#057 Oil and Gas This Week Podcast: OPEC Today – You Ask, Mark Answers

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We act a fool on this First Friday Q&A answering your questions on the state of OPEC today, crushing your competitors, and the big CO2 fight!

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#057: OPEC Today – You Ask, Mark Answers

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Questions

David Gray, OMS

Hey James and Mark – love the show, great job! I listen in the evenings after work here in the UK whilst out running. You guys do a fantastic job of making the world a little smaller and bringing us the leading edge news and insights from across the oil and gas industry. In fact I’ve cited some facts from your podcast in a paper I’m working as part of my post-grad study.

Our business, like many others has felt the pinch of the low price. We’re a service provider – mainly based in deep water – we create solutions to help pipeline operators fit-up and inspect pipelines. I know a lot of other supply chain businesses are suffering too. Do you have any suggestions as to how we can noticed higher up the chain so we get specc’d into projects as a matter of course rather than an emergency measure?

Cheers and keep up the good work!

Dave G

Amir Ali, Cameron

As someone who is young to the O&G industry (less than two years) how can recent graduates capitalize on their degrees (I have both a Finance and Supply Chain degree) on new opportunities within the industry?

For example I am interested in using my oilfield services experience and Finance degree to switch to banking. What tips or advice do you have for us?

Thanks and enjoy your show…keep up the good work!

Bart Crister, Terra Guidance

The Baker Hughes rig count is lowest since they started publishing the rig count in 1949. At what point prior to 1949 did we have this low a rig count?

Amir Dashtianeh, Seeking new opportunities

James and Mark, first of all I’m glad I came across your podcast as it is both informative and entertaining. My question is in regards to the downturn in crude prices and the impact Saudi Arabia’s decision to maintain production versus making cuts.

I constantly hear of O&G workers complain about how the situation we’re in is Saudi Arabia’s fault. What is your unbiased view on the culprit behind the fall in prices? Isn’t the US independent O&G company’s the one’s to blame for the excess production?

Thanks

Alexander, JP Morgan Chase

Hi Mark/James,

If OPEC members finally come to an agreement this year to cut production , what effect would an subsequent increase in US domestic production have on the spot?

Do US & Non-OPEC producers have enough capacity to keep the prices low regardless of OPEC production targets?

Long time listener,

Alexander Uteshev

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#057: OPEC Today – You Ask, Mark Answers

Transcripts Courtesy Of

[0:00:00]

James: I’m James Hahn II.

Mark: And I’m Mark LaCour.

James: And you’re listening to the Oil and Gas This Week Podcast, Brought To You By Red Wing. This is the show for busy oil pros who want to quickly keep their finger on the pulse of the industry, Episode 57. Mark LaCour, welcome in. How are you feeling this morning?

Mark: Awesome, dude. I mean it’s just been a great week already. I got a great week in front of us. I’m actually able to record this show not on the telephone.

James: Yeah. If anybody hasn’t heard that, we recorded Oil and Gas Careers Podcast on Tuesday, and Mark was calling in for the show, not the best quality.

Mark: — get good audio quality in telephone.

James: The best quality. But interesting fact, another fact we’ve learned about Mark LaCour is that there could be a chance that instead of giving you a good education, a good education here on the show each week, he could be pulling you over.

Mark: Yeah. I don’t know how we got on this subject, but yeah, right out of the Marine Corps, I thought about coming to police officer. So part of the process of getting through everything so you can be qualified to go to the police officer training is you do a ride-along program. So I rode along with the detectives and they were a bunch of goofballs. That was kind of fun.

And I rode along with the guys that were serving civic stuff that was just boring. And then I rode along with the guys that work traffic, and I was amazed at how horribly people treat them. I’m not a violent person but at some point I knew I was going to punch somebody in the face. And it’s like, “You know what? I can’t do this for a living.” So I never finished it. But I thought about it.

James: You thought about it, and you also had a high-speed chase with an old woman.

Mark: Yeah. Those traffic guys see some crazy stuff. You know, we had this old like grandma lady. I went to pull her over just because she was not wearing her seatbelt. I mean, you just would have talked to her, would have given her ticket. And she let us on a high-speed chase and they end up having to pull her off the car and cuff her. And it’s like, “Where the heck that come from?” The same thing. We pulled over some businessmen, and one of them jumped out the car and took off running because he had some warrant somewhere. These poor guys that work traffic, I have a lot of respect. I’ve kind of seen their world a little bit. So when I get pulled over, my hands were on top of steering wheel and it’s “yes, sir” and “no, sir,” “thank you, sir” because I know what the crap they go through. And you know, they don’t get paid a lot. So heads off to our Men in Blue out there protecting everybody. I got your back.

James: Yeah. I didn’t realize what a horrible day-to-day grind it could be because, where was that again? Because it wasn’t in Houston.

Mark: It was in Lafayette, Louisiana.

James: Yeah. So even in the smaller city like Lafayette, you got crazy things like that happening on a daily basis.

Mark: I mean physically, think about it. You’re in the car for eight hours and you haven’t moved, you haven’t stretched, and all of a sudden you get a break out in a full out run, and you’re wearing 20 pounds of hardware around your waist. I mean it’s like a tough motor competition every day for you.

James: That’s a good point. All right. Well, you also wanted to give a shout-out here at the top of the show?

Mark: Yeah. Jonathan Atwell, thanks, dude. He reached out to me. I talked to him a little bit about Exxon, and I did it because I just wanted to help. And I get this package and it’s an Atwell Nike polo-shirt and a handwritten thank you note, which in today’s world, you’ll never get it. So Jonathan, dude, you didn’t have to do it but I sincerely appreciate it.

James: That is huge, yeah. Handwritten notes really stand out in a world of email and voicemail and so forth. So that’s great.

Mark: Yeah. It’s on my Facebook company page. I scanned it because it’s just so rare to get something like that.

James: All right, yeah. So go to triberocket.com/ — I’ll have to look it out. I can’t remember the link I put together for you. Regardless, this is the First Friday Q&A, and we have quite a few questions to get into. So let’s kick it off with David Gray from OMS, Optical Metrology Services. He’s the Marketing & Communications Manager. Here’s his question.

Hey, James and Mark. Love the show. Great job. I listen in the evenings after work here in the UK whilst out running. You guys do a fantastic job making the world a little smaller and bringing us leading edge news and insights from across the oil and gas industry. In fact, I’ve cited some facts from your podcast in a paper I’m working on as part of my post-grad study. I’m guessing that fact was from you, Mark.

Mark: Oh, dude. David, make sure you fact-checked that because we don’t get everything perfect.

James: Yeah. And you’ll discover that as we go further through this show. Our business, like many others, has felt the pinch of the low oil prices. We’re a service provider, mainly based in deep water. We create solutions to help pipeline operators fit-up and inspect pipelines. I know a lot of other supply chain businesses are suffering too.

[0:05:09]

Do you have any suggestions as to how we can get noticed higher up the chain so we can get spec’d into projects as a matter of course rather than an emergency measure? Cheers and keep up the good work. Dave G.

Thanks for those fantastic comments. And as I said in my email to him when I replied, Mark, you and I are both going to have a lot of thoughts on this. So, why don’t you kick it off?

Mark: You know, what’s interesting about this? So Monday, I had a travel out for client meetings. But before I did, I went and met with a small service company that found me because their revenue stream has dried up in 90%. So we did some root cause analysis and I helped them structure a sales plan. But the basic problem, the basic root cause is when time for good, they were not putting money or time into sales and marketing efforts. Their phone just rang.

So when the price of crude failed, all of a sudden, that lack of attention to building that pipeline of prospects really beat them in the butt. So when times are tight, it’s really hard to increase your footprint, increase your market share because people are scared. Even your clients, David, the offshore operators that have these pipelines and manifolds and plants out there to move that crude around, they’re scared because their people are getting laid off. So for them to take a risk with the new vendors is hard to convince them to do.

But I do have some direction for you. The first thing is you need to sit down. You and your management team need to sit down and actually build out sales and marketing plan, like literally write it down. Figure out how many people are in your market. Your market is probably geographically defined. Figure out how many people you’re doing business with now and then see who you’re not doing business. This will develop your target list. And what a lot of sales, inexperienced people do is when we build that target list, they make the top targets the biggest companies because they think they could sell the most and they either don’t put the small companies on there or they put them last. What they do is they spend a lot of money and time on the big companies, the Chevrons and the BPs and the Statoils.

The truth is those are harder to sell to. You better off flipping that model, especially like y’all, y’all are small, and find smaller companies that are quicker to adopt. And then it’s just sales 101. Figure out what problem that you solve, figure out who in that company has that problem, and then engage in discussions, helpful discussions around that problem, and let them know that you’re ready to do business with them. If they have an existing vendor, ask if you can be the backup vendor, and you work that plan. And when the price of crude comes back, you’ll be in a good place.

Now, from a marketing point of view, I think James, you talk about that because that’s another thing that’s vital and that a lot of small operators spend no money or time in.

James: Yeah. So I’m looking at omsmeasure.com right now and I’ve got quite a few suggestions. I’ll limit my time here so we can get to the rest of the questions. But the first thing that I noticed about this website is that it is somewhat of a brochure site. It does have a little bit of lead generation to it, but here’s the biggest problem I see is that in the dropdown, it says News. And then the only link there is Blog. And when I click Blog and brought to the blog, and I’ve got a blog post here from August 3rd, 2016. And then before that, February 27th, 2015. And before that, May 12th, 2014.

So you’re not putting out any content that’s going to arouse interest and drive people to see your site. Another problem that I see with this blog is that there’s no opt-in. There needs to be an opt-in for an email list on the right hand side right at the top where it says, “Search Here.” You need to replace that with an opt-in form. And you need to give something away, we call that a bribe, so that people will give you their list. And this is the whole science of building an audience so that you can sell them things.

And when it comes to creating content, the key is not to create content that’s about you. It’s to create content that provides “utility” which is, among us marketers, is a very known phrase these days by Jay Baer, who wrote the book. And if you’ve never read it, go pick it up. Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is About Help Not Hype. And what you do is you sit down and you say, “What are the questions that we get all the time from our customers?” That question is a blog post title.

And then you just start writing stuff and you start putting in out there and you not only have the opt-in on the right, you put a pop-up on the blog so that people who are really appreciative of your content will opt-in. And then you also have to make sure to send Google the right search signals so that you can rank at the top of the search engine rankings, the SERPs is what we call them.

[0:10:19]

This is a farming technique. This is not hunting. So what you’re going to do is over time, you’re going to build your audience. And if you look at triberocket.com, you can click the button that says, “Become a sponsor,” and you can actually look at the graph in terms of listenership of this audience, and you can watch how — we didn’t get to 75,000, 77,000, 78,000 downloads overnight. It’s a consistent relentless execution over time that builds your audience, builds your authority, and then gets you out of that commoditized space. And into that, we need them to be spec’d in upfront place. So I hope that helps.

Mark: Yeah. And Dave, just think about this. You’re listening to our show. This is our content. Get it? We’re providing value, right? We’re putting valuable content out there. People look at us as experts. So we have a lot of inbound leads. You just have to think about this differently. David, if I was you, I’d see it. If you could arrange your phone call with James, you may want to look at what he’s able to help people do because he blew my business up.

James: Thank you for that. Yeah. So I’m happy to help with any other questions around that. But those are just a few tips just straight looking at the website. All right. Let’s move on. I titled this CO2 Fight. This was a Twitter conversation that you had back in February, actually, and we never really got to it on the shows, so I decided to put it in here.

Mark, enjoyed the most recent podcast as a rare lefty in your audience, who’s also a realist about energy issues, and is fascinated by the oil and gas business. I would submit that the closure of half of Germany’s nuclear power station since 2011 might have had something to do with the growth of CO2 emissions. It was less a failure of renewable tech per se, although to be clear, I’m not a huge fan of wind and sun as a replacement for reliable electric sources. And more a disastrous energy policy by Merkel that Germans continue to suffer under your thoughts, Mr. LaCour.

Mark: Yeah. So I agree that the energy policy was a disaster. I don’t know what the word is. It’s worse than disaster but that’s what that policy was. Now, I will stick to my guns that the increase in CO2 — yes, of course because they pulled nuclear power offline, they had replaced that with something. The renewables could handle loads, so they had to build more cold fire in natural gas power plants. But I’d still say that the reason the CO2s weren’t reduced was because of renewables. Let me give you a number that nobody knows out there.

So before they started this energy wind policy, when Germany got energy normal, you have a grid, electrical grid, and that grid sometimes has to be propped up. What happens is the demand gets bigger than the supply, and if you don’t increase supply in that moment, the whole grid will shut down. It’s called a brownout. So what happens is you have this generation stations that aren’t running, that when you get in that situation where the grid needs to be propped up, they kick on to just keep the grip up. And then when the load drops, they cut off.

So before they start this whole energy wind thing, in 2006, there are only three of those type of interventions, only three times in a year that they have to fire up extra generating capacity to keep the grid online. In 2014, when they’re in the middle of this energy wind policy, 3500 of those types of interventions.

James: And those were disastrous too because of those shutdown manufacturing plants in the middle of making BMW and things like that.

Mark: Yeah. But think about the difference between three times a year that you have to fire up emergency generations in 3500. That’s the reason that the CO2s haven’t dropped is they had to prop up the renewables with conventional electrical generation plants, which run on either coal or natural gas. But I do agree it’s a disastrous policy, and we’ve talked about it before in the show. I think we’ll end up talking about it again on this one. And it’s a model. And I have nothing against renewables. In the right situation, they’re great.

Think of all the street signs that are being lit by solar. That just makes perfect sense. Low power requirements, you don’t need to worry about running waters. It’s extremely reliable. It keeps the sign lit, so it keeps people safe. But would you want to fly in a solar power plane? No, you wouldn’t. You know that the risk is much greater if it fails in a plane than if it fails in a street sign.

[0:15:08]

So in the right places, they’re great, and we’ve made such great strides in technology. We’ve talked about this before in other shows. I think we’re going to hit peak oil demand way before we ever hit a peak oil supply because we’re gradually shifting to cleaner forms of energy, including things like natural gas. So great question. Thanks for reaching out to me on Twitter, and I hope that helped.

James: All right, cool. Yeah. So we are going to talk about that because we might as well just put them back to back. So here we go. It is from Patrick McKinney, and he works at Blatt Energy, something like that. Blatt Energy is actually the link. I’ll have all these in the show notes at triberocket.com/tw57.

Mr. LaCour, I am relatively new to your podcast and I’ve been using it to enhance my understanding of the other aspects of the energy sector. Wow. I will not go as far as to say that I take exception to your characterization of Germany’s renewable energy program. I do believe that the way you described to your listening audience wasn’t entirely accurate. No doubt, we have different sources of information. To be clear, I’m not in the renewables industry because I feel it is morally right. I’m in the business because I am well-compensated and believe that long range economics are favorable to the business.

I’d also state that I see no scenario in which natural gas is not an integral part of the electrical generation and solution. Likewise, I do not see a viable solution where oil, or specifically, petrochems can be replaced. My point to those statements is that I do not see oil and gas as enemies of renewables, nor do I think you should see us as competition of concern. If your podcast was “called This Week,” this would be a very different situation. If you’re ever in the mood to discuss some of these points, I would welcome the conversation.

So your thoughts on this, Mark.

Mark: Yeah. So I actually reached out to him. We tried to schedule a call and first, he couldn’t make it and I couldn’t make it then we’ve gotten to email. So we haven’t actually spoken live yet. But I do sincerely appreciate you reaching out to me. We love our audience no matter where you sit politically or environmentally, whatever. Our listeners are our listeners, and we love everyone.

So you know what I’m going to say on this. I disagree. The energy wind policy in Germany failed. Their goals were pretty simple. To reduce CO2 emissions by 80% and to have, by 2050, have renewable energy supply, 60% of their supply, and then increase energy efficiency by 50%. That was their three stated goals of the project. They failed. They did not hit any of those three.

You know, we talked about this in the earlier shows. There were some side effects that nobody saw like the cost of German electricity going up six times. German people start calling at their second mortgage. Because of those cost increases, manufacturing was pushed out of Germany because they just couldn’t compete anymore. Precision manufacturing is 25% in German economy. It just failed. It’s pure and simple, failed. Did we learn a lot? Did the German people learn a lot? Yes.

The problem financially with a lot of the renewables is they’re propped up by subsidies, government subsidies, tax subsidies. If you’ll look in the news right now, you’ll see all over the place how the spin on renewables is going through the roof. And people pointed that as shown how much we’re shifting to renewables. If we removed all the renewables off the planet, we would notice. It’s that small of market share. The reason we’re spending more money is because here in the U.S., Democrats and Republicans negotiate lifting the export ban. Part of that was we would subsidize more renewable.

So that’s why it means subsidizing was a negotiation tactic. It’s not that people want to do it. And once again, in the right situation, they make perfect sense. I don’t see renewables as competition. I don’t see anybody’s competition of oil and gas quite frankly. The energy mix will change as we go through time, like it always has. If you think about the dawn of human history, we started off using renewables. It was called biomass. It was called wood. We burn wood. That’s biomass. We’ve transitioned past that from a technology point of view. And as we move through history, we’ll continue to transition how we use and where we get energy from.

James: I didn’t plan on doing this but I’m going to go ahead and do this. I don’t know that you’ll be able to hear it, Mark, so I’ll let you know when I stop. But just to back this, I’m going to play a quick audio from Alex Epstein talking for Prager University. Can We Rely on Wind and Solar Energy?

[0:19:57]

Alex: Are wind and solar power the answer to our energy needs? There’s a lot of sun and a lot of wind. They’re free. They’re clean. No CO2 emissions. So what’s the problem? Why do solar and wind combined provide less than 2% of the world’s energy? To answer these questions, we need to understand what makes energy, or anything else for that matter, cheap and plentiful.

For something to be cheap and plentiful, every part of the process to produce it, including every input that goes into it, must be cheap and plentiful. Yes, the sun is free, yes, wind is free. But the process of turning sunlight and wind into usable energy on a mass scale is far from free. In fact, compared to the other sources of energy, fossil fuels and nuclear power, and hydroelectric power, solar and wind power are very expensive. The basic problem is that sunlight and wind as energy sources are both weak. The more technical term is dilute, and unreliable, the more technical term is intermittent.

James: All right. So that was just about a minute of that. I sent Mark the link while we are there. If you want to hear the rest of it, it’s a fantastic little breakdown. There’s only three more minutes left in the video, and I will throw that in the show notes at triberocket.com/tw57. Let’s move on from the energy debate and get into some other questions around business.

So Amir Ali from Cameron, he’s a business analyst. Here’s his question. As someone who is young to the oil and gas industry less than two years, how can recent graduates capitalize on their degrees, I have both a Finance and Supply Chain degree, on new opportunities within the industry? For example, I’m interested in using my oilfield services experience and Finance degree to switch to banking. What tips or advice do you have for us? Thanks and enjoy your show. Keep up the good work.

That’s all you, Mark.

Mark: Yeah. So Mark, I’ve realized if you work in the Cameron, why are you asking this question? I’m sorry, dude. That part of industry is getting hammered, and unfortunately, next years could be worse. It could be a bloodbath. So a couple of things to think about. One thing is if you have oil and gas experience and you have a Supply Chain degree, supply chain is an issue in this entire industry, no matter what’s going on from one into the other. Go look at petrochemicals, go look at downstream, they’ll all snap you up in a heartbeat. And you’re going to make more money than you make at the bank.

But if you want to go work at the bank, there are banking and financial institutions out there that solely target oil and gas companies, and they would love to have somebody with your oil and gas actual practical experience and your Finance degree. So there are two routes that you can use it. My suggestion from a career point of view is go look at downstream, and specifically, petrochemicals. Where is he, James? We don’t know if he’s here in Houston or not, do we?

James: No, we don’t.

Mark: Yeah. So wherever you are in the world, Google ethylene crackers X. So in this case, if you’re in Houston, Google ethylene crackers Houston, and you’ll get a list of companies that’s standing up ethylene crackers and those are your targets. These are the companies where you reach out to. And we’ve talked before our previous shows and in our career show about, don’t go online to fill out the application. Go on LinkedIn, figure out who’s hiring for that position, connect with them, provide useful information, and then let them know that you’d be interested going to work for their company. It’s a much better approach than having some HR generally see if you have the right keywords in your resume.

But anyway, thanks for reaching out. Great question. I hope that helped.

James: Yeah. And that’s always going to be a bit of our answer to anyone in general, whether they’re new grads or not. Just go downstream right now. All right. Bart Crister, our friend Bart Crister. I got to give a hot tip to Bart Crister. I think he’s got a question on every Q&A show, which provides him a back link, and we can talk offline if you want to about what that does for the search rankings in terms of his company. I joked when I sent this you, Mark. I said, “I think Bart is trying to stamp you.” The Baker Hughes rig count is lowest since they started publishing the rig count in 1949. At what point, prior to 1949, did we have this low a rig count?

Mark: So Bart, you are absolutely trying to stamp me because you know that the debt is not out there. So I have two approaches. I can either make up a number, because I know that you can’t verify it from right or not, if that is not there. Or, we could use this as a bit of a learning lesson. So how about we go back to when there was only — the rig count was one in the world? And do you want to guess when that was?

James: That was in Pennsylvania.

Mark: Nope. It was 347 AD in China.

James: Really?

Mark: Chinese used stone and bamboo to drill 800 feet to get oil.

James: I didn’t know that.

Mark: Yup. Most people don’t know it. That was the first recorded oil, 347.

[0:25:04]

James: 347.

Mark: So Bart, I hope that helps a little bit. And you all know that in 347, the rig count was one.

James: I love it. I’m going to have to find the Wikipedia on that and I’ll put it in the show notes. Let me write it down so I don’t forget it. So I’ll just put Wiki right here. And also, moving on, we have Amir — okay, I should have practiced his name, Dashtianeh, seeking new opportunities. Here’s his question.

James and Mark, first of all, I’m glad I came across your podcast. It’s both informative and entertaining. My question is in regards to the downturn in crude prices and the impact of Saudi Arabia’s decision to maintain production versus making cuts. I constantly hear of our oil and gas workers complain about how the situation we’re in is Saudi Arabia’s fault. What is your unbiased view of the culprit behind the fall in prices? Isn’t the U.S. independent oil and gas company’s the one to blame for the excess production?

First of all, Amir, you got to listen to the whole backlog of the shows because Mark discussed this at length in several shows, but let’s recap it.

Mark: Yeah. So good question because there’s a bunch of things that feed into this, if you want to know the entire picture. One is geopolitics. One, quite frankly, is the U.S.’ lack of support for Saudi Arabia from a military point of view. We’ve always been allies, and in the last couple of administrations, we’ve gotten further and further away from that. Saudi Arabia has enemies, Russia and Iran. Saudi Arabia uses oil like we use battleships and tanks.

So they did not cut production. A lot of people think they did something. And you’re right, Amir, a lot of people in oil and gas complained that Saudi Arabia actually did something. They did nothing. They just didn’t cut production. And that production caused a glut on the market, and they knew it would. And they did it to just stick a knife in Russia’s back and to keep Iran from being able to build up strong military force. Once again, they’re trying to control their enemies. But globally, everybody kept production up. U.S. kept production up, Russia kept production up. In fact, we actually increased production.

So as a whole, all of these countries that are producing oil and putting it on the global market are to blame. The difference is OPEC, predominantly Saudi Arabia, has the ability to ramp up production and go down production to try to keep prices profitable for everybody. They’re basically the swing producer. I think we’re going to talk about this in another —

James: Yeah, in the next question.

Mark: That’s the true story of what’s going on. It’s not Saudi Arabia’s fault. It’s not OPEC’s fault, but Saudi Arabia did it on purpose or a reason.

James: They did do it on purpose and we can get to the subsequent question in terms of how American companies play into this with Alexander from JPMorgan Chase. He’s in Equity’s financial analyst.

Hi, Mark and James. If OPEC members finally come to an agreement this year to cut production, what effect would a subsequent increase in U.S. domestic production have on the spot? Do U.S. and Non-OPEC producers have enough capacity to keep the prices low regardless of OPEC production targets? Long-time listener, Alexander Uteshev.

I believe he’s given us questions before. Thanks for another one, brother.

Mark: Yeah. So Alexander, we need a financial expert on this show. Ask around JPMorgan Chase if somebody wants to come on the show because you hear us say all the time, we’re not investment experts. We’d like to have one that we could actually hand some questions off to, which would probably throw a good bit of traffic in business you’re with.

So, let me answer your question. If, and I’m guessing you mean on the spot price, if OPEC comes to agreement to cut production, the perception will immediately cause the price of crude to go up. Not the difference in supply, just the perception in the market. And we are actually counting on that. We think that’s going to happen. So the spot price will actually go up, and we said this forever. We think it’s between $55, $60 a barrel by August. See if I’m right.

Now, as far as U.S. and Non-OPEC producers have the capacity to keep the prices low, this is what I think. We’re not there yet. Russia could have been there recently. But with the sanctions, they won’t have that ability to swing. The U.S. will. We will be stabilized OPEC. And we can’t do it now but in the very near future, say another five years, if we decide as a country that we need to keep prices low to keep our enemies for having money, we can ramp up the production. We can turn that facet wide open and we can keep oil down to $17 a barrel. I think that’s awesome.

[0:30:02]

So that’s kind of my take on that. We’re not quite there yet. We will be the swing producer in the world in the very near future.

James: Yeah. And if you want to hear more on that, that was Episode — I’m pulling it up right now. It was Episode 47, Oil and Gas This Week Podcast, Super Major Oil Companies Overtake OPEC. So we discussed, at length, one of the articles that specifically talks about this. I believe it was from frenemy seeking off. Our frenemy, right.

All right, those are all of our questions. Again, fantastic questions. Thank you to everyone who wrote in. If you haven’t written in, or specifically, go on to triberocket.com and click the Send Voicemail button on the right to leave a voice mail so we can play it on the show. We would love that. But regardless, these First Friday Q&As are pretty much my favorite part of the month.

Moving on, we have our Onion of the Week coming back with the onion, and I did get a chuckle. I got a chuckle from Mark out of this one. Sudafed Introduces New Sinus Drill for Immediate Congestion Relief.

Mark: Yeah. It’s a little funny. We ended up having a ten-year-old boy growth conversation around this off the mic.

James: It was definitely a ten-year-old boy conversation, and both of us have some congestion. That’s the price you pay for living in the greatest state in America.

Mark: You know what, James? It doesn’t snow here, it pollens.

James: Right.

Mark: I mean, literally, my car is yellow because of the pollan.

James: Right. Paige, a friend of the show, coordinator for some of the other things that we’re working on. She actually has a duster for her car that she carries in it, so yeah. Ton of pollen everywhere. All right. We have a winner. Mr. LaCour, can you tell us who it is?

Mark: It is Justin Campbell of Fenstermaker and Associates. He’s an environmental specialist. And Justin, I think I met you at NAPE. I’m not quite sure but I know Fenstermaker well in Lafayette. So congratulations. You got one of these awesome, awesome, awesome offshore bags. And what do our listeners need to do if they want to win one, James?

James: Yeah. So no purchase necessary to win. You can see this official site for details. It’d redwingshoes.com/podcast. Thank you to Red Wing for supporting this show and putting out some fantastic flame resistant gear that is a head to toe complete solution. So if you are in a situation where you’re managing dozens of different vendors and you want a one-stop-shop, they are the ones that you need to go to. And also, I have to give a shout-out to Intech, our newest sponsor. I couldn’t remember the name of our sponsors there for a second. But they put together a white paper that you had a chance to read, Mark. Artificial Lift: How to Drive Cost Down and Get the Most Out of the Ground. So I’ll get out of the way.

Mark: If you’re out there in the field and you’re producing, download this white paper. This is some really good stuff. There’s a lot of good info in here about how they can help you automate a lot of stuff at the very low cost, which would keep your production numbers up. Just think about what happens when you lose a motor on a pump jack, right? Or think about when you lose one wheel on a pad of six wheels that you’re using gas injection. You lose that one wheel, all six go down. They can’t stop that from happening. How can they stop that from happening? But then they can help you do predictive analytics on your maintenance, so you know ahead of time that you need to have this valve in your warehouse or this pump or this belt or whatever.

So think about how much more efficiently your fields were to run, and how much you can produce in this low crude price environment. So if you’re a producer out there anywhere in the world, download this white paper on Artificial Lift. It’s really good stuff, and it’s free.

James: Yeah. And I’m glad you said anywhere in the world because they are a truly global company. And to get this white paper, you can go to Intech www.com/podcast and go ahead and download that white paper. All right, Mark, we’ve got a couple of events coming up. We have business development, Chevron, in the deep water Gulf of Mexico, a story of steady growth happening at the four seasons here in Houston, on Wednesday, next Wednesday the 6th. What’s this all about?

Mark: I can’t go to this because I have client stuff, and I want to go to this so bad. So this is the head. This is the President of Chevron in deep water E&P. So this is a big wig inside of Chevron. And he’s going to talk about their long-term business development strategy in the Gulf of Mexico. So you get to hear from Chevron who’s one of the leaders in the Gulf of Mexico. How they figured out their finances, how they figured out who they were going to sell this oil to, how they figured out what investments they’re going to make, what platforms they’re going to build, who they’re going to buy trees from, and they could tell their business development story. I mean this is super inside of baseball. So if you’re in that upstream offshore world, go to this.

[0:34:57]

James: Yeah. I just clicked the link. I think I’m going to have to register. It’s, whatever, $40 or $50, $10 if you’re a student. I know we have a lot of students that listen to this show. So all of these things are in the show notes again. And then after that, yeah, the next day actually, SPRE: Petroleum reserves basics: What, How, and Why. And that’s also happening here in Houston, and it’s a dinner. So what’s this all about?

Mark: It is a group of Oil and Gas economies. I actually know the head of this group very well. And they started out small, and it’s actually grown to be pretty big. So they get together. They have dinners; they have cocktails, then so have a speaker. But they talk about real economics that are going on oilfield because everybody in the room is somehow plugged into the oil and gas industries from the economic point of view.

So this is a great little event that’s grown. If you’re wanting to understand how the money flows in this industry, you want to understand where you need to invest your time or money, go check this out.

James: Yeah. All right, and then there’s also SPE Tech Summit on the fifth and the sixth and a whole lot of other things. If you don’t receive Mark’s email that comes out once a month with every event, it says your handy thing. I’ll pull that open, copy paste into our show notes. So go to triberocket.com/events and you can get that. This is the First Friday Q&A, but the next one is just a month away. So tell them about it, Mark.

Mark: Yeah. So the First Friday of every month, we answer your questions. We try to be as helpful as possible. Anything you want to know about the oil and gas industry or anything from production to offshore, to politics, to money, ask us. We don’t always know the answer, and if we don’t, we’ll tell you. It looks like it’s starting to be a bit of a competition for people to try to stop me. So stop it That’s not cool.

James: You threw it out there, and I did in the group. Actually, in the group, I said, “Try to stamp Mark so we can all point and laugh at him for a change.”

Mark: Yeah. And then the thing that’s really, really cool is every now and then, I’ll make a mistake that I don’t do intentionally. And somebody out there will correct this and that we love that. We absolutely love that because it helps us learn. I want to know if I’m wrong about something. So it’s a great way for you to learn. So if you have anything you want to know, reach out, submit a question. And if we’re using on air, you get to shout-out.

James: Definitely. And Mark, the LinkedIn Group, Global Oil and Gas Network, by the way, it’s not named after the show. We’re coming up in a thousand members, brother.

Mark: Yeah, I know. If you listen to the show, you have to join our LinkedIn Group. It’s super useful. It’s not just related to this podcast or Oil and Gas Careers Podcast, we have future podcast coming out. It’s a way for you to interface your peers, ask questions. It’s a family, as James calls it as tribe. So we have a lot of respect and a lot of high trust with our members. You know, people reach out to me all the time and ask me stuff. Like Jonathan did about Exxon. I mean he reached out on the group discussion and said, “Hey, I’m getting ready to see if I can penetrate Exxon for my company. Do you mind talking to me?” And I said, “No.” We scheduled a call and I talked him through what he should do. I actually gave him some contacts out there.

So if you listen to the podcast, join the group. You will be so glad you did.

James: Yes. So that’s at triberocket.com/LinkedIn, and I paused for a second there because I just see if we had any new reviews, and we don’t, Mark. We have no new reviews.

Mark: Oh come on, folks. We need your reviews. Take the minute and a half. It allows us to rank higher in the search engine in the iTunes, which means two things. More people can find us and get useful information of us and we start stomping our competition. Both of those things, James and I, value very much. So do me a personal favor. Take a minute and a half. Go give us some review on iTunes. Thank you ahead of time.

James: Yeah. And it’s triberocket.com/twreviews. And I won’t make the joke about the number that there is because maybe that’s why a couple of you, animals out there, haven’t given us a review because you like the number that’s sitting there. If you’ve made it this far in the show, please share it with your friends. You can do that by going to triberocket.com/shareLI — that will share the show straight to LinkedIn — /shareFB for Facebook; and /shareTW for Twitter. And we are right at our time, and this has been a great time. Do you want to get out here, Mark?

Mark: Yeah. So folks, do great work, pay it forward, and we will see you next time.

James: Go find some grease, guys.

Mark: I’m a civilian in this police car, and he goes, “Do you see a shotgun? Do you know how to use it?” I go, “Yeah.” So now, here’s a complete guy in civilian clothes standing outside of the cop car with a shotgun on this grandma.

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