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- [00:11]
A
You're listening to the Oil and Gas this Week podcast with Mark and Paige lacour. This is the show for busy oil pros who quickly want to keep their finger on the pulse of the industry.
- [00:27]
B
You're listening to the Oil and Gas this Week podcast sponsored by Navis. This is a show for busy oil pros who want to quickly keep their finger on the pulse of industry. Thanks for joining us for episode 399. And I cannot talk today. That's already my fourth take an audience.
- [00:44]
A
Let me just make a little suggestion. You really probably want to catch episode 400 when it comes out.
- [00:50]
B
Yeah.
- [00:51]
A
Might be something a little bit different on that one.
- [00:53]
B
Yeah.
- [00:53]
A
Speaking of different, do you want to know who has the number six most popular business podcasts in Hong Kong?
- [01:00]
B
I would assume us.
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A
It's us. It's oil and gas this week. I'm still amazed that we're ranking that high this time in a major city in the world for business. Not oil and gas. Not oil and gas business. Just business. So, listeners, thank you. Without you, we would never be this highly ranked in Hong Kong. Singapore. We're coming for you.
- [01:16]
B
All righty. We've got a review. It's a five star. It says, great overview. Mark and Page have a great show informing listeners of the major activities and news shaping the oil and gas industry. Catch the latest show and see if you agree. And that's from S. Murphy 5 522.
- [01:30]
A
S. Murphy 522. I love how you wrote that. See, audience, all it takes is a quick 15 seconds typing into a sentence and a half. It's one of the best ways to support this show. So if you're a fan, leave us a review and if you're not a fan, leave us a review and let us know why you're not a fan. Not sure why you're listening if you're not a fan, but we would love to hear it. But apologies ahead of time for whatever Paige tells you. If you're not a fan,
- [01:51]
B
that's true. Is this true? All right, let's get into the news stories. First, we have zombie takers appear in Hormuz as war fuels traffic chaos.
- [02:00]
A
Yeah. And first glance, this might be the thing you've heard me talk about a lot where there's different parts of the world, Russia especially, that found these old tankers that were destined for scrap heaps and they got them floating again and operating so they could move black market oil. This is not what this is about. When they say zombie, what they're saying is these are not the rusted buckets of very large tankers. These are more modern tankers. But what they're doing is they're posing as another tanker. And if you do the research, the tankers they're posing as are ones that have already been cut up for scrap. It's sort of like you have a driver's license of somebody that died 10 years ago. It's very obvious that something's wrong in the whole situation. And what's going on is right now in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is allowing certain vehicles through and most vehicles not. So what's happening is these tankers are figuring out who they need to look like to see if Iran will let them through the Strait. Now, it's a risk. It's actually a huge risk. I suspect that most of these ships that are doing this actually are doing it by the blessing of Iran. So maybe it's not as big a risk as it looks like on the outside. But the first one they're talking about is a vessel, very large tanker that went through the Persian Gulf this past Sunday just a couple days ago, and it was flagged as the Nablian. The Nablion was sent to the scrapyard in Bangladesh five years ago. So obviously it's not going through the strait. And you have a bunch of this stuff going on. And what's going on is because of that constraint, prices have risen, not just for oil and gas, but for a lot of things. Yeah, because prices have risen, profits have risen. So people are more willing to take a risk. Now with the bonafide legit supertankers that are parked, they're not going through straits. The reason they're not taking that risk, number one, they don't want to lose a super tanker. Number two, their insurance companies will not insure them if they try it. Number three, nobody wants an environmental catastrophe of that magnitude. This is just a mess, but it is interesting that it spurred basically a zombie tanker business model. Did not see that one coming, but it makes total sense.
- [03:52]
B
All right, next up, Chinese oil giants rethink Iranian crude after US Waiver.
- [03:57]
A
Yeah. So China's in India are the two countries that were buying the black market Russian oil. Now the Iranian crude for last few years with the sanctions, there's some black market Iranian crude on the market. China's official refineries, the one that are owned by the government, have not touched that crude because they're scared of US retaliation, as they should be. However, there's a bunch of small, what I would call a Teapot refinery in China. These are not owned by the government. They're owned by small companies or individuals who could care less where the crude comes from. All they want is cheap as possible. Speaking of profit so they can make the most profit. Those small teapot non government owned refineries in China have been buying this black market all from Rand. Now with the escalation of the war and we're actually talking about that because I think it's actually de escalating. Give us a minute to get there. But with what's going on right now, it makes more sense for these teapot refineries in China to buy this black market oil. They don't buy as much of it. It's not as noticeable, it's harder to track, it's much cheaper. But like I said, the Chinese state oil refiners have been staying away from that crude. Now to make it all Even weirder, on March 20 the sanctions against this Iranian imported crude have been lifted. By who? Us, our own Treasury Department. And if you think through that you go that makes no sense actually in either an accidental or very shrewd way. I'm not sure which one, our current administration, what road they're going down but from a strategic point of view it actually does make sense. So you're letting the bad guys, Iran sell their crude without the constraints of the restrictions on the market. Right now during the war, Mark, why the hell would they do that? Because it's going to put more oil on the market. Right now the US is most worried about our people in harm's Ray. The thing they're worried about second is can we get enough crude back on the market to keep prices low Because Iran's only lever it has to pull right now is global economic slowdown and eventually a global recession because we can't power the world because 20% of the world's crude goes through that strait. In a weird sort of way I actually think this is genius to the point that they're we're even allowed importation into the United States of crude off of Iran which is crazy because just a little while ago we said that Iranian crude was terrorist money. Right now we're buying that crude. But I think it's the right thing to do. Give us 60 days. Let me see how this shakes out. Let me see if I change my mind. But like I said, from a very high strategic point of view, I think this is genius.
- [06:11]
B
Yeah, I think there's other things to play here. Yeah, like you said, we'll know in due time. Next up, we have Trump reports productive conversations with Iran.
- [06:20]
A
Give me a second. There's certain things in here. And actually this is reported on Truth Social and I actually read this before we turn on the microphones to record. So it's a coincidence that Paige put this in there. This is probably the most important sentence in this article. And you can go read links in the show notes. So this is a direct quote from President Trump. I am pleased to report that the United States of America and the country of Iran have had over the last two days very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East. Okay, why is that sentence important? We use Claude here. We use the paid version of Claude. It's a big shout out to them. We use them for doing research. I use Claude to go back and see what is President Trump called Iran in the last 15 days and how often has he called it the country Iran. He has not. He's called him every name in the book. He's called him terrorists, he's called him terrorist states. He's not called them a country. This is one of the reasons, plus some of the intel I have, that I think we're headed toward a resolution for this.
- [07:19]
B
Okay.
- [07:20]
A
And I know taking a quote from our president, is it hard science, it isn't facts. But just the way he said this, and like I said, I fact check, this makes me think that we are headed the right way. Now, there's a bunch of conversations going on between Iran and the US and our outcomes allies. Speaking of our allies, for the European countries out there that are listening that decided not to help us. Shame on you. Literally, shame on you. All of you would be speaking German right now if it wasn't for us. Probably not once, but twice. So I'm going to leave that alone right there. But back to this rig zone article. The Iranian Minister of Foreign affairs is in deep negotiations. What they don't want to lose is their facilities to produce and export hydrocarbon, so crude oil and gas. But what they're really scared of is we threatened to take out their electrical generation distribution. So right now their military is shot. Yes, they still have some, but we own the airspace. We have, I think now up to 5,000 Marines, amphibious assault group Devil Dogs. And those are the men and women that are ready to go to the beach and do some damage. And Iran knows that. And if we put the country in darkness and we take out their electrical generation and their distribution, they will literally have no defenses on what we're going to do. I don't think we're going to try to take over the country of Iran. I don't think that we would ever do that. But I can see us putting troops on the ground to secure the straits. And once we start that now, we're doing a policing movement inside a hostile country, which that typically drags out for years and years and years. I'm very interested that when Trump made this remark, almost immediately Page crude prices fell once again. A perfect example how the perception of what's going on in the market in the short term is more important than the actual supply and demand. However, this whole thing's going to remain highly volatile until we get this geopolitical risk taken care of. This latest pullback. I really think we're headed into some better times now. Once again, we have to come to agreement and we come to agreement on how we're going to enforce that agreement. And I think coming to agreement is not going to be super hard. I think we're three quarters away there. I think us agreeing how to enforce agreement is what we're going to struggle with. Remember, with the nuclear program, they agreed that we could send in third party inspectors. And soon as that agreement was signed, they kicked out all the third party inspectors. So we didn't have any way to enforce the agreement. This is how Iran operates. My fingers crossed. I got a good feeling about this. Let's give it some time. But this might be the beginning of the end.
- [09:31]
B
All right. Fire hits oil production at major Libyan field.
- [09:36]
A
Yeah, what do I have to say? The nationalized oil company, they had a leak in the Shahera crude pipeline. They had to cut production, actually had to cut the pipeline off. They got about half of that production or half of that transportation backup. As of now, that was 330,000 barrels per day that went offline, which is very significant in that part of the country with what's going on in the rest of the world right now. One of the valves basically just let loose. The leak occurred, it caught fire. From what I understand, nobody was hurt. They contained the fire part of the pipeline rather quickly to keep it from spreading. They eventually put the fire out. Now they're doing damage control and assessing what needs to be replaced and repaired. They actually can't put boots on that pipeline until that pipeline cools off. I'm surprised they're not pumping water through it to cool off. I'm not sure why. I don't know what the pipeline is made of. For whatever reason, they're letting it cool off via convention in the air and as soon as they get the people on the ground, they get stuff repaired that 330,000 barrels per day so come back online. I'm guessing it's probably going to be two weeks they get that back online, so. But thank God nobody got hurt.
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B
Yep, exactly. Oh, and I had to put this in here. Australia weighs LNG windfall tax Australia,
- [10:44]
A
there's a little bit of history with you in the uk. Not going to go all the way back to why Australia is there, but it is a great story. The culture of the UK yours is very similar. Do you see what happened to the UK when they implemented a windfall tax? All of the oil and gas majors just pulled out and they're not going to come back until that changes. That risk of that windfall tax changes. Just because companies and businesses start making more profits profit than you think they should doesn't mean you have the authority or even the right to tax them. And if you are going to tax them extra when the times are good, then you need to chip in money when times are bad. It's not fair for you to only take extra profit and when there's zero profit or negative properties, you not help. Windfall tax in this situation I think are horrible. Now, of course, the energy minister in Australia saying it's a great way to add more money to the government's basically your checking accounts if you don't know global price. LNG went through the roof because what's going on in the Middle east and Australia I think is the third largest LNG exporter. Big shout out to Chevron who saw that Asia Pacific market way before I did, or a lot of other analysts. They saw it 20 years for it developed. Now, these higher taxes, what are they going to do? They're going to stop investment in new gas and new oil and gas supplies infrastructure. The normal thing that when you tax a company extra just because they're making more profits and it's going to expose you, Australia to more future energy shocks because people aren't going to spend the time and money to make investments to help level out the shocks. This is one of the dumbest ideas ever I've seen come out of your country. But it looks like you weren't the first one to do it. You would think you would have learned. And while this is going on, guess what's going on with your cousins in the uk? They're backtracking on their plans for their windfall tax on offshore oil and gas production due to the war. So this is a bad idea. Australia don't do it.
- [12:26]
B
Next up, Texas leads nation in oil and gas jobs history.
- [12:31]
A
The article this is great. Last year is not great for the oil and gas industry. A lot of right sizing, a lot of layoffs. Unfortunately it wasn't due to the market conditions, the price swings, which historically is what caused us to do layoffs in the service industry and upstream side of the house. And then later prices came back, these people be hired back. This all has to do with having to drive efficiencies and change in the industry, the adaptation of new technology, things like AI. And unfortunately a lot of jobs that we've lost in the industry aren't coming back. However, here in Texas we actually gained jobs last year. Not a lot. We ended up with 476, a little over 476,000 people that work in the oil and gas industry. By the way, this data is coming from tipro, the Texas Royalty Owners Association. They always do good data around employment. The other thing is they also have some research on the indirect benefits of the oil and gas employment such as hotels, truck dealerships, restaurants, that sort of stuff. Because of all that, Texas is leading all the states in the US in employment out of 16 out of 19 sectors. 19 employment sectors Texas is leading, including the oil and gas industry. This is great. The average job take home pay last year was 100, a little bit over $135,000, which is 70% higher than most average jobs around the country. And the only place in the US that's even higher in Alaska at 150,000. Texas had the highest oil and gas payroll in the country in 2025 at 64 billion with a B. Take that California. And then last year the direct regional products think of as gross national product if Texas was a country was $385 billion. Which means about 35% of the Texas economy is money from the oil and gas industry. Now if you would rank Texas as a country and not a state, I think it'd be in the top 10 highest GDP countries in the world of that, like I said, over 35% of that has to do with the oil and gas industry. Go oil and gas. Go Texas. This is great. Watch what happens this year next. You think that employment of basically half a million people, I think that's good. Double. I think we have a million people employed by the end of 2027. We will see.
- [14:29]
B
We will. Next up we have Bangladesh seeks US waiver for Russian diesel As IMF warns of energy shock.
- [14:36]
A
What world did I wake up in? And once again from A strategic point of view. This makes a lot of sense. Bangladesh basically doesn't have enough diesel, and most of the world runs on diesel, not gasoline. But Bangladesh has enough diesel. So the constraints are causing prices to rise, which is causing their economy to crash. And so they have asked the United States to be able to temporarily import 600 metric tons of Russian diesel, which is a couple months worth of supply for the country. And I think we're going to do it, and I think we should do it, which is weird because not that long ago I was telling everybody we need to keep the constraints on Russia and not let them sell their hydrocarbons so they can't fund their war machine. But once again, we're in a different time right now. And so you have to look at what is the worst of the worst. Is it Iran being able to continue to hold the straits or Russia being able to continue a war with Ukraine, and sorry, Ukraine, but when I look at this from a military point of view, I think the right decision is to go ahead and open up some of those sanctions from Russia, not just for Bangladesh and not just for different parts of the world, for the entire world. Let's get those Russian hydrocarbons on the market. Let's use it as a pawn, like in a chess game, strategically. Let's make sure we measure everything. This, by the way, will allow us to figure out more of where that dark fleet is that's moving that Russian black oil and gas to markets. Let's get this thing with Iran settled and we go back and re implement the sanctions against Russia. I think if it's done well, it's a very strategic move, especially with the Houthi militants that are backed by Iran. Nobody wants to say that. Entering the war. Now they're entering the war where we have basically thousands of U.S. troops. I don't want to see a ground war, and I'm afraid that's where we go. But like I said earlier, I think we're headed toward a resolution there. So fingers crossed. I'm right about that. But, yeah, Bangladesh wants some Russian diesel and I think we should let them do it. It.
- [16:19]
B
All right, let's see. Qatar Energy brings us LNG online amid Ross Lafon fallout. Did I pronounce that right?
- [16:27]
A
Close enough. Do you remember when President Trump, this was the middle of last year, formed a deal with Qatar Energy and said we're going to have Middle east oil companies invest, I think it was $800 billion over the next 20 years in US infrastructure? We all kind of forgot about that this is one of the first ones, right? Guitar Energy in combination, ExxonMobil have achieved first production of LNG gas. Basically, the train got lit. This is located in Sabine Pass, Texas. And what I love about this is when this originally was designed, it was supposed to be an LNG import facility. For your young ones that are listening to the show, let me give you a little bit of history. Not that long ago in the United States, natural gas prices, natural gas was rare. It was harder and harder to find. Prices are going through the roof. We thought as a nation and those experts thought too that the US would have to import natural gas. And then fracking happened and it totally turned it around. And now we have more gas we know what to do with and we're helping other countries tap in using that well stimulation technique called hydraulic fracking. So this Sabine Pass or Golden Pass lng, which is in Sabine Pass, was originally designed to import LNG from other countries because we thought we would have enough. Now they've turned it around and now we're exporting that. Which tells a whole cool story in itself, if you've heard that story before. It's the exact same thing that happened in, in Louisiana with Schneer Energy and same thing happened with, I think in Corpus Christi as well, where these projects originally start off as LNG imports and we had to flip around to be able to export lng. Now Guitar Energy is dumping a bunch of money into this, which is great. This project has had amazing problems one after another. I think the primary contractor went bankrupt. I think a lot of stuff wasn't built right that was charged for it. I think there's a lot of stuff in court. I think that when they, I know they went over budget, I think it was went close to $2 billion over budget because all the turmoil. But this train is up, it's running even after all those major sex backs. And this is great that Qatar Energy is helping us here in the US and developing revenue. They're going to make a profit on this. And the reason that's great is some of the attacks from Iran hit the Qatar's key LNG export hub and that now they have to spend time repairing it. Now they're diversifying their portfolio. And I would love to have more Middle Eastern partners help us find and then move and then sell hydrocarbons that come from the U.S. and honestly, I would love Russian partners. I would love this thing between Russia and the US to go back to where it was, where we loved each other, we were peaceful, we helped Each other. Russia and the US as partners to me make way more sense than OPEC 2 that Russia formed or joined with the Russia partners, OPEC. Now do I think that's going to happen anytime soon? No, but I sure wish it would. But I think this is great guitar. Welcome to the U.S. congratulations on getting the Golden Pass LNG train up and running and I'd love to see y' all do more work with us here
- [19:11]
B
in the U.S. all right, next up we have Brent Eyes record monthly rise US crude settles above 100 as Houthis join Iran war.
- [19:20]
A
Yeah, so the Houthi rebels join. Prices go up. Yesterday, Trump says, I had a good conversation with the country of Iran. Prices went down once again, perception, but prices are crazy. U.S. crude futures settled above $100 a barrel. If you don't know what a crude future is, basically it's a contract saying I'm going to buy X amount of crude for, for a certain dollar a barrel at a certain date future. That contract can be traded like it was stock and typically it's, I think it's a thousand barrels with the normal thing. Is any y' all traders out there listening? Correct me if I'm wrong about that. So for the futures to settle above a hundred dollars a barrel, that means the traders think that in the future oil still gonna be really high. That tells you a whole story. I haven't seen that since, I don't know, 2020 maybe or no, not 2020, that was before 2020. So 2018, 2019 before the pandemic. Brent futures are also up at over $100 but $112 a bit barrel. So this is all good short term for the industry because it's driven prices up. There's constraints in the market. Obviously what's going on with Iran and the US and Israel and those constraints means there's a lack of supply. And so the countries that have hydrocarbons are benefited of this. Now, long term wise, the lack of hydrocarbons is going to hurt the world economy. We may enter to a global recession. And even the companies right now that are making money right now, they're only going to make good money for a short amount of time on this. I really want to see crude settle back down to the $60 a barrel place too early to when or if that will happen. But the fact that both the futures of Brenton and WTI have settled at high tells me a whole story in itself. We will keep an eye on this.
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B
All right, TC Energy Inc's new deals for GasLink expansion.
- [20:54]
A
This is genius. So TC Energy wanted to expand their pipeline basically. And so they've had a lot of issues with environmental groups, with governments, a little bit in the US but a lot in Canada as well. What they did, which is just genius is TC Energy signed an agreement with LNG Canada and the government, where LNG Canada is now the project manager on this project and TC Energy is the technical advisor. So they flip flop positions. This is going to make it much easier politically and environmentally to get this thing, this expansion passed. I loved how they, somebody thought through this and figured out if we change who's leading this project and whoever's leading this project is liked by the environmentalists and the governments, it may make things easier now. Now those two parties are doing this. They figured out costs and schedule estimates and blah, blah, blah for the growth of this natural gas pipeline. But Canada, if you're listening, which I know you already have thousands of listeners in Canada, this is going to strengthen your role as a global LNG provider that is really important for your country right now. You're falling behind because of some of your past politicians and environmental issues with the LNG exporting bonanza that is happening right now around the world. So this is actually good for Canada, good for the people in Canada. It's actually good for the world right now. If this, this expansion is online, we could prod more LNG and lower the prices globally while this conflict in the Middle east is going on. Good job, TC Energy.
- [22:14]
B
All right, well, let's wrap it up with some good news. Duke Energy awards nearly $275,000 to help fight hunger in South Carolina.
- [22:22]
A
And if you read through this, that's great, right? A little bit over a quarter million dollars. But Paige, their people got involved, their employees got involved. They did everything from distribute food boxes to the homeless that they made themselves. They helped fill up hungry students backpacks. They helped feed students that didn't have food on the weekends. They helped feed ve veterans, seniors. And it's just great that Duke Energy wrote a check. But I think what's even greater is employees at Duke Energy took the time out of their busy day. Everybody's busy to help their fellow human beings. Sorry about that. It just touched my heart for a second. This is a wonderful thing. Duke Energy, our industry as a whole does a lot of this sort of stuff and it's never publicized. Paige and I are trying to make a point to find these little snippets of when a company does something this cool of a charity point of view because they don't promote it, they don't talk about it. And we have to dig to find these things. So, Duke, feeding hungry people, hungry children, it's very noble. It's an amazing thing. Thank you for doing this. And I know Duke Energy pretty well. This isn't the first time they've done it and it won't be the last.
- [23:19]
B
Yep, I agree. I agree. And if anybody has anything that your company does, please reach out and let us know what that is so we can give you a shout out.
- [23:26]
A
And it's not about patting your company on the back or promoting what you're doing from a PR point of view. We want our audiences to know the truth about our industry, how we care. We care about the local communities we operate in and we care about our people and we try to help. So the more this we do, the more that people listen to this show will understand the reality of our industry globally speaking of reality, if you would really like to get an OGGN laptop or hard hat sticker and temporary tattoo, very simple. Go to YouTube. Search for Oggn. We're growing our YouTube channel. Comment on any video, take a picture of that comment, take a screenshot and send it to marketing.com and when we get that entry, we will send you an OGGN laptop or hard hat sticker and a temporary tattoo free of charge. And if you take that temporary tattoo, put it on you or your significant other or your child or your pet, just make sure your vet's okay with it. Take a picture of that and post it on social. We will send you an OGGN shirt. Easy way. If you get some free merch from Oggn. Simple thing to do. Go to our YouTube channel. Comment on any video.
- [24:26]
B
Also, if you haven't received your stickers yet, I'm sending them out in batches, guys.
- [24:29]
A
Oh yeah, don't think we get it immediately, but we will get them out. Speaking of getting stuff out, sign up for our two newsletters. The links are in the show notes. We have our oil and gas events newsletter and and also our weekly update. Both of them are useful. Weekly rig count. Paige, where are we?
- [24:42]
B
We are down 9 in the United States at 5:43. Down 24 in Canada, obviously at 5:53, up 33 internationally at 11:12.
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A
Like those numbers.
- [24:53]
B
I do too.
- [24:54]
A
Speaking of numbers, we're the number one merch oil, I guess merch store on the planet. Go check us out if you want to get some cool stuff for yourself, your kids, your grandparents. We need pet stuff on there.
- [25:02]
B
We really do.
- [25:03]
A
Yeah, we'll work on that first Friday Q& A is actually right around the corner. You know the drill. You submit A. If we read on the air, you get a big shout out. Remember, the goal is not to stump Paige and I. The goal is to help educate your peers who listen to the show. Guess that's about it. Ready to get out of here?
- [25:18]
B
Yep.
- [25:19]
A
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 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.