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Foreign. You're listening to the Oil and Gas this Week podcast with Marc LaCour and Paige Wilson. This is the show for busy oil pros who quickly want to keep their finger on the pulse of the industry.
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You're listening to the Oil and Gas this Week podcast brought to you by Cognite AI for the industry. Optimize production and decrease operational risk with trustworthy AI across the oil field. This is the show for busy oil producers who want to quickly keep their finger on the pulse of the industry. Thanks for joining us for episode 394.
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It's the end of the year.
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B
It is the end of the year.
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You and I are getting ready to take about a week off.
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B
Yep. It's going to be great.
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Yep. We do realize we missed an episode this year or two. Sorry about that. We'll try to do better in 2026. Anyway, this will be the last episode for 2025. And before we get to what we're going to talk about, Paige, our YouTube channel is killing. Our marketing team is going crazy. We're pressing 25, 26,000 subscribers. And if any of your listeners, if our listeners want to get something really cool, go to our YouTube channel. The link will be in the show. Notes. Pick any video you want, leave a comment, take a screenshot of that comment and send it to us either on social channels or@marketing.com and we will send you official Oggn hardtop stickers. Sorry, hard hat stickers, laptop, and a temporary tattoo. And then when you get your temporary tattoo, if you put that on and take a picture and send that, we'll send you to Ogg and shirt. I do know it sounds like a lot of work. We're just trying to get more of you to check out what we're doing at YouTube. There's some cool stuff there.
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B
I've responded to some of the comments on there, so that's been fun.
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We've gotten a lot of comments.
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Yeah.
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From all over the world.
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I know, it's really cool.
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Yeah. Anyway, enough about that last episode of the year and we're going to do my reviews. So, Paige, I'm just going to jump into it.
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B
Oh, you mean your predictions?
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My predict.
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You are on the edge of it's time for a vacation.
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Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. So sorry. 100%. My predictions for 2026, I do this every year. I've been doing this for, I think, over a dozen years now. You go back and check out stuff. It's actually funny to go back and see what I got and More. It's even funnier. The stuff I get wrong. Anyway, I want to cover the stuff my predictions for 2025 before I get in my predictions. 2026. And we'll just go through what I got right, what I got wrong real quick. So for 2025, the first one was Ira Fallout. I nailed that one. The next one is big tech companies are going to become gas companies. Nailed that one. We saw that coming two years ago. Right. Blunts to BTUs. Paige, I got that one wrong.
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Yep.
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I really thought the commercial marijuana industry was gonna take off in the US and they also need cheap, reliable, abundant electricity like the data centers. Plus they need fertilizer, which actually comes from.
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Well, that might be something that might be coming up because Trump just moved it. Medical marijuana to what, the Schedule 3. Schedule 3 from Schedule 1. So that could be something.
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Some of my predictions, when I get them wrong, it's because I was too early. And that may be one of them.
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We'll see.
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This may be another one. Shell and BP on the road to. I really thought that both of those companies were going to start moving their headquarters to Texas, specifically Houston. I got both those wrong. I still think it's going to happen though, guys. Anyway, got it wrong. Our new administration is going to tank the price of crude sitting here on the very end of December. It is tanked. It's really bad. And a lot of the experts out there are saying that it's going to be that way for a while. I'll get to why I disagree with that in a minute. Anyway, I got that one right. Deep water growth. I got that one right. More refining capacity in the world, but not in the U.S. i got that one right. Unfortunately, CCUs side hustle. I got that one right. The return of all gas manufacturing in the U.S. paige, I got that one wrong. And I should have gotten it right. Between the trade wars, the constantly moving tariffs by our current administration, we never regain those manufacturing jobs. The potential is still there. We still have the ability to be able to run those manufacturing facilities almost cheaper than anybody else. And we have the skilled labor here. And with the tariffs and everything, if they would have turned in the right direction, it would have made more financial sense. I just missed it. Got it wrong. And then my Last one for 2025. Another day, another doomsday. Yeah, I got that. So if you look at what I did last year, paige, I got 70% of my predictions right. That's not as good as I usually do. Usually I get about 80% right. My 12 year average is 79%. So I did a little bit.
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B
That's not too shabby.
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Yeah, it's actually not. The funny thing is we joke about this every year and I know who y' all are. I literally know some of the people's names. But there's a lot of air quote consulting companies out there, some of them with huge names that we all know of that right after this airs, you'll see some of this exact information in their outlook for 2026. I take it as a compliment because if not, I just cry. Anyway, let's start talking about what I think is going to happen in the new year 2026. Let's start with pricing. My pricing predictions are higher than almost everybody else's. I'm gonna get to why in a second. But I think Brent's average $59 a barrel WTI is averaged $67 a barrel. The price of gas at the Henry Hub is good to go for about $3.95 per million BTU. That leads me to my first oil and gas prediction for 2026, which is the great oil price plot twist.
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Ooh.
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A lot of experts out there are saying that we're an oversupply market, which we are. There's more oil on the market right now than we're keeping prices low. Most experts out there say that low price markets could stay away for all of 2026, maybe even part of 2027. Paige, I totally disagree on that. Totally disagree. Yeah. We have been drilling wells when we came last year to. We've been using a lot of wells that were drilled uncompleted to backfill as the natural gas and crude oil around the world gets used. We have to go drill new wells around the world in order to backfill that. And we haven't been doing that. Harold Ham actually says that he thinks that the oversupply is going out in about 18 months. I think it's actually run out months. So I think by the middle of 2026, we're gonna see prices go the opposite direction. I think they're gonna go through the roof. We're not gonna hire enough people. I'm not gonna get parts and pieces. Great oil price plot twist is my first prediction for 2026. We'll see if I get that one right or wrong. Number two for 2026. Balance sheet ballers. This is what's been going on. These layoffs that you've been seeing not just in oil and gas industry, but in other industries that touch the oil and gas Industry we're having to drive ruthless efficiency, capital, discipline. And what all that means is whoever has the is going to win and everybody knows that. So instead of taking capital and investing in different programs that may or may not make to the bottom line, everything is be focused on the bottom line. You're going to see stock buybacks, you're going to see ruthless discipline on investment. And our industry is being pushed into being more efficient because of where we're going and where we are. Unfortunately that means a lot of jobs that we have lost are not going to come back. It's not the traditional cyclic layoffs where a bunch of people get laid off because a low crude price environment and then they get hired back. Unfortunately these jobs aren' back. And just because we have to have a ruthless focus on our balance sheets. Number two, balance sheet ballers. Number three, prediction of 2026 Texas where servers go to sweat. It makes total sense to me that these data centers that the world needs, that we're building, most of them will be focused in Texas for a couple of reasons. Number one, we have the cheap, abundant, reliable natural gas and a very pro business state government. We have loads and loads of surface land that's dirt cheap. Think out in the Permian where there's not enough water to farm a ran. And even though there's money to be made on the minerals in the soil, maybe some money to be made on saltwater disposal or selling fresh water, the surface really got never capitalized. Well now if your families own the mineral rights out in the Permian somewhere and you've been collecting those royalty checks for maybe decades now, somebody can come build a data center on top of the land, buy your natural gas to provide electricity and now you have surface rights. When I look at the entire world, Texas makes the most business sense to me. What does that have to do with the oil and gas industry? We're going to learn new ways to make money by working with these data centers. The oil and gas industry is. You're seeing people talk about relighting nuclear plants, using renewables to power these data centers. Let's be real here people. There's only one fuel that can get these data centers up quickly that's reliable enough to make sure they make a profit. That's natural gas. So you see a ton of natural gas generation come online here in Texas. Number four, prediction of 2026 methane hydrate. It's going to be Shell 2.0 but the ice edition I'm dating myself because I had a thing for Vanilla ice in the 90s methane.
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You still have one now.
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What are you talking about? Hey, I love rappers that can storehouses, right?
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There's only a handful of mountains, mansions, mansions.
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Methane hydrate. What the hell is that? Imagine methane, the molecule methane, which natural gas enclosed in an ice crystal naturally in the bottom of the ocean. Think of it as a snowflake. Think of billions and billions of those ice crystals full of methane scattered all over our world's ocean. It's a natural phenomena. This is one of the reasons that China is so vehemently protecting the China Sea. The China Sea has some of the most easily recoverable ethane hydrate formations out there. Literally if you dive that deep, you could take a bucket with the underwater and pick up methane hydrate in a bucket and have a bucket full of natural gas. This is a new way to tap into hydrocarbons. Now this is a good place for me to stop and remind audiences when I do my predictions. What I am not saying is that this is when these predictions will hit their full stride, when they're the largest, when everybody knows what they are, when they're commercially viable. These are true predictions. My predictions are when I think that prediction is going to start on this one. Methane hydrate. I think the commercialization of methane hydrate is going to start in 20. It is not going to be a full wide blown industry probably for 20 years, but it will start. So number four, prediction 2026 methane hydrate is shale 2.0 but just the ICE edition number five, more money page, less spending. So if you're a company like oggn, that depends on the peripheral spending of the oil and gas industry and the companies that work with the oil and gas industry, 2026 is not going to be a fantastic year. Even though the industry itself is going to be in a great place. Tons of capital making shrewd. Whether that's an acquisition, a merger, picking up property somewhere, investing in pipelines, offloading terminals, cokers, whatever, we're going to do it very carefully and we're not going to waste money. So in a weird sort of way, 2026 is going to be financially very solid for the oil and gas industry. However, we're going to be a bunch of tight wads. We're going to have more money, but we're going to spend less. And you need to understand this. Like I said, if your business is on the peripheral of making money off of gas, which is one of the things that OGGN does, we've needed this for a long time, people. And it's Happening whether we like it or not. Number six, low carbon, you just get a participation trophy. Let me ask you, Paige, if this reminds you of something. Let's say I had a program that was pushed upon my company by public perception. And let's say, just say a few years ago this idea was adopted. Let's say this idea was adopted, but it didn't make a lot of sense for the company. But they did it because they're trying to make the public happy. And then when they figure out that it doesn't help business and it hurts them, they get rid of it. Does that sound familiar in oil and gas at all? That sound like DE and I esg.
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Exactly.
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The next one after DEI ESG is low carbon. Everybody has a low carbon program out there. You can go to the website and read it. And quite frankly, I think it's going to disappear in 2026. It makes no sense. We have as an industry reduced our air and water emissions every year since the 70s, maybe even the 60s. This low carbon thing was happening anyway. We no longer need departments and budgets and marketing spend on our low carbon solutions. It's happened anyway. And I think low carbon, that ide, just like ESG and di, just could disappear. Except they'll get a participation trophy. They were here. Number seven. This one really hurts me. American's petrochemical crown slips off.
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Yeah.
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We've led the world in producing petrochemicals. And if you care about the environment, when you produce some petrochemicals, the process and the byproducts could be really bad for the environment. And we make sure we take care of that. We make sure that we track it, store it, mitigate any accidents. Right. Honestly, the rest of the world doesn't always do the same thing. Unfortunately, geopolitically, it's a risk to build a new petrochemical plant here in the US because we don't know what's happening with our politics. Is it going to swing one way or swing the other way? So in a weird sort of way, it makes more fiscal and geopolitical sense. So it's less risk for us to build petrochemical plants in other parts of the world. Right now it's a race between India and China. One of those countries very soon will pass us up in petrochemical production and pay. I don't think we'll ever catch up. Well, and this is horrible. It's horrible for the American people, for our industry. We're shipping those jobs and that revenue to other countries that once again don't have the same level of care for the environment that we do. My only hope around this is that if we can get a couple of administrations back to back that are more moderate, that aren't as extreme from one end to the other, maybe we can reduce some of that geopolitical risk in the US and start attracting these facilities and this revenue back to us. But unfortunately, number seven for 2026 is America's petrochemical crime ground is going to slip off.
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Lame.
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Yep. Number eight, prediction of 2026, the entire world discovers our LNG and they return our calls. Finally. What do I mean by that? That we have the ability to export lng. We have the trains which actually convert the gas to a liquid. We have the offloading terminals built so we can load these huge vessels with liquefied natural gas. We have the deep water ports there. We have all the infrastructure that we can ship our LNG in these large vessels around the world. However, when that vessel of LNG gets to another part of the world, they can'. Just offload it. It's not bags of rice. They have to build import terminals, regasification plants, a lot of infrastructure. So the rest of the world's waking up to this opportunity to import our LNG really cheaply and it reduces geopolitical risk. And it's better for the environment than the way they generate electricity now, which typically coal. However, they got to build a bunch of infrastructure quickly. So they're finally returning our calls. We've been calling them for years saying this LNG thing's coming and now they're answering. So number eight, world discovers LNG and they finally return our calls. And what I really mean by that, that as the world starts building the other part of the LNG infrastructure, we need to make this a global industry. Number nine. This one's crazy, Paige, but I'm so happy to see this. Generation Alpha actually wants to work here now.
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Awesome.
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So Generation Alpha is still in high school. My original company, Motorpoint, has been tracking negative public perception since 2010 by generation. Unfortunately, some of the generations, the negative public perception is not only really high, but it's been high for a long time. And trying to change that is is almost impossible.
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It's like pulling teeth.
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Yep. However, this young generation looks at our industry in a totally different way than their parents or their grandparents. They look at us as a place to make great money. We get to travel around the world. We're not dirty, heavy steel destroying the world. We're high tech, cool, doing really great stuff, making the world a better place. And they want to come work in our industry. Now why did that change? Which by the way, the generation Alpha, negative public perception is less than 40%. The other generations are in the 70s. It's a big difference. 80. And if you look at the graph, which maybe I'll throw in here, that change in negative public perception is a pretty steep curve. So you can see that it's trending in the right way fast. Why? Part of it's Landman. A lot of young people love the show. Now the people in our industry that watch it, I know it's not 100% accurate either historically or from a technology point of view. Stop it. They're showing us finally in a positive light. Yeah, they don't get it all 100%. But so what? It's Hollywood part has also been the education that companies like OGGN is doing. And our industry is finally. So these young people finally realize the reality of the hydrocarbon industry. That it's cool, that it's fun, that it pays well, you get to travel the world and they want to come work here. So as an industry, we've got to make sure we keep nurturing, that we don't want that trend to turn around. So anything and everything you can do with our world's young people to help educate them around the reality of hydrocarbons without politics or agenda, please keep it up. I know we will. Here at Oggy, we have a podcast called Sparking Interest that's hosted by Kaden, probably the brightest 14 year old I've ever met. And his whole charter is to share the reality, the truth about hydrocarbons with no politics agenda, with his young audience. So we're playing our part as well. But this is so great. Generation Alpha wants to work here now and I just love it. Then number 10, my last prediction of 2026, your grocery bills could be the new president. What do I mean by that? The world is just sick and tired of high prices, high energy prices, high food prices. They're all connected. We all know why everything got more expensive. It had with our world's politicians forcing us in the renewable market after the pandemic, faster than the market could actually respond to it. Caused a lot of headaches, caused a decrease in reliability in our grid here in the US and actually grids around the world increase in costs and the public is just sick and tired of it. Now what's going to start ruling the rules and regulations and tariffs around the world is common sense. Less politics, more common sense. You're seeing voters push back, back there's nothing that infuriates a voter more than going to the pump to fill up their car. And the price went up since yesterday. The whole world is pushing back on this and they want what they had before, which is reliable, cheap energy. And we don't have that now. You're seeing it happen right now in some of the states. In the US you're seeing it happen in certain countries. I've seen it happen all over the world where the general population has put their foot down and it's look, we need what we had before. We don't care about all this other stuff. Let's get back to having common sense policy and regulations around energy, which is where we we're going, which is fantastic. So there we go. There's my top 10 predictions or my 10 predictions. Oil and gas industry for 2026. There's a video on YouTube if you want to go check it out. Hey, it'd be a good video for you to leave a comment on so we can see. Speaking of stuff, make sure you sign up especially follow us on LinkedIn. Also our two newsletters. We have new sponsors coming out this year, 2026 for both of our newsletters, so they'll get a little bit of a refresh. The links are in the show notes for the that weekly rig count. Paige, where are we?
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Oh man. In the US we're down 6 at 5:42, down 7 in Canada at 185, up 14 internationally at 1073.
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So not too shab, not too shabby at all. All right. Merchandise, we rule the world. Oil and gas merchandise. Go check it out. Especially our kids stuff. First Friday Q& A. It's right around the corner. That's where you write in a question. Paige and I answer your questions or try to answer your questions. Just remember the goal is not to stump up us. Also, the other thing that's happened recently with our first Friday Q& A questions is we've been getting a lot of questions from around the world which we actually love. So if you listen somewhere else outside the US don't think you can't leave us a question. Go to oggn.com is probably the easiest way to do it. Or hit us up on any of our social and leave us a question. We'll grab it and put it in the next First Friday Q& A. We got some traveling to do and some stuff to pack. You ready to get out of here? Remember folks, do great work, pay it forward and we will see you next time. Thanks for listening to OGGN the world's largest and most listened to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. If you like this 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 weekly newsletter. This show has been a production of the Oil and Gas Global Network.