Weekly Daily Standup Top Stories
The OBBBA Resets the Energy Policy Playing Field: A New Era for Oil, Gas, and Nuclear
On July 3, 2025, President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) into law, marking a pivotal shift in U.S. energy policy. This landmark legislation, passed with thin Republican majorities in Congress, […]
Dallas Fed Energy Survey
Current Report Oil and gas activity contracts slightly as uncertainty remains elevated What’s New This Quarter Special questions this quarter focus on changes to 2025 drilling plans, the impact of import tariffs on drilling plans […]
Ghost Factories Are a Warning Sign for Green Manufacturing’s Future
The promise of a green manufacturing boom, fueled by generous subsidies and ambitious climate policies, is unraveling across the United States and beyond. So-called “ghost factories”—abandoned or stalled clean-energy projects—are becoming a stark symbol of […]
Oil Markets Don’t Panic on the OPEC+ Production Push: Are They Maxed Out, and What Does It Mean for Global Oil Markets?
OPEC+ has been making waves with ambitious production quota hikes, signaling a bold shift toward reclaiming market share. However, recent data reveals a recurring theme: the group’s actual output consistently falls short of these lofty […]
The World Needs Trillions in Oil and Gas Investment to Avoid a Supply Crunch
Are We Falling Short?
DOE’s Grid Reliability Report Sounds the Alarm: Opportunities for Investors in a Strained Energy Landscape
The Department of Energy report is an eye-opening document, and I am glad that they are addressing this issue now, rather than waiting until 2030. The United States has experienced minimal electricity demand growth, and […]
Copper Prices to the Moon After Trump Announces 50% Tariff
Copper prices have gone stratospheric, with U.S. Comex futures spiking as much as 17% in a single day—the largest intraday gain in over three decades—following President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 50% tariff on copper […]
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
00:18 – The OBBBA Resets the Energy Policy Playing Field: A New Era for Oil, Gas, and Nuclear
04:57 – Dallas Fed Energy Survey
12:29 – Ghost Factories Are a Warning Sign for Green Manufacturing’s Future
16:14 – Oil Markets Don’t Panic on the OPEC+ Production Push: Are They Maxed Out, and What Does It Mean for Global Oil Markets?
18:58 – The World Needs Trillions in Oil and Gas Investment to Avoid a Supply Crunch
21:20 – DOE’s Grid Reliability Report Sounds the Alarm: Opportunities for Investors in a Strained Energy Landscape
24:39 – Copper Prices to the Moon After Trump Announces 50% Tariff
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– Get in Contact With The Show –
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Stuart Turley: [00:00:00] DOE’s grid reliability report sounds the alarm, but it’s opportunities for investors in a strained landscape. That and more on the weekend edition of the Energy Newsbeat. [00:00:10][10.1]
Michael Tanner: [00:00:18] Big Beautiful Bill represents the energy policy playing field, a new era for oil, gas, and nuclear. I mean, we’ve been following this stuff for two weeks. It was made official July 3rd, 2025, President Donald Trump went ahead and signed the One Big Beautiful bill, which was literally actually called One Big Beautiful Act, the OBBBA, which is unbelievable. You know, a lot of this analysis we’re pulling out is from good, good friend of the show, David Blackman in his writings with the Daily Caller. For one, I think there’s some fragility in this beautiful from a high level. A lot of House Republicans weren’t necessarily happy with a lot of the amendments that made it into the Senate. Vice President J.D. Vance had to come back to the Senate and cast a tie breaking vote, which is interesting. I think There’s two things in here to point out. You know, there’s mainly from an oil and gas perspective, the main thing to point out is the regulatory reform that comes in here. So Basically the idea is that now we’re going to be able to streamline the permitting process for a huge amount of energy and remember it’s not just the drilling of the wells that matters in the whole energy production process. We have to talk about how is this, how is this oil and this energy actually being created to electricity? And that’s where a lot of this regulatory change comes in. If you’re in the data center business, if you’re in the power business, this is a huge, huge bill for you because it’s going to allow you to more rapidly permit these things. The quote out of API CEO, Mike Summers or the American Petroleum Institute. He called the OBBBA, quote, a historic legislation that ushers in a new era of energy dominance. He’s going to say that regardless. It also, you know, this follows up on Trump’s attempting to become, you know, drill baby drills what he thinks. So the OBBB really follows what we did with the net, what he did with the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, which opened up about 13 million acres for leasing. You know, I do think there is this, as we’ll get to in the Dallas Fed survey, I think there’s this, you know, what the White House and administration are saying versus I think what some of the boots in the ground saying. But there was a big win for nuclear in this, the FTI consulting and energy consulting firm called basically one of the biggest winners in this whole bill from an energy perspective, nuclear power. And you know basically it comes down to regulation. It supports also this legislation has language in there that supports the development of next generation nuclear technology, specifically stuff that Stu talks about, which are these small modular reactors, which, I mean, again, are critical if you are going to create these, if you’re gonna create, so if you need a data center, you’re probably gonna need, at some point, nuclear on this because there’s so much power associated with it. Coal was mentioned a little bit. They really didn’t put anything specifically in it for coal. I think in the press conference that followed, You saw a lot of people. Talking specifically about where how we’re going to end the war on coal. Chris Wright, Secretary Wright said that. So, you know, the real argument is it’ll bought everything a smorgasbord from an energy mix. Obviously, if you’re in the wind and solar business, you saw that those subsidies were stripped out. Now, this was a interesting, interesting thing. So I’ll kind of just read you a little bit of what David Blackmon wrote. A deal brokered by Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski often softened the original timeline for the rollback of those wind and solar subsidies from the IRA, allowing for projects that commence construction by July 4, 2026 to retain incentives rather than requiring them to be operational by 2027. So what you can imagine is there’s going to be this huge rush between now and 2027 to start a project so that you can maintain those subsidies. I think obviously this will dampen long-term wind growth, but I think you’re going to see a Quote-unquote kicked off have a little bit of money spent so they still qualify for these subsidies. I think all in all, you know, I think this is what David Blackman says and I would echo this sentiment. This is a bold reset for American energy. Here’s his quote, second chances like this do not come often. If these great industries fail to grab this brass ring and run with it, it may never come again. For oil, gas, nuclear, the OBBA is not just a policy reason, it’s a mandate to lead American into the new era of energy dominance. It’s a really incredible. You know, again, reset an opportunity, Stu mentions here in this article, he’s going to be lining up some nuclear interviews on the podcast. So that’d be very interesting to see, but a highly controversial bill. I think it, it, again with, with the IRA wind and solar subsidies, I would have maybe liked to see them phase out completely. By 2027, I think this compromise has a lot more legal room. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out. [00:04:56][278.6]
Michael Tanner: [00:04:57] One of my favorite times of the year, the Dallas Fed Energy Survey, it dropped for the second quarter, which is basically a look at what’s the oil and gas. They basically do an interview of over 75 different oil and glass companies, both big and small, and then aggregate the data and have a bunch of comments. We’ll go ahead and I’ll kind of read some of the headlines and we’ll dive into some interesting stuff I saw. You know, the oil production index, I think that’s the big thing that people talk about, fell from 5.6 to negative 8.9. So an unbelievable swing in the second quarter. Natural gas production index also did turn negative, declining from 4.8. To negative 4.5. This is another big one, the oil field services input cost index rose from 30.9 to 40.0, pretty unbelievable. For EMP, the finding, and this is interesting, the finding development cost actually fell from 17.1 to 11.4, which is actually great. We saw lease operating expense index drop from 38.7 to 28.1, which was fairly good relative to where we see. I love this top line. Oilfield services reported a modest deterioration in nearly all indicators. Equipment utilization remained unchanged at about negative 4.6. The operating margin increased from negative 21.5 to negative 33.4 indicating that these, the margins continue to compress at an extremely fast rate. Prices received for services turned negative. They were at 7.1 last quarter and now they’re at negative 17. 0.7. Some other interesting things here. We’ve got the average WTI crude. Okay. So basically the average, basically most people thought that WTI was going to average $68 per barrel at the end of 2025. And that range was between about 50 to 85. When you increase to a little longer term of a timeframe on average, people were saying about $72 a barrel about 77 five years from now on the gas side three dollars and sixty six cents by the end of 25 In two years from now, $4.12. And in five years, $5.50. I’m not sure if I necessarily believe that. To give for a sort of a reference point, WTI averaged about 69.81 per barrel during the survey collected. And Henry Hubb was about $3.30. Yeah, most people you kind of see that nice bell curve. I’d highly recommend going and checking out these charts here. We also did see, I love this, there was a bunch of special questions that they asked EMP firms. One of them being how many, how’s the number of wells your firm expected to drill in 2025 changed since the start of the year. Basically the highest bucket was no change at 35%. A significantly decrease was actually the second highest at 25%. Slightly decreased was at 20% and then at 15, it was slightly increased and about two and a half percent slightly increased. So, or increased significantly, which is unbelievable. There’s a bunch of stuff on tariffs. You know, tariffs have… Affected all different operators differently. I think if you’re a large operator, you’re able to get away with it a little bit more. If you’re smaller operator or you’re not, you can kind of look at that of the response of changes. So small EMPs were basically scattered between no change and above 10%, with 13 of the EMP or 13 small operators reporting a 10% increase, which is unbelievable. Basically 23, which is unbelievable. And large EMPs saw nobody reported no increases above 6%. So all of the large EMS, whatever you call large E&P, a firm that produced 10,000 barrels or more a day, they saw no more than 6% increase, which again goes to show you those economics of scale. There’s a bunch of questions on WTI. I wanna get down specifically and cover some of the. E and P. So now these are comments from survey respondents. So I’ll read you what they say here. Survey participants are given the opportunity to submit comments on current issues that may be affecting their businesses. Some comments have been edited for grammar and clarity. Comments from the special questions can be found, blah, blah blah. All right, so here’s a couple of what I found of the interesting quotes. Deliberation day, chaos and tariff antics have harmed the domestic energy industry. Drill baby drill will not happen with this level of volatility. Companies will continue to lay down rigs and frac. Spreads will rise. There is constant noise coming from the administration saying $50 per barrel is the target. Everyone should understand that 50 oil is not sustainable. It needs to be mid-60s. There was too much uncertainty in the market right now. And I just have to jump in there. I mean, trust me, I’m a Trump supporter myself. I think it’s very clear where I stand on that. But I think if- Trump was saying he was going to drive oil prices down to $50, $55 a barrel while he was in the election circuit, before he was elected, while he was campaigning. So to think that this is a shock of where Trump stands when it comes to oil prices, I think you’re kidding yourself. Yes, the regulatory environment, I think, is a lot better, but the regulatory environment really wasn’t affecting the upstream E&P business. What really affects them is prices, and if really prices are going to get down to the $50 rate as this. Comment points out, it’s not going to be sustainable. It’s gotta be in that $65 range, at least to be able to get that. Political turmoil is not beneficial. We are dealing with war and bureaucracies, each trying to exert their specific agendas and effectively prevent progress. So this is interesting. Here’s from a smaller operator, service costs are low and wells are very economic, but there are inventory challenges for small operators like us. And now I think we get into a podcast that I did a couple weeks ago with Bennett Williams that we’re in the. Process of finishing up, where when you actually look at the challenges that EMPs are facing, he makes a great argument in the piece that we talked about, which was it’s actually geologic, it’s inventory problems. If the rock quality is not good, well, it doesn’t matter where prices are. It doesn’t, it does matter where the prices are, I guess, but geology drives the economics of a well. And so if you’re a small operator and you don’t have much inventory, and it can be a real hard. I think there’s this other interesting quote, we are spending way too much time and resources on trying to predict the price of oil. We dropped our rig count 50%. Also suppliers are being squeezed and there is concern that some of our vendors will not survive. Interesting. Another interesting comment here, if the Federal Reserve would lower interest rates, the oil pets would see a jump as the economy recovers to a higher level. Interest rates are holding the oil industry and the economy as a whole back. Interesting. Here’s some oil and gas service firms quotes. EMP customers are delaying activity due to steel tariffs. Our biggest issues are the steel tariffs we are absorbing as an oil-filled service company. Our customers are refusing to help absorb these costs. EMPs continue to speak out of both sides of their mouths. They talk about partnerships for treating their vendors like second-cast citizens, pushing OFS to unsustainable margins. This is a very, very interesting quote, and I have to agree with this service company, I mean, there is huge talk in the business about, oh, we’re partners with our vendors, We’re partners with them. But it’s always the EMPs going to the vendors asking for discounts rather than helping absorb some of the costs themselves. I think it’s really interesting this sentiment and I think this is a very very interesting quote you know which you know I think this is another interesting quote while the overall rig count has dropped we are seeing more of that drop coming from the larger operators and with that a chance for smaller operators to pick up rigs at better prices in our market smaller operators we feel like this environment provides opportunity we’re hopeful that more carve-outs from last year’s M&A Bonanza We’ll continue to create deals for the smaller and more nimble operators to prove up non-core divestitures. Very interesting. One, to quote, the price of oil is an issue affecting our business, so I could have told you that. So very, very interesting. I love the Dallas Fed survey. Go ahead and it’s, gosh, it’s like nine pages. So I’d highly recommend going, hitting the link in the description below to check it out. Ghost factories are a warning sign for green manufacturing’s future. I mean, this is really interesting because as we’ve been talking about recently, Obviously the one big beautiful bill. Phases out energy subsidy or wind and solar subsidies that were in the inflation reduction act or as we like to call it the Porky’s bill. And, but what they did at the last minute was if you watched yesterday’s show, they switched the language a little bit. And it’s now well it doesn’t phase out by 2027 as long as your project is quote in construction and i’m using quotes for those podcast listeners in completion or in construction you will now be able to get the tax benefit for the full life of the project So this is only going so that one big beautiful bill is only going to enhance what we’ve sort of already seen, which is the so called ghost factories or abandoned and stalled clean energy projects. It’s pretty unbelievable. So to give you guys an idea, here’s here’s the impact of these and here’s what’s going on. You’ve basically got all of these projects, which were started, but have now stalled because they don’t quite have the capital, but they needed to in order to get the tax subbies. Something we’re gonna see a lot more of because of the one big beautiful bill. So first up, Buckeye, Arizona. Core power, one billion dollar battery factory basically leaving a 214 acre lot empty after doing initial ground work. Oh, but it’s in construction. The company’s CEO has stepped down. That seems interesting, very interesting. So there’s also a wind turbine factory in Massachusetts that was scrapped. We’ve got a Georgia EV battery component facility was suspended mid construction, you know, Colorado lithium battery plant was also put on hold in the middle of construction. According to, this is a stat for you right here, according to Atlas public policy, 9% or about 10% of the $261 billion in green factory investments announced as 2021 has been shelved or canceled during the middle of the construction, and most of that has occurred Since Trump came into office 2025. So what does that mean? They’re souring on this and this is only going to get more again Why did they abandon it? Well, they didn’t abandon it. They abandoned it because it doesn’t make economic sense Why did they start it? Well, they started it because you were handing out free money. It goes back to incentives. And I bang my fist on the table. And it’s not just because I studied economics that I scream about incentives. Show me the money and I will show you an incentive. Meaning, if you just give people free money, you are going to change behavior. Now, that can be a good thing. It can also be a bad thing. And that’s where I come down on this. It doesn’t really matter the efficacy of these solar projects. But what we’re seeing, and these wind projects, what we are seeing is that if they had to go dollar for dollar up against other alternative energy sources, they’re going to lose. On a dollar for dollar investment ROI basis? Or why would they not be building? Why wouldn’t everybody be building this? Why wouldn’t Chevron be trying to take over the wind farm business? I mean, if anyone has the capital. To build massive wind farms. It’s Chevron, I’ve never figured this out. People say, oh well, you know, big oil hates wind and solar. They’re probably actually the best companies set up in order to manufacture and deploy large scale wind. But why aren’t they in it? Well, because they don’t want a dollar for dollar basis. It doesn’t make fiscal sense. It doesn’ stack up to what they currently do. So I think you’re only going to see these ghost factories get a lot better. It’s bleak for wind and solar, or a good thing if you’re on our side of the screen, where we’re not a big green subsidy people. So I do think it’s super, super fascinating. And this will definitely be one to watch. Oil. [00:16:14][677.3]
Stuart Turley: [00:16:15] Oil markets don’t panic as OPEC plus production push. Are they maxed out and what does it mean for the global oil markets? This was out of an article that I saw on OilPrice.com, great people over there and I went ahead and wrote this story. I also took a look at Josh Young. Josh Young on X is absolutely a must-follow if you’re in the energy space, and I’ve quoted in here, Ramco raising their delivered price of oil to Asia indicates their expectations of a tight market and higher prices despite OPEX Plus decision to increase production. Josh has always got some fantastic points up here, and when you take a look at the markets. Not just going down like they used to. As soon as OPEC used to announce an update, the market would just immediately drop, saying there’s more supply. But we’re going, hold it, not so fast. You haven’t been able to increase production over the last three or four times, so is this just a play? Josh Young, again, is reading the market spot on. Well done. So you have to ask, is OPEC plus maxed out? The chronic overproduction and noncompliance like Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria have repeatedly exceeded their quotas, but this reflects an inability to scale back rather than surplus capacity. That is critical. And when you take a look at the difference between the United States oil drilling versus the rest of the world the rest the world is managed by cash flow much like the united states but this cash flow is around governments if the governments need extra money they just drill more oil and they don’t care about an opec plus quota being established on them they need money go drill. In the United States, we have this thing called mineral rights. And fiscal responsibility. ESG has done a great thing to the United States oil companies and that is both private and public are giving money back to investors so that they can have fiscal responsibility and as I love President Trump but President Trump’s drill baby drill is not drill baby, drill whenever he says it, it’s drill, baby, whenever fiscally responsible. So there is a lot of fiscal responsibility going on in the United States oil markets right now. [00:18:58][163.1]
Stuart Turley: [00:18:58] The world needs trillions in oil and gas investment in order to avoid a supply crunch. Let’s go through these here and if you kind of saw how I was going with today’s podcast, research suggests the world needs significant oil and gas investment potentially in the trillions by 2030. I’m guessing four trillion by my crayon math. It appears that the global capital expenditure for 2025 will be around 570 billion, which is below the 640 billion needed by 2030. The evidence suggests top producing countries such as the US, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, as well as companies country companies like saudi ramco and exxon mobile. Are driving the production. However, investment gaps could impact supply. There’s controversy surrounding whether oil and gas will remain viable long-term investment, and I disagree. The controversy is there, but I don’t think so, because I think eventually technology will change and we won’t need as much oil and Yes. And I’m all in on the change on technology. Let’s use less oil. I’m All in, but until the technology changes, we are going to need it. So anyway, the top producers in investments at electric, I’ve got Exxon and Chevron in here, take a look at them. Always i do not give investment advice but talk to your advisor if you need tax credits or you need a year in new york by the way we love new yore cuz almost everybody in new York reads energy news beat i see a lot of people in new your always reading it we love New York but your tax base. You may need an investment with tax benefits. So taxes stink. In fact, I’ve got a new coffee mug. We’ll start talking about that here in just a little bit. But I also, this is a different quote from Josh Young. So Josh Young got two quotes today. This one is gold sword. Now copper is rising rapidly, is oil next. And again, I listen to experts. I listened to Doomburg. We, I listened to Josh Young and I’ve got a bunch of other folks here. [00:21:20][141.9]
Stuart Turley: [00:21:21] The DOE Department of Energy grid reliability report. Sounds the alarm and oh boy, opportunities for investors in a strained energy landscape. I got to hand it to secretary Chris Wright in the Department of energy. This is a very. Thorough report. It’s a little different than what I had come up with with my crayon numbers, but the Department of Energy’s report released on July 7th highlights significant grid reliability risk by 2030 due to surging demand from AI data centers manufacturing with potentials for blackouts increasing 100 fold. It seems likely that companies providing firm dispatchable power like coal, natural gas and nuclear and those innovating grid modernization will benefit given the report’s emphasis on reliability. Research suggests investors should consider firms like Peabody Energy, Constellation, NextEra, Vistra, GV, and Vernova based on their alignments with report findings. This is critical. We’ve been on a very flat line growth structure for the United States grid for a very long time and this is now huge. When you take a look at the report, I’ve included a copy of the entire report. Go to this article on energynewsbeat.co and take a look at it. It is all in here and I did not have how they had this broken out into some really key areas. Demand surge, electricity demand projected 16% over five years. Generation requirements, 104 gigawatts of retirements by 2030. That’s not very far away. Mostly coal with only 22 gigawatts of new firm base load natural gas or nuclear from 209 planned gigawatt additions that is huge it means that there’s 209 solar or wind or all these other but they’re not mainline stable. That is critical. Only 22 gigawatts stable demand. This is going to be Spain all over again on the United States grid. Outstanding job calling attention to this by the Department of Energy. I’ve got other ones in here for folks wanting to know, wait a minute, where do I invest? I don’t give investment advice, but I do look for good investment opportunities. And when you take a look at that, the full DOE report is there. ERCOT is not in a good state and there are only two that passed the DOE’s test for being up there. So, and they were kind of like iffy. This is huge. Secretary Chris Wright is ahead of the curve. Instead of waiting for the blackouts, he is running right on into it and saying, we’ve got to fix it. Hats off to them for recognizing the problem. And we will be reporting on how well they’re doing and keeping an eye on it. Great job. [00:24:39][198.1]
Stuart Turley: [00:24:40] Copper prices to the moon after Trump announces a 50% tariff. Just when you thought tariffs were a bad thing, I think this is kind of entertaining. President Trump, I believe we are going to be getting $300 billion in revenue from tariffs and inflation is down. Way to go President Trump. Trump’s tariff announcement made at the White House cabinet meeting July 8th aligns that it’s America first policy to rebuild. U.S. Industrial supply chains, the 50% duty matching existing tariffs on steel and aluminum stems from Section 232 investigation launched in February 2025, which examined carbon copper imports on a national security ground. How much copper, and I had to ask the question, how much copper does the U. S. Need? Copper is the backbone of everything that we need. At the time I’m writing this, is gearing up for 40. A single EV requires 183 pounds of copper compared to just 40 pounds for a traditional gas power. The U.S. Is geering up for a massive increase in copper demand driven by ambitious climate goals, infrastructure investments. At the time I’m writing this, I’m also producing a podcast for David Blackman this morning, which was absolutely wonderful, and Dan Jurgen, and they are discussing the shortage of copper. Which is expected to become a critical problem for the administration to address. Hats off to those two industry leaders as they’re talking about this, and that was fun to produce that podcast. The 50% tariff could disrupt these imports, potentially causing a supply shortage and driving up costs. But what it does do is hopefully protect some folks in the United States to get a mind going. With Secretary Wright going to the first one that we’ve opened in 75 years. He is on point and I think he’s off and running. [00:26:36][116.0]
Stuart Turley: [00:26:36] Welcome to the Energy Newsbeat. This is the Saturday edition. This is The Best of the Stories of the Week. We have had stories ranging from the DOE grid reliability report, we’ve had copper absolutely going nuts, and I’ll tell you what, this is a phenomenal week. I’m gonna go ahead and turn it off over to the stories, all that and more on the Energy newsbeat daily standup. [00:26:36][0.0][1585.1]
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