Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:01 Hey everybody, welcome to Chuck Gachts Needs a Job the Podcast. Got a little twist for you this week. Justin Gocea wanted me to come on his podcast. I wanted him coming on my podcast so anyway we

0:12 said screw it, we did it together. So anyway I hope you enjoy Bye!

0:35 Hey everyone, welcome back and thanks for tuning in. I'm here at the Digital Wildcatters headquarters with my man Chuck Yates, he, him, his, Galactic Viseroy at Digital Wildcatters. Viceroy.

0:47 Viceroy. Viceroy. What is, okay, so. Okay. So here's that. Here's this. Viceroy. So LinkedIn, LinkedIn makes you put a title in. Okay. I don't know if you know this. And when you get

0:59 fired, unemployed dude is unappealing as a title, right? And so I'm sitting there, I'm sitting there like, all right, what the hell? And Galactic Viceroy sounded cool, right? So I put it in.

1:11 Swear to God, somebody text me, dude, congratulations on the new job. No way. Oh yeah, no, it's great. So I text back, I text back. I'm just following my dreams. Right. And the dude text

1:22 back, I'm sure you'll crush it. Now he's probably out there going, Yates is off his rocker. Yates thinks he's a Galactic Viceroy. But he was encouraging in support of him regardless. Very

1:32 encouraging It's a true friend, Matt. And you know what my email address is, digital walk-catters - Galactic Vidroi at digital walk-catters - Dude, so that is hilarious - That's that - I have to

1:42 ask, have you ever had the green banner open to work? I mean, are you into the banner situation? Like, what do you think about that - Oh, I don't know what that is. I'm kind of - Well, I know

1:52 you're big on Twitter, but on LinkedIn, if a lot of people are looking for jobs, they'll have their profile picture and then there's kind of this green swoop that says, this has been the whole

2:02 problem - I'm kidding, I didn't know about that - I mean, I've jokingly said that the purpose of the podcast in my Twitter presence to is make sure I'm unemployable. 'Cause I figure, I mean, like

2:14 - I love fundamentally the laziest person I've ever met, so this really works for me being unemployed - But arguably, like, you're probably lazy when you have to do things you don't like to do,

2:25 but if you are passionate and you love something, whatever that looks like, chances are you're probably not that lazy.

2:33 That's kind of fair. I mean, particularly if you put it like a little bit of a dose of narcissism in with it, you know, it's like, oh, I get to be on camera. I kind of work to make sure I'm on

2:42 camera. Like when you call, I'm like, yes, sir. I'd love to be on your podcast - Right, no, that's great - No, so around here Colin will say, hey, could you do this for me? No, that sounds

2:51 like a job - Yeah, I'm done - I'm done - There's an element of that - Yeah, but you have, I mean, so you have a very unique background And by that, I mean, you know, you, you know, Rice MBA

3:02 graduate, right - Right, yeah - What year did you graduate - So here was the story. So undergrad, Rice, 91 - 91, okay - Semester of UT Law School in the fall of '91. Big thick book, tiny print,

3:18 no pictures. That's really bad. So I dropped out of law school and I just defaulted back into Rice Business School 'cause I didn't know what else to do - Gotcha - And figured out finance And that

3:29 was kind of the first aha moment. 'Cause I really thought, undergrad, science, I'm going to law school, I'm going to be the governor of Texas. That's my career path and just hated law school.

3:39 And so when I figured out finance, that was kind of like, okay, this is my jam. That was okay. That was my jam. I mean, because so 27 ish years in oil and gas and up to executive management,

3:50 right? And I mean, you did obviously you did very well, but then you became a podcaster, content creator, galactic visceroy

3:59 And you know, at the industry's leading events and media company, here we are at digital wildcatters. But between between all of that, you've spent some really interesting times with really

4:10 interesting people. And it wasn't maybe like a few months ago, on Twitter, you'll all of a sudden randomly pose you with like some celebrities or you're on fucking TMC. And so I'm thinking like,

4:20 and just in my mind, I'm like, when I met you at Energy Tech Night, I was like, man, I got to get to know this guy He has something he's way more than what the book cover shows. And then of

4:31 course getting to know you and then listen to your. and then all of a sudden you've got these pictures. I'm like, what in the world? So I'm actually really genuinely curious, aside from energy

4:39 and oil and gas and everything, we'll get into that. But like, how did you all of a sudden get in front of these celebrities? Like you had Migos, you know, you took a picture when take off, you

4:49 know, thing happened. Then you got some with some other like comedians and then was it like kiss or somebody? Like you've got all these, like anytime someone says something obviously you got a

4:58 picture of you with them. And it's like, where in the world? So how in the world? So like explain this all to me because I'm like a ton away. Like I tell my kids. Pretty happenin' dude,

5:06 wouldn't you wanna hang out with me if you were kiss? Yeah. Okay. So, so, so,

5:14 you know, some people like to go play golf, you know, some people like to hunt and fish. I mean, we all kind of have our hobbies. Of course. As weird as a sound and it probably comes from, in

5:27 all seriousness, kind of this insecurity and challenge I like stocking celebrities. Interesting. I just do. My buddy Fish says, I have the greatest celebrity radar on the planet. I can walk in

5:39 and go, oh my God, she's the B-level star in this reality TV show that ran from 97 to 99, and I go get a picture with her. What? And I don't know what it is. But anyway, it's kind of fun. Yeah,

5:53 so okay. And part of this actually kind of started with my brother, I've got three brothers One of my brothers and I used to play a stupid game call, what do you say to a celebrity when you meet

6:05 them? And we would call each other at all hours of the night.

6:09 And the first manifestation of this game was we were in the Houston airport, we're like walking out of the continental lounge. This is back before United, continental, we're walking out, and we

6:21 bumped into Peter Nune, who is the lead singer, Herman's Hermitz. Okay. And my brother Jay stares at him, and it's kind of awkward because we literally do bump into each other. And Jay just

6:32 starts screaming at the top of his lungs, Henry the eighth day I am, I am. 'Cause they had a song about a lady who had married seven Henrys and he was the eighth Henry, so Henry the eighth day is.

6:43 So we start screaming. And Peter new looks at us and goes, Oh my God, I'm gonna get killed and runs off. And Jay's like chasing him through the continent a lot. I don't know what came over Jay,

6:52 we were pretty drunk. But he's screaming, She would not marry a dick or a Sam. So anyway, it was so funny that we just started doing that And so we would always walk up to celebrities and we'd

7:03 have something funny to say or whatever. And kind of the pinnacle of that game is I saw OJ Simpson in the San Jose airport and I go, OJ, OJ, man, I got. And I kind of pull him down and I'm like,

7:16 Hey man, I got a line on the real killers. And he looked at me and freaked out and ran off - No way, what - So anyway, he kind of nuts to go do that to OJ Simpson - OJ Simpson is a good dream -

7:26 Why did he even kill me in the San Jose airport?

7:30 Yeah, but so anyway, it's kind of always sparked the thing. So I'm the annoying guy that will always go take the picture with the celebrity. So that's why I've got all these pictures - You

7:40 mentioned something earlier and to tie into this as well, but you said maybe some of it comes from insecurities or something like that. But like, so I read something not long ago, but there's two

7:50 things that really fuel us to sort of overcome or do something amazing. And a lot of it is based on our insecurities So what, what, based off of what you know about yourself, it sounds like you

8:02 have a pretty good level of self-awareness. What about the - It takes 54 years to get there, but yeah, go ahead - Right, no, and it does. And I think there's some wisdom that comes with that as

8:12 well. But like what type of insecurities have led you to be? 'Cause you did really well, and again, knowing what I know, I think you did fairly well in oil and gas and energy and finance. Is

8:24 that a part of it or, I mean, Is there any connection there? That's a good question. Kind of thinking there, I mean, Brene Brown and her research on us basically says that ultimately our

8:37 insecurity, our insecurities come back to do I feel worthy of love? You know, that ultimately, any time you're agitated or whatever, any time you're going through your bad behavior, drinking too

8:48 much, whatever, you start tracing it back, you unpeel it. It's do we feel worthy? And we all have that issue, right? And I think one of the things that kind of, you know, I wound up getting

9:02 divorced after being married for almost 25 years. And one of the things I've figured out from that was too much of my sense of self-worth was wrapped up in my ex-wife's approval. And so when that

9:14 got denied, man fucked me. I mean, I was just, I was a mess during the separation and the divorce and kind of led to a lot of therapy I've paid for more therapy than the Grush National product.

9:28 of a third world country - Okay - So you kind of kind of, you peel that back and in looking back, you're like, oh yeah, I was the kid that had to be the lead star in the high school drama play. I

9:44 was the

9:47 kid that was always seeking approval and where that came from, is it, I'm the oldest of four boys, was I just born that way genetically, but it's wild if you really start digging in and kind of

9:59 unpacking everything - Yeah - How a lot of this stuff, I hate to say Freud was right, but Freud's right, a lot of this stuff goes back to childhood on things - No, it does and actually I'm, you

10:12 know, for a long time speaking, you know, kind of on that is, when I look back now on really what's driving me and I spent, you know, I went through a period where graduate high school, I

10:21 wanted to do is go make as much money as possible, go work drilling rigs, I want to get promoted and do this. At that point, it was like success and money was the motivation behind everything.

10:31 And then come to a point now, we're in my sort of, you know, I call myself middle age, I don't know, 36 years old, reached a point of, you know, I guess financial success. And however you

10:40 want to define that as everyone has their own definition. However, reached a point and now it's like, okay, really trying to dig deep and figure out, like, it sounds funny. It's like, you know,

10:50 in the movie Zoolander, and he looks in the puddle and his face is all, like kind of messed up from the puddle. He's like, who am I? You know, like, I have that replay in my head. I'm like,

10:58 who am I? Why am I here? And what's my purpose? And ultimately, I look back at what I was, you know, as a child, like, what did I really love as a child? And what was like extremely good at

11:08 that came natural to me? And I'm trying to bridge that. Because what I've done now, up until this point, it wasn't necessarily what I, like, I never grew up wanting to drill holes in the ground

11:19 and be, you know, in upstream while in gas - Yeah, nobody did - Right, yeah. So it's like, you know, Even while I do find a sense of satisfaction and purpose. doing that because for the

11:28 greater good of providing energy to the world, you know, clearly I'm part of that ecosystem, which is quite satisfying. But like there's other parts of that too. It's like, you know, I feel

11:38 like sometimes there's more and so I'm, I'm spending a lot of time reflecting back into my childhood as like, why am I the way I am? And so it's, it's kind of like, you know, not to get into

11:47 that side of, you know, the conversation, but I can identify with, with what you're saying in terms of like really peeling back the onion And I think as we get older, we start to really

11:55 understand ourselves and even, you know, for my mom, she's 78, almost 80 years old and see almost having to like treat her as not necessarily a child, but you know, trying to help take care of

12:08 her mentally. And then her telling me things about herself as a child and me as a child, it really like starts to really connect the dots. So it's just weird kind of, I guess paradigm shift

12:19 sometimes when you really dig into it So my priest Patrick has been on the podcast a couple of times. Yeah, I've done a couple of men's retreats where 10 of us just hole up in my house for 48, 72

12:32 hours. And one of the things Patrick does kind of break the ice is get you a sheet of paper and he says, okay, let's go up the tree. So tell me about your parents, grandparents, and

12:43 great-grandparents if you can. And you kind of go, huh, whatever, you start doing that. You realize that so much stuff is driven by things that happened generations ago. I mean, you know,

12:57 Patrick's, I'm making this up 'cause I can't remember the exact, but you know, Patrick's great grandfather decides to go do something and gets killed in action. So his dad grows up without a dad.

13:12 So his dad leaves him - Yeah - And you know, Patrick grows up having to deal with an absentee father - Yeah - And you realize, no, that started 85 years ago And it's amazing how when you do that

13:26 exercise with 10 people. Everybody cries. I mean, at some point you're crying as you go kind of back through this - Yeah - And then he always closes out kind of the 48 hours of 72 hours of, okay,

13:42 you know, people are gonna be sitting in a room 80 years from now doing this, they're gonna go back. And you're gonna be the great grandfather. How much did you say about your great grandfather?

13:53 You said three or four words. So what are those three or four words? You want them to think about, you know, about you. And it makes a wild kind of circle on it, but yeah. You know, sort of

14:03 what you figure out doing that is one, you figure out just so much stuff you're dealing with baggage from the past. You also kind of figure out your, you know, the seven year itch is not just made

14:15 up thing. We really do run in seven year cycles - I've, yeah - How old did you say you were 36 - 36, yeah - So you just can't, you, if you were - You were exploring life, soul searching the last

14:27 two or three years. You're at the end of a seven year cycle and that's pretty typical for stuff. And you'll kind of think you pulled it together and then you're going to start hitting 40, 41, 42

14:38 and you're going to kind of go back, go back through that stuff. And so fascinating.

14:46 And I think kind of the other big thing that you have to wrestle with is if your sense of self-worth is something that's temporal, is something, if it's a person that can die or it's a person that

15:01 can break up with you and go away, if it's somebody you're no longer friends with or all, that really gets wild. Oh, I'm sure. Because then you're at the mercy of something. And so what part of

15:12 mine was in terms of getting right was stuff and I don't want to get preachy here because I would be like the

15:18 least poster boy for any sort of church you know, you know, mine kind of went to a lot of. God, you know, in terms of just figuring out, okay, why do I have worth? You know, why, why, why

15:31 should I feel okay being, being Chuck Yates? And so I really kind of got, instead of things of this earth, I kind of got more grounded in spiritual type stuff, even though I still drink too much,

15:43 you know, I was still, you know, cheat on this and that and do all these, do all these bad things. But anyway, I, I kind of did that And that, that really helped because people are always like,

15:54 Oh man, you got fired. That sucked. I was like, it's Tuesday, man. I had already kind of dealt with my demons, you know, call it, you know, three or four years before. So I was, I mean, I

16:04 was like, great, I don't have to go to the office tomorrow, whatever. And you know, you go, okay, I got to sell the jet. So I sold the jet. Yeah. Yeah. I drive a Honda and it's great.

16:14 Great. Great mileage. Yeah So would you, would you say, and again, we'll get in all the listeners are like, wow, this than normal, but I think this is important because I think these are

16:25 conversations that, especially us as men, as we get older, we lose our sense of deep relationships where you can have these conversations. So I think it's really cool that you do those retreats.

16:35 And talking before we move on, you're talking about self-esteem and self-worth. I think for the most part, most people's self-esteem and self-worth is wrapped up in the judgment of others. And so

16:46 we do things, you almost say, doing things to probably get approval from somebody or whatever. But the reality is, is

16:54 where people seek approval from other people is a lot of times those people don't even really give a shit about them in the first place. And especially when social media is like, Oh, I'm going to

17:02 flex on Instagram to where so I can seek approval from this masses of people. But reality just normally cares. You know what I mean? It's like, for me, myself, esteem and purpose is wrapped up

17:11 in the happiness of my wife and my two kids. Beyond that, it's like, I don't really. And then once I kind of realized because for a long time, something growing up like I always wanted to have

17:20 the best house. parties. I always wanted to have the most friends. I always wanted to be this captain of football. Same kind of like, I always wanted to be in that spotlight. And it's like, did

17:29 I really enjoy it or was it more to just like have that kind of sense of like, oh, everyone knows me and all this and stuff. And so, yeah, again, like kind of reflecting back, but you know, if

17:37 you look at Brene Brown's research, what she will say, the pressure point for a man is. So with women, it's body image. I mean, that is really what makes them feel unworthy is dealing with that.

17:48 And a lot of that society and magazines where with men, it's the ability not to fix something. That's really where we where we break down. And you can fascinating, you know, and you can look at

18:01 it's probably a little bit of a stretch, but you can look at I only got three likes on this Instagram post as maybe I'm not able to fix something. But usually our big pressure point is not being

18:12 able to fix something. And I think a lot of the problem men and women have is a man can't fix something. He loses his job or whatever. Can't provide for his family. And the wife thinks she's being

18:26 supportive. That's Collins chair. He's got a pump it up. He's got to pop it up. He's so short. He's got to pump it up. I hit my leg on it and it just - Sorry, I was just action. But a lot of

18:40 times the women will say things like, well, you should work on your resume today. And they think they're being supportive Actually, what the man hears is you can't fix it. And that's our pressure

18:50 point. And that's

18:52 really hard to navigate.

18:57 Because it takes a realization on your part as a man to go, she's not telling me I can't fix it. She's trying to help. But I think it's incumbent upon the wife, too, to just say he knows he needs

19:10 to work on his resume. Sure. He really does. Objectively, it makes sense. It makes sense And so, you know, it's, it's, you get into this kind of deep sort of stuff. And why I don't actually

19:23 think it's weird that we're talking about this on an energy podcast. I mean, we had the mind fuck of all mind fucks over the last three years. We have minus 37 oil. Everybody lost their jobs.

19:34 Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of mental health issues. Yeah. So that's number one. You know, COVID did a number on all of us because of that. And number three, the boom and bust cycle of our

19:49 industry. I don't think we've ever been mentally well in our industry over the you know, since Titusville, we have not been well because it's a boom and bust. Man, I yeah. And so I don't think

20:02 this is weird that we're actually talking about it. And what I've found on my podcast is when I do this type of stuff, you know, it's so funny. Whenever I turn in a podcast around here. Colin's

20:13 always like, all right, how long is it? And did somebody cry?

20:18 It's like therapy sessions for us all feel folks - We were hugging it out, but you know, the engagement I get with, you know, I did a, my first podcast of the year was seven minutes long. I sat

20:29 right there and recorded it on my iPhone and I basically just said, Hey, 2022 sucked for me. I don't know why. Nothing bad happened to me. I may have been clinically depressed. I wouldn't, I

20:42 promise you, I'll call if I'm gonna jump off a building. It wasn't that - Yeah, it was just kind of blue and a fun - Yeah - And I kind of half-assed everything and, you know, I didn't have any

20:53 consequences for my inaction. If I didn't drop a podcast one week, who cares - Sure - Kind of half-ass that roast I do every year for charity and we have the third largest take we've ever had and

21:04 stuff. And I really didn't have to face a consequence 'til the girl I was dating dumped me. And dumped me for not being engaged She dumped me for not being loving enough. and all that, and quite

21:16 frankly she was right. I mean, I was half-ass in the relationship and stuff. And so I had to really get right with my, I had to figure my shit out and dig into it. And I did a lot of that and I

21:27 got this wild, so kind of, let's call it December 10th of the New Year's Eve. I have this wild arc that has me on the road, seeing Roger Krieger and Corpus at one point, going to the Selena

21:40 Museum the next day to, I swear to God I had a burning bush moment on par with Moses, where I've literally spoke to God - Okay. Tell us more about that - Well, it's gonna come out on Chuck Yates'

21:55 needs a wife. We're gonna save it for that. So that's what I teased, and I basically put a stake in the ground. Now I have to actually go film this thing. But I teased, I said I'm gonna tell the

22:07 story of this, 'cause me and the girlfriend are back together - Cool So - yeah.

22:14 I say that on her behalf, not mine. Sure, sure. But now, and so anyway, I think just a lot of us in this industry have had to go through it because of the boom, but, and frankly, our

22:26 industry's dangerous. I mean, you can literally die any day out in the field. Yeah, no, that's true. You can't say that for many industries. Yeah, you're under that stress. And so I actually

22:37 think it's cool we're sitting here talking about this because I think the single best thing we could do to our industries figure out some way to deal with our mental health issues. Wow. No, let's -

22:46 I really do that. And I don't know what that is. I've spent some time thinking about it and I wanna do something. I don't know if it's, you know, is there an app we can have that sits there and

22:57 helps monitor people so a company can say, Hey man, I gotta get Justin out of there for a while. We gotta work on something. Is there. Huh. You know, 'cause you're seeing, in everything,

23:09 energy's always 15 years behind. unless it's, you know, a, unless it is, you know, being the most technologically sophisticated to drill a well, right - Yep, yep - We do that really well -

23:21 Right - Bookkeeping, we're 15 years behind. We use Ledger still, you know, mental health type stuff. A lot of industries are spending a lot of time focusing on that. I mean, you know, the

23:32 girlfriend actually, partner in a

23:36 large accounting firm. I mean, they give you a quiz pretty regularly and they fair it out, oh, there's, there's family member problems here for addiction or there's, you know, money problems

23:47 here. Whatever the mental health thing is, and they get, and they've got therapists on staff that are hitting it - Wow - You know, hey, you need to come to this session and stuff. And so there

23:58 needs to be something like that in oil and gas 'cause we just - It's very tolling on people. Would you say that majority, if not all have, people have a degree of mental health issues?

24:11 I mean, I think we all do it at some level - Right - And it gets pronounced and we figure out how to

24:18 deal with it. This is kind of an interesting stat. I know you think I'm changing the topic, but I promise I'll bring it back. You know, when the Navy SEALs go out and look for potential

24:29 candidates, they actually go and try to find people that had childhood trauma - You mentioned that in your podcast, right - Okay, yeah - Yeah, we talked about this before and it's they want

24:40 somebody that's dad abused them or whatever, 'cause they're used to running on a drill, adrenaline the whole time - That is, yeah - No data to suggest this and I'm not, I'm not impugning anyone in

24:50 the oil field 'cause anyone in the oil field, greatest people on the planet, but wouldn't surprise me if you see a lot of that - Sure - And 'cause they're drawn to that adrenaline, you know - For

25:00 sure, wow - And you started thinking about that, well, how do you deal with that? You drink too much. Go prostitutes, you gamble you do drugs and yeah, you know. No, I think it all ties

25:12 together. I think these conversations are, you know, again, they're important and they, I don't think, again, I don't think there's really, I don't, I don't think that people should have

25:24 shown away from it. And again, like I said earlier, and to the point of you made with your, the retreats that you do with those gentlemen, I think more and more needs to happen and, and to your

25:32 point on creating something or having some sort of program or a system or a way to, for folks to deal with it other than energy fin twit, which I think is helpful. But, but yeah, again, I think

25:46 there's a need for it and who knows, you might unlock the Holy Grail there. So yeah. And, you know, one of the things I've said on a podcast before, so I hate kind of repeating it, but I think,

25:59 you know, and it's horrible because we're not wired this way as, as men, but the only way you've deal with those feelings of being unworthy is to talk about them.

26:11 sure knows a way to say it. And that's so hard for us to admit to of things we did. But what I always say is, if you decide to do it, there is a 99 chance that the person you choose to do it with,

26:28 like, you and I go get a beer, I wanna talk to you and do it, 99 of the time, you always say back, me too. I felt that way too. The thing I love so much about my priest Patrick is, I'll go

26:41 fess up to these horrific things I've done in my life. And he always fesses up to something even worse. I'm like, dude, you're a priest. And he goes, I know it's really bad. I shouldn't do that.

26:49 But I mean - He's a dude - 'Cause,

26:53 I mean, and if there's one kind of message, and I'm being a little preachy here, but if there's one message, if you're feeling shitty, go talk to someone. I advise go see a professional, 'cause

27:04 there is a skill set of peeling back the onion up there - Right, they work out a certain framework that can be effective. Yeah - But at a minimum, go talk to a friend, go talk to a buddy, 'cause

27:14 I've never had an instance where I've been embarrassed to admit something and I've fessed up to it and I've ever gone, oh shit, I shouldn't have done that - Yeah - You know - Well, I think, and I

27:25 know digital wildcatters and there's a lot of startup activity happening and that's one of the common denominators I find talking to CEOs or founders of startups is it's like, it takes a toll on

27:37 their mental health And so I think even you tack on oil and gas to then starting a startup within oil and gas, I mean, you gotta be pretty mentally tough to be able to withstand kind of like a,

27:48 Josh Young's, I always love Josh Young when he talks about bison interest. He's like, I'm like a bison into the storm. And it's like, that just like to me sums up oil and gas. It's like, we're

27:56 always into the storm - Right - Yeah - So, but the moment we're not having the storm, you know it's right around the corner - Exactly. Yeah, well, before we keep going, I do have to take a

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28:44 hence a Norwegian company, but another great group. So appreciate all the support there. Hold on. Go ahead. Let's do this because I seriously believe this. I know we've had a pretty good run of

28:55 prices. We hit whatever 123, I think, was our high. We're back in the 80s now. And that's a far cry from minus 37. Nickel and dime's matter. they really matter and we're shitty as a business

29:10 about nickel and dimes. Hitting home runs, we do that great. We can go drill a wildcat well and hit something, we can 3D seismic image something and all that, but the nickels and dimes, the

29:22 block and tackling, kind of the plumbing and stuff, really, really matters today. And if we wanna be in industry and be around for a while, you gotta do that - Yeah, no - So that's why I love

29:34 your sponsor on that - Yeah, no, I've been shit matters - It does, I mean, if you can

29:41 reduce your water content in your oil production by way of deploying some technology that ultimately gives you better returns. And again, it may be 10 bucks a day, but over the course of a field,

29:52 especially if you extrapolate that over the course of life cycle, well, it matters. And like you said, I think - Walmart does it every day - Yeah, right - Tick on down the list of all the great

30:01 American companies they do it and we don't do it in oil, we don't do it in oil and gas typically Wall Street, shit's on us - Yeah - So why is that you think? I mean, I have my thoughts, but what

30:12 do you think that is? We do a bad job of doing that -

30:16 So I've always felt like as an industry, we got dollars as a hedge, meaning, you know, generally speaking, higher oil and gas prices led to a recession, right? I mean, it's a higher cost on

30:34 society, right - Yep - As an investor, you have a portfolio, so I need to own some oil and gas in case it runs up to counter the rest of the market. Notice in there, I didn't say, I need to find

30:48 a well-run company. I need to find a company that has a great play. I need to find, you know, it's now I need a hedge - Yeah - And so because of that, in effect, what you're rewarded for, if

31:02 you're just kind of the hedge dollars, is you're almost rewarded for hitting a home run as opposed to doing that, like Walmart, all they've ever done is hit singles and doubles. They never really

31:14 hit a home run. If you think about it, they opened it one store at a time - Yeah - They squeezed this and that out. And it's, you know, after 75 years, they have this massive company - Yeah -

31:25 We've had the business of always tried to hit a home run. So we'll spend money trying to hit this home run, but we won't spend money automating our land files so that we can save 20, 000 a year or

31:38 whatever the case may be. And so I think that's why we're, historically, we've been poorly run as an industry because we got money for being a hedge, you know - Yeah - Which I think also ties in,

31:52 and from my kind of position where I'm at in the sandbox that I play in,

31:58 because of the cyclical nature, and most companies are, you know, their success is measured every 90 days and they're looking for home runs to keep drawing in this investment. or the investors or

32:08 to gain Wall Street's confidence. But that's one thing I've noticed in my space is that because of the cyclical nature, a company, an oil field service company is somewhat reluctant, and I say

32:20 smaller oil companies, oil service company are reluctant to deploy a significant amount or a considerable amount of capital to whether it be automated to adopt technology. And it's like, we'll do a

32:33 little bit because if we invest a bunch of money and then in six months when we haven't realized or there's no return on this invested capital, well then all of a sudden, a rate count drops, well

32:43 then we're left holding the bag and then investors are like, what the heck? So, and again, this is pure observation is not like one company specific, but it's like we always do just enough to

32:52 like make it to the next cycle without really taking, like looking, okay, let's look at a 20 year horizon because we just don't know what's gonna happen in six months. And so I feel like a lot of

33:00 times we're going after these, and again, this is from my stance on oil field services Some do it better than others, but.

33:07 I until we can figure out a way and I have some ideas is like, how can we protect ourselves against these cyclical, because the cycle of these cycles happening? I think it's inevitable they're

33:16 going to happen. Right. And the intensity and the frequency are only getting more, I guess the frequency is getting, well, especially with the COVID more the intensity is getting more intense.

33:26 But it's like, how can we get ourselves to the next level and adopt technologies, deploy capital without always being worried about like, well, was the operator going to pay for this and well, is

33:35 the operator going to pay us more because we're trying to prove this new technology? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm seeing all of that. I think we have a long way to go. And I think

33:45 the cyclical, if we can figure out a way to reduce our exposure to these cyclical teenagers, I think a lot of that's going to come through automation, being able to scale up and scale down without

33:53 having to hire and fire thousands of people all the time because we're running on spreadsheets and we have everyone punching numbers in.

33:60 You know, that to me, I think is going to be a game changer And like, you know, to plug the sponsor again is like things like that that can all. making more problems because margins over time

34:10 have just gotten gotten beat down. And so I know in the old field of service space, like overall margins, they're hard to get. And because of unconventional is a lot of times commoditized. And

34:20 I'm saying this generally, I'm not sure people are going to argue because they always do. But in general, unconventional has somewhat commoditized, well, for the services because it's assembly

34:28 line. You know what I mean? It's just like, go, go, go, you can sell new technology. But chances are a lot of people are selling new technology. So is it really new? Or is it, does it really

34:37 differentiate you? Some yes, I'm no. But anyway, that's I digress, I'm just kind of thinking out loud on that front. But the cyclical nature of our business ultimately, inhibits our ability to

34:48 get to where I think we need to be. Yeah, and imagine what it does for young talent, right? Because I mean, at least the whole time in my career, the average age of the employees in the oil and

34:59 gas business of last year was 42, the next year, it's 43. I mean, you know, yeah, attracting that young talent. you think about it, you're going to a kid coming out of college saying, you're

35:10 really bright, you're really smart, come work here. And you can get fired anytime the Saudis decide to pump more oil. Can't really figure out what they're doing this morning, but you get fired.

35:22 And oh, by the way, it may take you 25 years to get promoted device president, because we have this tenure track. I mean, we're really bad about tenure. And there's some justification for tenure.

35:33 I don't know that I want a guy in charge of a rig who's been there two years. You know, of course. So I mean, it's a dangerous industry. So you do need to have experience. But at the same time,

35:45 you know, I like to tell this story. There was a, there was a big data group at one of the large GMP companies and a 23 year old data scientist, literally messing around on a computer, was

35:59 digging into stuff and figured out just through data. Probably had never even been into the field, figured out. If the pumper never put their truck in reverse, it would reduce wear and tear by 45

36:12 on the trucks. It would reduce accidents by 75. No way. And so they just, they redid all the pumpers routes where you never had to park and go in reverse. You were always able to drive forward.

36:25 Okay. And it panned out exactly how she said. She's like, that's it. And you know, she figured this out and it saved all this money And she got a 5 raise that year. You know, where if she's at

36:38 Amazon or Microsoft, she may be head of the marketing group at, you know, at 25. And so I think that's another element of this boom and bust is, okay, you're gonna take all the downside of a bus

36:51 but you're not gonna get the upside of stuff. And again, just add to anxiety and everything else. Yeah, knowing - Got him such a buzzkill. Here we are, buzzkill - Buzz the buzzkill hour.

37:06 Again, these are all challenges that we have to face and overcome. I think you talk about talent. Again, I know a lot of folks on the drilling contractor side, the drilling fluid world. To get

37:18 folks outside of college or coming out of college or even folks that maybe have come from rural America that are just hardworking, good Americans, to get them excited about oil and gas is extremely

37:31 tough. Back in the day, and this is one of the reasons I've gone into oil and gas, because as a rough neck when I'm 18, I can go and make double what my buddies are going to go make it. You're

37:39 working for whatever, some retail store or God for big going to college. I was the last thing on my mind and I was like, Well, I can go make 75, 000 a year as an 18-year-old with a barely passing

37:50 high school grades. Sign me up. But nowadays, that's not even the case. That's, I think, a lot of the challenge, again, I'm talking more specifically to field folks, is that before they could

38:00 entice them with paying them a ton of money, now a kid say work at, I don't know, below the belt. Well, that's a Canadian retail store. But anyway, some retail store have a side hustle on their

38:13 phone and make just as much as a rig hand going to West Texas and to your point, sacrificing their life every day, or six months of the year. So again, in talking to drilling contractors, like

38:23 they are having a hell of a time trying to find people, you know, the EIA and all these other models show, okay, we're going to try and increase us old production to like 12, four, 12, five,

38:32 by the end of the year, which is probably going to require a lot more rigs. And we have not, I think we're at close to eight hundred seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, five, I think,

38:39 yeah, and to get the hands required to service all the air to handle these rigs is, it's gonna be super challenging. And so it's like, can talk until a lot of the people there, it's like, well,

38:51 we can't entice them by a bunch of money because our day rates are what they are and our margins are, you know, we're, we're trying to hang on a recoup from COVID, you know, the pandemic and how

39:02 we got beat down on pricing or anything else. funny position. It's like, we want to ramp up, but yet we don't make them. Where are we going to find all the talent and the hands that are actually

39:10 willing to come out and work hard on a drilling rig? Well, and think about it. Let's overlay Wall Street on this because it always comes back to the money when they say it's not about the money.

39:19 It's about the money, right? Yeah. It is. Yeah. If you're trading your public stock trades at three times even, how much incentive do you have to go get more even, not right? You're trading at

39:32 10 times even, I'm going to get you a hell of a lot more EBITDA. We're going to go drill wells, all that sort of stuff. With oil and gas companies and the service companies trading at historically

39:43 low multiples, there is no incentive to go spend that money to get the field hand. There is no incentive to go drill more. That's why I think something's going to have to give. We're either going

39:56 to have to see multiples double in the US for more

40:02 people to go be willing to drill. Because we're going to need this oil, say what they want, we're not getting rid of oil anytime soon, or conversely, prices are going to double. They just have

40:13 to because we don't have the supply. So there's something there that has to give. Right. And to on that, but pivoting a little bit with regards to energy, and I think we may have had this

40:25 conversation in another sort of conversation, but have you had any core beliefs around energy that you've changed your mind on over the last few years? I mean, with regards to the goal with to

40:37 replace fossil fuels and this whole EV adoption, I mean, we're going through this interesting transition or whatever you want to call it. Everyone has their own name, energy expansion, energy,

40:44 this energy, that, but for lack of better terms, this energy transition, have you had any sort of principal beliefs change or have you kind of looked at things through a different lens as we move

40:55 forward into this goal of being net zero? So I grew up in life, I read Milton Friedman's free to choose. a libertarian. I had the COO, the IPAA on the podcast yesterday and we were talking about

41:12 it. I made it all the way through John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged by Ann Rand. If you haven't read that book, I mean, it's like a thousand pages of the same shit right over and over again.

41:25 So anyway, I've always been this free market guy. Yeah. And I've always thought, you know, you need free trade, reduce barriers and all that But you go through a pandemic where you can't get in

41:36 95 masks because they're all made in China. You know, you've got China making your medicines. You know, you go through that.

41:45 I'm not a Trump guy, so I don't want to sound like, but Trump was right about we need industry here. Sure. And so kind of filter that through our business. I mean, I used to say things like,

41:60 you know, I don't think we need a tax. I mean, US companies just need to compete with the rest of the world. selling oil. Now we need to protect our industry here. I mean, we really were at

42:10 risk because we'd become so dependent on our supply chain with the rest of the world. So things like, you know, I

42:21 don't know exactly what a policy might be that it changed my mind on, but just, you know, hey, let's try not to buy energy from authoritarian dictators that kill people That might be a place to

42:32 start. And if we've got to pay a little bit more for gasoline, I actually think that is worth it given the security nature of this. Because I mean, right, you know, I don't want to sound too tin

42:46 foil hat and who knows, but did China purposely leak COVID to see how we'd respond? Sure. Maybe. I mean, it at a minimum, I think it did escape from a lab. You know, I think I think we've all

42:59 kind of

43:01 agreed that's probably what and whether it was naturally occurring or created. It's not too far a stretch to think the next time it's going to be worse. And so that's the big fundamental belief, I

43:14 think, that's changed kind of with COVID and thinking about energy. Well, it exposed our dependencies on offshore everything, which, so to your point of bringing as much as we can here

43:29 domestically, I think there's a bit of a trade off there, but I think in the long run, it's probably the safest bet And I mean, again, it's another thing to kind of tie into that is,

43:40 you know, kind of go through that and then we go into this Russia-Ukraine thing and seeing gas markets completely fundamentally change here in the US. I mean, we're sitting on a gold mine. And one,

43:52 actually, that was one thing I was wanting to ask you about is you had Greg Cane on recently, which was like, threw me for a lube I was not excited. It was quite fascinating. His stories. I will

44:06 say this. And everything he's gone through. I've known Greg 20 years. Okay. And I know that Greg believes every single word he said on both podcasts he's done with me. He did. December of 2020,

44:16 he did the original Budagate podcast. And then we did the most recent one a couple of weeks ago. Greg really believes it. I will say this in Defensive Greg. People are like, oh, he's crazy. He

44:27 doesn't know what he's talking about and all that. There is something weird about the infrastructure build and the build going on along the Gulf Coast that I'm not sure is easily explainable. I mean,

44:41 I'm sure there's an explanation. Yeah. So I mean, I encourage everyone out there to go listen to it. On Chuck's podcast. So his podcast, yeah. Yeah, his just punchline is basically twofold.

44:55 There's a lot of infrastructure being built along the Gulf Coast in terms of capacity to refine ship, whatever. And then, and, and, you know, you think about that and you go, okay, that's

45:11 either volumes coming from the mid continent or from the Permian. And then specifically when you kind of look in East Texas and Madison County and around that area, what you see, and Greg has like

45:24 jumped fence, he's an old school land scout. Like he jumps the fence, he takes a picture. A lot of crazy things have happened, but he has identified pipelines being put in that aren't on railroad

45:36 commission maps. And I've seen pictures of it. So, you know,

45:42 it's crazy. But what if you is happens

45:45 look kind of at the map, you know, from the north through East Texas, basically you have six or seven pipelines kind of fan out around Madison County and then they gather back, call it around

45:58 Cleveland, Texas - Yeah - If these are volumes from the Permian Basin, I mean, you just loop pipe. right? You don't go and get multiple right-aways and do all this crazy stuff. If it's coming

46:11 from the mid-continent, same thing. You just build a bigger pipeline and you stick it right next to the existing pipeline. And the fact it's fanning out and these big pipes are being put in the gun,

46:22 that is weird. I will give Greg that. That is weird. And so his take is his original take back in December of 2020 was EOG had figured out in the Buddha they had the largest onshore oilfield ever

46:38 discovered and they were being quiet about it to go build the infrastructure. And then his follow-up to that is there's a play going on in Leon County, Robertson County, the deep bozier and

46:54 Comstock's big in there, Apeon's big in there. And they're drilling these big huge gas wells And so his whole take is, you know, this is this. fundamentally huge supply source. That's why

47:07 they're building all this infrastructure and the market will catch up at some point and figure out that he's right - Wow. It was interesting and it was interesting to hear that, and again, I was

47:19 kind of driving and doing things, but I was listening as I was doing different things, but his story about how he was, he felt like the government was on to him to where which then he was being

47:31 almost like pushed out of the oil and gas industry - He couldn't get a job - He was kidnapped and he was drugged - Yeah, and then his phone, like he couldn't be monitored - Yeah, I was like, what

47:41 - Like I said, I mean, Greg would not lie to me. I've known Greg 20 years and all that. I don't know that that stuff happened, but I know Greg believes it happened. I will say that 'cause we'll

47:52 talk about mental health. I don't know if we're gonna make for a loop - Yeah - Jesus - It really would. Literally would. So it's a wild story - It is - And I feel for the guy, man. I kind of feel

48:04 bad for him a little bit - You know, I do too. And the flip side too is it's such a wild story and people are like, oh, come on, you know. Why do you let him on the podcast? It's like, you

48:16 know - Why not - Hey, it's his story. He really believes it. I won't let people knowingly lie on my podcast, but I'll let him come tell their story - But again, if you look at it like the

48:25 fundamentals of what's happening in the infrastructure, like it has to make you kind of question and be like, okay, well, what is going on? Let's dive into it - I've gotten some DMs through

48:33 Twitter with, hey, I work at a refinery on the Gulf Coast. And whenever we bring in a new set of supply, the pipeline's always like marked whoever the operator is. So it'll be like, yeah, Exxon

48:46 or, you know, whoever's bringing supply. Because we have Project X pipeline being brought in right now. And when I ask about it, people say shut up. And you know, so yeah.

48:57 There's something weird there. Right. And I'm not a midstream guy, so it could be a simple explanation. Right, yeah. Like they, yeah, who knows? Let's talk a little bit, you know,

49:08 technology. You have a pretty good exposure here, especially due to wildcatters and all the fancy things happening on the technology side. Are there any emerging technologies that really excite you

49:17 as we move into 2023 and kind of beyond? So I'm a native disclosure. I'm also on the advisory board of Montrose Lane, the small little energy technology venture capital fund. So - Oh, OK, cool.

49:31 You know, advisory board, I think, is kind of code for you or the older brother. Yeah. It's not like I'm in the weeds, but you know, I get phone calls and keep in touch with the guys on a

49:41 fairly regular basis. The thing that worries me about technology and just kind of given where we are in the world that we need more supply, I don't see anything that in five years could make

49:56 materially change the supply outlook. So, and let me tell you what I mean by that. I mean, we're sitting there in 2005 to 2007, and we're just crushing it in natural gas. We're drilling

50:10 horizontal, fracking. We figured out how to make the shales work, the barnets starting to hum. You drilled an oil well back then. Came on a thousand barrels a day. Two days later, it was down

50:20 to 10 barrels of oil a day. It was the kiss of death. But at least when you were sitting around, you could talk yourself into, if we figure out what we were doing in natural gas and figure out how

50:32 to prop the formation open in oil, that could be a game changer. Now, did we see that, well, was I sitting there in 2007 saying that oil production is gonna double in the United States over the

50:45 next 10 to 15 years? No, I didn't see that. But at the time, if you told me that was gonna happen, I said, oh, okay, well, it would be because of this I literally don't see. anything

50:59 out there where if we added

51:04 35 to a US oil production, I don't see any technology that could be driving it. The one thing I've seen is there's a,

51:14 I don't even know, I think it's radio waves. There's this radio, high intense radio wave frack that's supposedly just rubilizing the hell out of rock and leads to greater recovery factors and

51:27 higher IPs. But I've heard kind of every testing they've done, it goes out about two inches and it clogs back up. But outside of that, that's what I worry about. So there's a ton we could sit

51:40 here for the next two weeks talking about nickels and dimes, type technologies that are really cool. Like, you know, there's so much digitization to do across our industry I mean, which I think

51:51 ties into the efficiency of how we operate, but I don't see a game changer. Do you see a game changer? You're closer to it than I am. I mean, let's take this. We are at 19 million barrels a day

52:05 of US production and call it 2033. Yeah. What caused that? Yeah. Outside of price running and we just threw rigs at it. I mean, was there a technology that caused it? Other than a massive

52:19 playoff shore or something. I mean, I guess I don't - That's just fine in the rock Well, of course, but yeah, to switch your point, no, I don't. I mean, is there - Yeah. I don't know.

52:31 Because ultimately -

52:35 It's tough, right? Because if you look at all the tier one acreage and you look at a lot of the production rates per well drilled looking at some of the EIA data that they've put out over time, I

52:49 think it peaked maybe a few years ago. But that's slowly dropping off And so people are now like. you know, the abundance of cheat, the cheap barrel is not necessarily there anymore. And so it's

52:59 like we're having to go on this fringe acreage and now all this consolidation is happening to try and so, so you know, it's with that thing about that data. I'm sorry. I cut you off, but I find

53:08 this fascinating because I did that same thing. So let's go back to, I don't know, pick a number 2012, 2014 and look, you know, all the way to 2018. Initial production rates out of oil wells

53:20 were up 30, 40 each year, right? Yeah Yeah, you were drilling longer, bigger fracks, figuring it out and then call it like 18 and 19 or 17 and 18, somewhere around there. Yeah. It was up,

53:34 call it 20 percent, you know, so it was definitely the acceleration rate was declining. It was still up. Yeah. If you took out Exxon and Chevron drilling in the Permian and the thesis there is

53:49 they were just late to the game, right? they watched everybody else do it. Kind of whatever it was 17 18 or 18 and 19 It was actually the IP per well was declining 10 And so

54:03 that so basically so they probably held they brought it up for longer Yeah, the production increases we saw doing the global numbers was really just chevron and exon deciding to drill They're really

54:14 good acreage in the Permian, but if you looked at just kind of pure Technological impacts. Yeah, we peaked in like 16 You know kidding that fascinating in that wild. Yeah, no it is which you like

54:26 again It's like we're gonna have to figure something out because with declines and now that this sort of data coming out. It's So I don't I mean I Don't know how we're gonna get to why I guess I like

54:37 even to get the 13 million here in the US which Like a good. I don't know how much of that is Alaska I think it's like half a million a day, but in the lower 48 I don't know how we would how we're

54:50 gonna get more than that and if you look at global oil demand, which is arguably going to peak in anywhere from two to 10 years, depending on which report you look at. But the demand still is

55:01 either. I'll take the over on that. Do what? I'll take the over on that. We're not, we're not peaking any time soon. I know I did a, I did a poll on, on LinkedIn and it was like, you know

55:09 what, when do you expect, you know, peak demand to hit and, you know, it's just the, the, the comical relief I got from everyone's inputs, which again, no one knows, but I would argue too is

55:19 like, it's not anytime soon Although just saying all that, I mean, and again, maybe I'm somewhat biased, but like I just can't see a case unless we have demand destruction, especially with China

55:31 and India, where oil with the supply and what we're looking at, like I just, I don't see a case for lower commodity prices. And cause I don't think OPEC has the capacity to just all of a sudden

55:41 open the tabs. Oh, they're, they're tapped out. Yeah. So it's like, are we in like a very long bull cycle? Like what are you kind of macro projecting? What's your thought? So I'll get these

55:54 numbers wrong because I haven't looked at them in a while. But if you looked kind of, you know, 2000 to 2015, something like that, basically, and I'll kind of make up those numbers, but the

56:09 relative of these numbers is more important than the actual number. I want to say in the kingdom, the Saudis had 50 rigs running, 75 rigs running, something like that. And that was made sense,

56:20 right? Well, with bust, they needed to drill another one, maintain pressure, whatever they had to do, right? From 15 to 19, there were points in there where 250 rigs were running in the

56:33 kingdom. And we know this data is all messed up because nobody reports, nobody tells the truth. They hide it. But the relative, Ie. five times the amount of rigs were running in a time when we

56:45 had like 40 oil, we averaged in there, you know, whatever, 45 oil It just tells you there's no excess capacity there. there is no turn on the tap. They have it, they have a massive resource,

56:57 but they gotta go spend dollars to get it. So yeah, you don't have that. United States we've talked about, we've got 775 rigs running, we trade it three times EBITDA, maybe four times EBITDA,

57:11 so there's no real incentive to go grow that. I talked to the CFO of one of the large EP companies, I go, how's it going? He goes, man, I send out dividend checks, everybody's happy. It's

57:19 great, I ain't gonna drill another well for the rest of my life. Yeah, right. So you have that. So it comes down to demand and believe it. So I was a big bear, I thought the recession happened

57:32 this year. I mean like, great depression level stuff. I mean, I thought Europe was gonna drag us, 'cause people don't realize 20 of the SP 500 earnings come out of Europe. And when you look at

57:47 the fang stocks, like the high flyer technologies, It's even more of their earnings come out of Europe. And Europe literally was at the point last summer where the Germans were shut down industries

57:59 'cause they were storing natural gas because they were gonna have to heat homes this winter so people wouldn't die. I literally thought all industry in Europe was gonna have to be shut down. And we

58:10 got bailed out by global warming. We had the warmest winter in Europe since 1881. So God really might be European.

58:21 I get this I mean, like Goldman Sachs has even come out and taken a European recession off the table. They think Europe's gonna grow, I don't know, 05 or 06. So not a lot. But if we get through

58:37 that, barring some weird COVID reemergence thing, and the history, the thing that got me about Fauci is Fauci could have come out and said, you know, this is a new virus, But that's like saying

58:51 this is a new baby. Yes, it's a new baby, but we've had a lot of babies on this planet. We know a lot about babies. So generally speaking, here's what's going to happen. He didn't, you know,

59:01 he caused hysteria at every corner. Generally what happens in every pandemic is the variant is less virile because at the end of the day, your guard is up, you're isolating the host if they get

59:16 sick. And if it's going to kill you, you're going to get isolated and the virus will die with the host. And so the history of every pandemic is, you know, the variants get less and less virile,

59:31 except for one. And that was the Spanish flu and the unique situation that happened there is we had trench warfare going on in World War I, right? We would build these trenches. We'd shoot at each

59:42 other. And when somebody got sick in the trench, what did we do? We put them in an ambulance drove them 200 miles to a hospital that had 500 people in it and they infected everyone. So that

59:53 actually was the opposite. You weren't isolating the host. You were bringing the host to a greater population. So that's why we had two years of it. So I mean, I can't see a variant of COVID

1:00:08 that's gonna be more deadly and shut things down. So you start doing that. I mean, how do we get away? On my whole career, oil production grows, oil demand grows one, one and a half percent a

1:00:19 year. Right? It just does Yeah. I mean, I think outside the pandemic year, 2008, 2009, we were down like 800 000, barrels a day 'cause we had the great credit crash. Sure. So I just don't

1:00:35 know how we're in anything, but a huge super cycle boom. Yeah. Do you mean talking about like new technology or something like something that'll ultimately allow us to increase supply to meet this

1:00:48 demand growth? Do you think there's anywhere in the world the fact technology hasn't really, ultimately do you think there's another call it Permin or an Eagleford or a, I don't know all the Middle

1:01:00 Eastern ones, but could that in theory ultimately unlock, I don't know, million barrels a day plus - So let's look at that. We have this unique experiment in the United States where we're the only

1:01:16 place on the planet that we have private ownership of metals, right? I mean however many hundred some ideas ago, Judge Brown or whatever his name was said, Farmer Bob, he owns it all the way to

1:01:28 the goddamn center of the earth and whatever comes out it is. So we have that. We have, I mean, we can all debate this, but we have as entrepreneurial a spirit in America as anyplace else. We

1:01:42 have the most advanced capital markets the world's ever seen And we have technology-wise in the oil field. put that on par with putting a man on the moon technology. We do that really, really well.

1:01:57 Can't digitize our land files, but goddamn it, we can drill three and a half miles horizontally and frack the shit out of something, right? So we put all of that together across what is arguably

1:02:09 as good as any resource base has ever been. I mean, we, people forget, you know, they talk about how great Saudi is. Well, we had Saudi. It's why we won World War II. It's called the East

1:02:18 Texas oil field, right? I mean, you know, so all I'm saying is we've gone through that. We now have a really good handle on what the cost structure is for a fracking,

1:02:32 fracking shale. So yeah, the shale exists anywhere else in the world. Yeah, it does. It's going to cost at least as much in America. And I would probably say it's going to cost 150 to 175 of it

1:02:42 because you're going to have different regulatory environments as you know, it's slumber Jay really going to put a fleet in the middle of somewhere where a Nigerian chief can grab it. Oh, and you

1:02:52 know, so you've got, you're going to have issues to, so the answer is yes. I think the more nuanced way to ask your question and what you were really saying is at what cost could you do it? Sure.

1:03:02 And I just, I don't think it's at a cheap enough cost. Interesting. Where we're, where we're going to have 40 oil. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's crazy to think about. On the last thing on

1:03:15 moving away from oil and going to gas, do you think we're in, you know, I think we're at like 350 360 today, you know, that's come down pretty considerably. Once free ports exporting goes, you

1:03:27 know, that's going to maybe shift some things. By the way, what happened there? I don't, you know, I read the headlines, man. I don't read, I read it too. It's just weird. Yeah, I don't

1:03:37 know. I don't have a light a little more. We're going to light a little more. Yeah. You know, it'd be interesting. I mean, again, I don't know. I mean, it was supposed to be January now.

1:03:45 It's February now. It just keeps it in your, you never get a straight answer, exactly on what happened and maybe I just don't know about enough about it, but you know, my 10-flow hat's been on

1:03:56 for a while - You never knew - Was it a massive cyber attack or something? Anyway, it's just strange - Yeah - The thing I've heard kind of from industry stuff that maybe the reason it's clouded and

1:04:09 a little bit of secrecy is just, they have such young inexperienced workers running around that somebody did something stupid and they don't want to have to fess up to it - I mean, that's could be,

1:04:19 right? I mean, we running into that all the time. It's just the young - Anyway, didn't mean to divert you off - No, no, that's wild. I don't get it - But do you think, you know, do you think

1:04:30 we're in a position where we're gonna see elevated gas prices for an extended period of time or do you think you're, like where do you think gas is going, I guess - Yeah - Is it a question - You

1:04:40 know, it's wild, so you're young. old saying that. Let's just queue up glory days by Bruce Preeksstein in the back. Glory day. No, you're young, but like 20 years ago, kind of before the

1:04:55 shale boom, all that mattered to natural gas price was the weather. I mean, Chesapeake and Aubrey hired these NASA level scientists to go study the weather so he can figure out when he should hedge

1:05:09 and all that. Weather is all that matter. And then all of a sudden you're busting and chills up and weather didn't matter. You never ever have heard a weather report talk about matter. Well, it's

1:05:18 back. Now weather matters again, because

1:05:24 we do kind of, we basically fill up all during the summer and then we withdraw all during the winter.

1:05:32 And weather now matters. And so it's really hard to guess kind of the weather on stuff. I will say this I mean, I think we've got enough. gas and the Marsellas and the Haynesville that we can

1:05:48 supply, we could supply the world for 50 years if we wanted to. If we committed to all the export, put the pipelines in that. Well, they were at least, you know, and then we have some activity

1:06:01 up there. And so we're tied in pretty heavily. And I know the digital wallet carries you guys are in tight in with, you know, or I have good conversations with people who understand that side of

1:06:11 it

1:06:12 That the takeaway capacity and then just the infrastructure there, they are up against quite a bit of headwind. Aren't they not like with in terms of pipeline capacity and their willingness to

1:06:22 actually, you know, deploy enough capital and power to increase. Well, they have big, bad government just flat out telling them no. Yeah. I mean, if you think about this, Massachusetts had

1:06:35 days this winter where a third of the heating in that state was done by heating oil. I mean, heating oil is crappy for the environment, right? I mean, I don't mean to trash heating oil, but it's

1:06:49 a hydrocarbon. It was a way, it was a reason why we moved away from it. Yeah, we import LNG into Massachusetts at the Everett facility. And it's, you know, and could we send, it's hard to get

1:07:01 a good number on exactly how much we're importing their kind of post pandemic, but pre pandemic, it was, I don't know, 50, 60 BCF a year or something like that You know, at one point we imported

1:07:15 Russian LNG there. I mean, is that just not crazy? When Toby Rice has more natural gas than he knows what to do with, we could run a pipeline up there. I bet if we put oil filled rando in charge

1:07:27 of it, he could have a pipeline built six months - How filled randy - He could have it built there and we could supply Massachusetts and, you know, and it's the government saying no.

1:07:42 That's kind of the really hard part about the natural gas story is just, what is our government going to do? Cause those artificial constraints like that. Yeah. Well, and which I think supports a

1:07:53 good case for the Haynesville to be long and strong too. No. I mean, I don't, but with where they're at positioned, but you know, close to the golf and all the rest of it, like they, they have

1:08:04 a, I mean, the Haynesville to me is, is, uh, it's kind of a unique breed in itself. It was kind of died off. And then now it's just screaming I think next to the Eagle for it's got the third

1:08:13 highest rate count in the bait, you know, for all major basins and, um, nine dollar gas will do that. Well, you know, kidding. So, and it sounds like just, they've pulled a lot of the public

1:08:24 companies and kind of where they are on rigs running in the Haynesville is like, yeah, we're watching it, but at 350 we keep going. Okay. No, I mean, that's, that's good to know. Um, going

1:08:35 back to sort of the, the, the public side of things Last year, you know, Everyone did, or I say everyone, a lot of people did really well, paid down a ton of debt. This year, I don't suspect

1:08:48 profits are going to be near as good as they were last year, generally speaking. But do you think, like, where do you think a lot of the free cash flow is going to go? Do you think it's going to

1:08:56 go to the investors like your CFO buddy said, or do you think it's going to go into drilling more, or is it going to be kind of a good balance? Like, do you have any kind of thought on that? Yeah,

1:09:05 you know, kind of, and I got a credit brad wholesome for this. This is more brad than it is me He runs along only hedge fund called Recurrent. And brads take that I've alluded to a few times on

1:09:17 the podcast is just show me your incentive and I'll tell you what's going to happen. And so at three times e-bit, you're going to send checks to your shareholders and you're not going to do anything.

1:09:28 At 10 times e-bit, you're going to go pick up rigs, you know, because that's ultimately, you know, what your share price is and how it trades is your incentive Brad tells us a pretty eloquent

1:09:41 story and I'm going to

1:09:45 booger it all up, but he's basically like, so you're telling me that all these idiot CEOs in the Shell Revolution are now geniuses because of capital discipline? No, they're incentives changed -

1:09:53 Right - When you were paid 50, 000 per acre, guess what you paid? You paid

1:10:00 499999 per acre, 'cause you got a markup in your stock price, so you'd buy everything - Yeah - And when the market tells you no, I'm gonna value you at three times cashflow, guess what? You're

1:10:10 not gonna buy any more acreage - Yeah - So it's, I think that's really just kind of watch the incentives if we see multiple stay loads. It's kind of crazy right now if you look, I'll get these

1:10:26 numbers somewhat wrong, but I think energy accounts for 5 of the SP 500 market value, but 15 of the earnings - Oh really - Yeah - Oh - I mean - It's an interesting - Yeah and then I mean you just

1:10:42 work. through the math and that means we trade at low multiples - Yeah - Low multiples mean no activity. So for those who are listening that maybe don't understand the lingo, what do you mean by

1:10:53 trading at say, three times EBITDA - Okay - Can you like summarize that for people who may not understand - Yeah, see I'm so cool, I talk the lingo - Yeah, right - No, so basically what EBITDA is

1:11:03 is earnings before interest taxes, depreciation and amortization. So revenue minus the expenses out in the field minus your GNA, the people to run the place. So that number is

1:11:17 the denominator, the value of your equity, so the shares outstanding times your share price plus your debt is your enterprise value. That's the numerator. So if you're, yeah, if your stock is a

1:11:31 billion dollars and you have 500 million a debt, one and a half up there. And if you've got 500 million a year of EBITDA you're trading at three times Gotcha. That's the multiple.

1:11:44 You can do a whole lot. Sometimes you look at the equity value divided by the net income, because net income is actually after interest. So you take the debt off of the numerator because your

1:11:60 denominator takes into account paying the interest on that debt. And so you look at earnings, multiples, and you see kind of 15 times net income and stuff So that's kind of multiples. Yeah, no,

1:12:14 that's interesting. And it's stuff that I, you know, didn't school, but I haven't been exposed to it in real life. So it's kind of a good refresher for me. But it's, you know, I've learned to

1:12:22 kind of really appreciate the finance things. Actually speaking of finance, have you watched the Bernie made off documentary on Netflix? No, but so many people around here. Dude, it's insane.

1:12:32 So you obviously know all about it, but it's. So this is crazy. You get time, check it out. This is crazy One of my LPs back when I was, was at a cane.

1:12:44 got taken by Bernie made off. So they lost money with him. So they were the most diligent company in terms of going through due diligence. And so they would come to Houston. They'd make sure we

1:12:57 had offices. They'd wanna see files on us. We offered them a co-invest. You know, it's like, hey, this oil and gas company needs 200 million. The fund's gonna put up 150. We need another 50

1:13:07 and we're going out to our investors who wants in - Yeah - Swear to God. They hired a land man, even though I don't think they could have spelt land man and spotted him land MA. But God bless them.

1:13:20 They hired a land man to go to the company and go through the files and then go to the courthouse and just check that they actually own the title. And it was all in response to we got taken by Bernie

1:13:32 made off - Wow - I mean, Kevin Bacon lost his net worth. I think he lost 50 million bucks with him. It's just crazy. And you know what's so crazy about that? literally had one bank account at

1:13:46 Chase, right? JP Morgan Chase, yeah, whatever. The 703 account or something. How crazy is that, Paul Money? I mean, I don't know. But you know, and then even in the documentary, is that

1:13:58 like, I didn't realize that JP Morgan Chase has like paid out a ton of money in multiple different lawsuits because of fraud. And it's like, huh, yeah, okay. But no, again, I don't have

1:14:09 firsthand experience in the finance world, but I try and pay attention and learn as much as I can because I just find it fascinating. And then when I came across that documentary, I was just

1:14:18 absolutely blown away. And then just to see how the family responded to it, and it's a sad story, but it's very interesting to see how someone at that level, and like, I think it was like

1:14:30 20-some-odd years, it ended up being like a billion dollar Ponzi scheme. Like, it's just crazy. So, I mean, here's the

1:14:37 public service announcement. You want someone that is slightly above average. If someone is beating the index of some sort by a large number, they're taking more risk than they're representing to

1:14:52 you. If they're not as volatile as the market is, they are taking more risk than they should. And so if somebody walks, if I do this, if I walk in and say, man, I'm generating 30 rates of

1:15:05 return on this and the index is like 10, I'm lying to you, I'm cheating you I mean, if I come in and say, hey, you know, the last 25 quarters, I've beaten the average, you know, 18 of the 25

1:15:21 times and the average has been up 12 and I'm at 132. You're like, okay, I can buy that - Right - You might be smarter than the average bear. If you're two exit, they're stealing - Right - I know

1:15:34 - It's not that hard - Yeah, I know - There are no free lunches in life - That's so true. And yeah, to think, I mean, That could be a whole nother podcast, just to talk about the psychological.

1:15:43 issues he was dealing with. But nonetheless, Chuck, this has been good. I feel like we could keep wrapping all day. The last question I do have, and then I want you to tell us about all the

1:15:52 upcoming events for digital wildcatters, is there anything, I mean, you're a pretty open book, but is there anything about yourself that not many people know about whether it's any unique hobbies

1:16:00 or anything like you do on the weekends that you kind of keep to yourself because it's just a personal interest? I mean, anything kind of unique? I haven't talked about people like, God, that

1:16:10 fucker says everything.

1:16:13 A

1:16:16 story that I haven't told many people.

1:16:24 Shoot. Well, the celebrity stalker thing is pretty cool. Yeah, no, that's unique. So a few people have heard this story. I like it though. It's the first time I ever met Brett Michael because

1:16:39 I have unnatural man love for Brett Michael of poison. Okay - I mean, just beside myself, a man love for him. And so like we get backstage and I'll walk in and I'm just kinda like bubbling. I'm

1:16:51 like,

1:16:53 Hey, Brett, I know this is kinda gay, but can I have a hug? And he looked at me and goes, Dude, that's totally gay, but bring it on - Yeah - Anyway, dude, hug me. So anyway, Brett, I've

1:17:03 been backstage and hung out with Brett five times. I don't have his phone number. He doesn't know who I am, but when I walk in, it's kinda like, Oh, that's the restraining order guy we need to

1:17:11 get But what, so what about him kind of just like interests you?

1:17:17 And I'm gonna say this with love, even though it's gonna sound like I'm trashing the guy, I have a picture on the second floor of my house. I have kind of my rock and roll room. I've got this bar

1:17:27 and everything. And it's from a Brett Michael concert when him performing so he is wearing a Brett Michael T-shirt - He has a Brett Michael hat - He loves it - He has a Brett Michael bandana. His

1:17:39 picture is on the drummers.

1:17:44 We're at Michael Banners all across the backdrop - No way - And I mean, just as shameless a promoter as there is, and I've always just said, that dude's my hero - Right, yeah - That guy's awesome

1:17:53 - You gotta love yourself before you can love anyone else - Yeah, right - Okay, one other celebrity story, 'cause I've told the Brett story to some people before. Worst celebrity encounter was

1:18:06 actually, believe it or not, Dan Aykroyd So I walk up to Dan Aykroyd, it's the opening of the House of Blues in Houston, and he's there and he performs. And I go up to him, I go, oh, Dan, I'm

1:18:17 a big fan, Ghostbusters, Dr. Troyte Lovey, he goes, what the hell do you want? I go, can we grab a picture? And he goes, yeah, you got 30 seconds. And I go, man, this is gonna be great.

1:18:27 And he goes 29, 28. And I'm like, oh, you know, I'm fumbling with my phone. So I get it, I snap the picture. And he looks at me and says, get the fuck out. What? And you look at the picture

1:18:38 it looks like we're brothers. I mean, it's just the greatest. But like the context behind it all is like, not what you would think. Huh, that's interesting. I would have never thought. But.

1:18:47 No, I wouldn't either. Well, there you go. That's all I love that. I feel like I disappointed you. Anyway. No, you're not. Chuck, come on. Tell us about Digital Walk has, we got some

1:18:57 events coming up. So, Digital Walk catters, doing some cool stuff this year. We're gonna

1:19:02 have our Empower event again, March 8th and 9th. That's basically

1:19:09 Bitcoin mining for the energy business. We have a thesis around here that at the end of the day, if you generate power, you're gonna be the ones that Bitcoin mine. You're not gonna, you know,

1:19:19 are we gonna have standalone Bitcoin miners and all? No, I mean, if I have the cheap natural gas and at a minimum, we believe that everybody in the energy business needs to have a strategy for

1:19:31 Bitcoin mining. Doesn't mean you have to do it. But yeah, like you go get a lease, you're gonna lease land from farmer Bob. There's laws in there that talks about what happens if you decide to

1:19:42 Bitcoin mine. Does he get paid on the Bitcoin revenue? Does he get paid natural gas? Anyway, so you need to have a strategy for it. So that's a great conference. It's gonna be at the 713 venue

1:19:53 in downtown Houston. We're gonna do four energy tech nights this year. The first one I think is February 9th. That's in Houston. We're gonna do Midland. We're gonna do Oklahoma City - Perfect -

1:20:05 Going to Oklahoma - Cool - Hopefully they'll let us back out, but we're gonna get out and we're gonna do Denver. And then in the fall, we'll have our Fuse Conference again. And the point there is

1:20:16 let's get everybody in the energy business together, renewables, oil and gas - Yeah, that was a great event, man. I mean, they're all great, but that was fun - And Colin likes to talk about,

1:20:25 let's have collisions. And we actually saw some stuff happening. I saw some renewables guys talking to some oil and gas guys. And the question was, hey, we're gonna have to scale up our business

1:20:36 You guys have scaled up more than any other business on the how do we do this? And we're just, if we truly are gonna get rid of carbon, we're gonna have to do that. We can't sit around and throw

1:20:46 shit at each other - Yeah. And that's what I thoroughly commend you guys for doing is really embracing the above all mentality. And it's like, let's collaborate and let's all focus on the North

1:20:57 Star, which is providing affordable, abundant and reliable energy to the world - Yeah, and let's make good stewards - Exactly - While we do that - Yeah - And then just, yeah, on the personal

1:21:07 front, we got Chuck Yates, needs a job - Yeah - And I'm gonna try, one of the things I'm gonna try to do better this year is I'm really gonna try to pull on the network and see if I can get some

1:21:17 folks to come on the podcast that normally don't do podcasts - That'd be huge - And we'll see if we can get that done. Then I'm also gonna do, I alluded to this on the first podcast of the year,

1:21:29 I'm gonna do an arc of Chuck Yates needs a wife. And that had originally kind of started out as this dating show for a change.

1:21:38 But where it's going to go is I'm actually going to talk about kind of this journey I went through kind of from, you know, I think we were talking about it earlier, from sort of the middle of

1:21:50 December to the end of December, trying to figure out my bullshit and all that. And so it's going to have equal parts like Saturday night live skits that are going to be really funny. No way. And

1:22:02 then, but then I'll get real I mean, we'll sit out with priest Patrick by the fire and talk too much and share more than I should. So hey, you need to do it. I'm not using poured out, like we

1:22:12 said, but no, I really genuinely appreciate your time. Absolutely. It's been an amazing conversation. It's been fun. Yeah. No, I've enjoyed it. And the last thing, last but not least, I do

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