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Let’s not follow California into energy poverty · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

0:07
Mainstream media has betrayed our trust.
0:10
Rather than tell us the whole story about the important issues of the day, they tell us only what they want us to hear.
0:16
Your hosts, Tom Harris and Todd Royal will bring you the other side of the story.
0:27
On January 9th, President Donald Trump met with major U.S.
0:31
oil company executives to discuss returning their companies to Venezuela and investing heavily in its oil sector.
0:38
In attendance at the White House were executives from Chevron, Exxon Mobile, Conical Phillips, and more than a dozen other firms.
0:45
With Venezuela holding the world's largest proven oil reserves, estimated at 303 billion barrels or about 17% of global reserves.
0:56
This initiative is vitally important from both a geopolitical and domestic energy perspective.
1:02
Most of Venezuela's proven reserves are in the form of extra heavy crude located in the Orinoco Belt, a massive strip of land running along the Orinoco River in eastern Venezuela.
1:14
This extra heavy crude is essentially oil that is so thick and dense and viscous that it behaves more like tar or peanut butter than liquid petroleum.
1:25
It's thick, sticky, and difficult to pump, and so requires upgrading and the addition of what are called diluents, a lighter, thinner petroleum liquid that you mix with extra heavy crude so that it can flow through pipelines, be pumped out of the ground, be loaded into tankers, and be processed in refineries and specialized processes.
1:45
However, before it can be refined, Venezuela oil reserves must be upgraded into synthetic crude, since most refineries cannot process extra heavy crude directly.
1:56
And upgraders are massive, expensive industrial complexes, something U.S.
2:00
companies can do far better than the Venezuela State Oil Company.
2:05
Uh abbreviated PD VSA.
2:08
Today's upgraders now run far below capacity or sit idle across Venezuela.
2:14
Now, PD VSA used to have very strong technical talent, but believe it or not, after a massive strike in 2002 to 2003, the government fired about 20,000 skilled workers.
2:27
That included engineers, geologists, and managers.
2:30
And so they gutted the company's technical core to discuss all this as well as the energy poverty that is now hitting California.
2:39
That's the topic we'll start with.
2:41
We've invited Jason Isaac, founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute to be our guest today.
2:47
Jason was last on the show in March of 2025.
2:51
So welcome back to the show, Jason.
2:53
That's great to be back.
2:54
Happy New Year.
2:55
I guess we can still say that since I haven't seen or talked to you every bit on your show this year.
2:58
So it's good to be back.
3:00
Good to have you here.
3:01
Hey, want to kind of jump right in with you because I'm I was a longtime California resident.
3:05
I was in Los Angeles for 26 years.
3:08
And you had a great recent article in the Orange County Register that we wanted to chat with you about that you wrote on January 14th, and I'm going to quote you that in California, quote unquote, more than three million households are unable to pay their electrical bills, and basic service has become quite a growing crisis for nearly one in four families.
3:28
What caused this fiasco?
3:30
Yeah, it's really a misallocation of resources.
3:33
I call it the green new fraud, if you will.
3:35
There's fraud has been in the news a lot lately as we're discovering more and more abuses of our tax dollars and governments around the world.
3:42
And so it's just this misallocation of resources.
3:45
And I talk about that in Texas a lot where I live.
3:48
Over the last 10 years, we've spent 150 billion dollars on things for our grid when we could have spent a tenth of that, 15 billion dollars on things for our grid that work, and we wouldn't be facing the problems that we're facing during cold spells, winter storm Uri would have just been a blip uh had we put sources of funding in the right location, but it's a misallocation of resources.
4:14
California's got some incredible so-called climate mandates that they're doing and spending billions of dollars on wind, solar, and batteries, things that don't work when you need them most and are extremely expensive even when they are working.
4:29
And so yeah, it's it's interesting that March was the last time I was on, because that's my data is through is through March of 2025.
4:35
So I'm hoping in the next couple of months, I'll be able to get some updated data that shows unfortunately, probably more Californians are behind on their utility bills.
4:44
Yeah, you're saying what one in four families.
4:48
Yeah, it's it's actually 3.4 million meters.
4:51
So it's the small businesses, it's those, yeah.
4:54
And I may have miswritten this in my article, uh, because it's that 3.4 million meters.
4:59
So you've got to look and see who lives behind those meters, families, small businesses.
5:04
Uh so that's it's it could be 10 million or more people.
5:07
If you've got four people that live behind a meter, I mean, you're talking astronomical numbers, but yeah, you're right, one in four Californians, and it's over 2 billion dollars in debt.
5:17
So it's people that are paying their utility bills that can afford to are really subsidizing other people that they can't afford it in the state.
5:25
So uh it's just really this egregious abuse of misallocation of resources.
5:30
It's bad policy, and bad policy is meeting reality in California.
5:35
Uh, and really around the world, uh, we're we're seeing this bad policy meet reality.
5:40
Yeah.
5:41
I want you to, you said something interesting.
5:43
I want you to kind of unpack for the audience, which is we always hear the phrase, you know, renewables are the cheapest way to do electricity.
5:51
Um, we'll say, oh, hey, Jason, the wind and the sun, it's free.
5:54
But would you explain the concept of why it isn't free, meaning the marginal cost and why when renewables penetrate a grid, not only do they make them unstable, but your electricity prices are going to rise.
6:08
We mind unpacking that for everybody.
6:10
Yeah, absolutely, Todd.
6:11
It's interesting.
6:12
And I think landman has probably done the best uh kind of one-liners or liners on this.
6:18
The fuel is the only thing that's free for wind and solar.
6:22
It's sunshine and it's wind.
6:24
Now you've got to be dependent on when those are actually performing, unlike natural gas, coal, and nuclear.
6:30
You pay for fuel and you pay for what you get, and it works when you need it the most.
6:34
Now, the things that they're not talking about is the thousands of tons in concrete, all the steel cables, the wiring, uh, all the fiberglass that goes into it that's not recyclable, the dependency on the Chinese supply chain, the subsidies.
6:47
I mean, wind and solar receive massive amounts.
6:50
It's it's astronomical.
6:51
It's wind is about $20 per megawatt hour in subsidies, where natural gas, and we in this research, it included tax write-offs that traditional businesses, standard business deductions take, but we wanted to include everything in the research.
7:06
Natural gas gets about 39 cents per megawatt hour of electricity.
7:10
Again, solar is solar is almost 70 a megawatt hour.
7:16
So we should be paying about $10 a megawatt hour or 10 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity at our meters.
7:23
There's no reason that you need to subsidize something nearly $70.
7:26
So those subsidies hopefully will go away.
7:29
There's been a just a gold rush, if you will, of our dollars and people trying to get new contracts or new new installations uh under contract and under construction.
7:38
But you look at the amount of transmission cost right now in Texas, you look about 30% of our electricity bills are paying for transmission.
7:47
So a couple of decades ago, the legislature and governor Rick Perry, they signed, they passed legislation called CRES, the competitive renewable energy zones, which said, hey, we're going to build out these transmission lines to move unreliable generation from the middle of nowhere to get that electricity to where consumers are, and the ratepayers will pay for it.
8:06
The legislature voted on it.
8:08
So people that are living in the state of Texas had some accountability.
8:11
They elected people to represent them.
8:13
Those politicians voted for the CRES lines, which is right now about 30% of our utility bills is paying for that transmission.
8:21
Now we have our public utility commission proposing new high voltage transmission lines that the legislature hasn't voted on, that the legislature hasn't appropriated money for, but yet the cost will still get passed on to the consumer.
8:35
And about four of the 40% of our utility bills will be paying for high voltage transmission lines to bring power from the middle of nowhere to where the consumers are when we should be building generation to where the consumers are.
8:48
So we're going to see higher costs.
8:50
We're unfortunately we're doing the same thing California has done in Texas, and it's just leading to higher cost.
9:01
When did this begin?
9:02
Because the let's call it the cognitive dissonance that I'm about to suffer is that.
9:07
Okay, I came from probably the bluest state, the heaviest democratic state in the United States, California.
9:14
Now I moved to Texas, and we when we typically think of Texas, we think of you know, red state Republicans, plenty of oil, plenty of natural gas.
9:22
But I've seen my electricity bills now go up 40% in five years.
9:26
I understand this, obviously, but when did this begin?
9:31
When did this move, this heavy move to renewables was happened in Texas?
9:37
Was it backed by ESG, climate change, global warming, or was it just good old fashioned businesses saw, you know, a lot of subsidies that they could they could come at the government, you know, the taxpayer trough.
9:50
But when did all of this actually happen in Texas?
9:54
Yeah, it was right after the turn of the century, really, here the early 2000s.
9:58
And it I would say the
10:00
Motivation initially was economics.
10:02
The price for natural gas was five times what it is today, four or five times what it is today.
10:08
And we were generating a significant portion of our electricity off of natural gas.
10:12
It was primarily coal at the time, but we were moving more and more to natural gas.
10:17
And that cost was really high.
10:19
And I and I think that Governor Perry felt like, you know, if we can build some generation, that maybe we can derate the natural gas, we can let off the throttle on natural gas, which is really expensive and bring in some cheap fueled wind that's getting subsidies from the federal government.
10:34
He and I really feel like he thought that maybe we would get to about 15% penetration, but it would ultimately save consumers money.
10:42
Well, lo and behold, wildcatters figured out the shale revolution and the price of natural gas dropped significantly.
10:51
And so I think it was completely unforeseen as to what was going to happen with the cost of natural gas and the motivation initially was how can we save ratepayers and consumers money?
11:03
Let's bring in some cheap, you know, so-called cheap electricity is what they thought it was going to be.
11:07
It turned out it wasn't.
11:08
So I think the motivations were in the right place at the right time.
11:11
But then when I was in the legislature last decade, I kept hearing from the lobby, the wind and solar lobby talking about all the economic development they're doing.
11:18
They wanted to get waivers for property taxes out in where they were building their infrastructure, the middle of nowhere.
11:24
And so they're building it on farmland and ranch land that's not generating any property taxes for the locals as it is anywhere.
11:30
And they're telling us we're going to create all these jobs, and it's going to be economic development and billions of dollars investment.
11:35
And I and I was naive.
11:36
And so now here I am on my tour of repenting for my sins and asking for forgiveness, but trying to educate the public at the same time that I was misinformed about the economic development because you find out that you know to get these incentives, you had to create 10 jobs in rural areas.
11:50
And we go back and look, well, at the very end of my legislative career when I decided not to run for re-election, I'm finding out that over 80% of the way the applications were granted waivers to meet those job requirements.
12:02
So they weren't creating 10 jobs, they were creating one at most, but they were still getting off the hook of having to pay property taxes, which is driving up the burdens of those of us that do pay property taxes.
12:14
So it was a total the green new fraud has been going on a lot longer than than we we know.
12:19
Um, and so now you know, talking about the penetration of wind, solar, and batteries in our grid at winterstorm URE just five years ago, it was 31, 33 percent of our installed capacity.
12:30
Today it's over 50% of our installed capacity.
12:33
We've had very little oh my gosh, we've had very little new firm generation added to the grid.
12:41
Very little, uh I it's less than one gigawatt, I believe, of thermal generation from natural gas, coal, or nuclear added to the grid in the last five years, massive amounts.
12:52
And I might be able to pull up a screenshot here soon and tell you, you know, give you a kind of a rough idea of the number of gigawatts of wind solar and batteries that we have added.
13:01
And so people think, oh my gosh, we're adding so much more installed capacity.
13:06
Yeah, we're we're looking at close to 30 gigawatts of wind solar and batteries added to our grid, and essentially no gas, nuclear, or coal.
13:18
So, what's that mean is our reserve margin that that difference between peak demand and your firm capacity is shrinking significantly, and that is frightening as we have another cold spell uh, you know, approaching the south, and it could be devastating if we have another winter storm Uri.
13:35
Yeah, wow.
13:36
I just wanted to go back to a couple of numbers you mentioned, because I love to give our listeners talking points so that when they're at the dinner table and somebody says wind is cheaper than than natural gas, they can come back with a real zinger.
13:48
And if I understood rightly, 39 cents per megawatt hour is the subsidy for natural gas, right?
13:55
Yes.
13:56
And solar is 70 dollars.
13:59
Yeah, solar is close, it's about 67 in some change in grant.
14:03
Those numbers are a few years old, but you're close to 70 dollars per megawatt hour.
14:08
Yeah.
14:09
Yeah, that's uh that's almost a 200 to one ratio.
14:12
Yeah, so so the answer people can give is oh, yeah, sure.
14:16
Any any energy source would be cheaper if you gave it 200 times more subsidies.
14:21
It's like it's like going out to Eaton saying, you know, if you eat at the steakhouse, your meal's gonna be cheaper.
14:25
But by the way, I'm gonna pay for 95% of it.
14:28
Yeah, yeah.
14:29
Yeah.
14:29
I mean, it's it's just really crazy, sir.
14:32
So that's a great talking point.
14:33
200 times in California, 200, almost 200 times more subsidies goes to solar per megawatt hour than uh natural gas.
14:42
200 times.
14:43
Yeah, which is interesting because the people on the left are usually concerned about loss of habitat and endangered species.
14:50
So keep in mind, solar takes up 75 times the amount of land of generation of natural gas, coal, and nuclear does.
14:57
That's including all the transportation, the exploration production, the mining.
15:02
That's including all of that.
15:03
So it's just it's completely backwards.
15:07
And people on the left, like, oh, wind and solar are the answer, but they won't, you know, nuclear is off the table.
15:11
No, no, we can't do nuclear because that just like solves their so-called problem, uh, their fascination with decarbonization, which is the their the Kool-Aid they want everybody to drink and multiple.
15:21
But it's encouraging the Orange County register would publish you, you know, like like that's really quite quite amazing.
15:28
Yeah, and I think you know, my messaging is more emotional, and that's what I really want to talk to.
15:32
I love talking about facts and figures and numbers.
15:34
And when you can when you can actually put a name in a face, and there's 3.4 million meters.
15:40
So you tend to 12 to 13, 14 million people in California are facing poverty.
15:46
The numbers from 2022 to 2023, it was a 30% increase in people in this country that were getting disconnected from their utility.
15:55
In California, you know, there's 3.4 million meters that were disconnected or that are behind in 2023, 242,000 meters in California were shut off of their electricity.
16:08
And so I talk about it from the standpoint of, you know, what are the repercussions of some of these policies that people are doing?
16:13
Well, that's going to lead to homelessness.
16:15
And people are like, wait a second, how do you how do you get to homelessness from not having electricity?
16:20
Well, when you buy a home and you have a homeowner's policy, and then people like, oh, look at you guys, you're you're fortunate enough to buy a home.
16:27
And I'm like, and if you sign a lease, if you rent a property, there are requirements in those contracts that you have your utilities connected.
16:35
Yep.
16:35
And if you don't have your utilities connected, you're violating the terms of either your homeowner's insurance policy or your lease.
16:41
And so they're really at the greatest risk for experiencing homelessness because they can't afford their utilities.
16:48
So something as basic as having utilities, but that's what happens when the actual utility companies, and I pin a lot of blame on this.
16:56
Uh, and I think we're gonna talk a little bit later about some of my Fox News and Fox Business hits in the president meeting with oil and gas executives, wanting them to lower the cost of a barrel of oil.
17:05
And for me, you know, leading a trade organization that actually represents the smaller independent that support free markets that don't want the subsidies, feeling the pinch at $60 a barrel of oil.
17:15
I mean, they're they're having to lay off people, they're cutting back on their operations.
17:18
That you know, the majors, these international majors, the the companies Exxon and others that have embraced political agendas can can ride it out and they can squeeze the smallers and hopefully pick up the pieces that are left of some of these smaller independents, but it's not good for the economy.
17:32
But I've really encouraged the president uh to have the utility executives come into the White House and find out what they're doing to abandon their political agendas.
17:41
I mean, President Trump at Davos just blasting the EU for their embracing of the green new scam and how high the electricity costs are in Germany.
17:50
Well, the utilities are glad to push these costs on, they're glad to waste billions of dollars on wind, solar, and batteries because they guaranteed they're getting a rate of return.
17:59
So they pass those costs on to ratepayers, and that's why ratepayers are behind on their bills.
18:04
They can't make it.
18:05
And that's why I was watching Varney and company earlier this week, and they're talking with an analyst that came on recommended buying utilities because they're profitable.
18:13
Well, they're guaranteed a rate of return.
18:15
That's the reason BlackRock and Blackstone aren't just investing into utilities, they are buying them out right because they're guaranteed, depending on the state, between a nine and 11% rate of return here in the US.
18:28
I mean, it's just amazing.
18:30
And President Trump, the DOE, Chris Wright's doing a fantastic job, but they need to call these, and really, I think Congress needs to investigate them embracing foreign treaties like the Paris Accords that have not been ratified by Congress.
18:42
I think it's treasonous that they've aligned with those principles and outright embrace them.
18:47
They should be answering before Congress and to the ratepayers, and quite honestly, some of those executives, they need to lose their jobs because they've abandoned their fiduciary responsibility.
18:55
That's absolutely I want to go back to I keep harping on the Texas thing here, but when you were Tom J Jason, when you're on here what a little about a year ago, you were with last was about a year ago.
19:08
If I recall correctly, you had talked about the penetration of renewables onto the Texas grid.
19:13
Yeah.
19:13
I think you said at that point it was maybe in the 40% range.
19:18
Correct.
19:18
And if I heard you correctly, you said now we're at the 50%.
19:22
We're right at 50%.
19:25
Yeah, yeah.
19:26
It's it's right at half of the installed capacity of the grid is wind solar and batteries, the most expensive forms of generation.
19:34
And so we're about to have this massive winter storm.
19:37
Talk to us about what happens with this level of uh renewable penetration of solar panels, wind turbines, and then the supposed backup of just having batteries.
19:46
Yeah.
19:47
And so that this is what's happening in Texas right now is uh our grid operators are frantically making sure that all of the generation that firm, that thermal generation, thermal being you heat up water, you spin a turbine, natural gas.
20:00
Coal and nuclear being the fuel source, uh, those sources of generation, they are they're making sure that none of them are under for routine maintenance.
20:08
They're making sure that they are online and going to be available during for this upcoming cold snap, which isn't going to be anything as serious as winter storm year, because we you'll see most of the state come out of freezing temperatures during the day, where winter storm ure, you saw nearly the entire state below freezing for four days and four million people without power, hundreds of people lost their lives.
20:30
So they're going to make sure that generation is online and standing by in case the solar panels, if if they're frozen over like they were during winterstorm Uri, they had ice and snow on them.
20:41
So even if the sun was shining, it wasn't penetrating the snow and the ice.
20:45
And so you weren't getting any solar generated electricity.
20:47
The wind turbines froze.
20:49
The humidity in Texas uh mixed with that that cold that vortex that got really, really cold, frozen completely shut down.
20:56
Uh so we had a massive drop-off of that generation.
20:59
So what they're gonna do is they're going to pay millions of dollars to make sure that coal and natural gas and nuclear, really nuclear is running consistently, but coal and natural gas are standing by.
21:10
That's over $2 billion that ratepayers are paying now annually, and that number is increasing.
21:16
So the ERCOT, or the electric reliability council of Texas that manages about 80% of the consumers and 80% of the grid in Texas, pays this generation to stand by.
21:27
It's like I need you sitting out in your car with a gas running in case I need to go somewhere.
21:33
In case, you know, in case my wind ride or my solar ride doesn't show up, I'm gonna jump in my gas ride and we're gonna go somewhere.
21:40
But if they show up, you're still gonna get paid.
21:42
It's over $2 billion a year that ratepayers are having to pick up.
21:46
They're absorbing that cost in their utility bills.
21:48
It's one of the reasons why we're seeing utility bills increase significantly here in Texas up 25% over the last five years.
21:54
That's unattainable.
21:56
So it's really hopeful, hopefully it doesn't lead to a deindustrialization here in Texas.
21:59
And I hope that policymakers really look to get a fix in this next legislative session and get some reliability standards put in place.
22:07
If you want to be on the grid, you've got to meet a certain minimum amount of generation, regardless of what the weather is doing.
22:12
It's got to be based on demand and you've got to be reliable.
22:15
And you've got to bear the cost.
22:16
Governor Abbott has said as much in some directives that wind and solar should bear the cost that they put on the grid, like transmission, like transmission.
22:25
You're gonna produce electricity out in the middle of nowhere.
22:27
Why am I paying for your ride to get it to where I am when I can have natural gas right outside, getting me generational electricity right here with zero or very low transmission cost?
22:40
Uh so it's we we've awarded rewarded here in Texas inefficiency.
22:45
Um, and and I just hope it doesn't come uh to bear here during this next storm, but it certainly will over the coming months and years.
22:53
Yeah, there's a point there.
22:54
I think it's it sort of begs the question.
22:56
If you're keeping these stable, secure energy sources on standby, why don't you just use them in the first place?
23:03
I mean, that you know, like I mean it it sort of strikes me that if you told the wind and solar companies you have to pay for the backup that's required to be kept on standby, that would make a lot of sense, wouldn't it?
23:17
It would, and that's exactly what we've proposed.
23:18
I have a state senator Kevin Sparks out of Midland, had a great bill, Cynthia Bill 715, last legislative session last year.
23:26
Hopefully he'll reintroduce it or something very similar.
23:29
Next legislative session, he is a champion for affordable and reliable energy.
23:34
Where, and I think I've I've fallen in this trap in the past where it used to be I support all of the above energy policy.
23:41
But you know, as I've come to learn and educate myself and do extensive research in the topic, all of the above includes things that are heavily subsidized.
23:48
They're heavily dependent on a foreign Chinese supply chain.
23:52
And when you're talking about wind solar and batteries, those are are neither affordable nor reliable.
23:57
Uh, and so it's it's great that we have a federal administration that embraces affordable, reliable, and resilient.
24:04
That's the talking points uh and the language used by our Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and most of the administration talk about affordable and reliable.
24:12
All of the above is gone.
24:14
Those days are over.
24:15
But we do need some reliability standards if you're going to connect to our grid, and we really should have the generation paying for its transmission.
24:25
If you're going to build out in the middle of nowhere where nobody lives and where there's no demand, then you're gonna have to pay to get it to where the demand is.
24:32
Yeah.
24:32
Yeah, in other words, pay the real cost of wind and solar power.
24:35
And that to me would be a talking point that our listeners can use is to say, well, if you think wind and solar are so great, are you gonna pay for the transmission costs?
24:44
Are you gonna pay for the backup?
24:46
Because if you do, and you can still show that they're cost effective, then I have something to listen to.
24:52
Otherwise, let's change topic.
24:55
It's like EVs.
24:56
They want they want other people to pay for them.
24:58
And now that a lot of the subsidies in the U.S.
25:01
have gone away, uh the cost of EVs, yeah, the market has tanked because the cost of EVs are increasing because no longer are purchasers of internal combustion engines subsidizing the cost of an EV.
25:13
You know, and the the tax credit was just the smallest subsidy.
25:17
$7,500 tax credit is what most people talked about, but it's really the corporate average fuel economy credits that were being forced onto purchasers and buyers of internal combustion engines, and those are going away.
25:29
So they've they're gone.
25:31
Uh so just some incredible progress in 2025 on that front, which will help bring the cost down of internal combustion engine vehicles, which will be great for the consumers.
25:40
Oh, for sure.
25:41
We have to go for a break now, but in the second half, I was hoping we could talk about the state of Venezuela's oil infrastructure before the U.S.
25:49
came in and what the impact is going to be of the U.S.
25:53
controlling their oil infrastructure.
25:55
So will you talk about that in the second half?
25:57
Love to be great.
25:58
Yeah, it's good.
25:59
So this is Tom Harris, my co-host Todd Royal, and our guest, Jason Isaac.
26:04
We'll be right back after the break.
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28:28
Well, I challenge you to find a broad array of great voices, a deeper bench of experience or a more dedicated collection of passionate patriots than here on America Outloud.
28:45
Now is our time.
28:49
America Outloud.
28:58
We are back.
28:59
We are with Jason Isaac, the carbon theme.
29:02
Hey, Jason, I want to talk to you about Venezuela.
29:04
You've done great work in this area.
29:06
And talk to us about the state of Venezuela's oil infrastructure post before we got Mura and now after.
29:14
What's that going to look like?
29:16
Yeah, it's really interesting.
29:17
Just going back and doing some research.
29:18
I've got a great economist on our team at the American Energy Institute, Tricia Curtis, who has really educated me a lot on this issue and China and Iran and China buying about 80 to 90% of the oil coming out of Venezuela.
29:31
But you look back at the early 2000s, about 2004, 2005, Venezuela was producing 3.4 million barrels per day of oil.
29:40
Then you had Chavez come in and really seize the assets of companies like Conoco, which is now Coneco Phillips, other companies, assets.
29:50
And then you had employees that went on a strike and they were all fired over the over 20,000 now state employees were fired, brought in people that were.
30:00
Uh friends with and had great relationships with the party of Chavez.
30:05
Maybe they didn't have any experience, but then compare that.
30:08
So 3.4 million barrels of oil about 20 years ago compared to today, about seven to eight hundred thousand barrels of oil.
30:16
So a significant drop off in the production of this heavy, sour crude, which is almost like pulling tar out of the ground.
30:24
You really need some experts on the field that are mixing that oil that are producing it, pulling up out of the ground.
30:31
It's not easy.
30:32
And I think that's what happens when you have a socialist government that doesn't know what they're doing, uh, that feels like they know it's best for everybody.
30:39
Production decreases significantly.
30:41
Uh, and then China coming in and buying again, 80 to 90 percent of those that every single barrel of oil coming out of the ground and making trades, trading technology, trading other things, but coming in, there's always hooks when you're dealing with China, bringing in Chinese nationals to work mines.
30:59
This was not just about the oil in Venezuela.
31:01
I think it was about law and order, returning the rule of law to the this entire hemisphere.
31:07
And it was talking about the critical minerals, the elements, the rare earth elements and gold that's in reserves there in Venezuela.
31:16
I mean, some of the largest reserves of oil and those critical minerals, rare earth elements and gold are there.
31:23
And Venezuela was doing, I think uh Maduro was meeting with the Chinese, maybe the same day or the day before he was uh seized by law enforcement and brought to face justice in New York.
31:34
So uh they're doing some shady things.
31:36
They're a little too close to home for us.
31:38
Yeah, and can you say a bit more about China and how they fit into this equation?
31:42
Because the fact that Trump now is going to undoubtedly not allow them to get all that cheap oil.
31:48
I mean, they're not gonna be very happy about that.
31:50
Do you think they're just gonna accept it?
31:51
Or what do you think is gonna happen?
31:53
Well, you know, it's interesting.
31:54
I don't think they are very happy, but it may be forcing them to come to the table with us and stop some of these, you know, they'd seize the seventh tanker this week of this unflagged or you know, false flagged vessel with all the transponders turned off.
32:09
Again, the seventh vehicle that the Americans have seized this week that's illegally shipping oil out of Venezuela.
32:15
Um, but the Chinese, look at what they've done over the last couple of decades.
32:19
They massively expand their electric generation on the back of coal.
32:23
So, and I've testified in Congress several times, and I've said of all the technology the Chinese steal from us.
32:28
It would be nice if they would utilize our pollution control technology.
32:32
They don't.
32:33
We do, and we're world leaders in clean air.
32:35
I mean, the Northern Hemisphere, the North America, world leaders in clean air, at least the US and Canada.
32:42
I mean, we've reduced pollution nearly 80% over the last five decades.
32:45
You look in California, and over 60% of the pollution in California is Asian air pollution.
32:51
Takes about one to four weeks.
32:53
So during the the Chinese Olympics, the air quality improved in in Southern California because they shut industry down to try to improve the air quality in China.
33:00
It actually improved the air quality around the world.
33:02
Uh so it would be nice if they've used some of that technology.
33:05
But yet, yeah, I think China, again, they've expanded their electric generation.
33:09
And for the first time in the last year, China has expanded their refining capacity, powered by cheap coal-fired electricity, something that we need to be doing here in the United States.
33:18
We can learn a lot from the Chinese.
33:20
We need more coal-fired electricity.
33:22
We need a lot more nuclear things that China is doing.
33:24
We need more natural gas.
33:26
We need to also expand a refining capacity.
33:28
And so they've expanded their refining capacity.
33:30
They're putting diesel, jet fuel, and home heating oil on the global markets for the first time ever in the last year.
33:36
And they're doing it with Iranian oil that they're buying on the dark market.
33:40
They're buying Russian oil and Venezuelan oil.
33:43
Well, one of those sources dried up, and it was a pretty significant source.
33:46
Yeah, for sure.
33:47
For our Canadian listeners, you might have heard that Mark Carney was just in China, and he made a deal to bring in electric vehicles from China into Canada at, you know, much cut tariff rates.
34:00
Our premier here in Ontario, okay, Ontario does most of our automobile manufacturing.
34:04
He's furious, of course.
34:06
But you know, for Canadians that think that we can deal with China as an honest, honest broker, you know, that they'll actually keep their agreements and not put spy devices into their EVs.
34:17
I mean, what would you say to these Canadians who think China is this paradigm of sort of virtue that we can trust?
34:23
Yeah, let's I'll make the comparison to a Roomba, those i robot vacuum cleaners that run around your homes that are very prevalent.
34:31
People have them in their homes.
34:32
There were some concerns, the security concerns years ago about them because they have cameras and sensors and they can completely map out your house.
34:40
And so there was some concern that, hey, you know what?
34:43
I've completely mapped out this house.
34:44
I know how many bedrooms and bathrooms it has.
34:46
I know where the furniture is, I know what the furniture looks like.
34:49
Well, maybe I can sell this data to Amazon and Amazon can start target marketing you like, hey, there's an empty spot in your house for this piece of furniture.
34:56
Maybe you should buy this furniture.
34:58
So there were some concerns about that.
35:00
Well, look at what's happening in the EU right now.
35:02
And I think you have Poland that's come out and said no more Chinese-made electric vehicles in our country because their electric vehicles are doing the same thing around their military installations.
35:12
They have government-owned Chinese electric vehicles that are in their military bases, in or on their military bases, that are completely recording everything, internal to the vehicles, but also external cameras.
35:26
It's like a robot vacuum going back and sending data, videos back to the mothership of the Chinese communist party and recording all this incredibly sensitive information.
35:36
It's quite alarming.
35:38
Yeah, Premier Ford, the Premier of Ontario, he made the point that with these spy devices in the EVs, and apparently it's real.
35:46
It's not just make make believe.
35:48
And he says it may get to the point where the U.S.
35:50
won't even allow them to cross the border into the US.
35:53
So I mean, I think people should take that a little bit more seriously.
35:57
Yeah.
35:58
Hey, I wonder, I want to return to Venezuela.
36:00
You know, some people are saying that Venezuela stole US oil when they nationalized the largely owned American-owned and operated oil industry.
36:08
But other sources say that American companies were properly compensated in this orderly transition.
36:15
Who is correct?
36:16
No, there's I mean, the international court has ruled multiple times that Conoco, now Conoco Phillips is owed over 12 billion dollars because of their assets and their interest that were stolen during the Chavez and the Maduro regimes.
36:30
And so the and that got talked about, I think, at this executive meeting in the White House a couple of weeks ago, where Trump's like, hey, you're not going to get that back.
36:39
Or you're not, you've already written it off.
36:40
We're not even going to talk about that.
36:41
Well, just because they've written it off doesn't mean that they're still not owed those resources.
36:46
I mean, they've written off the tax liability for 12 billion dollars.
36:50
It's not like they've gotten 12 billion dollars back in write-offs.
36:54
Uh, so and you think about who owns the shares of Conoco Phillips.
36:58
I mean, this is not a private company that hurt one particular family.
37:01
This is a publicly traded company of shareholders of pensioners all over the world.
37:05
I mean, you've got teachers and firefighters and first responders and pensions that have invested in this company, hoping for a return on investment so that they can fund their retirements so that states can have fiduciary duty applied to their pensions.
37:18
And when a country comes in and steals 12 billion dollars in assets, that's 12 billion dollars in property theft.
37:24
This is something that, you know, I even had a hard time grappling with, and someone that's a really true private property rights person said you realize the cash in your wallet right now is your private property.
37:35
You realize that the stocks of a company you own is your private property.
37:39
And when people come in and devalue that, whether it's you know, Biden printing millions of dollars and giving out to his friends, that's leading to me having less worth and with the money that's in my wallet.
37:51
And when you steal 12 billion dollars of assets from Conico, you're stealing hundreds of thousands of other people private property, and they need to be reimbursed and compensated for that as a court has has duly ruled.
38:03
And so I think that's probably why there's some hesitancy about some companies going back.
38:06
Now, Chevron's been able to work this really wonderfully well over the last few years.
38:11
They've had these joint partnerships where they've been able to have foreign companies come in and work with them, uh, but not risk their people, their life, their limb, and their property, uh, and continue to help them produce oil.
38:22
But I and I do think over the next couple of years, we're going to see that production increase, maybe double.
38:26
We'll get from about 700,000 barrels of uh per day to closer to 1.4 million in about two years.
38:32
Exxon's gonna play it cautious, which I yeah, I think the president was going after Exxon a little bit, calling them playing too cute.
38:39
Um, and so he's a little upset with Exxon.
38:41
But which it just blows my mind is Exxon will, you know, play it too cute in Venezuela and not invest there, but they'll waste billions of dollars on a carbon capture project in these Texas that they're proposing just south of Beaumont, you know, in the golden triangle.
38:56
So they carbon capture and sequestration.
38:58
This isn't utilization.
39:00
You know, they've been doing utilization in the form of enhanced oil recovery for three decades now in the United States.
39:05
And it hasn't been just until the last couple of years, they've been getting subsidies.
39:08
That's why I love representing companies that are in the oil and gas, coal, and nuclear space that don't want subsidies, don't want corporate welfare.
39:16
They want free markets, they know they can compete and win.
39:19
And here you are, you've got these major companies that do these European political agendas of decarbonization, and they're gonna do carbon capture in East Texas, which does absolutely nothing to mitigate a changing climate, just makes everything more expensive.
39:33
It is an abdication of fiduciary responsibilities.
39:35
And I'm tired of these executives doing this year after year, wasting billions of dollars.
39:40
You and I paying more for energy and electricity, and there being no repercussions.
39:44
These are the same executives that have been leading these companies for years, and they don't have any repercussions.
39:50
Amen.
39:51
I got a little fired up there.
39:52
Yeah, but it's like a politician.
39:54
You give you your politician, you continuously make bad decisions, and you take your constituents off, the people you're supposed to serve.
40:00
You ultimately you might you might get fired, but you've got you've got an answer to.
40:04
If you're a head football coach, you get fired.
40:06
I mean, exactly.
40:07
Well, let me throw another little log on that fire.
40:10
How about you know the world economic forums going on right now?
40:13
And uh Larry Fink has taken it over from Klaus Schwab.
40:18
Would you want to let everybody know who Larry Fink is, what the world economic forum is, and Klaus Schwab.
40:24
If if you need to take a shower with a bar soap after answering this question, Phil feel free to we may need to pause at the very least, let him brush his teeth after the he's about to educate us on.
40:37
Yeah, Larry Fink's been on the board of the World Economic Forum for years now.
40:41
But as Klaus Schwab was you know allegedly mismanaging millions of dollars, living his his high carbon lifestyle while professing the rest of us should live as peasants.
40:50
Um Larry Fink's now taking over as a co-chairman of the World Economic Forum and he's singing a different tune.
40:56
And this is what you know, I'd had some opportunity to work with the legislature in Texas after I left my service in the Texas House.
41:03
We got a bill passed in 2021 that says if you boycott, divest or sanction fossil fuels, then you can no longer do business with the state.
41:10
Well, I got to define what boycott meant.
41:13
And it was basically if you were doing something out of your ordinary business purpose to target companies that produce fossil fuels or transport or distribute fossil fuels, then you're going to get put on a boycott list in the state of Texas.
41:26
Uh, and so we had several companies like uh PNP Parabas, which is this French Brazilian conglomerate.
41:32
They have a company, they they bought a bank years ago called Bank of the West, something a bank that was started in the Western United States over 100 years ago in coal producing communities in Colorado.
41:43
And then they became natural gas producing communities in Colorado, and Bank of the West came out and said we're no longer going to do business with companies that earn more than 25% of their revenue from the production, distribution, or sale of hydrocarbons.
41:56
So they were going after oil and gas and coal.
41:58
And I'm like, that's just discrimination.
42:00
Like and then we saw this national, like this really this movement, this cartel-like movement coming out of the UN, the World Economic Forum that BlackRock was a part of.
42:10
Larry Fink is the CEO of BlackRock, the world's largest financial institution that now controls over 14 trillion dollars.
42:19
That would put them, I think, in the top three or four GDPs of countries, if I'm not mistaken.
42:24
It's a lot.
42:24
They control a lot of revenue.
42:26
It's those pension dollars that they've been entrusted to invest and get returns on investment.
42:30
Well, Larry Fink five years ago is at the World Economic Forum, sending out his letter to CEOs and preaching the gospel.
42:37
He was wearing some scarf about climate change.
42:39
I mean, you talk about virtue signaling, like, hey, I'm literally going to wear it on my scarf at the World Economic Forum, you know, really forcing companies to invest in wind solar, wind solar and now batteries, forcing companies to embrace the Paris Accords, forcing companies to embrace net zero through the Glasgow Financial Alliance for net zero.
42:59
And now five years later, he's kind of singing a different tune that you know, we need fossil fuels now.
43:06
And maybe wind and solar weren't such a good idea, and they're making electricity more expensive.
43:11
Something that those of us that understand math, science, facts, and reality understood from the very beginning.
43:17
Um, he's kind of coming around.
43:18
I think it's just because he's been getting beat up, you know, for the in the United States and a lot of red states who have come after him and BlackRock uh for their nefarious dealings, forcing companies to really invest in this unreliable and expensive form of electric generation to the benefit of Larry Fink and his company.
43:35
Isn't he one of those CEOs that should be held accountable?
43:38
He should be out of a job.
43:39
He has got no business leading the World Economic Forum.
43:41
And I'm quite honestly, I'm a little disappointed that there's the delegation attending the World Economic Forum that's there.
43:48
We should, it's a nonprofit.
43:49
Uh, that we should have absolutely no involvement in this woke global elitist gathering in Davos, Switzerland, but we we give it validity and credit when when people show up uh and do that.
44:01
It's the same thing with a climate cult gathering called COP 30.
44:04
Uh, I I haven't attended some of those conferences.
44:06
I know others of our friends have.
44:08
Uh, I just really think that we need to, you know, perhaps start our own uh that talks about human flourishing.
44:14
And when you get access to affordable and reliable energy, that's where you have human flourishing.
44:17
And in the UN and World Economic Forum says they're all about ending poverty.
44:20
Uh, but the way you do that is you end energy poverty.
44:23
Yeah.
44:23
Well, Heartland, of course, is hosting a counter conference.
44:26
And that's great.
44:28
That is wonderful.
44:29
That's doing exactly what what we want to see happen.
44:32
So now Trump's opponents are saying that the U.S.
44:35
is stealing Venezuela oil.
44:38
And uh is that actually true?
44:40
I mean, I don't think they're stealing anything.
44:42
They're giving them a proper price, aren't they?
44:44
Yeah, they absolutely are, where they were paying a $15 discount on China was paying a $15 per barrel discount on Venezuelan crude.
44:53
Well, now it's returned to free market.
44:55
So it's whatever the spot price is or whatever people are hedging at.
44:59
We're just helping them manage the assets, the sales of that oil is coming into a U.S.
45:03
bank.
45:04
It's going to go to the people of the country of Venezuela.
45:06
Uh, it's it's not going to go to a drug cartel like it was previously.
45:10
It's certainly not going to go to a corrupt uh government like it was, but it's going to go back into the United States and into Venezuela, really improving their infrastructure and lifting the lot.
45:21
Venezuela has this incredible depopulation.
45:23
25 to 33% of the population is left over the last 10 to 20 years.
45:28
I mean, you you talk about how you really lose a country and people are in abject poverty.
45:32
I mean, they had a power outage that lasted a few hours years ago.
45:35
I wrote about this last decade.
45:37
You know, 54 people died in hospitals because they that they didn't have power.
45:40
The backup generators didn't work.
45:42
They didn't have diesel fuel for them, but people on kidney dialysis machines on life support, you know, power is pretty important to a hospital.
45:50
And it's certainly, you don't want it to depend on wind and solar.
45:52
You want it to depend on things that work when you need them the most.
45:54
And when you're in a hospital, that's when you need power the most.
45:57
But 54 people died over just a power outage over a few hours in Venezuela.
46:02
Uh, that's happening in Cuba now, uh, because they were completely dependent on, they were providing security forces to Maduro in exchange for oil.
46:11
Well, I I guess that was a pretty bad investment because the security forces were were no match uh whatsoever for US uh law enforcement.
46:19
Yeah, yeah.
46:20
It sort of reminds me of the EU sending 30 soldiers to defend Greenland.
46:24
It's hilarious.
46:25
I guess maybe they're just gonna stand in the way and hope that the bad PR will deter the Americans from doing anything.
46:31
Yeah, what a joke.
46:32
What an absolute.
46:34
I love the uh head of Italy, the prime minister that she said it was a joke, you know, that it was just stupid.
46:40
So let's just look at actually what is the impact going to be of US control of and especially their investment into improving the Venezuela oil industry, which is really run down, hasn't it?
46:52
So, what do you think is going to be the main outcome, say two, three years from now, because the U.S.
46:57
are now starting to build up the infrastructure again?
47:00
Well, I think the President Trump's a little frustrated with uh Mark Carney there, the prime minister, a little frustrated with Canada.
47:06
I tell you, a lot of Canadians are too, because a lot of us are actually writing to our MP, which I've done and saying, what the heck?
47:13
You're you're making all these deals with China and you're completely ignoring all the human rights.
47:18
And then he goes to the WEF and he says Canada stands up for human rights standards across the world.
47:24
So, you know, on the business times, uh, I guess it was out of India.
47:27
I put a comment on last night and say, well, if that's the case, then why did they have no reference to the oygers being used essentially in slave labor to make batteries, et cetera, for the EVs.
47:38
So I mean, it's double talk, you know, it's just really not consistent.
47:41
So back to the impact of Venezuela having an upgrade in all of their infrastructure, especially these things called upgraders that allow them to refine the heavy, thick Venezuelan oil.
47:53
What do you see is going to be the impact internationally and also on the American consumer?
47:59
Well, it's going to be very similar if you followed what's happened in Guyana, which is the neighbor of Venezuela.
48:03
I mean, economic prosperity that has never been seen in this country before.
48:08
It was sembling very similar to what was happening in Sri Lanka prior to 2019 when they elected their first ever net zero candidate as their president.
48:17
Sri Lanka was experiencing economic prosperity.
48:19
They were climbing up ahead of their neighbors, India.
48:22
Uh, they were they were exporting tea, they were exporting rice, they had this incredible growth.
48:27
And then they adopted that they elected this official, one president, one policy, net zero.
48:33
He immediately said we're no longer going to use or import nitrogen-based fertilizer.
48:37
And so you have this company that's climbing out of poverty, this country that's climbing out of poverty, and within one year, food prices increase 40%.
48:46
Uh people and then they're now they're having to import tea and rice from China.
48:50
They're completely dependent on China.
48:52
Um, the food production decreased 40% and food costs went up 80%.
48:57
I mean, you just talk about astronomical hit.
48:59
Well, in Guyana, they're producing oil and gas a couple of years ago.
49:03
The stores were empty, the shelves were bare, people are living in poverty.
49:07
And it's been over a year now.
49:09
I read this article in the Wall Street Journal talking about the grocery stores, and it just looks like a modern American grocery store.
49:15
People are overwhelmed and just awstruck by the variety of goods that they have, the cuts of meat that they have, the staples that they have, and they're loving it.
49:24
They have good paying jobs like they do in the Permian Basin in Texas.
49:28
People are working in the oil field.
49:29
So the economic prosperity really plays an important part.
49:33
People are getting higher educations in Guyana.
49:36
That's going to happen in Venezuela because that's what happens when you have economic prosperity.
49:39
You have you have that economic prosperity, which is pretty amazing for a family.
49:43
It's pretty great for your livelihood, but it's also great for educational outcomes and environmental leadership.
49:48
I mean, we wouldn't have the world leading clean air and number be number one in access to clean and safe drinking water if it wasn't for our economic prosperity that's been powered by hydrocarbons uh and nuclear.
50:00
energy here in the United States.
50:01
So I see incredible great things over the coming years as people climb up out of poverty.
50:06
And that's what we want.
50:07
Look, 50 years ago, over 40% of the world's population lived in abject poverty.
50:12
This less than $2 a day today's equivalent earnings.
50:16
So 40% of the population 20 by 2020 that number had dropped down close to 8%.
50:22
And then with the Biden administration, it ticked back up.
50:25
It was the first time it had increased in decades.
50:28
We're still below 10% of the world's population and living in is abject poverty.
50:33
So the key to ending poverty around the world is getting people access to affordable reliable energy.
50:37
And we can certainly do that.
50:38
And when you bring on more energy like what Venezuela is going to be able to do onto a market not a black market, not a dark market, not in these uh unflagged vessels, the shadow vessels, when you get it done in real markets, you're going to help people around the world.
50:52
And so it's just going to be not only astronomical or incredible for Venezuela.
50:57
But look, a lot of that oil is going to come up into the Gulf Coast of the United States and the Gulf of America where it'll be refined.
51:04
That's going to make us less dependent unfortunately for our our our neighbors to the north on you Canadians on Canadian oil.
51:10
And I think that's why they're cutting deals with China because they're already exporting oil to China.
51:15
That number will increase you know based on some of the deals that are being done which is unfortunate because you're just going to have to ship it across the oceans increase transportation cost.
51:26
It would just be better if we could maybe play play nicer as uh you know regional neighbors here and yeah it sure would.
51:32
And a lot of Canadians would love that.
51:34
I mean my ancestors came from Boston you know and I mean uh in fact Ann Hutchison was my ancestor.
51:39
She was a woman's rights activist and a native rights activist who ironically was killed by natives.
51:45
I also thought that was kind of uh crazy.
51:48
But uh now I watch I wanted to switch topics we only have three minutes left.
51:52
And I noticed when you were interviewed on Fox News you had a hat in the background and uh it said something about coal.
51:58
What did it say actually?
52:00
Yeah I was looking to see if I had one here I I'm usually wearing that one or my make nuclear grade again hates it says mine American coal again and I've I've gone out and I've spoken to people for the last gosh five years or so that work in coal mines in Wyoming that work in the industry and I will tell you it's night and day Tom the difference in their mental health their outlook on life right now compared to four years ago because I went out to some of these mines during the Biden administration and you know these are mines that are on Indian reservations and Navajo Navajo Indian Reservation in eastern Wyoming and the people we're talking to the workers and like we don't know how much longer we're going to have our jobs.
52:37
You know my I'm the third generation of people to work in this mine.
52:41
They make really good money they they have great life experiences.
52:46
They love their jobs.
52:47
I mean come on they're getting to play in the dirt on these big Tonka toys and these big trucks and equipment as their job I mean it's like every kid's dream and they're making really good money they've got great families and a couple of years ago they just didn't know how much longer they said yeah the the Bureau of land management isn't extending leases.
53:02
So once we we clean out this this uh the this strip of coal then we we don't know where else we're going to go and so we may close this mine down they're forcing the power plants to close down so our our our demand is going away I mean just really depressed and disappointed about the the outcome of their lives in the next five to 10 years and you go out there now and I was out there just a few months ago and so I took some hats out there I wanted to give it to the people because we really do we do we do need to mine American coal again and we need more of it.
53:31
We need to increase our coal fired generation uh here in this country it's incredible great baseload generation you can't ramp ramp it up as fast as you can natural gas but when people talk about a battery and I'm like the best battery that's out there is a rail car full of coal covered up with a tarp.
53:49
So because you can take that and you can shovel it into a generator for months months and that's that's so that's the best battery we saw during winterstorm five years ago is about 50 to 60% increase in the amount of electricity on our grid from coal it was over 200% increase from natural gas because those plants that were working that were online had to massively increase their production and so that battery was that great coal that we kept on site you could take nine months of storage on site and everybody keeps saying batteries are the answer batteries are the answer.
54:22
We've had almost gigawatts of batteries here in Texas they last for hours two hours actually right you and it's so much more secure in fact there's a group in the US called Secure the grid and they prom they promote coal because you pile up to a year's supply right there.
54:40
You're not dependent on a guy gas line coming in or or the wind and sun.
54:44
I mean I think coal has gotten a bad wrap generally speaking don't you?
54:49
Oh absolutely and I really think a lot of it was the people in the oil and gas industry that were giving it a bad rap.
54:55
And it was natural gas people looking to take market share from coal bashing coal.
55:01
And so that's it's one of the reasons why I I love the work that I do is because our members again we're oil gas, coal and nuclear there's not another trade organization out there that represents companies across the spectrum of those energy production because they normally compete with each other and I still go to coal conferences and they bash natural gas and I go to natural gas conferences and they bash oh yeah what the heck and so that's where I try to train them on messaging and I said don't bash your competitors to try to get your product to market why don't you praise your competitors because you know if you you put your competitor at a nine and you tell your your their customer that you're going after it that you're a 10 that's that's great you're better.
55:38
But if you bash your customer and you put them at a one and you just say you're better than them that means you could be a two I I can't stand I've never and I had a sales background before I got into policy a couple of decades marketing technology in the trucking industry.
55:52
And I would praise the good things about my customers but or my competitors but I would tell my potential customers that our products just operated better and I'd tell them where in some cases we didn't operate better and I would tell them and they appreciated that honesty but I just can't stand bashing your competition to try to no it makes no sense.
56:08
It reminds me of um was it Benjamin Franklin and he said we all hang together or we all hang separately I mean you know the environmentalists want to kill them all.
56:18
So they shouldn't be fighting amongst themselves.
56:20
It's like a little civil war between fossil fuel companies it's totally ridiculous.
56:24
Anyway I'm going to put up an ad underneath the um podcast on Monday an ad that we took out in the Washington Times actually in which we said exactly that and we quoted Benjamin Franklin because these environmental organizations they want to kill you all not just natural gas or coal everybody.
56:42
So yeah you got to fight against them.
56:44
So my guest today and Todd's guest as well has been Jason Isaac he's founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute.
56:52
So thanks so much that was an exciting interview I'm going to share this everywhere.
56:55
Thanks Jason great thanks Tom for having me on appreciate it keep living the high carbon lifestyle yeah for sure this is Tom Harris signing out from the other side of the story