Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:21 Howard, I was trying to figure out if we had met before, and the context under which we may have met is before I joined Kane Anderson, and that was March 2001. I was an investment banker for

0:38 Stevens Inc, the Little Rock Arkansas Investment Bank. Sure, yeah. Well, I kind of had the joke. I was in the Houston office, I wanted to do well, but not well enough to get promoted to Little

0:48 Rock It was kind of the dance I did, but I used to build myself as the investment banker for Traverse City, Michigan, because I took Miller Exploration Public, those headquartered there. I worked

1:02 on their joint venture with Key Production, which became Simmer X, which is now whatever pharmaceutical drug sounding name I also did a deal for KEP, which had a reef.

1:18 play up in Michigan. So I used to build myself as the banker for Traverse City. And didn't you do a deal way back in the day with the Traverse City Michigan? Way back in the day we did a deal.

1:29 When I started Cadence in 2001,

1:35 we had a very, very interesting geo out of Houston, Texas by the name of Lucius Gere. And Lucius was a 72-year-old ex-union unical senior geologist who was a crusty old Texan, but a darn good oil

1:49 man, Chuck. In fact, I named our new company that I'm going to talk a little bit about today, LG X Energy. I named it Lucius' honor. He was such a fun guy. So, LG X stands for Lucius Gere

2:00 Exploration. Lucius passed away a

2:05 number of years ago, but we all miss him. He was a real character anyway. So, we built that company up with production in North Texas up in Wilburger County. It was called Cadence Resources. And

2:17 then we had a real interesting gas play over in the Soto Parish, Louisiana that we partnered with the big

2:24 international energy company out of Argentina, Bredis Energy. We built that company up in there. Hey, Howard, let me cut you off. What formation of gas were you going for over in Louisiana?

2:35 Hostin Cotton Valley Gas. Oh my gosh. Yeah. We had Hostin Cotton Valley Gas near Shreveport in the Soto Parish And then we did an acquisition of a company out of Traverse City, Michigan called

2:50 Aurora Oil and Gas in 2006. And the management of that company kind of took over as part of the deal that we brought in, along with some financing. And then they kind of ran the show from there.

3:04 And I like your question, Chuck, because one of the things that happened in the aftermath of that, I had stepped down from the board in February of 2006, I think. And.

3:17 Over in our Louisiana play, we had full column rights to the acreage that we held. And it was a pretty large acreage package. I don't remember the exact number, but it was pretty good size. And

3:30 we had full column rights, and it turns out that we had Haynesville rights, which we probably could have sold for an awful lot of money. And those guys sold out our interest in the play for like

3:40 four million bucks, which was four times cash flow. On the existing wells, giving no value to the PUDs that we had and there were lots of them and giving no value to the Haynesville rights that we

3:53 had. So anyway, water over the dam, but - My story on PUDs. That was interesting times. My story on that is we had invested in a company called Catto Resources named after Catto Parish. We'd

4:07 gone in to do cotton valley stuff and we just stunk it up. I mean, we drilled the crappiest eight wells, probably in that whole parish. And we were staring at the first loss in Kane Anderson

4:21 history and the private equity energy funds. My head was on the chopping block. So anyway, we struggled and ultimately good rich, wound up buying us and bought us for stock. And that was right at

4:36 the beginning of the Haynesville. So there was some Haynesville value. But I don't know if you remember just how rapid the extension was of the values in the Haynesville No, I kind of do, I had

4:48 left the company at that point and I thought, you know, and these guys almost immediately decided to sell our interest in the producing wells in the acreage in De Sono Parish to get 4 million cash

4:60 on hand for something else they wanted to do up in the Antrim in Michigan. And they left the whole thing, I was, anyway, but it was interesting times over there. Yeah, last thing I'll just close

5:13 out on the story So, we sold. for a good rich stock. We got some Haynesville acreage value in there. So we had gotten two thirds of our money back. And we were all going to church that Sunday to

5:26 make big donations and say thank you 'cause we'd been bailed out. We were immediately gonna turn around and sell the stock that Monday in a bought deal. And a lawyer went out of town unexpectedly on

5:39 Friday and hadn't filled out all the paperwork we needed. We were so pissed, we were livid, we were flaming the guy, all this. Well, in the next week and a half till he got back, the Goodrich

5:52 stock price actually doubled as the Haynesville Ascension went on. And we wound up making 12 times our money because the lawyer went out of town. So anyway, we sold the stock 12 times our money and

6:06 called it a shrewd investment and moved on. So yeah, that was wild Yeah, that thing, it really did hit hard when it hit.

6:18 Yeah, there's all kinds of stories like that. You know, I had a deal with a friend of mine out of, had a private company out of Midland. This is in the earlier days of cadence and I had made a

6:27 deal to buy,

6:30 to buy a

6:33 35 stake in his Lee County, New Mexico field, historic field that he had over there for seven and a half million dollars. This was in I think about 2003 or so, 2004. And we, I had gone down to

6:49 Midland. Our banker in New York had agreed the funding, he had it in place and I had gone down to Midland to close on it. And

6:59 I get a call from the lawyer. He had hired or from my banker in New York. He had hired this, this lawyer in New York who had no experience in oil and gas. And the guy was reviewing these leases in

7:11 Lee County and he said, you know, I'm not comfortable with the title on all these leases that are out there. I mean, some of these things have been divided and subdivided numerous times over the

7:21 years. Well, look, the fact is that the group I was buying into, they'd been paying the royalties to the residual land owners like a slot machine for 10 or 12 years. There'd been never any

7:32 complaints. You know how these titles are on old oil and gas leases that have been handed down through families. Well, anyway, long story short, this lawyer said, No, I don't think we should

7:43 tow this

7:45 So I went to Steve, my friend, and I said, Our lawyer's trying to block the closing of this. I'm sorry. And he said, Oh, he said, Thank you, Howard. He said, I would have honored the deal

7:55 because we shook hands on it and whatever, but at this price, I really didn't want to sell it anyway. Well, bottom line, one year later, he sold his Lee County play for 125 million. So I think

8:09 35 of that is more than seven and a half just a little bit

8:15 now that's That's crazy that I'm you know one of the things I but you mentioned reef plays up in Michigan I mean I got my feet wet in the business as a young investor buying into Northern Niagara

8:27 reefs oh wow yeah in the in the Northern Niagara reef trend and there was this geologist that had had a hot streak of hitting these things he'd hit like five or six of these and these Northern Niagara

8:41 reefs you know one well could be a couple of million barrels no problem right and what was the premise he was on the hot streak and eat what was the premise behind those as I recall it was you know

8:51 advent of 3d seismic we could finally image yes so we knew where the reef was and you hit it it was either a howitzer full hydrocarbons or it was wet was that kind of the play as I recall or or the or

9:05 the porosity wasn't there the porosity wasn't there okay it was tight yeah this is before fracking was big we're talking the 80s right so he had a two well package and And he had this one well. I'll

9:16 never forget it, it was called the maidens. He said the seismic on this is the best I've ever seen. This is gonna be a monster well. But he had another prospect that was part of the same acreage

9:27 package that he had to agree to drill that one at the same time. And the seismic on that one was if he is hell, it was called the Stolen 1-18, right? Yep. So it was a package deal. 10, 000

9:41 bucks got you a 1 interest in both wells 2, 500 for your interest in the maidens and 7,

9:50 500 for the maidens and 2, 500 for your 1 in the Stolen. So I'm gonna bet, Chuck, that you can write the rest of the spreads. I wanna hear it.

10:01 Well, the maidens well was a dry hole. The Stolen well paid me back my 2, 500 for my 1 interest. For the first few months, it was paying me back every week.

10:16 And over the course of that well, over a 20 year period, I got over 110, 000 in cash payouts for my 2, 500 investment. Nice. You know, I think that's kind of lost on, what I'll call the

10:29 younger generation. I hate to sound like an old boomer, but I think that's lost on folks, just the excitement we had when we first had 3D seismic. You could, for the first time, truly image

10:43 these structures and just the lottery ticket nature of it was so much fun. Well, and that's really where we are in what I'm doing now with LGX Energy in Indiana. And I'm happy to tell you all about

10:57 that 'cause we're super excited. But there's always, you wanna try to find a way in this business to get some kind of an advantage, right? Whether it's seismic or whether it's the acreage you hold

11:11 some kind of new technology for completion techniques or whatever it is, you wanna find some kind of an advantage. So back in the cadence days, I told you about Lucius Gere, right? Well, he was

11:22 a real good oil man, and we had some really good leases up in Wilburger County on the Wagner Ranch, which is, I think, after the King Ranch, I think it's the second largest ranch in Texas. They

11:32 had their oil and gas division with their own geologists and everything, and we were getting leases on them, leases where we had to drill right away I mean, there was no time on them, but Lucius

11:43 liked some of these prospects, and so we'd get a

11:47 40-acre lease and drill a well, and we were having a lot of success. Well, Lucius says to me one day, he says, You know what? We ought to hire my old friend, Al Wadsworth. You know, he's

11:57 retired down in Houston now, but I think he could help us. And I go, Well, sure, Lucius, what's the story? Well, Al, you know, he's 88 years old, and he lives right there in Houston He's

12:08 not far from the log library. And, you know, a

12:13 lot of them wells that were drilled up there in Wilburger County where we're at, they were drilled way back in the 19 teens and 20s and they had different technology for logging them wells. And a

12:25 lot of modern geologists, they can't read them, but oh, wow, he can read them old logs. So we hire Al and we pay him, you know, three days a week on a consulting rate and he'd go down to the

12:37 log library in Houston and he'd pull these logs off the Wagner ranch and he'd call me up and he'd say, how are you? He said, I got, well, I got, there's a well here. They drill this well in

12:47 1919

12:49 and they logged 16 feet of really good looking pay in the upper Millham sand at 1, 652 feet and

12:57 they never completed it. And I said, well, why is that Al? Well, they didn't want, they didn't want no well doing a hundred barrels a day back then. They were looking for 2, 000 barrels or

13:06 nothing They weren't even going to waste the time completing a well like that. So we'd go twin that well. You know, it had long since been plugged in abandoned, but we knew right where it was. We

13:18 had the coordinates, we'd go twin that well, and we'd make a 60 or 70 barrel a day well every time. And we did that over and over and over again. You know, some of them came in at 100 barrels a

13:29 day, and some of them came in at 20 barrels a day, but they were all shallow, cheap, and they all paid out fast. It's stunning. So that was our advantage there It's stunning the amount of what

13:42 I'll just put in quotes and call institutional knowledge that our industry has lost through the ages. 'Cause if you think about it, so much data was stored on paper that's been destroyed, we're in

13:55 people's heads who have just flat out and hate to be blonde about it, but they've died. And it's - Right, well, guys like Lucius and Al and they were, they were at the very end when we had them,

14:06 and they were, they were the reason we were successful, frankly, 'cause I was, you know, that was my first - time in the commander's chair in an oil and gas deal, I've been an investor and a

14:19 financier of some projects before that, but yeah. The single worst, the single worst tool on the planet for years in our business were those old mud logs 'cause you'd get a show and everybody'd get

14:32 excited and you'd go complete that zone and it'd never have anything in it. And you got to the point where you just started throwing away all those old log libraries, love and behold, the shale

14:42 revolution happens. And those were the compass that pointed you to all the shales out there and those were the best tools ever to sit there in the shale revolution. It's just crazy how

14:55 institutionally we've lost so much through the years and haven't gotten it captured. I do want to hear about what you're doing right now 'cause I know nothing about Indiana and Illinois. I've looked

15:07 at three or four deals. Well, let me give you the background on that So LZM Center, V.

15:13 A company we started it in November, my partner and I that I've worked with for 30 years, we started the company in November of 2021,

15:22 and with the thesis that there was a portion here of the Illinois Basin that was underexplored, for sure, using any kind of modern technology. And that would be several counties in southwestern

15:34 Indiana, and the reason we focused in on that is we were able to negotiate an acquisition of a company called Adler Energy that was owned by some German investors. And they had drilled out a small

15:47 field called the Thomas Field back in about 2006. And

15:51 there were six or seven producing wells, and they had they had declined down from their initial flush production to where collectively they were doing about 20 barrels a day. And so we bought the

16:02 whole company, and that included that field, which was doing about 1920 barrels a day and still is, you know, that these wells have 40 year life on them. Yeah, what formation is that and about

16:15 how deep is that? Well, those were Mississippian, not Mississippian, sorry, those were Devonian age reefs. Okay. Small reefs, shallow reefs at about 1, 800 feet. Yeah. And so they probably

16:28 put seven straws into that drink that with seismic, you would have done it with two or three

16:34 the most, but those are still producing about 20 barrels a day for us. We bought the whole company for

16:41 260, 000 just closed on January 31st, 2022. But the real key there for us is back in the first part of the new century, Adler had spent about, well, they had shot over 400 miles of 2D seismic

16:56 across four counties. And then the crash of '08 hit and the oil price took a hit and they really never even processed most of that seismic. So we got all of that seismic and we set to work in 2022

17:12 process and seismic like crazy

17:16 and we have had well and based on that we've gone out and started leasing and of course one of the challenges in southwestern Indiana we're operating in Clay County and Green County and Davies County

17:28 and Vigo County. One of the challenges there is that you know all that property was settled back in the 19th century under the Homestead Act So you know farmers got 160 acre parcel deeded to them and

17:42 then they had children and grandchildren and they got it divided up or sold off and so there's no federal land there there's no large tracts of land available for leasing and so you really have to be

17:54 kind of specific and you have to know how to talk to Indiana farmers which we do so we've been able to get really good three-year paid-up leases with two-year options and when you hear the numbers

18:06 that we're paying

18:09 be a little careful because of the people, but other people don't know what we know, but we're getting leases. We're getting three year paid up leases for between 10 and 25 an acre. Oh my gosh,

18:19 that, I kind of want to sit here. And we're paying it, and we're paying a one eighth royalty. I almost want to go license the song Glory Days from Bruce Springsteen to start playing in the back

18:32 because. Yeah, it's really pretty amazing. So in the first year of processing about 25 of that seismic, we've already got 55 prospects that we've either leased or intend to lease because we can

18:45 see Mississippian targets there. We can see Devonian reefs that have formed and we can see deeper horizons that have been massively productive in other parts of the Illinois basin, including the

18:57 Trenton, the Black River Sand, the St. Peter Sand, and even all the way to the Knox. And the deepest, any of these formations are, And this part of Indiana is about 3, 800 feet to 3, 900 feet.

19:10 So we're going to be the first five, well, okay, so we start with that premise and then we've come back and shot 3D seismic to confirm what we're seeing on the 2D that we processed. And we've

19:23 identified five prospects that we already have permits on that we're getting ready to start drilling as this funding comes in from our reg A So, we've got five prospects that we've reconfirmed on 3D

19:35 and just to give you some scale for what the Illinois Basin is all about. I mean, the Illinois Basin covers two thirds of the state of Illinois, the southwestern third of the state of Indiana, the

19:46 western half of the state of Kentucky. And it's been like the fifth most productive basin in US. history

19:55 John D. Rockefeller discovered a field in East Central Indiana, a Trenton field, which is not technically part of the Illinois Basin, but same formation. He discovered a Trenton field there in

20:07 1890, which became the first 100 million barrel field in US. history, called the Lima-Perou field in Allen County, Indiana, and that was the basis of his multi-billion dollar fortune. Was that

20:20 field? That's what got him started in the oil business, and it produced over 100 million barrels over a 20-year period, and again, because of the primitive technology that was used back in the

20:31 1890s and early 1900s, it's been estimated by the Geological Survey that there's 150 million barrels of stranded oil there that we can't get because you depressurize the formation by drilling it

20:46 incorrectly. So it was a massive 250 million barrel field that Rockefeller discovered. Now there's Trenton Fields in southern Michigan that are again at about the 2800 foot level. which is where

21:03 we're seeing the Trenton in our area of Southwestern, Indiana. The Albion Sipio field has produced almost 200 million barrels. And the stony point field of almost 40 million barrels. Now, uh,

21:17 our senior geophysicist, Jerry Blackston, he actually worked on the stony point field. He knows exactly what the seismic on that field looked like And we've got five prospects right now, Trenton

21:32 prospects with mirror image seismic, the stony point. And yet in those four counties, almost all of the production that's happened over the last hundred years, has been very shallow,

21:43 Mississippian or a little bit of Devonian production all above 2, 000 feet. So how, how isolated are these reefs? Are they individually defined prospects? or do the race somewhat. run together

22:01 and where I was going with this. Sometimes they grow in clusters, like in one part of Clay County, we've leased one reef that looks like it has extremely good closure and is about 160 acres in size.

22:16 And there's another one right next to it, underneath a town that's about the same size, which we've got leases going on that as well. So they do tend to grow in clusters, these reefs, and that

22:28 part of Indiana, these Devonian age reefs are about

22:32 1,

22:34 800 feet deep, something like that. And then typically these first five that we have seismic on, we've got stacked pay underneath it. So when we drill, we're gonna be going to the basement to

22:45 look at the Knox, and we'll take a look at one of the other sands like the St. Peter or the Black River, and we'll take a look at the Trenton So I can't even remember having a investor presentation

22:59 presentation. that was geologically driven since that's been, yeah, 20 years since the last time. I notice you're not wearing a tie. I can always tell the geologist was screwing me if they had a

23:10 tie on it. Well, I'm not a geologist, but I've been around them for 40 years and I've seen a lot of squiggly lines and I've got a really great, my team of people, which includes geologist,

23:22 geophysicist, land man and project managers, we've got 150 years of collective experience in the Illinois basin So I've really got a great hair, a lot of gray hair in the cockpit, if you will,

23:34 and they've got some excited young guys out there too, but, you know, just to give you some more scale. Let me jump in, let me jump in, if I can remember a couple of my geologic questions from

23:46 20 some years ago. Anything with the A-V-O analysis that's gonna help us differentiate between water and hydrocarbons, then that sentence even makes sense I think I would have asked that.

24:01 Well, it does, but I think that the answer is, you know, like these first couple wells that we drill, we already know that these areas are hydrocarbon charged. For instance, the first well

24:11 we're going to drill, another company just, they drilled into the gas cap and they never got below the gas cap 'cause they didn't have any seismic, but we already know there's its oil and gas

24:20 charge. Oh, there you go. This whole region, this whole region because there's shallower formations that have produced for decades

24:29 Just to give you some scale down in one of the counties that we're in, our seismic, there's a, there's a Salem field which is produced historically five billion barrels of oil from a

24:41 Salem field at above a thousand feet. It's a 900 foot deep formation. We've got seismic just a couple of miles north of that field that looks exactly like it. And what's it gonna cost us to test a

24:54 field at 900 feet? Not very much. That's me with my seven iron. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, there's so much, our team has so much excitement over this. So what's it even like trying to get a

25:10 rig? What's it like trying to get a rig? Oh, well, we've got rigs lined up. It's, you know, that's the other thing about the Illinois basin is it's been producing for 120 years. So you've got,

25:22 there's drilling companies, there's work over rigs, there's field hands, there's geologists, there's two refineries in the Illinois basin that we're currently selling to the country mark refinery,

25:31 the production that we've got. And we've got to, you know, it's all light, sweet, crude. We don't get any penalties for heavy sulfur, anything like that.

25:42 So anything going on in the area in the oil field that would shock somebody from the Permian basin, maybe any different things you have to do in the Illinois Basin versus, you know, what I'll call

25:57 it more traditional. Oh, you don't have to drill as deep. We don't have to drill as deep a hole to get to all the formations we're after. We don't have to pay near as much for the leases. We

26:06 don't have to pay near as much royalty. And

26:10 we don't have to deal with the federal government at all because it's all state of Indiana oil

26:17 and gas division and we've been able to get drilling permits in a week. Wow, yeah, much more So I mean, to me,

26:29 it just as an industry investor, my whole life, it ticks all the boxes for a project. And so what we're doing, we've got a reg A on the streets, Chuck, that people can read about it at our

26:41 website and I'm doing webinars on it. Back to what you and I were talking about earlier about the oil business. One of the questions I've got is, what's the risk profile of oil and gas drilling?

26:54 And I said, Well. The risk is if you're drilling one well, the risk is extremely high, you know. Even if you've got good geology and good seismic and everything else, there's all kinds of things

27:05 that can go wrong with one well. I mean, you can hit oil and it can be no porosity or you can hit oil and have screw up the completion and stick rods in the hole. There's all kinds of things that

27:19 can go wrong or it can be a dry hole. And the way you beat that is with diversification So you know, over the next couple of years we're going to be drilling dozens and dozens of wells with

27:29 excellent science on all of them in an area that's already proven to be highly productive for hydrocarbons, mainly oil.

27:39 I started to say just across the line in Illinois, there's been Trenton Wells, remember go back to Rockefeller and what he did in eastern Indiana, there's been Trenton Wells over on the Illinois

27:49 side of the line, one well that is IPed at 4, 000 barrels a day with over a million barrels of cumulative. um,

27:58 total production resource, you know, total recoverable oil. So these Trenton wells can be huge. You know, one, one Trenton well can, can make a company frankly. Yeah, that'll be interesting

28:11 to, that'll be interesting to watch. Like I said, I think in my career, we wound up, um, we wound up looking at three or four deals in the, that neck of the woods. Was there a new Albany shale

28:24 that was somewhere? Yeah, yeah, there's, there's really good new Albany shale down in, uh, in Posey County. And, and, and, uh, and a lot of the infrastructure for the new Albany Shales had

28:35 placed out gas prices haven't been very interesting lately, obviously compared to oil, but, um, but Posey County isn't very far away from us. And there, we know of some very outstanding Albany

28:47 shale prospects down in Posey County, but that hasn't been our focus right. But Interesting. now

28:53 yeah, new Albany The channel is a real thing. Gotcha, all right. Give me kind of one or two sort of wild oil stories

29:08 Oh, oh boy. Well, there's so many, you know,

29:14 so many. I mean, I told you the one about the stolen well, you know, the only reason that even got drilled is the landowner was requiring that you have to drill the stolen prospect or I won't give

29:25 you the maintenance process. And that just the best, you know, the well that kicked off the Permian Basin, the Santa Rita number one, the guy had to import in, be a train, the drilling rig,

29:39 right? And so does that move in the drilling rig. It breaks down. He doesn't have enough money to fix it. So the drilling rig is right there. He drills the well, boom, the Santa Rita number one

29:52 hits and lo and behold, we've got the Permian Basin and it kicks off all that five years later, he went back and drilled his original prospect that he brought the rig in for and it was a dry hole.

30:05 Yeah

30:07 So here's one for you. I mean, I don't know if you're a golfer or not, Chuck, but you know, the United States Open Championship this summer was played at the Los Angeles Country Club. I've

30:18 played Los Angeles Country Club and I sliced the ball into Lionel Richie's backyard. So. Okay. Well, you know, I was a college golfer and of course,

30:34 I got a chance to play in my uncle's famous tournament at Pebble Beach. My uncle was the legendary American entertainer, Bing Crosby. So I got to play a lot of golf with him and I got to play in it

30:46 anyway. Back to L-A-C-C. So very elite business-oriented membership, they've never allowed any entertainers to become members there. So no actors, no none of that. 36 holes, great track, as

31:02 you know But what most people don't know is that for many, many, many years.

32:07 which made no sense to me and just baffled us for a while. The second thing is we bought this field and the first thing we wanted to do was send a vacuum truck out to sweep up all the oil, pick up

32:19 all the oil on the ground. Just being a good environmental steward, that's what you would do in Texas. Lawyers had a fit, don't you dare, don't you touch the oil on the ground? And I go, what

32:33 are you talking about? And they said, the second you vacuum up that oil, you're admitting that you did it and it's not natural. And then you become liable for it. So we literally had just oil

32:56 seeping up in the ground in and amongst our wells, but we couldn't touch it. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it's just an incredible basin. I don't know if you ever saw pictures of the Wilmington

32:59 field down at Long Beach in the early days, but, you know, talk about putting too many straws in the drink. I mean, they literally had oil derricks lined up like, You know, not nine pins

33:06 stopping down there. all just onshore and just offshore. The Wilmington field produced 4 billion barrels of oil for gone crying out loud. Isn't that crazy? That's just one field in the LA basin.

33:17 So the big wild that kicked off Texas was spindle top and east Texas. And arguably the reason we won World War II was the east Texas oil field providing all the oil.

33:31 Spindle top, that region never actually hit payout despite being one of the most prolific areas of all time. They wound up drilling so many straws into that formation that it never actually hit

33:44 payout over the course. I did not know. I mean, I know spindle top blew out at 100, 000 barrels a day when they hit it in 19, whatever, 12 or, but I didn't know that. Yeah. You know, this is

33:58 where like there's another field, there's another Devonian reef field Not far from us, call the Holden Field. that we're going to be drilling right away. But the Holman field, I think, is done.

34:12 I don't want to get the number. I won't be far wrong. It's done about one and a half million barrels from from an 1, 800 foot Devonian reef. And it's owned by the people that own the Indianapolis

34:23 racetrack, have the 500. But that field's been producing for, you know, 20 years. And with the way these, these reefs play out in Indiana, as you get a, you get a nice flush production on the

34:36 well. And it declines over the first three years from, let's say, 100 barrels a day down to, you know, 15 barrels a day. And by year 10, it's down to five barrels a day. And then that stays

34:47 there for 40 years. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's wild. Well, Howard, I always like to end every every podcast with five questions. And.

35:04 I actually came, I'm kind of throwing a curve ball at you 'cause we didn't prep for this, but I've got five questions being Crosby edition. Are you ready for five questions on your uncle? I can

35:17 handle any of those. I knew the man quite well. I'll show you how well I knew him. I can do it here on my phone if you can see. There we are together at the San Francisco Golf Club. Nice. It

35:30 actually, if you'll text me that picture, I'll get him to throw in the podcast if you'd like, so. Yeah, he was my dad's younger brother. They were numbers three and four of seven, big Irish

35:44 family in the early part of the century in Spokane, Washington. Oh, nice. And yeah, they were Irish twins, more than the same 12 month period. We had children 18 months apart and our joke used

35:59 to be, we were beginning the discussions on the third child the decision got made. So yeah, all right, question number one. Okay. Your uncle, clearly the voice of the holidays. Where do you

36:14 rank singing wise? Are you a backup singer on a Arbor day, maybe?

36:20 No, I've actually had a semi-professional singing career. I've made five or six albums, CDs, happy to send you

36:48 one. And, you know, not everybody in the family, my brother, Keith can't carry a tune in a bucket. I mean, it's painful to watch, but, you know, I was just back, I mentioned I was just over

36:49 in Ireland this last week, and I have some very good friends up in the little village in Northern Ireland. And my friend went to school with the actor, Liam Neeson. Oh, nice. And

36:55 a few years ago, I was in his village, and I did a little show at the golf club there, and Liam's mother, Kenny. was in the audience, as well as his sister who I've met a couple of times.

37:05 Anyway, she's passed away now, she was in her 90s, but she came up to me afterwards. He said, You know, I liked your uncle a lot, but I think your voice is a lot better. Nice. And I said,

37:15 Well, Kitty, let's get your hearing aid checked, sweetie. 'Cause - Hey, I take that, I like that. All right, question number two. Your uncle, actually well-known for his passion for golf Big

37:32 golf player. Got any secret family golf stories you want to share? Sure, lots of, I could tell, we could go on for a long time on that. You know, he was actually an excellent player. He

37:45 learned to play as a caddy at Down River Golf Course in Spokane. He played, he qualified and played in the US amateur in 1940. He played in the British amateur in 1950 as a contestant. He won five

37:58 club championships at the lake side in LA. He won another one out here in the desert at Thunderbird. And he won, I think, a couple up at Hayden Lake in Idaho. So he had a competitive career. And

38:09 then, of course, he's in the World Golf Hall of Fame as the founder of the whole PGA Tour for charity movement. He started that in 1937 with the Bing Crosby National Pro-M. And it grew from there

38:24 to where now, virtually every PGA Tour event benefits charity. Nice. But Bing started all of that by myself. That's something I did not know. I had done some research, but I had to run across

38:37 that. That's cool to hear. So kind of on the similar lines, question three, obviously had a long-storied career.

38:48 Is there something that may be lesser known or something you'd want the public to know about your uncle,

39:01 Well yeah, there's a lot of things. I think one of the things that I would say is that

39:07 most people don't understand what a pioneer he was in helping to advance the career of African American entertainers. In 1932, Bing recorded a record called Daida with the Mills Brothers,

39:27 and this is the first time that a major recording star performed with a black music group and gave them full attribution on the

39:37 record. So it was Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers, and that was 1932, and you know, so it's a fascinating record too because Bing scats on the record, which I can't do, and one of the Mills

39:51 Brothers, when you listen to the song and you can listen to it on YouTube, just dine us. Bing Crosby, it'll come up with the Mill's brothers. And one of the Mill's brothers makes his voice sound

40:05 like a bass. You think you're hearing a bass being played, but there's no bass. It's one of the Mill's brothers doing the bass with his voice. And then in

40:17 1936, Bing co-starred with his very good friend Louis Armstrong in a film called Penny's from Heaven

40:26 And he insisted that they get equal star billing. And then in the post production, the executives from the studio came and said they wanted to delete some of the Armstrong scenes from the movie

40:40 because they felt that his presence as a star might hurt ticket sales in the South. And Bing said, well fine, then cut an equal number of my scenes. So that was another sort of major step But, um.

40:56 Well, I'm hearing that. You know, they were a mutual admiration society. Layton, his life, somebody asked Louis Armstrong, who's the greatest Janus singer of all time? And he said, well,

41:08 Bing Crosby, of course, his voice is like gold coming from a cup. Because he's really started out as a Janus singer in the 30s. And then, and Bing was asked about Louis Armstrong, when after he

41:21 died, his famous quote was, Louis Armstrong was the beginning and the end of popular music The best there ever was, the best there ever will be. Yeah. So they were very close professional

41:35 colleagues. You know, I love hearing the stories like that because Hollywood's credit, they did a lot of that. Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, tick on down the list of the great things. And now,

41:51 I really love hearing that. And this was probably - Well, the other thing that's interesting about Bing He never had an entourage. None. I mean, he drove his own car, answered his own mail to

42:05 the extent that he could, and nobody, he didn't have any hangers on following him around. There was no rat pack, for instance. That's interesting, that's interesting, 'cause one day I'd love to

42:18 be famous and have a big old entourage. So

42:22 interesting to hear. So this question, I actually know how you're gonna answer it, but I'll go ahead and ask it anyway. Do you view your uncle as a responsibility you have, a privilege you have,

42:39 or is it just an interesting icebreaker at parties? Oh, I think it's a privilege. Especially when you consider the magnitude of the totality of his body of work.

42:55 He recorded over 2000 songs commercially, which is more than double anyone else. He had 41 number one hits, which is more than double anyone else. He had 368 songs charted between 1931

43:10 and 1957, which is more than double anyone else, actually more than triple.

43:16 He starred in 63 feature films, and he was one of three movie stars in history to sell a billion tickets at the box office.

43:26 The only other two were Clark Gable and John Wayne, neither of whom had any number one hits to my knowledge. So, the scope of the level of, and of course, he had top rated radio show in the

43:39 country for 15 years.

43:44 He had television specials every year, Christmas specials. He just went on and on and on That's really cool to hear so question five Obviously, your uncle is best known for the iconic holiday song,

43:58 White Christmas. Is that mandatory listening these days in the Crosby House, or do you all secretly rock out to Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas?

44:12 Well, I'll tell you what's interesting about, there's a lot of interesting things about White Christmas. First of all, you know, it was part of the movie Holiday Inn in 1941, '42,

44:23 and the whole score was written by Irving Berlin, and when everybody thought the big hit out of the movie was going to be a song called Be Careful, It's My Heart, which was the Valentine's Day song,

44:35 and the theme of the movie was going around holidays around the year, and so Irving was playing through the score for the cast, and he got to White Christmas and played through it, and apparently

44:46 Bing just said, Ubing was always very nervous about how his songs would be accepted. And apparently Bing said you can relax serving this song will do quite well.

44:58 And, you know, obviously one of

45:02 the things I find the most interesting about it is this is 2023. And almost everybody you can think of has recorded a version of White Christmas from Elvis and Frank Sinatra to Mariah Carey to Ella

45:18 Fitzgerald. I mean, you almost can't name an artist that hasn't recorded White Christmas. That would include me with an Irish group that I did a record with.

45:28 But the fact of the matter is nobody wants to hear anybody else's version. I

45:32 mean, nobody wants to hear Sinatra sing White Christmas. Nobody wants to hear all the sing White Christmas. They want to hear Bing. And in the '70s, when he was doing a lot of work with a

45:44 producer out of England called Ken Barnes, Ken suggested that they, that they do re-recording of a lot of his early hits from the '30s and early '40s when the recording technology wasn't as good.

45:56 So Bing had him put together a list of songs for re-recording. You know, everything from June and January to blue skies to all kinds of the early stuff. And White Christmas was on the list and

46:09 Bing's going down the list. Yeah, yeah, and then he crosses out White Christmas.

46:15 And Ken said, well, why that? He said, well, I think we got that one right The first time we don't need to do it again. Yeah, that's a great one. Of course he did it again every year on his

46:25 Christmas show. Right. Not a commercial authority. Right. Ah, that's so cool. Now I love that. Yeah, we got that one right. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, no need to go further with that one.

46:37 So it's still the biggest selling record of all time by a mile. Ben Crosby's White Christmas. There was a brief period in 1998 when Elton John's candle in the wind.

46:49 passed it up. But Christmas comes every year and Princess Di only dies once.

46:57 That's right. Well, how are you cool to come on? This was fun. Well, fun for me too, Chuck. I hope I didn't drown your audience with geology, but anybody that would have an interest in looking

47:11 at our company, lgxenergycorpcom, have a look, come to one of our webinars and you can hear more That sounds awesome. Definitely need to get you back when you got some results. Wish you the best

47:24 of luck because at the end of the day, nothing's better in the oil business than hitting a great well. No, there isn't anything. It's more fun than anything. And of course, we could have a long

47:36 conversation about why oil is going to be here for a long time and why the dreams of electric cars are are not going to materialize the way people think they might. Yeah, no. Yeah, absolutely,

47:48 we'll definitely get that scheduled. That's the subject of another discussion, however. So, Chuck, thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be on with you.