Daily Energy Standup Episode #196 – Energy Insights: Refinery Shutdown, BRICS Expansion, and US Grid Vulnerabilities

The original BRICS economic alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa has expanded today.  During the summit held in South Africa, the group which is home to about 40% of the world’s population […]

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

Michael Tanner: [00:00:15] What is going on. Everybody, welcome into another edition of the Daily Energy News Beat stand up here on this gorgeous Monday, August 28th, 2023. As always, I’m your humble correspondent, Michael Tanner, coming to you from an undisclosed location here in Dallas, Texas, joined by the executive producer show, the purveyor of the show and the director and publisher of the world’s greatest website and our produce become Stuart Turley, My man, How are we doing today? [00:00:37][22.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:37] Hey, you’re doing great. I’m here in an undisclosed location in the bunker, so you got to love it. [00:00:42][4.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:00:42] Yeah, it looks a little better than what we’re dealing with here. Hopefully it’s not thousand degrees where you’re at. We’re still sweating it out here in Dallas. [00:00:48][6.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:49] It’s going to be 80 degrees today. [00:00:51][1.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:00:51] Oh, you got it. You got it. Good there. We got to love Bear Country. We have a fantastic show for you lined up, Stu, as always, brings the fire here after the week. And we hope you guys had a good weekend as well here on this Monday Meetings. They’ll be short, they’ll be quick. Then you’ll be out of here and you’ll be on to the rest of your week. First up on our menu, Biden admins Latest Home Appliance crackdown Ceiling fans. You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s all that needs to be said about this new one. You’ve got to be kidding me. Next up, marathon to shut the third largest U.S. oil refinery after storage tire, fake fire. This is not good. We found out of this actually on Friday’s issues cover what’s going on with marathon. This one is just outright spooky. Stu read China’s threat to the US electric grid. You know the CCP always coming back to earth to screw us like the CIA six ways the sun and we got we’ll end with kind of the back of three stories around BRICS. First up, BRICS will control 80% of the world’s oil production by January 2024. Holy smokes. BRICS economic Bloc expands, adding Iran, Argentina, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Ethiopia. Dun dun dun. We have the fallout from BRICS dual cover that. And then finally, this is a more of a overview article on what this new BRICS expansion is going to bring. BRICS expansion is beneficial, but it also isn’t without strategic challenges still will creep us out over the latest happenings with BRICS will then kick it over to me. I’ll cover quickly what happened in the oil markets this weekend. We were up on Friday of about one percentage points. I’ll quickly cover what’s going on with rig counts and then we’ll let you get on out of here and start your week again. We hope it’s a great one. Before we do all that, guys, remember all the stories and analysis you’re about to hear are brought to you by the world’s greatest website. WWW.EnergyNewsBeat.com The best place for all of your energy news you can check us out Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube subscribe anywhere leave us a review leave a comment. We really appreciate everybody interacting with the show and giving us feedback. You can interact with us [email protected]. Check us out. Dashboard.EnergyNewsBeat.com. It’s our new data news product combo hard at work at V2 guys. So please check it out. There you can find Stu and me both on LinkedIn. Let’s dive right in though. Stu, Where do we want to begin? [00:02:57][125.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:57] Well, let’s go ahead and start with my buddy Biden. You know, I do it better. Do what. [00:03:02][4.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:03] Best Buddy Biden [00:03:03][0.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:04] Oh, my goodness. I do a better Putin imitation than I do. BIDEN Because I don’t want to poop in my pants. Okay, So let’s start here, dude. This is just going to be hilarious. Biden Admin Latest Home Appliance Crackdown Ceiling Fans. They were going after the stoves. New York State has already banned gas and then they released last week we talked about it 48% increase in electricity because of their bans. Let’s go after this one. This rule would require numerous small business fan manufacturers to redesign their products and may put between a ten and 30% of small business ceiling fan manufacturers out of business. This is nuts. It’s a minor change for control for the U.S. to be able to control your food. [00:03:56][52.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:57] According to the Energy Department’s analysis, this new rule will save you $39 over the lifespan of your ceiling fan, which you buy maybe once. [00:04:06][9.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:07] Right? And then $39 and it’s going to add $75 to the cost of it at the front? Absolutely. Your cost of capital means that it’s actually quadrupling the cost. [00:04:20][13.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:04:21] Stupid thing slowly, because the less you can because think about for anyone who doesn’t have an economics degree for this to make sense, the cost of a ceiling fan would have to be less than $39. What’s your average selling price fan right now? Let’s go to Homedepot.com. So what do you think the average price do of a ceiling? 100 bucks. One 2120. Doing this in real time? Let’s see here. I’m going to go 150 because I think I just purchased one. [00:04:44][23.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:45] I did two, but I went cheap. [00:04:46][1.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:04:46] You went show you went the cheap one. The automatic 140 bucks, 375 if you want an ergonomic one. So the point is, guys, this rule is idiotic. Now you can’t The cheapest one is $44. The cheapest one is $44. [00:04:59][12.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:00] Okay. And it it’s about this big for my podcast listeners. I’m holding it up and it’s about 12 inches in long right here. So, you know, when you sit back and take a look, it’s just small. Okay. Now. All of these stories are going to weave in together and it’s going to be fun because our weave that I wear on my head is going to match the storyline. Let’s go to the marathon. Marathon. This one is just a little tough. This one really is kind of like outlying out there. Marathon to shut in third largest U.S. oil refinery after storage tank fire. Our you know, our hearts just go out for anybody in any disaster. Diesel prices rose 5% while futures jumped about four. The outage threatens to delay to deplete already low distillate stockpiles at a time when U.S. demand for the fuel is set to rise going into the harvest and heating season. This is going to impact the southern half of the states, the Midwest, but it’s going to only impact the upper Northeast because they’re still importing from Spain, which is also importing it, which is Russian crude that sanctions. So they’re still on a higher price in the eastern seaboard. [00:06:17][77.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:18] So still that Mississippi River is critical to get commodities up the up to that northeast. It’s a critical juncture point. So this is only going to hurt the consumer. Now, the interesting part is, you know, are they actually going to do an investigation to find out what happened? [00:06:32][14.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:06:33] Or is it I do hope it’s, you know, just a lightning strike at something like that. But, you know, we’re going to move on on that. Our hearts go out to it. We’ll follow it. It’s a big price impact. Michael, I got three stories for for bricks and for our. A little inside baseball on our successful podcast that we have is because of you, your diligence, your millennial outlook on life. And you and I fight I mean, we discuss these stories. [00:07:00][27.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:02] Well, who you were talking about. [00:07:03][1.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:04] You and I argue or discuss about these stories and you are always I have to defend my stories, too. You know, this is built more many lives when I’m doing a story or two, I guess three in here on Rick’s coming around the corner and China’s impacting the U.S. This. [00:07:22][18.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:22] One is some scary stuff. I think we need to start from the top, though. So let’s start with what happened in BRICS. We had we’ve been talking we’ve been scare people for months about BRICS expansion. We’ve been applying for BRICS. I’m sorry to say we did not get approved into BRICS. Who did get approved? Let’s start there. What? [00:07:39][16.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:39] Okay, Miss Producer, could you bring in we’re going to bring in several slides on this for our podcast listeners. The first slide coming around the corner is from our random dude on Substack. And I really I really like Andrew Corbett show and he is a Russian Ph.D. now. He just got his Ph.D. BRICS was originally Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. And in January 2024 they are going to be Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are joining. These 11 countries have combined population of 37 billion people. [00:08:27][47.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:28] 3.7 billion? [00:08:29][0.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:29] Yeah, 37. Sorry, sorry. Thank you for fact checking me in regards to. [00:08:33][3.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:33] Your Oklahoma State education there, folks. [00:08:34][1.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:35] I can’t argue, dude. They they issued me crayons and I for I programed in Fortran on a card D bunch. [00:08:42][6.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:42] So that’s insane. So read me that again. Here, let me get my get this right on top of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. That’s the original BRICS. Now we’ve got Iran, Argentina, UAE, ah, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Ethiopia. How did Ethiopia get in there? [00:08:58][16.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:59] I don’t know, but I guarantee it. They’ve got some AI are rigged. [00:09:03][3.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:03] It’s rigged. The room was rigged. Okay, now. [00:09:07][4.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:09:07] Listen, think about this. The other article is in there and it is now that new composition, Control of 80% of the world oil production. This coincides with Andrew’s article in many ways, but it documents. Now, while this is let me go back to Andrew’s article here. I brought that in just as a particular moment. This is what I said in my publisher’s note. Excellent overview of BRICS expansion. It is clear that the new members are a solidification of the BRICS bank and the global financial model. Changing the other geopolitical implications are significant. The new BRICS bloc will control over 80% of the gas resource, oil and gas reserves. This is effectively ending the United States ability to weaponize that dollar and complete Western cultures falling into decline. I recommend subscribing to Andrew Corbett. You. And a random substack of the day guy newsletter. He is not found in mainstream media. I don’t agree with everything he says, but holy smokes, he brings his A-game there. So here’s where it gets. He brings up the financial part. Mike and Michael and I want your opinion. The BRICS monetary and I’m going to call it the Bricks BLOCK because this is not bricks B+. It’s I’m calling it I created the bricks block because it’s now a block of bricks. Pretty good pun, but it’s the financial bank is going to be most likely the one. And it’s also going to be kind of like the McDonald’s playground, because if you want to join bricks, you’re going to join the bricks monetary system. So it’s like the entry into bricks. You’re going to join their monetary system. They also came out with a note and said, oh, by the way, we’re not going to interfere with the U.S. dollar as the global standard. But he documents in here that it’s going to help accelerate the dollar to India’s ruble, to Russia’s ruble. I mean, it is absolutely going to eliminate the United States as a world bully. Absolutely. [00:11:34][146.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:35] I think the most important part of all of this, you know, first off, there’s nothing funnier than getting to watch Stew read his own writing, because you can just see the you can see him understand the errors that he’s made in writing, in the grammar, and he’s trying to make the sentence make sense. So he’ll go clean that up before everybody sees that first up. Second off, the you brought up the most important part is that BRICS is going to control 80% of the world’s oil production by January 2020. Absolutely insane. I think the fall out from BRICS specifically is you talk about moving to the BRICS currency. I don’t think the BRICS currency is really on the table yet. I think what’s going to happen is exactly what you mentioned. They’re going to shift to probably the wan, maybe the ruble, maybe something been India transaction. But they are going to now, you know, OPEC is essentially dead now. BRICS now probably becomes the major player when it comes to oil and gas prices go up, prices go. And now there’s other interest. It’s going to be interesting, you know, including Ethiopia in there, Argentina, you know, you know, now you’ve got obviously, Brazil was in there before Saudi Arabia. How does Saudi fit in with all of this, specifically with the other geopolitical things around there? I think it’s critical that the United States begins to increase its oil and gas production because this is going to become a problem in the near future if they decide to be like, well, now we’re good on or you know, we’re good on sending on shipments to the U.S., Hey, we’re good on this. I mean, we get a lot we get a lot of our oil from around the world. I mean, yes, Canada in the United States make up the majority of our own domestic consumption, but we still rely on other things. Europe, I think, is in trouble. If I would be scared if I was sitting in Europe right now thinking about how everybody around me is ganging up on me, and if Russia doesn’t get me with the gas now, Saudi might get me with the oil. [00:13:22][106.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:13:22] I’m going to throw this squirrel in it as a very ugly squirrel with big teeth. And so you’ve got not only do we need heavy oil because of our refineries, we if we had the Keystone pipeline, this might not even be an issue. It is that significant. So when you take a look at heavy oil, Brazil, we are sanctioning the snot out of Brazil. Brazil is where we have to get a lot of our heavy oils. Then you take a look at India, Russia, China and everybody else on this. Who are we sanctioning around the world, Michael? Iran, Saudi Arabia. [00:14:01][39.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:02] It’s everybody in BRICS. [00:14:03][0.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:04] Everybody in Rex. This is 100% the cause of the U.S. period. [00:14:10][6.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:11] All I want to know is why did our application of Brexit denied? Do? What did we do wrong? [00:14:17][5.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:18] They did not like my President Biden imitation. They thought I was too close and they thought I was they thought I was okay when I was imitating Putin. [00:14:27][9.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:27] Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. All right. Final one. We got to get back. Let’s end up at the grid. But of course, the grid now involves the CCP, so. Exactly. [00:14:35][7.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:36] Oh, dude, this one has me just airsick. There’s about 16 stats in here. We all know that. I can’t talk about the grid without giving a shout out to our national treasure Meredith thing when she Herbert describes all of this and got me rolling on the grid. Okay, here’s where I didn’t know a lot of this in. Let me go through this. The CCP has buried codes into a lot of our gear. And let me go into this just as a background. 1977, back when I was going to college. I mean, this is kind of frightening. The. New York had the blackout due to a lightning strike in the substation. Michael, this helps set the stone. How fragile the is at this stage that how fragile the the grid is. Riots. Looting occurred in many poor areas. The other thing about 1977 is 1978, the birth rate spiked because everybody was in the darkness. And it is hilarious when you go back in and everybody attributed. So instead you had baby boomers and now you had blackout kids. [00:15:44][68.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:45] Babies. Lots of blackout babies. [00:15:47][1.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:15:48] Okay. Over 200 people died and it cost 250 billion. Then we had that was for the Texas one. Here’s the list. Cyber hacking, Chinese made electrical infrastructure, electromagnetic pulses, open borders, domestic terrorism, natural disasters. All of these have one thing in common Any of our substations, any of our transformers. David Blackman has also covered this a lot. Our supply chain will require years, years to get those parts back on line. Let’s get down into here. In 2019, a £500,000 transformer built by his Zhengzhou Hoch PIN Transformer Company of China. I butchered that, but it’s got to sound fun of China was commandeered by federal authorities after entering the port of Houston. It was trucked to the San Dimas labs in New Mexico. The transformer had built in back door traps that would allow an adversary to shut down the transformer and thus shut down the grid. An estimated 400 Chinese transformers in the U.S. grid due to winning bids that can shut that grid totally down. [00:17:04][75.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:05] It’s spooky. It’s spooky that they have a backdoor into our system. And we’ve seen this before with Weiwei. Not to ship. You know, we’re not talking about energy right now, but it really is energy because Weiwei is providing the infrastructure in, you know, the physical infrastructure in which our our network economy is built off of. You know, they’re you know, they’re spying on us right now, all held to CCP. [00:17:26][21.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:29] Where the the patriarch of hookup. [00:17:32][2.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:17:32] Huh? That’s it. Go ahead. [00:17:33][1.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:17:34] Okay. Electromagnetic pulses implies China had their balloon rolling over and they were documenting our nuclear weapons. They were doing this. It was 100% arranged, in my opinion. Arranged with diaper. Dan That’s pretty funny. Calling that our president diaper. Dan That’s brand new. And so you heard it here second. And so when you sit back and think they’ve been studying this they own the grid, they own all the parts and now they have been letting everybody in through the open border. There is a unbelievable amount of young Chinese men that have been coming through the border that are of military A they’re not with a family. They’re not traveling as immigration. They’re coming and going. We know where the grids are and we know how to go blowing up. All right. So, you know, Sanju said the supreme art of war is to subdue your enemy without fighting. Man. We are like fighting an unarmed opponent. We are so stupid. Okay. [00:18:37][63.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:38] Yes. Now, I do have a feeling that the neo con establishment wants to go to war with China and will do what they can to convince us that we need to go to war with China. So I’m always skeptical of a CIA veteran writing an article on how, you know, we need to go to war with somebody. I’m a little bit skeptical as well. [00:18:58][19.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:58] Let me throw this squirrel at you. And this is a weightlifting squirrel of about £900. They have said and I’m saying the our government, the whole key to this is bringing the U.N. as a peacekeeping force to the United States. They want us to take arms and go nutty. Here’s what’s going to happen right now in Canada. I saw a video last night of U.N. troops in that area where they have all these massive fires. Trudeau has already started that plan. Watch it. If that is true, you’re going to see that is what the Democrats are trying to do to get rid of this with you. [00:19:37][38.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:37] I don’t want war with China. [00:19:38][0.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:39] I don’t I don’t want war with the U.S. I’m a peace keeping, loving kind of guy. But I’m not wearing a mask. [00:19:45][6.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:45] When that’s about me. Trust me, I will not be wearing a mask now. Alex Jones. Right Again. What is it? It is in other news. [00:19:53][7.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:53] Okay. An MP. I’m going to just mention this real quick. NASA’s now putting out they’re saying that now there’s a bunch of new sunspots coming around and everything else. And it’s like when I was watching the weather report this morning and he’s a real. All it takes is one big some suns. It doesn’t even have to be the Chinese. And our grids did. And I mean, it’s like once and I put that in there just just so I could mention that it could be a natural disaster. Prepare for any natural disaster with a 72 and a two month. So you can survive on your own, because we can see that FEMA is not taking care of our great people in Maui. It’s that you have to be able to stand on your own. That’s just my shout out. [00:20:38][45.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:20:38] No, absolutely. Absolutely. So. House Spirit. [00:20:41][3.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:20:43] Wrestling. And for our podcast listeners, I want to apologize on two things and give Michael a shout out if it sounded like Muttley. Back there when I was laughing so hard because I was having a little difficulty reading my own writing. Michael That was an outstanding gig. Thank you very much. In my mind, laughing like Muttley. [00:21:00][17.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:21:02] I was going to I was going to say one way at one. Great. You want to talk about how we could raise money for charity? You inviting in a reading contest would be absolutely unbelievable. Yeah, we’re pretty. [00:21:14][11.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:21:14] Fabulously. [00:21:14][0.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:21:15] Pretty close. The problem is Biden’s got to read your writing and you got to read Biden’s writing. I don’t know what’s worse. [00:21:20][5.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:21:20] I think I’m going to go join. What’s the church that talks in tongues? [00:21:24][3.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:21:25] Scientology. We got to go put you an interview, so I will. Guys, quickly cover finance. There’s not much that happened this week, other weekend, other than we saw oil prices settle, 79, 83. That’s about a 1% increase week over week, which is fairly unfortunately dull considering we’ll all go all the way up to about 80 to $83 throughout the week, mainly as we covered the marathon oil disaster has really done in Louisiana to spike the diesel prices there up to a year high. So far, East Coast is going to get pounded with that. US rig counts dropped by ten total rig counts in the U.S. stand at 632. So rig counts continue to fall and falls due home with no end in sight. That probably means an end. It’s going to be interesting to see what the fallout is from domestic production. Remember, one of the big trends of where production goes, where the rig counts go? We’ve consistently see rig counts fall and fall and fall. If we’re going to be in a supply shortage, we would look to be adding rigs. So this does not bode well for the United States in terms of our domestic production, specifically with the brick stuff that we just covered, Smokey. But other than that, fairly sure we can look into the newswires. Do not much that happen from an oil finance standpoint. So we’ll let you guys steer clear and have and have an off segment. What should people be scared about this weeks Do you got any predictions? [00:22:39][73.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:22:40] Diesel’s going up and it’s going to go up really high in the east. I want to track what the price difference is between the East and the rest of the U.S. averages, because I’d really like to see what the Russian impact is on the jet fuel the UK. We just released another article with the UK using massive amounts of Russian jet fuel. I mean, it’s not like the East Coast. It’s they’re really using it anyway. It’s going to be a great week. [00:23:09][29.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:23:10] It’s going to be a great scary week, just how Stu likes it. So with that, guys, we’re going to let you get out of your get back to work and start your week. We appreciate you checking us out. We will be with you all week covering the top energy stories. Again, follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Subscribe to us on YouTube, guys. For Stuart Turley, I’m Michael Tanner. We’ll see you tomorrow, folks. [00:23:10][0.0]

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