BP, Shell, Exxon: Oil’s Future

ENB Pub Note: This is an interesting article from Politico. The critical point is that the Department of Energy is not looking to cut any good energy sources. I define good sources of energy as […]

ENB Pub Note: Alaska is very dear to my heart with all of my trips to Alaska and my Grandfather being attributed for being a major discovering geologist of the North Slope formations, it is […]

Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro

02:20 – Why the Rubio Ceasefire Plan is DOA Part 8: The BLUF and the Overview of the Next Tranche of Papers

05:05 – BP, Shell, and Exxon Signal One Thing: Oil Isn’t Going Anywhere

07:20 – Trump admin considers killing big energy projects in Dem states

11:04 – Alaskan Tribes ‘Applaud’ Interior’s Move To Restore Oil And Gas Leasing

13:04 – Trump’s Trade Tactics Are Driving New LNG Deals

16:42 – Markets Update

18:38 – Rig Count Overview

18:53 – Energy trader Vitol eyes $3 billion sale of US shale producer, sources say

20:11 – Outro

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Stuart Turley: [00:00:00] Trump Admin Considers Killing The Big Energy Projects In Dem States This title is really, like you pointed out, a little bit off-kilter there because Chris Wright is one of the best energy-focused individuals and I’ve heard this from several folks and that is when you take a look at Chris Wright He started out as a nuclear guy that happened to be an entrepreneur that happened to be a oil field service CEO. I mean, he’s more of a goob and a, a nerd than he is a executive. I mean the man is classy and he only wants to cut projects that have absolutely more that cost more to create than you get the energy out of it. and that’s. [00:00:52][52.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:00] What’s going on, everybody. Welcome into the Monday, March 31st, 2025 edition of the Daily Energy Newsbeat standup. Here are today’s top headlines. First up, why the Rubio ceasefire plan is DOA, dead on arrival, part eight, the bluff and the overview of the next tranche of papers. Good, good friend of the show, George McMillan wrote this one, excited to dive into this one. Next up, Trump’s trade tactics are driving new LNG deals. Next up BP shell and Exxon signal one thing oil isn’t going anywhere. Next up, Trump admin considers killing big energy projects in Dem states. Little bit of a faulty headline, but we’ll dive in and cover some interesting stuff going on with these new energy projects. Finally, in the news segment, Alaskan tribes applaud Interior’s energy move to restore oil and gas leasing. Stuhl then toss it over to me. I will quickly cover what happened in the oil and gas markets. Some volatile stuff. Obviously, tariffs coming up this week. It’s going to be extremely spicy. We did see a little bit move in rig counts. And then we have energy trader VTOL is eyeing a $3 billion sale of its US shale producer, the Energy Partners. So we will cover all that and a bag of chips. Guys, as always, I am Michael Tanner, joined by Stuart Turley. Where do you want to begin? You know, I had heard that VTol story before. [00:02:19][79.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:19] Hey, let’s start. Let’s start with why the Rubio ceasefire plan is DOA part eight, the buff, the overview and the next tranche of papers. Michael, this is from George McMillan. And a little bit about this story is that the original series on this was why the Kellogg’s ceasefire plan and the whole thing was DOA because President Trump has not got the right information from his team and he needs a whole new team in And I’ll tell you why, it comes down to the bottom line in here. President Trump is contending with the same western coalition of neoconservatives, neoliberals and greens domestically as well in the UK and European Union. Michael, George McMillan has got a great set of articles out there and he came up with the line, all President Putin has to do is nothing. President Putin, because of President Biden, has moved all of his energy exports to Asia. Everything is already rolling. Everything is moving. And President Trump, our great President Trump, does not have all of the information he needs. And so we know some of these articles got to the team and they were shocked. So I got it from sources. It’s pretty cool that George McMillan’s information. is rock solid. So this is a great interview, great article. And he and I will be talking about it on a podcast later in the week. [00:03:50][90.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:50] Absolutely. We’re very blessed to have George McMillan as a, as a contributor here. You know, I, I can, I think it’s interesting that what I find fascinating is that, you know, there’s there, you know. Basically there’s a cleanup effort having to go along going on. I mean, there’re 20 years of terrible policy when it comes to Russia. And the issue is, you know, as you sort of, as always pointed out, Putin doesn’t have to do anything and he wins because he’s put himself in this position to be able to do that. And that makes any countermove the United States wants to do. It’s why Trump’s come out recently and said he’s really mad at Putin because he feels like he’s backed off and gone against the ceasefire. [00:04:28][37.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:29] Well, he really hasn’t. And it’s because all Putin has to do is wait for the conservative people to go along. And what you’ve heard me say along, Michael, is that if they don’t have cheap energy, regimes change. And we’re seeing a potential regime change in the EU and in Germany and all these other places where electricity prices are high. Why are they high? because expensive LNG is having to come in versus cheap Russian natural gas. [00:05:03][34.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:03] Alright, let’s go to the next one. What’s next? [00:05:05][1.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:05] Let’s go to BP Shell and Exxon signal one thing, oil isn’t going anywhere, and I’d like to read this in my best Irina Slav from Bulgaria accent, but I cannot do a Putin imitation. What makes you think I can do Irina slav? BP Shell & Exxons Chevron are boosting fossil fuel investment at disappointing returns on green energy ventures. BP is increasing oil and gas spending by… 25% Michael and Shell is prioritizing its LNG growth in their whole LNG trading center. The US supermajors stayed the course and are now outperforming their European counterparts. [00:05:51][45.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:52] It is interesting. I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on with BP. You know, we do know that activist investor Elliott Management has decided to come in there and shake things up. You know we know that they’re eyeing 27 new oil and gas projects over the next five years, specifically in that midstream space. And there’s rumors of a BP shell massive merger. Now, I think before that might happen, I think you could see a possible relisting of the common shares both on the New York Stock Exchange to possibly make it easier. but… I also don’t know if that’s the right move because of, you know, I mean, the FTC, yes, Lena con is gone, but, but Trump isn’t necessarily your traditional neoconservative when it comes to economics from the standpoint of, You know what, you know, he’s not necessarily just about, you know, bigger is better, better mergers are better. So I think it’s going to be fascinating to see what happens here, but yes, they are there. The free market will always win. As Adam Smith said, the invisible hand. will guide the markets to where they need to be to be as efficient as possible and efficient is a all-encompassing term [00:06:55][62.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:55] And when you, you alluded to several key points for the UK, holy smokes. Batman. If they run off their two biggest oil producers, [00:07:04][8.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:05] Yeah, now they’re still going to be producing oil on the North Sea and all that good stuff off the UK shores, but there’s a lot of revenue that comes back from a governmental standpoint that gets lost. [00:07:19][13.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:20] Hey, let’s go to the next story here. Trump admin considers killing the big energy projects in dem states. This, this title is really like you pointed out, aptly pointed out a little bit off kilter there because Chris Wright is one of the best energy focused individuals. And I’ve, I’ve heard this from several folks. And that is when you take a look at Chris, right. He started out as a nuclear guy that happened to be an entrepreneur, that happened to be a oil field service CEO. I mean, he’s more of a goob and a nerd than he is a executive. I mean the man is classy and he only wants to cut projects that have absolutely more, that cost more to create than you get the energy out of it. and that seven of the hydrogen hubs, there’s only one hydrogen out there, the green, the blue, the green whatever it is, it’s the white hydrogen which is naturally forming can create more energy than if you try to go create hydrogen. the greens, the blues, and the grays are not aliens. They’re forms of hydrogen that take different amounts of energy going into them in order to create it. And this is also in conjunction with Doug Burgum, the great Secretary of Interior. Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Association CEO Frank Wallach said the list of organizations with the DOA, but cautioned it’s clear what yet action the administration intends to take and so They’re still weighing through these, but the states are broken out in this article on which ones they’re going to break out. [00:09:09][109.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:09] Yeah, so you’ve got the Pacific Northwest hub, which spans Oregon, Washington, and Montana, the Arches hub in California, the Midwest hub, which links Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan, the Minute Glanta hub in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey. Those are on the cut list. On the keep side, you have the Heartland hub, which spans Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, the Appalachia hub through Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and high velocity in Texas and Louisiana. You know, I think if you were to I think the article title is a little misleading by political, from the standpoint of, I wouldn’t necessarily say this is Dem states that they’re getting rid of, it’s just, they’re looking at it from a net energy production, net energy loss standpoint, if it’s going to cost more than the energy it’s gonna produce, why do it, and you know, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, those aren’t bastions of Republican, you know of Republican from that standpoint, Minnesota definitely not. And when you look at the one that’s on the cut list, you’ve got Montana, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania. All those are places in which Republicans have done well. So I think that it’s a little bit misleading. And I think what they’re really doing is looking at this from a net energy, from a cost standpoint. Now, I would caution, we can’t get in this tit for tat game by canceling things just because somebody’s a Democrat because then eventually when we lose an election, that’s gonna come back to hurt us. It’s- It’s a little bit of what I’m fearful of, of some of the security clearances they’re getting canceled. You know, that’s just going to now set a precedent for every president is now going to lose his or her security clearance when they… That’s just clearly going to happen. [00:10:45][95.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:45] Take a look at Biden and his canceling of the Keystone pipeline. Who did it hurt? It actually hurt the Canadians more than it did the United States, especially in the terror force, because if we had a pipeline, president Trump would wave that pipeline and all that oil coming in instead of coming in on the rail cars, but let’s go to Alaska here. Alaska tribes applied interiors moved to restore oil and gas leasing. And Michael, as you and I have talked about in the past, very recently we’ve talked about my family’s history in Alaska. And since my grandfather was one of the chief geologists that discovered the North Slope, and I actually did work a little bit on the Alaska pipeline in their tech area, the Alaska pipeline is only being used at 20% right now, if that. We could really take a lot of advantage of that. And when you take a look at the great trade differential, we have billions of dollars coming in for the Alaskan LNG facility coming in. This is all greatness and it’s cautious optimism. And I apologize. I don’t want to butcher his name, uh, Nargaric Hercek, president of the voice of the Arctic Intuit nonprofit organization that represents 21 native American corporations and communities. We feel like we’re going to be able to get some things done with a more favorable administration, but we’re also careful about is we don’t want to have to threaten that cultural base and lifestyle that we rely on every day. One of the things I can tell you, Michael, is my time up in Alaska is treasured. And from the standpoint, the American oil and gas workers and what they do up there, They have done a phenomenal job protecting the environment up there. We do it better than any other country in the world. [00:12:41][115.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:41] Yeah, and it’s great to see an alignment from native communities, citizens, and what the administration is doing and what state leadership wants to do. So I think all around this is great. Alaska is one of the few states that does get a little bit of a subsidy, and people get physical checks from oil and gas production. So we do love that. [00:13:03][21.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:04] And real quickly, as I close out, Michael, this really leads into because on Wednesday, President Trump is going through the tariffs and announcing our American freedom day or whatever he’s calling. He didn’t want to do it on April fools. So he’s got some big announcements coming out on Wednesday this week, but he’s also encouraging all the people to buy LNG from around the world to avoid tariffs and help offset his trade imbalance. An example of the trade imbalance is… The EU has a trade imbalance of about $300 billion in the United States and they tariff the snot out of our cars and everything else. So let’s take a look at Russian natural gas that we talked about. It’s about six to eight MMBTU, six to $8 MMBT and an LNG import. when you consider MMBTU is about $10 to $15, depending on which port, then you may have transport costs on top of that. So ballpark, your natural gas prices are double when you’re LNG versus Russian natural gas. [00:14:17][72.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:18] No, it’s the reason why Trump’s trying to go all in on LNG. I do think using tariffs this way is the market isn’t going to react, I think, as positively as it may react to others. I think that’s what you have to worry about. [00:14:34][16.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:35] But Steve Reese, I love Steve Reese and I get to interview him in two weeks. And this is really important. At what price do you put for national security? Because Steve Reese with Reese Consulting can talk about all from the Permian all the way to the Gulf and then all the way to Germany and LNG imports there. So, you know, energy security has a price. [00:14:59][23.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:00] not true it’s true and with that guys let’s go ahead and jump over to finance before we do that let’s quickly pay the bills as always thank you for checking us out world’s greatest website ww ww dot energy newsbeat dot com stew and the team do a tremendous job making sure that website stays up to speed everything you need to know to be the tip of the spear when it comes to the energy and the oil and gas business go ahead in hit that description below for all these the timestamps links to the articles a great way to support the show subscribe to us of our substack the energy newsbeat.substack.com Stu has some great custom articles there. If you are so inclined to sign up for a paid membership, you do get some stuff that nobody else gets to see from an article and an analysis standpoint. And we are talking about adding a few more things to the offer stack. So we appreciate everybody there. Also, thanks to support from Reese Energy Consulting. They make this show possible by supporting us. Guys, if you are not using in the upstream space an oil and gas marketing company or do not have an in-house marketing team, I highly, highly recommend calling them. You’re leaving money on the table. If you’re not working with somebody like Reese Energy Consulting, and if you’re thinking about getting into the LNG space or you’re in the midstream space and you’re working with and you need help on any level, please call Reese Energy consulting. We love those guys over there. And as always guys, if it is not too early in 2025 to start thinking about taxes or trying to become Billy Bob Thornton from Landman. InvestInOil.EnergyNewsBeat.com is a great way to learn how to get ahead on your 2025 taxes, do a little bit of a portfolio diversification, and ultimately be able to go up to a party and say, I am Billy Bob Thornton. We’ll sign up and you will get all the information that we have on how to get started in the energy space, Stu. But let’s go ahead and jump over. Markets have absolutely been getting crushed right now from a top level. S&P 500 has dropped below the 50 day moving average. It was down about two percentage points on Friday. NASDAQ was in about 2.6 percentage points. A lot of that coming from the mag seven, specifically in Divya in Divy, uh, take two year yields down 2.1 percentage points, 10 year yields, down 2.5 percentage points dollar index down about 2 tenths of a percentage point. Bitcoin basically flat $82,000 over this weekend. Crude oil, 69 36. That was down to that eight tenths for percentage point Brent oil, basically flat 73 43. natural gas. Basically $4.06, that’s up $0.14, or about 4, 3.5 percentage points. And XOP, which is our EMP securities contract, is down to about 8 tenths of a percentage point, down to $1.3068. You know, on the actual oil side, I mean, I think all eyes are on tariffs, too. I think people are slightly worried that this is going to start, and these tariffs could start a global recession. And part of the reason is that is just, you know, trade is going whine down and You know, not that I’m a, you know, neo-conservative free trade goon, but there is something to be said about as markets find the most efficient path. And if the most deficient path is, is, is international trading, I think doing everything we can to discourage it through tariffs can lead to recessionary pressure pressures. I do think some of that pressure is offset by the fact that Venezuelan and Iran have seen, you know, tariffs being ratcheted up on them. Those actually happened last week. so. I think these upcoming tariffs on the second on imported goods, I think, is, you know, being counteracted by tariffs on other end. So, you know at the end of the day, you know, it all could be a net neutral. We did see a 3.3 million barrel draw on Wednesday from this crude oil strategic patrolling from the stuff over there at Cushing. So there’s a positive note there. We also did see rig counts coming on Friday. That was down by about one rig. 592 is the total count. That’s still down about 29 from year over year. Canada saw about 17 rigs shed, so absolutely unbelievable. Internationally, it was basically flat. The last thing we saw, Stu, was VTOL, who owns VTX Energy Partners, is eyeing potential $3 billion sale of that company. It’s still early in the process. Um, but you know, part of their reasoning is, is that VTX is one of the few private operators that’s left in that Southern Delaware basin. They just got done recently selling Venser over to Civitas for about $2.3 billion. And with about 46,000 BOE per day, about 120 locations and 46,00 net acres. You know, they do feel like there is some, there, there is some chance, you know there is a good market for it. They’re eyeing as much as 3 billion, which does include debt. I think the, the hard part is, you know, depending on where they think prices are, if you think prices like Stu are, are going to be in the $80 range by the end of the year due to geopolitical stuff, why sell now when you can just wait out. Now the other thing, you, you’re like me and you’re a little less non-bullish on, on oil and 70 might be a great opportunity and to sell right now. So I think it’s going to, it’s interesting to see what they decide to do, but there definitely is running room and there definitely is a-a- There’s not that many of these type of companies left. So whether or not this ends up working out or not, I think will be interesting to see. That’s really all I have, Stu. What are you worried about this week? [00:20:11][311.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:20:12] Oh, I’m not worried about anything. I think the world is going to be right-sizing here. And I’m looking forward to Wednesday’s announcements from President Trump. I’m really prayerful more about just that he gets the right information to help end the war and end people killing each other. That’s what I would prefer. [00:20:32][19.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:20:33] Absolutely guys. Well with that, we’re going to let you get out of here. Start your week. We appreciate you checking us out here on the world’s greatest podcast, the energy news beat for Stuart Charlie. I’m Michael Tanner. We’ll see you tomorrow, folks. [00:20:33][0.0][1212.2]