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Welcome to Energy 101 with Julie McLelland and Jacob Stiller. Join us on our mission to help raise the world's energy IQ.
0:00 Welcome to Energy 101. Today we have Kerry all the way from DC. She is a lawyer for Hunt and Andrews. May have heard of him. I haven't, but I'm about to find out. So you're a lawyer specifically
0:14 when it comes to permitting, which, guess what? Has a lot to do with oil and gas energy mining minerals, like everything. This is
0:25 Energy 101. So let's hear the lawyer side of all of this. Great. Yeah Hi, everyone. Um, so I am a partner with Hunt and Andrew's Curth and my specialty is environmental permitting and litigation
0:40 related to those permits. Um, for energy, mostly complex energy and infrastructure projects. So anytime anybody wants to build any kind of oil and gas project, electric utility project, new
0:52 generation, um, and mining, I do some mining work too. you know, you typically need permits from the federal government, whether that's from EPA, you know, other agencies, the Department of
1:07 Energy, US. Army Corps of Engineers, we can kind of get into that whole landscape, but you know, people come to us when they have very complex sort of big projects, and you know, it helps that
1:19 we're in DC, so we have good relationships with the regulators there, and can help them navigate their permitting process, and you know, sometimes we get the question of why would I need a lawyer
1:33 for that? You know, isn't it a technical process, and it can be, but. You need a lawyer for everything. You need a lawyer for everything, is really the answer.
1:42 Just think like that. Absolutely, and frankly, like most of the projects we work on are complicated and sometimes controversial, and so you have to prepare for the possibility that your permit is
1:52 going to get challenged. The way to do that in a good way is to get lawyers involved early so that they can help you make sure that you have a good record and support for the permit. So anyway, I'm
2:04 excited to be with you guys today to talk about permitting and what's going on in DC and kind of the landscape for energy projects. Oh, yeah. There. Ooh. There's so many ways to go. Can we, is
2:16 there any kind of way we can just get a timeline of like a start to finish on any kind of project, right? So let's say, let's say there's, I mean, we're talking about land, right? Like the
2:26 permit is for the land and we all know the minerals that's underneath, right? Is it have to do with that? Well, so it can. But so for example, if you want to build a natural gas pipeline and
2:40 that pipeline has to cross wetlands, it sometimes can cross through areas that have endangered species that you might need to impact their habitat. Um, if you have to do any kind of water crossing
2:52 that people's backyards, people's backyards, if you want to cross federal lands, that's a whole thing. And out West, that's frequently you have to cross, you know, park service or forest
3:02 service lands to cite some of those projects. And so anytime you basically impact a federal resource, which is, you know, again, wetlands, waters, endangered species, public lands, um, that
3:18 typically triggers a requirement to get some kind of federal authorization. Yeah. So let's maybe bring up something that's existing, like trying to get a pipeline from Alaska down to California.
3:28 Sure. Um, which I'm not even sure. Have they ever finished or done that? Not that I'm aware of. Yeah. That's like, that's like current. Yeah. Yes. So they're, so let's say they allow the
3:39 mining up on the north slope of Alaska, which is like where they have people drilling and like negative 50 degrees for some reason, and then they need to get the the gas out and they need to start
3:51 bringing it south. So they start building pipeline. Like what's the first thing they're gonna come across? You know, getting right the second they are right outside their jurisdiction. Yeah, I
3:60 mean, the first thing that any of these projects do is, you know, they site, they map it out and they try to avoid, frankly, federal resources where they can because if you don't have to go
4:10 through that permit process, that's even better, but most of them do. They're trying to do all the work before the more work comes This is where all the engineers come in and the people that have
4:21 the technical brain and that know the area and they'll do biological surveys, they'll do wetlands delineations, they'll do all kinds of site work to figure out what is going on on the land and what
4:37 would you need to do to be able to build there? That's sort of what well before we get involved, Although it would be great if we would get involved earlier sometimes so that we could say, hey,
4:48 avoid this or avoid that. But usually they come to us with a, you know, designed project and say, we need to get this approved. We need an Army Corps of Engineers permit for wetlands. We need a
5:01 BLM authorization to cross BLM lands. Sorry, I'm not supposed to do acronyms. Bureau of Land Management is BLM. The voters aren't being Black Lives Matter. Yeah, exactly Yeah, yeah, I hear
5:13 that acronym a lot in oil and gas, but you gotta remember, just in case grandma's watching, you wanna join - I'm trying to avoid the alphabet soup that we do in this case. You wanna let your kid
5:22 know what you do. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay, so they wanna get the lawyers involved, but they wanna save money. Like, they wanna do as much work as possible, but you're not just gonna get
5:35 it all done by yourself, regardless. Right, and you know, there's sort of the aspect of, you know, just getting a permit, which is. something that is, can be a very complicated process. When
5:48 you have a federal, when you need a federal permit, there's a requirement to do an environmental review, NEPA review is what it's called. And that is supposed to be the agencies looking at what
6:03 are all the environmental impacts of this action and should we do it? And that NEPA process, you probably have heard in DC, you know, from DC talking about a lot about permitting reform. And
6:15 that's kind of a big component of that is, can we do the environment, how long can we, you know, can we do this environmental review faster? How, how in depth does the environmental review need
6:25 to be? You know, how much information does the agency need to give you a permit? And so that's
6:33 has been in a flux in the last, you know, eight month, eight or nine months. So it's sort of an interesting time to be doing permitting because there's been a lot of changes. The one example you
6:43 gave was about. like pipeline, is
6:46 there any kind of permitting before getting started on like drilling or mining or building a wind turbine? Like what are the differences there? So it almost always depends on where you are and so
7:00 what's going on on the land. But for mining, often you're gonna need a lease from the Bureau of Land Management or whatever, wherever the mining, the resource is If you're in a minor resource
7:13 that's on public lands and a lot of the mining in our country occurs on public lands where people have purchased leases from the federal government to do that. So it's not your land, but you own the
7:24 mineral resource. So that agency is federal? That's federal. And often there's a federal and state sort of overlap. So you often have to get your federal permits and then you have to go to the
7:33 state and get that too. Sometimes county and local too. Yeah, just a triple threat And so yeah, so for mining, you know, usually you're getting a permit from either the Bureau of Land Management
7:46 or the US Forest Service, if it's on forest service lands, and they have to approve your plan. What are you gonna do with this mine? And they think about things like water usage. When you're
7:57 drilling down, are you gonna impact the groundwater table? The species usually becomes a big issue. Tribal issues usually become a big thing because as part of that authorization, they have to
8:10 involve any tribes that might have an interest in out west. Of course, that's a big, where most of the public lands are. There are usually a lot of tribes that have an interest in the land. So
8:20 that's for mining, I guess. And with wind, that's an interesting one because it's, again, this administration has pushed back against wind, right? And so my clients that are wind developers
8:38 basically are trying to do anything they can to avoid siding. their wind projects in an area that would require a federal permit, because they know the Trump administration does not like wind
8:50 projects, and so you don't want to have to go get a permit from them. And a lot of times those projects can be cited without, you know, onshore can be cited without getting federal permits as long
9:01 as you do it on private land. Really? Okay, so like you can own your own property, put a wind turbine up with like no paperwork?
9:10 Well, you probably, you know, depending on where you are, there might be state requirements, but there might not be federal requirements. Now, if you're going to build your wind project in an
9:21 area where a bunch of endangered species birds migrate through every year and you're probably, you know, they might die in your wind, you know, in the turbines, then you will need to get federal
9:34 authorization And if you can site it on private lands, if you can avoid or at least minimize impacts to species, some of those projects. don't have to get federal authorization, which makes it
9:46 less fun for me, but good for our clients that don't have to go through that whole process. Yeah, and that's kind of like where my knowledge hits a wall where I would love to hear more, but we'll
9:57 have to have you on with the more of our technical hosts to get into that. Sure, sure, yeah, yeah. That makes me think about offshore stuff. So, you know, there's like uncharted territory in
10:08 the ocean, but like, you know, right off the Gulf and stuff, like that's all super regulated and the same basically might as well be land. So like, do you, have you worked with like things off
10:16 shore, basically, wind or the oil rigs? Yeah, and, you know, my colleagues at my firm do a lot of offshore oil and gas drilling. I haven't worked on that as much, but I have worked on offshore
10:28 wind projects, which is honestly, it's a similar process. You have to, you know, again, get a lease from the federal government on the outer continental shelf And you have to be able to. to be
10:42 able to build something there, you have to get federal authorization that's from, for offshore wind, it's from the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management, BOEM. And again, you have to go through
10:54 a big environmental review and that would look at things like, are there whale migrations that come through here? Are there even things like, are there historic shipwrecks that are in the area that
11:09 you might impact because those can be protected historic resources? So you have to look at kind of, what's going on on the ocean floor? And then you also have to look at things like, how are we
11:19 gonna get all of the equipment here? You know, we have to bring a bunch of barges out here. What are the emissions from those barges going to be? So you have to sort of look at kind of everything
11:30 that's gonna go into that project in the environmental review. And the agency has to show that it has like sort of taken a hard look at those. at those impacts before it can issue you an
11:43 authorization. Wow, yeah, the logistics is just a nightmare to talk about. It's very, very complex. Yes, yeah. So you say you didn't, you haven't really worked on the offshore stuff, but
11:53 like how much have you touched it? I find it so interesting how they like, they literally just draw like these made up borders, like blocks in the ocean, which like, if you take away the blocks,
12:03 it's just water. So it's like, how do they even like think about measuring and just like, how do they even like know it's like, Okay, I'm in the middle of the ocean. You look all around, you
12:13 see nothing. It's like, this is where our lease ends. Like, you have any experience like - No, that's about my area. That's when you would call in your engineers and your consultants for that.
12:24 But I mean, it's very well, as you said, very structured, very much like, here's your little area. And it costs X amount for that per area, and which can be, you know, expensive. And
12:42 there's a lot of jockeying, I think, on how to put together, you know, if you want to have a couple of rigs, for example, you know, how you want to get a few things next to each other, you
12:53 know, again, you need to coordinate the transportation. And now it's very complicated. And I haven't done a lot of offshore projects, but. You're not lining up either. Well, it's interesting I
13:08 think a lot of, for the past few years, I've been very focused on sort of energy transition and projects that go toward decarbonizing. Those are sort of like bread and butter, old school projects.
13:24 And I think they're not going away anytime soon, but there's more of a regular cadence to them, sort of like people know how to do it versus on some of these more newer technologies, carbon capture
13:38 or a wind project. It's, you know, the permitting process is evolving as, as the technologies evolve. And so, um, it's more complicated. You might need a lawyer more frequently for that kind
13:50 of thing than for, you know, offshore oil and gas drilling where like it's been around for a long time and not much has changed. Right. So I mean, how long have you been in your field where like
14:03 you're adapting and you are up to date or, you know, like, how long have you been doing it? So I have been at the firm and in my role for 15 years, I went to the firm straight out of law school.
14:17 And the reason I picked the firm was because they had a really deep environmental practice, which is not very common. Like a lot of law firms will have like one or two people that do environmental
14:28 work, but we have about 40 across the country. We've got DC office. We've got Houston. We've got California folks. We've got some folks in North Carolina and New York So it was a. a really neat
14:40 opportunity to learn from people who have been in the midst of it in DC. They helped get these laws passed in the '70s and '80s. And then we're learning. So I got to learn from a lot of kind of
14:53 really like
14:56 people who sort of paved the way in the field. Yeah, the veterans. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Wow. Yeah. So you probably, you know, you join, you love the environmental approach to it And then
15:08 I'm assuming in the last, you know, almost two decades, you've learned that even if you're working for wind or hydro or anything, there's so much non-environmental things happening to set up the
15:23 environmental things, right? Absolutely. You kind of get into spiral like nihilism that I love to bring up in the
15:29 show.
15:31 And you know, this, here at Collide, like we are an AI tech company for energy and all of our customers are upstream oil and gas. We are very oil and gas forward, but a lot of, we're not like
15:44 big, scary oil man. Like we hate wind and stuff like that. Like we're very energy adjacent. But how was your thoughts changed on that kind of stuff when you're like, oh, I'm a go be a lawyer for
15:57 it and be like an activist or just stand up for a better future. And then you kind of 15 years later, like really seeing what happens behind the scenes Like what is like your full story and take on
16:10 all that and what have you seen? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think
16:15 when you go to work at a law firm, your clients are mostly industry clients. And so you're working for project developers and proponents. And so, I certainly have done a lot of oil and gas over
16:28 the years and a lot of represented electric utilities and then in the last few years some more of the renewable and kind of.
16:40 you know, newer players, but, you know, maybe this is me just drinking the Kool-Aid after all of this time, but I think one of the things that has always really struck me about working for
16:51 industry is it's kind of neat to see things get built and help things get built and help power, you know, what's going on. And so there's definitely shifts over the years and different
17:04 administrations in different market, you know, realities that change like what's our power mix going to be and how are we going to, you know, get all this power out to the grid. But it's I, what
17:16 I enjoy about it is, you know, the individual projects change, but for a lot of our clients, it's really the goal is how do we get power out to, to the people and, you know, make money in a way
17:30 that we're complying with all the rules And so there is a push pull in Washington, which has been You know, I can, we can talk about that. And that's been interesting to live through. But a lot
17:44 of times the sort of basics of, we want to build something. We want to build new generation. We want to build a transmission line to get power to this area. You know, we want to build a pipeline.
17:58 You know, those kinds of things,
18:02 it's a lot of the same kind of nuts and bolts. And it's kind of fun to work on something where you're, I think, not a lot of lawyers, you know, you're fighting over contracts or you're fighting
18:12 over money. And that's not like to say that that's not involved, but it's an actual tangible project that hopefully will get built at the end of the day. Yeah, that helped me kind of cope with
18:24 everything, like seeing how everything works and becoming educated on it all, just kind of made it more fascinating other than like a controversial or, you know, whatever, I was like, this is
18:35 just how, things are and things will be. And that's really cool. Yeah, so yeah, you're bringing up DC and that's where you live and work and energy. I mean, energy is everything and energy is
18:49 political and energy is, you know, ever changing. So what have you seen, you know, in the last few administrations? Like I would, I would think just as an assumption right now that like,
19:04 there's not a whole lot of flip-flopping, no matter which, who's behind, you know, the desk in the Oval Office, because no, you know, this country strives on energy security, not failing.
19:18 Like everyone, like we do what it takes to keep everyone's lights on and be like the first world country that we are, right? And, you know, an example I always think of is how Kamala was trying
19:33 to, you know, get the presidency and she had this known talking point being like anti-fracking. And everyone was like talking about it in a news and whatever, but like everyone here, like who
19:44 understand energy or like, oh, she's gonna say she supports it. She has to or she's screwed, right? Like, and I learned like you can't, you cannot just like completely like follow like the
19:56 generic tropes you assume for these political parties. Like you kinda, no matter which party you're on, you need to be pro-energy Yes, yes, absolutely. So what do you actually see in DC with
20:07 these talking points? Yeah, I mean, I would say it's true that you kind of have to be pro-energy, but what I have seen is shifts in the thinking on what's the best way to do that. And, you know,
20:24 for a long time,
20:28 the focus has been on decarbonization and, you know,
20:32 with the Biden administration, starting with the Obama administration, but particularly in the Obama, or sorry, in the Biden administration, it is yes, we need energy, but we don't want to
20:46 prioritize certain types of energy that have high levels of CO2. We want more environmentally friendly technologies. And so renewables being sort of the
20:60 push, right? Wind and solar, battery, carbon capture and storage. And, you know, with this administration. And so that was always kind of the Republican talking points during that phase,
21:16 we're all always, we need all of the above, right? We find renewable energy is good. We need all of the above. The shift in the last few months, which has been honestly kind of surprising to me
21:32 fast we shifted, has been energy dominance and also fossil fuels, focus on fossil fuels, focus on coal, focus on keeping those plants running, focus on oil and gas, and it's not really in all of
21:45 the
21:54 above strategy anymore. I mean, the administration has made it's dislike for wind and solar pretty clear And so it is sort of a pivot a little bit, you know, a lot of our clients aren't changing
22:07 up their whole strategies on what, you know, type of projects they want to do, but it does change the calculus on you probably can't get a wind project built right now on federal lands. That's
22:19 just not going to happen. So go back and focus on other types of projects So in that respect, there has been a shift and one of the things that has been a big sort of buzzy thing in DC is permitting
22:34 reform with every, you know, Congress. And it's a bipartisan issue comes in. Everybody kind of agrees it takes too long in this country to get things built. That's sort of a baseline talking
22:47 point that everybody has.
22:51 And so what this administration has done is say, yes, and we are going to prioritize fossil fuel projects, get those permits done first. Those are the permits that get highest priority. So those
23:04 projects have a shorter time frame right now than other projects. So that's been sort of the interesting shift that we're seeing in DC. And
23:14 I wouldn't say a lot of our clients had had to totally pivot, but it's just a different generation mix, a different approach to your business model that you have to account for the realities of what
23:29 you're going to be able to get permitted. I mean, I can look past all the flashy Trumpisms and drill baby drill and stuff like that. Do you think there's just like a general genuine idea that we
23:44 wanna stick with like these conventional ways of getting our energy from like coal, oil and gas because it's just less risky. We've been running this process for literally over a hundred years now.
23:57 Meanwhile, like all these new renewable projects are relatively newer, always changing, always getting better, but it's not so grandfathered in. And going back to the topic of you saying like,
24:06 we
24:11 take too long to get things done here. I mean, that's because we are ethical and we have really good laws and rules. So like people don't die and 14 year old kids aren't working in factories. Like
24:23 there's a reason that things take a while here and that we do a lot of things overseas.
24:30 Do you think that's kind of, that has something to do with, is that a good excuse basically for the current administration that that's why they're saying no to wind and solar? Yeah, I mean, I
24:40 think that is,
24:43 that is what they would say, right? And I think the,
24:48 what's happening right now, and you can't really talk about energy right now without talking about data centers and AI, right? I mean, that is what we're hearing from our clients right now is we
24:60 need as much generation as we can get. So we want it all, right? We want, we want to keep the coal plants running. We want to build more natural gas. We want it fine. If you can build a wind
25:11 farm, do that. If you can build solar, that's great. But their view is just, they know that the demand is skyrocketing and they need to be able to figure out how to meet that. And, you know,
25:24 as you say, traditional fossil fuels right now, a big part of being able to do that. We can't do it without that right now. I think it's still good to be thinking about other technologies and to
25:37 make sure that we haven't totally abandoned the idea of evaluating our emissions here and there and trying to further technologies that allow for that. But again, I think, at least for our clients,
25:54 what we're seeing is you kind of need it all You cannot forsake the fossil fuels in favor of renewables. That's just not where we are right now. And you can't do that and provide reliable power.
26:09 Yeah, you're bringing up the high performance computing. Yeah, yeah. That is what's happening. The way these LLMs are growing, AI, even the robots are on the way. I see it somewhere in my feet
26:23 every day, like literal light. Futurama robots like are happening doing chores in our house. So that's cool. But yeah, where's that all coming from? And we're almost, you almost kind of made it
26:34 sound like we're desperate. It's like, we have to use call still, like, because we got to stay on top of this, you know, maybe that's something to do with like the US being obsessed with
26:43 obsessed with leading and industries and stuff, you know, we feel insecure that China is like kicking our ass sometimes. And it's like, you know, we got to keep, we got to make sure we're,
26:53 we're top dog and stay on top of things. And when it comes to these data centers and it coming with being desperate, we're talking about putting nuclear back on, which is
27:04 a
27:08 kind of like, you know, people, people, some people still think nuclear is like, Oh my gosh, you're noble. Yeah, yeah, it's like, well, no, it's not desperate. It's actually a really good
27:12 idea. We should have been using nuclear this whole time. Yeah, it's kind of like a life hack that we just got scared of because of the public perception, like the worst PR ever. It's actually
27:24 exist and some countries are almost completely running off of it and we're kind of missing out. So it's nice that we are, something happened to make us rethink
27:35 it. And when you talk about nuclear, you think regulatory, you talk, you want to talk about things taking too long, nuclear is one of those, has your firm touched nuclear? Yes. Yes. And you
27:47 know, just, you're right that it, I'm kind of talking about it as if we're desperate and it's not because it's more just that, you know, our clients that have forecast out how much power are we
28:01 going to need in the next five, 10, 20 years? I mean, this AI boom was just not something that five or 10 years ago we were planning for. We just weren't. And so they need to pivot. They need
28:13 to figure out how to account for that. And to your point, you know, I think this administration and they're not alone in saying this they think, you know, keeping up with China on. AI is a
28:24 national security issue. It's not just, oh, we want to, you know, flex. Yeah, I mean, and, and, you know, you can see all of the little Colorado behind that, right? Like it's not mutually
28:37 exclusive, but, but they see that as, you know, we need to be able to keep compete to do that. You need a lot of power. And so, you know, getting back to your point on nuclear, you know,
28:48 that we definitely have, have folks within our firm We actually have a gentleman in our Tokyo office who's been doing all kinds of stuff on nuclear. And he's sort of like, finally, you guys in the
29:00 US. are kind of getting it together. I imagine country is a pair of, obviously, a huge guy.
29:05 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're seeing, I mean, what we've seen is kind of certain clients trying to reinvigorate existing, you know, old power plants that haven't been running. Can we get those
29:20 back up and running? And then, of course, small - small modular reactors, the SMRs are hot right now. And so everybody's kind of in that mode of, again, it's part of the, we needed all
29:35 strategy. And I think people are sort of coming back around to the idea that nuclear is relatively clean, even though, you know, bad PR side, it's a relatively clean technology. So it is
29:49 important to, you know, develop that. And I think we're sort of still at the beginning of that resurgence, but certainly most of our clients are thinking about how they can get into that or, you
29:60 know, get back into that. Yeah, let's finish off the nuclear talk so we don't have to revisit it, but yeah, like you said, we're bringing back old plants online or, you know, said, you know,
30:12 then you're just like, that, or you build new ones. But we're not necessarily building new ones. We're thinking of the small modular ones, which is, I guess, as simple as it sounds, is a
30:20 smaller, easier to build. not supposed to power like such a wide area kind of plant, but what are the steps that are actually being made right now, maybe not in your firm, but just in DC or
30:33 things you've heard of like, what is everyone kind of like, what are the projects that are in the works and how many like years are we forecasted to see some, some things go online? Yeah, that's
30:43 a good question. Well, I mean, one of the things that, you know, those all require nuclear regulatory commission to approve. And it's, that's notoriously been a crazy long process. I think
30:56 there is a hope that the SMRs, the small modular reactors, they can do that in a shorter timeframe, but haven't, we haven't seen that yet. So I think that is all of, you know, a lot of our
31:08 clients are sort of dipping their toe in on the small nuclear, you know, on SMRs and seeing, okay, maybe let's do, you know, one site and we'll see how long, you know, how fast we can get that
31:19 permitted and online and then scale if that works out, but so far what I've seen on it is a lot of people saying they want to do it and announcing plans to do it, but not a lot of actual movement in
31:33 terms of getting them up and running. Yeah, I like to think that the nuclear has been in the energy mix this whole time, like a very small percent. I just like to think that, you know, it's kind
31:43 of big back when like a few of these plants are back online. And then when they shut off, there's been like a very small sector, you know, working with it And it's kind of like high performance
31:53 computing. Like it's all picking up and everyone has to like get it together and there's all these jobs being created. Like are all these, is the talk of nuclear coming back? Is that like kind of
32:04 waking up the sec, the regulatory sector of the government? They're like, okay, we need more employees. Cause this is happening again. And like there's like five guys who've just been doing the
32:13 same job for the decade. Well, you honestly raise a really difficult tension that has been going on in DC right now, which is, there's this. push for faster permitting, a push to get things
32:26 going, and that takes people and staff that are educated and that know what they're doing. But of course, with all of the doge stuff, a lot of people got fired at the beginning of the
32:40 administration that were career staffers or that had been in their role. And so we are seeing with a lot of the permitting, yes, they're prioritizing energy projects, but a lot of the offices are
32:53 just down people and they don't, they haven't beefed up their staff and they haven't been able to. And the people that they did add, I do a lot of carbon capture permitting and a lot of the EPA
33:06 regions that have to issue safe drinking water act permits for carbon sequestration projects in the last couple of years really beefed up their staff. But in the doge cuts, you know, sort of last
33:20 in first out, those were the first people to get fired. And so they spent all this time building up their forces and now they're down a lot of people. So, and the return to work, you know, was a
33:33 big, a big cause, some exodus too, because a lot of people had been working remotely for years for the government. And then now all of a sudden, oh, you live an hour and a half away, I'm sorry,
33:43 you have to come in five days a week. And so some people left because of that So that was happening even before all the Doge stuff. So yeah, I think, you know, I would say personally, I would
33:57 like to see some of these agencies really staff up because I think that is going to be critical to getting some of these projects moving. We really are in a weird time of like, where a lot of things
34:08 just didn't line up, where I was like, the high performance computing, COVID,
34:14 and just our political voting choices come into a very scary sector of the timeline. You had no idea that all was environmental permitting was the thread through all of that, did you? I'm hopeful
34:29 that as I'm educated and learned a lot about this stuff, I feel more hopeful and I think we'll get through it. I'm not gonna be the one doing all this hard work, but you are. No, I mean, it has
34:41 been incredible to see our clients pivot and be resilient and think about, you know, okay, like they're not daunted by it. They're like, okay, we gotta figure out how to keep the grid reliable.
34:52 We gotta figure out how to get keep people's lights on. And so it's just almost like a math problem of how are we gonna do that?
35:02 And, you know, different clients have different strategies, which is fun to see too. And, but they're not, you know, they've been through swings before, right? It's not totally new, but it
35:13 is sort of a perfect storm of circumstances. I think we're doing a good job at kind of just jumping around like different energy mixes, basically, and getting like a very surface-level take. So I
35:24 appreciate it. Good, good. Let's tackle a few more. You're currently working on like CCUS stuff, right? Yes. So why don't you kind of talk about literally just maybe describe what that is Right,.
35:36 sure. And not just like the magic version where it's like, ooh, we're just sucking carbon out the air. That's right, that's right. I mean, it kind of literally is, but maybe a little bit more
35:46 detail about it and like what your job has to do with it and permitting. Yeah, so carbon capture utilization and sequestration is the CCUS acronym. And by the capture part, what we mean is when
36:01 you have, whether it's a power plant, an ethanol plant, any kind of project that's generating CO2 emissions is capturing that, those emissions, instead of releasing them into the air.
36:15 And so there are these projects called direct air capture that literally just sucks CO2 out of the air, but most of them are, you know, tacked onto a power plant or something like that where
36:27 they're pulling off the CO2 emissions from a project, a facility. Then the utilization piece of that is, there are some ways to use that carbon dioxide, whether that's to enhance oil and gas
36:42 production, injecting that into the ground can help with extraction.
36:49 So that can be used, CO2 can be used that way. And then the piece that I've worked on the most is the storage. And what we mean by that is you drill injection wells and inject, that's, you've
37:02 taken the CO2 from a plant, you transport it to an injection wells, often via a pipeline. And then you drill an injection well and inject the CO2 down thousands of feet into the ground. you know,
37:15 sometimes depending on the formations. And you can use existing - You can repurpose existing wells to do this. And so where I come in on this is
37:26 under the safe drinking water act, EPA, and in some cases, the states, depending on who has primacy, and I can talk about that, but for most states, EPA is the permit issuer. You have to get a
37:39 permit from EPA to inject CO2 And one of the things, the main piece of that is to show them that you will not be endangering any underground sources of drinking water. You're going to inject the CO2,
37:53 and it's going to stay where it is. It's not going to migrate up into a reservoir that people pull drinking water from. So it's very technical, and EPA
38:05 has only really been issuing these permits for a few years. So the technology isn't new, but this permitting structure people going after CO2 storage is sort of new. And so that's been kind of a
38:18 fun area to work on because there's so many different ways you can structure one of those projects. And you can just be what we call a source to sink where you have all in one piece of land, you've
38:32 got the power plant, you've got a transmission line or in a lot of places in the Midwest, it's like ethanol plant,
38:40 you've got a pipeline and you've got the injection wells kind of all in one place. But then there are also sort of hub projects where you're kind of building injection wells and then you get sources
38:51 from this area, the sources from this area and people are gonna pay you to take their CO2 and
38:58 store it into the ground. And the idea is that that is better environmentally than releasing it into the air. There's also financial incentives, there's tax credits for that.
39:09 you know, in the inflation reduction act, there was a lot of federal funding for that, but some of that has gone away. But yeah, so it's been, it's kind of a new, not new technology, but a new
39:21 kind of industry. And so new permitting regime that I've been working on, that's been really fun. You basically knew nothing about this like a few years ago, right? Yeah, exactly. So how do
39:32 they teach, how do you learn? Like obviously you probably get like the best world-class way of learning this stuff. What does that look like? Yeah, that's great. And that can be about anything.
39:42 Well, that's a great question. I mean, one thing is kind of being a environmental regulatory lawyer, you sort of learn how to, this sounds silly, but how to read regulations and how to look,
39:53 you know, what kind of things to look for when you're figuring out how to comply with those requirements. But honestly, you learn by working on them And, you know, you, in this case, we had
40:06 some clients that
40:09 we were kind of the first ones knocking at their door and saying, hey, we have a lot of experience with environmental permitting, you need counsel. Like you really need a lawyer to help you with
40:17 this. And they were kind of like, I don't know, not sure if we really need a lawyer. And then, when they brought us in, they were like, oh, we do need a lawyer, perfect. But yeah, so you
40:26 kind of learn the regs, you work, I mean, we work very closely with EPA during that process. So in some of those first permits, we were kind of learning it together because the EPA staff didn't
40:37 really know what they were talking about. And then one of the other pieces of my job that I enjoy is working with technical people. We will often work with the consultants and engineers. And some
40:52 of that at the beginning is, OK, explain to me how this works, right? And how can we show to EPA that you're not going to endanger drinking water? And they'll kind of put up a model and a
41:02 PowerPoint and show you. But as you're working through these applications, which really technically complicated. Um, yeah, I just try to absorb everything and um, translate what they're saying
41:15 from it's funny. I mean, somebody usually has to translate from lawyer speak, but I can help translate the technical speak to the regulators that maybe don't know, uh, as much as our technical
41:27 folks do. Yeah. It's funny that we live like with all of these advancements that we're going through, like so fast, accelerating, like we all have these jobs that like not only is it a job that
41:37 you weren't even originally taught, like in school or whatever, but like the job didn't even exist, you know, five, 10 years ago. Exactly. Yeah. I'm literally questioning people who work here
41:47 who they, their job is like building LLMs, doing all this AI stuff. And it's like, you didn't go to school for this. No one, Chad GBT one was anywhere, right? And now, now you're like a LLM
41:59 master, like how, how did you like fall into a role that doesn't even exist? Like that's just crazy how that works. And I mean, it's just kind of similar with what you're doing with the
42:09 advancements in energy and how we capture and all that stuff too. So yeah, it's truly fascinating. Yeah. Let's get through a couple more things. One, do you touch any rare earth mineral stuff?
42:20 That's a huge one kind of callback to competing with China, stuff like that. Yeah. We want that lithium and cobalt and yada yada. What do you do deal with that with the permits? Yeah. So yes,
42:33 and it's right now critical minerals, I would say, are sort of on par with energy in terms of how much this administration is supporting and focused on pushing and prioritizing those projects. So
42:47 there's a lot of opportunities there for mining projects that, frankly, for years, it was - they were just not able to get permits. And so again, going back to the point of - it depends on where
43:01 the resource is. Yeah, a lot of the projects I'm working on are in like Nevada and California, where there's a lot of public lands. And so a lot of times it will be, you know, the mining company
43:15 has, you know, 3, 000 acres of leases from the Bureau of Land Management or the Forest Service. And they have to go to those agencies and say, okay, here's the exploration we want to do. We
43:28 have, we want to have however many drill pads And we're going to drill for five years. And if we find something, then we're going to come back and we're going to mine it. And they have to get
43:38 those plans approved by the agency, usually BLM. And again, BLM has to do an environmental review and they have to look at, okay, you know, again, groundwater issues, species issues, tribal
43:52 issues are huge for those projects And so getting through the permitting process for those, you know, those are really long term projects to a lot of them are. 20, 30 year approvals that they're
44:05 getting. Are we just learned that the lithium process is literally just, it's a pull and you wait for it to like rise up to the top or whatever, like. Yeah, there's all kinds of like things that
44:16 you learn about, like, you know, sort of the underground mining versus, you know, where you just have an open pit. And I'm kind of, have been learning about all of that more recently too We
44:30 have a really good mining lawyer on our team who's in San Francisco and he was at, you know, sort of in-house at a mining company before he came to the firm. So he's been helping to bring, kind of
44:41 build up that practice. And it's been very fun to sort of work on those permits. All right. Okay, you ready for your last question? Sure. Have you heard of the Blunt Nosed Leopard Lizard? I
44:52 have heard of the Blunt Nosed Leopard Lizard.
44:56 Tell me everything, Chuck McConnell? No, Chuck here at Collide. He has our most popular podcast. He's a centric figure. And he's an old man who likes rambling about the same things. And one of
45:08 the same things he rambles about is the blunt-nosed leopard lizard. And you can kind of see where I'm going with this. Animals and species have a lot to do with regulation
45:20 and permits. And basically the story is like, the whole operation was closed down because they realized they were endangering these random lizards. And I mean, how many millions and billions in
45:33 energy are these little critters causing us on a daily basis? Well, I think with,
45:41 hopefully, honestly, not a lot because now, many of those situations happened, like I'd say in like the '70s, '80s and '90s And now people I think are very sophisticated. go out and do a
45:56 biological survey before they, you know, they have to before they start drilling. And so one of the carbon capture and sequestration projects that I worked on in California, they had blunt nose
46:09 leopard lizard among their other species. And they had to, you know, they went out and they did surveys. So they figured out sort of where they are. And they also tried to, you know, design the
46:21 project to avoid areas that they, where those little little guys are. But then they also have measures that they, you know, you have to educate the workers that are going to be working on the
46:32 project and kind of put in measures to avoid. So if you see them, then you're supposed to fence off a little area and kind of not, you know, try to try to avoid that area. It depends on the
46:43 species, kind of what those measures are. But yeah, I mean, it is the Endangered Species Act is if you
46:53 have a piece of property where there's a lot of endangered species, it will be very expensive to develop it. And so, you know, that is something that people look at inciting their projects to try
47:06 to minimize the need to deal with that. All right. Well, we cover pretty much everything. Let's wrap it up with some Houston talk, you know, type of Houston. I love hearing it. Yeah. You're
47:17 an outsider. I am from DC. I'm assuming you're not from DC, like, born and raised. Well, I'm from Maryland right outside of DC. So kind of pretty close. Yeah. DMV. Okay. Yeah. So you visit
47:28 Houston a lot. Yeah. You'll have an office here. Mm hmm. You know, what do you see here in Houston? What's exciting about being here? And is this the right place to claim as the capital of the
47:39 energy? Yeah. I mean, I think it is. And we have a really big Houston office. And I come down here a few times a year and I, you know, love coming down here, honestly, because the folks in
47:51 our Houston office are basically the. Kindest humans, but also it's great because our clients are all here I mean, they're you know, some of them are downtown some of them are in the energy
48:01 corridor But you know, you're kind of bouncing around and everybody's here and everybody here kind of speaks the same language And so, you know Not that I'm the arbiter of these things, but I I do
48:13 I do view it as as the capital the energy capital Well, there's your endorsement. Yeah, there you go. All right. Thank you. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thanks for having me