Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:20 You're cool to come do this because obviously Midland Odessa is so important to the energy business and the infrastructure out there's just been a nightmare forever.

0:35 Oh yeah, I mean the infrastructure is wild out here. You see a huge disconnect in Midland Odessa, especially in Odessa, you know, I've lived in West Odessa forever and some of the biggest names

0:46 are out here. You know, Halliburton has a facility out here. It's got at some points, 800 plus guys, and yet they're the only ones with sewer out here while 35 to 40, 000 people don't have any

0:56 sewer access. A lot of them have water and of course with that, that means they don't have broadband, right? And so you start to see all these issues where you only have a handful of places that a

1:06 lot of these companies want to build and grow and that's mostly on the interstate. It's been an issue. I mean, I've been here 40 years now. Yeah. And kind of why is that? Because my sense would

1:18 be I get it. Boom and bust of oil and we go broke. But when times are good, it seems like there should be money spent there. Now it may fall into disrepair during the bust cycles and I understand

1:34 that. But it just feels like kind of Midland Odessa just has never spent money on kind of the basics. And that feels different than the other oil towns. You know, you go into Tulsa, you go into

1:48 Oklahoma City. There's a nice hotel there during the bust time. It's vacant, but it was at least built during the good time. What's the story behind that?

1:60 I mean, you pretty much hit it dead on. You know, I was a co-chair for a pack here to bring this last bond in Odessa. Midland was running one at the same time. Our bond was a little under a half

2:10 a billion. There's was well over half a billion. And you know, I did the whole show, for example, right? We got a booth, it was donated to us. one of those back barns. And we had people like

2:22 Diamondback or Pro Petro champion running guys by to talk to us about it, to make sure they were informed. We make sure we do about both bonds and both cities. Because the last time we passed one

2:33 was well over a decade ago. And that was the first gripe I get as well, you know, we just passed one. I was like, well, that was 12 years ago, right? And what was the district's past one?

2:43 What was the Odessa bond for? I'd at least read about the the one in Midland and kind of the billion dollars because case Van Hoff had been very kind of vocal about it, written editorials. What was

2:58 and but I hadn't heard about the Odessa bond. What was it for? Yeah, so, you know, it kind of plays into energy and I will give a shout out to case slam or Sam sledge over at Pro Petro, a couple

3:12 others donated quite a lot of money to us to help push that bond over here just like they did in Midland. You know, they see how important this is, but you know, this one's a little different. So

3:22 Midland, they were gonna build two brand new high schools, which they dearly need. We do as well, but ours was mostly to fix a lot of outdated, antiquated HVAC, plumbing, electrical,

3:34 especially. You know, every single room now has how many computers, how many digital devices, all those things. A lot of these buildings were built, pre-82. In fact, we have very few

3:44 facilities in Midland or Odessa that aren't roughly 60 years of age. And most of the recent ones that are nicer were built right around that bust in the '80s. So that's, you know, just a whole lot

3:58 of old thoughts of, you know, we're gonna have this boom, we're gonna have this bust. We can't keep investing because of what they saw in the '80s and how long they took to recover versus what we

4:06 see now in the Shell Revolution where, I mean, it's not really gonna slow down much and we have all these issues with workforce. So the big thing we brought to our bond It's about a third of it.

4:18 is a new career in technical education building. And we had a lot of backing on that. There's a group called the Permian Strategic Partnership. That's everybody from Oxi, Diamondback, Propetro,

4:30 Target, just every name that you can think of. They buy into this, it's all about education and developing the area for the future workforce. And they committed to actually donating up to10

4:41 million

4:43 to if we pass that bond. So that's to help on top of what have we passed the bond for, which was roughly80 million. And then we get a little bit extra from them to help expand that because they see

4:52 the needs of the workforce.

4:55 And so has the bond been voted on yet or is it still to be voted on?

5:03 So both Odessa and Midland passed their bonds in November, the bulk of them at least. We had a small portion that was supposed to go to Ratliff Stadium, you know that stadium you see in the movie

5:14 of Friday Night Lights, Permian Panthers.

5:18 a little more than 50 years old at this point and it has some foundation issues and we brought a very small package to the voters said hey we need to spend a little less than three million dollars to

5:30 rip everything out do a coating and kind of bulk up all this concrete because unfortunately we've had some earthquakes in this area and that building wasn't designed for that and we couldn't get the

5:40 voters to pass that part but it was such a small portion the biggest bulk of the bond passed in Odessa as well in Midland and so the the Odessa bonds were Odessa school district bonds or the county

5:54 bonds city bonds where what's the county says actor county

6:01 okay this is actor county independent school district which is one of the largest school districts in the area by far so you know I think y'all talked a lot with a couple different people from

6:12 diamondback on some of the podcasts under digital wildcatters about

6:16 the midland bond right What's interesting about Odessa and Midland is Odessa is the size of their school district right now is what Midland plans to grow into in about a decade. So we're that far

6:27 ahead of them as far as the amount of students. We have 33, 500 students in the district right now across all of Vector County.

6:35 Oh wow, that

6:38 is pretty big. And so raise the money. You're upgrading basically school buildings And then tell me more about,

6:50 is it CTE? Is that what you're calling the training center that you were just talking about? Yeah, CTE is short for career technical education. One of the cool things we're doing here, it all

7:04 goes back to energy, right? We started a whole new curriculum here because we talked with PSP, that permanent strategic partnership, much easier to call them PSP And they, they saw the needle in

7:17 the work. right? And they're telling us, I said in a really interesting energy talk back in October at University of Texas, Permian Basin, where their finance director came out and said, you

7:28 know, we told you five, six years ago, we're going to need roughly 100, 000 new employees throughout the entire Permian Basin. That's not only to fill in new jobs, but also replace the retirees,

7:40 right? Back in October, November, I'm not sure exactly when it was, they came out with completely new numbers, they basically doubled that number. So now, they see 190, 000 new jobs that are

7:51 going to be needed in roughly 10 years in the Permian Basin. So that's why the Permian Strategic Partnership comes together and says, Hey, we're going to make a donation to this Career and

7:60 Technical Education Building. You've got an energy part to it. We're doing everything from training guys on, you know, how to actually operate a drilling rig, how to read meters. They're going

8:10 to have a control room that they actually operate in the facility, collect data, even foreign language is completely different in these facilities, right? So instead of doing your normal foreign

8:21 language, you're gonna have options to get data analytics, bring that data in, write software with it, pump it back out, instead of learning French or Spanish. So this is a true career technical

8:34 education. And then you see really cool things like, we're not doing your typical language arts, right? Instead, you're coming in and you're having technical writing or learning how to read

8:43 blueprints and things like that It's a facility that really feeds the workforce in the area. Oh, that's cool. And is it grade nine through 12? I mean, is this an effect for replacing high school?

8:55 Is this after high school?

8:58 It is for nine through 12. And one of the cool things about PSP is, they get to utilize this facility. So kids go to school what, about 180 days of the year. That's all they go, right? They'll

9:10 have to school year. They're not actually in that facility So PSB has this option. to utilize all of this donated equipment, the extra space, even our culinary, right? So we're gonna have a

9:23 bistro that they can rent out at nights and weekends, different centers that they can utilize for training for continued education. And then we also have partnerships with the local community

9:33 college, which has a huge welding program. So they can utilize the facility as well. So this isn't just for those kids nine through 12, it'll be open nights, weekends, summer, for all of the

9:43 industry around And so what we did is we got a big donation for the land. It's roughly 40 acres from a group called Grow Odessa. So we got to save about3 million. It's gonna go to the facility,

9:57 but this location is located right on I-20, kind of closer towards Midland. So both Midland and Odessa are gonna have the opportunity to use that for all that continued education. There's not a

10:08 whole lot of driving going on. And then there's some major names right around the corner. You've got cut energy You got Caterpillar. literally across the street. So a lot of synergies that can be

10:18 happening with this facility. So this is cool. So when does the facility get built? When do you have your first class of folks coming through?

10:32 So CTE is a little different because these kids are already participating. They love to do this. And so we have a little bit of flexibility. Originally, we were gonna try to open the facility for

10:42 the school year of 2026 But due to some planning, some new donations that came in, it gives us a little bit more square footage, some new programs we're adding to energy, such as mapping, data

10:54 analytics, that ties directly to the energy sector. We made a lot of changes recently. So we pushed it about seven months. But the goal now is January of 2027. So the middle of that school year,

11:05 these kids that are in some of the facilities already, and we have seven different facilities right now that we operate all of our CTE out of, Those will go in, most of them will go into one

11:15 facility. and they'll move right there around Christmas. Oh cool, and so kids can opt into this. I mean, you're in eighth grade and you're gonna go to Odessa High School and you can say, no, I

11:31 wanna go into this program. How does that work?

11:35 That's the trick, right? So you've got a kid in eighth grade and you're trying to tell them, hey, we've got this energy sector, we've got this welding program, cosmetology, culinary, whatever

11:46 it may be, right? And no eighth graders thinking about what they want to be when they're coming out of high school. So it's got to be a extremely nice facility. It's got to have programs with

11:55 hands-on that they've never seen before. And that's how you kind of hook, line, and sinker, right? You go out there, say, at eighth grade, we're going to walk you through this facility and

12:04 show you how cool all these programs are and show you the different things you get to do. And then that's how you kind of get them in there. Whereas, you know, you go to Odessa High, you go to

12:13 Permian,

12:15 By law, you have to go to school, right? So those facilities are a little bit different and it's not really a choice. We have to make sure we educate the community that this is a choice and there

12:26 are limits. So in the past, we have one of the largest welding programs in all of Texas. There's 140 seats, 140 stalls that they utilize and 400 students are in our welding program here. Some

12:37 transfer in and out throughout the day, some are there all day long, but we're by far one of the biggest. So they went to regionals recently and they just mop the floor with every other district.

12:47 I got first and second, everything except for art and welding. And we have a great program here because of that. And we've had this huge, huge line for a decade where the juniors and seniors,

12:58 they get to opt in as long as they have good grades for that welding program. Those freshmen and sophomore, they're usually just passed along because we didn't have enough seats for them. But what

13:07 if you wanna explore that? What if you wanna take welding certificate but then you also wanna go into another program? you weren't really allowed that with the other facilities. So this new

13:16 facility has more seats, more capability, or just serving more kids. That's really cool. So one thing that hit me is

13:27 whenever you want us, Colin and I would love to come out there and shoot content, you know, shoot the kids working on stuff, going what they're learning and the like, 'cause what we have found is

13:43 that for all the, you know, kind of our industry psychosis, for lack of a better word, that everybody hates us, people actually think what we do is fascinating. And if we just document it, I

13:57 mean, Colin did a TikTok video on how a drill bit works and it got a million two views in two weeks. And all the comments are like, Dude, this is so dope, this is so cool So we'd love to come out

14:11 and just document that stuff because. It sounds like what you guys are doing in Odessa is what I've wanted HISD to do for the last 20 years. I mean, HISD has been a shit show of a school district.

14:29 And I've always said, you know, we've got just these great kids in Houston. We've got some economically challenged areas. That's a perfect spot to go get oil field people. You know, let's go

14:43 train 'em You walk in and tell a kid, hey, you wanna make100, 000? You get to drive a big, huge truck. And they're like, hell yeah, I'm in. So first love to come out and see it

14:57 and shoot stuff. And then

15:02 so you're gonna have the new facility up kind of January of 2027

15:09 What do you think you'll see in terms of metrics? like how many kids do you think run through the program? What does kind of the future look like with this? This work is a bit tricky, right? So

15:23 we started planning this about three years ago. And we had this idea of how many square footage we were gonna have. When you bring a bond, you have a dollar amount set for each program. So if you

15:33 say you're gonna build a middle school, which we did have on our bond, that was X amount, which was 120 million. Our CT was 80 million We can't really move those funds around, but when we started

15:45 the planning, a lot's changed since then, right? So inflation has just kind of taken over everything. You brought up Houston, you know, there's A-leaf in Houston, which is, I think it's 215,

15:56 000 square feet, beautiful building, right? They built it for less than 30 million. We've got 80 million going to this, which includes equipment too. So 60 million ish is going towards the

16:07 building itself We're going to build about 100, 000 square feet less, but that's for almost double the image. That's how much inflation has taken over since we started this planning. So some of

16:18 those donations that come in from PSP, that's gonna help a bit. We're hoping for some more. We've had some really good talks with some very interesting people. And one of the tricky things with

16:28 PSP is no one really knows who that is. Even though some of the biggest names of the industry, they don't really tell the best story. They're not really worried about that either, about getting

16:38 each individual name out there. But some of the individual companies, whether that's OXI or Diamondback, or they also participate in our committees as well. So we do have Potera and Diamondback do

16:50 have representation within the committee because we want people from the industry come in and say, well, this isn't only what we see we need today, but we need five years, 10 years down the road.

17:02 How do we introduce this to the kids at that eighth grade level to be interested in it? How do we tell that story? How do we make them understand how important oil gases or other energy factors.

17:13 We've looked at things like carbon.

18:14 skills to welders are always going to be in demand, the technical type aspects. You can always tell everybody, well, I guess it's the highest skill level trained workforce on the planet. It's

18:28 really, really cool the stuff we do.

18:32 Oh, yeah. I mean, the technology that comes out of this area, it's used all over the world. You start to tell that story and kind of show it to people, all the things you can get into, some of

18:41 the stuff that we removed from the CTE over the years, because everybody told you, hey, go learn how to code. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I'm a software engineer myself. So I don't hate on that

18:51 at all. But you know, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, all of these fields, we can't fill in the area. And all of those are transferable into oil and gas, especially electrical, you know, I mean,

19:03 look at the, the frack fleets, everything's going electric now, look at all the modular stuff that we're doing with data centers and AI, you know, it's, I sit on a board right a broadband

19:15 initiative and nonprofit we're doing right now. It's in its early stages. We've had all these really good conversations with companies looking to move into the area because it's really easy to move

19:25 around data. It's really hard to move around electricity. We have all the energy in the world here. And I mean, you see Walho Hub, it goes negative every time you turn around. And there's so

19:34 many opportunities. And, you know, we're not just doing that in Ector County, we're looking to push that all the way out to Reeves County, Pecas County, Midland County, Andrews, and just have

19:43 all these opportunities of infrastructure, if we're building a workforce for the future, the future is going to involve AI, deep learning, data centers. And we have to understand that and we have

19:53 to move with that. Otherwise, we end up in another bust, right? We don't have those opportunities. We don't see it and move forward right now. It's just, it's another nightmare right down the

20:03 road. Yeah, no, it's, it's, we, Colin and I have talked about this probably for three years now, but. You know, our view of the world when it comes to Bitcoin mining, 'cause ultimately

20:17 Bitcoin mining's about the cheapest, most reliable power you can get. And that's always gonna move in places in the world, but you also want security, et cetera. We've always said that the

20:31 Bitcoin mining map of the United States should look like the shale revolution. 'Cause it's like, where do I have cheap natural gas? Where do I have the infrastructure to do that? And if you're an

20:46 18 year old kid, I would say, go figure out Bitcoin mining 'cause it's computers, it's

20:57 high tech, it's electrical, it's power, it's cooling, a lot of cool high tech stuff there and go walk into any oil and gas company and say, hey, all that gas you're flaring, pay that negative

21:07 gas that you're having to pay to put on a pipe somewhere Give it to me and I'll Bitcoin mine. That's as high tech as you get. And kids, young kids, just love that stuff. And there's just so much

21:21 opportunity there that I really could, if I was the mayor of Monahan, I would like trying to, I would host every data center, every Bitcoin miner on the planet, take them to the, take them to

21:37 the Benagons. But, you know, I would say this is where you want to be because we've got, you know, we've got some reliability issues with our grid out there. It's still, still tough on that,

21:51 but we got a lot of cheap natural gas. We can generate a lot of electricity, you know? Oh yeah, I mean, you see it, we're doing everything

22:01 right in energy side, right? We're going out there and we're just building tons of production, we're finding ways to do it cheaper, more reliable, but then we don't look technologies. I mean,

22:12 why are we not looking at data centers with AI? Why are we not looking at Bitcoin mining if we've got the power there? If it's going to be somewhere else, we might as well utilize it here and

22:20 capture all of that. Then you look at carbon capture, right? I mean, that's, that stuff is wild, how much money they're spending on it. You know, Oxy and 15, what they're doing in Ectra

22:28 County, it's just unbelievable the plant they're building out there. Now, you know, our fans really out in the middle of nowhere, the best option for capturing carbon. You know, however they're

22:28 going to

22:41 utilize it, is it going to be mostly sequestered into the ground or is it used for enhanced oil recovery? We'll see how that kind of plays out. But, you know, everybody sees all these

22:52 opportunities within this area in the Permian Basin, but not everybody is utilizing at full scale. You know, we even have a natural gas to sustainable jet fuel plant that we're looking at having

23:04 built here as well. And, you know, that's another option for natural gas to get out of pipe and turn into something else. And that's been to the talks. for almost five years now, and yet we

23:13 still haven't had someone step forward and say, Well, let's just get this stuff done. It's the same thing with Bitcoin mining. Really easy, it's modular. Just talk with the right people, post

23:23 it, and you don't have it done within weeks, months. Yeah, no, I think that's right. And if

23:30 I'll volunteer myself as being a guest lecturer, the one thing I've noticed in my career, and I've been in the energy business, caught 30 years, is 30 years ago, we didn't have as much science

23:49 and engineering driven type things that we have now. I mean, it's amazing, drilling a horizontal well, modern frack, it's incredible what we could do, but what we did have way back 30 years ago

24:04 is we had wash buckling, wild catters that would say, you know what, I'm gonna build the world. biggest data center here because I've got cheap natural gas, you know, think Clayton Williams,

24:16 think, think those type visionary folks and it does feel like we're kind of lacking that because if you look at the world today, you have technology companies that are sitting there going Oh my gosh,

24:31 we need a lot of power to be able to run all this stuff so they're definitely heading our way. And I feel like we the energy company should be heading their way equally as fast and it doesn't feel

24:44 like we're doing that when historically we've been the most entrepreneurial industry on the planet I mean right you spend every dollar you have drilling well then you turn it on and go all right,

24:55 what do we got boys

24:59 Yeah I agree with you 100 there you know it's it's kind of that old guard thing you're you're constantly trying to tell the story and you have certain people in the industry that just cannot see past

25:09 it. They don't really understand how everything works, where they don't listen long enough to really truly understand it. But they'll understand industry, they'll understand things that you talk

25:17 about. I mean, horizontal drilling is modern marvel. It's unbelievable some of the things we do with the fracking out here and, you know, the production you see it in the numbers we're now number

25:28 one in the world producing oil. And it's for good reason. We have entrepreneurs in the area, a lot of private guys out there that are really pushing the envelope, but why don't we see it in

25:38 technology? Why are they not utilizing all of this? What's considered cheap natural gas? And I mean, look at it, right? We're the only country really in the world that wasn't under huge

25:50 recession within the past few years because we have cheap energy. We grew jobs, especially Texas. And this is a really interesting number, right? So Texas, let's look at the whole country,

26:05 right? the whole country for every dollar invested in education. you get about a return on your economic impact of about 57 bucks, right? But for every dollar, 57, really good number. Texas has

26:18 doubled that. So Texas, for some reason, when they invest in education, whether that's at the college level or your high school and middle school level, they see the economic impact for all of

26:29 the area, nearly108 for every dollar spent. So, the same thing with education when you go into Bitcoin, right? Or you go into the data centers, why don't you educate these people, make them

26:41 understand and see the economic impact and how you get the true return. So, I mean, that's what we're all about, right? It's getting returns on investment. 'Cause what I want the kids to see is,

26:53 you know, your story that you just said, hey, we doubled oil production after being in decline for 30 some odd years. I think we peaked in what, 1972, and we were in decline until 2008, 2009,

27:08 somewhere around there.

27:11 And

27:16 we doubled US production in such a short period by adopting technology. And it was literally five guys in a rusty pickup type stuff that did it. It was not Exxon, it was not Chevron, it was a

27:24 bunch of private equity and small management teams getting after it. And now when we look at the need for power going forward, I mean, how much, I mean, when you look at power, you go 1950 to

27:39 2000, power usage was up almost 15x, right? We just developed a bunch of cool things that needed power, computers, air conditioning, refrigerators, you know. And so 2002, about today very

27:55 slightly up the use of electricity, it's 'cause all the machines got really efficient. I mean, we're using 10x the power for data centers today versus we were 10 years ago.

28:10 We have 10 times the computing power in data centers from 10 years ago, but we're only using 10 more electricity to power that. And it's because the machines have gotten so much more efficient. But

28:22 I don't know how much we can be doing that. And so when we look out, I think Goldman, I think it's a lawnmust says we're gonna need three X to the power about 20, 45. Goldman Sachs is at like two

28:36 and a half. I think McKinsey's at two X, whatever it is, it's a lot more. And you made the point earlier, electrons are really hard. They have to be synchronized in a grid, moving pieces. So I

28:49 don't know that the existing utility infrastructure is gonna be able to lead that change. So there's this massive opportunity for entrepreneurial oil and gas companies to figure out how to move into

29:06 that realm and I'd love for 18 year old kids. to hear that story, 'cause those are gonna be the ones that do it, not the guys sitting around today

29:16 that are running our oil and gas companies, 'cause I don't think we have those visionaries like we used to.

29:24 Oh yeah, I agree 100. I mean, I've seen those numbers as well. Two X to four X on power, your electricity needs, whether if we hit that net zero, which we'll see how that goes, but that's four

29:37 X And that's what the data centers and everything. So how do you move that electricity around? Why don't we utilize electricity or the power that we have here, the energy within the Permian Basin

29:48 and start having those modular opportunities? And telling those kids these stories. So even though I'm not part of the school district and I'm just a parent and community member and I sit on a lot

29:58 of these committees for the school district, which that's what they need. They need people from the outside instead of this echo chamber. But I've met a lot of really great directors, expression

30:07 on the CTU side. And so they invite me to do different things. Back yesterday, I did one for some digital audio guys over at one of their facilities where we flew drones for the kids. And we

30:17 explained the opportunities in the energy sector and monitoring methane and mapping and LiDAR and just went through every single piece. And these are

30:26 16 year old kids that are getting to fly a commercial drone for the very first time. We're doing it right around the eclipse. So there's a little extra coolness around it And we also just found out

30:39 that they okayed to add a drone program to Ector County's for Odessa's school district that will have these kids with a full program to become a commercial drone pilot at 16 years old. When they walk

30:55 out of high school, they have that certificate and they're able to utilize that as part of their resume. Go out there and start monitoring methane or you know, there's just so many opportunities

31:06 with that. That is, that is, That's so cool to hear it. The coolest piece of art I have in my house is, we had, back when I was at Caine, we had invested in a company called Silverhill that we

31:19 ultimately sold to RSP for two and a half billion dollars. And it was right there loving Winkler County in

31:29 the Delaware. And so we hired a drone to go fly over and take pictures And then we laser those pictures onto 10 with very bright vibrant colors in it. And it's pretty cool stuff. And I mean, just

31:49 shooting that drone footage was one of the coolest things ever, you know, in terms of watching it and everything. So I mean, I couldn't imagine being 16 and being told, Hey, you can make money

32:01 doing that. I'd be like, Wow, I'd be in So this is, this is really cool. I love the stuff. you're, you're doing, I'd love to figure out a way, you know, we're happy to come out and shoot all

32:14 this footage and stuff. But I'd love to figure out how we export this because quite frankly, every school system in Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas, and let's throw Louisiana in there and maybe

32:29 Montana and North Dakota. Uh, I don't know that Colorado would take it, but Colorado should do it too But anyway, we should, we should be doing this in, in all high schools. Cause these are,

32:41 these are skills that people are going to be able to use in all other industries and it just selfishly for our, our business. This is how we, we, we get a lot less, uh, griping about made up

32:59 environmental claims and more kind of just have a reasonable discussion on the trade offs of energy and what do we need to do to get to net zero? address. So I think you're doing the Lord's work.

33:13 Yeah, I mean, that's one of the messaging that we have with the kids when we're looking at them at the eighth grade is, you know, how important is the Permian Basin to

33:21 just carbon capture or renewables and things like that? But how clean the energy is here? You know, just the carbon footprint of the oil coming out of the ground or the regulations that we have in

33:32 the US is just so it's so important to tell them that message. So you look at, I saw a study recently of kids that are 16 to 22 and how they feel about the industry and if they would work in the

33:46 industry, right? And I think it was 1000 kids that they interviewed and less than 6 said they would even consider the energy industry as a whole, including renewables out of that 1000 kids. So

34:00 when they actually work in it, it was well less than 6 of that thousand kids. It's just unreal how. They don't even consider the industry. So you got to tell that story and say, well, there's a

34:09 whole lot more going on here. And we're going to need these hydrocarbons. But there's no way around that for decades to come. So would you rather produce it in the Permian, in the US? Or do you

34:20 want to go overseas where it's a lot dirtier and there's a whole lot more issues? And we've told that story very well. And kids, they kind of perk up and go, well, I didn't know that. My dad

34:29 works in the little field. I had no idea that that was a thing in my club. You do now, so go home and tell

34:38 dad. My favorite saying along those lines, particularly when I talk to 16-year-old kids, is, all right, guys, I'm just going to tell you, when it comes to the atmosphere, it's like a swimming

34:51 pool. There's no peeing and non-pying section of the swimming pool. You pee in it anywhere, you're stuck with it. So, yeah, no, you're right We need to we need to tell that story more and you

35:06 know, need to do it in a positive way and in no way a defensive measure because we don't have things to be defensive or apologize about, we've done great things. I mean, you start talking about

35:21 inventions that have led to better humanity. You start talking the wheel, fire, hydrocarbons are top five for sure, top 10. And yeah, we got some issues to work through, but I'll tell you this,

35:35 we're gonna be, we're gonna be the solution, not more of the problem when it comes to fixing things.

35:45 Yeah, I mean, you just honest with the kids too, right? So you go in there and you say, yeah, we do have certain issues. You know, methane is a great example, right? You start leaking

35:55 methane everywhere and you're not monitoring things. But you're honest with the kids. You say, you know, these are the parts of the industry we need to fix. These are the things that we're doing

36:03 right, wrong. And you look for solutions. The only way you're gonna solve that is by actually looking at the industry as a whole and trying to figure out how to bring those solutions to life. And

36:12 we get really great conversations with a 16 year old kid that's like, well, why don't you do this? Or why don't you do that? And I'm like, well, you know, the technology's not there or, you

36:20 know, but they're asking the questions. And I think that's one of the most important parts because once they start asking those questions, well, now you know, they're truly interested in the

36:29 industry. And you have a kid there that's gonna possibly be, you know, the next one to come through this area and revolutionize something, you never know. So, but capturing them at that young

36:40 age, they're, you know, possibly, you know, gonna go into data centers or AI or deep learning or, you know, whatever the buzzword is at that time, 'cause they never considered one of the

36:50 guests 'cause nobody ever talked to 'em about it. Yeah, no doubt. Well, Kevin Circe, you've been very cool to come on If people want to reach out, how do they. find you? Are there websites

37:06 with the committees

37:09 you work with? Where can people get more information about all the stuff we've been talking about today?

37:15 So I am on Twitter. Bronco24 is my handle. I also write on substack, energycrisissubstackcom, which is fitting for kind of

37:27 where I feel like we are in this industry right now. And you know, the ECI does have their own bond page. You know, we're working through things when they get updates, but I also put a lot of

37:38 those updates on my substack as well and Twitter. Very, very cool of you. Appreciate you coming on.