Latest / Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News / Doomberg on Iran, OPEC, China, Russia-Ukraine, and the return of energy realism

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Doomberg on Iran, OPEC, China, Russia-Ukraine, and the return of energy realism · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:11
  Hello, and thanks to another another episode of Geopower Energy Real Politics.
• 0:15
  I'm your host Todd Royal, and I've got uh very special guest back, Dunberg.
• 0:20
  Dunberg is one of the top writers on energy geopolitics, finance on Substack.
• 0:26
  You can find him also at Doomberg.com.
• 0:29
  He's really an industry standard now.
• 0:31
  If you want to learn about energy and folks would talk about real politics, he talks about it.
• 0:37
  So for that, I just want to welcome Dunberg.
• 0:39
  Thank you for being back on the show.
• 0:41
  Todd, good to see you again, my friend.
• 0:43
  It's been too long.
• 0:44
  It has been too long.
• 0:45
  And we've we've had some changes, and really there's nothing to talk about.
• 0:48
  So tell me about your summer summer.
• 0:51
  Yeah, yeah.
• 0:52
  Your summer vacation.
• 0:53
  Just picked up my daughter from college yesterday.
• 0:55
  You know how it goes.
• 0:56
  Yeah, stuff.
• 0:58
  We'll talk about what outfit you're gonna wear and your favorite barbecue classes.
• 1:01
  Um, exactly.
• 1:03
  Let's dive in, let's dive into this.
• 1:05
  Um obviously we know with Iran it's changing daily.
• 1:09
  Straight of Hormuz with the energy issue is you know prices are all over the place.
• 1:15
  Just tell me what you think as far as where we are with Iran and where do you see this going for the next two to three months, and now it's gonna affect the midterms.
• 1:25
  Yeah, look, I think um, as you probably know, we have been operating under the mental model that World War III kicked off in 2014.
• 1:34
  And that um the battle for Iran is just one, albeit really important battle in that broader struggle for um global economic primacy.
• 1:49
  And um, in many ways, we believe in the piece we're working on now, which hopefully will come out over the weekend is that um World War III is nearing its crescendo.
• 1:59
  Um we'll talk about perhaps why.
• 2:03
  So I it one way to look at the the war in Iran, which is sort of our base view is that I'd say catastrophic blunder on the part of the Trump administration.
• 2:12
  I don't think there's any other way to say it.
• 2:16
  Um, Iran has been the fixation of the sort of forever war neocon wing and in Washington for for many, many years now.
• 2:27
  Um Trump put it all on the line.
• 2:29
  I think he clearly thought, you know, post-Venezuela that um things would be far easier than they've turned out to be.
• 2:40
  You know, I I heard the spin that you know, anybody who's opposed to Trump is Trump derangement syndrome or you're pro-Iran getting a nuclear weapon um such lumpy simple arguments um mask decades of nuance and complexity that yeah, you know, um we won't get into now.
• 3:03
  Um, but suffice to say, um, the man ran on no wars, and um especially no forever wars, especially no regime change wars, especially not in the Middle East, and here we are, stock in a quagmire in the Middle East um yet again.
• 3:18
  And so I think um absence some major earthquake, the Republicans are set to get wiped out in the midterms, and um and then impeachment and everything else will follow.
• 3:31
  And that that's not a political statement.
• 3:32
  I just um yeah, just is what it is.
• 3:36
  Um, there's a sort of a 5D chess mental model, which we would tend to fade, but we should put it out there for completeness, which is that um Trump recognizes the era of unipolarity is over, and in a way the Iran war is catalyzing a shift to multipolarity that accelerates Trump's true ambition, which is ironically quite consistent with the national security strategy document that they put out, um, which is to demonstrate to the forever war wing that Iran is not a winnable war, and having given its level best to overthrow that regime, now Trump can go to China and cut the deal he wanted to cut um all along.
• 4:16
  Um that's probably the end point, whether it was the plan all along, I suppose doesn't really matter.
• 4:21
  Um, but that's our view.
• 4:23
  We think um the events of the past 24 hours have been monumental, let alone the past 60 odd days.
• 4:32
  Um and I I do think that um Trump's visit to Beijing, which if it happens, we think it will.
• 4:40
  Yeah, I do too.
• 4:41
  Um coming on the heels of um, you know, the Iranian foreign minister paying a visit there today.
• 4:47
  And um Putin allegedly going either shortly after Trump gets there, or as we suspect is more possible than most are modeling that he is there coincident with Trump's arrival and it becomes a three-way summit.
• 5:02
  Um big changes at big change is afoot, and um World War III will be settled um here shortly.
• 5:09
  We help, you know, otherwise it's a short path to nukes.
• 5:14
  It is um where do you you said what do you what do you think uh has been a big something big that's happened the last 24 hours?
• 5:22
  You said you know, we've had pretty big sea change even the last 24 hours.
• 5:25
  What do you think about it?
• 5:25
  Well, the biggest unpack that a little bit if you would.
• 5:28
  The biggest over the weekend was um China finally pushing back on the unilateral extra legal sanctions, as they would call them.
• 5:37
  Um secondary sanctions issued by the US against members of the you know, veto holding members of the UN Security Council of China and Russia.
• 5:49
  You know, um people like to um minimize the Security Council in the United Nations, but that was a U.S.
• 5:55
  construct after the second world war and the and the P5, the five veto holders were the allies of World War II, the victors of World War II.
• 6:03
  And um for the US to use secondary sanctions against Russia and China.
• 6:08
  Um is not how that was meant to go.
• 6:11
  Um, but what happened um is that Xi Jinping called called BS on the sanctions.
• 6:18
  There's no other way to say it, by invoking a 2021 sanctions blocking law, which made it illegal to follow the latest round of sanctions against the refiners in China.
• 6:32
  One of those refiners happens to be a very big and very important one that is utterly commingled with all the major Chinese banks.
• 6:39
  And so if Scott Besson is to follow through by sanctioning all the banks that are now legally obligated to keep doing business with this Chinese refiner, Heng Li, then basically you're telling Apple and Tesla and Caterpillar and all the major American companies with significant business interests in China to choose between which country they're going to remain in.
• 7:00
  Which country they're going to remain in.
• 7:01
  And we suspect that this will all get walked back down in some major deal when Trump goes.
• 7:01
  And um we suspect that um this will all get walked back down in some major deal when Trump goes.
• 7:10
  But after decades of planning, China has finally decided that it is time to uh to play its its Trump card, so to speak.
• 7:10
  But um after decades of planning, China has finally decided that it is time to uh to play its its Trump card, so to speak.
• 7:22
  Yeah.
• 7:22
  Yeah.
• 7:23
  There was a gentleman came out of McKinsey, said that said he felt like the strategy in
• 7:23
  There was a gentleman came out of McKinsey, said that said he felt like the strategy in all this was like you, China have Fed the United States in rare earths.
• 7:38
  We're now going to F you with in fossil fuels.
• 7:41
  So we're going to go after Iran now.
• 7:44
  We went after Venezuela.
• 7:46
  Now it's time for us to go, you know, go with Iran.
• 7:49
  And he didn't he cross-referenced, you know, is it Elbridge Colby, his strategy of denial, who's very undersecretary of war.
• 7:57
  What do you what do you make of that theory?
• 8:00
  Because I certainly, and I think people all across the world right now are just going.
• 8:07
  They're trying to almost come up with a strategy.
• 8:09
  Okay.
• 8:09
  Why did you why did you do this?
• 8:12
  Yeah.
• 8:13
  Um not to be too mean, but kind of reaffirms my view of McKenzie, I suppose.
• 8:19
  Um the uh you would understand what I'm saying.
• 8:22
  Uh, I do yeah, they like they like to make reports without sources in them, but that's a that's a whole other plot.
• 8:29
  That's a whole other episode for us to do together.
• 8:32
  So I think you know, people wildly overestimate China's vulnerabilities across all dimensions.
• 8:39
  Um piece we put out this morning called flipping the script, um, gives our view on China's alleged vulnerabilities in the semiconductor chain.
• 8:47
  Um I don't know why it is that Western analysts, I guess they would almost be advocates, um perpetually view China as something to minimize and or ignore when the track record is just virtually unbroken.
• 9:02
  Um so we put out a Doom Zoom two years ago, I think July 2024 called um Year of the Dragon, you know, China through the lens of energy.
• 9:14
  And um that's aged pretty well.
• 9:16
  Um China is a coal story, first and foremost, and it makes it mines all its own coal.
• 9:22
  So like 50% of 56% of China's primary energy needs are met by domestically mined coal.
• 9:29
  It only generates 4% of its electricity from natural gas.
• 9:32
  Yes, it is beholden to global crude flows, but in typical Chinese style, it has massively overinvested in refining, which means that its neighbors are the first to feel the pain when it is shorted of crude, which is exactly what we're seeing now.
• 9:48
  Um it has been buying an extra million barrels a day of oil for as long as we can see 18 months or so.
• 9:55
  Um there they think strategically their leadership development program is based purely on merit.
• 10:04
  Um there's lots of great benefits to the democratic system, but there's a couple of significant weaknesses to it, which is that um popularity and meritocracy can sometimes be let's just say the overlap in the Venn diagram is not a is not uh not complete.
• 10:21
  And um and so they've seen this coming from a mile away.
• 10:26
  Um they've they they've been investing scores of billions in dirty coal to chemicals processes that allow them to make diesel and jet fuel from homegrown coal.
• 10:38
  The only other two countries that did this at scale were Nazi Germany and and apartheid South Africa.
• 10:46
  So um, you know, they know what they're doing.
• 10:49
  Um yes, they're short crude oil, but they're swimming in it in storage terms, like 1.8 billion barrels or some crazy number like that.
• 10:59
  And um they uh because they have excess refining did hours after the war broke out, they halted exports to refined products and kept buying crude, which really put the squeeze to their neighbors in Asia.
• 11:14
  Yep.
• 11:14
  And I remember seeing these headlines, you know, 220 jet fuel in Singapore.
• 11:19
  Suddenly the foreign minister of Australia is in China cutting a deal, and suddenly China, after everyone's felt the squeeze, is graciously releasing um, you know, extra refined products again, and this is all just geopolitical leverage that it is purchasing in the way that it does.
• 11:38
  And so um this think of it, just to give one example of like it can't be that this is what people think.
• 11:46
  But then sometimes you wonder this whole panard that within 12 days Iran's oil wells will blow up.
• 11:54
  I mean, who believes that?
• 11:56
  Who tells this to the president?
• 11:57
  How is this how is this even?
• 11:59
  I mean, it's laughable.
• 12:01
  If there's one country on earth that knows how to handle volatility and what it's allowed to produce and sell in the oil markets, it's it's Iran.
• 12:09
  Yeah, who did that one?
• 12:11
  That was the think tank, the international something or something.
• 12:14
  I I don't know.
• 12:16
  I don't read it, obviously.
• 12:17
  That's the kind of stuff they're producing.
• 12:19
  But this reminds me of um all the talk we heard.
• 12:22
  I I don't want to call the guy out.
• 12:24
  Um a very popular content creator whose specialty is demographics, um, was saying much the same thing about Russian oil production after Ukraine and the sanctions war against it, as though the integral of talent within China, Russia, and India couldn't replace what Schlomberger was doing in Russia.
• 12:44
  I mean, what who are we kidding?
• 12:47
  Like, yeah, this um I got at the time on a podcast debate about it.
• 12:52
  I I characterize it as Western Western techno arrogance.
• 12:56
  Um you know, China has an entire university dedicated to producing petroleum engineers.
• 13:03
  You know, they that that that campus has 20 times more people than the U.S.
• 13:08
  produces each year.
• 13:09
  But then like Moscow University is at Moscow or Moscow State University, Moscow State University is a genius, yeah, genius university.
• 13:16
  Genius, some of the best research in the world comes out there.
• 13:19
  Look, when I was in industry, we hired many, many, many PhDs, and I I had a rule.
• 13:25
  If Moscow state is on the resume, they're in, unless proven otherwise, right?
• 13:30
  I mean, um look, the uh try try to get into Fudan University as a high school student in China.
• 13:37
  Um these are elite universities.
• 13:39
  If you haven't visited them, you don't understand.
• 13:42
  Um like and again, this is not some fetishism for our geopolitical opponents.
• 13:50
  I think it's realism.
• 13:52
  Yeah.
• 13:53
  And uh like you first thing that you should do is prevent yourself from underestimating your opponents.
• 14:00
  Opponents.
• 14:00
  Um same thing with the with the chip stuff.
• 14:02
  And same thing with the with the chip stuff.
• 14:05
  So but anyway, I digress.
• 14:05
  So but anyway, I digress.
• 14:08
  Um somehow it got put into the president's head that um hold out on this blockade for another week or two, and um the proverbial S hits the fan in Iran, and I and I just think that's laughable.
• 14:08
  Somehow it got put into the president's head that hold out on this blockade for another week or two, and um the proverbial S hits the fan in Iran.
• 14:17
  And I and I just think that's laughable.
• 14:19
  So that's and so here we are.
• 14:20
  And so here we are.
• 14:22
  You've done really good work on oil prices.
• 14:22
  You've done really good work on oil prices, and I want you to unpack it because obviously when people hear an oil price, they think, well, what I pay.
• 14:25
  And I want you to unpack it because obviously when people hear an oil price, they think, well, what I pay at the pump.
• 14:31
  And I've my relatives and friends and a dear friend of mine sent me an incredibly long text message about it in a LinkedIn piece.
• 14:38
  And I go, I literally said, you should you should go subscribe to this this person group called Doomberg.
• 14:44
  I go, I don't have time in a text message to break down, you know, prices of oil, one price in one part of the world is different than the other price.
• 14:52
  So taking the Iran war, taking oil prices, would you break down where do you think oil prices are going?
• 14:58
  And even to your work that you talk about different prices around the world.
• 15:03
  Love to hear just kind of break that down for the audience.
• 15:05
  So the first thing you have to understand is there's no such thing as quote the oil price.
• 15:11
  Yeah.
• 15:12
  And most of the time, that distinction is one without much of a difference.
• 15:19
  But when you have a hot war in the Middle East, then this is no longer one of those times.
• 15:24
  And those differences mean quite literally everything.
• 15:28
  And so what do I mean by there's no singular price of oil?
• 15:32
  Um the price of oil is meaningless without ascribing grade location of delivery and timing of delivery.
• 15:42
  And so when people say the price of oil, when they're in North America, they're almost exclusively talking about the front month West Texas intermediate contract, which is settled by delivery in Cushing, Oklahoma.
• 15:59
  And the rest of the world, when they talk about the price of oil, they are talking about the front month for Brent Crude, which is seaborne oil, which can be settled by delivery, but is mostly settled by cash.
• 16:15
  In reality, there's dozens of oil prices, and then there's extra dimensions of time.
• 16:20
  There's an oil curve.
• 16:21
  You can buy today the right to take delivery for oil in December at Cushing.
• 16:26
  The December oil contract trades.
• 16:29
  It trades differently than the front month, and the front month trades differently as expiration approaches.
• 16:35
  And sometimes it moves wildly as expiration approaches because you suddenly have to do something with this oil because you're standing for delivery, which is why the front month WTI price of oil went negative during COVID.
• 16:47
  Somebody was stuck with a contract and couldn't take delivery, and they had to pay somebody to take this contract off their hands.
• 16:54
  That doesn't mean the global price of oil was negative.
• 16:57
  It means that particular contract traded negative into expiration.
• 17:01
  And so once you understand that, then you layer in the fact that there's an enormous amount of oil in storage around the world, much of it in government storage facilities that exist for this very moment.
• 17:21
  And the bullets in those chambers are being fired, not to get you sort of demonetized.
• 17:28
  And those disproportionately affect the front month in a way.
• 17:34
  Because what does it matter to the June delivery of oil and Cushing Oklahoma that there's a war in the Middle East?
• 17:42
  I would argue not much.
• 17:44
  The signaling factor of telling drillers they need to bring more into market, I suppose, is why that price goes up.
• 17:50
  But there's no question that there will be a shortage of oil in the US anytime soon.
• 17:55
  There is a shortage of refined products in Asia, like we talked about earlier.
• 18:00
  So all that said, we have been surprised at the relative timidity of the price move given the consequences of what has happened in the war, the closure of the Strait of Horror moves.
• 18:13
  And there are there's a whole school of people on Twitter who think that this is evidence of government manipulation of the price of oil.
• 18:23
  And we have a different view.
• 18:26
  When you're wrong and the market is telling you something different, especially a market as sophisticated and deep and liquid and filled with insiders and every shark in the book, um, when the market is telling you something that is different than your expectations, the first thing to to assume is that the market is right and you're the one that's wrong.
• 18:45
  And um, and so we start with that.
• 18:48
  And why, like if you'd have told me, you know, if you and I were having this podcast on February 27th.
• 18:54
  Yeah.
• 18:55
  And you said, do me.
• 18:58
  Um the US and Israel are going to launch a decapitation strike against Iran.
• 19:02
  They're going to kill uh, you know, Mani.
• 19:06
  Um Iran's gonna punch above its weight, battle the US to a standstill and shut the straight of four moves and refuse to open it for 60 days.
• 19:18
  Over under price of oil, front month, WTI 150.
• 19:22
  I would have I would be without a house right now.
• 19:25
  I would I would I'd like to say I'd I'd sell everything I owned, and I'd go, I'll take I'll take the over, thank you.
• 19:30
  Yeah, I'll take the over.
• 19:31
  I'll even go the over at 200.
• 19:33
  Sure.
• 19:33
  So here we are, 100.
• 19:35
  Why?
• 19:36
  So what does that mean?
• 19:36
  What do we get wrong?
• 19:37
  Like it'd be humble.
• 19:39
  Um there's a lot of um, there must be a lot of exits outside of the Middle East that are kind of on the down low, in addition to the big pipeline that is ramped up, you know, to the Red Sea.
• 19:55
  You can move oil over land.
• 19:56
  There's other pipelines.
• 19:57
  You can pump more than the nameplate, you know, every everything, every bribe is being paid, and Iranian oil is coming out, and China has a ton of it.
• 20:04
  And look, the IEA exists because of this, and they've released 400 million barrels.
• 20:10
  There's a lot of oil uh in the world.
• 20:12
  And as I'm as our friend um JJ over at Market Vibes likes to say, you know, the guy traded oil for 50 years, is he says, June, uh, everybody lies in the oil market.
• 20:21
  Well, there's an awful lot of lying going on before this war because here we are at 100.
• 20:25
  Right?
• 20:26
  Okay, let me throw let me throw some some at you here.
• 20:28
  You've you've done great work on this.
• 20:30
  I did extra I did work on this when I was in grad school on, you know, looking at USGC surveys.
• 20:38
  Just the United States alone has so much oil.
• 20:41
  You know, you'll even have people tell there's oil in the Rocky Mountains.
• 20:44
  I used to live in California, been to the Monterey Shell, both parts of the Pacific, the vodka, Russia.
• 20:51
  I mean, we are swimming in this stuff.
• 20:54
  Do you think the someone asked me at a family gathering, and I said, well, I said the reason you don't have oil come to market, a lot of it's political.
• 21:00
  Don't have oil coming to market.
• 21:01
  A lot of it's political.
• 21:02
  You have the environmentalists, people who believe in you know, climate change, those things.
• 21:02
  You have the environmentalists, people who believe in you know climate change, those things.
• 21:06
  Do you think the market is priced in?
• 21:06
  Do you think the market is priced in?
• 21:08
  There's so much oil in the world, just in the United States, or even if the Europeans ever decided to get their act together, not to mention what's going on now in Argentina, Brazil, Guyana.
• 21:08
  There's so much oil in the world, just in the United States, or even if the Europeans ever decided to get their act together, not to mention what's going on now in Argentina, Brazil, Guyana.
• 21:23
  On, I mean, the you could go into Africa, you can go the coast.
• 21:23
  On, I mean, the you could go into Africa, you can go the coast.
• 21:26
  I mean, just it's all over the place.
• 21:26
  I mean, just it's all over the place.
• 21:29
  Do you think the
• 21:29
  Do you think the market?
• 21:30
  That's my only the only thing I can come up with is sure governments are manipulating it.
• 21:36
  Scott Besson's a brilliant man.
• 21:37
  He comes from hedge fund.
• 21:39
  He's a brilliant man.
• 21:40
  Of course, it's being manipulated.
• 21:42
  But do you think the market though is also looking at there's so much untapped reserves?
• 21:50
  How can we put oil at 200 barrel?
• 21:53
  First of all, it could print there, but it can't stay there because there's not enough demand.
• 21:57
  Okay.
• 21:58
  Even with the straight closed to consume oil at 200 a barrel.
• 22:03
  So we think it's kind of Schrdinger's price at the moment.
• 22:08
  Peace could break out on any day.
• 22:10
  Trump is erratic.
• 22:11
  And so if peace breaks out today, and the strait opens up, there's a gusher of pent-up supply that has to get dumped immediately.
• 22:21
  Tankers filled with oil, um storage facilities in the across the Middle East filled with oil.
• 22:29
  All that is constraining bringing the wells that have been capped back online.
• 22:33
  And once the wells come online, they don't want to turn them off.
• 22:36
  And so this, you know, you have to dump all of this oil, and guess where it's gonna get dumped in the front month.
• 22:41
  Okay, let's then let's have a little fun, you and me here.
• 22:44
  May 6, 2026.
• 22:48
  The war, quote unquote, ends.
• 22:49
  Let's just go June 1st.
• 22:51
  Yeah.
• 22:53
  Let's just go June 1st.
• 22:55
  Trump goes to Beijing.
• 22:56
  I think it's May 15th.
• 22:58
  Yeah.
• 22:58
  I saw a photo on Twitter, I guess one of the C 130s landed the other day, and I got a follow up.
• 23:04
  He goes, Isn't this a strange site?
• 23:06
  And I'm like, okay, so he's he's going.
• 23:08
  They're they're delivering things.
• 23:10
  I'll go if it gets and you will take, how about would you take under 30?
• 23:15
  I'll go under 30.
• 23:16
  What is your when?
• 23:17
  By when?
• 23:18
  Um it ends June 1st.
• 23:22
  End of year.
• 23:24
  Ooh, I'm okay.
• 23:25
  I was gonna tell you, I was gonna do a 30-day thing.
• 23:27
  I mean, I'm gonna I'm gonna go crazy.
• 23:29
  I'm gonna go a little nutty on you here because I think there's more sitting back there than um than is imaginable.
• 23:37
  Okay, I'll go if it ends June 1st, I'll I'll give myself a buffer.
• 23:41
  I'll go by Labor Day.
• 23:43
  It will be at it will be at $30.
• 23:45
  The definition.
• 23:47
  I think it stays at 50 until the government coffers are refilled.
• 23:50
  Oh, oh, okay.
• 23:52
  I think you're gonna beat me.
• 23:53
  But I'll I'll take 30, but you're going 50 with government coffers being refilled.
• 23:58
  Okay.
• 23:59
  But I think um, look, the long-term real price of all commodities is lower.
• 24:02
  Back to the premise of your question.
• 24:04
  Yeah.
• 24:05
  Our view is that um the resource base of hydrocarbons should be modeled as infinite.
• 24:15
  Um, especially if you have any kind of a discount factor.
• 24:19
  Um and um all development is constrained by politics, not geology.
• 24:26
  Yeah.
• 24:27
  Um so you mentioned the Monterey Shale.
• 24:30
  Um, California is blessed with the same resource base as Texas.
• 24:37
  I saw the uh a report in the LA Times, you know, California has an impressive oil and gas reserves, but it's more expensive to drill.
• 24:46
  Uh yeah, why?
• 24:47
  Politics.
• 24:48
  Um if um one of the reasons why oil can't stay at 200 is not only because there isn't demand for it, but then globally, the you know the politicians who have stood in the way of development, um Gavin Newson, California, the NDP Party in British Columbia, they'll all get wiped away in a tsunami of political revolt at 200 in oil.
• 25:11
  Yeah.
• 25:12
  Um up and down the the Western hemisphere, there's an extra incremental 10 million barrels a day for Trump to play with as it is.
• 25:18
  Um if your resource base is infinite, um, of course it's in the oil industry's interest to pedal this peach of cheap oil nonsense.
• 25:30
  Um it's like diamonds, you know.
• 25:33
  I I lived in Los Angeles for 26 years, and people don't realize in the I'm I'm assuming in your industry days you've been to Los Angeles.
• 25:42
  Um if you go into Beverly Hills, there's actually an oil derrick in Beverly Hills.
• 25:49
  If you if you go on the part of um really you have to go past the you have to you have to go south, kind of southwest of the airport when you go into LAX.
• 26:01
  Um there's massive oil fields up in there.
• 26:05
  And even um I did some government work for a number of years in LA, that LA itself, Los Angeles itself sits on oil on um oil reserves, and the reason you can't pump it is it would sink because most of the the soil is liquefascus oil, it can turn into sand pretty quickly.
• 26:25
  But there had been work for years to go, how can we get the oil out from what's under Los Angeles?
• 26:30
  I used to laugh and go for people that are so concerned about environmentalism, you are literally living on top of an of an oil reserve.
• 26:40
  I used to just find that really funny.
• 26:42
  Forget the shale.
• 26:43
  Um yeah, I'm not even doing the shell.
• 26:44
  I'm just going to go offshore.
• 26:46
  I mean, California is really the birthplace of U.S.
• 26:48
  oil.
• 26:49
  Um so that doesn't go up, you know, keep going up the mountain, the mountains to Calgary in British Columbia, um, or go down into Mexico sitting on natural gas reserves, but we haven't even talked about natural gas yet.
• 27:04
  Um talk about an infinite supply of the you know, North America's drowning in natural gas, which is one of the reasons why we think OPEC is dying.
• 27:14
  You okay.
• 27:15
  I've just here's what I want to do.
• 27:17
  Um, I gotta take a break.
• 27:19
  Uh I want to take a break.
• 27:20
  And here's what I'm coming back with two things in particular.
• 27:23
  Um, one talk Russia-Ukraine war with you, uh, a gentleman named uh Kar Karganov, who I'm I I don't speak Russian, gentlemen's Sergei Karganov, he's a kind of one of Putin's hardliners, literally just said that um Europe should be that nuclear weapons should be used against Europe.
• 27:42
  So I will I really want your your viewpoint on Russia, Ukraine, where that is.
• 27:46
  I think you've done some of the best work of anybody out there.
• 27:49
  But what I really want to do is you wrote an article, I think over a year ago that you felt that OPEC was going to be your group, felt that OPEC was going to be going away.
• 27:58
  We know what just happened with the United Arab Emirates.
• 28:00
  Not at Arab Emirates.
• 28:00
  So I really want to just tee it up for you, let you talk about your article, where you think OPEC is going and what the UAE, what that meant for them to leave it.
• 28:01
  So I really want to just tee it up for you, let you talk about your article, where you think OPEC is going and what the UAE, what that meant for them to leave it.
• 28:09
  So uh my name's Todd Royal.
• 28:09
  So my name's Todd Royal.
• 28:11
  I am the host of uh Geopower Energy and Real Politics.
• 28:11
  I am the host of uh Geopower Energy and Real Politics.
• 28:16
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• 28:16
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• 31:01
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• 31:13
  In fact, second half.
• 31:26
  You'd written a little over a year ago, and please tell us what the piece is called, which you felt with OPEC will say the demise or the breaking up of OPEC, and obviously the news of what's taken place with the United Arab Emirates.
• 31:38
  It seems like your piece is aging very well.
• 31:42
  Yeah, I'm just pulling it up right now.
• 31:44
  Um it's got a really simple title, and it was actually written in September of 2024.
• 31:49
  Man, time flies when you oh my gosh, it's been that long.
• 31:52
  I thought that was like a year ago.
• 31:54
  Yeah, so the piece was uh very subtly titled How OPEC Ends.
• 31:59
  Um real subtle, real subtle.
• 32:02
  Yeah, so uh to explain the motivation for that piece and then why we think the UAE's move this week is sort of consistent with it.
• 32:11
  Um the share revolution not only flipped America from a net hydrocarbon importer to a hydrocarbon gigapower.
• 32:23
  Um it also twinned the production of oil and gas in a way that the market hadn't experienced before.
• 32:31
  What do I mean by that?
• 32:33
  In many of the large sales in the U.S., the Permian most particularly, you get natural gas, natural gas liquids, and oil, crude oil, all from the same well at the same time.
• 32:46
  And so you have this avalanche of co-produced natural gas that you have to deal with.
• 32:52
  And natural gas is a wonderful fuel.
• 32:55
  Um it's burning hydrocarbon.
• 32:59
  Um you can cook in your house with it and not really worry about ventilation, for example.
• 33:05
  Um, it powers many furnaces.
• 33:07
  It's the fuel for cogeneration facilities that are at the heart of America's industrial base.
• 33:12
  But it's a gas and some pain to handle.
• 33:14
  You need pipelines, you need LG export facilities, you need all that midstream stuff in order to unlock the value.
• 33:20
  But once you do it, truly is a field of dreams.
• 33:23
  Don't build it and they will come.
• 33:25
  Um because natural gas is co-produced.
• 33:29
  Um you quite literally can't give it away in the US, and it's a wonderful fuel.
• 33:34
  So you have this gas in the premium today trading at minus four dollars per million BTU spot.
• 33:40
  Um that's because today, because of the war in Iran, oil is trading at a premium to natural gas on an energy content basis.
• 33:51
  And so because oil's at a premium, they're drilling for oil and they're getting all this gas for free and they're paying people to take it to drill more oil.
• 33:58
  Um, and so ironically, over the long term, um as people switch engines to burn natural gas because it's cheaper than oil, then oil becomes less useful and slowly, surely over time, that arbitrage closes, and um natural gas becomes more valuable and the prices equilibrate.
• 34:22
  So what do I mean by equilibrate and energy content?
• 34:25
  Let's give some numbers.
• 34:27
  Um Natural gas is priced in dollars per million BTU, right?
• 34:32
  And there's 5.6 million BTUs in a barrel of WTI, let's say.
• 34:38
  So just to make it easier, if you multiply the price of natural gas by six, you get the oil equivalent price.
• 34:45
  So if natural gas is five dollars a million BTU, that's $30 a barrel oil.
• 34:51
  Um landed L and G, where natural gas is taken and frozen and shipped and regasified somewhere else, is trading for $16 to $20 a million BTU today, which is around $100 a barrel oil.
• 35:00
  16 to 20 dollars a million BTU today, which is around 100 a barrel oil.
• 35:05
  Um, because two the two fuels do the same thing.
• 35:05
  Um, because two the two fuels do the same thing.
• 35:07
  They get burned to produce electricity.
• 35:07
  They get burned to produce electricity.
• 35:10
  Um in America, natural gas is dirt cheap.
• 35:10
  Um but in in America, natural gas is dirt cheap.
• 35:15
  Even at the Henry Hub, the main benchmark, it's three dollars a million BTU.
• 35:15
  Even at the Henry Hub, the main benchmark, it's three dollars a million BTU.
• 35:18
  So if you're an AI data center, or you're a long-haul truck driver, or you operate a large farm, um the cheapest fuel on the
• 35:18
  So if you're an AI data center, or you're a long-haul truck driver, or you operate a large farm, um the cheapest fuel on the board is natural gas, and you try to find a way to use it.
• 35:33
  And every time you switch an engine to use natural gas instead of some product derived from oil, you are chipping away at the utility of oil, and you're making OPEC's job to keep a premium price on oil all the more difficult.
• 35:49
  Okay.
• 35:50
  Um so the ratio of the price of oil to the price of natural gas is another way to do this, and that ratio should be six.
• 35:57
  And um it had peaked out a couple of years ago after the Ukraine invasion at like 55.
• 36:04
  Yeah.
• 36:04
  And we we wrote a piece called generational arbitrage pointing this out, and it drifted back down to like 10.
• 36:11
  And then this war broke out and it shot back up to like 35 again.
• 36:14
  Um so every time oil trades at a premium to natural gas, that hidden hand of the market grinding away and making natural gas more valuable um accelerates.
• 36:30
  And underreported in this whole OPEC exit of the United Arab Emirates, um, is the importance of natural gas in their decision.
• 36:40
  Um like the US, much of the UAE's natural gas is produced as a co-product now, associated gas.
• 36:48
  They import gas from Qatar, they'd like to not do that for domestic needs.
• 36:54
  They export L and G, they'd like to do more of that.
• 36:57
  And their oil quotas from OPEC were rubbing up against not only their oil needs and wishes, but their natural gas needs and wishes too.
• 37:08
  Do you think so?
• 37:10
  Do you think any of their exit also had to do with how well their four brand new reactors their nuclear power plant is doing?
• 37:19
  Well, not directly.
• 37:22
  Okay.
• 37:23
  Um and I don't think natural gas is the dominant decision.
• 37:27
  I think their fiscal crisis and need for a U.S.
• 37:30
  swap dollar swap probably drove it.
• 37:32
  And Bessant, being the shrewd trader that he is, says, Yeah, but you're leaving OPEC if you take this swap line.
• 37:37
  Um and so, but history will have to figure out figure out those details.
• 37:42
  But I just I only bring up the natural gas angle because this recent spike, um, which we predicted would be bearish for natural gas in the US.
• 37:52
  That's proven to be true.
• 37:53
  That doesn't at first flush make sense.
• 37:55
  Hey, why there's an energy boom going on?
• 37:57
  Of course, natural gas is going to go up.
• 37:59
  No, chasing oil, more natural gas, a lot of natural gas, natural gas price goes down as you chase that extra dollar from the barrel.
• 38:08
  And um, and so in a world where natural gas is just so plentiful and cheap and abundant here, and the midstream companies are spending tens of billions of dollars to build those pipelines, those gas collection facilities, the export terminals, um, these immortal facilities come online.
• 38:29
  Um, inevitably OPEC will be its own undoing, and and we're seeing that now.
• 38:34
  Tell the tell everyone too um because you said a minute ago, and I want people to understand you you you drill for oil, but uh uh coming with that is oil and natural gas.
• 38:46
  Explain the importance of NGLs.
• 38:50
  Um NGLs are actually a form of oil.
• 38:54
  So I would there's a semantic shift going on in the very definition of oil.
• 39:00
  Um when people say oil, what they really mean is crude oil.
• 39:06
  But in reality, the the statistical review of world energy and we and not that we're anywhere in the same league, but um the broader definition of oil is today, crude oil plus natural gas liquids plus condensate, right?
• 39:22
  Um and these are basically lighter and lighter hydrocarbons compared to the traditional definition of crude oil.
• 39:29
  But you know, again, in our for our pro tier a couple of years ago, we had a doom zoom called trend lightly, talking about this semantic shift of what the definition of oil is.
• 39:39
  And our definition of oil includes natural gas, actually.
• 39:42
  Yeah, and it's any hydrocarbon that finds its way to a refinery.
• 39:46
  Yeah.
• 39:46
  Um, but people are still stuck in that old definition.
• 39:49
  So I'll give you a classic trap that this allows people to fall into.
• 39:55
  The US produces 13 million barrels a day of crude oil, but it produces 21 million barrels a day of oil.
• 40:04
  And um there's a whole cadre of what we call um wish casting advocates, people who really want the price of oil to go up, the price of crude oil to go up because they have some financial interest in it or some reputational interest in it.
• 40:20
  Um, who say NGLs don't count, you know.
• 40:23
  Um I know that is absurd.
• 40:27
  How I don't know.
• 40:30
  I've I've listened to the same people, read the same people, you know, maybe not, but that mindset, and you just go, but it's in a refinery.
• 40:38
  Right.
• 40:39
  So like you call me simple-minded, it came out of the ground.
• 40:42
  You shut your napta cracker and you make your ethane only cracker and off you go.
• 40:46
  So you know that meme with the guy pointing at himself in the mirror.
• 40:50
  Um I I once sent that meme to a friend.
• 40:53
  Um, and uh it said it's not that you don't understand energy, it's that NGLs don't count, you know, pointing at pointing at yourself in the mirror.
• 41:00
  Yeah, I don't know why people say the things they do.
• 41:04
  I mean um oil is anything that finds its way to a refiner.
• 41:09
  Um NGLs are cheaper than crude oil, therefore NAFTA crackers are you know, petrochemical plants around the world based on NAFTA, which is traditionally derived from oil, crude oil, um are shutting down, and ethane-only and propane only crackers are popping up.
• 41:24
  And yeah, LPG is a major export now to China from the US, and like these molecules, nobody's gonna waste these things.
• 41:31
  I I have a real good friend, a buddy from college, you know, had works at a hedge fund partner, and they've got they've got interest in Ohio.
• 41:40
  He says the same thing.
• 41:41
  He says he says, he says, if it is coming out of he always goes, if it's coming out of my hole in the ground, yeah, I'm going to find a way to make money off of it.
• 41:51
  And look, um, he's probably talking about the Utica shale, which is getting wetter.
• 41:54
  It used to be a dry gas hole, and now there's NGLs coming out, and um, and so they're gonna do something with those things.
• 42:00
  They're going to do something with those things.
• 42:01
  Yes, the natural gas is going to feed the data center, and then they're gonna do something with the ethane and the propane and the butans and the pentains, and uh off you go.
• 42:01
  Yes, the natural gas is going to feed the data center, and then they're going to do something with the ethane and the propane and the butanes and the pentanes, and uh off you go.
• 42:08
  And and since they got to get rid of them, it'll be cheaper than the same molecules cracked from a barrel of crude.
• 42:08
  And and since they got to get rid of them, it'd be cheaper than the same molecules cracked from a barrel of crude.
• 42:16
  Oh, he would, yeah.
• 42:16
  Oh, he would, yeah.
• 42:17
  It's a if it's coming out of there, we're gonna we're gonna do something.
• 42:17
  It'd say if it's coming out of there, we're gonna we're gonna do something.
• 42:20
  Maybe they'll get some helium while they're at it and they'll be real happy.
• 42:20
  Maybe they'll get some helium while they're at it, and they'll be real happy, you know.
• 42:22
  You know, I mean, it He'll tell you they do.
• 42:23
  I mean, it'll tell you they do.
• 42:25
  There's a reason there's a reason why the highways in America are paved with asphalt, it's because it's still bottom.
• 42:25
  There's a reason there's a reason why the highways in America are paved with asphalt, it's because it's still bottoms from crude.
• 42:30
  Like anything that goes into a refinery comes out.
• 42:33
  It's used.
• 42:35
  Yeah.
• 42:35
  Um, and it just has to, just the volume.
• 42:37
  People don't understand like the billions and billions of pounds that flow into these facilities.
• 42:41
  If you have one percent of the molecule, you know, flow that you don't know what to do with, that quickly becomes a mountain.
• 42:49
  Oh, absolutely.
• 42:50
  Right.
• 42:51
  And so you gotta get rid of it.
• 42:52
  Pay people to take it.
• 42:53
  It's going somewhere.
• 42:54
  I I have a little my own little working model because I'm in the the nuclear power world that says one of the reasons these advanced reactors want to get up to 950 so you can make hydrogen is I secretly believe, I mean, I'm being a little facetious here, but you know, big oil companies because you use so much hydrogen in the refinery process.
• 43:14
  I've always thought nobody really no one no one wants to use hydrogen in a fuel cell or is an energy carrier for electricity.
• 43:21
  It's oil companies going, no, we just need more hydrogen in our in our refineries.
• 43:25
  I've yeah, so there's a couple of plays.
• 43:27
  So, first of all, high grade steam is valuable.
• 43:30
  Um creating industrial heat is like 10% of global carbon emissions.
• 43:34
  Yeah.
• 43:35
  Um and there's this little side pocket of natural hydrogen that we think is coming.
• 43:40
  Um I've read that from you.
• 43:42
  I'm um yeah, I but I would probably version for for today's conversation.
• 43:47
  Okay, so you know, Demi, let's let's do you know, we made our our bets here on um where oil prices will go here at the end of the year.
• 43:58
  What do you think about OPEC?
• 43:59
  If I had to pin you down and okay, I'll go first.
• 44:02
  When do you think OPEC is quote unquote gonna finally crack?
• 44:07
  How about I'll I'll get I'll I'll come here first.
• 44:09
  I'll say mid-2027, Q227.
• 44:16
  So I think it's a bit of a trick question.
• 44:18
  I know it is because it's not never going to end in name.
• 44:21
  Yeah, yeah.
• 44:22
  And so um back to polymarket, how does the bet resolve?
• 44:25
  Um, you know, the UN Security Council still exists.
• 44:29
  True.
• 44:29
  You know, it died a long time ago.
• 44:31
  Yeah.
• 44:32
  Um, I would say that um when does this influence wane?
• 44:37
  How about that?
• 44:38
  There's a better way.
• 44:39
  Well, I mean, that's hard to measure.
• 44:40
  If you wanted a milestone, I would say the breakup of OPEC plus.
• 44:44
  Got it.
• 44:45
  Okay.
• 44:46
  Um, so if you see Russia and Saudi split ways, you know, um, and we do need to cover your promised analysis of the war in Ukraine before we wrap up.
• 44:55
  Um I was about to say, um, yeah.
• 44:56
  Don't want to don't want to leave people hanging on that.
• 44:58
  No, I don't.
• 44:59
  I was just uh to answer your question, I would say uh it's um far more likely to um fade away than flame out.
• 45:08
  Okay.
• 45:09
  Good.
• 45:10
  I'll I'll again I'll throw the I'll I'll throw that number the number out there.
• 45:14
  Um yeah, let's do I've got you here for about another 15 minutes or so.
• 45:19
  I was definitely I I'd tee this up with what I'd said in the first part.
• 45:23
  There's a there's a wonderful gentleman I follow named Andrew uh Korybko, and I'm butchering his name, so forgive me for that.
• 45:30
  But talked about one of Russian, a Russian expert, typical little more of their hardliners who's infamous for lobbying uh Vladimir Putin, the nuke, as they say to nuke Europe.
• 45:42
  Um this gentleman named Sergei Karaganov gotta give an interview to Russia 24.
• 45:48
  He's also written before in Tass.
• 45:50
  And oh, I think that's also you tell me the uh is it the Valerie Club um that the is one of their big think tanks.
• 45:58
  Anyway, you we we hear now so often drones are getting through, they're hitting some of their largest refineries and terminals, uh the war is bogged down.
• 46:10
  Um Putin's gonna be we're gonna get rid of him at any moment, and peace on earth is going to take us all.
• 46:21
  Um bya.
• 46:24
  And all the world's ills will go.
• 46:26
  I'm a little negative on that sentiment because I know that you hit 140 substations and I could make put Ukraine in the dark.
• 46:35
  So well, let's talk about this.
• 46:37
  So please, yeah.
• 46:38
  So tell me where where are we with all this right now?
• 46:40
  There's so much propaganda and misinformation in the West, and the Brit the British are the worst.
• 46:45
  Um The Guardians almost laughable.
• 46:47
  Oh, you know, Putin's got cancer and they're fighting with shovels and they're pulling chips out of washing machines and all this stuff.
• 46:54
  Um a couple of misconceptions in the West.
• 46:59
  Um one is that Putin is a dictator who runs Russia with an iron grip.
• 47:04
  Um when in reality, Russian society is highly complex, highly evolved.
• 47:09
  He has stakeholders like everybody else.
• 47:11
  And the pressure on Putin is from the right.
• 47:14
  Yeah.
• 47:14
  Um if the much desired regime change operation were to succeed in Russia, he would be replaced with somebody far more harsh to the Western objectives than to some by some dove who wants to join the EU and reopen the spoils of Russian cut Russia's commodities to the Western oligarchs and all that stuff.
• 47:34
  Um so Putin um is under the gun, pun intended.
• 47:40
  Um the war in Ukraine is pitched by Putin internally as a civil war.
• 47:50
  Um battle for control over predominantly Russian speaking parts of the old Soviet Union.
• 47:56
  I mean, that's that's the way it's pitched internally.
• 47:58
  I'm not saying that that's my view.
• 48:00
  My view is I don't really care who controls the Russian-speaking part of the Donbass, and I think it's none of our business.
• 48:04
  Um so um the the critique of Putin is that he is fighting Ukraine with a hand behind his back because these are Russians and you know it's a civil war.
• 48:19
  When in reality Ukraine is a proxy war with Europe and the US, and the Iranian response to the strikes by Israel and the US by carpeting the Arab countries in the US bases calling BS on their neutrality when clearly American military assets were being used to hit Iran from those bases, is exactly how the right in Russia has been telling Putin he needs to behave vis-a-vis Europe since the war in Ukraine broke out, since before the war in Ukraine broke out.
• 48:49
  Um these drones flying through Estonia and hitting, you know um parts of Russia that there's just no way that these drones could fly from Ukraine and and hit is pushing serious red lines in Russia.
• 49:00
  Is pushing serious red lines in Russia.
• 49:04
  And um one thing that I don't know when this is coming out, but again, these things are just never reported in the West.
• 49:04
  And one thing that I don't know when this is coming out, but again, these things are just never reported in the West.
• 49:12
  And since I try to read everybody's propaganda and there's some very good sort of relatively pro-Russian stuff to be had, if you're interested in it.
• 49:12
  And since I try to read everybody's propaganda and um there's some very good sort of relatively pro-Russian stuff to be had, um, if you're interested in it.
• 49:22
  And I'm always interested in what the other side is telling itself.
• 49:22
  And I'm always interested in what the other side is telling itself.
• 49:24
  Um there's a big show my showdown coming here with the um
• 49:25
  There's a big show showdown coming here with the um Victory Day Parade in Moscow.
• 49:33
  Most unusual sequence of events, again, utterly unreported in the Western media.
• 49:42
  And Ernie of all people, um, and he said, Yeah, we're gonna toss some drones into Moscow and disrupt this parade.
• 49:50
  You know, we're at war.
• 49:51
  This is not a time for possibility.
• 49:54
  And um, the Russian, you did you not see this, Todd?
• 49:57
  So the Russian I I did see this.
• 49:59
  Okay, the Russian military came out with a statement basically saying if you do this, we are going to launch your resniks into central Kiev.
• 50:09
  The gloves will come off at that point.
• 50:12
  Um, you frame for people so sure let people understand the way the Russians see this victory day and what for their psyche that because basically they are they relive World War II essentially on a daily basis.
• 50:29
  So World War II is the seminal event that one needs to understand if you wish to begin to understand Russian culture, Russian psyche.
• 50:38
  Um I'll choose my words carefully.
• 50:42
  Um Russia fought Nazi Germany in World War II, and I think most sane historians would say no country lost more of its people than Russia in fighting that war.
• 50:54
  Upwards of 20 million people.
• 50:56
  Um conservative, those are conservative numbers too.
• 50:59
  Compared to the several hundred thousand that the US lost, for example, which is not not to minimize in any way the American sacrifices, of course.
• 51:08
  Um this is portrayed internally as the Great Patriotic War, as you know.
• 51:14
  And um the fight against Germany and the sacrifice made.
• 51:20
  So let's go all the way back to sanctions, you know.
• 51:22
  Um the United Nations Security Council was born in the aftermath of World War II, and the victors all got vetoes.
• 51:30
  China, Russia, Great Britain, France, and the US, and Great Britain and France were basically there to ensure that the U.S.
• 51:38
  had three of the five vetoes.
• 51:40
  Um this was never supposed to happen again.
• 51:45
  And correctly or not, there is a strain of Ukrainian politics that the Russians has have characterized as having, quote, 1930s style thinking, which is code, not very subtle code for you know what.
• 52:04
  Nazis, yes, Nazis, yeah.
• 52:06
  Um they uh are often referred to as the Banderites.
• 52:11
  Um and the Banderites, to the Russian telling, were heavily involved in the 2014 regime change operation, they would call it a coup.
• 52:22
  The West would call it a color revolution.
• 52:25
  Um regardless, it happened, and that's why we think World War III started then, um, when Putin rolled into Crimea and Georgia, and then a few years later started dumping treasuries and buying gold.
• 52:38
  Yeah.
• 52:39
  Um for what Moscow, again, I'm I'm trying to accurate portray what other people are saying without lending my own personal approval to the veracity of the statement.
• 52:54
  Um for a what Russia would call a Banderite regime to launch drones into a very important parade in Red Square that celebrates victory day.
• 53:07
  Um would be I couldn't think of a red or red line.
• 53:12
  I I I was about to say that's why when you just said that, my mouth hung open.
• 53:16
  I did not uh right.
• 53:17
  So what do I mean by launch or into Kiev?
• 53:22
  Um they didn't use the word or I'm guessing most of your listeners have never even heard the word orznik.
• 53:27
  Tell them what it is and tell them what that's important for going to Kiev, what that would actually mean.
• 53:33
  So the Oreznik is an advanced Russian missile that we think is the most powerful missile ever used in war short of a nuclear weapon.
• 53:47
  Yeah, um absolutely can.
• 53:49
  And uh it's been used twice now by Russia in the war in Ukraine, both for demonstration purposes.
• 53:56
  Um the footage of the resnik is freaky scary.
• 54:01
  Yes, it is.
• 54:02
  And um the damage it has caused has remained a secret, like, you know, you're more likely to find out what was at Roswell than to understand the damage from either of these strikes using the open source, which we have tried, of course.
• 54:18
  Um apparently these missiles travel so fast that um there is no known defense technology capable of intercepting them.
• 54:28
  And they because they travel so fast, even like the warhead itself is just the weight of the missile, um, it creates such a um convulsion of physics when it collides with its target that um the consequences are kind of like a nuclear bomb without the radiation, I guess is the easiest way to say it.
• 54:55
  Um perhaps not with the same radius of destruction and so on, but they're pretty devastating weapons.
• 55:00
  And um Russia has used them twice as warnings, and those warnings have largely been ignored, as far as I can tell.
• 55:08
  You have to be familiar with the Russian propaganda to even know these things were used.
• 55:15
  Um they have been used in one case, the first time they were used at a very, very large industrial facility, and uh we've not yet heard about that facility since never heard.
• 55:28
  And then the second was actually pretty close to the Polish border in what was rumored to be underground NATO bunkers again, um, other than Emmanuel's Emanuel Makron's relatively panicked response to that.
• 55:41
  Um the Western reporting on it has been rather muted.
• 55:45
  If they were to be used against, oh, I don't know, the Ukrainian parliament as a demonstration, and that's basically what the Russian you know uh defense um you know, the Russian military um threatened to do.
• 56:00
  Threatened to do.
• 56:02
  They literally warned that residents and foreign diplomats of Kiev need to get out.
• 56:02
  They literally warned that residents and foreign diplomats of Kiev need to get out.
• 56:07
  Okay.
• 56:07
  Okay.
• 56:08
  Wow.
• 56:08
  Wow.
• 56:09
  I could get the exact statement for you.
• 56:09
  I could get the exact statement for you.
• 56:10
  It's on the Oh God.
• 56:10
  It's on Oh God, please, yeah, please do while we're talking about it.
• 56:11
  Please, yeah, please do.
• 56:12
  While we're talking.
• 56:13
  Yeah, when, yeah, please do.
• 56:13
  Yeah, when, yeah, please do while you're looking at that, I'll just give uh as an audience, you should know that that every single thing a Russian will think about will be they'll sometimes refer to the Napoleonic War, but what they really refer to
• 56:15
  While you're looking at that, I'll just give as an audience.
• 56:18
  You should know that that every single thing a Russian will think about will be, they'll sometimes refer to the Napoleonic War, but what they really refer to is when Germany invaded Russia, conservative numbers are 20 million.
• 56:39
  Stalingrad to this day is considered one of the more brutal battles in the almost the history of recorded mankind warfare.
• 56:48
  And it's one of the reasons the Russians will still keep photos of Stalin.
• 56:53
  Well, thank you, Dunberg.
• 56:54
  Seriously, thanks for coming on.
• 56:55
  Yeah, I appreciate it, Todd.
• 56:57
  I'm Todd Royal.
• 56:58
  I'm the host of uh Geopower Energy and Real Politics.
• 57:01
  And again, I just thank our host Doomberg.
• 57:03
  And God bless you.