Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:20 Hey everybody, welcome to Chuck Yates needs a job. The podcast honored today to have as my guest, Jane Stricker. And I'm a booger on your title. What are you doing? Sorry, you told it. It was

0:32 like 15 minutes long. Yes. It is ridiculous job title. So I am the Senior Vice President of Energy Transition at the Greater Houston Partnership and my secondary role, or really probably my

0:43 primary role is as executive director of the Houston Energy Transition Initiative that the partnership leads on behalf of industry. So I always just tell people I'm leading the energy transition and

0:54 the energy transition capital. Gotcha. And you actually have the right background for that because you had a long career at BP. Tell me about career at BP. Yeah. So random collection of jobs at

1:06 BP is how I would describe it starting with working in retail gas station business when I joined BP in 2000. So this is great When I was at Kane Anderson, one of my partners was a trolling engineer

1:20 and right out of school, he went to work for Exxon. He is down in Corpus Christi, meets a girl in a bar, and she goes, who do you work for? And he goes, Exxon, and she goes, which one - Yeah,

1:32 exactly. Well, and I started in Baltimore, and it's that thing where it wasn't an energy industry. If you worked for an energy company, you worked in a gas station - Right - And I really never

1:44 had, for the first half of my career, any real sense of the true size and scale of the energy industry or BP. 'Cause I worked in a retail business unit that was part of a retail business that was a

1:56 completely separate segment from everything else in BP. And so, for the first half of my career, I was in marketing doing, I ran gas stations, built gas stations and operated them, and did offer

2:12 development and planning, things like that and really with no sense of what happens in the offshore. Gulf of Mexico and the onshore, lower 48 gas business. I didn't really understand any of that,

2:25 right? I understand any of that, right? And so it wasn't - Isn't true that a third of the inventory of convenience stores are stolen. Isn't it something - I think it's a little bit - I think

2:37 they're on average. Yeah, that's probably about right. That's so wild. Yeah, convenience store business is an interesting business. I think I've made more pots of coffee in my entire life than

2:46 most people and stocked more coolers. And so - but

2:52 there's a little bit scary to it from - I mean, I had a retail background. I worked for JCPenney's London Fog before I worked for BP. And when I started running gas stations, my biggest fear was

3:02 somebody in one of my stores getting robbed or shot or hurt. And that's really where I learned about safety culture. Because in clothing retail, the worst you're going to get is a paper cut or

3:15 something - Right.

3:17 But all of a sudden I'm in this environment where I'm wearing a pager, we're open 247, we sell alcohol. I mean, all of the things that create risk, I had to have liquor licenses in my name in

3:29 Atlanta, Georgia because I was the manager of all of these convenience stores and you're basically relying on the lowest common denominator sometimes working the midnight shift to not sell alcohol to

3:42 a minor or somebody who's drunk or, you know, I mean, and then you've got the risk of people that work for you getting hurt. And so that was really the first time in my career, I had experienced

3:54 a safety culture and having to be cognizant of that safety culture. And it comes back around for me, obviously - Yeah, so what else are you doing at BP - Yeah, so moved to Houston. So made the

4:07 shift from retail into corporate finance I had done my masters in finance, my MBA at Loyola.

4:16 BP and then took a role here in Houston to manage our corporate funding for the US operations. And in the time I was in that role was when Macondo happened. And so, let's do this. My mom listens

4:32 to this podcast and my dear sweet mom who raised four boys and is so innocent and naive also doesn't know anything about energy. So what was my condo? Mom, this for you real quick. The rest of the

4:43 audience gets it Yeah, everybody gets it. But yeah, Macondo was the explosion of the deep water horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. And so I was in our corporate finance organization at the time

4:55 when that happened. And so talk about, you know, frontline view of the financing challenges of how to manage through that kind of disaster And I mean, obviously the people on the front line

5:09 dealing with the actual impacts and the implications of that and the spill and the clean up. and the deaths, that was incredibly difficult. And I think sometimes people forget that organizations

5:24 are people and people that really deeply care and don't wanna see anyone get hurt, don't wanna take advantage of people. I think our industry gets a bad rap. But at the end of the day, it was very

5:36 emotional for all of us because it was a difficult time and we were trying to do the right things And so I was in corporate finance through that through the negotiation of our settlement with the

5:51 federal government. All of those things I sat in the company secretary's office for a few years while we were actually negotiating those agreements with the Department of Justice and the EPA. And

6:01 then I was asked to take a role supporting that compliance. So we were under two federal agreements for five years. One with the Department of Justice and one with the EPA required to conduct and

6:15 conduct. a series of, with the DOJ, it was primarily focused on process safety and changing our process safety approach and implementing procedures and processes in our Gulf of Mexico operations

6:28 and in our well operations. And then with the Environmental Protection Agency, that one was more focused on ethics and compliance. And so ensuring that, and that agreement applied to the entire US

6:40 operations And so 14, 000 US employees, and we were required to

6:47 meet a number of ethics and compliance obligations, things like sort of conduct training, safety training. We had a federal monitor, we had federal auditors. And so for that five year period of

6:59 time, my team had to develop the processes to make sure that we met all of our obligations. And then we tracked and managed that and provided assurance to the board and to our external stakeholders

7:12 that we were in fact meeting all of those obligations. So I don't even know the metric to ask, but maybe I'll just make this up, like how many pages are those two agreements? I mean - Yeah, I

7:23 mean, the agreements themselves are each a couple of hundred pages. But the reports that then have to be submitted each year to demonstrate compliance with those obligations massive. I mean, I

7:37 think we added it up and it was somewhere in the realm of 600, 000 pages of documentation to prove that we were meeting all of the requirements of those agreements. Two agreements, five years each,

7:51 two federal monitors, two federal auditors. At no point in time did we ever, throughout those two agreements over that period of time, we never had a material audit finding and we never had any

8:05 issue raised by the monitor. I mean, it was amazing to me even being in the job, I'm seeing how serious life people took those agreements and how hard people work. to make sure that we did all of

8:18 the things that we were required to do about the government to demonstrate our commitment to doing business in this country, 'cause ultimately what it comes down to is your license to operate in the

8:28 country. And recognizing that any mistake would jeopardize that license to operate - And this is gonna sound like libertarian chuck bashing the government, and I don't intend to It's more an

8:44 intellectual curiosity question about it. Did you feel like the agreements you negotiated with the two government entities, actually the government knew what they were asking for and it was actually

8:58 positive steps, or did it feel more like check the box type stuff? And the only reason I ask is just, I'm always sitting here thinking about, how do we regulate correctly? 'Cause I'm a luber -

9:10 And do the people who do it, even understand right yeah we were we had a panel on our zero, we did a streaming event about the industry trying to get to net zero emissions. And one of the things we

9:24 were talking about on the finance panel was investors want ESG. And I said, I hate to say this because I love my former investors, but they were kind of like just a steward in his Supreme Court

9:36 decision about pornography. It's like, I know it when I see it. But they truly didn't know what they were asking for. And so the reason I ask is as much as I'm a libertarian and don't think there

9:46 should be any government already, there actually has to be. So were they constructive in how they did it? Did they bring in experts? Yeah, actually they did. And I think, you know, at the time,

9:58 Bessie, boom, those federal organizations who had been regulating offshore operations already were instrumental in helping to define the nature of the obligations and the process safety elements.

10:12 So with respect to stuff. Yeah, and we were required to have a process safety monitor in addition to an ethics monitor. And so we had expertise that really helped us think through how do we get

10:26 better at this? How do we demonstrate? And how do we really change the way we think about things like semzaudits

10:34 and the everyday operation, the activities that we do in our business to make sure that we are thinking about safety and making sure that the process makes sense. Because the more you're relying on

10:47 people and human factors, the more likely you are to have something go wrong because people make mistakes. And so the more you can put the process in place and have people understand those processes,

11:00 at least then when you've decided not to follow a process, there's a deliberate decision-making element to that versus relying on a person and their subject matter expertise to get it right.

11:14 on the

11:17 DOJ agreement, absolutely. On the EPA agreement, the nature of that agreement was actually based on a document that we submitted to the government statement of present responsibility. So after

11:31 McConnell happened, we were required, we were going to be suspended from doing activity in the US. by the EPA, which meant that our leases, it meant fuel contracts, it meant any of a number of

11:45 different things that involved the government, we would be suspended from being able to do any of those things - And yeah, you were probably selling stuff to the military, like, you know, jet

11:54 fuel - Yeah, yeah. And so in order for us to continue to do business, we needed to provide the government with a statement of present responsibility that says we are presently a responsible

12:08 organization and capable of continuing to do business with you And so when that got written that said, here are all the reasons why we are a responsible organization. That became the basis then for

12:23 that EPA agreement. They said, Chummy. Five years, you say you do all these things, you say you train people on ethics and compliance, you say you have safety training, you say you audit these

12:34 activities, you say your leaders go through leadership training, you know, Show me for five years and we're going to audit you every single year. And so that's where those big joint reports come

12:46 from. The document, did you do everything you said you were going to do? What does the training look like? How is your executive compensation tied to safety metrics? All of those things we had to

12:56 document and demonstrate for five years. Well, and give me maybe one or two specific examples because the one you gave when we came over and had lunch with you, Colin and I went over and had lunch

13:09 to just say, Hey, what we're up to tell us about the partnership. The one I loved is you had to send somebody to pee in a cup. Right -

13:19 So we were on federal probation for a period of time. So my boss was actually the guy who was required to go meet the probation officer for the duration of our federal agreement. And so he would

13:33 have to go over to New Orleans every so often and meet with the probation officer. And it's federal probation officer, but that probation officer is seeing criminals from other types of - Cartel

13:45 members - Yeah, just all of the above - Yeah.

13:48 So yeah, so we used to have a role in our team. I always told my team our job was to keep our boss out of the orange jumpsuit

13:57 and that was sort of how we brought it to our everyday work. I mean, obviously we took it very seriously. And it was important to us. We felt like we had this weight of the organization on our

14:07 shoulders to make sure that we had good processes in place and that we were helping the organization better. but we also had this very personal like, our job is to keep our boss out of the arms

14:19 jumpsy - And did he actually wind up getting drug tested? Or did we kind of do a joke about that - I think we joked about it, but I don't think he actually ever did have to go through that testing

14:28 personally - But now that's interesting. Were there, is there

14:34 something surprising out of all that that maybe people wouldn't have thought of either something you had to do or just a compliance result or something kind of just that none of us would have thought

14:47 of? 'Cause that's a wild experience and it's uncharted territory, right - It is, it is absolutely uncharted territory. I think when I would explain to people, people fundamentally understood the

14:59 Department of Justice agreement and the process safety requirements and having to improve operations and well operations in the Gulf of Mexico and changing the way we are. to improve safety and put

15:17 more processes in place. I think people fundamentally got that because of the nature of the accident. I think what always surprised people is when I would say, you know, we had this ethics monitor

15:29 and we had to do code of conduct training and there was this perception when I came into the role with particularly with the EPA and with some other federal government agencies that we inherently

15:41 didn't know to do the right thing.

15:45 And I personally get very offended by that view 'cause I worked with these people for, you know, I had worked in this company for over 10 years and I knew how seriously everyone took their job and

15:58 how seriously everyone took safety. And so this idea that somehow we just didn't embed ethics or ethical thinking or we didn't teach people to do the right thing. And because of that somehow people

16:14 didn't do the right thing. I think it was the piece that I found most - and people when I tell them about the agreements, find most surprising. I literally would have to track that 14, 000

16:25 employees completed their code of conduct training.

16:30 And while I think it's important that you have an ethical organization and that people understand what's expected of them and that they understand that they can raise issues without fear of

16:41 retribution or reprisal, just the fact that there was this perception that we somehow didn't care or weren't trying. I mean, it was an accident where mistakes made absolutely. But at the end of

16:56 the day, it was not for a lack of people wanting to do that. Yeah, and it's - I mean, the thing - so I've got a whole soapbox about one. We've abdicated our role of educating the public what we

17:11 do and I think that's because. run by a bunch of engineers. God bless engineers, but they don't tell stories very well. And two, I think there's also when you're an oil and gas company, you

17:24 produce a barrel of oil and you sell it into the market. You are not Nike that needs to go out and say, Hey, we're better than Adidas, so you understand the importance of education and the like.

17:36 So I think we've totally abdicated

17:39 that responsibility and we need to do a lot better about it. The other thing too that I think has happened and my podcast listeners are tired of hearing this. So tune out for 45 seconds,

17:51 but then come back. So I'll get folks from what I call the other side and I call them reasonable environmentalists that will reach out and say, Hey, we can't talk publicly, but I want to chat I'll

18:04 sit and chat with folks. I've got one that calls and says, Hey, it's not the burning of the hydrocarbons because quite frankly, if I didn't have my suburban, I couldn't deal with it. my six kids

18:15 are worry and the reason we fight so hard and she'll even say, quite frankly, the reason we play a little dirty sometimes and we know we're playing dirty is we don't trust you guys. I mean, I

18:26 think Lee Raymond saying climate change isn't happening quite frankly. And I get so much grief when I said we're really obnoxious when prices are high and we're rich. And I don't think we appreciate

18:38 that high oil prices pushes the economy into recession and everybody else is suffering. And so the suspicion level because of those two things is just through the roof. And I think that's kind of

18:52 the most important thing we need to do is educate on that front. Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, that's what big part of what my job is now at the partnership. I mean, I'm leading this energy

19:02 transition initiative on behalf of industry. It's industry that has funded this work at the partnership for three years. And it's the industry. players that you would expect that have a big

19:15 footprint here in Houston. I mean, it's the BP's, the shells, the ex-hans, but it's also Dow. It's also NRG. It's also Sonova. And so

19:26 we've got midstream players. We've got primarily renewables players and we've got traditional incumbent players, all that have recognized publicly or amongst themselves that we need to think

19:41 differently about the way we operate our business We are in transition. We've been in a transition for 100 years. This industry has always been in transition. I get frustrated when people say, Oh,

19:50 we don't like the word transition. We have been in transition for 100 years. We used to burn water. And we will continue. And then we burned whale blubber. And then, yeah. Yeah. And then it

20:00 was oil and then we found natural gas and then we found fracking. And so, you know, we continue to find new ways to produce and provide energy to the world. And that's what this industry does,

20:14 and it's what it does well. What we don't do well is talk about it - Right - What we don't do well is build trust. And I think we are living in a time where there's intentional barriers and

20:26 divisiveness being created, people want to own an issue, not solve a problem. And so I think there's a lot of hitting people against each other on oversimplified explanations of what's happening

20:41 But in Houston, we have to be successful with this. We have to really figure out how to navigate and leave the transition because our economy and our jobs here depend on it. And so my role is to

20:56 find ways to help progress energy transition solutions for the region and for our member companies. And in that, create jobs and economic opportunity, drive that innovation ecosystem, This is

21:12 where everything will scale from. Doesn't matter whether you've created your technology in Boston or California or Denver. If you wanna integrate an energy solution into the system, this is where

21:24 you need to be in the long term. And the industry players in common industry needs to hear that and they need to know that they need to find a way to think differently about their operating model and

21:37 learn to integrate some of these new solutions into their business models That's where the transition needs to happen, bro. We more than anywhere else. But this is where it'll happen. This is

21:48 where it'll come together. And so the work that I'm leading at the partnership is really about how do we support that? How do we help educate not only people in Houston, but outside of Houston,

22:00 about the role Houston has to play an energy leadership in the long term. And then, you know, whether it's funding the transition or implementing new technologies. support and supply chain or

22:13 helping support the innovation ecosystem. This is what the member companies have come together and asked me and Bobby Tudor and Scott and I question Eric Mullins as the leadership of this to drive

22:30 that forward. And so it's it's been a really fun first six months in role and drinking from a fire hose. So insane. It started with, you know, zero week in South by Southwest, like right out of

22:43 the box and and and having to figure out what's the narrative, what's the story we want to tell? And then how do we how do we start to bring more people in and engage NGOs and governments and

22:55 universities and people who don't think that that think that the energy transition means shutting down the energy industry, the incumbent industry.

23:07 When the discussion needs to be how do we bring everybody to the table? is the only way we win at this is if we can find a way to

23:15 work together and figure out how to integrate all these solutions. Because at the end of the day, one, this is being driven by not Big Bad government. This is consumers. This is investors. This

23:29 is company and it's a tidal wave. So one, it is going to happen. Two, I think when you just said win, in my mind, win means we make this transition by spending five instead of spending 100.

23:43 Because that, I mean, the 95 that we save in there can do a lot of good stuff for humanity. And so we need to be thoughtful. That's why I hate the demagoguing about energy because at the end of

23:56 the day, if we're not leveraging the existing energy infrastructure, it won't get done. I mean, we could, if we had, it just won't happen. Yeah, if we had the United States and we had no

24:07 energy infrastructure, okay, yeah, we might start with hydrogen. But we have all this stuff it's been paid for. We got to figure out how to - Absolutely. Yeah. And you could easily see how - I

24:18 mean, if you look back at the tech bubble, the amount of investment that just evaporated because it wasn't sound commercial opportunities. It was interesting technologies that ultimately didn't

24:31 have a role to play. And so on the investment side, we have to figure out what makes sense, what works I mean, obviously, from a research side, you want to be looking at every option and be

24:43 continuing to push the limits on what's possible. But at the end of the day, to scale it, to make it work, to implement something in an existing system, you got to figure out how to make it fit

24:56 and what works at scale. I mean, we're talking about - when people talk about electrifying everything, I don't think they understand that doesn't just more outlets. Like,

25:09 so, so peach here. was a CEO of Adventure, one of my portfolio companies back when I was at King. Heat is an engineers engineer. And we go out to California to play in a golf tournament. So I

25:22 take all my CEOs out there. And this is, gosh, 10 years ago, eight years ago. And one E four year old recent college graduate is there talking about the wonders of Tesla. It's zero emissions.

25:36 And Pete is like, well, where are you gonna get the electricity? And she's like, I plug it into the wall. You know, and it just, I mean, Pete was just, his head was blown. And I said, I

25:47 said, Pete, you know, at the end of the day, that's a lack of education that we haven't done. It's not that she's an idiot, you know - Yeah, I mean, I am a firm believer that the further away

25:60 you are from the source of things, the easier it is to not care about where it comes from And I think it's that way with food.

26:12 We all love our single serve everything, but if you were close enough to the plant that was having to, you know, to break all those things down, create all that plastic that is then used to

26:24 package up all of those little individual serving things that you like to throw in your bag and go versus, you know, the way it used to be, and I'm going to sound like a boomer I'm not a swear,

26:37 but I'm Gen X by three years, but I am Gen X just for the record. But I mean, when I think back to when we were kids, like you things came in bulk and, you know, you divvied it out and you went

26:49 on about your way. Everything didn't come into 10 minutes. And when Ziploc bags finally showed up, it was magical. It's like, holy cow, what are these things? This is okay. And my mother still

26:58 wouldn't buy them. She would only buy Saran wrap. Oh, nice. Yeah Tons of, but I mean, it's that mindset of we want to, we want to put the blame on the producers. And I get that we have a bad

27:14 history of handing off the talking points about the role of energy. But consumers drive this business ultimately at the end of the day in both directions. So whether we are successful in driving

27:28 forward on the transition, we need consumers to really continue to push us in that direction. But we also need to bring really great solutions to the table and help people understand what solutions

27:40 make sense and where you're not really getting the trade off you think you're getting - Yeah. So we'll quick maybe step back. What is the Greater Houston Partnership and maybe how's it finance?

27:54 What is its mission and what - Yeah. So

27:56 the Greater Houston Partnership is the economic development engine for the Houston region. So city of Houston, 12 County region. It's sort of, I always tell people That's like a Chamber of

28:08 Commerce on Stara. I mean, it has been around since the mid-1800s. It is one of the oldest economic development organizations in the country. We have about 900 members who fund the activity of the

28:23 partnership. But our mission is really to make Houston a great place to live, work, and do business. We primarily represent the business community. And so we have an economic development team

28:34 that is really focused on bringing new industry here to Houston They are helpful to companies that are looking to build a business in Houston in identifying locations. If it's a battery manufacturer

28:45 and they want to build a

28:48 plant, they know exactly what locations are available, where there's real estate, how

28:55 it fits with rail lines. And they do all sort of that economic development work for the region and for businesses. They're really helpful in understanding what are the incentives that Houston has to

29:06 offer competing against Denver we're competing against. Florida or competing against California. So they tell the story of why you'd want to bring your business to Houston. We've got a policy team

29:20 that really focuses on how do we advocate, particularly at the state level, for policies that will be supportive to our businesses and to our communities here in Houston. So we've got a policy team

29:31 that will advocate for one of the big areas right now is around CCUS policy for deployment of carbon tax - CCUS carbon capture - Carbon capture use and storage. So that's a huge opportunity for us in

29:44 Houston, given the asset base that's here, the emissions base that's here, the geologic storage opportunity that's here. I mean, we can make a huge impact in emissions reduction pretty quickly

29:57 with the implementation of carbon capture use and storage. But we still don't have a regulatory regime that will allow it to happen in Texas for nationally And so, you know, our - policy team will

30:10 help advocate on behalf of industry for the policies that will enable those sorts of projects and technologies to move forward. So you're going to mock me at this. You're going to make fun of me for

30:21 this. But this is this is true. This is not Chuck H. Stick. This is really true. Do you know what could be the single most effective and its natural carbon capture technology in the world and

30:38 everybody would say, right, the tree? You tell me. I know soil is a big one. It's the whale. A whale on average over 33 absorb will lifetime its tons of

30:50 carbon. It dies. It sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Number two. But does that carbon get released by the ocean? No, it sits down there at the bottom of the ocean forever There are hundreds of

31:04 years. Number two.

31:08 Whale excrement. is the perfect fertilizer for plankton. And plankton photosynthesizes call it 40 of the CO2 on the planet. We have decimated the whale population over the last 200 years. We've

31:24 gone from four to five million whales down to, we think we've got 13 million whales piece of good creating a and a narrative creating to steps are 10 there anyway, if so boats And by get hit they

31:29 because forward grow going to it's hard And today.

31:35 content, Colin and I are like

31:47 on step one with this, but we're really serious about this, that increasing the whale population could do a lot in the way of helping. So I love to meet those people because we're right here on the

31:60 ocean, you know? And it really, there really is something to do on that front and

32:10 Nobody talks about it - That's fantastic. And it was not part of the National Petroleum Council study on carving crafts -

32:17 They missed all that - Sadly, we may need to go back and revise. But

32:24 I do think nature-based solutions do have a role to play. I think we don't leverage the land, the space, and I'm not talking about trees, but I'm talking about soil sequestration. There's a lot

32:33 of work right now with ranchers in West Texas about leveraging their ranches and their ranch land as a mechanism to store carbon dioxide - So you can mock this. One of the solutions we were banding

32:46 about is we were gonna go to musicians and get them to create romantic music for whales to put them in the mood.

32:56 And, you know, jewel. You were meant for me splash, splash, splash, or something to that effect. Mock away on that - Well, you know, that'd be one way to get you done - Exactly. Did not mean

33:07 to diverge So. What else is the partnership doing - So the partnership has, we obviously we do a lot of events, networking, we bring together, I think one of the things I think the partnership

33:19 does best is connecting the dots across organizations. And so, to the extent that there are companies looking to do a project on X, we can help them connect to company Y, who's also interested in

33:30 doing that. We create a forum for them to talk about issues of business interest primarily So whether it's the infrastructure, resiliency, things that impact the Houston region, that also impact

33:47 business community. And so thinking about criminal justice and some of the issues that we've been having around the crime rate continue to go up, we tackle those types of issues with our business

34:03 members that impact their ability to do business successfully in the region. that sort of the fundamental purpose of the Greater Houston Partnership. And then Bobby Tudor had been the chair of the

34:16 partnership. And it was right at the time, at the end of 2019 into 2020, when we were starting to hear some of the big corporates, energy corporates, put their net zero commitments out. So BP,

34:29 I was still BP at the time, BP had announced its net zero commitment. Shell came out with its net zero commitment And it was two years ago, basically this month, that Bobby stood up at the end of

34:42 leading and said, Houston has a responsibility and an opportunity to lead the energy transition. And that's what really kicked off all this work that created my role in this energy transition

34:53 initiative in Houston. And it was really about, we did about a year's worth, or the partnership did about a year's worth of work with McKinsey to understand what are the implications different

35:04 scenarios for Houston in the energy transition. you know, we were already seeing significant contraction of energy jobs in the region at that time. And obviously, I kind of understand that. I got

35:17 booted. And obviously through COVID and, you know, when at the beginning, and when, when oil went, you know, upside down, it hit even harder. And so thinking about what, how do we make sure

35:35 that we are future-proofing? Houston for its residents for the economy and making sure that in the long term, we still have a great, great place to live in. And so that work kicked off. That

35:48 strategy got launched a year ago, the end of June. And then I came in in January to leave the work once they sort of figured out the structure and how they wanted to pull it all together. So

36:00 actually at the end of this month, we have our next future of global energy conference until it runs from.

36:09 I have the 28th of June, 30th of June. You've got a combination of in-person and virtual events. It will be a bit of a where are we when we're in to this new strategy. And so Bobby will be giving

36:20 an update on where we are on that. And then we've got Marty Durban, who is Vice President at the US Chamber of Commerce and he's the President of the US Energy Policy Institute. We'll be on site as

36:33 a keynote for that - Is that available to the public - It is, it is. So we've got, if you go to the Greater Houston Partnership to the events page, the future of global energy event is there and

36:45 there's a rate for members and a rate for non-members, but it's opened to anybody who would want to attend. It's a luncheon event, runs for a couple hours. That's on day two at the Hilton downtown.

36:58 And so Marty will be great because I think so much has happened in the landscape over the last six months. you know, we came into this thinking, you know, we're just going to plow forward on

37:10 energy transition and the war and the crane happened and supply chain issues continue to be a problem for the industry and everyone more generally. And so, you know,

37:22 it's not slowing down the transition, it's thinking about how do we how do we make sure that we're not just transitioning, that we're transitioning to an energy abundant future, right? I don't

37:34 know.

37:36 And so, he'll talk a good bit about that context at the global and national level. And then the third day, which is the virtual day, we've got concurrent tracks on carbon capture, use and storage,

37:50 hydrogen, and then industry decarbonization to really talk about what's happening at the global and national level, what's happening in Houston, and then what's on the forefront, what's happening

38:01 in the innovation space. And so, for each of those tracks, we've got three panels. that sort of lay out context, talk about what we're doing in Houston, and then talk about with a lot of our

38:12 startup companies here in Houston, what's coming down the pike with innovation in those three areas in particular. And then we also have a really great closing panel focused on climate equity. And

38:22 so, you know, I often say that if the only thing we do in the energy transition is reduce emissions, we haven't done what we're supposed to do. We have to do it in a way that creates opportunities

38:33 for everybody And so we'll have a really great discussion with the Chief Sustainability Officer for the City of Houston and somebody from BP and somebody from Houston Community College and Houston

38:44 Advanced Research Center talking about, you know, how do we make sure that through this transition we're creating opportunities for everyone to be successful and to improve, you know, pollution

38:56 issues in communities and to create great jobs that anyone could

39:03 access to in the long term. So I think that'll be a great No, that'll be cool. I'm going to get you to close with, give us the elevator pitch for why Houston, because there are folks actually

39:16 outside of Houston that listen to us. Yeah. Supposedly there. I have heard this. I don't know that it's true. One of the nuclear submarines in the Navy that's trolling around defending us.

39:29 Supposedly listens to my podcast every Thursday morning and blast sit through the sub because the commander of the sub wants to get into the energy business when they retire. But before you give the

39:41 Houston pitch, I got to tell my favorite Bobby Tudor story. So Bobby Tudor played basketball at Rice University. Bobby Tudor was also gracious enough to finance Tudor Fieldhouse at Rice, IE. the

39:55 new basketball gym. And so I run around and tell everybody, you know, Rice is so bad at athletics, we name our basketball gym after the career leader in turnovers. On the best side -

40:08 Totally not a true statement. Just totally make that up. But I say that all the time, Bobby would be able to be a side - We could just stop. We could just stop. I find it very funny. But anyway,

40:20 no, I think Bobby was definitely the right person to kind of lead this charge - He's doing a fantastic job. And he has such great perspective on all aspects of the energy industry - Yeah - On his

40:35 career history He really fundamentally understands why this is important, why the energy industry needs to have a big role in it - Yep - And why Houston. And why Houston is, I mean, there are -

40:49 And he's got to grab a toss to pull that together. He wouldn't get up and talk about romantic songs about ways - He would not - Yes, he would not - But I think, you know, why Houston, I've been

41:01 here in Houston for, I guess, 12 years now.

41:08 Like

41:10 I said, I worked for the energy industry for I have my career before I actually understood the energy industry because I only knew that small piece of it. But being in Houston,

41:20 everything in Houston is tied to this industry. We have the medical industry and that's fantastic and actually I think that's a huge asset for us. We have space. We have a diversified economy But

41:33 you don't live in Houston without knowing someone, working with someone, related to someone or interacting with someone who works in this industry. And so, you know, this is a hundred percent

41:48 priority for this region. It's also the place where we have all of the right assets. We have, you know, we have the SHIP channel 44 percent of the pet's are chemicals used in the world are

42:01 produced here in Houston. We have a third of the hydrogen that's produced. is used in the world is produced here in Houston. With our industrial base, our missions base, the geologic storage

42:14 capability, the industry that's here, the universities that are here, the number of engineers and talented people that are here. I mean, and you can afford to live here

42:28 and rent space. I mean, a lot of the founders startups will tell me, they came to Houston because God, they can afford to hire people and rent space for their startup. And I can get a decent

42:40 house in the heights. Right, exactly. And it's also just a fantastic place to live. The culture here, I think, I don't think people realize how great - Best people on the planet. And the food

42:52 and all of those things. Time magazine, I think it was 15 years ago, voted Houston the number one food city in America. We have amazing food. We do, we do Even if you haven't watched this last

43:05 season of Top Chef, it's worth a few. I guess they do all the great spots here in Houston - Yeah - But I think the other thing is, there is this really interesting intersection that is happening

43:15 here in Houston that will not happen anywhere else. And it's this intersection of digital technology, medical technology, space technology, and energy industry coming together to create things

43:29 like, I mean, if you look at some beta factory, you know Moji This intersection of bioscience and chemical engineering, or you see digital happening in a lot of places, but a lot of times it's

43:42 digital for the sake of digital or tech for the sake of tech. Here it's tech for the sake of solving a really big problem - Right - Right, how do we create enough energy for the world and in a way

43:52 that's at lower emissions or reaching our net zero goals. And so I don't think there is any other single geographic location in the world where you have this intersection of things going on position

44:07 a place to really lead the way and so, you know, we need to figure out how to get everybody moving in the same direction, but I mean, that's my passion about it is I just I think the time the

44:21 intersection of things the assets the talent and the commitment I mean you hear young people in school here in Houston at University of Houston in the energy program They love this industry and they

44:34 want to solve this this challenge and figure out how to keep the industry alive in the Long-term and deliver what the world needs in a way that that doesn't destroy the world So you think it's amazing.

44:46 So I have actually been doing around I've been opening up zoom calls and having So old having kids come on and just talk. Hey, why are y'all coming into the energy business? Why not what's going on

44:59 and I talked to a second year engineer Who told me a story and this is why I'm actually so up to miss about energy's ability to win back the narrative is the engineer said for three years and he's

45:13 Canadian. Suncor came to my university the first two years they gave a speech titled how to drill a well and 25 people showed up each time and we'll just go ahead and throw them under the bus. It

45:28 was an old white guy giving the presentation The third year basically the same speech was titled using AI to image the subsurface and they said a 27 year old Indian engineer who opened it up with oh

45:48 my god this is so freaking cool. 500 people showed up and Suncor had 10x the recruiting class The amount of technology and challenges that happen for us to image stuff miles under the ground drill a

46:03 three mile well. is staggering. If I were an engineer, that is the coolest stuff in the world. You can go to Silicon Valley and write software that helps

46:16 eBay or whatever. Nothing compared to the challenges and the intellectual stuff we have to do. It's so cool - Exactly. My nephew was looking at Wisconsin. He was looking at colleges and I had a

46:28 number of years ago and I invited him down to look at some schools here and in Texas when we went to some schools But I also took him over to the BP's High Power Computing Center. My nephew was very

46:39 much in the digital. He built his own computer and he's like a lot of young people. They just fundamentally, their world revolves around tech. So I took him to the BP High Power Computing Center,

46:53 which was at the time, and I'm not sure if that's still true now or not, but it was like the second most powerful computer system in the world and had him sit down with Keith Bray who - who ran the

47:06 computing center and hear about how we were using data to figure out where energy is stored and how to get it out of the ground and the size of wells and being able to use digital capability to

47:21 understand the opportunity. And he was blown away. He was like, holy cow, this is really exciting stuff. But the traditional thinking is, I don't want to go work on an oil rig - Yeah - And the

47:38 traditional thinking of the energy companies, we can't let anybody see this. This is our competitive advantage. No, it's not. There are no secrets - Exactly. Yeah - And the last thing I'll

47:49 amplify on what you say about Houston,

47:54 and I'll get all these details wrong, but I want to say it was 20 years ago, the economist ran a survey of all the major cities in the world where they basically went out thousand random citizens of

48:06 each city and they asked a series of questions. The delta between answer number one and answer number two that was greatest in their whole survey and it was like magnitudes great was the question if

48:21 you work really hard in this world you will succeed. It was something like 87 of Houstonian said yes to that and number two was Hong Kong at 64 or something and they wrote a whole article about

48:36 Houston just going what are these not so optimists out there but I think that's why we have the greatest people in the world. I mean we we're optimists we get in the energy business we spend all this

48:48 money drilling well then we turn on and see what we've actually got and to top that off we've all been broke at some point so we really don't have a class structure here. I mean you can't be too

48:58 uppity around here because I always tell people. Yeah, you never know in this town who's got money and who doesn't You literally never know when you meet people, whether they've got money or not -

49:08 Yeah, and it could change daily. I always say the CEO of an oil company's best friend is inevitably the janitor. And when things are doing well, they're flying around private on the CEO's plane.

49:21 And when things are poorly, the CEO's slipping on the janitor's couch. And that's just kind of how Houston rolls. And so, bum Phillips, the former head coach of the Houston Oilers used to always

49:32 say, Oh, these were my cowboy hat when I went outside the country and I told people I was from Houston and they knew I'd be nice to them. So - And it's a great, I mean, we love it here. I still,

49:42 you know, I'm a Baltimore girl at heart. I'm still a Ravens fan, I always will be. And an Orioles fan, but we do love it here in Houston. And it's great. And as somebody who has made a career

49:52 out of just figuring it out, I mean, that truly, if I think back about my entire career, it has become, you know, it is basically the motto, just figure it out. running something new and just

50:03 figure it out and do the next thing. And that's Houston. Just they will just figure it out. We will just figure it out. So it's exciting times to be here. And I wouldn't want to be anywhere else

50:14 right now. Jane, you were really cool to come on. I appreciate this. There's a boss. I really enjoyed it. And I will say I was terrified, but

50:24 I often ask myself, am I cool enough to go on Jokey's podcast? Because I'm not sure I'm cool enough for the crowd. How do people find out about the partnership website? Yes. Houstonorg is the

50:40 website. And if you go there, if you look at events, you can see the future of global energy event. I'm on LinkedIn. I talk energy transition all the time. So feel free to reach out to me that

50:51 way. Jane's tricker on LinkedIn. And the

50:55 Houston Energy Transition Initiative, we're still building a site so we don't have site for that yet but the you can find the Houston Energy Transition Initiative strategy and the work that we're

51:05 doing there on that greater Houston partnership website - Cool.