The PetroNerds Podcast

Recorded on February 22, 2025 and November 19, 2024

Episode 126 of the PetroNerds podcast is a deep dive PetroNerds special. Trisha Curtis, CEO of PetroNerds and host of the PetroNerds podcast, catches listeners up on everything happening in geopolitics and the economy before getting into her talk and presentation to a sold out crowd in Midland, Texas for the Society of Petroleum Engineers on November 19, 2024.

This is an hour long complete rip of geopolitics, oil, and the economy, post election. In the introduction of this podcast, Trisha gets into the meeting between the US and Russia, Saudi's hosting of the meeting, the Fed's comments on tariffs and immigration policies, actual inflation moving up in January 2025, and oil prices and economic jitters.

In the Midland talk, Trisha walks listeners through the changes that will be seen in policy and the market by the Trump Administration on energy, gets into the geopolitics of the world and the relationship and thread China has with Russia, Iran, and North Korea. She covers power generation, emissions, LNG, global oil and gas demand, and closes with a look at US shale and what to expect under a Trump Administration. This is not a podcast you are going to want to miss folks.

This PetroNerds podcast is everything you need to get you caught up on the market and a whole lot more.

This podcast and the associated PetroNerds bonus episode are sponsored by Efficient Markets also known as EnergyNet.

https://youtu.be/IyNgLJ96GYk

Recorded on January 23, 2025

Episode 125 of PetroNerds podcast is your complete outlook and overview on oil prices, M&A, activity, Trump, and US shale. Trisha Curtis, CEO of PetroNerds and host of the PetroNerds podcast, is joined by Chris Atherton, the CEO of Efficient Markets, also known as EnergyNet. PetroNerds is proud to announce the first PetroNerds podcast sponsorship by Efficient Markets.

This is a partnership between Efficient Markets and PetroNerds.

Trisha Curtis and Chris Atherton cover everything from oil prices and M&A to changes in the regulatory landscape to infill drilling, PDP, production, and refracs. They talk about what their clients are asking them, oil price volatility, and how oil and gas prices are impacting transactions, deals, and M&A. Chris talks about the stability in oil prices in 2023 and 2024 lending itself to a good transaction environment.

They talk about CAPEX and spending and the public market. Chris Atherton talks about weather in Houston and the spike in natural gas prices in 2025. They get into trends and themes and views within the industry, capital discipline, Saudi Arabia, and natural gas prices.

Trisha diagress with the thought that capital will be disciplined with higher natural gas prices. She is bullish on activity in the US and the runway. She also gets into OPEC and EIA and the differing views on US shale production potential. Trisha and Chris discuss the question, will capital discipline constrain growth in the US, and at what price point?

They talk about the role of private companies, deregulation, and the rig count in Wyoming and Utah reflecting the current regulatory environment and expectations under Trump. Chris talks directly about M&A under higher natural gas prices and M&A with oil price volatility. They also talk about Trump, policies, and what Trump wants for oil and gas prices and what that means for money and investment in the space. Trisha says "Hydrocarbons are back in fashion in America." Chris discusses renewables and where wind and solar now sit on the deal side.

This podcast is jam-packed and covers all of this and a whole lot more. You are going to want to listen to it more than once and share it with your colleagues and friends.

If you are interested in podcast sponsorship and partnering with PetroNerds, reach out on the PetroNerds website at PetroNerds.com on the contact page - https://petronerds.com/contact/

https://youtu.be/n4MJn2UE1w0

Recorded on January 22, 2025

Episode 124 of the PetroNerds podcast is hot off the press PetroNerds special focussed on the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States and the multiple executive orders on energy signed on his first day in office January 20th, 2025.

Trisha Curtis, the CEO of PetroNerds and host of the PetroNerds podcast, is joined in this episode by Jason Isaac, head of the American Energy Institute. Trisha Curtis is also the economist for the American Energy Institute. This podcast was recorded as a livestream by the American Energy Institute on Wednesday January 22, 2025. Trisha and Jason cover the multiple executive orders focussed on energy including "declaring a national energy emergency," pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords and "putting America first in international environmental agreements," "unleashing Alaska's extraordinary resource potential, and "delivering emergency price relief for American families and defeating the cost of living crisis."

They get into the actual executive orders, talk about oil prices, geopolitics, geopolitical leverage, American energy dominance, and Trump's inauguration speech which said "we are going to drill baby drill" and "refill the SPR to the tippity top." Trisha also talks about oil prices, what this all means to the market, Germany and decline of industrial Europe, tariffs, China, and a lot more.

https://youtu.be/1DHtWQD9ln8

Episode 123 of the PetroNerds podcast is your complete market update for everything happening in 2025. This podcast is a timely and condensed talk on oil, energy, and power that Trisha Curtis gave to students at the Colorado School of Mines.

This energy dense podcast gives you everything you need to get your 2025 off on the right foot. Trisha introduces this podcast with a thorough market update covering the rise in oil prices, the rise in the 10 Year Yield, the Federal Reserve, and much more. Trisha dives into the rise in oil prices and notes that these prices seem slightly overdone, but explains that there are many geopolitical factors and events that could cause prices to stay here or rise further.

She spends time walking listeners through the rise in the 10 Year Yield and the Federal Reserve and how the Yield is rising despite the Fed lowering interest rates. She explains that the Fed is looking at potential policies of the incoming Trump Administration, but did not take into account the spending of the Biden Administration and Congress in the past four years. She talks about oil prices, geopolitics, and potential moves of the Trump Administration, Russia, Iran, and persistent and inflation.

The body of this podcast is the presentation and talk Trisha Curtis gave to students at the Colorado School of Mines on October 17th, 2024. This talk is tailored to focus on the geopolitical economics of energy. She walks students through traditional fuel consumption, why watching oil prices and the oil market is so important, the biggest themes in energy including hot wars and the forthcoming election, China, and US oil production, productivity, and resiliency. She gets into the weeds on US, Chinese, and global energy consumption and power generation by fuel, actual global CO2 emissions and where they are coming from (China), power demand growth, and the rise in Colorado, US, and global electricity prices and the direct correlation to the increase of wind and solar into the grid.

This talk is good, but the Q&A is better and a fired up Trisha Curtis explains to students that Europe is driving their economy into the ground in the name of lowering CO2 emissions while global emissions are rising because European manufacturing is simply taking place in China.

This is a PetroNerds podcast you are going to want to listen to more than once and share with your friends and colleagues.

https://youtu.be/-eRSxLuTl0g

Recorded on December 18, 2024 and October 3, 2024

Episode 122 of the PetroNerds podcast is your pre-Christmas PetroNerds special. This podcast is the panel discussion Trisha Curtis hosted at the Denver Earth Resources Library with Leen Weijers, VP of Field Engineering at Liberty Energy and Brenton Cheeseman, VP of North America at NCS Multistage.

Trisha spends time talking to Leen and Brenton about growth in US oil production, the role of the US service sector, and the incredible efficiencies made in the past few years. This is a candid conversation covering production, efficiency gains, a sub 600 rig count, horizontal lateral lengths, and the state of the service sector. Trisha asks Leen and Brenton to talk about the efficiencies in drilling and frac, completions, the speed in drilling, the growth in lateral lengths, and refracs. They talk about consolidation, the future, the Rockies, the Bakken, the role of the service sector, and the number of frac fleets.

Trisha introduces this podcast with a fresh market download on oil prices and the macro, the Federal Reserve's hawkish interest rate cut, and what clients and the industry are asking about in 2025. She spends twenty minutes getting you completely up to speed on the Federal Reserve rate cut and meeting and the mixed messages and confusion the Fed has caused. Trisha explains to listeners the biggest macro factors driving oil and the weakness in the global economy.

She closes the intro telling listeners about her Common Sense Institute Report that has just been released on the state of Colorado energy, rising electricity prices, CO2 emissions, and lack of growth in Colorado oil production. The paper can be found here. https://www.commonsenseinstituteus.org/colorado/research/energy-and-our-environment/key-trends-in-colorados-energy-landscape.

This panel discussion took place at the Rockies Expo at the Denver Earth Resources Library downtown Denver on October 3rd, 2024.

https://youtu.be/hUetfgKI13c

Recorded on December 5, 2024 and November 11, 2024

Episode 121 of the PetroNerds podcast is another PetroNerds special, recorded on November 11th, 2024, with Chris Wright at Liberty Energy's office in Denver, Colorado. This is right after the election victory of Donald Trump's second term and days before Chris Wright is officially named Trump's pick for US Energy Secretary. Jason Isaac, the President of the American Energy Institute, hosts and moderates a panel discussion with Chris Wright and Trisha Curtis, the CEO of PetroNerds and Economist for the American Energy Institute.

Trisha Curtis opens this podcast with a jam-packed intro covering oil price moves, the OPEC Plus cut extension, France's political chaos, and what Trump means for US energy and global energy. She tries to clarify the opportunity and leverage and levers this new Administration has on energy, from sanctions on Iran to refilling the SPR to lifting the "pause" on permits for new LNG exports.

In the panel discussion, Chris Wright talks about energy sobriety and the importance of energy knowledge, energy policy, and energy security. When speaking about President-elect Trump and energy, Chris said, "He intuitively gets it… Energy is not a sector of the economy; it is the sector of the economy that enables everything else we do. If we get energy wrong, nothing else matters." He talks about bad energy policies that do not help the environment and hurt people's lives.

Trisha Curtis talks about the difference between Biden and Trump, the complete change that will be seen in energy and broader policies, high energy prices and lots of regulations under Biden, and the night-and-day policy switch with Trump and the current market euphoria. She gets into the delta between what you are charged for natural gas by utility companies and the actual price of natural gas, a gap of about $20, and she talks about adding more natural gas into the electricity pool, stemming the decommissioning of coal, lowering US electric bills, building out more natural gas infrastructure in the US, and exporting more natural gas.

Chris Wright gets into Trisha's favorite subjects, China, manufacturing, and coal! Chris talks about building infrastructure in the US for manufacturing and industry and consuming more domestic energy for manufacturing. "We could produce 20 percent more in natural gas." Trisha talks about China and tariff exposure to China and what Trump intends to do. Trisha and Chris talk about Germany and China and the bad policies in Germany, energy and otherwise.

Jason Isaac brings up the high standards of US air quality. Chris talks about growing up in Denver and the improvement in air quality. Jason asks Trisha to talk about economics and tariffs, and Trisha gets into China and tariffs and explains the need for hawkishness on China and the need for tariffs with a foreign adversary. She gets into Iran and their crude exports to China as well as the cheap China goods coming into the US and the need to make these goods in the US. Trisha comments on "decoupling" with China and the need to be more hawkish and more educated on China. Chris says, "Everything you hold dear relies on energy," and he says we are definitely going to see a shift toward affordable and secure energy and the need to address the grid and affordable power. "Trajectory and dialogue" first, then the reality will come later.

In the question and answer session, an attendee asks about EPA rules and the ability for the EPA to unwind or roll some of those rules back. Chris Wright explains that this will take some time and this will be tricky, but rolling back some regulations and bold actions for energy sobriety will probably be implemented. Trisha Curtis added to that answer by talking about Trump pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords and the dramatic shifts in what the EPA will be doing and pushing.

Chris talks about Reagan as a reformer and, while he could not shrink the size of the government, he did stop the growth. He expects Trump to implement even greater reforms and seek to reduce the growth and size of the government.

A local senator asks about Colorado politics vs. the US, and Chris Wright talks about how he has pointed out to the Governor of Colorado that shale activity has not returned to Colorado and speaks to the overall top-down regulation and size of the government and policies. Chris also talks about how Liberty built a manufacturing facility in Oklahoma, not in Colorado, because of the regulation. Trisha explains that Colorado is likely to double down on the aggressive energy policies and decarbonization efforts and comments on how anti-business Colorado is becoming.

https://youtu.be/1MBxiCkwpxQ

Recorded on November 15, 2024 and November 13, 2024

Episode 120 of the PetroNerds podcast is a show-stopping 30-minute post-election run down covering everything from U.S. shale to geopolitics. This podcast is Trisha Curtis’ talk and presentation to the Oklahoma Petroleum Alliance in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on November 13th, 2024 with a fresh market intro from Washington, DC. This heavy-hitting and fast-talking podcast gives you a full post election analysis of what a second Trump Presidency means for energy and how radically different this will be from the previous four years.

Trisha also walks her audience and listeners through the US and global economy and the messy and intense state of geopolitics. She talks about the macro, the economic health of the global economy, the spare capacity out of Saudi Arabia, robust production out of Russia, North Korean troops in Russia, and China’s financing of both Iran’s proxy endeavors against Israel and the West as well as China’s funding and support of Russia for the war in Ukraine. She gets into the rising electricity prices in the U.S., wind and solar and coal power, potential growth of natural gas, and the desperate need to embrace U.S. domestic energy to lower energy and power costs for the average American and the average business.

And lastly, Trisha brings this PetroNerds presentation and podcast home by talking about shale production and the whopping 13.4 million barrels per day of oil the U.S. is producing. She talks about election implications and what it means for shale and U.S. energy. This is a podcast you are going to want to listen to, relisten to, and share with your friends and colleagues!

https://youtu.be/IeqeFpP1UXc

Recorded on November 18, 2024 and September 9, 2021

This is a special reissue podcast with the oil and gas industry's very own Chris Wright. On Saturday November 16th, 2024 CEO of Liberty Energy, Chris Wright, was announced as President Elect Donald Trump's pick for the US Secretary of Energy.

I have known Chris Wright since 2017, and I can honestly say there could not be anyone more qualified for this position. Chris is passionate and deeply understands energy issues and costs and cares about the consumer and human lives. Something missed in the media this weekend is Chris Wright's and Liberty Energy's foundation, Bettering Human Lives.

This special re-issue podcast in an hour and a half with your new energy secretary. Get to know him, get to know me and PetroNerds, and get excited about America's energy future and prosperity. This podcast was recorded on September 9th, 2021 in front of a group of folks at Liberty Energy's office in Denver, Colorado and Chris and I cover everything from CO2 emissions to China to completions and frac sand.

https://youtu.be/vs8EGC359ag

Recorded on October 30, 2024

Episode 119 of the PetroNerds podcast is a US election PetroNerdy special focussed on the impacts to US energy from this consequential Presidential election. Trisha Curtis, CEO of PetroNerds, is joined by Jason Issac from the American Energy Institute and former Texas representative.

This fun election special tries to get into the politics and policies while keeping it relatively entertaining. This podcast is politically focussed but it is not light on passion or data. Trisha does a fliparro where she hands off the moderating and interview to Jason and becomes the guest on her own podcast. Jason asks Trisha a series of questions from her interview with BBC to domestic policy impacts of the US election and foreign policy.

The goal of this podcast was to try and dispel some of the bias Trisha sees on market coverage with regards to energy, the economy, and the election. Trisha and Jason talk about policy impacts to US oil and natural gas as well as electricity prices, Iran and China. They talk about Harris' flip flopping on fracing, what fracing actually is, and how a Harris Administration will be much harsher on oil and gas than the Biden Administration and how Harris' domestic energy policies will be a continuation of his policies and much worse.

Trisha gets into inflation, lowering energy costs and electricity bills for the US consumer, and how to make the US consumer and US manufacturing competitive again. They discuss all of this and a lot more!

https://youtu.be/w4XY972tpoM

Recorded on October 23, 2024 and October 2, 2024

Episode 118 of the PetroNerds podcast is part two of the politics, ESG, and climate special with Paul Tice, NYU Stern Professor, investor, and fellow at the National Center for Energy Analytics.

Trisha Curtis starts this podcast with a complete rip of the current volatility in US and global markets, oil prices, the US election, comments by Paul Tudor Jones on CNBC on debt and economic crises, the Harris team's comments on not enabling US oil and gas and fracking, Baker Hughes' CEO comments on the role of natural gas as a "transition fuel" and a "destination fuel," and Trisha's contentious interview with the BBC on their Rare Earth program. Trisha Curtis on BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00244x3

The conversation continues with Paul Tice and Trisha Curtis asks Paul a series of questions on ESG and ESG vs. DEI. Paul talks about companies and climate science and a lack of push back and leadership across the board. They get into regulations, the Paris Climate Accord, SDG rules, and Trisha gets into primary energy consumption in the OECD vs the non OECD. They talk about regulations and politics and fracking bans and the reality of a Harris Administration vs. Trump. Paul says we need to educate the public and use the legal system to push back. Trisha talks about politics, the election, and how the oil and gas industry may not be able to come back from another four years of this. Paul talks about the use of setbacks and other limitations to ban fracking without banning fracking. Paul and Trisha talk about US production, policies against the oil and gas industry, the resiliency of US oil production, and the industry's need to get real on politics.

Paul says ESG allows the developing world to produce oil and gas while strangling the developed world and the West from producing oil and gas. He talks about the need to challenge the underlying premise of climate. Trisha asks Paul about the proponents of ESG and how it is distorting and impacting business and Paul dispels that ESG is not helpful for financial performance. Paul says oil and gas has to be more outspoken but also more selective in their investors. Paul Tice says "anyone who wants to talk about ESG metrics is not a real investor."

Paul closes the podcast by saying there are ways to turn the tide with politicians and business leaders getting over the fear factor and pushing back on ESG and climate. There is soo much in this jam packed mic drop podcast you are not going to want to miss it folks. Share this PetroNerdy PetroNerds special with your friends and colleagues.

https://youtu.be/2RHqkhvyXb8