Week Recap: Is the U.S. Losing Energy Power to Qatar & China?

ENB Pub Note: The EIA released its report on selected battery trade volumes, which makes us wonder how the United States will compete for batteries and critical minerals. Looking at the AI-generated plans, I am […]

Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro

02:22 – Britain’s Plan to Retrain Oil and Gas Workers for Clean Energy Jobs

04:44 – President Trump’s Gulf tour inks significant energy and technology agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE.

08:29 – WSJ Goes Fully In The Tank For ‘Clean’ Energy

11:52 – EOG Goes Abroad, and So Does American Power

14:49 – QatarEnergy eyes major LNG trading expansion

16:46 – Trump allows Equinor to resume work on wind project off New York

21:25 – China dominates global trade of battery minerals – What will it take for the U.S. to get on it’s own production supply line?

24:42 – Outro

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

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Stuart Turley: [00:00:00] The new trading block is going to be the Middle East, India, and Pakistan. When they’re going to calm that down in there and then it’s going to be Russia and the United States. It’s a whole new trading bloc about to happen in here. And he says in this video clip that the middle East can outshine the EU. And the EU is on a death grip here. That is pretty amazing. 600 billion investment. We have it all detailed out here. AI and data centers. We’re talking. We also have XTO. I believe it was either XTO or somebody else is now drilling for cutter. [00:00:38][38.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:00:46] What’s going on everybody? Welcome into the weekly recap for Energy NewsBeat Daily Standup here on the gorgeous May 24th, 2025. Holy smoke, Stu. It’s been a long week. [00:00:58][11.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:58] What a week. What a great week. We had a, uh, a, a state of the market. We live event. We had very well DRW live. I mean, we’ve got a lot of things going on. Beginning of our AI data center is being released as far as podcast. [00:01:13][14.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:13] You’re seeing way too much of us, but that’s a good thing. Um, thanks everybody who showed up to our state of the union. It’s going to be available on our sub stack. We’re going to start doing some paid only ones, um, monthly. And what we’re going be doing is we’re actually going to be, it’s going be zoom webinar style. So you’re going able to pop on and chat with us. It’s gonna be interactive. We’re not necessarily just going to do stream yard where you sit back and listen, you’re gonna be able to interact, ask questions. So highly recommend checking out our sub-stack also guys. So subscribe to our substack. Also shout out. Supporters of the show, Reese Energy Consulting, if you’re in the upstream space and you’re not working with the marketing team, call them. Trust me, they’re going to save you buko bucks. If you’re on the midstream space, highly, highly highly recommend talking with them and then finally guys invest in oil.energynewsbeat.com. It’s never too early to start thinking about how to diversify your portfolio by adding energy, gives you some monthly distributions, gives you a sweet tax deduction. And also you can be Billy Bob Thornton from Landman. So trust me, trust me. You’re gonna look at that. InvestInOil.EnergyNewsBeat.com. Stu, the team has picked out some of our top stories for the week. I’m gonna go ahead and turn it over to them. Have a great weekend, folks. We’re off tomorrow. We’ll see you Monday. [00:02:22][68.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:22] This one is from Felicity Broadstock on oilprice.com and when you when you talk about retaining in and you talk, about moving workers from the oil and gas base to the green energy space, this is pretty interesting when you sit back and kind of go, have you and I heard this before? The UK government plans to extend its windfall tax on oil and gas companies to fund the retaining of fossil fuel workers for green energy roles. Michael, then they also want to partner with Norway to boost renewable energy investments, creating thousands, thousands of new green jobs and then posting closing tax loopholes and reallocating subsidies could generate billions for just the transition. I find this a bunch of horse. [00:03:14][52.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:15] Yeah, and I mean, what I find interesting too, is that this was something that actually, when I was going back to grad school, was a possible master’s kind of project or thesis of mine was helping develop curriculum to retrain oil and gas workers to go work in clean energy. Now, I wasn’t really going to be helping with the curriculum itself, more some stuff on the back end, but what was realized real quickly and ultimately they scrapped the problem is there’s, or they scraped the ideas, there’s a bunch of problems. But the first one… Being, okay, retraining it’s technical. It’s not just like you’re going from serving at one restaurant to serving in another restaurant and you just have to learn a couple of the new policies, it’s literally going from one profession to another profession and that costs money and it’s technical. Number two, there just aren’t that many clean energy jobs. You’ve got, you know, they’re talking about thousands of jobs in clean energy. Well, there’s probably 50,000 people who work in the oil and gas space. In the UK. So guess what? Where are they all going to? You’ve got 50,000 people now fighting for 1,000 specific jobs. And number three, do people actually want to do this? You have to get people who work in oil and gas aren’t just dying to go work in clean energy. They can also do other things. So there’s a whole host of problems with it. I think this whole retraining idea is, like you said, a bunch of hand waving to make themselves sound good. Really what they want to is just shut down the fossil fuel industry. They don’t really care about the They don’t really care about the workers. [00:04:41][85.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:42] No, and that’s the funny part. My president’s golf tour, Inc. Significant energy and technology agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. This was an amazing trip. Michael, uh, when you take a look at two trillion announced by the white house visit, which includes stops from Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and a couple others, the white house put out a video with $10 trillion of investment. It’s unbelievable and the fanfare, I really appreciated that we have a president that is well respected again in that area, but I want to point out in this article, Michael, I added a post from Josh young. We have Steve Wittkopf talking to Tucker Carlson and bringing up a very big point that I’m connecting the dots. This big point is there’s a new trading block in town. The new trading block is going to be the Middle East, India and Pakistan. When they’re going to calm that down in there and then it’s going to be Russia and the United States. It’s a whole new trading blog about to happen in here. And he says in this video clip that the Middle East can outshine the EU. And the EU is on a death grip here. That is pretty amazing. 600 billion investment. We have it all detailed out here. AI and data centers. We’re talking. We also have XTO. I believe it was either XTO or somebody else is now drilling for Cutter. There’s an article that I was trying to get written before taping this. It’s unbelievable between the LNG support with McDermott and Cutter unbelievable 8.5 billion providing offshore. So it’s almost like, I believe it was somebody from oil price.com said it’s like the bromance between the United States oil and Middle East oil is on again. It’s pretty funny. [00:06:40][118.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:40] No, it really is. I mean, there’s a lot we could talk about with this trip, to be, to be honest with you, a lot happened. It’s great to see this amount of investment. I think, you know, from Saudi Arabia standpoint, I think they see an opportunity, quite frankly, to take advantage of us from the standpoint of we are looking for investments in energy that’s not coming domestically. And if they can come in and buy in on a, you know, what do they say? Buy low, sell high. I mean again, And I guess my question with this is, Stu, we’ve been talking about energy as a national security issue. Does this give you any cause for pause that we’re handing the keys over and allowing these foreign countries, regardless of who they are, to come in and own significant chunks of our energy infrastructure? Are you worried about that at all? [00:07:29][48.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:29] Somewhat, but if the contracts are written appropriately and guarded now, do I want Chinese owning our farmland? No. Do I want Bill Gates owning our farmland. No, I want both of those people out of the country. So the answer is as long as the contracts or when written correctly, I think we’re okay. Okay. Okay. Cause [00:07:50][21.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:50] You know, I, we got does, you know, there is a little bit of, of pause I have. I mean, [00:07:56][5.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:57] Well, take a look at Japan. Japan has bought all the way from the molecules now. They own mineral rights in the Hanesville and they can ship them all the way out through. They own partial all, you know, they got their own tankers. They’ve got seven tankers, so they’ve bought their energy supply line all the way through with 20 year contracts, 20 year contracts. So this is not the first one that’s happening. People want to buy into United States energy. Yeah, no, they do. They do. They definitely do. The wall street journal goes full tank, clean energy. Uh, David Blackman wrote a wonderful substack here and he says, this is not a story I enjoy writing about since I’ve held some respect for the wall street journal, writer, writer Jennifer Hiller, who did some fine work covering the early days of the Eagle Ford shale development for the San Antonio express new work news network back in the day. Sadly, today’s piece at the wall street journal is more pro intermittent energy propaganda from a publication that appears to a plop fully into the tank. These days, David, I just really enjoy hanging with you and I enjoy your view on everything else and it is GOP. Lawmakers are targeting clean energy tax credits to fund president Trump’s tax and spending bill. States such as Texas, Arizona are rough, are consider rougher rules for renewable projects, which might deter investment in the sector. Proposed changes could significantly raise electricity prices for homes and businesses in several states between 2026 and 3032. She missed the point of this that Alex picked up and David’s picked up on as well. It’s okay. Those nasty GOP lawmakers who are targeting the clean energy credits to help fund the bad orange man backs, tag bad man, orange man, bad tag subsidy bill. I suppose we should count our blessings that Hitler didn’t accuse the Republicans of pouncing on the favored conservative targeting epitaph. Used in propaganda pieces such as this, she might have had to overrule an editor on that one, but it’s the last bullet that especially is objectable. Proposed changes could significantly raise electrical prices for homes and businesses in several states. Now a rational person, says David, which he is extremely rational, might ask what the basis for such an obviously false assertion. Is there any real world experience to indicate that these would be the outcome? Heck no, says David. Of course not. The Wall Street Journal based that prominently on a displayed assertion on nothing but a study conducted by a highly biased source. Well done, David, pointing that out. And he goes on further in the article, pointing out that again. And again this is just one more sign as if we needed another one that the legacy media is on its deathbed and I for one would like to thank the legacy media for being kind of scoundrels otherwise My podcast and Michael and I would not be enjoying the bandwidth hog that we’ve created. We’ve got a lot. We are on track for 18 million reads of the transcript, 2.5 million listens of the podcast this year. We’re on track. For some serious growths. We’ve gotten some great sponsors and this article from David Blackman substack kind of points out why. EOG goes abroad and so does American Power. I am looking forward to getting to visit with David Ramsden Wood again, the infamous or the infamous DRW. This article is fantastic. This is on his substack, the hot take of the day, and it is really covering about some great points. He says, this is not merger Monday, But it’s news he’s been advocating and wanting for a long time. EOG just launched a 900,000 acre exploration concession in the United Arab Emirates, the UAE, in a headline. But it’s a signal that the larger US EMPs and EOG in particular, it’s what’s happening now in a global oil markets just isn’t about the barrels. As you said in his speech in Tulsa yesterday, six time the volume that’s produced globally is traded daily. It’s a financial market in the OPEC chatter and Trump pressure have talked from $75 to $60 in a backdrop of declining inventories and peaking us oil. The truth it’s about strategy it’s a bad alliances it’s bad who controls the energy and flows in a world that is starting to fracture and if you’ve been paying attention to trumps quiet moves in the middle east this past month you know this isn’t a coincidence it’s doctrine. DRW hits it right out of the stinking park and it’s about drill baby drill, but it’s drill baby where, and I’ve always said now that it is now, ESG has done a great thing to the oil and gas companies. It’s drill, baby drill when fiscally responsible. And this is a fantastic point. DRW, you did great. The Middle East isn’t a risk. It’s a strategy. What this means to oil order in an American power. It’s just not about the EOG needing new rock. It’s about geopolitical maneuvering at its finest way to go. DRW again, we’re going to be covering this David and I believe it’s nine o’clock central live on X YouTube and LinkedIn. And again, the bottom line, EOG UA deal isn’t a business win, it’s a geopolitical move that tells you everything to know where we’re headed. The shale era of the U.S. Dominance of giving away to a global chess board of energy influence. And if you want to know where the next battles will be fought, don’t look at OPEC quotas or the rig counts, look at EOG. This is phenomenal considering the energy realities on Monday’s podcast. Was all about is the United States a new member of OPEC plus this story really kind of hammers that one in. Qatar Energy. You take a look at Cutter. This article was pretty interesting. Al Kabebe said on Tuesday during a session at the Qatar Economic Forum powered by Bloomberg that Qatar Energy started just trading a few years back and we’re going to expand. The ambition is by 2030 to reach somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 million tons of non-Qatari LNG traded by our reading room. Let me tell you how much they are looking to expand. Michael, they currently are at 77 million tons today and they have 70 ships. They’re adding 128 ships. They got expansion going on, baby. That’s that’s a big number of shit. [00:15:40][463.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:40] No. And I think what they’re also seeing is they’re seeing that in these turbulent times where oil prices are all over the place, seemingly because of things that they can’t control, I think they look at the super major, specifically they look at The Shells of the world, they look at the BP’s of the World who have these massive trading arms that are able to basically provide profits, abnormal profits in times of lower oil price. I mean, we see this every time with Shell oil prices go down, their oil and gas business profits decrease, but their trading profits go through the roof, the spreads go up. So I think what they’re doing is also taking a look at what’s going on macro and saying, okay, if we’re gonna own all this LNG. And it’s the easiest to trade, why don’t we just have our own trading arm and do this internally, capture those profits that are then leaving us and leaving it up to the vitals of the world or the BPs of the word. And so that I think is definitely part of their analysis as they’ve come to this conclusion. [00:16:36][55.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:37] Oh, I couldn’t agree more. And I think it’s great. And I, I think, it’s also interesting how much, uh, cutter energy is investing in the U S as well too. So I think that was pretty good. Trump allows Equinor to reserve work on offshore wind project. You’d be happy. The whales just absolutely committed Harry Carey. I heard one of them beach himself here just about 15 minutes ago. He’d rather beach himself than, than face a windmill. What quick, what does it mean to you? That’s a beached whale trying to avoid a wind turbine off the epic empire wind project. This is really sad, Michael. And this part of their story that we covered yesterday that I covered yesterday from Alex Epstein on the, uh, uh debacle we have as a government. Can’t get rid of the, a, IRA, a porcupine bill stuff. New York state power mix for 2023. I added this into the article because I want people to understand that New York power mix is the eighth most expensive in the United States right now, and when you sit back and take a look, they’re 46% natural gas. They can’t expand anymore on that. Cause governor Hokel has then turned around and said, we ain’t doing any more natural gas Hydropower is 22%, nuclear is 22%. Renewables are 10%. Ooh, but they also import from Canada. Oops. [00:18:06][88.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:06] I mean, to be honest, you know, as much as, you know, I would have thought New York was going to be, I mean New York to have a really odd mix of electricity. I mean 46% natural gas, 22 hydro, 22 Nuga. That’s not terrible. That’s a really good diversified mix. I mean I don’t know how much New York does right, but they’re at least doing this right. [00:18:25][18.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:25] They shut down their nuclear and then they just barely reopened it. Michael, they were shutting down 22% of their power. Their, their, their path to stupidity is in that governor’s office. [00:18:38][13.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:39] Yeah, I guess, I mean, as a, you know, I mean, I guess we’re looking at 20, 23 numbers. So I need, we need to know 20, 25 is going down. But I mean you’re telling me between natural gas, hydro and nuclear, it’s over 80% of the electrical miss. I’d have thought it was way worse than that. So I mean they’re doing better than California. [00:18:54][15.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:55] But yeah, they are there eight in the country. So they’re not as bad as California. Okay, not as bad as california is still eight. [00:19:04][8.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:04] Oh, I’m not defending them at all. I’m just saying like that. That is a little bit Chuck. Now. I mean, you do see that the average residential rates, um, you know, in New York or high, you’re talking about 27 cents per kilowatt hour, which is up about three cents from where they were in 2023. Um, the average national, um is about 17 cents per kilowatt our, um which is obviously not terrible. And the average monthly bill, as you mentioned, ranks. 43Rd or eighth highest with an average monthly bill of about $140, so not great. [00:19:39][34.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:40] But I, the fact that we’re bringing the empire project back on after it was laid to rest and you made an app, Apple, you made a great point and I, even though I don’t like listening to you, I did listen to you on that one. And it was a point that they had spent billions getting to that point. But at what point were they just rushing through the graft and greed, uh, and the approval process. The fact that offshore wind cannot sustain itself without the subsidies is a problem for me and why are we going down this road? Look at other sources to get your energy mix other than offshore with [00:20:23][43.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:20:24] Well, I mean, I’m in agreement with you. Offshore wind is terrible. So I mean you’re not going to get any complaints from me. [00:20:30][6.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:20:30] I’m sure wind is just one step below, um, burning oil. [00:20:35][4.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:20:36] Yeah, or just getting mice to lose their minds on treadmills. I mean, there’s not much. There’s really not much worse. So it’ll really be interesting. Equinar did say on Monday that the following dialog with regulators, federal, state and city officials, and that stop work order that they had talked about was lifted by the Bureau of Ocean Management and that construction will resume. So regardless of what they think they’re moving… [00:20:59][24.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:21:00] Forward. I just, I’m sorry because watch what happens. Bookmark this podcast in 2027. Let’s take a look again at the New York state power bills as all this comes due and they have to start adding this in. They’re going to get electrical rates added back in and the consumer rates are going to go through the roof. Yeah, it’ll be super interesting. China dominates the global trade of battery minerals. What will it take for the U S to get on its own production supply line? Thank goodness. We’ve got a great secretary of energy secretary, Chris, right? He’s already really going through this. And I noticed something Michael today, today on the energy news beat chat GPT bot was scouring our site. And pulling down the things. I’m like, what are you pulling down? And I went and found a couple of things that Chad GPT was working on from China. Interesting. We got some. We got China all up on the site. And I’m sitting there going, well, that was really interesting. So now let’s go through here. This is part of the EIA. Look at the E.I.A. Chart selected battery and global volumes. And China is like 90 percent of it just around the world. Europe, Asia, and then the, we’re in the little tiny little bit of the rest of the world. Battery mineral processing is 90% in China. It, that’s the key. We got minerals all over the place, Michael, that is not being mined or in China, it’s not the minerals. I just want to go on here and say, it’s the minerals, it’s ore processing. That’s where it is missing. [00:22:47][107.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:22:48] Yeah, it’s, it really is. And I mean, you know, I’ve spent more time. I think the average person looking into this back when I was, you know, forced to go back to school. Thank you, Stu. But it’s a, it really is fascinating how the supply chain is extremely complex when it comes to these critical minerals. It’s extremely challenging to say, okay, let’s just bring it in house because it’s a little bit like oil. You either got it or you don’t. And it’s not as, you know, you think it’s easy and quick to go drill an oil well, you should try getting a mine permitted and maybe not permitted, just build a mine. I mean, let’s just say, for example, permitting was a week for these mines. Well, it’s not just, oh, let’s go dig a ditch in the ground. You got to basically remove the entire face of the earth. So, I think, you know, I have a hard time when people say, oh, well, what does it take to bring the US to its own production line? Well, it’s gonna take a lot more than just a bunch of money. It’s gonna rethinking how we engage with the world, creating supply lines that are other than China. That I think is the key piece. It’s not just, oh, here, we don’t have enough here. Sorry. It’s… [00:24:04][76.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:24:04] And why would China, I didn’t mean, I’m sorry, I did not mean to interrupt you, but why would China want to help us gear up our ore processing side of the business? They won’t. [00:24:15][10.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:24:15] Of course not, especially with the rhetoric we’ve got. So I think it’s, it’s if we’re going to take an aggressive stance against China, we better prepare for this. And I think unfortunately, we’ve taken an aggressive a stance against china, which is a good thing. I’m not saying that’s the unfortunate part. I think the unfortunate part is we should have spent the last five to 10 years knowing we were going to a harder step and a harder stance against China so that when we do, we don’t run into these type of issues. [00:24:41][25.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:24:41] Oh, absolutely. [00:24:41][0.0][1461.2]