Week Recap: Trump’s Energy Moves, Hydrogen Hype, and Orphan Wells Explained

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

Stuart Turley: [00:00:00] If they don’t have cheap energy, regimes change, and we’re seeing a potential regime change in the EU and in Germany and all these other places where electricity prices are high. Why are they high? Cuz expensive LNG is having to come in versus cheap Russian natural gas [00:00:23][23.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:00:31] What’s going on, everybody? Welcome into a special weekly recap edition of the Daily Energy Newsbeat Standup here on this gorgeous Saturday, April 5th, 2025, as I am Michael Tanner, joined by Stuart Turley. Woo, man! [00:00:46][15.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:47] very long and it’s crazy out there. Can you believe how much the people are charging us globally around there? China charges the United States 67% tariffs. [00:00:59][12.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:00] Yeah. And, and now we’ve, according to Trump, we’ve been liberated. So it’ll be, it’ll be fascinating. It’ll be fascinating to see how all this plays out guys. And we won’t waste too much of your time. We’re going to go ahead and kick it over to the team. But quickly guys, as always www.energynewsbeat.com, check out Reese Energy Consulting. We love them guys. Hit the description below, sign up for our sub stack. And if you need to get into the oil and gas business, invest in oil, energynewsbeet.com. Let’s We’ll see you next week, folks. [00:01:31][30.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:31] Why the Rubio Ceasefire Plan is DOA, Part 8, the buff, the overview, and the next tranche of papers. Michael, this is from George McMillan, and a little bit about this story is that the original series on this was why the Kellogg’s Cease Fire Plan and the whole thing was DOA? Because President Trump has not got the right information from his team, and he needs a whole new team in there, and I’ll tell you why. It comes down to the bottom line in here. President Trump is contending with the same western coalition of neoconservatives, neoliberals and greens domestically as well in the UK and European Union. Michael, George McMillan has got a great set of articles out there, and he came up with the line, all President Putin has to do is nothing. President Putin because of President Biden has moved all of his energy exports to Asia. Everything is already rolling. Everything is moving and President Trump, our great President Trump does not have all of the information he needs. And so we know some of these articles got to the team and they were shocked. So I got it from sources. It’s pretty cool that and George McMillan’s information. is rock solid. So this is a great interview, great article. And he and I will be talking about it on a podcast later in the week. [00:03:00][88.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:00] Absolutely. We’re very blessed to have George McMillan as a, as a contributor here. You know, I, I can, I think it’s interesting that what I find fascinating is that, you know, there’s there, you know. Basically there’s a cleanup effort having to go along, going on. I mean, there’re 20 years of terrible policy when it comes to Russia. And the issue is, you know, as you sort of, as always pointed out, Putin doesn’t have to do anything and he wins because he’s put himself in this position to be able to do that. And that makes any counter move the United States wants to do. It’s why Trump’s come out recently and said he’s really mad at Putin because he feels like he’s backed off and gone against the ceasefire. [00:03:38][37.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:38] Well, he really hasn’t. And it’s because all Putin has to do is wait for the conservative people to go along. And what you’ve heard me say along, Michael, is that if they don’t have cheap energy, regimes change. And we’re seeing a potential regime change in the EU and in Germany and all these other places where electricity prices are high. Why are they high? because expensive LNG is having to come in versus cheap Russian natural gas. Hey, let’s go to the next story here. Trump admin considers killing the big energy projects in Dem states. This title is really, like you pointed out, aptly pointed out a little bit off filter there because Chris Wright is one of the best energy focused individuals and I’ve heard this from several folks and that is when you take a look at Chris Wright He started out as a nuclear guy that happened to be an entrepreneur that happened to be a oil field service CEO. I mean, he’s more of a goob and a nerd than he is a executive. I mean the man is classy and he only wants to cut projects that have absolutely more, that cost more to create than you get the energy out of it. and that seven of the hydrogen hubs, there’s only one hydrogen out there, the green, the blue, the green whatever it is, it’s the white hydrogen which is naturally forming can create more energy than if you try to go create hydrogen. The greens, the blues, and the grays are not aliens, they’re hydro- forms of hydrogen that take different amounts of energy going into them in order to create it. And this is also in conjunction with Doug Burgum, the great Secretary of Interior. Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Association CEO Frank Wallach said the list of organizations with the DOA, but cautioned it’s not clear what yet action the administration intends to take. And so. They’re still weighing through these, but the states are broken out in this article on which ones they’re going to break out. [00:06:02][144.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:03] Yeah. So you’ve got the Pacific Northwest hub, which spans Oregon, Washington, and Montana, the Arches hub in California, the Midwest hub, which links Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. The minute Glanta hub in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey. Those are on the cut list on the keep side. You have the heartland hub, which spans Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, the Appalachia hub through Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania and high velocity in Texas and Louisiana. You know, I think if you were to I think the article title is a little misleading by political, from the standpoint of, I wouldn’t necessarily say this is Dem states that they’re getting rid of, it’s just, they’re looking at it from a net energy production, net energy loss standpoint, if it’s going to cost more than the energy it’s gonna produce, why do it, and you know, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, those aren’t bastions of Republican, you know of Republican from that standpoint, Minnesota definitely not. And when you look at the one that’s on the cut list, you’ve got Montana, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania. All those are places in which Republicans have done well. So I think that it’s a little bit misleading. And I think what they’re really doing is looking at this from a net energy, from a cost standpoint. Now, I would caution. We can’t get in this tit for tat game by. Thanks for watching! by canceling things just because somebody’s a Democrat, because then eventually when we lose an election, that’s gonna come back to hurt us. It’s a little bit of what I’m fearful of, of some of the security clearances they’re getting canceled. That’s just gonna now set a precedent for every president is now gonna lose his or her security clearance when they- But take a look at Biden. That’s clearly gonna happen. [00:07:38][95.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:39] Take a look at Biden and his canceling of the Keystone Pipeline. Who did it hurt? It actually hurt the Canadians more than it did the United States, especially in the terror force, because if we had a pipeline. President Trump would wave that pipeline and all that oil coming in instead of coming in on the rail cars. Norway’s oil fund to buy stakes and offshore wind for $1.5 billion. Just want to make sure that everybody is remembering that Norway one time several years ago. was going to shut down their entire natural gas fields and they pretty much did a good job of that the poster child of natural gas for the rest of the EU so you gotta love that the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund Norway 1.8 trillion dollar oil fund will buy 49 percent of two offshore wind farm developments in RWE for a total of 1.5 billion dollars or 1.4 billion euros. That’s pretty impressive, but it’s an offshore wind farm of Germany. The RWE of Germany has just pledged to slash capital expenditures for low carbon energy projects by 10.8 billion amid the mounting uncertainties about the renewable energy policies and profitability. Quote, the company is responding to regulatory uncertainties and constraints in the supply change geopolitical risk and a higher interest rate. I’m not really sure why you would do this but when you sit back and take a look it’s a good thing for them to do since this is a German wind farm in trouble and it is a nice thing to do. But I don’t know that I would invest in offshore wind right now. [00:09:28][109.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:09:28] Peak Permian Production, is it near or is it past already? And when I wrote this article I kind of took a spin off of the old I never met mess with it death wins with a Sicilian when death is on the line and or never go in against a Sicilian when death is in the line Vizzini from the Princess Bride movie. The Permian is not quite dead yet almost like the Monty Python skit that is always there but when you sit back and take a look we may slow down and looking at the exact timing there’s a couple things that are in here. Remember I just talked about how much we import versus how much we produce. And in recent years, production is around 6.3 million barrels per day, according to the US Energy, the EIA, and approximately 6.6 million by the end of 2025. This is out of the Permian. So when you take a look, and we had the articles come out about Scott Sheffield saying, hey, wait a minute, we may have already hit peak tier one asset. Well, it’s about also the geological formation and how much water it costs more to pull out in some of the geologic formations in here. In the great article from oilprice.com, and I would butcher her name and I apologize, Ms. Parzavoka, I’m sorry for butchering your name, but there are some bullet points. In the Permian Gas to oil ratio, GOR has steadily risen from 34% to total production in 2014 to 40% in 2024. Pressure from within the reservoir declines as more oil is brought to the surface. Another ratio is also suggestive of the wells, operating cost drilling wells, produced water. Water to oil ration in the perineum is much higher than other basins. The other basins produce water will also drive cost. There cannot be U.S. energy dominance at $50. It’s just simply not gonna happen. So here’s a great quote. One basin does not define a country’s energy wealth, but it can impact the decision-making along the way. A great man, Stu Turley, once said that. Oh, that was me. So when you sit back and take a look at this, even though they may be forecasting peak Permian oil. Jury’s out. I wouldn’t hold anything against either technology finding more deeper side whatever the case may be. I’m not ruling the Permian out yet, but at what price? You always have to ask that price on there. Beijing looks to put the brakes on the sale for the Hutchinson ports. I also saw this article not only just on X but from Amuse on The quote is President Trump has once again been proven correct. Panama claimed that Hong Kong based company, CK Hutchison, which operates two of the ports at either end of the Panama Canal was free from Chinese influence, despite Trump’s assertion to the contrary. Now we’re kind of seeing that China is stopping BlackRock from being able to buy them. This is going to be critical in the next few days as we sit here and we take a look at today is the second and it is a really huge day finding out that at the time I’m recording this podcast, Israel has already notified that they have removed all of their tariffs on the United States. And I’m very impressed with that. I also did not know how much they were tariffing in the United States. So this is a wake up call and I want everybody to understand that China may have to practice their scooby-doo and rut row in Chinese is really rut row. So I think that’ll be a pretty fun one when we say take a look at this. The decision last month by the Alaking control conglomerate to sell 80% of the Hutchinson ports for 22 billion is pretty important. And especially when you consider that President Trump has honestly spoken, and he is right on this, that the Panama Canal is not only national security, it’s energy security, and we need to have control of that. And nobody’s even talking about the other canal that Mexico has been quietly building over all these years. And so that one is going on and it’s going to be a real problem. So president Trump hats off on doing that. And you’ve got to get control of our ship building. And I know you’re working on it, but I’m going to keep reminding you of, of that. So we got to keep rolling on that. [00:14:27][298.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:28] New house bill acts as renewable fuel standard over eco harm and higher gas prices. Rep. Scott Perry Bill aims to abolish the RFS, arguing it harms the environment and raises gas prices and doesn’t reduce our reliance on foreign oil. Republican out of Pennsylvania Scott Perry on Friday proposed legislation that would abolish Renewable Fuel Standard, RFS relieving it not only harms the environmental and raise gas prices, but it would be a vital step in preserving those essential jobs and reducing inflationary pressure. It was intended to foster the use of environmentally friendly fuels. The environmental benefits of ethanol, particularly in replacing gasoline, are highly questionable. This is huge. And if we phase it out, the Heritage Foundation has noted how the use corn-based ethanol and gasoline has only raised feed prices for cattle. and poultry farmers and diverts valuable farmland from other agricultural purposes. This is critical as we try to wean ourselves and grow more of our own food rather than import it in from other places. Let’s make American agriculture sing again and be great. This is absolutely a wonderful bill. We’re going to keep you guys on it and see if it can go through the house. And if it is a phased in approach so that we can get the farmers subsidies to get them weaned over to new crops, I’m all in. But it does more harm to your engines and the environment and it costs more energy to produce than you get out of it and it means absolutely no good for the environment. [00:16:24][116.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:16:25] Trump halts historic orphan well plugging program. This is really a huge story that RT sent to you. Billions of dollars approved by Congress to clean up abandoned wells have been frozen as part of the Donald Trump sweeping cuts. This has to get to Secretary Wright and Secretary Burgum on this. This is a very important thing because… the amount of money that was available for plugging wells, and it was not just because they were called orphan wells. The program set aside $4.7 billion. A large sum for plugging wells was meant to supplement state-level plugging efforts, so it’s kind of like… really stretching your dollars by helping out. The grants were distributed in five point film five million to clean up abandoned wells in the state. California also received a nine million grant sure that went to like busses or the homeless in California I bet but I’m just kidding that was a joke but when you sit back and take a look at this the orphan well program is going to be dwarfed here in a little bit. This is where they have undocumented orphan wells may emit nearly 63 million grams of methane per hour into the atmosphere. Here’s where I disagree with this statement totally. They don’t know how many undocumented orphan wells they have. This is almost like we have undocumented citizens in the United States voting in a government elections. And we, no, we don’t. Yeah, we do. They’re now on social security. So, I mean, no. How do you know how many it is? You don’t even know how many it is, but we know in [00:18:05][100.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:18:05] No, and there’s a big problem with how orphan and oil and, you know, the orphan and plugging well business takes place, and it’s really a dirty business because really what you’re able to do is you’re able to freely transfer wells into a new P5. And for those listeners, a P5 is an operator’s license. It gives you the ability to operate, you now, specifically like in the state of Texas. we call it a P5. and in order to have a p five there’s a bond you have to put up and there’s a limit if you’re under a hundred wells it’s like fifty thousand if you are above a hundred well that’s like two hundred and fifty thousand and so what that is supposed to do is that bond is supposed be there is that hey these are fun set aside in case the state ever has to take control of the wells to go plug them the problem is you’ve got ninety nine orphaned wells and have only put up a fifty $20,000 bond it’s much cheaper for an operator to abandon those wells, start a new P5, which they’re allowed to do, seen it happen many times, transfer the three good wells into that new P five, leave the 96 wells that suck under the old P five and then just lose out on the 50 grand and then only have to put up a 50 grand bond here, whereas if you had to plug all those wells it would at least be a half, you know, $750,000 to plug all those wells. So there is a shell game being played by operators. And this is where, you know, this is where, to kind of contradict the statement I said earlier about how the private market will solve it. Well, the private will solve and they’ll solve it in an efficient way for stakeholders. The problem is, some of the stakeholders in these orphan and abandoned wells aren’t financially incentivized, a.k.a. wells that are in people’s backyards, Wells that are on people’s ranches that are leaking. and we can’t just have companies being able to freely move without any repercussions. So in theory, I like the idea. If we’re going to spend money on cleaning up the environment, I’m not against plugging these certain wells. Now, I mean, you’ve given out $4.7 billion, and it says in this article, California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico plugged 100 orphan wells. Thanks for watching! so that’s not equal about a billion dollars per one in that obviously it’s less than that but i mean it’s wildly inefficient and i think this brings up the hard part of government money comes with stipulations one it’s really hard to turn a profit plugging a well because it’s from we use it because it to reimbursement so what do you do you have people jack up prices it becomes less efficient there are there are ways specifically ways that stew and i have have been in tossing around with our friends. There’s ways to solve this. We went to a conference six months ago. They were talking about all of this stuff, but nobody had any answers. And really, the answer is you got to incentivize operators to either keep these wells under their P5, increase a bond, which is going to be tough because you’re going to put smaller oil and gas companies out of business, tax the heck out of large companies, because think about it. Chevron’s only put up a $250,000 bond for their 10,000 wells. It’s the same as your mom and pop that has 101 wells. So now Chevron is kind of maybe sliced and diced their assets, but it’s all the same. So should Chevron and Exxon pay more? Should it be a per well fee? Should you have to put up 5% of the plugging cost per well? There’s that way to do it? You know, then there’s this whole world of carbon credits and that, you know, that market is, is extremely early is extremely green from the standpoint of it’s undeveloped. There’s a lot that needs to be worked out, but there’s an interesting path down. Well, if you plug these wells, you could maybe be able to achieve carbon credits, but then you could go sell on the open market and a bunch of stuff like that. So I think there’s all of these different. ways that or there there’s a bunch of different ways you could go about solving the problem just handing out money is a solution but is it the most optimal solution i do think in some cases getting the state to come in and plug high-valued wells and when i mean high-value wells i mean wells that are leaking on people’s ranches wells that are in people’s backyards that are causing you know soil contamination or that type of stuff there is a need for just we need to provide some state money to go plug some of He’s extremely… owner as wells, but you have to figure out a way to incentivize the private sector to either solve this problem or change the way you go about modifying these bonds because it’s not working right now. Exxon and Chevron shouldn’t have to pay the same amount of a bond as Turley Energy Corp. This shouldn’t happen. [00:23:00][295.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:23:00] Here’s here’s one thing I do want to say is that was we’ve tracked this and report on it We need to let everybody know about it But I also want to raise a gigantic issue that needs to be handled by the same people the same Doug Burgum and Chris Wright need to also take a look at all the wind farms and solar farms That are coming offline in the next five years are going to be Horrific it’s going to make the orphan wells look silly [00:23:29][28.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:23:30] It’s true. I mean, we need we need a lot of minds thinking about it. So I think that you bet, you know, we’re and we’re going to keep having this as a conversation. [00:23:30][0.0][1395.1]

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