Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:20 You know what the key is to all this stuff? Sequel suck. So welcome back.

0:28 Thank you, thank you. I don't know, wait, wait, Godfather II? That's fair. I haven't seen the new Den of Thieves Pantera, is that any good? Have you seen that? I have not, so there we go.

0:38 I'm hearing good things about it though. Okay, so we got two. Okay. Two out of a million. This will be three. Empire Strikes Back. Empire Strikes Back was better than the original. Yes it was.

0:46 So let's keep our fingers crossed I'm your father.

0:50 Dude, welcome back. Thank you, thank you. It's great to be here. It's great to be here in the studio.

0:55 Yeah, in this school, 'cause last time we were your studio. Right. Yeah. I like it, it's just a nice studio, I like it. Ah, very cool. I feel at home here. Nah, I like it anytime.

1:02 Standing invite to come. All right. The, so I liked the Sheffield article. Thank you. That was cool. I think that was an important story to tell. Why did you, why did you think that? Why was

1:15 it important for me to tell it? I got my, you know thoughts on it, but I want to hear from you. Yeah, no, why I think it was important to tell is I think it's the most ludicrous thing on the

1:27 planet that anyone thinks

1:31 a oil and gas company in the United States can fix oil prices. To me, that is just ridiculous. If we could do that, I guarantee you oil would not have been at minus 37 in April of 2020 when I got

1:43 fired. What, so we're a little over 100 million barrels a day, right, we're at 100 and 5 million barrels a day. United States is 10, 12 of

1:53 that market. Yeah, we're paying here as half of one or was half of one percent. Yeah. Yeah, it would be a little tough. It would be a little tough. With a bunch of guys that would literally cut

2:03 each other's throat for 50 cents. I mean, that's how competitive and dynamic the US market is. It's not, you know, and don't forget, the big US-based majors and the independents, A great deal

2:18 of love and respect between those totally so bright there were a lot when I first saw that he was a may that the federal trade Commission put out this announcement that basically Scott Sheffield was

2:32 collaborating with OpeC that was their allegation that was more or less what their press reports at and almost immediately I said I I if this is true you know I want to write it if it's not true I

2:44 want to write it and this is an explosive charge I'm not sure that they understood just how explosive it was Yeah Nah and and maybe just a level set real quick basically what we're talking about new

2:57 correct me where I'm wrong so exxon bought pioneer and you go through what is at heart scott whatever basically looking for monopolies so the FTC has to look at it historically they always said okay

3:11 is this going to give somebody pricing power over the consumer You know, this was a fraction of small oil production worldwide. So generally, you would think they would say, okay, they actually

3:24 said, okay, but Scott Sheffield cannot be on the board of Exxon and - Right, so we're talking about an article I had, I wrote for Texas Monthly on the website, probably in a future magazine in

3:38 the March or April issue. And the only real caveat is that when Exxon acquired Pioneer, part of the deal was that Scott Sheffield, in addition to, I think, the enterprise value of the deal was

3:52 645 billion, about 5 billion of debt, the rest of equity. Part of the deal was that Scott Sheffield was gonna sit on Exxon's board, okay? And I think maybe as someone else on Pioneer, they were

4:04 gonna get two board seats. So the Federal Trade Commission looked into the merger to make sure that there was no. They wasn't going to create too much market power, like you said. And they pretty

4:17 quickly said, no, this is not too much market power. And that makes sense. It's not, even within the United States, it's not a dominant oil company. But as part of what they do, they pull

4:32 Scott Sheffield's emails. They pull his phone records. I mean, they really, it's almost, I don't want to say a criminal investigation, but sort of what you think when someone does a criminal

4:42 investigation They really do a hard scrub. And what they did is they came out and said, based on what we found, voluminous correspondence, what they called it, that word, voluminous

4:52 correspondence, they believe that he was trying to control oil prices, collaborate with other independents and OPEC. And he should never be anywhere close to a seat of power, much less on the

5:05 Exxon Mobil Board And so they, they would not approve the merger until Exxon said we agree not to let Scott Sheffield on the board. And big surprise, ExxonMobil immediately said, Sure, we're fine

5:20 with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I hate to say this 'cause I like, I have friends at Exxon that I like totally threw him under the bus. I mean, it was, I don't think you can describe it

5:30 any other way, but - I have no evidence to indicate it's anything other than that. They said, We can buy Pioneer and take their wells. Great, thank you very much. And so they signed off on that

5:41 And Scott - and so the FTC puts out a press release that basically says Scott Sheffield, we believe, was an OPEC collaborator. I mean, just a mind-boggling accusation. And Sheffield's response -

5:56 so at this point, he's not on the board of - he's not even going to be able to close the board of Exxon, right? He's not running a company anymore. He's fully retired, but he was

6:09 expecting have an active retirement. and his name was just thrown through the mud. And this is not somewhat, I mean, Scott Sheffield has been in the Permian Basin as a CEO for what, 40 years? He

6:21 started in the

6:24 70s. More than 40, almost probably almost getting on to 50 years. I mean, he helped build the Permian. He's been kind of one of the more important, certainly durable executives in the West Texas

6:36 oil field forever. Everyone knows him, everyone has an opinion about him And out of Washington comes this accusation. And so I'm a Texas monthly writer. I write about the oil and gas industry. I

6:50 wanted to know what they knew and how they would make that claim. It bottled my mind. Yeah, 'cause so another thing that bugged me is when you sit there and you go after oil and gas people, ever.

7:09 I want to almost do my Jack Nicholson right here. I'd rather you just say thank you. I mean, literally being able to double oil production in the United States literally changed global power

7:20 dynamics. It allowed us to have Amazon vans at our house every day. I mean, it was the most massive subsidy, if you will, to the economic growth in the United States, all because we figured out

7:32 how to drill horizontally and frack And Scott was a big part of that, a huge part of it. I didn't even really understand it, but there's this reporting that Dan Jurgen has in his book, The New Map,

7:43 and then Scott Sheffield and Pioneer put out their own book called Pinering Independent, which kind of details this. But in 2011, 2010, I'm trying to remember the exact details, they basically

7:57 set out their geologists to say, Let's look at this. Can we do this? People forget when the fracking revolution begins, it's the

8:05 Barnett, it's the Haynesville, it's all gas. The oil part of it really doesn't come until 2008, 2009, where you have, you know, breaking them exploration up in the will of Stan, you've had

8:17 extra. Hold on, let me cut you off real quick because, you know, we started hitting those really big natural gas wells. And for about two years, maybe three years, the biggest kiss of the death

8:28 was to get an oil well. You would produce a thousand barrels of oil in that first day. And then literally three days later, it was 10 barrels a day And it took two to three years to figure out

8:41 exactly what kind of sand what you need to actually prop the rock open 'cause it was different than, it was different than gas. Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, I mean, I'm sure you'll get

8:53 emails and responses, but I mean, Bud Brigham, Breaking my Exploration Up in Wilston's kind of figures it out, XTO and Pioneer in the Permian. Those are sort of the people who kind of, who

9:03 really figure it out. And actually, you know who we need to give it Okay. Is actually John Chrisman at Apache, the CEO. Oh, okay, yeah. John was regional manager of the Permian for Apache at

9:17 the time. And he was, and I like John a lot. He's a good friend. So I'll give that disclaimer. I like him a lot, but you know, he's got people that don't like him and stuff. He's an amazing

9:29 engineer. And he was really want him and the Henry guys were really on the forefront. Oh my God. Horzontals are gonna work 'Cause at Caine with Adventure, we had this acreage in the Midland Basin

9:42 and we went and drilled six wolfberries back when you used to drill a vertical and you fracked it all together. Right. We drilled six of those and we were gonna start drilling Horzontals but we were

9:53 scared to death and I remember calling Paul Lucas and I go, Hey, Paul, can we make a deal? And he goes, Yeah, what's the deal? And I go, My whole goal in life is to raise energy fund six We

10:05 were on energy fund five where a venture was. And the way I do that is I have liquidations out of Fund 5 and send to my LPs and they'll send it back to me. So that's my whole goal in life, is to

10:15 raise that if you will go out and just run a sales process for this asset, I'll let you and your partner, Pete, choose whether we sell or not. I won't vote on that, but let's just see. And if

10:28 it's appealing to all of us, we can sell. Paul goes, I like a man that has a motivation and tells me what that is So anyway, we did, and we got36, 000 an acre, and it was crazy because we sold,

10:42 and that stuff was worth 100, 000 or 200, 000 an acre later. But yeah, it was really, there was a thought that all those fields were just drained by the old verticals. And, you know, Pioneer

10:54 was sitting on top of just tons of acreage out in mostly, I guess, Midland Basin, not so much the Delaware Basin. We see Midland Basin, and they figured out, Hey, there's a huge amount,

11:04 billions of barrels of oil left in our acreage,

11:08 and people sort of followed. There's, and we can, you know, what is it, the expression, you know, the success has a thousand mothers, right? You know, they're gonna people out there, but

11:18 clearly pioneers in that conversation in terms of giving credit to how did we go from a million barrels a day and pretty certainly stagnant in the Permian to where we are right now, which is what,

11:30 six and a half million miles a day. So huge amounts of credit, right. I mean, and that's sort of one of the things I say in my articles, like if you're Scott Sheffield and you've done all of this

11:39 and then you deliver huge value to your shareholders, you're selling out to Exxon, at a premium, you're going into retirement, like somewhere in the back of your head, you're probably thinking,

11:49 All right, presidential medal of freedom. You know, something to sort of credit for what I've given to this country and delivered. And instead, you know, he's hiring1, 000 an hour lawyers to

12:01 defend himself and his name It's just, you know, it's an Alice in Wonderland situation. Like where am I? No, that's really what I wanted to get at and explore. I mean, I kind of went into the

12:12 story saying, I'm not gonna be able to really be the judge, right? To really say guilty or innocent. I wanna get at more, what is it like to be that person? Top of the world, oil executive,

12:24 and then just get taken down, notch after notch after notch. I kind of ended up making a little bit of determination in the article, but. I think I knew where you were laying and reading the

12:34 article One point on that, and. I was gonna say it's not even about leaning. I mean, the facts are, it's just you follow the facts and you sort of draw your conclusions from what the facts are.

12:44 So one point on that that we talk about on BDE all the time, if you look at the net income margin for oil and gas companies for call it a 10 year period. in a fact it was single digits. I'm just a

13:01 simple writer. I don't know what this name -

13:05 If they had net income, it was amazing for a 10-year period. And then you look at Apple, which has profit margins of almost 40, 50. You look at Google, you look at Microsoft, 30, 40. That

13:18 profit. That to me is power to control prices. You know, if you can have a 40 net income margin, you can control price If you're making 6, you can't control price. But you're also, you're

13:31 raising, I think you're raising kind of an interesting point also, which is that right about, remember, 2016 or so, is when Wall Street really begins to read the riot act to these independents

13:43 and say look, you guys are generating a lot of oil, but where's the profits? And that's where you see the variable dividends, that's where you see, you know, the share buybacks really come into

13:53 it because it was Wall Street pressing and saying, Look, you guys are. You guys are sucking wind in the SP 500, you know? We need to see something more. And that plays a really important part in

14:05 the Sheffield story because he was an early, he was fairly early into, hey, we all need to give back. Pioneer needs to give back to its shareholders more. We need to focus more on profits and

14:17 less on growth. And he really was, you know, he was talking about that. And the Federal Trade Commission looks at that. And instead of saying, oh, he's responding to what his shareholders,

14:28 institutional shareholders, are telling him they concluded he was trying to corral the independence to all act and cut production to raise prices. I'd like to see the Federal Trade Commission

14:41 coordinate a calendar, which is where all those guys show up on the same day, much less collude on prices. But so, yes, so

14:50 basically he's responding to what shareholders are telling him. And he is. a leader in our industry. So he should be telling us this. I mean, you know. If not him who. Yeah, right. If you're

15:02 not listening to the CEO with a good track record in 40 years, who are you listening to? I mean, in tech world, we listen to Bill Gates when he talks and tick on down the list. The other thing,

15:15 and tell me if this is true or not, so when we have COVID hit. Yeah. And world oil demand goes from 100 million barrels a day to call it 80 or 75, you know, drops 20. And literally all of these

15:30 companies could go bankrupt 'cause they had a lot of leverage, et cetera. We shut in a bunch of wells and all of this. I think what Scott was saying there in terms of, of we should have Texas,

15:45 the Royal Road Commission, pro-rate production, we got to get prices up. That was a policy discussion. Yes. That was a legitimate policy discussion to have at that moment. That was not price

15:57 fixing, but I think the FTC also said that, hey, that's your price fixing.

16:04 They were careful not to say, because you are allowed within a regulatory framework. If you're going to go before the railroad commission and in public, say this, that's a protected speech. So

16:14 they were careful not to say that when he spoke at that, this was marathon zoom meeting in April 2020. But what they did is they picked up afterwards, he's talking about how we were adopting the

16:26 tactics of OPEC and OPEC plus they say, okay, that's, you know, you're admitting to it. And he's like, well, I wasn't. I was basically saying we all need to act in concert. Um, yeah, the

16:36 whole railroad, I, I found this fascinating. I didn't realize this

16:41 OPEC railroad commission still has on the books, the ability to pro rate oil production in Texas. They just set it to zero. You know, There's just no, no limit. but they never took that off the

16:56 books they're still in state law railroad commission can do that it's just they've just since whatever the late nineteen seventies they set it to Zero you know and therefore they walked away and

17:06 forgot it so he was just saying hey just for a few months that's bump it up so we all share together and we all sort of come back into the match supply and demand the end if you look at their hedge

17:20 book at the time they were pioneer was fairly well protected they were not going to go bankrupt low debt that's always been Scott Sheffield so I mean if he wanted to be you know he certainly could

17:34 have just kept his mouth shut watched a whole bunch of other companies go bankrupt and just start picking up assets on the cheap right they were in a position to do that but he didn't he he felt like

17:44 he there was a responsibility to keep this industry he has been part of as healthy as possible that's why he goes the railroad Commission along with Parsley CEO at the time

17:55 not his son, it was a different part of the CEO. Yeah, Eric Gallagher, and they go - He's coming on the podcast next Tuesday. Oh,

18:02 okay, well ask him about this. But I mean, they make the case, they make it just completely out in the open and say you guys need to act and the railroad commission doesn't. Railroad commission,

18:11 Ryan Sitten was ready to act, but the other two were just, you know, they sort of took this, could we really do this? Do we have the bureaucracy even to do it? Like, even if we wanted to

18:21 pro-rate, do we have the people, do we know how to do this? And so they just, they didn't even vote on it. They just let it lapse and moved on. Yeah, so,

18:33 okay. So I'm not as mad at Lena as I was before, 'cause you kind of talked me off the ledge, 'cause that really bothered me just that a policy discussion that's a legitimate one should not have

18:45 been thrown against him. I don't want to get, I don't want to stir up between you and Lena, but other than this. railroad commission, the round this time he's going out and talking about capital

18:57 discipline and how we all need to be smarter about this. And that you could argue was kind of a policy discussed, well, that they absolutely go after him over, maybe not a policy discussion, it's

19:08 not talking about government policy. But he's saying, we as the industry need to be better about this, we need to give back and show better returns for shareholders. And that they absolutely go

19:16 after. But I think, the thing for me that really made me, I mean, I've done investigative reporting in journalism for 20, 30 years. So I'm used to this, I do the FOIA as I get all the evidence,

19:31 I look at the redacted stuff. The thing that really bothered me was their claim of just multiple emails and conversations with OPEC members and others. Because, I mean, I'll just put it out there

19:47 on the podcast, show me the evidence. I have looked. I have seen what, I mean, they issued this redacted complaint, I've seen a lot of what was redacted. I've read it. I've seen a lot of the

19:59 conversations. It's just not there. I mean, they pick up, he said, he's had voluminous conversations with this unnamed OPEC minister. Well, that was Abdul Aziz's WhatsApp chain. There are a

20:13 lot of people who are on this WhatsApp chain that Abdul Aziz, the Saudi oil minister, distributes. They're not talking about oil prices They're not talking about oil production levels. They're

20:23 talking about sometimes it's as simple as he's saying, Hey, here's this new commercial for tourism in Saudi Arabia. You guys should come visit. I've heard from a decent source that is borderline

20:36 spam. Yes. I mean, you know, you're sitting there with your phone and there's another one. Yeah. I mean, it's not a group tech stuff. Yeah, it's group text stuff, you know? I mean, and

20:45 it's not even as fun as sort of my, you know, my football, you know, what's up, chains. You know, we're all talking about, you know, who's gonna win this year? Well, that's fun stuff. This

20:54 was just like, you know, and the other thing I put in is that sometimes they can play in about energy reporters. I wasn't talking about myself. I actually had someone in mind, and he texted me

21:03 after the article came out and said, I saw that, you're absolutely right. They used to complain about me. It's a Bloomberg guy. And so, you know, so it's like, okay, wait a second This is

21:13 your evidence. Like, what else do you have? Where's the, and not even a smoking gun, but where's the, hey, if you do this, I'll do this. Or even hinting, you know, 'cause sometimes, and

21:25 when you have this kind of price fixing, you know, cartel, they don't quite come out and say it like that. You know, there's a little bit like kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudge going on. That

21:36 wasn't even there. The second part, or the second answer,

21:44 to your initial question of why do you care about it is, and my politics are, I'm a libertarian. I live, let live, we're all good. And I make a big distinction between old school Austin liberals

21:58 who are just weird and wanna be weird and they wanna be left alone, versus what we saw more recently in liberals in that you agree with us or we're gonna go after you 'cause that's in effect what the

22:14 FTC did. We're gonna use the power of the government against you 'cause we don't like that you're polluting the environment. That's really, that's what I saw it as. We don't like this polluter.

22:27 We're gonna stir up the pot about he's colluding to hurt people and we're gonna use the power of the government to do it 'cause I mean, they're holding criminal charges over his head, right? Or not.

22:41 Yeah, they were, and as recently as after the election, no, it's not after the election, after the inauguration, right, before my story ran, I sent my last email saying, okay, is criminal

22:53 charges still on the table? No comment. So they were not saying no. It's realistically with a Trump appointee controlled FTC, I don't think that's gonna happen. I mean, if you wanna give me odds,

23:06 I'll take that in a second. But you know, you brought up Lena before, right? That's Lena Kahn, she was the chair of the Federal Trade Commission under Biden. What Sheffield told me, 'cause I

23:18 pressed him on this, I said, Well, why are they going after you? If they don't have any evidence? He thought he was being set up as a political scapegoat. 'Cause if you look, if you kind of go

23:26 back, going back to last spring, it's still Biden running against Trump, right? This is before you have to switch over to Kamala Harris. And if you're

23:38 concerned that you're not going gasoline prices are going to rise up and through the election. And that's going to come an election issue. And it didn't. But going back to the spring of 2020, we

23:49 were starting to see those stickers, the Biden sticker of, Hey, I did this. It could have happened. It makes some sense to me that you'd want to go after an oil executive, charging them with,

24:02 and it charges maybe not the right word, but they put out there that, you know, one of the outcomes of this was higher oil and gas prices, higher gasoline prices. So it would have been convenient

24:15 to say if gasoline prices were going up, it's not us, it's oil executives. And look, we're going after this oil executive who we think has done this, you know? So I almost wonder, and this is

24:27 what Scott Sheffield kind of argued, is that was he being set up as a pawn? And if certain things had happened, he would have been sacrificed.

24:36 That, to me, is a very plausible, um,

24:41 scenario. Yeah. Yeah, no, I, you know, we talk all the time about the energy narrative and stuff. And the environmentalist movement has been very good about creating the boogie man, you know,

24:57 and we're running the planet and scaring the hell out of people. We've been really bad about creating our heroes. You know, when we were talking, we were talking nukes before we hit a record. We

25:10 had a nuke panel here with various folks and they came to me and they said, okay, what do we need to do to make nukes happen? And I go, well, clearly Taylor Swift needs to start dating nuke. And

25:22 they need to have a kid. We'll have little nukes running around. I mean, we've got to create a hero. And I'm blanking on who said this because I want to give them credit. But one of the people on

25:32 the panel said, you know, actually, we've been running around with nuclear submarines for all these years. Never had a problem. in effect, defended the free world with that, why don't you get

25:42 one of the captains of those ships to come out and be our protagonist, be our hero? And anyway, we need to do that in oil and gas. We don't really have any kind of our heroes. In the first book I

25:54 wrote, The Boom, I had this line, and it was something like, in the United States, we love our oil, but we really don't like the people who provide it. And it's true, I think I probably said

26:06 that in relation to Aubrey McClendon, at

26:10 the time, was just sort of being vilified. We, like Americans, we use more energy per capita than probably all but a small handful of countries out there, and those countries are just using it

26:20 for industrial stuff. We love our energy, but we don't like the people who provide it for us. We don't see them as heroes. In fact, we often see them as villains these days. Have you heard my

26:31 take on this? No, go My take on this is generally speaking when oil prices are really high. and we as an industry are doing really well. The rest of America is crumbling because it's usually a

26:45 drag on the economy and stuff. And we have a tendency to be really obnoxious and loud and fly around in our private planes and our Mercedes. And we print up bumper stickers that say freeze a Yankee.

26:58 Yeah. And so two years ago when oil prices were spiking up when Putin invaded Ukraine, digital wildcatters took, I don't know, 10 grand, 15 grand. We were just buying people gasoline. And just

27:14 to say, hey, man, we were suffering two years ago and people looked out for us. Okay. We know you're suffering now. Wait, did you just go to gasoline stations? Yeah, we just started doing it.

27:23 And we filmed it some and put it online a little bit, but it's like, guys, we don't have to be dickheads when we're on top of the world. I think we're on worst enemies sometimes. And I say that

27:35 with love, I love this industry

27:40 The amazing thing to me is that if you're going to look at all the kind of the oil and the energy CEOs and say, Okay, let's find a villain. Scott Sheffield is not the guy you would want. He's like

27:52 your uncle. He's a nice

27:56 guy. He's down to earth. And this is not to, you can be a nice guy down to earth and still run a price cartel. But it was a weird person to go after. And he's somebody, you know, you talk about

28:08 environment. He's someone who was out in front talking about methane and the need to stop methane leaks. I mean, it's hard to kind of think through how he was the one who ended up in the crosshairs.

28:21 Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of an engineer's engineer, just to add on to that.

28:27 I love this detail, photographic memory. I mean, there were these stories of, you know, when he was running Parker and Parsley, you know, smaller company which merged with Mason became pioneer

28:37 of the whole history. But you know, back when it was a smaller company, but not a small company, he would memorize well production numbers. You know, that's what he was doing. He knew how the

28:46 different wells were doing.

28:48 Yeah. And in effect, he was kind of AI and machine learning before there was, you know, he had it all in his head and he could, yeah, I don't get the whole thing too. So totally changing gears

29:00 here What does Texas Monthly have to do with land man in the series? 'Cause I see your logo. Oh, I love it. So what year was that, 2019, 2020? We had a podcast called Boomtown by Christian

29:17 Wallace and it was about kind of the culture of working on the oil field. You know, the people, the culture, where people went to get food, what, you know, where they went off work, what it

29:29 was like living in man camps. I mean, the whole, we really kind of did that boots on the ground, look at it. And I guess Taylor Sheridan heard it. He bought the intellectual property rights to

29:39 it and based landman around it. And in fact, if you look at every episode of landman, it's produced by Taylor Sheridan and Christian Wallace. And Christian Wallace is a former Texas monthly writer

29:50 who did boomtown. So it was sort of grew out of a Texas monthly podcast and the whole bit Oh, that's really, that's really cool because we've had a lot of fun watching it. And I actually think on

30:03 the whole, that's going to wind up being good for our industry. I mean, how can you not like Billy Bob Thornton in that role? Yeah, I mean, he just knocked it out of the park. It was just

30:12 amazing. I enjoyed it. I mean, a lot of people that I know kind of rolled their eyes at it, but I thought it was great. It was very entertaining. Yeah, it's Taylor Sheridan stuff tale of shared

30:25 it right it's a tale of sharing is great at getting this central male character who has a thousand things going on around him, a thousand crises, and he's just dealing with them, right? And that

30:35 was, I thought it was the best presentation of the oil field that I've ever seen on screen. Yeah, we were shocked with the defense of the industry that they were doing. I mean, I thought, I mean,

30:47 the whole thing about it's really windy in the moral high ground. Oh yeah, that was great, that's good stuff. Okay, so, you know, at the risk of biting the hand that feeds me, right, because

30:58 it's Texas Monthly. That line in the final episode, who was it, was Dale, right? The operations guy, who was the name of the character who lived in the house with Dale and Nate. Right, it's

31:10 Dale, Nate was the lawyer. Dale was kind of, what did he say the earthquakes came up? 'Cause this is Rebecca going up on her whole thing. And he said, well, there've always been earthquakes in

31:18 Oklahoma. And I was like, wait a second, the railroad commission, of Texas even agrees that salt water disposal wells are causing earthquakes, and we need to address this and figure out ways.

31:29 Like, you know, I think they maybe went a little too far in sort of defending the oil industry. Give it to us once, though, come on. So it's99, 999.

31:39 All right, all right, yeah. Now, what I thought was great was, I mean, of course it was, you know, it was dramatized, and, you know, but you were in a man camp, right? You were on the,

31:51 this is what it's like It felt what it's like to be out on a rig, you know? Yeah. You know, they were, were they slinging iron? I guess they probably were slinging iron. They were, you know,

32:01 they were up there. It just, it gave people a sense. But going back to, you know, us Americans, we love our energy. We don't love the people who provide it for us. I mean, this kind of gets

32:11 back to that question because we don't really know what it takes. Or energy is invisible to us. Right, we flick a light switch and it comes on. Used to be years ago before either of us were alive.

32:25 They used to have these

32:28 gasoline pumps where the gasoline would go into this glass cylinders. You could see it was, didn't have impurities in it, right? That was like the last time that anyone ever saw gasoline. You

32:38 never even see gasoline, right? You put something in your tank and you do it and do it or you know, same thing with electricity. You plug your car in with electricity or you flick, you never see

32:48 it. You have no sense of where it's coming from, what it takes to do it. Now you and I, you know, as a journalist, you, we understand how many people, how much engineering, how much steel

32:58 goes into all this, how many billions of dollars it takes. But, you know, most people don't. And Landman, I think, did a great job of saying, Hey, this is what's going on out in West Texas.

33:09 These are the people who are doing it. These are the sacrifices they're making. I mean, the body count was racing worse than an only fan's

33:18 lady, but I do think everybody in the oil and gas business knows someone that died in the oil field. It is dangerous. And just a couple of days ago, there was some on the X, there was a hose,

33:30 right? It was a pressurized hose, they got loose, and yeah, it is dangerous. Now, you're right, it didn't seem like people are dropping like flies every week. You know, and I'm not sure

33:39 Mexican cartel showing up on

33:44 Joel Sykes is happening on a daily basis or the Texas National Guard strafing vans, but you know, hey, that's Hollywood, right? I did like that, it's a real thing though of stealing oil. I mean,

33:57 that is a real thing. A buddy of mine I was talking to and he said, he thinks he lost about80, 000 last year from people stealing oil. Pulling up in a truck and loading up from a tank And then.

34:11 You know, it's like almost what we talk about with Russian sanctions. It's like, well, who would actually buy that 'cause they know it's stolen oil. There's a price, you know? I mean, somebody

34:21 will buy the Russian oil at some point. This was the hot oil, right? Back when it was taxed, you would have hot oil being run all the time, yeah. So are those thefts, are they happening though

34:29 out of like tank batteries on Joe Peds? Yes, I think so. And so what you actually do, it costs money, but you put a lid on them, you lock them And that sort of stuff, but you know, my buddy

34:43 has 500 wells, 200 of them don't produce, 300 of them do, and he has 1200 barrels a day of production. So four barrels a piece. So for four barrels a day, do you really buy a lock and buy a

34:56 whole new tank, you know? No, but how big are how much do those tanks hold? You know, what are the tank batteries? If they're holding 200 barrels, let's say, and 70? 1, 400, right, you

35:08 know, you can fill up your truck and get a thousand, I mean - Yeah, no, but you do that math. You start doing the math, yep, yep. So, but not the cartels. Well, or maybe, I don't know. Is

35:19 it organized crime or is it crime of opportunity? I actually don't know the answer to this. I don't know, I don't know that either, but it sounds like maybe you're on your Permian Basin. We gotta

35:29 get to - Your next article. Can I co-investigate it with you? Yeah, I'll do that. That would, CSI Permian Basin. It's actually not a bad idea Like oil theft out in the Permian Basin. I mean, I

35:39 love that whole, 'cause I think this is true. I love that whole part of Landman where it's like, I can go report my truck stolen. Right. And I know it's gonna come back in a month, but it'll get

35:50 tied up for a year. Yeah. Yeah, no, I thought that was good. There were just some, yeah, there was some great, there was, you could tell, and I think it was probably Christian, who grew up

35:60 in Andrews, you know, and grew up amidst the oil patch,

36:04 You could tell that the writers. We're knew what was going on and could tell some stories from inside the oil patch app so can I impose upon our friendship to do this okay is there any chance tommy

36:20 or monte if he lives yeah come on Chuck yates the job the podcast as part of an episode and I you know I think we should try to fabio should try to make that happen now come on in character Yeah Yeah

36:34 Yeah I'll Be Out I Mean I'll kind of play Chuck Yates cause I'm not a very versatile actor go on bitter sht I don't Think Monty you got a chance for right cause Monte is Jon Hamm and he's about to do

36:46 this he's about to lead some new show called My Friends and neighbors or Something busy Yep I feel Billy Bob but I think so too I feel that your best bet you know and that's the kind of story I might

36:58 be able to go get you know you just took over emtek's in your soul do you sold the exxon or whatever tell me the story Or Well, so here's the question for you. Do you agree? Where'd you grow up? I

37:12 grew up in Richmond, Texas. Okay. So 25 miles from here. All right, so this might not hit quite as close to home, but do you agree that Jerry Jones is a better actor than general manager? Okay,

37:23 so I am a huge Dallas cowboy fan. Oh, you are, okay. Huge Dallas cowboy fan. So for whatever reason, bum Phillips, Earl Campbell, all those guys never stuck I was a Roger Stavak, Tony Dorsett,

37:38 Drew Pearson. They were more successful in that era when you were kind of the formative Chuck Yates year. Yes, so huge cowboy fan. My dad quit when they fired Landry, but I'm like, nope, I'm

37:51 all in on Jimmy Johnson. So I have been a long suffering fan. Classmate of mine, Will McClay, he was Willie back at Rice, is actually the GM of the Cowboys. I mean, he's player development He's

38:04 the guy running the draft now. Jerry's Jerry's GM and the capitalism Draft I'M Glad because I was about to head for the door or if you were going to try to argue with Me Jerry cost of the shots but I

38:16 mean will is actually paid at GM levels Great Gig and and twos so he went to play for the arena team that the Joneses used to own and when he got done playing he became a scout and he's just been with

38:30 the Jones Family's whole lot they were good at and the Cowboys if you look at percent of draft picks over the last ten years that have made the pro bowl their number one or number two eighteen percent

38:42 of their draft picks me that they've drafted really well that hasn't been the issue but you have an answer my Question better actor or GM I actually talked about this on the podcast way better

38:53 absolutely horrible GM he did a really good Israel I am not account crushed I'm not a cowboys fan at All I root for another team in the NFC East So You Know My Allegiances I'M just going to be real

39:05 clear about this I thought he did a good job and that might be the best, only good thing you'll hear me say about Jerry Jones for. I actually think that arguably might be the best sports cameo I've

39:16 seen in something. It's top five, top 10. It was really good. I mean, I'd have to think through my Marshawn lynches, but yeah, it's up there. Oh yeah, Marshawn.

39:27 Mike Tyson. I mean, like Bob Uger now, yeah. Oh, Tyson, no, yeah, just like hangover is pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they were over No, no, but he was good. Have you ever

39:36 interacted with Jones, met him? Not really, no. So we drilled a well with him. And so I got to interact with him a little. And it's kind of like, the same thing I'll say about Nancy Pelosi,

39:48 incredibly charming one-on-one. I mean, you know, just amazing. So I actually wasn't surprised that he nailed it. 'Cause, I mean, I walked away from Jerry Jones actually thinking the guy liked

40:00 me and all that. And I'm sure he didn't even remember my name, but you know, very, very charming, charismatic guy. horrible to you. Well, we put them on the cover as the Bumsteer of the year,

40:10 a text month year last month. I did, you know. I saw that. So, yeah. No regrets. No regrets. Hashtag no regrets. Hashtag no regrets. That's awesome. Well, dude, you were awesome. We come

40:21 back on. That's always fun. Yeah, no. I was happy to talk about it. Texas, the oil industry, energy industry, it's a fascinating thing

40:31 to

40:33 be part of For you to cover for me is never a dull moment, always something happening, big egos, big bets. It's just lots of fun. And you know, I'm glad I got a chance to do the Sheffield story

40:46 and to talk with you about it. Yeah, no. And I appreciate you coming on and talking about it because at the end of the day,

40:56 you know, it's like, you know, when you talk to your mom and she said, that's not fair You know, it just didn't feel fair, you know, so when I first heard about it. it didn't really feel Fair

41:07 and the More I Dug into it and the more I kept saying where's the evidence what do you have and as a reporter it also bugs me that here we are in January our Corners read the end of January the

41:22 complaint came out seven months ago and they still haven't released an unredacted if they have the evidence released the unredacted complaint let us all see this evidence if you're if you go and rob a

41:36 convenience store the government's going to present perfect present the evidence that it was you who did it no so if you're saying this guy was an opec collaborator let's see the evidence is the least

41:48 they can do Yeah and I think just one other point that that that has to do with US too as there are real lives in terms of pioneers shareholders and employees that don't have their advocated Exxon now.

42:06 So there's some real stuff that can happen. I mean, and that's why you, when you merge in your combining equities, okay, we want somebody looking out for ours, you know, and that's why you kind

42:18 of get these proportional relationships of, well, you get two board seats. You want somebody looking out and they don't have that advocate there. Let me ask you another question. I mean, Exxon,

42:27 I haven't looked recently. I'm sure the percentage of their income that comes from upstream is probably a little more than 50, you know? I would think so. I haven't looked anymore. I mean,

42:37 they've got downstream, they've got chemicals, but I mean, it's probably, I've got 60, 70, so I'll talk to my head. Where's their upstream experience on the board of directors? It's not there.

42:47 There is no EP guy on their board of directors, period. So, I mean, arguably having someone like Scott Chevel who had been around and had seen this before, and Exxon's joined their investor dates

42:59 last month, came out and we're like, our big areas of focus are. Ghana and the Permian right that's that's an upstream that's pretty much it for exxon going forward while you had a chance to have a

43:11 top guy who had been living the Permian for forty years drilling the Permian knew all the strata and not any more no that's a that's a that's a really interesting point a weird Trivia one of the the

43:28 guys the dissonant board members put on what was it called engine engine number one or andy Carson Yeah rice classmate dear friend I just profiled him for the rice alumni magazine did you really Yeah

43:43 it should be coming out maybe it's out already they can call me up and said would you do a Q and a with him and I never met him we did we did a good deal Yeah did you know him and rice Yeah Yeah we

43:52 were actually really good friends we I mean we still text and smart guy I a hang just really really smart and interesting to spend time are arguably the greatest public speaker in My in My Friend

44:02 Group he is he is epically good. He would be a good person to ask about like how does the energy industry present itself in a positive way? Yeah. 'Cause he's thought a lot about that. Yeah. I

44:16 keep trying to get him on the podcast and he's always like, you know, I can't talk about Exxon, I can't do this, you know, but there's so many other things. When I interviewed him and I said -

44:24 Oh, he's fast enough. I said - He's a wind guy. He's always been a wind guy. He's been a wind guy, but when I said to him, what's the technology you're excited about right now? You know, if

44:32 you had a kid coming out of college, what would you tell them to go into? And some question like that, you don't have to track down the rice owl alumni magazine, he said fusion. He was most

44:44 excited about fusion. He said, when I started my career, I never would have thought by the end of my career, fusion was gonna be really sad. I believe that now. And he's like, R-H, you know?

44:53 Yeah. So he's, well, yeah. So he really, he believes that fusion as a commercial energy source is like right on the cusp of happening. Now we've heard that before, but yeah, that's cool.

45:08 All right, get home so you can watch soccer. All right, thanks man.