Week Recap: Minerals, Politics, and the Energy Game

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Michael Tanner: [00:00:10] What’s going on, everybody? Welcome into a special edition of the Saturday, January 11th, 2025, edition of the Daily Energy News. Beat Stand up. We’ve got a hey was a heck of a week. Still a long week. The team has picked out top stories from this week. I had a solo show on Monday that I just got all worked up about. I was throwing my it was it was a pretty wild one. You know, it’s bad when you get a text from your mom saying maybe drink a little less coffee before you start firing off these solo shows. So I didn’t really work. I’m still going to drink them out of coffee, but we appreciate the feedback. It was a busy week. Still busy week. [00:00:45][34.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:46] Unbelievable. The news, everything from Donald Trump trying to buy Alaska. No, he already bought that. So, I mean, we’re talking Greenland and everything else. He’s you can’t buy this kind of entertainment. [00:00:59][13.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:01] No. If we buy Canada, I’m going to Calgary. We’re shooting a live show from Calgary. I promise you that. [00:01:06][5.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:06] I just want to say this for all the movie stars that moved to Canada when President Trump got a. [00:01:13][6.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:13] Long goodbye and now. [00:01:15][1.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:15] He’s taking control of it again. The joke’s on you guys. [00:01:20][4.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:22] The joke is on you guys. Well, we’re going to go ahead and kick it over to the team quickly, though, guys. As always, we got to pay the bills. This show is sponsored Energy Newsweek.com, the best place for your energy in oil and gas news, the news and analysis that you’re, quote unquote here from this is all brought to you by said website. I’m suing the team do a tremendous job with that website, making sure it stays up to speed so you can be the tip of the spear when it comes to the energy and the oil and gas business. Go ahead and check out the description below for all links to the timestamp and links to the articles, please subscribe to us on substack. The best way to support the Show. We are starting to roll out some paid only subscriber articles. We’ve got two up so far one on the Jones Act and another on the infamous Mines Mineral model, which does some critical minerals transition estimation in awesome white paper. We spent a lot of time working on that, so please go check that out. We’ve got our third white paper that we’re dropping, which is an add on to that mines mineral model, which basically says, okay, given the results of this critical minerals model, is there some interesting investment decisions that we could glean from that? We don’t give investment advice, but we do give some interesting tidbits there. So please go subscribe the energy news. Be that a substack.com. You can also check us out on YouTube, Spotify and iTunes. Give us a five star review and a follow there if you can. But guys, we’ll let you get out of here. I’m going to throw it over the team. We’ll see you Monday. [00:02:44][82.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:45] Okay. Let’s start with our buddies over there in Germany. We you and I have had our laugh with Sergeant Charles. I mean, Chancellor Charles. [00:02:52][7.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:53] I see nothing. [00:02:53][0.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:54] I see nothing he is begged for. Let me start with this. You go green energy policies, you go physically broke. Regimes change if you don’t get low cost natural gas back in German purchases of Russian uranium. Serge, the side note to this, Michael, is Germany shut down all of their nuclear reactors and they have not failed to turn them back on yet, but they’re already buying uranium. What happens when people don’t have low cost energy regimes change? Germany dramatically increased its uranium imports in 2024, bringing in 68.8 tons, a 70% jump in increase. Considering their reactors are shut down, do you see them applying to get them turned back on here pretty quick? [00:03:50][55.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:50] Well, they’re going to they’re going to need to because if you’re talking about this, the whole critical minerals space and we’ll we’ll talk a little bit more in the transition about some critical minerals stuff that we’re dropping on our Substack is a little bit of a tease there. But if if you’re going to move to a new killer era, if that’s what needs to happen, this stuff is critical. And if if all of a sudden now you’re you go from, well, we can’t import natural gas from Russia. But now we need to increase uranium. It’s like, well, what do you. It’s the same thing. There’s no difference. [00:04:26][35.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:27] So anyway, I got really tickled. And when I had talked about this before, German MP The minister calls for Nord Stream to be reactivated. This is following last week’s rumors that the from the Slovak president, Michael, said, by the way, this is being set up for a U. S company to buy the Nord Stream. For our listeners who don’t know what Nord Stream is, Nord Stream is from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea that President Biden alluded to him, making sure that it would not be in service. Now there is one of those pipelines still capable. I have talked to George Macmillan about this, and Germany is really needing a low cost Russian natural gas in order to survive. They have been de industrialized. They’ve they’ve lost BASF, their fertilizer plant. They’ve lost their they’ve shut down their steel mills. They have shut down several v v w they have lost all this stuff. They are on the borderline of total collapse. Ukraine drives the energy price up further by stopping the transit of Russian natural gas pipeline in Europe, Dougan wrote Exxon Thursday, complaining the German government and the EU are happily watching the destruction of the European industry due to high energy prices. Michael This also brings up the interview that I did with George. We are seeing the potential destruction of NATO and the EU coming around out of this. This is huge. [00:06:15][108.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:16] This is huge. And my question to you is, how does Nord Stream fit in with the negotiations that are going to happen starting January 21st with the new administration? Where does Nord Stream fit in with all that? [00:06:28][12.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:29] Outstanding question, Michael. President Trump is sitting back over here going. The whole reason Biden and his interfering agent, three letter agencies that I don’t want to mention because it gets us thrown off of certain things. They’ve been interfering with governments and in elections. George Macmillan has brought this great point out. If President Trump allows the purchase of a U.S. to end, let’s say the war is ended, Germany can buy that existing pipeline that is still there and they can turn it on immediately. They can get cheap Russian natural gas. But President Trump then would control how fast the other ones come on. So it’s still a geopolitical control issue that is at play. Holy smoke, bad man. And when you have President Trump saying, I want you to buy LNG for me or I’m going to tariff everything out of the EU. Holy smokes. This is a gigantic discussion. [00:07:36][67.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:37] And I love that. But do we have enough LNG export capacity to meet that demand? That’s what I think is interesting and not to get us off top, but you know, everybody keeps asking me, you know, drill, baby, drill. What’s Trump going to do to oil prices? Well, in my opinion. And then we’ll get into a little bit later some of optimism for the oil business. But drill, baby, drill is code for deregulation. And deregulation really has more to do with pipelines and LNG export terminals than it does with drilling. We’ll get into a little bit more at sign of optimism. [00:08:08][31.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:10] Biden Poised to Announce Offshore Drilling Ban to Appease the Green Lobby. I’m talking to David Blackmon on Tuesday. On this one, he and I are going to do a deep dive on our podcast and we’re going to sit down and go over this. This is a double barreled middle finger from the president of the United States. Biden has stuck it to the American people. And this is going to be a painful thing for Trump to get undone. President Joe Biden is reportedly preparing to restrict offshore drilling, oil and gas drilling in his final days of office, a move that would placate the environmentalist lobby and potentially obstruct President elect Donald Trump’s plan to unleash the energy sector. Here’s where the Chevron deference does mean it’s okay, but we have a lot of judges and Obama and Biden judges that can delay this forever. And drill, baby, drill is not. Drill, baby, drill, drill, baby, drill is drill. When fiscally responsible and when the courts allow. That is a huge difference on this. And I find it totally despicable that the Biden administration handlers are doing this because we know that Biden is only trying to think of what his depends are for or if he’s having ice cream because it is nothing to do with the government. [00:09:35][85.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:35] And and to be clear, this is obviously only over federal land you’re talking about the coast is California and mainly Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. I find interesting, though, Stu, here’s this quote from the article. While many of the Biden administration’s energy policies will be relatively easy to reverse, the reportedly forthcoming offshore drilling decline will be permanent and difficult to revoke because it is enabled by a law that permits presidents to protect federal waters from drilling without clearly allowing them to walk back prior designations. And that’s all according to Bloomberg News. And so that’s the part that just blocks. Blows my mind. It’s easy to enact. The president has the authority to enact this law. But why then doesn’t he have the authority or the new president have the authority to roll the decree back? That’s what I don’t understand. [00:10:20][44.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:20] I don’t know. But I’m going to ask David Blackman. And David and I are going to cover this. So this is just huge politics. [00:10:25][5.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:10:26] Biden bans new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters. Super interesting. I’m going to read a little bit from the article here. President Biden has begun taking executive action in his final days to protect more than 625 million acres of American ocean from offshore drilling. The White House announced early Monday as if they had listened to our show that we recorded Sunday afternoon, said, we’ve got to get out ahead of these guys. They’re in front of us here. The move to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters includes the entire East Coast, eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific, off the coast of Washington, Oregon, California and additional portions of the North Bering Sea in Alaska, where future oil and gas leasing could not take place. Here’s a quote from President Biden himself. My decision reflects what coastal community businesses and beachgoers have known for a long time that drilling off these coasts would cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs. I, to be honest, slightly half of that quote I don’t disagree with mainly when he says unnecessary to meet our energy needs, but I’ll get back to it. So I’ll give him a pass there. This next quote is, is where we go off the rails as the climate crisis continues to threaten our communities. Yes, we’re threatened, folks. Remember, you got a gun to your head. It’s just unpleasant. As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy. I don’t know what transition he’s talking about, but clearly he you know, something’s going on in his mind there. Now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren. You know, when he means grandchildren, he means the grandbaby that he’s denying is really is great. If you want to know more about that, look that up. But I’m throwing this offline here. I’m busy today, folks. But this is you know, obviously this is a complete as the title says, it’s completely political in the fact that, you know, he’s got to throw some red meat to his constituents to, you know, secure up his legacy so that when he goes and builds his $4 billion presidential library, he could say he stood up to the big bad oil companies. He fixed climate change. He banned drilling on 625 acres of offshore lands that we had no oil. And that’s the funny part. So if you dive in specifically to where he actually didn’t, you know, he’d be banned this drilling. Let’s go back. Where did he ban it from? Will he. So he banned it on the East Coast. Okay. So like North Carolina, Virginia, all that jazz, eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific off the coast of Washington, Oregon, California, and additional portions in the North Bering Sea, which you couldn’t drill for oil and gas anyway. So where exactly is all the offshore activity? Well, if you look at a map, what’s funny is the majority of the U.S. offshore production is central and western Gulf of Mexico, which remains unaffected by the ban. So, as always, it’s a look at me now. Look what I’m doing. I’m protecting the environment, but I’m not really protecting anything that would be drilled any time soon. I don’t know anybody clamoring to go drill some very deep offshore Atlantic wells. No one wants to do that. No one’s clamoring to go drill next offshore Oregon. No one’s really clamoring to go drill a winter. Well, up in the North Bering Sea Strait, you know, you might end up on on the Deadliest Catch because you catch you catch something a little, you catch something more than just fish. What’s what’s interesting, though, is that keep and Biden has actually gone ahead and okayed some lease sales in a three year span basically. And in 23 he approved sales in 25 this year, 27 and 2029. It is the minimum that they could legally offer. And, you know, basically the reason why he did that is because under a 2022 climate law, the government must offer at least 60 million acres of offshore oil and gas leases in any one year period before it can offer offshore wind leases. So a little give here, a little red meat there, a little red meat there. And don’t forget that President Biden was the one that okayed the Willow project, which really put his, quote unquote, climate legacy at risk. So he again threw out a little red meat to his constituency. It’s again, it’s politics, politics, politics. Much like real estate, location, location, location. This move is all about politics. He says a lot, but doesn’t actually do anything. If that isn’t the theme of President Biden’s administration, I don’t know what. It’s not doing much. Just kind of they’re talking some words that don’t really make sense. Pretty unbelievable. But he does go ahead and do this. You did hear it first from the Swami, a.k.a. Stuart Kerley here on this show the day before. So, folks, that’s why you tune into the show. It’s clearly not for the jokes. It’s for our hard hitting analysis on this stuff. But, you know, I think the interesting part is no one is really sure how President Trump. UN do this. And part of the reason why I think Biden did this and he pick where he did pick is so that Trump just says it’s okay, we wouldn’t drill there anyway. I’m good. You know, I don’t you know, you don’t you don’t see the president of Chevron standing up and saying we were about to go drill a deep offshore Atlantic. Well, you know, all you’ve got is the CEO of the American Petroleum Institute who’s got to do this because he’s an oil and gas lobbyist. Say American voters send us a clear message in support of domestic energy. Well, and yet the current administration is using its final days in office to cement a record of doing everything that is possible. Scripted. I mean, he’s true. It is true. Now, again, look under the hood a little bit. Nothing’s really going on. But Mike Summers presidency over that aspect, doing what he gets paid to do. So, you know, he’s got a cat. Got to show something for cashing that nice paycheck he’s getting. [00:15:54][328.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:15:55] Why would President Trump want to annex Greenland? Is it for the weather or for the critical minerals? Let me guess. [00:16:01][6.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:16:02] Is he. I don’t know. That’s a tough one. Can you help you explain it to me? [00:16:07][5.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:07] Well, when you take a look if you look in the article, we have Russia right over the Arctic and then you have Greenland and you have Canada. My father had an emergency when he was flying a B 47 on nuclear alert and had to dump all of his fuel and land in Greenland and almost ran off. The runway is a very short runway in Greenland, by the way. So if you take a look, it is right there. And for our national security interest in the presser today, President Trump was standing there and he says there’s all these Russian boats and there’s all these Chinese boats. China has actually started a mining company and it has been mining critical minerals in Greenland, stealing them pretty much, and almost nothing. And it is amazing. I also embedded in here from Donald Trump Junior, a little bit of a town hall that they had in there. And all the Danish people were like, we’re in Guam. So this is absolutely, I did nothing. This was all there. So I ask on X, I ask group, what kind of minerals are there? Lithium, graphite, no, b m, platinum group metals. Titanium. Cobalt. Zirconium. Uranium, iron ore. Zinc. Gold. This is like exactly what we need. But I want to go on record. Michael. We do not need to be strip mining that up there without taking care of the environment, even if it is more expensive. And we don’t need to have whales doing the work. I know you don’t have a high, you know, a high regard for whale life, but I have a high regard for children and the environment. And I think that we would be better at it than China or in, you know, looking at how that it’s all about the critical minerals, but it’s also the ships. I agree with President Trump on this. I think it’s going to be kind of interesting. [00:18:02][114.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:02] Well, I think this article also points out Green Lives Matter, Ultra Frog 17. I love this tweet here. The reason why President Trump wants to buy Greenland, it’s all about his trade war with China. And this is where I think and I completely agree with this analysis here, it’s got nothing to do with, in my opinion, strategic military capabilities. I mean, sure, we we’ve already got a base there, so we may make a base. Maybe we can make the base a little bigger. The former who knows it all for the critical minerals. And it really has more to do with hurting China than helping us. I mean, all these critical minerals are theoretically used for the energy transition we’re about to cover. Two stories would Trump said, we ain’t doing the energy transition any more. So why do we need these minerals if we don’t aren’t going to use them for all of the stuff? Because Trump’s about the bad at all? Wait a second. It’s because it’s all part of the economic war with China. Now, personally, I’d rather get into an economic war with China than a hot war with China. Exactly. We get into no war with China. But if we got to do something, at least make it there. So that’s my read on all this. [00:19:09][66.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:09] Well, we also need the critical minerals because like we talked about on the Monday show, you know, gallium, we don’t air the whatever there was for the the minerals that we don’t even have that. Trump says he wants no wind turbines built in his administration. Michael, if you had asked me on our Sunday show that we recorded if I had this on my bingo card this week, would Trump buy Greenland and would he ban windmills? No, I did not. This is a quote from today’s presser. We are going to have a policy where no windmills are being built, Trump said in a lengthy tirade against wind power during a conference at his Mar a Lago resort in Florida. I did not write that. That was from the article. They litter our country, Trump said. Nobody wants them in there. Very expensive. Here’s where. If they were fiscally responsible and they actually work, I’d be almost all in on them because it would reduce fossil fuels. But they’re not fiscal. Fully responsible from day one. And then the waste. These things have now he is not picking a fight, Michael. This needs to be known. He’s not picking a fight with the solar industry because he knows the solar panels are okay. So he’s kind of drawing a line in the sand box between wind and solar, and he’s kind of going, I’m going to take our wind at this road. I did not see that one coming. [00:20:31][81.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:20:32] Well, because you could argue that solar has some use. There is a sliver of use, in my opinion. Wind has no use. No, the only thing wind is I mean, there’s two reasons why wind is good. One, offshore wind kills the whales. We know. We love that. And number two, I mean, to some of these, there are some farms and this is in Oklahoma. Kansas. [00:20:53][20.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:20:54] I got a whale oil pod calling in right now. [00:20:56][2.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:20:56] Eat is calling and they’re shutting it down, demand it dies. But you also have to realize there is a small segment of the ranching community in north Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas that does rely on the surface use damages and relies on this for revenue. So I don’t know how you use it. Obviously, he’s saying no more should be built. There’s about I was looking this up today. There’s about 8 to 10GW of wind power already approved and in the process of being built. So who knows what happens that but there is a small sliver of revenue that does go to these landowners who, you know, need it, especially if you’re living in a place that, you know, it’s hard to ranch you, you your crops don’t really grow. How else do you make money through a wind farm? I wouldn’t do it. But, you know, you paid me enough money. I throw a wind farm in my backyard and. [00:21:42][46.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:21:42] You know, and it’s a big problem that we’re about to see in the next five years. My goal is that the wind farms that are out there that go broke, who cleans that crap up? It’s about $500,000 per windmill to take it down and get it out of there. Who’s going to recommend the land? It’s about to be a huge issue. Europe reacts to Trump’s threat to Greenland. You can, by the head popping around the world. Borders nice must not be moved by force, a spokesperson for the German government said on Wednesday. Coming from the German blitzkrieg government, there is no question the EU is letting other nations in the world who they ever may be attacking sovereign borders. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen urged caution. Tuesday night is a very close ally of the United States. I think there’s reason to welcome the growing American interest, but it must be done in a way that respects the Greenlandic people, she told Danish media. I think the Danish folks, the Greenland people, Greenlandic people are excited. I think that they would definitely be all in. And when you take a look at the geostrategic importance of Greenland, I’m all in because it would stop the strip mining that the Chinese are already doing. So I’m in. [00:23:03][80.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:23:03] Yeah, it is weird to think about that. We’re obviously not going to take military force to Greenland did to say that’s going to happen. That’s just it’s disingenuous now. Or would we put pressure on Greenland to possibly vote to get out of Denmark’s control and come to the U.S.? Maybe. I think the issue is Greenland wants to become an independent nation regardless. Now the question is, do they have enough revenue? I mean, do they have enough of an economy to do that with all of their natural minerals? The answer is yes. It’s part of the reason why, again, the United States wants it. They want all that money. It’s again, going back to it’s all about money. You know, it’s not about, we’d love to have the Greenlandic people is part of it. We could give a hoot about those people for the money. [00:23:44][40.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:23:45] And let’s take a little bit of a walk in history here for a second. The Panama Canal. The Panama Canal was Panama was actually owned by Colombia in that area. Down in there, it was a different country and we wanted the canal. So what did we do? We started a government. We forced a new voluntarily new government of Panama. And we interfered in there until we got our Panama. And when we got the new government, we got the canal. So we have done that in the past. [00:24:19][34.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:24:20] Yeah, no, absolutely. So it’s very interesting to see. [00:24:20][0.0][1429.2]

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