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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 back to Energy 101. Today we have David from D now and we are now going to get into HSE. Yep, that's for sure. HSE is health, safety, environmental. Ism, not the ism, it's just. So
0:19 HSE,
0:20 the much beloved safety guy for all those people in oil and gas. You know, you love what you love us when we show up on site, come and talk to you about things, health, safety and environmental
0:28 compliance is basically what that field is about. So it's making sure that operators, service companies, distributors, service companies, anybody in the industry is one, um, following
0:39 appropriate regulations from the government about worker safety. Typically that's coming from OSHA, right? The occupational self, so oh my gosh, occupational safety, health and health
0:47 administration, um, such regulations for like, you know, hey, you need to monitor for H2S, have a foregas monitor, wear your hard hats, wear your steel toes, things like that to avoid.
0:59 major injuries on site, safety side, also typically regulated by OSHA. That's for stuff like, you know, are you avoiding the spread of disease in a workplace? Are you keeping your workers from
1:11 getting silicosis by having a bunch of silica gas go into their lungs and start choking them when they're, you know, 30 years on, whatever. Totally. And then exactly, it seems like a bit, it
1:19 seems like a good thing to do, right? And environmental, environmental compliance. That's typically regulated by like the EPA, right? We have various environmental standards for how to do our
1:28 work well and not kill more animals in plants than we need to when we're doing our work. And so yeah, that's the main job of HSE specialists is to help our workers go home safe, as well as protect
1:38 the environment, make sure we're following government rules, make sure that we're doing our best to meet customer expectations and things like that. So. Cool. So environment, protecting
1:49 environment, safety, don't let anyone die. Exactly. And health, don't let anyone die. Yeah, yeah, don't let anybody die I guess the way I think about safety versus health is safety is more
2:00 like, you know, the acute thing. Like, hey, you're on site and there's a
2:06 explosion, right, on a tank battery or something. That's obviously death. That's safety. You don't. You want to avoid situations in which somebody's going to die or be severely injured, like
2:14 get their arm chopped off or fingers, things like this. So more acute stuff, whereas health is more general, holistic wellbeing of a person, right? That's not necessarily like, obviously you're
2:25 unhealthy if you get exploded and die But for things like ergonomics is one thing, right? Like when you're doing and doing your work, are you doing it in a way that, you know, in 10 years,
2:35 you're still going to be able to walk? Are you stretching? Stretching, right. Exactly. Stretching. You know, are you not being overly tired as, you know, guys in this industry work extremely,
2:47 extremely long hours, very physically demanding work. Are you going to be, are you physically and mentally okay while you're doing work? So that's how I'd think about the difference in - health
2:58 and safety environment is obviously it's its own thing, not necessarily. I mean, it's related to human health in that, you know, you don't want to spill a bunch of benzene, which has both
3:06 environmental impacts as well as human health impacts. But yeah, they're all bunched together as compliance in some form or fashion. What's knocking you out faster, benzene or H2S? That is a
3:18 great question. H2S, I believe, is what will knock you out sooner. Hence the yellow monitors every single person, where's ever exactly, right? So benzene is not a non-monitor there. It's H2S,
3:29 oxygen. Honestly, I couldn't tell you what the other two ones are. Oh, carbon monoxide. I don't know what the fourth one. What's that? Classic. Classic is like carbon monoxide. But yeah, H2S
3:38 is very, very dangerous. And it's probably the biggest environmental hazards that oil and gas guys are going to encounter every day on the on the field. You see those wind socks around, right?
3:46 That are like with air blowing in them. That's telling you what direction the air is blowing such that running opposite. Right, right. Run the opposite, remove, go perpendicular to that and then
3:54 go up stream up upstream up up uh upwind. So you can avoid that, but yeah, extremely dangerous at about 100 PPM.
4:03 That at that point, it's considered immediately dangerous to life and health, meaning you could die or you're gonna be severely injured for a long time going forward. So that's a really big deal in
4:13 upstream oil and gas for sure. The range is crazy from like crazy chemicals or emissions, whatever that you can just breathe in to like literally talking about stretching, breaking your back. Yeah.
4:25 I mean, it's like there's probably crazy rules about texting or I even saw something looking into it. Like people offshore, they have to learn about sharks. Right. It's like what other crazy or
4:37 even like mundane things are we teaching these workers out in the field? This field encompasses an extremely broad set of hazards that are like physical, chemical, biological. It touches on
4:49 everything. At the end of the day, it's about risk too. 'Cause I mean, if you're doing your job well as an HSC professional, things aren't happening.
4:57 And that's hard to quantify. If it's not happening, how do you know that it's like, because of your activities versus not? An example of this is poor deep water horizon blew up and had all those
5:09 terrible events happen. Literally the day before, one of the VPs from BP was coming by to celebrate seven years instant free on that rig. And then 11 people dead, massive environmental disaster,
5:26 tens, hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil in the Gulf. And that's crazy, right? Like, hey, the metrics are saying everything's cool. And then next day you have one of the biggest
5:34 environmental and human disasters that the oil field's seen and have a huge regulatory reshift in terms of how offshore oil and gas is managed from a safety and health and environmental perspective.
5:44 Like a whole new administration was brought in to manage that stuff because of that one disaster. So it's a really, it's really scientifically philosophically interesting field to be in for sure.
5:55 So I guess like what does like the day-to-day look like for someone in your position? Like maybe let's say someone even on the field, like are they going in every day? Are y'all like an auditor?
6:07 Like what does it look like? Yeah, so it's a mix of a lot of things. What the field guys will tell you is that we are shop cops. So guys that are rolling up on site, you know, issuing tickets
6:18 saying, hey, hey, why are you not wearing your steel toes? Hey, you're doing this, your job wrong. You're not wearing your hat. Well, yeah, we have paperwork out there We're checking boxes
6:25 saying, oh, yes, you know, fire extinguishers are up to date. Fantastic. Oh, yes, fall arrest gear for this guy looks great. Things like this, which certainly some safety professionals do.
6:35 So the day to day, it's a mix. My day to day, at least, is a mix of sort of office work and field work, although mostly warehousing, as you mentioned earlier. So, you know, office work is a
6:44 lot of - there's a lot of paperwork, right, because the interesting thing about HSC is you - a lot of documentation of, hey, we're following these procedures. We've done these kinds of trainings.
6:54 Inspected our sites x y or z number of times both for the government to assess, but also for our customers to assess, right? So like, you know, every time you go and step foot on like an ex ex on
7:04 well pad or something as a contractor You have to prove that you have fallen these sets of safety and health policies that you will be doing those things while you're on site For a lot of life
7:14 obviously first human health safety. We don't want people to die Environmental stuff, but also liability perspective right such that you know ex on isn't in a situation in which they have a
7:23 contractor come on site Who's just you know will fully negligent and then somehow they're in trouble. They have to the contractor has to prove that they are Going to be doing their job in a really
7:33 good way And not freak out So yeah, the day-to-day is both a mix of like paperwork But also in the field going and checking out how people are doing their work making recommendations being a resource
7:42 Lisa's how I approach it is
7:45 I try to build up rapport people basically what I'm doing is I'm selling the idea of Health and safety to on-the-ground workers and saying hey, here's how the company Approaches doing this kind of
7:55 work. I see you're doing it in this way. Here's some recommendations. This also company policy be upfront about, here's what we need to do. Or here's what the company says you need to do. I'm
8:03 not the expert. I don't know how to do your job. You know, I'm as white collar as can be. But I can make recommendations and things to help you be more safe on your job. We all want to go home at
8:12 the end of the day, right? With all of our hands intact, with our feet intact, with our men, with our brains intact, everything. We don't want to be dead and leave our wife and children at home
8:21 So yeah, it makes office work in-field. And also a lot of just like brainstorming, instant response is a big deal, too, in this field. So like when somebody breaks their foot or something, that
8:36 is in the US, workman's compensation is a thing. So like when an employee gets injured on company time, customer company hours, the company is responsible for managing that and making sure that
8:49 they're getting healed. I do sort of facilitating health responses as well as investigating incidents to see like, okay, what led to the conditions in which this worker got injured and how can we
8:60 try to mitigate those things going forward? And that's the most exciting part of the, I mean, not, it sounds bad, right? Where you're like, oh great. No, you gotta check out that security
9:07 footage. Right, exactly, yeah. You get into sort of secret agent mode or not even see like FBI investigator mode. Forensics. Forensics, all that stuff, right. It's, it's, and I find it
9:16 interesting. Like I love just like building up, okay, here's an understanding of how this thing got here, going into interviewing people, you know, digging into, yeah, it's a, it's like an
9:26 expedition, a journey where you're going and learning about how things work. Obviously, it sounds bad to say, oh, I, I live for the incidents in my job, ideally, you know, people have this
9:36 idea of vision zero, like no incidents, whatever, I think that's impossible, but that's the most interesting part of my job, I think is the incident investigation response. 'Cause that's where I
9:44 really feel like I'm helping too, like where I can say like, hey, this worker got injured, I'm helping facilitate them. coming back to work, being healthy, making sure they're getting paid,
9:53 able to support their families, and that's very satisfying. So hopefully I've described the job, feel free to dig into greater details 'cause there's a lot there. Yeah, I mean, that's the day to
10:01 day. Is there any like long-term projects? I mean, I guess, for instance, like a case where like someone gets seriously injured and you have to keep up with them for weeks or months. But is
10:12 there any other like, is there something like maybe you're even currently on or something in the past or a colleague you've heard? Like they're spending like six months handling something. Like
10:21 what else besides a day to day is there? Right, yeah. So there are broader like structural aspects to running a health safety environmental program. A lot of that comes down to setting up proper
10:32 policies and procedures for the company, right? So one thing that's changing is just regulations change, right? Like OSHA might come out with a new regulation around heat stress in 2026 about,
10:42 you know, how are you supposed to ensure that your workers are not getting overheated, getting heat stroke, dying. Obviously it's a huge thing in Texas, out in the Permian, it gets real hot out
10:49 there. There are going to be some rules coming out from OSHA about how to handle that. And so the companies need to determine what is the appropriate policy that we should do for this. Should we
10:57 require breaks every two hours, 15 minutes? So there's like the sort of more like establishing general standards for the industry and that take for the company. And that takes quite a while because
11:08 you have to go and engage with different stakeholders, dig into what OSHA wants, dig into what your insurance provider warrants, dig into what your lawyers want to meet a good compromise position
11:18 that everybody's satisfied by Um, another big thing, so that's just policies and procedures, updates that can take a while, like training regimens as well, similar things like the scope of work
11:26 for your company might change. For example, my company D now is acquiring our largest competitor, MRC global. Um, and as part of that, we're going to have a whole new other business that we
11:37 haven't, that hasn't been part of our company before that we're going to have to see, okay, what do they do? But do they do things that we haven't done before? What are the risks and hazards
11:44 associated with that kind of work that we may need to investigate and figure out how we can better facilitate that going forward.
11:52 Another thing that's really important in this field, and I'm sure anybody who's been involved in contracting on the oil and gas industry has heard of this word, total recordable incident rate,
12:04 injury rate, sorry, sorry, total recordable injury rate. And that's sort of like the fundamental number for this field is like how often are people at your company getting hurt, right? And
12:15 that's summed up in one number that can be gained in a lot of ways, I have a lot of issues with the number, but it's fundamental in a lot of stuff. So like some, a lot of operators, like if you
12:22 have a TRIR above
12:25 a certain number, they just won't do work with you, right? 'Cause you're too much of a liability for them. If you're, like for example, if you facilitate an injury while you're on their site,
12:33 you know, that involves lawyers, that involves all sorts of different things. And so that's a number that people are quite focused on figuring out how you can minimize at a company level. And
12:41 that's again a structural thing, you know? That's like where are our major injuries coming from? We may have policies and procedures already set up, but are they right if we're continuing to have
12:51 hand injuries or we're continuing to have slips, things like that. So yeah, I would say that the way that I think about long-term projects, or these are things, at the end of the day, it's all
13:00 facilitating minimizing impacts to humans and the environment, right? The day-to-day is the actual work where you're in the field going and talking to people,
13:09 selling them on ideas that will hopefully make them safer, things like this Whereas that broader, longer-term project thing is like, okay, how do we develop a whole system and a culture in which
13:18 safety is something that people are really focused on in their day-to-day? Such that when the workers are doing their work, they're not just waiting for the shop cop to come by and tell them, hey,
13:28 don't do that. They're more like, you know, I'm the expert in this. How can I do this in the most safe way and the most efficient way such that I'm not going to injure myself, injure my
13:35 colleagues, injure the planet, things like that? You mentioned OSHA a lot. Like, that's the governing body of safety in the country, right? That's correct. Yeah.
13:46 And we all know like it breaks down by city, state, even, you know, like. Oh, does OSHA like Trump all that or does it depend what state you're in? Like for instance, you brought up Midland,
13:58 which is in Texas and where you work, you're actually up in North Dakota. I don't know if we mentioned yet. Yeah. Uh, like, is there OSHA would govern both of those when it comes to this
14:07 industry, but do the states like kind of break it up differently in a way? Yeah. So OSHA, um, so it depends on the state Um, OSHA is the, basically the bare minimum standard for everybody
14:20 across the country, right? Like OSHA regulations, non-negotiable. These are things that one has to do because the federal government, OSHA is the highest, um, governing body with respect to
14:32 occupation, or worker health and safety in the country. However, states, um, as, you know, federal state relationships are pretty interesting. In some states, OSHA has delegated the authority
14:42 to implement that bare minimum procedures to states. And then in some cases, it's OSHA that's actually doing that managing that for people. An example is, and some states have their own OSHA's,
14:53 their own like, and they have higher standards perhaps. Like a good example is California. California has Cal OSHA, which is, as you might say, California Occupational Safety and Health
15:02 Administration. They have their own rules and standards for what, for workers in California, what you need to meet. And often those are higher than the standards that are set by OSHA. So yeah,
15:14 it really depends on where you are But OSHA is sort of, yeah, the way I think about it is OSHA is setting the bare, minimum, legal, administrative standard from the government. But then people
15:25 often are going above and beyond, right? Because one, you know, the states may require things that are more extensive than you, but also other companies may require more things that are extensive
15:33 to you. For example, like Supermajors, Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron, they are very safety and health focused. And one way that you can think about that is, because the super majors operate in so
15:44 many different places around the world, right? They're operating in the US, but they're also operating in Malaysia. They're operating in Africa. They're operating in these other various
15:51 jurisdictions, or they operate offshore versus onshore. Like offshore standards for safety and health are much more rigorous than onshore because offshore, we've had a lot of crazy accidents and
16:02 stuff that's happened, that people are like, we're not gonna screw this around. And it's all federal jurisdiction, right? And so they, the way I think about it is they import, like that
16:10 thinking for like, okay, we need to do, we need to follow the most rigorous set of standards that we are legally obligated to do. In this case, for example, offshore, but they'll bring that
16:18 thinking to onshore, which may be more rigorous than what OSHA wants them. It necessarily requires them to do, but they're going above and beyond because they know that it's really important. It
16:26 impacts their bottom line. It impacts how they operate everywhere. And it's easier for a large company like that to just say, hey, we're all following this one stand. It doesn't matter where you
16:33 are, we're doing things this way or that way because we're required to do another places. So we'll just have everybody do it everywhere, if that makes sense. I mean, OSHA, like I said,
16:43 governing body, is that mean, like, politics really get in the way? Or do you think everyone's doing a good job at like following the numbers and, you know, which I would assume really matters
16:53 over to politics? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think OSHA, I'm sure, and when you were growing up, I'm sure you hear like little jokes about, oh, OSHA's gonna do X, Y, or Z. It
17:03 kinda comes up, but people aren't necessarily familiar with what all the day to day. It's not the most, it's not like the EPA, right? EPA is heavily politicized in the country, right? Lots of
17:11 complicated feelings about environmental regulations, about its impact on business, on government, on everyday people.
17:20 OSHA is not as political as that, 'cause I think it's just not as, I don't know why this is. It's not as polarizing a topic. It's pretty hard to argue with like, yeah, we want workers to be safe
17:33 and health because everybody is a worker. Everybody goes to a job. Everybody has family who works. It's very easy to see, yeah, no, I think that people in America should be able to go to their
17:45 jobs and not die, right? That seems pretty easy to say. That's not to say, for example, that heat stress one, the rule I was talking about. It's not been formalized or anything that was
17:55 proposed by the Biden administration before the Trump administration came over. Some people argue that that heat stress rule was in reaction to climate change catastrophism, right? 'Cause we think
18:05 about global climate change, about heat, right, like, oh, we should have a rule for heat. People thought that was a big deal. COVID vaccine requirements as well. There was a proposed rule
18:14 about requiring all businesses in the country to have their employees receive COVID vaccines, which is obvious. I mean, anybody in this country knows that that was a complicated subject in which
18:26 people have strong feelings either way. So politics has come into it, but I'd say as a whole, a lot of the rules are just pretty, they make sense. They may be annoying to implement and like to,
18:37 it may be obnoxious at times, but like wearing your hard hat and steel toes. I don't know. I don't think it's that big of a deal, you know? And that's not to sit, of course. I'm simplifying a
18:47 little bit, but I'd say overall it's pretty good, but it's like all government agencies, they can be slow at times, you know, in updating regulations, for example, a lot of their exposure
18:56 limits for particular chemicals, like benzene or silica or,
19:02 yeah, other things like that. They have these, there's this concept of permissible exposure limits, which is like how long a worker can be exposed to a certain concentration of that chemical over
19:13 an eight-hour workday, basically the rolling average, right, of how, like a lot of those are still from the 70s when OSHA started, which is pretty old, right? Science has advanced quite a bit
19:21 since the 70s, it's literally 50 years ago, for some reason they haven't been updated.
19:28 But overall, I think it's, yeah, it's hard to argue with workers going home safely. So relatively not as politicized as other topics, I would say Yeah, speaking of the 70s, like. Do you, are
19:41 you aware of like any of the crazy stuff that it's talking like in the field, specifically like the things they used to do and get away with? I mean, the list should be endless, but. Yeah, the
19:50 list is kind of endless. Any stories you've heard or? I mean, simple stuff, just like for example, like going and working on tank batteries, for example, you got workers going up there to do
19:59 stuff, like no fall rescue, no tie off points, just like fully, we're just going up, you know,
20:07 putting ladders on top of man lifts, or like, you know, getting on the top level of a ladder, right? Sending people to go in and work in benzene heavy environments and whatever. It is what it is.
20:17 We got to go get the job done. You
20:20 know, people being lowered into trenches with no, so like an excavation for like, we're placing a pipeline, a pipeline area, no protection for that trench, where it could cave in at like any
20:32 moment, right? Just lowering them with a, Um, uh, Oh gosh, how am I blanking on this? One of the shovel things, they just lowering them in a shovel thing, and then they break in their legs
20:45 and like, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. Crazy stuff like that. That at one point in time was acceptable. It was just normal, right? As the approach, like you go and get your job
20:57 done. Whereas nowadays, even if people still do things like that, like make their drivers drive 24 hours, 36 hours straight. On the roads, right? Pretty insane. The expectation, at least
21:14 culturally, is that we should not be doing that. Again, people are doing those things in different places. But the base standard for how society expects businesses to operate is much better than
21:26 it was 50 or 30 years ago, things like that. But it's always changing, and especially in the oil gas industry. We've got a wild catter mentality, if you will, Wild West kind of rough. like,
21:37 hey, whatever, I'm a tough guy. I'm gonna go out and do these things. I'm gonna work at negative 50 degree below weather in my t-shirt or something. We got sort of a machismo about us. So
21:46 there's oil and gas culture has definitely changed, but for the much, for the better. Now, especially in response to a lot of those disasters I was talking about, like the Texas city refinery
21:54 explosion or Exxon Valdez oil spill up in Alaska, Deepwater Horizon, which I already talked about. Things where it was very clearly shown to the industry that if we don't make this a priority for
22:06 how we work, one, people are going to die, most important thing. Two, we're going to lose a lot of money. And that's also an important thing for a business. And so I'd say it, cultures change
22:19 quite a bit in the industry, relative to what it was, but can always improve, which is true of anything, right? I mean, is that culture a challenge? Like the Roughnecks, like they don't want
22:29 to follow the rules or not concerned about their safety? Is that the actual mentality like current day? as most things do, it depends. But yeah, there are certainly, I'd say it's kind of an age
22:39 thing. Some of the older guys, they're just like, this is how we've always done things, right? Which is a, honestly, it's a reasonable response to a lot of things. If it's been working for
22:48 this long, then why change it? And yeah, the machismo part of it, and the tough guy mentality, and also just not liking being told what to do, which I get, you know, most of us, or a lot of
23:00 us in the oil and gas industry are from Texas Texans, we have, we like our freedom. We like our being able to do what we want to do. We want to be left alone. We want to leave other people alone.
23:09 And so when you have a safety guy coming up to you and saying, hey, please put on your hard hat, say screw, even if they, even if they know, and again, I sympathize because I'm like this
23:18 personally, even if you know that it's a smart thing to do, the fact that somebody is coming and telling you to do it leads up to resentment, right? And you're like, I don't want to do that. Or
23:26 fire retardant gear, for example, FRs, heavy, annoying to wear. I don't want to wear this. I've never been on fire I've never had an arc flash happen around me. blast, why do I have to wear
23:37 all this crappy stuff? So there's definitely part of that, like just sort of a base resentment of some of the rules. But also, I think part of that's on safety professionals. And that safety,
23:47 like in the field, the safety guy is not a very, I joke that it's a beloved feature, not a beloved profession in the field, because people think we're annoying, 'cause we're going up and saying,
23:58 hey, you're not doing X, Y, or Z thing, I'm gonna write you up, I'm gonna tell your manager that you're not doing this therefore. There's a really heavy compliance attitude among some people in
24:06 this space where it's like, not treating the workers as people, the treating them as automatons to follow rules and policies and procedures. And if you do not comply, you're gonna get the stick,
24:15 right? And so why would you wanna listen to somebody like that? So the way I try to do it is I try to build up rapport, like show good faith, like, hey, these are, I'm a facilitator, I'm a
24:26 resource, I'm not a shop cop, I'm also just not inclined to be a shop cop, so it kind of works out for that way. Building up genuine relationships with people to say, hey,
24:34 here are some potential ways that we could do this job in a safer way so that you go home to your family. I care about you personally. I want you to be alive. I want you to be healthy and being
24:45 flexible to recognizing that policies and procedures are designed from on high typically in Houston in the oil and gas industry, but realities in the field are quite different, right? You mentioned
24:53 I'm in North Dakota, right? Obviously from a weather perspective, very different, right? A lot colder in the winters up there, no hurricanes, stuff like this So ideas that safety professionals
25:04 have in Houston about how work should be done and say the Permian might be more realistic there because you're close to the Permian, but how many people in Texas are going up to North Dakota a lot?
25:11 Very, very different dynamics, very different culture, very different weather, very different geographies. So you have to be flexible about, okay, I understand this is the policy, but I agree
25:22 that the way that you're doing work as done is actually the most safe way to do it. And if it's the most safe way to do it, then fantastic, you know, I don't care whether it's a policy, the
25:31 policy or procedure is secondary to the effect on. being good for the people who are doing the work and making sure that they are not being injured. Yeah, it's funny hearing to compare, like, you
25:42 can compare this mentality to any work. You know, it's like, you want these people to follow the rules without being asked, you know, down to like a line cook, you want them to wash their hands
25:54 after they go to the bathroom. Right, exactly. To parenting. It's like, I want my kids to brush their teeth without telling them, you know, it's like, how do you, what's the culture of like
26:05 having them do the right thing, safety-wise, knowing that, like, as if no one was watching, like, how do you actually get that point across, especially like to these older guys who don't want
26:18 to follow the rules? I think it's really all about relationships. Like, I think of my job, I've done sales in the past, I'm selling the idea of self and safety to people, right? And as part of
26:27 being a sales guy, right, you're, you want people to like you, you want to build up relationships with people,
26:33 people like in respect and trust and think that, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about and maybe I should follow his recommendation, not even just 'cause he's smart, but because I like him
26:40 personally. And so I think ultimately it comes down to relationships and showing good faith by going and doing things for people. For example, as part of my job, I go and do audit inspections of
26:52 facilities and sort of look at it from a health and safety environmental perspective. Like, are they following the rules? Do they have X, do they have X, Y, or Z things in place? Do they have
27:04 their forecast been checked reasonably? Have they been annually inspecting fire extinguishers? All these sorts of things. One way to approach that kind of thing is to go and say, wrong, wrong,
27:14 wrong, wrong, wrong, handing it to the person saying, hey, you go do this, you're wrong. And then you walk in off and go into your nice little office and not negative 50 degrees below winter
27:24 weather. Another approach one might take to that is noticing, okay, one prioritizing Okay, great. There's an exposed electrical wire here.
27:34 Probably a bad thing to have like 120 volts just hanging out ready for somebody to go and get electrocuted. That's an immediate hazard. I will call the electrician. I will have them come to the
27:43 site. I will handle the payment and stuff basically doing something on behalf of the branch manager or whoever you're interfacing with to show like, this is important to me. I'm going to do actual
27:53 work and show that you can bring value to that person such that it's not just like, oh, this is the guy who's going to come chew me out This is the guy who cares about me and is willing to do work
28:02 to help my safety such that I'm then more inclined to say when he comes and talks about something more minor, perhaps like, hey, maybe you should go have all of your trucks get new batteries before
28:14 this winter because you don't want people stuck in blizzards in North Dakota and freezing the death, right? Might be more inclined to do it. So that's all I think about it is relationships,
28:22 relationships, relationships, empathy, compassion, service, right, not being
28:30 a dickhead is kind of the easy way to explain it is to not be a jerk. and do good for people. And then when you do good for people, they will tend to wanna do good for you. And they'll also listen
28:39 to you more, you know? Kind of a novel idea, right? But it's actually, yeah, not well understood by some people in the field, that's for sure. Yeah, what are like, you know, we talked about
28:51 the regulations and roles that everyone follows, but like what can we, what is like the future of like the actual, like physical things that can help, whether it's like tech, you know, AI or
29:01 sensors or whatever, like what can like, what do you see or how do you see? That's gonna just help us get to that next gap of like literally no incidents guaranteed. Yeah, one, no incidents, I
29:16 think it's impossible. People have a lot of vision zero, there's a lot of claims made, net zero, various things about how we're not, that's different, that's the climate thing, that's different,
29:24 you know what I'm talking about, there's like no incidents, no, the reality is we live in a complicated world, a lot of things going on all the time. There should be a baseline expectation that
29:33 there are gonna be some incidents, just 'cause of the complexity of these systems we're interacting with. What we wanna do is avoid the actual genuinely preventable incidents by virtue of us going
29:42 and doing things, right? So I think that in some ways that zero mentality can lead people to optimize for crazy things. A really easy example of this. One way to get zero incidents is not report
29:54 anything. If you don't have any incidents, if you don't report any incidents, nothing happened, right? And there's a right, there's a huge under-reporting culture across industries that is not
30:03 just oil and gas thing because if you're optimizing for the metric of zero incidents, the best way to do that is to just not talk about the incidents, not have it on paper, therefore it can't be
30:12 calculated, therefore it doesn't show up in your TRIR, right? Because nobody's doing it. So that's what I would say. It's baseline expectations. There are gonna be some injuries, some incidents,
30:20 some problems, but we're trying to minimize that number to the extent it's reasonably possible while not also leading to other negative impacts downstream in terms of technology and things
30:31 like that. One thing that's really cool is there's just a lot of new, again, the material world. There's a lot of new innovations and PPE that are coming out and like health monitoring, for
30:40 example. I have my Apple Watch that tracks my heartbeat, how much I'm exerting myself. For example, guys out in the Permian, you're working in 100 degree heat out on a rig, you're drill hand.
30:53 These guys are probably getting really overheated, but they may not know it. They may be dehydrated, for example. They may not know about it. But I heard about this company, you can add to the
31:00 show notes I don't remember what their name is. But they've designed some wearables, like a little patch or whatever, that you stick on your body. And it quantifies the amount of sweat that is
31:10 coming off of your body and to telling you whether you're dehydrated or not. And then it can remind you on your phone or whatever, hey, go drink some water, take some breaks. That's super cool.
31:18 Right? Like, who would have thought that that's possible? Before I was like, that's amazing. I never heard about that before.
31:26 AI is also really interesting and cool like the ability to. You know, hey, you're gonna about to go do a job, right? AI, think about all the hazards that I might assess in this job, but that I
31:39 might encounter in this shop, excuse me, that I may not have thought of. Like here are the ones I came up with for installing this pump on site, but what are some other things that I may not be
31:47 aware of? Like that's just simple knowledge, right? If you have a very intelligent machine that can help you brainstorm for stuff, you're more aware of things to look out for. For example, when
31:57 we think about hazards, we're usually very good at determining like physical hazards Like, oh, that forklift could run me over. Oh, hey, that overhead crane could drop, and it could drop its
32:06 load and kill me by crushing me. But we don't necessarily think about things like pressure, like pressurized lines, extremely dangerous, pressurized tanks, explosions, heat, right? Chemical
32:18 effects, a lot of these things are invisible, right? So some of these new technologies that give workers more infield understanding of what they're about to go do could really be helpful there. So
32:29 there's a lot of opportunities there, And of course, the other one, which is a complicated, like
32:35 more automation, not, more automation does not always mean more safety, right? Automated systems can remove control from operators who, you know, you program, oh, here's what we think should
32:44 happen in the situation into the machine. But it turns out in the field that actually the guy who's working there is like, no, actually that's not right. We shouldn't be doing this, but the
32:50 automated machine just goes, so it's not a panacea. But in as much as one can, you know, get the actual person away from the potential source of hazard and have a machine do it, right? That's
33:02 better, right? Because that means that you're the person that's not as exposed to that hazard. You know, they're not right next to the pipeline under pressure that needs to get worked on. It's a
33:10 robot doing it or something. The operator is like, I don't know, a mile away, just working on it. Automation, drones, like stuff like that. So there's a lot of interesting new technologies
33:19 that are potentially gonna be impactful, but
33:24 the reality is we live in a world in which people die and get sick and other things like that. And I don't think that's going away, unfortunately We all die, you know, but. Hopefully we try to,
33:32 we die at a reasonable age and not while we're on a work site, you know? That's pretty much everything with health and safety. Let's maybe wrap it up with the environment stuff. Yeah, I mean, we
33:43 can literally double the time with it, but which is fine, we got the time to do it. I mean, something I hear a lot just to kick us off is carbon credits. Is that something you have to deal with?
33:55 It like a mission tracking, like, is that kind of what the environment part has to do with HSC? Yeah, so the environmental side of HSC encompasses a lot of different things. And it depends on the
34:06 company, right? Some companies, things like
34:10 quantifying greenhouse gas operations from your operators is included in HSC. Some places, that's a specific sustainability department that's doing greenhouse gas reporting, stuff like that. In my
34:19 current role, I'm mostly health and safety focused, but by training, I'm a geologist, an oceanographer. And before this job, I worked for a few years in the carbon markets, emissions management
34:28 space, worked for, um, project developer who is generating carbon credits using forests, like basically trees suck in CO2, right? They grow and growing, they take CO2 out of the atmosphere,
34:38 put in their bodies, take in CO2 out of the atmosphere, a company could pay a landowner to do that in order to help make their numbers look better with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. So I
34:47 worked for in that space and then also did some work on that emissions management side of the oil and gas industry I mentioned, where, you know, hey, operator is producing a well and they have a
34:58 methane leak Methane's a very highly impactful greenhouse gas, helping quantify that for companies to report to the EPA, at least formerly. And so yeah, I've worked in that space and but the
35:11 environmental side of at least my current role is much more focused on
35:16 things like hazardous material transport, for example, you know, things that can explode, things that can make you sick, radio. There's a whole set of regulations around how you ship things and
35:25 how you have to notify people that when you are sending them some production chemicals Here's the houses of that production chemical that you might be encountering, such that workers and companies
35:35 are aware of what they're dealing with. Things like houses just waste, right? You can take like a T-norm if you've heard of this. It's technologically enhanced, normally occurring radioactive
35:46 material. It's a long word, but what that refers to is naturally in the earth, in places that we're producing from, there are radioactive elements there. Background levels, it's usually not
35:56 super high Things like radon, other things like that. But as we're producing from that play, we're concentrating it because we're sucking in the fluids. And they're being concentrated because we
36:08 are, we're bringing them in, they get caught, stuff like that. That's a hazard that we encounter in the upstream oil and gas field. And so there are rules around how you're supposed to dispose of
36:18 that waste, how you're supposed to keep workers from encountering that waste, what you do about it to minimize that kind of waste. Or I guess that's not exactly waste actually, I don't know.
36:27 That's a good question. I need to look into those regulations more deeply.
36:31 Other things, environments will clean air act, right? Like not CO2 is part of that, but you know, we've got a lot of other self-dangerous gases that are associated with all sorts of parts of the
36:42 oil and gas industry, whether it's like sulfur dioxide emissions, nitrogen oxide emissions, things that impact air quality, right? Houston, we live in a city that has a lot of air quality issues,
36:49 much better than it was 25 years ago, which is awesome. But that's also something that the environmental side of HSC will touch So clean water act as well, like, you know, are we letting
37:02 dangerous chemicals and elements where often the watersheds impact rivers, impact the ocean, things like that. So it touches on a whole bunch of different things, which I find personally very fast
37:14 and excited to mention I'm an environmental guy by background, and that it's so complicated. There's so many different things, because especially in this industry where, especially the upstream
37:24 side of it. Like we are out in the
37:27 field. in diverse geographies and geologies with different kinds of trees, different kinds of water, different kinds of topography, different mountains, different geologies under it. So there
37:37 are a lot of different ways that
37:40 the industry can screw up and can also do things well when it comes to protecting the environment. So
37:46 yeah, that's the part of HSC in a nutshell. And I mean, you come from the environmental background and you know, you and I are very similar where we, I don't have like a career in
38:01 environmentalism, but I just innately like think it's good to have the cleanest, longest lasting earth we can. And then you kind of learn the essential of the oil and gas industry of all energy
38:16 sectors. They all have their flaws. They all like even from wind to solar, they require manufacturing, which has pollutions even geothermal having offsets like everything.
38:28 You can't, we've learned in the industry that it's, you're kind of screwed no matter where you go. We can't just plug in a bunch of solar panels and call it a day. Right. So how do you cope and
38:39 deal with that kind of stuff? How do you like take everything you've learned in the last, let's say, decade of your life and balance both sides of being pro environment
38:52 but pro energy? Yeah, no, and this is a great question. I think it's one of the most important questions that everybody can be thinking about day to day, especially in this industry. So by way
38:59 of background, I've born and raised in Houston, originally from here, four generation Houstonian, grew up around the industry, but a big lover of nature fell in love with it through walks at the
39:10 Houston Arboretum, you're going out around the trees, you know, the animals, things like this. But growing up in Houston, I'm very aware of the importance of oil and gas to a thriving society
39:18 that like all of our clothes are made of it in some ways. The car that I drive has, Um, uh.
39:24 uses that as a fuel the reason that I can turn on my lights as that like those are all very good things and it's good for Humans that we have that so I was never like a You know anti-oil and gas
39:33 partisan, but by caring about nature I also was you know concerned about the impacts of the industry on stuff when you like I don't particularly care to go out and see you know Pump jacks like it
39:44 takes away from the net some of the natural beauty for me when I'm going out in an exploring different places So there are trade-offs with everything
39:51 And so the way I think about it is I used to be more radical kind of like An arco-primitivist de-growth guy, but somehow I didn't hate the oil and gas industry at the same You know these things when
40:02 you're in your early 20s You don't really know what you're thinking or anything like that So I used to be when I thought about these environmental problems and crises and whether it's climate change
40:09 biodiversity water everything What one way that one could think about solving that issue is to just like hey, let's stop consuming right? Let's like People in the West, you know, people like you
40:20 and me who have this abundant light. have all these electricity, like let's just like chill out, man. Like we could like, I don't know, go farm or whatever and not use all this energy, right?
40:30 Or that's so that's one answer to that, it's just like no consumption or to minimize consumption, degrowth, stop growing, no economic growth, let's slow down, let's go down, less people on the
40:40 planet, right? Let's less than our impact, right? That's one way to think about it. The other approach to this question is like to maximize growth, right? And say like, hey, throughout
40:50 history, yes, there have been plenty of bad things that have occurred as a result of human development, you know, like raising force for agriculture, environmental pollution, polluting oceans,
40:59 you know, destroying fish and whale populations, extirpating whole species, lots of bad things. But, you know, at this point, in industrial development, there are parts of nature that are
41:09 coming back as a result of changing economic tides, right? Like the Northeast, for example, there aren't as many farms there now, because in a globalized world, that's the most, not the most
41:17 efficient way to grow wheat or whatever So now for us, you're coming back and there are more animals and. things like that. So one, the other approach is to maximize growth. We actually need to
41:27 maximize production and consumption. And then as a result of that just occurring, we're going to minimize our impact on the planet, right? By having more energy dense sources of power, like more
41:37 nuclear, more vertical farms, like provide an overabundance of things for humans, but make it in a more concise footprint, right? That has less environmental cons and let the rest of the place go
41:49 to nature, right? So there's a kind of like the two poles I think about it. Here's a me personally, as you mentioned, I worked in carbon credits for a few years, emissions management, and
41:59 that's one approach. That's like a market-based approach to trying to address these issues, to say, Hey, companies, they know that they are releasing some amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that has
42:07 impacts on the global climate. Let's do what we can to reduce our emissions, whether it means fixing leaks in a very fast fashion, like
42:14 upstream oil and gas, and then for those parts, or using electric vehicles, that's an even complicated situation. But like, Reduce emissions in whatever way you can, but then also for those
42:24 emissions you can't remove, because again, we live in a physical world where realistically oil and gas is gonna be around for a very long time. Let's offset those emissions by taking some CO2 out
42:34 of the atmosphere to balance our things like that. So work in that industry, very complicated. A lot of it's nonsense, in my opinion, unfortunately we can dig into that if you want. But I guess
42:44 the view I've come to now is trying to seek a balanced approach, which is kind of like a tried answer, but it's tried for a reason, it's honestly, it's usually the answer to most things, is like
42:55 to recognize, one, to recognize that we do not live in a utopia and we will not be living in a utopia. There are pros and cons to everything. In the de-growth mindset, there are gonna be problems
43:05 in that world. Not everybody will be completely happy and eternally blessed when everybody has their own small one acre farm, I mean, I don't wanna do that, right? Maximum economic growth, right?
43:16 And minimize, like there's gonna be trade, There is a base level of just like recognizing that the world we live in has a lot of problems,
43:24 but balancing things for humanity. Like we want people in the global south to have energy. At least I do. I think it's important, right? Energy is such an amazing, it makes so many things that
43:36 we take for granted possible. Hot showers, clean cooking, you know, not using literally like burning wood in your house and dying of air quality, air pollution Huge deal, being able to see your
43:48 family, taking flights, right? These things are very important. I think that every human person has the right to an energy abundant lifestyle. You know, what level that energy abundance is at,
43:59 you know, depends, but I think that's important. But on the other hand, the environment also has rights, right? It's, I don't think that we should be devastating marine fish populations by
44:11 polluting it with nitrogen and phosphorus for American farms, right? So I mean, I don't have an answer to these questions. I do what I've sort of explored both the
44:24 degrowth side and the maximum economic growth side. And these are two ends of a spectrum. The answer's probably somewhere in the middle, but we're just gonna have to sort of work our way through it
44:34 and figure out what we think is appropriate for us in particular. Yeah, I think in the last five years, I've done two things. One, it's like personally do what you can, whether it's the
44:48 slittlest things, like using reusable products, recycling, even that, it probably ends up in the waste anyway, you just ignore that part. Adjusting your AC properly, all these little things
45:00 that make you feel better, do it, like that's the best you can do. If you wanna go beyond and reach out to your own city, government or whatever, that's a step I haven't taken But the other, the
45:15 second thing is that like just. educating myself has really helped me like just feel better, feel bad, empathize with, you know, how the world works. Like it's, it's so messed up. Like we
45:29 really do have a nice mix of energy use here in the US. You know, it, it's, it, we have a lot of nuclear. You'd be surprised. We have renewables. Unfortunately, there's still coal in mixed
45:40 with oil and gas. Like it, we got a little bit of everything on a global scale It's, it's pretty impressive and a huge, huge change, especially if you look at like the, the day, like gas went
45:51 up and passed coal, like coal usage is crazy. It's underappreciated how crazy that is. Yeah. And then you look at China who's like, they have, I mean, I don't know if this is like a fact, but
46:02 it's like, they have the means to not use coal, but they're doing it because it's so cheap. It's, it's almost like they're like, they're just thrifty It's like we're gonna keep what Cola's is
46:14 messed up and
46:17 we can drill and get our own energy source or we can ship it in, whatever, but they are choosing to build cold minds. And they have other ethical issues with the way they work in their culture.
46:28 And it's like, well, they're a lot worse than us. It helps me cope or feel better. But I don't like thinking about it too much. And then you go down to the actual poverty of, like you said,
46:40 like the Global South, like they have to use coal because they do not have the system to drill for gas or to build renewables. That's the big thing. A lot of people in the oil gas industry will say
46:53 it's like, yeah, they can't, they can't do renewables. That shit's way too expensive, who's helping them start that up and maintain it. And you know, whatever. And it's just all screwed up,
47:04 you know. And
47:07 yeah, I mean, we were talking before this about like, nuclear is obviously a big one. There's, I mean, people in our industry understand like it's like a decade just to get a power plant up and
47:18 running, but there's modular reactors. They're smaller things like taking all that, you know, how do you, how do you compare to us on a world scale and what, what is the future? What are we
47:30 going to live to see our energy mix transition to another country start to thrive? Um, and just to finish that, like Africa specifically, we know is going to hit like crazy population growth,
47:42 like, what are you confident about? What are you scared about that? We're going to see like these countries grow and other countries not. Yeah. Um, well, one thing I can confidently say, and
47:53 obviously this is all speculation. It's all complicated. And it's who nobody really knows is the first thing to say. Um, but one thing I can confidently say is that, um, fossil fields are going
48:03 to be used in a lot of countries all over the world for the next 50 to 100 years. I add minimum. It's just going to happen like you were saying
48:12 And not even free early from an energy and cost perspective, but just like geopolitical tensions. Like a lot of countries have coal, not a ton of countries have great oil and gas reserves, right?
48:22 So like from China example, they don't have, they basically have no oil and gas reserves. They have to import off their natural gas, whether it's through LPG shipments or LNG shipments or shipping
48:33 it by a pipeline. That's kind of a hard thing for a country to take, right? That we have, you're dependent on US or for example, for that So it makes sense that they would use coal, right?
48:42 They're also trying to bring up energy used by all their population, right? And it's cheap, right? So I think fossil fuels are gonna be used for the next 50 to 100 years and in large extent, like
48:53 a stat I have, and this, I think this came originally, what did I hear this from? Chris Wright, I think.
48:59 Over the past 50 years, global primary energy production, which means the energy used for everything, not just electricity, but like industrial heat, process heat, all things we use energy for
49:09 transportation, burning, burning fuels.
49:14 80 of global primary energy production and use has come from fossil fuels. And that hasn't changed over the past 50 years, right? A lot of new different energy sources have come on, right? Solar
49:23 and wind and renewables and all that kind of stuff, but yet that is still not budge. And so that history is indicative of the future, which I'm a big history guy, I think it generally is. Seems
49:34 like it's gonna be a big part of it, right? In terms of the US relative to other countries, I mean, I think we're in a great spot, obviously Like the shale revolution has just been amazing,
49:45 unbelievable, frankly. Again, another under-appreciated story we were talking about, like 20 years ago, the US was a net oil importer by a big margin. Natural gas prices were super high.
49:59 There's a reason that everybody has ethanol in their gas right now, 'cause people were trying to figure out other domestic sources of energy we could create. And now we're the biggest oil exporter,
50:11 produce crazy amounts of natural gas. Remarkable, amazing. And given that 80 number, that's important, right? That we can do that. We also have extremely talented people in this country. Solar
50:23 and wind, like the industry here is doing extremely great, right? Or historically has done quite well and has expanded quite well. Batteries, also really important, super cool. A built way to
50:33 use this intermittent renewable store up the energy that only comes at certain times and, you know, using it at different times. You know, the small nuclear, there's kind of a hype cycle going on
50:41 right now. I think nuclear is super cool. I wish that there was more of it. 20 of the US energy comes from nuclear, I believe, right about there. So it's a lot of our energy comes from it. I
50:52 wouldn't say there's a renaissance, but there's a lot of rumblings about more small nuclear reactors, but I'll have to wait and see. You know, I, again, history being indicative of future
51:02 performance. The US has not done great on building nuclear plants since the '70s, you know, the most recent, plant that was built was in Georgia, the Vogel nuclear plant, went crazy over budget.
51:15 That's a traditional large scale nuclear plant and anytime you bring a new product on a site, whether you call it a small modular reactor, which a lot of these aren't actually modular, they're not
51:23 like, they're not shipping them off factory lines, they're going and building them in sight. We'll have to see. And it's a complicated regulatory environment in this country. So I hope it goes,
51:30 I hope it happens because I think nuclear is awesome.
51:34 But yeah, America is a very blessed country from an energy perspective We've got basically all the natural resources one could want in a country is here. We have really sharp talented people. We
51:45 have great industries, great capital markets as well to invest in these kinds of deals. So I think America is going to be great from an energy perspective. And yeah, in terms of how the other
51:54 world shapes up, that'd be interesting. Like China right now, they're really doing an all the above energy build out, right? They're building the most nuclear out of anybody. They're building
52:03 the most solar and wind down of anybody. They're also building the most coal out of anybody, right? and that's pretty, I think it makes sense for them. Um, Europe, you know, is doing their own
52:12 thing. Um, yeah, yeah, they're doing their own thing. I won't comment on that, but, um, the world's going to be interesting, I think, is the long and short of it. And, but I think the,
52:22 the, yeah, the key thing is that fossil fuels are going to be a huge part of the energy mix going forward purely just from a historical perspective of how much it's being used and energy man is
52:30 going up and it should be going up both in the US for new technologies, but also for, again, a focus I really have is those seven billion people I give this from Arjun Murthy, who you might want
52:40 to have on the podcast. He's with Verritain, runs a really sharp newsletter, but he talks about the lucky billion and the very unlucky seven billion. All those other people that we forget about,
52:49 the global poor in countries that we're not, we're not so lucky as to be born in the United States, like you and I were, that it's unjust that
52:59 they do not have access to energy resources. And so provided that that's true, we could live in a state of injustice. I mean, that's a lot of the world's like that, right? They could not get
53:08 energy, but I think it's very important that they should and that everybody who works in this industry should continue to work to make that a reality such that everybody can enjoy the benefits that
53:17 people like you and I enjoy living in a very energy rich and abundant society. Well said, I think I owe China an apology. I did not know. They really don't have any basins. No, they have like no
53:29 oil and gas production there. They got all that land. They really lucked out. Yeah They could, it's a complicated geology over there. There are some potentially exploitable shale plays there,
53:40 but the way the formation, it's close to
53:45 the Himalayas, basically it's not just flat pancake stuff. It's very like, very hard to drill there, but they have a ton of coal, right? And coal is base load, power per, so you can't blame
53:59 them for using it. Yeah, you can't blame them And also, I mean, Cole, like there's new tech, like The coal industry is still around, the new plants that they're building are much more
54:08 environmentally, relatively, from an emissions perspective, like sulfur, nitrogen emissions. There is a difference in how coal is - Being used now, for sure. Right, I mean, there's the
54:19 buzzwords of clean coal and shit, which makes you sound like there's no emissions, but comparing to burning coal 100 years ago to now, it is definitely better, but I'm not gonna be one of the
54:30 people praising it, but you can understand that it's not the same technique. Of course, it's not the same technique, and it's just, I think we should, and I think understanding and or seeking to
54:41 understand reality as it is is very important for any of these kinds of conversations and to realize that when the trade-off comes between global climate change, air emissions versus energy,
54:53 reliable energy, humans are almost always, they're always pick this one, right? And cost too, like there's so many factors that lead into like we want reliable, cheap. um, abundant energy
55:07 versus these environmental issues. And that's just, it's, it is what it is. You can, you can disagree with it. You can think that that humans are done for that, but it is what it is. And you
55:13 can appreciate it. I can appreciate it. I can sympathize with it. Like I, I'm glad I can fly. I'm glad I can fly, drive a car. I'm glad that when I go home and I turn on the lights, the lights
55:22 are going to be on. I'm glad I can cook without, you know, killing my family, um, things like that. So yeah, world's complicated. Um, and there are no silver bullet, easy answers to any of
55:31 this kind of stuff, which is again, it's a cliche thing to say, but the reason it's a cliche is because it is true. And that's why it's, we should appreciate it more. I suppose. Oh, yeah. Let
55:43 me wrap up this, this, uh, environment segment with, uh, my environmental pipe dream, which is, uh, I have, I've been one of the assets questions in the right person. So I'll say it now,
55:54 which is if we got, if we spent all the money, the capital, you know, government, the private business on everything we use on oil, gas, coal, and went to renewables with all that money, all
56:07 that workforce went to nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, everything else. Could we 100 net zero like with that plan? Which is an impossible scenario, pipe dream, but like - Yeah. 'Cause it's
56:23 always money, right? It's always capital, it's always regulations. Yeah, I think the main limiting factor is storage of energy. And the reason that oil and gas is so valuable is 'cause of how
56:32 energy dense it is and how transportable it is. The midstream. Right, well midstream and also like just the fact, like when you drive across country, the gas in your car is gonna take you much
56:41 farther than a battery will now. So absent like some magical, and maybe this will happen, I don't know, some transformative change in battery technology or some other unbeknownst energy storage
56:51 system,
56:53 I don't see that really happening. And the other thing to keep in mind is that oil and gas is not just for energy, right? petrochemicals, it runs like medical equipment. tons of like metal
57:04 equipment, most things in this room, the products that plastics everything like that all comes from petrochemicals at some base point.
57:15 And I don't see a I don't see it. I haven't heard anybody come up with like a real proposal for for replacing that part of oil and gas. So I don't know I I think unless the energy storage part is
57:25 fit is managed and I
57:29 mean you also have to think of this depends on what time scale to you're thinking about right like 2050s net zero by 2050 is a pipe dream it's been a pipe dream it's a it's imaginary right not real
57:38 yep but like infrastructure takes a long time to build out we've been building out oil and gas infrastructure for the past like 150 years everywhere societies built for it gas stations are a thing
57:49 right pipelines are a thing refineries are a thing it's all here and the amount of capital and the time and the labor and all that other stuff uh to go into utterly transforming that i don't think is
58:01 plausible. And just when you look historically, we talk about energy transition, right? The reality of the
58:10 world's use of human use of energy is it's always been energy addition, right? We're burning the most biomass now that we've ever done globally in history because there's still a lot more people in
58:20 Africa that are still using biomass, right? So biomass didn't go away. We're not burnt wood is still being used, right? Coal is still being used as we've been just discussing. So it's always at
58:28 adding things or historically has always been adding things not to say that it couldn't be the other way. But it just seems highly implausible to me. But that would would occur. And therefore, if
58:37 it's highly implausible, we should probably be working on things that are more in a core with potential reality.
58:44 So yeah, I don't know. That's that's my opinion about it. Of course, who do I? I'm just some guy. I don't I don't know anything. But um, yeah, that's how I think that I was literally a
58:53 perfect answer. You really hit a brick wall when you try to like pipe dream and like the solution. It really, like. Okay, all the energy, all of our lights are on from renewables, okay, but 90
59:06 of things we use are made out of hydrocarbon somehow, like
59:11 magical. So, it's like, it's really like, you're screwed. I don't know how to which way you go. And the
59:21 solution is to accept it and transition the way we are. Like we're doing it, it's not gonna happen fast, but it is happening, so. Right, yeah, it's happening. Even if you'll just look at
59:33 numbers of like
59:36 carbon, greenhouse gas emissions per unit GDP over the past 50 years, it's a pretty consistent, like a sloping down line. Like it's, before even anybody was focused on climate change and like,
59:46 hey, we need to radically change our economy. It's been going down. Of course, absolute emissions have been going up because there are more people, more rich, things like this, but per unit of
59:54 economic output, the greenhouse gas emissions have been reducing It's funny, you look at like 100 years. It doesn't, like the way it plateaus, it doesn't look like much. But if you look at like
1:00:05 20, 30 years, you can actually see like the second, like we are like, okay, let's like try like Al Gore documentaries, like actual like emissions, like we're collaborating to do both things
1:00:19 like, okay, we can keep oil and gas going, get the coal down, get the oil down and gas up. And then like it's, the scale actually looks promising and better, not like we're not just like going
1:00:29 up, like screwed, like we're gonna be water world in a decade. Yeah, actually looks like we're doing something. Yeah, I mean, US greenhouse gas emissions are been, they peaked and they're
1:00:37 going down now. Yeah. And that's true, that's just reality. Not drastically, but down. They're going down, right? Yeah, I think the other thing I think about a lot is even if that the pipe
1:00:47 dream that you proposed happened, there are a lot of parts of that world that I wouldn't like. Like I don't particularly care for solar panels, solar farms taking over all of Nevada, right? I
1:00:57 don't particularly care for wind turbines how they look We have a lot of, so you. North Dakota is powered mostly by coal and a lot of wind. I think like 50 of energy, energy product, or
1:01:06 electricity, excuse me, not energy, electricity production and use and, no, electricity production in North Dakota comes from coal, abundant coal resources, a lot of coal power plants right at
1:01:17 the mouth of mines that are used and a lot of wind power, like 25 I believe. Wow. Check, all these numbers I'm throwing out, they're not, like these are my, off top my head. I'll go to the IEA
1:01:25 and pull up North Dakota's Energy Matrix. Yeah, don't take the best of the word of God, go check me as everybody should, whenever anybody throws out numbers. Yeah, that's right, it's EIA,
1:01:33 what's still on? Yeah, EIA is the US, IEA is - They have all the cool charts. Yeah, cool charts. I'll pull up the North Dakota EIA Energy Mix. Yeah, go check it out. But yeah, I mean, so
1:01:43 yeah, if there is a world in which, you know, solar panels are everywhere and wind turbines everywhere, like, I don't, I wouldn't like that, just like how I don't necessarily like seeing pump
1:01:51 jacks everywhere, right? I'd rather they're being more space for nature. But again, I'd rather, it's very different from, this is going to happen. Therefore accommodate ourselves to reality.
1:02:03 And this is not a fatalistic thing either though. It means like you're saying with your things, like take the act, do the things that you think should happen in your small set of your reality,
1:02:14 whether it's with your wife, your kids, your community, et cetera, be a good person. Try to do what little things you can do about the things you care about in your little way. And don't sweat
1:02:25 too much, the global things, 'cause you can't really change that, but you can do things, there are a lot of things that we can do right now. You, the listener, in your life, that can make the
1:02:35 world a little bit better,
1:02:38 so. Yeah, beautiful. I think you have a healthy, moderate
1:02:43 take on things. You've worked on both sides literally,
1:02:47 and you're 100 factually correct and not wrong. Oh, I wouldn't say that, but I don't know, I try to be rigorous I want, yeah, I think truth and reality is very important. I'm trying to be
1:02:59 rigorous about what you do and you don't know, and I think that's extremely important just 'cause if you don't do that, then you're gonna make up problematic solutions to problems that may not even
1:03:09 exist. And yeah, you're just not gonna be effective. Yeah, unironically, everything is so radical these days that this boring, this boring, moderate take is refreshing. And
1:03:22 it's just the healthy way to look at things. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Less wrapped things up with North Dakota, where you live for some reason.
1:03:33 So, thinking like on a scale of our audience, like who don't know anything, North Dakota is big because of it when Basin Bakken the
1:03:40 comes
1:03:43 to energy. So maybe fill in that and compare it
1:03:48 to Texas and I don't know. Also, North Dakota, beautiful state, I love it there. I've been to the National Park up there, the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. North Dakota is one of many
1:04:00 states that get like, everyone's like, who lives there? What's there? It's boring. It's like, no, go there. I love it. So with that, say, you know, infrastructure-wise, what's also great
1:04:11 about this state. Yeah, so North Dakota, 800, 000 people live in the state, but have quite large states. So very - They got a second least populated state. I think it's, yeah, I think it's
1:04:21 second or something. Like Wyoming, North Dakota I think first is Alaska, then Wyoming, and then North Dakota. So very not dense. But as you know, from an energy perspective, the reason that
1:04:31 it's on the map is because of the Bakken Shale within the Williston Basin, was a one of the big initial uses of fracking for oil production in particular. That boom happened around 2010, 2011. A
1:04:44 lot of companies realized, oh, this is a great place to go and produce. Oil production is huge there. It's now the third largest producing state in the US behind Texas and New Mexico. Used to be
1:04:55 number two people up there a little salty about it because now the Permians out in New Mexico and it's a they surpassed us, but such is life
1:05:02 Yeah, so it's been a pretty it's been I mean oil oil and gas productions or oil production No oil and gas production's been hurt occurring there since 1951. So it's been a well. It's been a long
1:05:10 time, but really post shale revolution Facking is when it's really really boomed energy is quite strong up there. Lots of people obviously very cold It's for those of you don't know where it is
1:05:22 geographically. It's like right in the center of the country Far this north state right next right below Canada. It's in the middle of the Great Plains So summers are hot they can get into the
1:05:30 hundreds, but it's dry. So it doesn't feel like anything to me I'm being from Houston. Winter's gets very cold Can get into the negative 50s sometimes with wind so it's a tough place, but people
1:05:41 up there are super nice I really like them. They are So they mentioned I grew up in Houston one of the biggest cities in the US tons of people everywhere up there kind of the opposite I live in
1:05:50 Williston, which is a town of about 30, 000 people. Midland Odessa of North Dakota, main oil field town. And people in North Dakota are just, they're nice, they're chill. I get along very well
1:06:02 because of the oil and gas connection, a lot of Texans, like shared culture. They also did a lot of ranching back in their day, so shared Texas culture as well, both from the energy production
1:06:11 side, as well as oil and gas. Agriculture is also a huge thing up there. Biggest wheat producing state in the US, lots of soybean, canola, other sorts of seed oil production. Oh gosh, I use
1:06:23 the words, don't Don't don't don't slam me in and out. Okay. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's really good.
1:06:31 But yeah, it's it's cool. And in terms of culturally, I so one, I've never been in Midland Odessa. So I don't know what the Permian's like, but like North Dakota. Yeah, probably. Don't shoot
1:06:42 me anybody from Midland Odessa, but it's it's very interesting. I mean, seeing being from Houston, the white collar, you know, The guys who are calling the shots part of the industry and going
1:06:53 and being in a place where actual work is being done has been been quite clarifying and quite informative about one, the effects and impacts of oil and gas production on places that boom. Obviously,
1:07:04 it's made the state really rich, like there's that really rich state. Lots of big, big funds for schools and whatnot coming from oil and gas royalties, but there's also trade-offs, right? People
1:07:15 in Willston who've been there longer than the boom, like remember that when the boom happened, it was really like Wild West kind of stuff. Lots of young men making lots of money, lots of alcohol,
1:07:23 lots of women, lots of crime. Things have calmed down now. But yeah, you see the pros and cons of being in a boom town for sure. It's the boom town culture. Yeah, boom town culture. But
1:07:36 another great thing is there are lots of young families. North Dakota has the second highest total fertility rate in the nation behind South Dakota at two point something, which means there are tons
1:07:46 of kids around there lots of young families with like it's normal to see kids with. families with three plus kids. Horny estate. Yeah, horny estate, that's for sure. And there's so much
1:07:55 infrastructure for it up there. Like kids run around the street. I wouldn't, you wouldn't see any kids run around the streets down in Houston, right? You'd get like CPS call it in you two seconds.
1:08:02 Up there, it's just normal. They're driving when they're like 12. Right, yeah, they're doing things like one note, that's kind of a non-sequitur. But in Williston, like the neighborhood
1:08:13 streets, they don't have stop signs. They don't have anything. Unmarked intersections Because of how few people there are driving around. But you would never, I've been seen any place like that
1:08:23 in Houston. So when I first came and counted, I was like,
1:08:27 how do I drive here? Apparently the rule is you're supposed to yield to the person to your right, but that's not really what happens. People just kind of laugh. The rolling stops. Yeah. North
1:08:36 Dakota is the only place where I went to a gas station, and you just go up to the pump and take it out and put it in. And then you go inside to the cashier and say, hey, I just filled out my car.
1:08:48 Interesting, I need to hit up that gas station. That's interesting. I was in the middle of the state. Okay. 'Cause I was traveling from like Williston to the, like, or is it Davidson or?
1:08:60 Dickinson? Dickinson. I was traveling from Dickinson to like, you know, South Dakota, what's the? Rapid City. Rapid City? Yeah, the Black Hills. Yeah, okay. So in, I was like in that
1:09:11 transition. So, and like running out of gas. It's so fun, it's a weird, like, it's just like grid, like large country road grids. And then the geography changes so drastically. Yeah. It's so
1:09:24 interesting. Yeah, it's right on the boundary. I would say like North Dakota is right on the boundary of the, between the Midwest and the beginning of the West. So like Western North Dakota,
1:09:32 very West. Badlands, beautiful. My idea of North Dakota when I first went up there was the east side of the state, which is just like regular farmlands, boring, flat. Western North Dakota is
1:09:41 beautiful. Right, that's what I hype up. I mean, Fargo is like the big city of North Dakota. Part East of Minnesota. Right next to Minnesota, yeah. That's not what I'm pitching on. I'm
1:09:51 pitching North Dakota. I'm picturing. Yeah. Yeah, what we basically just talked about. Yeah. The Badland, the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the way like the terrain is, it's so
1:10:00 interesting. Yeah, it's - I recommend it, highly. Highly, the sunsets and sunrises are stupendous out there. The bison, I mean, that's the best, that's the big draw with the park. Quick
1:10:09 story, I was backcountry camping. And so like I slept in like 20 degree weather and a tent, I was crazy listening to like prairie dogs all night who sound like they're like being stabbed. Like
1:10:22 they're like screaming in the horrifying way. Oh my God. And then coming across a herd of bison on the trail and there was like a hundred of them. Yeah. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm like
1:10:33 probably a hundred yards away from them. And I have to just like kind of go all the way around with that radius. And the whole time I was walking around them, the herd was slowly shifting. Yeah,
1:10:43 they were looking at you And I was like, am I going to die in North Dakota? No, that's their defensive posture. So they hurt up and they'll look at the. In this case, they thought you were a
1:10:52 wolf or something and they're like getting their horns ready for if you come after them and try to get their babies that are in the depths of the herd, the first one's gonna gore you. Wow. Yeah.
1:11:02 They're magnificent creatures. I saw wild horses. Yep, tons of wild horses down there. Actually kind of an overabundance of wild horses. Really? Yeah, and they're federally protected by not the
1:11:13 Endage Species Act, but a previous wild, I think it was actually a wild horse act in particular That makes it really hard to like, even sell them to people, especially to kill them. Which again,
1:11:24 like wild horses are cool, but when you don't have predators around to manage populations and you can't shoot them, there's some issues there. Yeah. But yeah, I think it's great. I didn't know
1:11:33 what to expect, but I've really appreciated the region and the people and the beauty of it. This would be my first door to go to winter though. So we'll see what happens. I'm a little scared.
1:11:42 I've been hyping myself up saying, Hey, I'm gonna treat it like a Texas summer. You know, just like go in the car, go out, but also I'm going to get like five hours of sunlight a day, which is
1:11:53 a big, I'm a big sunlight guy. So that'll be probably the biggest drawback of the cold and not again, I've never lived in a winter climate. I've been back and forth to North Dakota past few years,
1:12:01 but this is our first time being there full time.
1:12:05 So it'll be interesting for sure. And I'll let you know next time I come on the podcast. Hey, how North Dakota is. Yeah, no idea. You haven't lived through it yet. Yeah. It's a long story Um,
1:12:15 I was working remote jobs before this job and we, my wife and I split time between Houston and North Dakota. Um, so during the tech summers, we'd be up in North Dakota during the winter we'd be on
1:12:23 Texas. Perfect. Yeah. Just like, just like New York and Florida, but instead Texas and North Dakota. No, I love that. Right. Oh, yeah. Great comparison. Right. But now I have a couple of
1:12:30 kids and, um, remote work, uh, died in a lot of ways. So I was like, yeah, we have a house up there. So gonna hang out there for a few years and see what happens after that. So. Yeah.
1:12:41 Probably the schools probably aren't good up in North Dakota So yeah, that's it.
1:13:46 just like randomly, which never happens. Or never, like I can count on my two hands the number of times in Houston that I was just like out somewhere and I saw somebody I knew, which is kind of
1:13:54 crazy, right? Even though I grew up in the city for like 20 and lived in it for like 26, 27 years of my life. So that's a huge plus and people are nice.
1:14:05 Yeah, it's a well-run state overall, like roads are great. So lots to say. Also, if you need a job, go to North Dakota. If you have a pulse, you'll get a job It's, there's so much work there,
1:14:17 but there are so few people who wanna live in North Dakota that they need workers and you get paid a lot. So yeah, for any of you unemployed listeners who need a job, go to North Dakota and you'll
1:14:28 get one. Nice. I know, this is officially gonna be our longest episode. So congratulations on that. Awesome, beat the record. So I wanted you to give a shout out to your wife and I'm gonna pull
1:14:43 it up here where there's a heat. Your wife's been on Chuck Yates podcast, that's our most watched podcast in our collide umbrella. You wanna maybe talk about her a little bit as we wrap up here?
1:14:55 Yeah, absolutely, yeah. My wife's awesome, so her name is Alma Valerio now, but in your musician life, she goes by Alma Cook, 'cause that was her maiden name. She's in the industry as well.
1:15:04 She owns her own business that does safety compliance for small contractors, trying to work on sites like your electricians, your plumbers, roused about companies who need to prove to operators,
1:15:14 hey, we have policies for X, Y, or Z thing. We track injuries in certain ways. We've acknowledged that we need to wear steel toe, or we need to wear slip resistant footwear during the winter,
1:15:24 stuff like that. So she manages the software platform, the software systems for those contractors where basically data is uploaded, that contractors can then go and assess their contractors to see
1:15:34 like, okay, they're doing the things we need them to do to work. Has a little boutique consulting business that does very well.
1:15:41 She's also a singer songwriter, musician.
1:15:45 Neo Sol is her genre, sort of RB stuff. But what really made her famous in North Dakota and in the oil and gas generator? Well, North Dakota oil and gas for sure. She's famous, other parts, who
1:15:56 knows. Is this song called5, 000 Candles that she wrote? That's about flares in the Bakken for when she first got in the industry and started visiting and she, you know, as artists do have sort
1:16:07 of mystical or interesting experiences and like, wow, that's something. Great song. Yeah, so she does that, raises our two kids 'cause her business, she's automated so much of that on work.
1:16:17 She works like maybe five hours a week, five to 10 hours. Does a lot of music education work up in Williston? Like she runs a monthly open mic for targeted high schoolers, people below the age of
1:16:27 drinking. So they can go and do music 'cause most of the place up there for drinkers and you can't get in and can't do your music. So she does that. She runs these music intensives again in
1:16:37 Williston to teach people not so much about like how to play guitar, instruments or how to sing, but what are some professional tips for people about, if you'd want to do this as a career, what's
1:16:48 the reality of it? It sounds sexy from the outside, but being a musician is a very hard thing to do. So she's an amazing woman, very blessed to be married to her. She is brilliant, super sharp,
1:17:01 kind, generous, brings order, goodness all around her. So I highly recommend my wife getting to know her. She's cool, so. Recommend your wife. Yeah, recommend my wife, she's great. She's
1:17:10 mine though, so nobody else can have it Not that kind of recommendation. Not that kind of recommendation. Recommend to be friends with, yeah for sure. There you go. All right, last question.
1:17:17 What's coming first? Earth population, nine billion? North Dakota population, one million.
1:17:26 Wow, that's a great question. So one million North Dakota versus nine billion.
1:17:34 Hmm. Honestly, I'm gonna say nine billion, I think is first. Unfortunately. Unfortunately first This world is producing. Right, it's producing and people, I mean, it's a great, again, it's
1:17:45 a great place to live, but the winter, the weather is just extremely, it's hard. It's very hard to deal with that. And it's, it filters for kinds of people, you know, people joke about it,
1:17:55 the winter keeps the riffraff out, which I think is, it has actually true in a lot of ways, 'cause you gotta be a tough person to live up there, community minded too. So, yeah,
1:18:04 I don't know, I don't see North Dakota, again, we can go check the projections and whatever, not that I necessarily believe it, but I think nine billion first And I think North Dakota will
1:18:13 probably stay below one million for a long time. I know, and how many people are actually like permanent residents? How many people are like snowbirds or where the term is or literally work
1:18:22 seasonally for the work in the Bakken? Right, exactly. They're in Fargo, but live in Minnesota side. Yeah, there's a lot of people who come and work for a while and leave, a lot of transients,
1:18:32 especially in Williston, because you can go and make money, but that's not everybody's ideal is to live in North Dakota full time. But for the people who do live there and love it, you know,
1:18:42 because of the community feel, 'cause of the natural beauty.
1:18:46 And some people even appreciate winter weather, which is kind of crazy, but yeah, it's good. I like it too, but I don't know if I like North Dakota winter weather, but I'll get back to you.
1:18:55 Yeah, well that 20 degree night in the tent, let's just say it wasn't the best, so. Right, exactly. And think about doing that in like negative 30, and then see what happens. Exactly. All
1:19:04 right, well, let's wrap it up with your shout out to your podcast, and we'll say our goodbyes Yeah, sounds good. See, I run a media project called discern Earth, focused on seeking to make
1:19:17 sense of life on Earth as the general tagline. As a podcast, I have a lot of cool interviews on there. We explore things like philosophy, theology, career, biography, like why people do what
1:19:28 they do is kind of the gist of it, focused on people who work in climate, who work in environmental topics, things like that. I think it's pretty cool stuff. I also am working on doing my own
1:19:38 writing.
1:19:44 By heart, I'm a writer, but somehow get busy. And you know how it is being a creative person, where you want to do these things, but then you somehow life gets away from you. But I'm starting to
1:19:48 write more for that. It's discernedearth. If you can go check it out on the interwebs. And yeah, I'm gonna be doing more of some more podcasts probably. Got a lot of interesting people I wanna
1:19:59 talk to, but trying to figure out the best way to produce it 'cause unlike you, Jacob, my favorite part of the day is not
1:20:08 editing media for hours on end. I wanna have the conversation and then just bounce. There you go. Cool, well, thanks for coming on.