Buckle up as the best Monday morning live podcast on Energy rolls out a huge topic on Geopolitics and Critical Minerals. There are some surprising developments underway, and we will cover them all. From NATO’s shifting defense budgets and China’s strategic chokehold on rare earth processing to trade realignments and energy market turmoil, this fast-paced discussion dives into the global power plays shaping energy security.
Join David Blackmon, Dr. Tammy Nemeth, Stuart Turley, and Irina Slav for a candid, insightful, and at times humorous exploration of the geopolitical chessboard behind critical minerals and the energy landscape.
I truly appreciate the industry leadership of Irina, Tammy, and David, as well as the insightful comments from our global listeners every Monday morning. -Stu
Highlights of the Podcast
00:11 – Opening & Intros
01:43 –Geopolitics, NATO, and Energy Security
04:33 – NATO Spending & Critical Minerals
08:32 – Energy Economics & Geopolitical Alliances
14:56 – Supply Chain Vulnerabilities & China's Role
23:17– Environmental Activism & Policy Barriers
30:31 – DEI Requirements & Economic Dysfunction
41:29 – Inflation, Unemployment & Energy Costs
45:36 - UK Pulls Plug on £24 Billion Desert Power Fantasy
49:24 - Senate adopts Carney's fast-tracked major projects bill - well before Canada Day deadline
52:57 - Trump announces U.S. - China Trade Deal
53:21 - The Senate version of the “Big Beautiful Bill” took a surprising turn: Instead of allowing wind and solar subsidies to continue forever, the bill kills the subsidies and imposes a new tax on them!
56:03 - Germany moves to block any attempts to restart North Stream
56:19 - California should raise fuel imports, pause margin cap, regulator says
57:43 - California is a U.S. National Security Risk, and the Gas and Diesel Crisis Was Manufactured
58:15 - UK Car Output Hits 76-year Low: Green Energy Policies, Not just Trump Tariffs, Drive Deindustrialization
International Author writing about energy, mining, and geopolitical issues. Bulgaria
Principal at DB Energy Advisors, energy author, and podcast host.Principal at DB Energy Advisors, energy author, and podcast host.
Energy Consulting Specialist
President, and CEO, Sandstone Group, Podcast Host
Geopolitics and Critical Minerals – Energy Realities Live Podcast
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
David Blackmon [00:00:11] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy Reality Podcast. I'm David Blackmon. It is my week to, I guess, pretend to be the host of this thing. And with me so far are Dr. Tammy Nemeth up in Canada today. It's such a beautiful scene out there. Tammy, how's everything?
Tammy Nemeth [00:00:34] It's beautiful. We had rain yesterday, which is good, and now it's supposed to be hot for the rest of the week.
David Blackmon [00:00:40] What is hot in Canada in the last day of June?
Tammy Nemeth [00:00:45] Uh, it's supposed to be I think upwards of 28 to 30 degrees celsius
David Blackmon [00:00:51] Oh, wow. So that that actually is hot. Yeah, that's that's approaching what 98.
Tammy Nemeth [00:01:00] I don't know, it's pretty warm.
David Blackmon [00:01:03] Yeah, that's warm. That's very warm.
Tammy Nemeth [00:01:05] Typical for summer in Saskatchewan, that's for sure.
David Blackmon [00:01:12] Mr. Turley, Stu Turley is with us in Oklahoma at his bunker, his on the lake bunker there.
Stuart Turley [00:01:21] Oklahoma, how are you doing, Stu? I'm doing fabulous, David. I am sore. I actually put in 1300 pounds of cement at my shop for a footing to get my backhoe so I could get into the shop to work on it. So which came first? 1300 pounds is cement or working on your backhoe. I don't know.
David Blackmon [00:01:42] The one I don't want to mess with. I trimmed some crape myrtles this weekend. That's the extent of my manual labor these days. Well, thanks everybody for joining us. This week we're talking about, you know, there's just been such a slow news period of time that there isn't much to talk about these days, but today we're going to talk, I'm just Of course today we're talking about what ought to be the hottest topic, frankly, related to energy these days, which is geopolitical issues and oil. And really it's more than just oil. It's oil, it's natural gas, it is LNG exports, it it's nuclear, it's renewables, it China building 94 coal plants a month or some crazy number like that. Um, and it's, um, It's all tied up in events happening around the world, including, of course, in the Middle East, where we just had a 12-day war between Israel and Iran with the United States, jumping in to, I guess, effectively kind of end it, at least for now. It's happening in Europe. You know, everything that takes place in Ukraine has implications for global trade and in fact... I mean, I think some really keen, smart people like Daniel Juergen would tell you, and Stu Turley, by the way, would tell that Ukraine war has had the impact of frankly reorganizing global trade relationships and geopolitical relationships all over the earth. And energy is a big part of it, of course, because oil is the... Most traded commodity on the face of the earth and has been for over a century now. And you know, I just think this was a great time to hold this discussion. We even saw it, I think, energy playing a significant role in the outcome of the NATO conference last week. When every country but Spain uh, agreed to raise their, uh, what they're referring to as national security interests, spending to 5% of gross and domestic product. Um, seems like a big lift to me. I'm sure president Trump would be thrilled if everybody gets to 2%. And, um, in most, many countries are at 2% now, thanks largely. To his arm twisting beginning a decade ago. And Tammy, what do you think? Is every NATO country but Spain gonna get to 5%?
Tammy Nemeth [00:04:33] It depends on how you calculate that 5%. So apparently, in the in the NATO agreement or communique or whatever, it's 1.5% is quite flexible, where it could be spent on things like critical minerals or infrastructure, which then leaves it you know, three and a half percent for real actual defense spending. And I guess, as we've said before, I'm... Spending. Can you can throw money at anything that doesn't mean you're getting something good out of it, you know I could spend a couple billion and not actually have any guns or tanks to show for it um, and then there's also the the climate element of it and in the eu is still doubling down on ensuring that there's their Responsibly sourced or in alignment with their climate pledges. And so I don't really understand how that works because jets or tanks or weapons and so on they require a significant amount of emissions to create them and when you're using tanks and jets they emit a lot so they have to use sustainable aviation fuel you know in a war situation or whatever but I mean Britain was showcasing that when they had the big royal flyover a few weeks ago. They were bragging about how they use sustainable aviation fuel in the fighter jets that flew over and whatever. So, I don't know, I think it depends on how big of a risk they think they're at for an actual military engagement or some kind of confrontation. Because it only seems to be when there's like an emergency, that stuff gets done. So will they actually commit if peace is on the table? And things settle down in the world? I don't know. But this seems to be a good excuse for increasing investment in other things like, for example, Canada in the EU signed this new trade and defense arrangement or something. And I haven't really seen a lot of the details around it. The agreement is quite general to some extent, what they've released to the public. And it has like all these different points and climate change. Is a huge part of it. Granted, it's farther down in the agreement, but it's still significant. And there's supposed to be this joint EU-Canada investment in critical minerals. So I think David, you had sent around something earlier this week about the new China-U.S. Trade and how critical minerals is a core component of that. And so when we talk about energy as a whole and defense procurement of what not, critical minerals are a key part of that. And so if you look at how long it takes to actually put these kinds of things into development and actually producing things, it takes a while. There's a bit of a lag between, oh, we're investing 22 billion in critical mineral infrastructure. And from when a company puts forward a proposal, runs the regulatory gauntlet, and then eventually starts producing things. So my understanding is that there's a couple of mines and processing facilities that are supposed to come online in 2027, at least in Europe and maybe a little bit in Canada. So we'll see where that actually goes. And in the United States? I don't know. I mean, is it possible to actually get mines approved? And built within a reasonable amount of time. It's as bad as Canada and Europe, so time will tell.
David Blackmon [00:08:32] Hi, Irina. We've been joined by Irina Slob in Bulgaria. Irina, how are you today?
Irina Slav [00:08:38] I'm great, thank you. I was just running late with my errands, sorry about that.
David Blackmon [00:08:43] Well, that's never happened to me before, so yes, kidding of course. So we are talking of course about geopolitical issues and oil, and we have been kind of rehashing NATO's agreement last week to, among all the countries except for Spain of course, to raise their national security spending to 5% of GDP, which seems like a take a break, lift and I wonder what you think about that, and also, does anyone really understand why Spain is a holdout on this? Is it just that you've got a socialist government and they're just not going to do it, or is there another big motivating factor behind that that I'm not aware of?
Irina Slav [00:09:35] I don't think anything good about this. I mean, we're giving money to people and we're giving money for things that nobody really needs. And now we're going to give more money to NATO for what? We just received one F-16 aircraft under some contracts with the American government from years ago. And it wasn't for just one aircraft, but we just got That's totally going to help, who knows what. I respect Trump's desire for other NATO members to contribute more, you know. But you know a lot of us don't really want to be in NATO we don't feel like NATO is making us safer and if you think about the level of indebtedness in the eurozone the euro zone can't afford more spending on anything big defense energy they can't afford it that's why they're accepting Bulgaria in the Eurozone so they can spread the debt I mean, France's indebtedness, I just saw some new figures, is 114% of GDP and they're going to spend more on NATO. Let's just bankrupt the whole thing. The faster it happens, the sooner it ends, the better. So the healing process could start.
David Blackmon [00:11:12] So basically Spain is the smart company in this country in this equation.
Irina Slav [00:11:17] Spain is being amazingly realistic, I think, which is...
David Blackmon [00:11:21] There you go.
Irina Slav [00:11:22] Uncharacteristic of its government, but maybe they really can't afford it and can't lie about it. Maybe that's why they're saying it.
David Blackmon [00:11:34] Stu, what do you think?
Stuart Turley [00:11:38] I think there's so much to unpack from what Tammy, Irina, and you have already said. We're off and running here. Uh, I apologize. I had the wrong slide deck up there for a today, but, um, I'll tell you the United States it's about China's dominance in not only the rare earth minerals, but it in critical minerals. It's the processing. And there are two stories that are critical. Uh, this one is from S and P global. Now, when you take a look at this, I charge, um, you, uh, the United States actually got a geranium processing plant online, and it is going to be able to take care of 50% of the geranium, which is important for military building that we were just talking about. And Tammy, you're bringing up a very great point. Sorry for being nice today. It's my normal mode of being a real jerk. So, uh, but this is important that we do get this. And if we don't get the regular, it takes 20, was it David 20 years to get a mine operational, but we've got a fast track. This one plant is being fast tracked into less than 16 months. And it's almost ready to start turning on, which is huge. We can do it when we want to do it, right? Yes. And this article from the S&P Global was also fabulous in taking a look at the total discussion that we have going on here in having a look at all of this stuff. They do an outstanding job over there. But i think this is also bringing up a big point. And that is, I think China's economy is in worse shape than they're admitting. And I, I just put out on my, uh, sub stack. That's why they are now starting to talk to president Trump. And when you take a look at how bad off they are, and David, you'd mentioned the trading blocks. So we have the trading blocks of Canada, the EU, and the UK are aligned with net zero policies. You have China that is over here in financial collapse. I can't stress this enough. They are having some serious problems. So the losing group of the UK and the EU are going to align with one that's already in financial control and holy cow, Batman, and then you have the new trading blocks of, uh, Saudi Arabia, um, the UAE, Qatar, Russia, India, you have all these trading blocks now coming in and the U S pigpiling on this. Bricks is going to be redefined and thrown off on the side. So this is a huge thing related to oil and critical minerals. All this comes into play.
David Blackmon [00:14:56] Yeah, that last point you just made about Bricks is enormous. How much time and energy have we, on this show and many others, put in over the last two years, talking about the rise of Bricks as a global powerhouse, right, that could rival the G7, and now suddenly things are being reorganized again, even as that group was expanding. And really becoming increasingly influential. Now we have yet another kind of reorganization of trade, trading blocks globally. And, uh, you know, it's just seems like everything else. Uh, since Trump came on the scene in 2015, I mean, I've remarked about it many, many times is the daily news cycle just accelerated exponentially. And it continues to accelerate. And that's reflected now, I think, in these global events. I mean, just think of how many historic global events we've experienced in just the last couple of months. It's like five years worth of historic events. Really, over the last year, we've had a decade. And it just continues to accelerate and that's impacting global trade and just like it impacts anything else and it really is amazing how a single person who doesn't buy into the globalist agenda and poses how Washington DC has functioned for the last 40 years. Kind of turn over the whole apple card. It's really an extraordinary thing to have lived through. I'm not sure what my point is there, but it just feels like, you know, geopolitics is not immune to that.
Stuart Turley [00:17:07] Tammy dropped this into the private chat here and I just wanted to share this. This looks phenomenal, Tammy. Thank you for sharing that.
Tammy Nemeth [00:17:15] Yeah, so this this is the G7 critical minerals action plan and it's about really as they state, you know, to overcome the risks and to the resilience of the critical mineral supply chain. You know, they they want to start this trade war with China when China holds the cards of all of these critical minerals. You know, I was like, well, what are you doing here? You've been giving away all your weapons to Ukraine. You need to rebuild them. And you need all these critical minerals to do so. But China controls the production and especially the processing of them. And so one of the things that they identified in the G7 is here, this is funny, coordinating responses to deliberate market disruption. So when, as we saw,
Stuart Turley [00:18:10] Say that again. I'm sorry, I got tickled.
Tammy Nemeth [00:18:13] So coordinating responses to deliberate market disruption. So that would be like when China will flood the market. So a company will invest all this money to do mining of a critical mineral, then China waits for them to spend all their money, then they flood the markets so that that company has to go bankrupt. And they did this for that mine in the United States. I'm trying to remember which, David, do you remember what critical mineral that was? It was, uh, um.
David Blackmon [00:18:47] Oh man, I'm drawing a boy.
Tammy Nemeth [00:18:49] I'm drawing it like...
David Blackmon [00:18:51] Minnesota the one in Minnesota
Tammy Nemeth [00:18:53] Yeah, the one in Minnesota.
David Blackmon [00:18:55] Yeah, and I can't remember the name of it, but yeah, yeah, that was three years ago.
Tammy Nemeth [00:19:01] Yeah, actually, yeah, two, maybe two or three years ago, they invested all this money to develop this supply chain for this particular critical mineral. And the minute it was operational, China flooded the market and crashed the price so that the company had to suspend operations and try to find a buyer or whatever. So now they're with the G7 agreeing that when this kind of thing happens, they're and you can have a coordinated response. I don't know what that means in practice.
Irina Slav [00:19:35] What will be this response?
Tammy Nemeth [00:19:38] Right, so... Go ahead, David.
David Blackmon [00:19:42] They've all intentionally handed this off to China. I mean, China dominates because all those G7 countries 40 years ago made the decision, we wanted China to have to deal with all these dirty industries, mining and processing, all this stuff. And so that's the reason China's dominant now. And now suddenly they're taking a step back and say, oh, boy, did we mess up. What do we do now? Right? It's just so, I don't know, so ineffective.
Tammy Nemeth [00:20:12] Well, Tom has a really good point there where he said if yes, is it true that the United States does not have these rare earth minerals? Or is it that we're not willing to mine them and would rather mine them somewhere else? And that really ties into what you just said, David. So it's the same thing in every western country. And it's, it's not just that we want these other countries to mine these dirty things. It's because the environmental movement and their funders have been instrumental in preventing that development from going on. So like in Canada, they're talking about, there's this ring of fire in the Canadian shield in Northern Ontario that has absolutely everything. And the minute they said, oh, we wanna develop this now, this is really important, the indigenous people and the, backed by the environmentalists said, no, you can't touch it. So, what are you going to do when you have all these great resources, but the activists within your own borders are preventing you from developing them? So, I mean, the countries are going to have to think about...
Irina Slav [00:21:17] You're going with the activists rather than with common sense.
Stuart Turley [00:21:23] May I?
David Blackmon [00:21:23] I don't think the government's going to have to say national security matters.
Stuart Turley [00:21:29] May I add? Oh, sorry. Sorry, Tammy. I am so sorry. May I add that Tom's point? Is it true that the U.S. Does not have these rare earth minerals or is it we're not willing to mine them? I would also like to add we're not willing to process them. I think it's not we have them. The United States is not willing to process them. And processing is the critical part. We have more critical minerals in our 51st state of Greenland. It's a joke, but I mean, there are more mines up there and they're more critical mineral. It's not China has the grip on the critical minerals themselves. They're everywhere. It is the processes and the processing, in my opinion.
Tammy Nemeth [00:22:19] Well, let me give you an example. So the government of Saskatchewan had promoted through various incentives and whatnot at the University of Saskatoon one of the critical mineral processing facilities. And they developed some new technique is really great. So they helped support this. And a couple of years ago, they were at a point where they could go into live production. And they were looking for an investor and a buyer. No one would touch it. China was going to buy it and shut it down. And so then the government had to intervene and say, well, wait a second, no. We don't want China to buy it and then shut it down, and so I think the government is still trying to keep it open. So here we have an actual processing facility, and they can't. Get the investors to take it over. Why is that? Why is that?
Stuart Turley [00:23:17] I would not personally want to invest in Canada, the EU or UK. Personal opinion because of net zero. So just my personal opinion.
Irina Slav [00:23:28] I'd like to respond to SRB's comment that if NATO is so obsolete, I really should explain why Finland and Sweden were so eager to join NATO.
David Blackmon [00:23:37] Oh, yes.
Irina Slav [00:23:38] Irina should not explain anything, my dear SRB, because Irina doesn't live in either Finland or Sweden, and what they do with their foreign policy is their business.
Stuart Turley [00:23:52] Can I, I'm going to be a real jerk today. Uh, I think the United States needs to, I, I think we, the United States needs a back out of NATO, but that's just me.
David Blackmon [00:24:06] So, yeah, and I tend to agree with that, and I think Trump tends to agree with that. But it's not the topic he wanted to deal with this year, because there's so many other things.
Irina Slav [00:24:18] Yeah, and he probably doesn't want to do it so bluntly, you know, so he's offering them a way out, just pay up or shut up.
David Blackmon [00:24:28] But I do think, so his focus is ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. And once there's an agreement and a settlement of that war and it's brought to an end, I believe, this is just my personal belief, we'll see Trump then move to say, we don't need NATO. We're going to bring Russia into the G7, make it the G8 again. We don't need NATO, we're going to disband NATO and stop spending all these billions of dollars on an organization that is obsolete. That's what I believe will happen over the next year or so. And in the meantime, it was politically smart to do what was done. And that is reach this deal to ensure every country is contributing as it had promised decades ago to contribute, except for Spain, which I guess gets a pass at all this. Gail, Campbell, Andrews, I wanted to highlight this comment too because it's really on point. Doomburg uses the phrase at the speed of China, G7 and other plants don't consider the time element of these plants. That is true and that just goes back to the fact China is not a democratic country. It's not a free country. It doesn't have real elections in the same sense that we have elections and democracies in the Western world. China is the command and control economy and it's government can move the people in whatever direction it wants to move them for as long the term as it wants to until the people, unless and until the the people decide they've had enough and rebel.
Irina Slav [00:26:20] Did you just?
David Blackmon [00:26:20] We can't do that.
Irina Slav [00:26:21] Do you think they include Europe in democracies and free elections, David?
David Blackmon [00:26:27] Well, yeah, I mean nominally nominally there are still free elections. Yes The appearance of it. Yeah, that's the pretense. Those are the official talking points
Irina Slav [00:26:43] But the other time that was really good.
Tammy Nemeth [00:26:46] For sure, I'd add to the Sweden and Finland positions there, I think there was a lot of pressure from the European Union for them to join and, you know, cause it was about expanding the NATO, expanding the response to Russia. But I don't see how Russia could join the G8 when They're doing Europe is doing everything in their power to continue to alienate Russia like the fact that they have this This legislation that they're introducing that would ban the use of Russian natural gas LNG or pipeline Starting next year. Yep, like and Germany wants to put a thing in there a legislation to say they will never ever restart Nord Stream.
Stuart Turley [00:27:38] Nope!
Irina Slav [00:27:50] Just don't buy the gas.
Tammy Nemeth [00:27:52] Right. Why do you have to ban it like that? I mean, yeah But you know you thought we talk .We talk about democracies.
Tammy Nemeth [00:28:07] No, please go on, go on.
Irina Slav [00:28:09] All this is happening while Russian LNG imports are running at record, or were running at record high last year. And the story I had for today explicitly stated that the German government says that no Russian LNG enters Germany by its import terminals. Yeah, it's entering via pipelines after being regassified elsewhere, so what is your point? It's really embarrassing to watch, to be honest, and they keep the sanctions and they're not doing anything.
Tammy Nemeth [00:28:49] Well, Irina, it's like Germany saying we're not going to have nuclear, but they take nuclear power from France.
Irina Slav [00:28:55] Exactly! Yeah, yeah, actually that's a great precedent for this behavior.
Stuart Turley [00:29:01] Tammy, I think your excellent points just proved my statement that the new trading blocks are going to happen. And the EU is doubling down on stupid and so is the UK. So, there are...
Tammy Nemeth [00:29:17] And until Trump, so was the U.S.
Stuart Turley [00:29:20] I couldn't agree more, you know the difference between the...
Irina Slav [00:29:24] 12.
Stuart Turley [00:29:25] You know what the difference between the EU and the US is?
Tammy Nemeth [00:29:34] But so now we have Governor Carney. I would say he's the governor of the EU, from the EU. He's going along trying to say we're the most European country outside Europe, which is such an insult to a lot of Canadians. And he keeps repeating this. It's so offensive. But in any event, he's tying us to everything that Europe is doing instead of learning the lessons. You know, it's like. Just wanting to drag Canada down further. And to me, this is sort of like, America's best friend is no longer a best friend. And they're trying to spin it that this is Trump's fault. But I think the reality is, Canada is not behaving in a way that is good towards who our biggest neighbor is.
Stuart Turley [00:30:31] Tammy, may I ask you on the latest? I know this is not on critical minerals, but what is your opinion on the latest tariff war with Canada going on this morning?
Tammy Nemeth [00:30:42] Well, with that digital services tax, which is insane. I don't, you know, Justin Trudeau brought that in. There's so many of the people in Carney's current cabinet were in the Trudeaux cabinet, responsible for this legislation. And somehow they forgot to tell them, wow, this is gonna be really bad and it's likely Trump's going to react. And instead it was gonna start today. Where all of the tech companies that operate, the American ones that operate in Canada like Meta, Google, Apple, would have to be paying something like 3% of their revenue to the Canadian government or something. I mean, it is an insane amount, retroactive to 2022. So the government was looking at several tens of billions from these companies. And Trump said, yeah, no, this isn't going to happen. And so late last night, the Canadian government issued a statement saying they were rescinding that legislation. But you can't, the parliament's not sitting. So they said, we're not going to collect the money. But parliament isn't sitting, so so much for rule of law, you have to be able to. Go to Parliament and rescind things, but apparently he can just make an executive statement in Canada, which you can't, but they are, and they're not going to collect that money now, because Trump called off all the trade talks, and I guess now they're back on towards the end of July.
Stuart Turley [00:32:23] Bloomberg put out a thing this morning saying that Canada is reconsidering just to get Trump to the table. I don't think Trump is going to let them off the hook that easy.
Tammy Nemeth [00:32:34] No, I mean that the statement was they were rescinding the legislation. They were going to. Now parliament doesn't sit again until I think September. They had this huge long summer break. So I don't know. I hope that they actually do because that that tax is just insane.
David Blackmon [00:32:54] Well, the retroactive nature of it is just so. Offensive, you know, um, we've tried to do retroactive taxes that there's been a couple of times in recent street Congress has, in fact, Congress didn't make do one tax break during the George W. Bush presidency retroactive to January 1st of the year the bill was passed. Then there have been a couple of other efforts, one in the Obama years, that the Democrats made an effort to do a tax increase that was retroactive over a year, and that failed. The very nature or the very concept of a tax-increase that's retroactive is just offensive, I think, to the minds of free people, right, who think, at least believe, we're living. In a in a democracy that has rule of law. And I think that was a real critical misstep that government made in Canada on that. What have we got here Americans used the word talent to identify the necessary employees, such as an engineering and techie slash engineering in Canada, Palette is not marshaled for energy or mineral projects. Wow And I think that's true in the EU too, right? I mean, largely.
Stuart Turley [00:34:25] But you know, Gale brings up a great point, David, in that when I've tried to do oil and gas work or going up into Canada, I have to hire a Canadian to stand next to me to do my work. And it's just pretty crazy when you consider the work rules in Canada.
Tammy Nemeth [00:34:47] Yeah, I mean, that's been around since the 60s. And a lot of it has to do with, you know, America is much, much larger than Canada. And there's this fear. And it's particularly, as we see with supply management, which is there's this cartel that runs the dairy industry, and the poultry industry in Canada. And they're afraid that if we just open things up, America will dominate us and everything. And they will be no Canadian companies, right? This is the fear. And it's like, well, why don't you, if you undo the regulatory shackles, Canadians would be able to compete. But there's all of these rules. And I know like in the 70s, when oil and gas development was going crazy and they were trying to nationalize stuff, they put in all these rules, like you just said, Stu, where Canadians, there had to be X percentage of Canadian participation. And if you're dealing with stuff, you had to have a Canadian there and so on. So yeah, it's an issue. Grand Finale has a comment there that Canada was on the cusp of voting for a conservative Pierre Poliev, and then Trump scared them off. Yeah, fear is a powerful motivator and it was weaponized by the liberals and brilliantly so, as much as, I don't like it, but it was tactically a good move.
David Blackmon [00:36:12] I mean, a lot of people think Trump did that intentionally, but I've never seen a great explanation what the motivation for him doing that would be, and maybe he did.
Tammy Nemeth [00:36:26] Yeah, I don't know. All it did is now we have a guy who wants to have closer ties with Europe and that's, you know, I don't see how that's a benefit for America, but whatever.
David Blackmon [00:36:38] I don't either. Quite honestly, I think it would have been... Oh well, anyway, I'm not Canadian, so I don't have a say in it. I think it's probably where we're at 37 minutes in. It's probably time to wrap this up. Does anyone have any final comments on our topic of the day before we move on to our articles? Hearing none.
Irina Slav [00:37:07] I'm told they should pay more attention to the time factor as Gail mentioned. They really should.
Stuart Turley [00:37:15] And I think the critical mineral part of it is so, I don't want to use the pun critical, but I think it's also an underlying thing just as in China they've had 400 of their 500 car manufacturers go broke, 400 of them go broke. So we're talking some serious issues and it's related to critical minerals. There is no energy transition or electrification without critical minerals, so it's all related.
David Blackmon [00:37:52] Yeah, you know, was it Stuart Tammy made the point that China's economy is not as healthy as they'd like to pretend it is Tammy, was that yours?
Tammy Nemeth [00:38:03] No, I think that was Stu.
David Blackmon [00:38:06] Okay, that's a great point, and I think it's exemplified, illustrated in the level of tariffs included in the agreement between China and the United States. The United States is going to levy a 55 percent tariff on Chinese goods imported into the country. China gets to levy a 10 percent tarif on U.S. Goods coming into China. That's an enormous disparity. I think it kind of illustrates which company was most interested in getting that done at the end, or was their economy was in more distress than America's economy was at that point in time when that deal was made. In the United States, we don't have any inflation at all. It's disappeared from the conversation. Employment remains strong. Economic growth kind of stalled in March and April, but is. Begun to pick up again. Whereas in China, I mean, you don't know, you can't know what's really the truth is because you can trust any of the numbers coming out of that government.
Tammy Nemeth [00:39:19] My final comment on the critical minerals aspect is that in Chicago, in September, they're going to be doing a conference on critical materials and minerals, the G7, and I think they're also going to maybe include South Korea, India, maybe Australia, because Australia also has a lot of minerals and mining and whatever. One of the interesting elements that I failed to mention is that the EU... For their critical minerals. What they're focusing on is circular economy and how you can recycle the existing ones so that they don't have to invest in mining and processing of new ones. They're really focused on, let's just recycle a bunch of stuff.
Stuart Turley [00:40:09] Gail, again, we love Gail. By the way, Gail thank you for being such a regular watcher of the show. This is from Gail I had a highly diversified employee team but when I applied for funding our green project I received a zero on the DEI rating. This was Canada.
Tammy Nemeth [00:40:29] Yeah, you have to meet all of these DEI checks in order to get government matching of different investments, especially for green initiatives, but you have to be not only how green it is, but how woke it is. And none of those things have changed.
Irina Slav [00:40:51] And professional credentials. Experience, knowledge, this or that, doesn't matter.
Tammy Nemeth [00:40:54] That's farther down the totem
Irina Slav [00:40:57] Of course.
Tammy Nemeth [00:40:58] So like, for example, at universities, when they're applying for a lot of the funding at universities in Canada is through these government programs, like they set aside this money, and then you have to go to a committee and get your stuff. But for these research projects now, they have a list of all these DEI boxes you must check in order to qualify for academic funding. So yeah, it's not, I don't know, I didn't see how you get innovation with that.
Stuart Turley [00:41:29] David, I want you to respond to this one. I think this is important from grand finale. David, are you serious regarding the inflation and unemployment? You're kidding, right? Don't tell me you believe those government numbers. David, before you answer, I'd like to say, I believe no government number, but I believe this administration better than I believe the last administration. So I apologize for that. Okay,
David Blackmon [00:41:51] you just gave my... Answer to. Yeah, no, and I believe from personal experience that inflation has, at least as we knew it under Joe Biden, has gone away. I mean, you just go to the grocery store, I'm paying three dollars a dozen less for a carton of eggs, a dollar less for a loaf of bread, a $1.50 less for gallon of milk, and on and on. It's hard to believe we've forgotten just two years ago. When every time you would go to the grocery store, three days after your previous trip, the price of everything had gone up. Yes, no, that's disappeared from the public conversation, whether it's disappeared entirely or not. Who can you believe? I don't know. But what I do know is I don t hear anybody at MSNBC and CNN talking about the price a kind of A-Z, and that's why, because the prices are going down instead of up. But I want to thank Robert, and speaking of regular viewers, we appreciate Robert D'Amico. He brought up a subject that I had forgotten about, but we predicted a week ago where the oil price would be today. And he says I was spot on. Well, because I predicted $68 a barrel. But we were talking about West Texas Intermediate price, not the Brent price. And the Brent is about $68 today. But WTI is more like 65. So I was a little, but yeah, it got lower, didn't it? Anyway, thank you, Robert. I always love to say I was right about something because it doesn't happen that often.
Stuart Turley [00:43:32] I disagree.
David Blackmon [00:43:36] Average fast food process. Okay, Grand Finale, we're going to have this argument. Average food process for $18 for what? I mean, yeah, they were $18 three years ago too. So what's the point? I don't know what the point is. I mean I had to stop ordering, you know, out from McDonald's three years ago because prices have gotten crazy. I mean insane or but I haven't seen them go up since then. So I, again.
Stuart Turley [00:44:04] Yeah, Fast-food prices
Stuart Turley [00:44:08] measured. You know, I hate to tell grand finale that but fast food prices are not a measurement.
David Blackmon [00:44:15] Well, the pressure on minimum wage, you know, raising the minimum wage in parts of the country has been a big factor in that.
Tammy Nemeth [00:44:23] Well, with inflation and unemployment, those things take a little bit of time to alter. I don't doubt that in the United States there's been some marginal improvements over the past since Trump came in, but I think you might need a little longer, and I agree. I don t believe any government numbers. They all seem to be manipulated to forever in power because they want to make themselves look good. And I know in Canada, the groceries. Are still incredibly expensive. They haven't really gone down. The only thing that's gone down is gas prices so far. And the removal of the carbon tax hasn't really flowed through to the rest of the supply chain. So who knows what will happen. Okay, are we moving on to the stories now?
David Blackmon [00:45:13] Yes, articles, stories.
Tammy Nemeth [00:45:15] Yeah, really quick. So my story is here. The first is from Irina actually, where she had this great substack on the this desert project where they were going to build this massive electrical interconnector from Morocco to the UK is going to cost them a zillion dollars, whatever. And the UK finally pulled the plug on this. This 24. They were going to invest 24 billion into this desert power project or And it's interesting because Irina, in her substack, had linked to this academic study where they were talking about this global energy interconnection that China's been pushing since 2015, and then they highlighted in that article about how there's this massive interconnection between Morocco and France and how great it is, and they could be able to do this. No, Morocco and Spain. Oh, sorry, sorry. Morocco and Spain, you're right. That's right. That's right. Under the Mediterranean or whatever. And they're talking about how many megawatts and like megawats. That's not very much.
David Blackmon [00:46:22] Yeah, if you're not getting to GiggleWatch, you're not doing anything.
Tammy Nemeth [00:46:25] Right. And you're investing all this into these undersea cables that are, you know, easily disruptible and everything else. And why would you want to create this global system that's vulnerable? You know, if you don't have your own energy, electricity production, and your reliance on all these different interconnects, it just takes one fault. And a boom, it's like several countries or states or whatever end up being out of power because because of one fault in this thing. So not not the best. Plan in the world, but China is still pushing it, and I find that interesting. And the Global Energy Interconnection Development Company, or Guideco, for the longest time, Stephen Chu was involved with that project. And he is the former. U.S. Secretary of Energy under Obama and he was working with this group. So I think under Biden they were trying to revive it. China's still trying to bring this back because you know Europe's in trouble and everything else. So I'm glad to see that the UK is pulling their money out of that. I'm concerned though because they're talking about a transatlantic electricity interconnection now. So if you think going under the Mediterranean or around the coast of the Atlantic from Morocco over to the UK is bad, they're thinking of building one from the UK to Nova Scotia or Newfoundland and to help supply Canada or something. I mean, it's stupid, but they're talking about it. If they can find an investor, that'll be interesting.
David Blackmon [00:47:59] Well, the first thought that occurs to me is that if you did that, you could move the transatlantic ships like cable cars, right? You could just let them link in and have electric ships going back and forth.
Tammy Nemeth [00:48:13] Well, through the North Atlantic in winter. Okay, sounds good. Amazing idea.
David Blackmon [00:48:24] You just need an ice breaker to lead them.
Tammy Nemeth [00:48:28] Push those ice out of the way.
David Blackmon [00:48:30] It could be an electric ice breaker too.
Tammy Nemeth [00:48:33] Well hey, Russia has nuclear ones, so technically that's electric, right? Are there nuclear icebreakers?
Irina Slav [00:48:40] Everything.
Stuart Turley [00:48:44] Russia has six nuclear icebreakers and they're looking to build another eight.
Tammy Nemeth [00:48:51] Wow, and well, they're still talking.
Stuart Turley [00:48:54] There's a lot of oil up there.
Tammy Nemeth [00:48:56] And they have a bunch of defense installations up there through the various Arctic things. In China's.
Stuart Turley [00:49:04] The Northern Passage.
David Blackmon [00:49:05] Robert de Domenico makes a key point here about line loss. Transatlantic line loss would be incredible. I can't wait to see what that would amount.
Tammy Nemeth [00:49:16] I know I know it's like Okay so then the other story here is the Senate adopts Carney's fast-track major projects bill well before Canada Day deadline. So they introduced parliament was sat for like a couple weeks and they decided to push through legislation without without real consideration of it and so Carney had introduced this bill in order to bypass to expedite projects that are considered of national interest. There's five criteria really vague so Basically. It puts in the power of the cabinet, like that's running the show, to bypass Parliament and the proper process. For projects that they decide are in the national interest, they suspend various elements of existing legislation. So it puts a two-year limit on environmental reviews and all these different kinds of things so that supposedly projects can start breaking ground within two years. I'll believe that when I see it and basically all of the existing legislation that makes it a nightmare to try and get anything built in Canada has not been removed, none of it. It's all still there but it allows the cabinet to act like a dictatorship really and pick choose which projects will be promoted and which ones won't. And so Alberta and Saskatchewan are thinking, wow, this means pipelines, because surely a pipeline to the coast in order to help Asia or Europe would be considered in national interest in geopolitical security and so on. But that's really not what Carney's talking about. He's talking about expediting a interconnect from... Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland to build wind turbines off the east coast and ship that electricity through interconnectors to western Canada and to do mining. But the environmental groups and the indigenous people are really upset and saying no you have to follow this Process so if they're if they if this actually works, I don't know But I think the projects that will be approved are ones that are in alignment with net zero and not necessarily about increasing oil and gas.
Stuart Turley [00:51:47] Wow. Hey David, this is a great line and I would, this is from Robert, love Robert, I would love to be a guest on here someday or even to have a call on the topic of economy efficiency and last mile distribution delivery.
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:05] Yeah, that'd be great
Stuart Turley [00:52:07] I would like to open this up before we move on to the next thing, and that is, I would like to have a regular special guest of our regular listeners of energy experts that come on and have it as a regular policy. So outstanding point. And your Substack?
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:30] Right. So you can find me on my website, TheNemethReport.com, but I post all of my different writings and whatnot on TheNemethReport.substack.com. And I haven't been posting very much because I'm on holiday. So next week, when I get back, I'll start publishing regularly again.
David Blackmon [00:52:52] Oh, it's my turn. Uh, let's see here. Well, we already talked about the one on the top, right? Trump announces us China trade deal. I talked about disparity and the tariff percentages under that deal. It seems kind of one sided in the United States is favor. That's what can happen when the United states has a president who understands the concept of leverage and negotiations. Uh, second one is the Senate version of the big, beautiful bill took a surprising turn instead of allowing wind and solar subsidies to continue forever. The bill kills the subsidies and imposes a new tax on them. That was, uh, from my friend at Ireland, the wonderful guy who is, uh uh, talks or teaches, uh energy at TCU here in Fort Worth. Um, and he's right. Suddenly, you're fighting. Sometimes late Friday night or early Saturday morning, the Republicans in the Senate decided they wanted to actually cut some spending and put in a new provision to quickly dismantle the IRA subsidies for wind and solar, which are just layered on top of a bunch of other subsidy programs for wind or solar that have existed for the last 30 years. You know, just a complete waste of money and time and misallocation of capital, and I'm glad the Republicans are pursuing that. There's still several more steps in the way before this bill gets to the President's desk by July 4th, which I still believe will happen, and we can all keep our fingers crossed that new provision in the Senate version of the bill stays in there. So that's all I got on this and made up a little time.
Stuart Turley [00:54:45] David, I want to just say that the amount of traffic that I've seen on the Senate version of the cuts has been glorious. People are panicking and you take a look at the graph of the chart. I did it on the podcast for this morning for the news. And here is the ramp up of projects.
David Blackmon [00:55:11] And, you know, the response of those industries to this provision tells you all you need to know about whether or not they are viable industries without those subsidies. Because they went absolutely crazy online over the weekend about that. They know that without those subsides, their industries collapse, period. And then because they're not viable. Oh, yes, my sub stack is Blackmon.substack. It's called Energy Reality, Energy Transition Realities. I wish I hadn't included the word transition in that title three years ago when I created it, because we're not in a transition, as I think we all realize at this point. I can't see you.
Irina Slav [00:56:01] So we covered the first one that Germany moves to block any attempts to restart North Stream and that's because some German politicians are admitting the obvious, that that's cheap gas, that we all know this, so no need to dwell in. The other stories, I can't believe any of you guys didn't mention it, California should raise fuel imports, pause margin cap regulator says, Wish us well! I think one of you gentlemen predicted will happen because when the local refineries are forced to close, California would need to import fuel. And then this cap they wanted to force on refiners and fuel companies, they're removing that so they can survive and keep doing their business. Can you believe that reality is coming to California?
David Blackmon [00:56:53] But note the specific word that's used there, Irina. It says pause the margin cap.
Tammy Nemeth [00:57:03] just pausing it.
David Blackmon [00:57:04] They're pausing it, which...
Irina Slav [00:57:06] Yeah, which means that none of these companies are working as planned, isn't it?
David Blackmon [00:57:11] Exactly.
Tammy Nemeth [00:57:14] That position wasn't going fast enough.
Irina Slav [00:57:18] But when it starts going fast enough, it will totally, you know, ban all fuel. Absolutely. It is a beautiful story. And my Substack is Irina Slav on Energy and I've got something lined up about metals tomorrow.
Stuart Turley [00:57:35] I love your Substack Irina.
Irina Slav [00:57:38] Really funny. Thank you.
Stuart Turley [00:57:42] Oh, by the way, California is a national security risk, and the diesel and crisis was manufactured. And not only that, Governor Newsom is actually a scam artist, and I truly would love to interview him. Not really. I don't want to waste my time. But the UK It would be if I would do it, but I'd have to make sure I'd go in and don't touch him because I don't want to get an oil slick on my hand, you know.
David Blackmon [00:58:12] Sulfur.
Stuart Turley [00:58:13] Oh no, snap, but the UK car output hits a 76 year low green energy policies, not the Trump tariffs were the problem on that. And I'll tell you, California is, and Irina, your points were wonderful, but California is a national security risk for the United States because we're going to see $10 gasoline And be so And it would not surprise me if Governor Newscom has a contract on his desk to buy the refined products from China and get a kickback. It would not surprised me. I don't have anything to base that on. And this is not an allegation. I'm just saying it would. Not surprise me. I wrote this one this weekend on my energynewsbeat.substack.com and the real story of the Chinese economy. It was a lot of fun putting that bad dog together. And you can always find me on the energynewsbeat.co or dot com. And again, you guys are rock stars today. You guys did a great job.
David Blackmon [00:59:25] Two additional comments. California is a communist in nature. I can't argue with that. And Robert pops it all off by saying California is an embarrassment.
David Blackmon [00:59:40] Our show is over. We've been here an hour. Thank you to everyone who commented and asked questions. And I'm sorry I got a little intemperate there with the grand finale. It was all in good fun. And everybody have a wonderful week. I hope, I look forward to seeing everyone here again next week.
Tammy Nemeth [01:00:02] Thanks everybody.
David Blackmon [01:00:04] Same station.
Irina Slav [01:00:05] Bye.
Tammy Nemeth [01:00:06] Bye.
David Blackmon [01:00:06] Bye-bye.
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