ENB # 107 – As anyone who listens to the ENB podcast, one of my favorite things is learning and interviewing our CEOs, Industry Thought Leaders and subject matter experts. Today is no exception.
Tom and I filmed this on Saturday, and I mean it made my Saturday. Our conversation was entertaining; I learned a lot from Tom about global politics, technology, and the energy transition.
Some of the key topics revolve around global geopolitical influences on energy, the petrodollar, China’s influence, and the current administration’s energy policy.
Please follow Tom on his LinkedIn HERE.
Tom: Thanks for your industry thought leadership and for joining the podcast. I look forward to hearing when you go over 3 million post impressions this year! Already looking forward to our next podcast together. – Stu
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter. – Check out the YouTube or podcast for the actual language. (I am from Texas and Oklahoma, so I talk funny).
ENB Podcast with Tom Kirkman
Stuart Turley [00:00:06] Hey, good morning, everybody. Today is just a special day. I get to record one of my favorite people that I am following. My name, is Stu Turley, president, and CEO of the Sandstone Group. And this is an Energy Newsbeat special. I’m here to visit with Tom Kirkman. Tom is an industry thought leader and I have been following him in all of his antics on LinkedIn for a very long time. Thank you, Tom, for stopping by the podcast today.
Tom Kirkman [00:00:33] Thank you, Stu. This should be fun. As we in our did our pre-game show chats. Nothing is off the table. I will try and behave, but let’s have a lively conversation and we don’t know where this is going to end up. This should be fun.
Stuart Turley [00:00:48] Oh, absolutely. But you know, we were talking about some of the things going on around the world. And I really think, Tom, there is two different layers. And I we’re just going to just jump right on this because it doesn’t know you on LinkedIn should. And I just think everybody needs to follow you. And you and I were talking back and forth on some of this and I’m going to bring up your oil price. You told me about this in your thing. You’ve got you done a lot of writing. And Tom, how many are you going to go over? How many millions that you’re going to go over this year? What’s your target? Oh.
Tom Kirkman [00:01:28] I’m currently in the last three or 65 days on LinkedIn, 2.75 million. So my target for this year in the space of 365 is I’d like to break 3 million views. I really.
Stuart Turley [00:01:38] Like to use about.
Tom Kirkman [00:01:41] 30,000 comments in the last decade, 8000 on Oil Pro Forum when I was a volunteer moderator. There are 8000 on the oil price forum when I was a moderator there and well over 10,000 on LinkedIn in the last decade, I loste track. I can’t keep track of how I that with you.
Stuart Turley [00:01:59] But, you know, we’ll just kind of like keep going on. But your comments and what I don’t know how you do it, but it’s like when you get everybody all riled up, you calmly speak the truth and it just polarizes people. And you had a prediction in oil price, don’t sneeze crying. This is a threat to oil markets and global economies. There are 37 pages or 5 million comments on this thing. And they were. Tell us about that one. And how did that prediction work out for you?
Tom Kirkman [00:02:34] It went well. I can actually read you what I wrote and I just love the first comments. This is back in January 24th, 2020, a day before Chinese New Year, and this is before the coronavirus had exited China. And it hadn’t really reached the media in the United States. And here are three little sets and three little paragraphs that I wrote. So just before Chinese New Year on the 25th, it looks like coronavirus emanating from China is going to cause multiform intertwined havoc in global health markets, energy demand, travel plans, and economy, all going to get whacked starting in China already. How to hurt the tax will remain to be seen, but whacks are already being dished out. Let’s see how far the health problems spread globally by next week, along with a resultant knockdown on all sorts of other economic and energy factors. So again, this is nobody in the US had even heard of coronavirus yet. And it’s like, I’m going with this and I’m going, Wow, what’s going on in China? And the first is the beginning of the first two comments is this is such utter bullshit, excuse my language. The next one was utter claptrap clickbait B.S.. So sometimes I make predictions about global oil and gas and the economy because they’re all intertwined and a lot of people don’t like what I read or what I write. I know that it’s just my opinion. And my tagline is a mark here on Oil Pro Forum, which is to have 1 million registered members. It used to be called the LinkedIn of the oil and gas industry before it got closed down by a competing zone. Rig zone is a huge legal mess, but my tag tagline as a moderator was just my opinion. As always, you are free to disagree and that undermines a lot of trolls right there because there’s so much trolling online and I can dig in and I can do trolling myself, but it’s like, Yeah, let’s not fight over petty things. Let’s let’s have a rational debate. And it’s like, I don’t mind people disagreeing with me. I expect it just don’t, you know, don’t call me a Nazi, Don’t don’t call me all these other names, because it’s like, yeah, I’m sorry. You’re just you’re that’s not rational debate.
Stuart Turley [00:04:33] I want to Tom, you know, both you and I, we were kind of teasing back and forwards where we go here. Both of us are old enough. I could care less what people think about me. And you said, Yeah, you know, but we both got gray hair, and I’m like, Hey, that’s mean. They got in two minds, flesh-colored. And, you know, I’m a little jealous of anybody at my age having hair. So anyway, this was really cool. And your predictions as you go through and we’ve lived long enough that we can kind of see these things. Let me drill in on this one thing, and that is so many people think pricing oil and gas is just a simple supply and demand and it is not anymore. I mean, it is I mean, it always wasn’t. But now you got geopolitical, you’ve got politics. You’ve got the windmill crew, I mean, the whales.
Tom Kirkman [00:05:26] Dying.
Stuart Turley [00:05:26] The Granholm estate. I mean, my goodness, how do you put all this kind of stuff into the pricing model? And if you don’t consider any of those kind of things out there, it’s almost a mess to even try to think about pricing.
Tom Kirkman [00:05:39] I give up trying to even forecast any type of pricing anymore because there are so many unknown variables and unknown unknowns besides all the obvious politics. I mean, blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipeline, that’s what’s going to have a huge knockdown effect for a long time. And no, Russia’s not going to rebuild it because it will get blown up again. They would be stupid to try and rebuild it. Right. So let’s morph into what I wrote about on LinkedIn this morning. I was just flabbergasted when I saw this. And one of my favorite writers is Sundance on the conservative Treehouse. And it’s like he’s posted that there were three separate oil refinery fires in Mexico yesterday, in one day, in one day. And it’s like, okay, so here’s my take on this, and here’s kind of my prediction that after I get out of whatever I’m going to say here. So Nord Pipeline, I have got my views on who probably was behind it, not necessarily who actually did it, but who is the driving force behind it. I’m not going to get into it should be obvious to anyone of the brain, but there are zero consequences to Nord Stream pipeline getting blown up by the people who did it. Right. The United Nations refuses to discuss this, and a lot of European nations have thrown in the towel they do not want the United Nations to actually do an investigation of who blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which is actually an act of war.
Stuart Turley [00:06:57] So exactly.
Tom Kirkman [00:06:58] There is zero punishment, zero consequences to blowing up a natural gas pipeline. It has international consequences that mean it’s fair game on oil and gas infrastructure. We’ve seen smaller stuff like this before in the past, especially in Africa, siphoning off energy and, you know, some pipelines getting blown up a little bit and stuff like that. But now what I see is we’re moving into kinetic warfare between the green revolution and hydrocarbons plus nuclear. I’m not a huge nuclear fan, but it’s like it’s I have to be realistic. We need it because wind and solar is just not cutting it. So I have repeatedly called it, in my view, the Biden administration’s war on domestic oil and gas. And you can see it with the Keystone XL pipeline getting canceled the first day in office, permits being revoked, permits for expansion of refineries, permits for expansion of oil and gas facilities, oil and gas drilling and offshore drilling. All of this is being denied and curtailed and basically being made as difficult as possible.
Biden administration didn’t even have a federal oil lease, which is actually demanded by Congress once a year, and it just drifted up. They’re doing everything in their power to kill off domestic oil and gas by a thousand cuts of policies detrimental to domestic oil. And foreign oil and gas is fine. Venezuela, for example, is like really? So they’re ignoring the Canadian oil and gas and Trudeau doesn’t want to ship it out anyway. And Biden is stomping on US domestic oil and gas producers, making it as difficult as possible while proclaiming,
Oh, you guys are, you know, recording profits and all this other nonsense. Well, he’s he’s the one causing this to happen. So. So now what’s happening is the president of Mexico six months ago, his history to this, as stated in the Oval Office to Biden, he has no intention of reducing oil refinery activities. He wants the price of gasoline and diesel to go down significantly. And this is directly contrary to what the Biden administration has been trying to do, which is don’t don’t pay attention to what they’re saying. Pay attention to what the Biden administration is actually doing, what the Biden administration, what they’re doing is making gasoline and diesel more expensive by adding out additional policies and rules and regulations and then loudly proclaiming, oh, it’s oil and gas industry’s fault for, you know, making excessive profits. And it’s like, no, that’s not it. So the president of Mexico made it very clear they are not going to go along with the green energy transition to wind and solar that the Biden administration is pushing so heavily with the Orwellian Inflation Reduction Act, which is the exact opposite of what it says.
And so what’s happening now? And the Sundance, the writer, the pen name of the writer of the conservative Treehouse Forum, said Watch what happens to Mexican oil and gas in 2023. So six months later, what’s happening is three Pemex oil refineries in three different locations are have fires on the same day. These are refineries. This is what. Processes, crude oil to usable gasoline, usable diesel airplane stuff. It is it it just reminds me of all that. Well, let me put it this way. Put two and two together of Nord Stream pipeline. There were no repercussions. And now all of a sudden, this is obvious. Three. Oil refinery. Refinery, oil refinery fires at Pemex in Mexico on the same day is not an accident. I’m sorry. It’s mathematically improbable. I won’t say it’s impossible, but it’s like, come on. Really? So my prediction is if nothing happens to whoever or whatever caused these fires because this can’t possibly be accidental, it’s just too coincidental. If nothing happens, more similar infrastructure will be sabotaged. I mean, you look at the guys that were the people that were shooting transformers systems, electrical transformer stations. There was a rash of them in the United States over the last couple of months, deliberately repeatedly shooting transformer stations and causing these blackouts. It’s almost like they’re testing to see what you know, what how the United States government will react to deliver sabotage to the energy infrastructure. So with the Biden administration’s very Orwellian and impossible, quote-unquote transition, there is no transition is not workable away from hydrocarbons away and hydrocarbons just oil, gas, coal, and LNG. Right. And also transitioning away from nuclear power plants because I think three have been shut down in the last three.
I lose track because I don’t pay attention to nuclear power plants as much as they do oil and gas, but they’re reducing domestic oil and gas production. They’re ignoring importing oil and gas from Canada, blowing and reaching out to Venezuela. Up until just a few months ago, New England was still importing oil from Russia. Exactly. Sanctions. And so is California. California is an energy island. If you don’t know what an energy outlet is, just Google these three words California Energy Island. California deliberately is making it hard for it. They want the government wants deliberately high prices in California for energy to try and force the initiative of moving everyone to electrified and electric electricity from predominantly solar and wind and some hydro. But the thing is, you can’t build a whole bunch more hydro dams. You just can’t get it. You can maybe build one or two more, but you can’t build a million more hydro facilities. You just can’t. So the wind and solar cannot and will not work because Germany has proved it over their last decade of investing enormous amounts of money into wind and solar. And it’s not working. So the Biden administration is trying to force domestic US oil and gas to reduce energy and throw enormous amounts of money toward wind and solar in rent-seeking industries which are going to destabilize the electrical grid. Right? By definition, wind and solar are intermittent and they cannot be the primary power source.
Stuart Turley [00:13:04] Exactly.
Tom Kirkman [00:13:05] Coal can be nuclear can be, natural, gas can be. Those are reliable sources of energy. Wind and solar are not. They can never be baseline electrical power. Add in the push in mandates for everyone to buy EVs electrical vehicles and moving. This is a disaster waiting to happen. So my view and a lot of people disagree with me on this, this is deliberate. This is not accidental. West is designed to create havoc in Western countries, and this goes hand in hand with, you know, the Klaus Schwab craziness of, you know, the great reset in the fourth Industrial Revolution and all of their nonsense. You can see the people eating bugs and all this other nonsense. It’s like, I’m sorry, I’m not going along with this. So all of this goes together. So anyway, sorry I’m rambling on so much, but oh, not very firmly. There’s going to be more kinetic sabotage in attacks against various oil and gas infrastructures. It can be refineries, it can be pipelined because currently there are no real repercussions to whoever parties or whichever parties in that plural are doing this.
Stuart Turley [00:14:15] Let me let me ask this because you brought up about 17 times that you have said this question. And I’m like and I keep wanting to jump in on these. But let me back this up because there was an article that came out two or three weeks ago on the Nord Stream from that Pulitzer. Yes. Wonderful article. I mean, it went it was like, here’s Norway. They stopped off in Norway. Here’s how it all went in and everything else. And who you know, it was really laying out the potential that the Biden administration did it. And then president, he even alluded that he was going to say, well, you know, it’s going to get taken out even early on. I mean, that’s his words, not mine. But I thought that was a fair. Below this article.
Tom Kirkman [00:15:01] He had a follow of a YouTube interview yesterday. If you haven’t seen I haven’t seen it yet. So find it. He has a half hour YouTube. Seymour Hersh has a half hour video interview which came out yesterday, I believe. I have not been able to see. I’ve been running around like crazy. It’s probably already taken this weekend and I’m sure there’s some more updates on that. But what he wrote is plausible. I do get concerned about his reliable source. I get suspicious of anonymous sources because it reminds me of the whole Iraq war nonsense of weapons of mass destruction, like, I guess. But on the other hand, this guy is putting his life’s reputation on the line for all of the things he’s been writing about for the last 50 years. And I seriously doubt he’s going to damages impeccable reputation by hosting complete and utter nonsense.
Stuart Turley [00:15:49] I’m going to say it one step further, Tom. He’s putting his life on the line.
Tom Kirkman [00:15:53] Yes, it is. He might get Epstein or Arkin started. I know.
Stuart Turley [00:15:57] So as we sit here and we take a look at this, there’s no doubt that if there are no repercussions, we’re going to see these things happen more. That, to me, is just plain as day logic on this on this train thing. It’s it’s just boggles my mind. There’s two things that you brought up. Biden killing the Keystone pipeline. We need those heavy oil sands coming out to replace, you know, any kind of imports. We would need Venezuelan oil if we could import Canadian oil.
Tom Kirkman [00:16:32] Exactly.
Stuart Turley [00:16:33] Without the pipeline, we could get off railcars coming in. Oh, railcars have problems. They don’t stay on the tracks. And in California, I think 90% or whatever the number is of their natural gas comes in from either imports from Canada or another. They have very limited resources and then they bring in what they buy, 70 to 80% of the oil out of the rainforest.
Tom Kirkman [00:17:02] Yes.
Stuart Turley [00:17:03] China.
Tom Kirkman [00:17:03] Yes. No. South America, not China. So again, Google that. Google I don’t trust Google is DuckDuckGo and do an Internet search for California Energy Island. It’s a very specific phrase and it’ll explain why California will always have higher prices than the rest of the US for their energy is a deliberate choice. They’ll bring pipelines from other states into California for both oil and gas. They’re dependent on electricity from other states. They recently banned all oil and gas drilling in the Los Angeles Basin, which used to be a huge oil and gas export. County is banning natural gas pipelines and natural gas in new buildings in various cities in California. They’re making life very, very difficult and very, very expensive. So people will continue fleeing California.
Stuart Turley [00:17:54] Yeah, I mean, let me let me finish up on this next story. Has all of this is tying together you, Tom. You’ve tied in about six pieces that I’ve been kind of scratching my scalp on. So if the trains are in in this really big disaster in Ohio, they are looking at hauling by rail, a lot of the polluted material and bringing it down to Texas, to Houston to put in a salt water disposal. Well, and I’m saying.
Tom Kirkman [00:18:26] 1700 derailments in the United States in the last year, 1700 1700. The only ones that make the news are, you know, if there’s some sort of disaster. Our our infrastructure for bridges, roads, all sorts of infrastructure in the United States is decrepit and needs to be rebuilt. Our electrical grid. My opinion only and I know a lot of people vehemently disagree. Our electrical grid infrastructure is severely overloaded and we’re not keeping up. Electrical utility companies are trying to upgrade as fast as possible to make the existing transmission lines more, you know, deliver more electrical power.
The thing is, there’s a shortage of what they call conductive conductor, the copper wire. There’s a shortage of transformers, some of them some of these transformers take two or more years to get. There is a shortage of electrical transformers. So these idiots that were literally shooting shotguns at electrical transformers in California and other states deliberately trying to sabotage the electrical infrastructure, that’s really, really bad news for the United States. So I don’t. Trains are not the way you want to transport oil or gas. Pipelines are by far the safest and most economical way to transport hydrocarbons over a long distance. So Russia has huge ones going directly into China. They’re building more. And this this gas that used to go from Russia to the European Union is going to eventually work its way into China and other companies.
Trees that that want this. It’s just now it’s going to cost more money because it’s now grossly inefficient to make longer pipelines and send it by by ship and by rail and all this other stuff. So Europeans are going to be paying significantly more for energy from here on out because they have made a deliberate choice that they do not want the cheap Russian oil, gas, coal. I don’t know if you’re aware that coal is is blocked as well. LNG, which is blocked. So what’s happening is that for LNG in particular, Russia has been selling excess LNG to China and China and India have been reselling it to the European Union at huge markups, sometimes 300% or 400%.
And the Europeans, the European Union says, oh, this is not Russian, it’s from China, it’s from India. And we’re fine with that. And it’s like you are making the deliberate choice with your sanctions to pay through the nose for energy, which you desperately need. And they’re saying that the false narrative that, oh, we need to move away from hydrocarbons and move even faster toward solar and wind, that is a disaster waiting to happen because they are by definition intermittent and you’re just asking for rolling power blackouts.
Stuart Turley [00:21:08] It’s easy to say, I love Arena. You know, you and I were also talking about Irene a back and forth. There she is such a great, great lady. I love her opinions and I just interviewed her this week. We have a monthly podcast and she is such a hoot. And she I love her phrase sanctions don’t work. And the only people that pay for the sanctions are the consumers. And Iran for all these years has figured out how to get around the sanctions. And then Putin was over there saying, Oh, now I’m going to get sanctions. So he started going, Well, this is how they got around it. And then Putin’s working with Iran. So now they’re working and they’re not in the game up. The whole dirt fleet is now coming forward and it’s going around the whole thing. I mean, tankers are being sold off to, you know, to go to this dirt fleet so that Russia and Iran and Iraq can all sell these things to India and China. What is that going to do for the whole mess, do you think?
Tom Kirkman [00:22:11] You know this this near in on one of my favorite topics, which is the decline of the petrodollar and people get all annoyed and it’s like, look, guys think it’s getting around this. There’s no way around this. The petrodollar has been abused so much by sanctions and I have been railing against energy sanctions for a very long time. The world needs more oil and gas, not less. Right. There’s just no way around this. And I give up even trying to argue with people who refuse to accept this basic premise.
Wind and solar can augment add to hydrocarbons in nuclear. They cannot replace hydrocarbons in nuclear and buy hydrocarbons. Again, that’s oil and natural gas, LNG and coal, so they can add to the mix. The world just continues on a regular basis for the last 100 years with the glyph glitch during code for a year or two continues to need ever-increasing amounts of energy. Right? So there’s there’s no way of getting away from oil and gas now. Right now, oil and gas, around 80% of the world’s oil and gas is sold using the US dollar, also called petrodollars, around 80%.
That is going to ship what is going to happen within a couple of years as BRICS plus expands their economic clout and starts dealing in energy transactions and other commercial transactions without using the US dollar. It can be a gold based currency. It can be an oil based currency. I mean, you saw it happen to Gadhafi. But the thing is, Iran and Russia are not going to be intimidated or bullied that way. They’re just not. So the US using economic sanctions brutally against so many countries they disagree with have got most of the rest of the world going, Holy crap, I need to move away. And you know, they saw they seized. I forget how many billions of dollars from Russia in their, you know, their overseas bank accounts. They did the same thing to Venezuela. And they’re looking at, okay, well, we need to start slowly divesting our, you know, their central bank reserves of US dollars and start spreading it around a little bit because we don’t want our U.S. dollars reserve in case the United States gets upset with us. So you’ve got the rise of bricks and bricks, our nice counter measure against the bulk of, you know, Schwab’s insane World Economic Forum and his grandiose plans that that that’s going to fail massively. It’s going to be fun to watch. But bricks rising, you are going to you are going to see Saudi Arabia has already stated repeatedly their intention to join BRICS and they are open. They said this openly to start selling oil in currencies other than U.S. dollars, that once that happens, that is the end, the essential end of the petrodollar, it will go into decline.
Doesn’t mean it’ll go away. But the the era of the the United States being the reserve currency. They will start shifting. And I use a historical example. Look at the British pound sterling 100 years ago.
Look at it 50 years ago. 50 years ago, 1 GBP sterling was equal to roughly five U.S. dollars. And over the course of the last 50 years, it has now come down to 1 GBP sterling is roughly equal to $1. It is no longer it was for a long time when remember when Britain was, you know, the world’s colonial master. And it’s exactly right. It’s no empire lasts forever. So the United States is printing trillions of dollars and so many other governments printing trillions of dollars of fiat money, which has zero backing. The U.S. dollar is no longer back in gold and just devaluing and watering down the existing U.S. dollar. So what’s happening is other countries around the world are starting to Russia is starting to do this. There’s trying to back the ruble using gold and oil. China is starting to do the same. And you start to see certain countries around the world massively buying up gold in preparation for moving away from the U.S. dollar as the primary reserve currency. And it’s going to happen slowly because countries, China especially, has long term plans.
They think in decades, Western governments and Western companies tend to live and die by quarterly and annually. It’s like, no, let’s look at ten, 20, 30 years. So it’s slow to have massive changes because they’re worried about, you know, revolution by their people. And side note, with a food shortage is coming up. And so many United Nations, World Health Organization, World Economic Forum, Joe Biden or so many people have said there’s food shortages coming. China has been stockpiling lots of lots of food so they won’t have a revolution due to lack of food. China knows from past experience, if you can’t feed your people, the government gets overthrown. Right. The U.S. has not learned this lesson yet. With so many food processing plants, over 100 being destroyed in the United States within the last couple of years, it’s insane. Anyway, I’m getting off topic here. So now back to oil and gas, the U.S. petrodollar. What I see is over the next couple of years and I can’t really give a timeframe, but what’s going to happen? I
s there going to be a shift from 80% U.S. dollar is being used to buy and sell oil globally. It’ll shift to 70, 6050. At some point. Only half or so of the world’s oil will continue to be traded in U.S. dollars. And BRICS plus BRICS plus will probably be expanding this year with maybe Iran. I’m waiting for Saudi Arabia. A few more countries in Africa. I’ll I’ll wait to see what happens. But as these countries start using currencies other than the US dollar for their internal trade with their growing economic bloc, the value of the US dollar as a global reserve currency will reduce. And I am not anti-U.S.. I’ve been all over the world. I’ve dealt with oil companies and engineering companies in 30 countries. I’ve actually had pages added to my last passport because I’ve bounced all over the world. So I adore being back in the United States. My issue is not with the United States. The Constitution in the Bill of Rights is incredibly fantastic. It’s unique in the history of the world. My belief is not with the United States. My beef is with the current United States administration. Right. That is causing chaos, reducing our freedoms, causing economic chaos, trying to shut down oil and gas, trying to impose totalitarian policies, the whole lockdowns and all this other stuff I totally disagree with and I believe I’m part of a silent majority. There are some people who are, you know, very, very strongly for all of these lockdowns and mask mandates and all this other crap. And it’s like, I believe they’re a minority. They’re just very vocal about it.
Stuart Turley [00:28:44] I think we’re coming to a time that you’re either going to quit being the silent majority or you will not be able to ever speak it again. And so I think that’s my opinion. So we don’t want you canceled.
Tom Kirkman [00:29:02] I’ve learned over the years when I was writing, I was a volunteer moderator at Oil Price, an oil pro for a while. Just because I like writing and being a moderator, especially when I was in a Southeast Asia country where you can literally get thrown in jail for writing bad words if the government disagrees with you have to learn to dance around and allude to things, and you can say some fairly outrageous things as long as you avoid the third rail topics that you know are going to bite you hard and get you banned and censored. So I have gotten used to over the years on LinkedIn I give you some of my tips before we started recording here about how to avoid getting banned and censored. So these are useful tips. I don’t really think this is the appropriate forum to to discuss these, but that it’s important to speak truth in in a way that is going to be acceptable to people. Doesn’t mean you have to speak the whole truth doesn’t mean you have. To be a jerk about it doesn’t mean you have to be up on a soapbox and yell and scream, because back in my punk rock days, that’s what you did. You yell and scream. That turns people off. So I’ve learned not to do that. It’s better to use humor. A little bit of sarcasm, mocking idiots. And there’s a lot of idiots in government.
It’s like just saying Mark Twain is like one of my favorite authors, you know, back when it’s like, you just you just have to shake your head and roll your eyes at the idiotic comments that come out of our dear leaders. You know, Kamala was just like, I just read some of the stuff that she said yesterday and it’s like really for you are just there’s nothing between your ears. So there’s no shortage of stuff to mock. And if you do it in a in a way that people can appreciate the amusement, then you can also slip in some stuff. So one of the things that I’ve stated very, very clearly for a very long time, I use the general topic of international oil and gas, plus all of the international politics that goes along with this as a vehicle for throwing sand into our idiotic policies by governments around the world. I will openly poke fun of the stupid things that they’re trying to implement. So trying to force people to buy electrical vehicles when the electrical grid is already overloaded and you’re trying to make the electrical grid even more intermittent and prone to blackouts by increasing solar and wind is insanity, if you think about it. So anyway, I talk too much. So back over to you. I’m sort of wandering around here.
Stuart Turley [00:31:31] I’m just you know, you and I have so many of the same opinions and I just love the way you articulate them. So it it is fun and you’ve got to have humor. I just kind of like Irene and I have been banned by the U.N., so I’ve got that going for me. You know, if you get banned by the U.S., well, then, yeah.
Tom Kirkman [00:31:52] U.N. is a horrible organization.
Stuart Turley [00:31:54] Absolutely.
Tom Kirkman [00:31:55] I want the United States out of the U.N. and U.N. out of the United States, get them out of New York City. I think they are horrible.
Stuart Turley [00:32:01] And then the only other claim to fame is that when I met Bill Gates, I made him so mad he couldn’t see straight. And a vein came up across his forehand like this. Well, that’s my if I can meet a politician or an unelected politician like he is and make him mad, I’m all in. So it means I’ve done my job. But, Tom, we’re running out of time, and I want you to have your last word here. Give us your last thoughts. What’s going to happen for the balance of 2023? What do you think is going to go on?
Tom Kirkman [00:32:34] Energy is going to be on a crazy roller coaster as usual, but it’ll be probably a little bit worse than usual because European Union is not going to be able to restock their natural gas stockpiles this coming spring and summer because last year they did it using mostly Russian natural gas and that option is no longer there. So next winter, next winter and the winter after that are probably going to be precarious for much of the EU. The other thing that I’m trying to highlight again and again and again, and I’m not going to let this go, I see more kinetic attacks against oil and gas infrastructure, right? I don’t know where, but since there’s been essentially zero repercussions for these attacks, that’s like the green light for this type of thing to continue going on for political reasons, for environmental reasons, the green war against oil and gas is going to escalate into kinetic warfare. I wish I was wrong. I really do.
Stuart Turley [00:33:27] Think you’re dead on. Right. And I and I there was an article that came out of it wasn’t Norway, but it was I’ll have to think of it yesterday or day before that, they were saying that the North Sea is also possibly under attack for the very same reason. And if you think about it, Tom, your articulation of it being that way is dead on. Right? We didn’t cover one. Another thing in that is the train. We did talk about the train coming back down and we’re having to get it, you know, the song. And I think there’s so many train derailments that an intentional train derailment would not even be noticed.
Tom Kirkman [00:34:10] Well, one of the problems I have with that, that this particular train derailment, there are so many suspicious parts to it. I’m not going to elaborate. But for example, blasting gaps were found nearby. The train derailed directly on top of drainage areas is just it I’m I’m not going to go out on a limb. I’m just I’m just going to say it raises some red flags.
Stuart Turley [00:34:36] Questions.
Tom Kirkman [00:34:37] Why is Biden refusing to go there? If you look at who owned the trains that derailed BlackRock and the usual suspects there, there’s been mostly a mainstream media blackout about this. The EPA said the water is safe to drink, which is a load of hooey. It’s really I actually saw and I will show this they just drink out the EPA along with. Officials raising their glass of water and saying the water here in East Palestine, Ohio, is safe to drink. And it’s like, no, it’s not, you idiots. Chickens are dying ten miles away. I mean, just abruptly. So I get concerned of why this particular train, why this is why this particular cargo and why why it’s being so studiously ignored. And it’s just a slap in the face to the people of East Palestine, Ohio, that instead of Biden going to East Palestine and, you know, sending huge amounts of aid, which was was denied by two weeks by the federal government, he went over to Ukraine, met with Zelensky and promised, I believe, $10 billion more is being planned to ship over. I believe Yellen came out yesterday. Janet Yellen said that 10 billion more. So someone has told me a week ago that the U.S. so far has sent 113 billion, is far more than what the media is doing. But they listed it all out and I’m going, yeah, that sounds about right between the cash and the military. And you should see that the one linked in article I had that that lays out the State Department that lists out all of the military. It’s a huge list, all of the military equipment. And that’s not that’s not the money. That’s just the military equipment. So Biden is promising Zelensky billions more dollars while actively denying an environmental disaster, probably the biggest environmental disaster in the history of the United States. I’m not I’m not exaggerating here. I know I have a tendency to exaggerate for rating purposes, just just to poke people a little bit. My view is this is probably going to turn out to be one of the worst environmental disasters in the United States. Initially, the United States government, federal government for two weeks blocked and banned any significant federal aid. And it’s only when Trump went there in person that the Biden administration changed their mind and said, okay, we’re going to give you federal aid, because the optics in the media, which they would be able to ignore of Trump going there and just eviscerating Biden for not helping, you know, the Biden administration for not helping would just be unacceptable optics for the mainstream media. So that’s when they finally relented. So whether you like or hate Trump, I kind of bows to him, and it’s a flawed, deeply flawed character. But I appreciate what he was trying to do. And let me just throw in here what we discussed. You can edit this out later if you want. I view Trump and Putin in much the same light. They’re doing what presidents are supposed to be doing, which is looking after the citizens of their country first and foremost.
Stuart Turley [00:37:34] And you and I both agree Putin is a bad man, but he is to be respected from the standpoint of taking care of his.
Tom Kirkman [00:37:42] Country, its citizens. Yes, I don’t that I don’t like his methods. I’m not. I’m just not. But if you look at the history of world leaders, proper world leaders are ones that actually take care of their citizens first and screw the rest of the world.
Stuart Turley [00:37:57] And if the U.N. wants to ban you or Schwab hate you, tells me you might be on the right path. You know, I agree. But I just interviewed you real quick. I just interviewed a doctor about this Palestine. And he is a phenomenal doctor. And he said very much what you just said. It is going to be a if not the biggest ecological disaster in the U.S. history for now. So. Well, Tom, you just made my day and we’re filming this on a Saturday and I’m just the it is really made my day. So thank you, Tom. And I just really appreciate your industry thought leadership. And I’m going to see if we can’t get you to the how many millions?
Tom Kirkman [00:38:41] 3 million.
Stuart Turley [00:38:42] 3 million. We got to get you that 3 million. So, you know, we got to have some real serious interaction on this one. At least if I can get you at least halfway there, we’re going to be all right. Right.
Tom Kirkman [00:38:53] Cool. Thanks. Appreciate it. It has been it has been a blast talking to you. And our our pre-game chat was even more interesting. But let’s not go down that road. That is just.
Stuart Turley [00:39:01] Oh, no. Thank you. Have a great day to.
Tom Kirkman [00:39:07] Take care.
The post ENB # 107 – A great interview with Tom Kirkman, an industry thought leader with a large LinkedIn presence and a common sense approach to energy. appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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