meant to power more than two and a half million buildings, create 10,000 jobs. That's what these five wind farms were supposed to do. What happens to them now?
C
So here's the really interesting point. You're talking about Orsted, right?
A
Yeah.
C
So if you cancel projects that are already almost operational or underway, that's really difficult. And I don't know how you protect against that. If you don't want to issue any more permits to new projects, that's fine. That's one thing. Right. There's business viability through that. The problem is that then the US becomes an area where you have force majeure. So force majeure tends to be used in areas of violence, political violence, where production can be disrupted through no fault of the producer. And now you're starting to put that on the us like it's not Orsted's fault that its project got canceled. So then how to. Then you force majeure that and then the contracts are null and void or the contracts have different results. That's really crazy that the US would be responsible for stuff that we usually associate with like Libya. Right. So that's one. The other is that, and this is a real concern in every person that I talk to, just no one will say it on the record, is that if an administration is willing to do this for wind, what's to prevent a populist democratic regime coming in and doing the same thing to oil and gas. So the oil and gas community desperately doesn't want that to happen. They desperately want those wind projects to go through. They might not care about wind, but they want those wind projects to go through so their own assets won't be in trouble next time.
A
They don't want that precedent.
C
But no one's willing to kind of come out and say it because they don't want the administration risk. But that is a real concern and a real problem and a very large risk economically as offshore wind. Economic. You could very well make the argument that it is not that maybe certain projects are, maybe certain contracts now are, but it's really expensive and it's really hard. And the question becomes, and this can go to any form of new energy, who takes on the Risk? Is it insurance companies? Is it bankers? It is private investors, private equity? Is it the state? Is it local? Is it the government? Is it the company? So who takes on the majority of the risk and problem? What happened about a few years ago when the wind bubble first burst was that the companies themselves took on so much commodity and supply chain risk that when Covid happened, they got really hurt and really burned. So they're desperately trying to diversify that risk, which puts more risk on other parties, which makes things very complicated. And that's kind of where we are, irrespective of the Trump administration.
A
Well, let's talk about one area where we see lots of risk appetite at the moment. That seems to be nuclear energy. And not a moment goes by when we're talking about AI and data centers, when we're not also in the same breath talking about nuclear. Talk to us, if you don't mind, Alex. There's been some hot news right out about Meta announcing a partnership, additional partnerships of nuclear energy companies Vistra and Oklo. That share price soared 30% at the end of last week. In reaction to that, what's your take on what's going on in nuclear at the moment?
C
Oh, so many thoughts and feelings. So first of all, anyone you talk to is like, we love nuclear. Let's go for sure. See change, let's make it happen. No one's against nuclear. It's just a matter of like getting it done and the price with which you get it done. So the risk, the way that I'm looking at it is that it's really hard to get nuclear done.
A
Yeah.
C
Signing a PPA where a company is going to pay you money for nuclear power if you build the facility, if it comes online and if it gets approval isn't worth anything. It's not a real contract. That's like me writing a letter on my daughter. Be like, you're allowed to not go to school. Like it's, you have to get approval from the government, there has to be permits, there has to be local laws. Like there's a lot of processes you have to go through for nuclear because it's hard, it's expensive. And previously the cost overruns were bananas, like billions of dollars cost overrun. Right. So you have to get a lot of ducks in the row. So it would it seem, as an investor, you want to caution that when you're looking at these mouse and PPAs that are being signed, what's real and what's not, what's a nice headline and what actually has teeth to it. And I gotta tell you, there's not a lot of teeth out there because it's really hard to sign the ones with teeth.
A
If there was ever a time, though, for this to happen, it feels as though with the sheer amount of capital that's going towards AI and sort of AI derivatives, and I put this in the bucket of an AI derivative. If ever there was a regulatory appetite to try and support something like this, it's now. If ever there was a confluence of events like the stars aligning, that says, okay, we're gonna make this happen, it feels as though it's now. What would you be looking for, Alex, to say? Okay, now I see the teeth. And the teeth are sinking in. And it's gone from being headlines to actually being on the path to reality. And we're gonna see nuclear capacity actually built.
C
It's really cool and sexy. Are you ready?
A
I'm ready.
C
Permits and fuel allocations.
A
Where are we gonna see the permits? Where are we gonna see those permits?
C
They come from the nrc and.
A
But geographically, where are we going to see it?
C
Anywhere where there's space.
A
So you're really. This is a completely indiscriminate. It could be Pennsylvania, it could be Nebraska, it could be. Could it be California?
C
Maybe?
A
Maybe.
C
Yeah. I do have a lot of space. And you can definitely build data centers. But do you really want to go to California with regulatory over that stuff?
A
I don't know about that.
C
But seriously, it's NRC permits and it's going to be fuel allocation. Like, those are the two things that you need. That. That a lot of companies do not have. Some do, but a lot of companies do not.
A
And what's the time frame, do you think, for that happening?
C
Years. Years. It can be years. It takes a very long time to get that done. Even if you fast track it, you're still talking years.
A
So there's no. Let's again talk about this administration just got X amount of time left. Is it years that sits inside this administration?
C
No, no, it's moving. It's definitely moving. And if you can streamline any of this stuff, like one application for multiple permits or something like, that's great. And you can do that. So the administration can definitely help, and they can definitely help with things like fuel allocation. That's huge. And programs to help advance fuel for nuclear reactors and all of that. There's a lot that they can do. But the way a lot of people are thinking about it is that you have this first wave of AI data center demand. That. That's really going to come from natural gas. You may have some solar and some storage, but that's really going to be natural gas. The second wave will be nuclear, but the second wave is in like eight years.
A
So for that first wave. So right now we'll just finish here. You're talking to companies in the thick of this all the time. How much are they talking about? The risk that we're seeing, these circular trades in AI, that the funding that's going into data centers, which in turn is going to fuel the demand for the kinds of natural gas that we're talking about. Is there a level of anxiety around this that you've seen in the equity markets? Or people, do they think it's real?
C
Okay, so yes and no. So everyone kind of feels like there is a bubble in AI and everyone's pretty clear that not everything that has been proposed will get built. Everyone's clear that utilities and data centers may be double counting projects. Everyone knows that. But they always come back to the fact of. But just because it's a bubble doesn't mean Nothing. So if 100% doesn't get built, maybe 70% does. 70% is still a lot. If demand isn't 10x but it's 8x, 8x is still a lot. So that's sort of the vibe that like yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a bubble, it'll burst, it'll hurt, whatever, but like there'll still be players around and everyone will still survive and we'll still get stuff done and stuff built, period.
A
And is there a. Just for investors that's for investors. For investors that's very hard. But for the companies who are actually going to execute against construction, against building, against taking huge amounts of capital and building projects that still take years literally to put together, how do they do their diligence to figure out which one's real and which one's not?
C
And that's when you go to who takes the risk. So you have a lot better ability to manage that. If you have an insurer taking some of the risk, if you have private equity taking some of the risk, if you have the bankers taking some of the risk and some of the. And then you have like a meta coming in and saying that they'll provide some funding as to it just you have to be secure in what those PPAs are and are they real? And when people say breaking ground, you gotta remember what breaking ground is. Are they breaking down for their offices? Are they breaking down for a nuclear, Are they breaking ground for a nuclear plant? Like those are very different breaking grounds. Right. And as long as you offset the risk equally and you get all your ducks in a row, you should be fine.
A
There's one player in there that you just mentioned who, I'm embarrassed to say I haven't given much thought to, and it's insurers.
C
Yep.
A
We keep hearing about private equity, private credit, public equity investors, IPOs. But insurers are one that don't get a lot of attention because they're not sexy.
C
And the insurers are like, please don't talk about me.
A
But I was gonna say give us names, which insurers are on the hook here. But we're gonna save that for another time. We'll do another time. Alix Steel, please come back. Amazing con. Huge thanks to Alix Steel for joining. Hope he comes back to bring more energy and more insights. That's it for today's Brew Markets Daily.
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Brew Markets Daily is hosted by Anne Barry and produced by John Coteau, Tarka Delatif and Emily Milian. Technical direction by Eugene Waugu and Lonnie Fiskis. Brittany Nataco is our audio engineer. Guest booking by A.B. silver. The President of Morning Brew Inc. Is Devin Emery. And we just want to mention we'd love to hear from you. If you have any feedback or a company you'd like us to COVID leave us a comment or send an email to brewmarketshow@morningbrew.com.
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Wake up on Monday with the Morning Brew newsletter and tune in to Neil and Toby on Morning Brew Daily. We are going to see you back here on Tuesday, same time, same place. Have a fantastic long weekend.
This episode dives into the complexities of the global oil and energy markets, including who's producing and using oil, the shifting landscape due to technological advances and geopolitical events, and the impact of U.S. energy independence. It also explores the future role of renewables and nuclear energy—particularly in the context of AI-driven demand for power—and assesses the political, economic, and market risks of investing in various energy sources. Alix Steel provides insider perspectives, industry insights, and practical analysis for investors and market followers.
Oil’s Pervasiveness: Alix emphasizes how energy—especially oil and gas—is integral to almost every consumer good and activity.
Who Produces Oil?
Rising Importance of Latin America: Discovery of low-cost reserves (offshore Brazil, Guyana) is attracting new investment.
“We basically tapped all this rock, we got all this oil, and then all of a sudden we wind up getting to a place where the super cool, juicy rock, we may be running out of it.”
— Alix Steel [05:48]
Oil Grades: Oil varies in density and quality; what refineries can process depends greatly on this.
U.S. Refining Complex: U.S. refineries (Gulf Coast: Valero, Philips 66, Chevron) are among the few able to handle heavy Venezuelan crude.
Venezuela’s Investment Risk:
Barriers to Entry: Infrastructure, skilled workforce, break-even costs, and government stability all make Venezuela extremely challenging as an investment.
“Darren Woods [ExxonMobil CEO] said, ‘We’ve had our assets seized there twice. So you can imagine to reenter a third time would require some pretty significant changes. ... Today it’s uninvestable.’”
— Ann Berry (quoting Woods) [12:00]
Breakeven Price: The oil price at which extraction is profitable. For many projects, this needs to be above $50–$60/barrel; if prices fall below $40, much production halts.
Winners and Losers:
OPEC (Saudi Arabia, et al): Watching and likely to hold back production to wait out market changes.
US Shale Struggles: Smaller, private operators are under pressure, feeling “screwed” as prices and demand for expansion remain uncertain.
Oil Majors and Renewables:
Wind Power Project Cancellations:
AI Demand Drives Nuclear Urgency:
Timing:
“Just because it’s a bubble doesn’t mean nothing...If 100% doesn’t get built, maybe 70% does. 70% is still a lot.”
— Alix Steel [27:19]
Alix Steel and Ann Berry provided a lively, in-depth exploration of today’s most pressing energy market stories. Topics ranged from global oil production’s geopolitics, the nuances of refinery infrastructure and oil grading, Venezuela’s notorious investment risk, to the impact of fluctuating oil prices and shifting global demand. With AI and data center growth, the conversation pivoted to the future: the challenges and reality-check around scaling nuclear energy, the risks of executive action on renewables, and the vital but overlooked role of insurance in underwriting the sector’s future. Both guests balanced technical details with clarity and approachable energy, making this required listening for investors and energy market novices alike.