Welcome back to another episode! This week’s episode is our First Friday Q&A for March. You ask the questions and we answer them. Big thanks to everyone who wrote in. If you want to get a question answered for next month’s FFQA, click the link below. Enjoy!

2017 on the road sponsors:

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Lee Hecht Harrison

API-YP Events

Questions:

Hey guys. Love the show. I am a chemical engineer and work for one of the independent refiners (think Valero, Phillips 66, Marathon, Andeavor, PBF). I absolutely love my job, my company, and the industry as a whole. However, I am at the start of my career (2014 grad), and worry about the long term outlook for refining in the United States. I have ~35 – 40 more years to work and am worried about building a career in an industry that may be struggling in the next 10/20/30 years. The discussion on oil & gas outlook seems optimistic when looking at natural gas demand and petrochemical feedstocks, but where does refining fit in the future? All of the majors seem to be divesting their refining assets and point to nat gas & LNG as the fuel of the future. Even if there is still strong demand for jet fuel and diesel in the future, ~50% of refinery output is gasoline. If this demand drops substantially, won’t that trigger a significant number of refinery closures? Should I leave refining and try to move to petrochemicals, midstream, or nat gas processing? 

Really great show guys! One of my direct reports told me about your show, and I’ve been a listener ever since. Your audio quality has gotten much better and I like Jake much better than the previous co-host. My question is – can we ever expect you to release shows on a regular basis, like every Thursday or something? If not it’s okay. Keep up the awesome work! 

What do you two think the next 10 years will bring for the Super Majors? And have you ever thought about doing a “meet-up group”. We have an entire floor that are fans of the show, and it would be fun and valuable to get together every quarter or so and talk about our industry. I’ll buy Mark a bottle of Malbec if you make this happen