Energy News Beat
Do you feel your energy bills are increasing, and no one cares? Well, Anne Bradbury, the CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, stopped by, and we cover some of the most important energy topics in the US.
A little inside baseball: – Anne and I have over 99 connections on LinkedIn, and I have interviewed 26 of those joint connections. Quite a joint list of industry experts!!
Please reach out to Ann on her LinkedIn Here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-bradbury-015381147/
Thank you, Anne for stopping by, it was a blast – Stu
Anne served as Floor Director to two successive Speakers of the House of Representatives: House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). In her capacity as Floor Director, Anne guided the House majority’s floor operations and advised the entire Republican leadership team on legislative strategy and policy development. Anne’s role as one of the Speaker’s most important advisers was expansive, from serving as the Speaker’s liaison to the House Rules Committee and Senate floor staff to advising the entire House Republican leadership team, House committees, its members and staff on the rules and procedures of the House of Representatives.
As one of the top legislative strategists and technicians in Congress, Anne was instrumental in the implementation and adoption of major rules packages and legislative initiatives ranging from reforms to national security and intelligence policy to health care, energy, transportation, trade, education, and energy policy initiatives introduced and passed by the House of Representatives.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
01:16 – Talk about the North American Prospect Expo (NAPE) and upcoming events.
01:54 – The recent COP conference in Dubai
04:11 – Bill Gates’ changing statements on climate change and the carbon footprint of different energy sources.
06:48 – Discuss the significance of American LNG exports, especially to Europe, and its role in providing energy security.
09:13 – Are you seeing a lot more long-term contracts?
10:36 – Tell us what you do to try to help out our great American producers.
15:45 – Is there anything we can do for our great oil and gas producers in California?
17:19 – And who do you see is leading our country in energy for all type thing?
19:34 – How do you see yourself helping change the narrative or education?
23:30 – The great American American Export Europe Council, how can they help you?
25:05 – What are your thoughts for these upcoming ideas? Are anything your last words?
26:04 – Outro
Stuart Turley [00:00:03] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy News Me podcast. My name’s Stu Turley. Have you ever wondered what’s going on in the oil and gas base in the United States? It’s kind of weird, but I’ll tell you what, one of the things that’s going on is talking to industry experts who actually understand what’s going on with what’s going on with the whole regulations through legislation, through regulations. I have the Anne Bradbury here. She’s the CEO at American Exploration and Production Council out of Washington, DC. Thank you so much for stopping by.
Anne Bradbury [00:00:43] Thanks do I’m super excited to be here.
Stuart Turley [00:00:45] I’ll tell you what, I got to do a little inside baseball for our listeners. You and I have 99 connections on LinkedIn. You learn a lot of them. You’ve got a lot of good connections out there. A You’re a smart B, you’ve got a great organization out there fighting for the oil and gas industry. And I’ve interviewed 26 of our joint connections on LinkedIn. That’s bizarre. You must know.
Anne Bradbury [00:01:12] Bull. I talk to a lot of good people.
Stuart Turley [00:01:16] Absolutely. So, hey, you and I are going to be at NAPE next year. This is really a cool thing. We’ve got four booth. How many names have you been through?
Anne Bradbury [00:01:27] Believe it or not, to do this is my first name.
Stuart Turley [00:01:30] No way.
Anne Bradbury [00:01:32] Yeah, I know all about it. Exactly what it is. I’ve never been. I’m super pumped.
Stuart Turley [00:01:36] Oh, well, I’ll tell you what. The podcast are way cool on the reach. And you just had David Blackmon, and you mentioned R.T. and a few others, and we kind of laughed, said this is going to the barge now set low for this podcast. But hey, tell us a little bit about what you thought about COP. There is some weird stuff coming out about co-op, right? Yeah.
Anne Bradbury [00:02:01] So common still. I think it goes till tomorrow technically. And right now the big news out of co-op is that there is a big push from some European countries and others to sign a joint statement saying that we are endeavoring to phase, quote unquote, phase out fossil fuels. And it seems like that they have now pushed back on that opaque is getting a lot of the credit for being the one to stop it. But I think, you know, from what I’m reading, it’s also some, you know, developing countries like African nations that are like, yes, slow down, like we need fossil fuels. And so the environmentalists and Al Gore are now saying, you know, throwing up their hands and saying, you know, this is this is the worst thing ever. But, you know, I think it’s actually a much better reflection on the reality of, you know, the state of our world today and the need for fossil fuels across the globe. And, you know, so so that’s that’s the big hullabaloo at NAPE excuse me at a at COP this week in Limits.
Stuart Turley [00:03:20] And it’s pretty funny when you have it in Dubai. The UAE is kind of like oil. You have the Saudi Arabia shows up with Saudi Aramco. And you and I were chit chatting about this right before the show. Can you imagine their heads popping with all the green type folks? A pow, pow, pow, pow. It sounded like somebody doing it. What is it? The popcorn you squish. And everybody has the instinct to do that to bug your family. Oh, the popcorn. You know.
Anne Bradbury [00:03:53] It. It drives me nuts. But they get great joy out of it.
Stuart Turley [00:03:57] So, yeah, I throw it down on the carpet and, you know, try this. Very satisfying. Oh, it is. You know, I feel good about myself. My wife is like you 12, so. Okay, so not only that, we have Bill Gates was there, and I keep telling people that the only time I met him, I drove him nuts. I mean, I have that effect on people. And, you know, I wish I drove him a little more nuts. Maybe he wouldn’t be the way he is now, but he said maybe. Did you see that interview where he said climate change is not going to kill us and it’s not a big deal? And then I saw him interviewed that cop and goes, Climate change is going to kill us.
Anne Bradbury [00:04:38] Yeah. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:04:40] What’s up with that noise? And then, So you see all these knuckleheads, and it’s the elite. 1% are using more CO2 than the bottom 60%. They are 70,000 people.
Anne Bradbury [00:04:59] Yeah. 70,000 people. A cop, Probably a bunch who flew private jets to get there. And. And so, yeah, you know, it’s it’s, it’s interesting. And I and I think it gets back to where we started this discussion which is you’ve got to be realistic about global energy demand to ever have an honest conversation about climate because countries are not going to choose having lower emissions over the ability to provide affordable and reliable energy to a growing population, because energy is a hallmark of progress. And it’s we’re so lucky and Europe is so fortunate that we have this abundant, affordable, reliable sources of energy. But the vast majority of the world is not that fortunate. And so asking them to give that up in the name of climate change, it’s just not going to happen. Whether you think it should or shouldn’t, it is not going to happen. And I think the sooner folks can come to grips with that reality, the sooner we can have more realistic conversations.
Stuart Turley [00:06:03] You know, when we sit back and kind of look at the great operators and you work with a lot of the big, big guys and what is it, 50% of our oil is produced by the private.
Anne Bradbury [00:06:17] Uh, so the stats I know is that over 80% of oil is produced by independence. Yep. And, and PC represents just over 50% of production.
Stuart Turley [00:06:29] Oh, okay, great. Again, that’s. Oh, Ukrainian mass popping in my head there. But that’s a lot of oil.
Anne Bradbury [00:06:38] It’s a lot of oil. It’s like with a lot of it’s even more natural gas. Like it’s a lot.
Stuart Turley [00:06:42] And we would be dead meat with that. Our great exporting of LNG facilities.
Anne Bradbury [00:06:48] That is 100% right. Even more so Europe would be dedicated to our incredible LNG exports. And you know what? I you know, I think the the story of American LNG saving Europe’s bacon over the last couple of years after the Russian invasion of of Ukraine, it’s an incredible story. It’s one we’re very proud of, couldn’t have been possible without the shale revolution. But I also want to point out that because of that, exports to Asia were the lowest that they had been in several years. So so some of that was just moving cargoes around, right, necessarily, like sort of adding to the aggregate amount of LNG in the in the world.
Stuart Turley [00:07:31] And so let me ask this. Yeah, Russia was supplying a lot to Asia and then China was buying a lot of it and then reselling it. So Russia actually got around sanctions by selling it to China and then China was selling it back to the EU, talked about carbon emissions, having these things roll around the world, they’re not easily done.
Anne Bradbury [00:08:06] Right. Right. That’s that’s absolutely true. But it’s like the world needs more U.S. LNG, not just the ability to like move cargoes around. Right. Because, you know, Russian gas is clearly significantly dirtier and you want to sort of enable this Russian China partnership that’s emerging. And so, you know, super proud of the fact that we were able to provide so much U.S. LNG to Europe. But we need to be able to do that without moving cargoes away from other places in the world. Oh yeah, really important. And so we need more export capacity, we need more pipeline capacity for Pakistan.
Stuart Turley [00:08:49] They had one of their LNG shipments stolen from somebody else. Our bid. Yeah. I was like, that’s not right.
Anne Bradbury [00:08:59] It’s not. And you know, it’s, you know, countries like that can’t afford to pay that premium when you know that those prices, by the way, to keep prices lower and more stable is to just put more energy in global marketplace.
Stuart Turley [00:09:13] Are you seeing a lot more long term contracts? Boy, I am. I mean, it seems kind of weird that our long term contracts around the world, that’s cool. You see Cheniere and everybody else putting out long term contracts. And Sean Strawbridge just got his new company going.
Anne Bradbury [00:09:32] Oh, me?
Stuart Turley [00:09:33] Okay, Yeah, he’s doing contracts around the world. So he’s. He’s gonna get.
Anne Bradbury [00:09:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s great. I mean, I think that’s a super important component of this business, and we need to continue to see more. And, you know, one of the things that I think would help is if DC policymakers stop talking about the fact we’re going to phase out fossil fuels. Right? Because I do think that that sort of counteracts this notion of, you know, can I make this a safe, long term 20 year investment, which, you know, I think we know it is.
Stuart Turley [00:10:15] I don’t know how you do it.
Anne Bradbury [00:10:16] There’s this public there’s this other narrative out there that we’re you know, we’re.
Stuart Turley [00:10:20] We’re.
Anne Bradbury [00:10:21] Going away, you know, within that time frame, which is, you know, just.
Stuart Turley [00:10:24] For your organization, I feel I’d like to just say go ahead and put a memo out to your board and and give you a bigger raise for being in Washington, DC and then tell us what you do to try to help out our great American producers.
Anne Bradbury [00:10:41] Yeah. So still, you know, as you point out, like our main purpose, purpose of existence is to be an advocacy organization and to speak on behalf of the leading companies in Washington, to Congress, to regulators, to the White House, to educate on the importance of, you know, domestic production and to advocate on behalf of the industry. And, you know, it’s not always an easy job. But, you know, we think, you know, our mission starts with education and sort of making people understand what the impact of these policies will be. And and, you know, it goes all the way to advocacy. So we think about, you know, creative ways to to try to, you know, encourage people to really understand and put policies forward that support domestic production.
Stuart Turley [00:11:33] So being a mom to your kids. Yeah. Or going to the Congress, which is you’re dealing with probably more adult behavior with your kids. Is that a fair statement?
Anne Bradbury [00:11:47] So I have two teenagers, you know, teenagers. So I actually think that’s still probably true. And they’ve they’ve been sort of indoctrinated for several years now in terms of, you know, just be asking talkative questions about, you know, when they come home and tell me what they learned at school that day. And so we can sort of turn that around and then they go back to to their classmates and start asking provocative questions as well, which is really fun. So so, yeah, I mean, I actually think it’s very similar. You know, it’s a lot of it’s a lot of really foundational education work on on basics.
Stuart Turley [00:12:31] But, you know, and I get I’m sorry, I get excited and I think about 16 different questions for you there. But it’s about energy. It’s about elevating humanity out of poverty through low cost energy, natural gas, nuclear are critical. You can’t make a with all the teenagers and folks that are out there protesting oil and gas. Windmills don’t make.
Anne Bradbury [00:12:58] These right, right, right. What? RO Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that’s really important to understand. And even, you know, issues around EV is right. I mean, you have to drive in TV for I think an average of 60,000 miles before it even breaks. Even when you look at the lifecycle analysis like a lot of miles and ad 20.
Stuart Turley [00:13:21] I’ve got some numbers that are not adding up. So AD 20 you can you can say Stu Turley said oh thing no yeah just and so it’s up there because you have the resale you have insurance prices are going up and then you have the carbon footprint is getting worse because of supply chain. That number is not right. And it’s the same thing with wind farms. Wind farms are not sustainable from day one and then from day one, you know, without the tax subsidies. And then they are only sustainable with tax subsidies after up to eight years, after eight years, the maintenance is so bad that they’re all being walked away from. Why? Why, why are they not bidding on them anymore? Why now? Why did all these big boys lose all this money?
Anne Bradbury [00:14:19] Right. Right.
Stuart Turley [00:14:21] How how expensive is your power in DC? Oh, I don’t.
Anne Bradbury [00:14:26] I don’t know. I should know that I know what my monthly bill is, but I don’t know what my. Okay, well, a unit power is still.
Stuart Turley [00:14:33] The New York and California are two times as high as. Texas. In Texas, we have wind, solar, nuclear, coal. Well, that’s a natural gas. So let’s let’s have it all in Texas.
Anne Bradbury [00:14:48] And California has to import, I think, at least 30% of its power from other places because they’ve shut down production and generation within their state. Right. In the name of being green. So they’re just imported from other places.
Stuart Turley [00:15:02] And you know what’s even worse? Buckle up, man. Are you ready for this?
Anne Bradbury [00:15:05] I’m ready.
Stuart Turley [00:15:06] Okay. China has they’re putting in I believe it’s more than a million barrels capacity on their refined products. California has shut down their refined products and they’re arranging to import from China. Gasoline in. And they’re. And they think they can do that because they’re trying to get rid of gasoline and diesel.
Anne Bradbury [00:15:38] That does not shock me.
Stuart Turley [00:15:41] The rule of law.
Anne Bradbury [00:15:44] Yeah. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:15:45] Is there anything we can do for our great oil and gas producers in California? That seems to me to be a hopeless cause.
Anne Bradbury [00:15:54] You know, it’s interesting. You’re seeing some companies leave California because of the regulatory environment there. I mean, it’s it’s pretty brutal right now. And it’s, you know, I mean, you know, we have a ton of companies that operate in states with extremely high regulatory standards like New Mexico and Colorado.
Stuart Turley [00:16:16] Right.
Anne Bradbury [00:16:16] At least in those states, it’s more of an effort to have very high standards without maybe driving industry out of the state right now. Intention is to drive companies out of the state.
Stuart Turley [00:16:28] It seems like I’m okay with high standards because of the environment.
Anne Bradbury [00:16:32] Right. Right.
Stuart Turley [00:16:34] And and our great ENP operators do a better job than anybody else on the planet.
Anne Bradbury [00:16:41] They do. And states are some of the best regulatory bodies, you know, in this country because, you know, they really they have the sort of institutional knowledge they’ve been the right for oil and gas for a long time. And they understand that, you know, what works in Pennsylvania might be different than what works in Texas, might be different than what works in North Dakota. Right. They’re very different operating regions. And so, you know, a one size fits all approach to a regulatory scheme doesn’t make sense.
Stuart Turley [00:17:09] All right. Between us girls. Who’s your favorite either senator or Congress person to visit with about this? And who do you see is leading our country in a energy for all type thing? And I think I just threw on the spot.
Anne Bradbury [00:17:28] Yeah, it it’s hard to choose. I have. So there really are I mean Congress gets a bad.
Stuart Turley [00:17:34] This is a really.
Anne Bradbury [00:17:38] Bad rap. That being said, there are a lot of great members of Congress and so a lot of good ones. So I’ll just off the top of my head, I’ll list a couple of my favorite ladies, Stephanie Bice from Oklahoma, Capito from West Virginia are really great energy leaders. So I’ll start there. But, you know, I think we’ve got a great like energy leadership sort of just, you know, really like if you go around, like a lot most of our producing states, you’ve got you’ve got really great, great leaders representing maybe not. Okay. There are some there are some exceptions to that, for sure. Okay.
Stuart Turley [00:18:22] I answered that so greatly. I just interviewed Representative Congressman Zach, Man, he’s a who and I really, really enjoyed him. And then also Andy represented from Tennessee Bar, Andy Ogles.
Anne Bradbury [00:18:42] Oh, okay. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:18:43] And he is a sharp cat. Yeah, I really enjoyed both of those. And we have about ten more lined up. Oh, good. So the Opry is in. If you are ever visiting with anybody, I would love to have a discussion with you and some of those other women, because I think that the battle is you guys need to tell us, how can we help get your story out?
Anne Bradbury [00:19:08] Yeah, that’s a great idea. That would be fun to do.
Stuart Turley [00:19:11] And so that you don’t have to sit there and go, Hey, how do I get my story out? Hey, let’s leverage our our channels.
Anne Bradbury [00:19:18] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Stuart Turley [00:19:21] So what do you see? How do we get around? Not get around? Because I like the regulatory issues that are good. How do you see yourself in 2024? Because this is going to be a rough political year. How do you see yourself helping change the narrative or education? I don’t know how you do it again, I pull my hair out.
Anne Bradbury [00:19:44] Yeah, So this is a tough one. And I and I like how you framed the question because we try really hard at PC to be in favor of common sense regulations, right? So we’re not anti-regulation, right? We’re just pro common sense, effective, workable regulations. And that is a very difficult needle to thread for regulators. I will say, you know, we look at the most recent EPA regulation on methane that just came out, and you can see a lot of signs where the agency is trying to do the right thing. Directionally, I think there are some really good components of it, right? I think there are definitely some flaws in terms of workability, in terms of disincentivizing. Some of the technologies that our companies are really utilizing and employing, they’re going to be so critical. Enduring the sort of trajectory that we’re on in terms of continuing to drive down emissions. So it’s imperfect and we hope to continue to work with EPA to make it better or to reconsider some of those proposals. It does feel like some of the regulations kind of go downhill from there, right, That the you know, the methane tax we’re still waiting on. But that’s going to be, you know, a tough pill to swallow for a lot and something that will work we’re going to work really hard on because, you know, first of all, we think it’s pretty punitive against U.S. companies and, you know, should never have passed in the first place. On top of that, you layer the subpart W revisions, which is changing the underlying math, and it’s going to artificially inflate everyone’s reported emissions. And so this is that’s going to be a huge problem because it’s going to make it look like US production, you know, emit somewhere in the magnitude of like triple what it currently does. Not because we’re emitting more, but because they’re changing the underlying factors and inflating some and double counting. So. That to me is like sort of that sort of that the the regulatory issue that should be getting more attention than it is right now. So it’s only in the proposed rule phase. We haven’t seen a final rule yet, but that’s going to be a big area of focus for us. Well, next year.
Stuart Turley [00:22:06] You know, getting hammered by the regulatory issues with scope on emissions. I can understand that. Scope two, Scope three with the one. Right. I mean.
Anne Bradbury [00:22:20] And it yeah, it’s the analogy I heard is it’s like punishing farmers because, you know, you know, there’s too much calories in this cookie year because people are eating like, you know, the king egg on the dessert menu. Right.
Stuart Turley [00:22:38] I saw that same thing. And I it was a guy from the middle of he he was one of the oil leaders in the Middle East.
Anne Bradbury [00:22:45] He I remember where I saw it. But it.
Stuart Turley [00:22:48] It’s a.
Anne Bradbury [00:22:48] Great analogy, right? Once we produce this product and it someone buys it and uses it for another purpose and then sold it down the road, we have no control over it, right?
Stuart Turley [00:23:00] Oh, no.
Anne Bradbury [00:23:01] We don’t have the ability to control how the emissions are used. Where are they? So as long as there’s demand for our product, we’re going to keep making it. But to sort of punish us because then people are using it or to somehow use that to evaluate or score us is like, right. You know, it’s just kind of it’s just nonsensical.
Stuart Turley [00:23:22] Oh, yeah. Like you have your work cut out for you. How can people help your council? You know, the great American American Export Europe Council, how can they help you? So you need help? I’m sorry, I do.
Anne Bradbury [00:23:41] We need all the help we can get. So if you go to our website, speak, dawg, there’s an area, there’s a link where you can sign up for our updates. And that provides information both on sort of updates out of Washington in terms of what’s happening here on the Hill, what’s happening and regulatory bodies to keep you updated, informed when it makes sense. It also says, you know write your congressmen on this issue. So we make it incredibly easy and then we send out is we’re getting in an election year. You know, we’ll also be sending out sort of don’t forget to register to vote and here’s how you can how you can vote, because just being engaged through this process is incredibly important. And individual voices, even though it might not seem impactful, collectively make a huge difference.
Stuart Turley [00:24:29] And so this is this is a joke and don’t be offended. But is there any way you can start firing up a mail in ballot for anybody that likes energy? And maybe you and I can drive around and collect all those mail in ballots?
Anne Bradbury [00:24:43] I know it’s tempting. It’s tempting in.
Stuart Turley [00:24:47] That for our podcast listeners, I think Paul in was blinded by my flesh colored bald head as the sun got in her eyes. And she actually thought that other joke was funny. So, you know, I’m sorry about that. And that again, Thank you. You got the last word coming around the corner. What are your thoughts for this upcoming ideas are anything your last words?
Anne Bradbury [00:25:12] Last words? You know, I would just say if you are an energy worker, like be incredibly proud of what you do because it is incredibly important. And I, for one, am very grateful. My team is very grateful. So I think we start from a place of gratitude. And then number two is get involved. And again, you know, you can go to our website. It’s an easy way to get involved. People vote both in primaries and. Make your voice heard. Any way you can think to do so.
Stuart Turley [00:25:41] I love that. Vote early, vote often. But then that one guy that did say that got thrown in jail or they tried to put him in jail. Vote early. Vote early or vote when, you know, my grandparents have voted like six or seven times in the last last elections and they’ve been dead for all these years. I am getting that is a joke. Everybody I know, I guess. Thank you so much and for stopping by the podcast. I appreciate.
Anne Bradbury [00:26:07] You. Thanks to great to chat.
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