Doug Sandridge, Oil and Gas Executives for Nuclear Energy

There's a way, a way such a better way today Today, a nation flies till the world There's a better way, today there's a better way This is Rod Adams and it's time for another atomic show Today, I'm really excited about my guest. His name is Doug Sandridge and he is the stimulant The leader, the founder of an organization called Oil, Executive Oil and Gas Executive for Nuclear He recently appeared on Robert Bryce's podcast Power Hungry And on the basis of interview, I said, I gotta talk to this guy, so welcome, Doug Thank you, that's exciting Yeah, I really enjoyed listening to your story, but for those people who don't listen to all the nuclear-focused podcast Can you give us a brief history of Doug Sandridge? How did you get where you are today? Well, thank you. Yes, thank you for having me today I am working in the oil and gas business, that's my day job, that's still how I make my living I grew up mostly overseas, my dad was a petroleum geologist, geological, actually a geological engineer Which is an unusual degree, not too many people get a geological engineering degree But we moved all over the world growing up And I didn't really live in the go to school in the US Until I was in 10th grade When I moved back and had quite a culture shock moving back to middle in Texas And then, I went to University of Oklahoma and got into the oil and gas business I actually worked in oil and gas throughout my college career I was a pump or a mechanic, a roused about a rough neck on drilling rigs And one day my dad said, son, I don't think working on a drilling rig is a job for a family man You need to look at something else and I eventually ended up as what we call a petroleum land man So I do a lot of land work, property rights work, regulatory work And I spent my virtually my entire career working in oil and gas, I've dabbled a little bit in the renewable space And a few years ago I became an advocate for nuclear energy And so now I, my daytime job remains oil and gas But my nighttime avocation, now my kids are grown, is advocating for more nuclear energy That's terrific story, you know, I served on submarines in the 1980s And was a department head in the period from 1980s to 1990 And three of my best junior officers had similar college experiences to you They majored in oil and gas topics, went to school in either Texas or Oklahoma And worked as actually one of them went to Louisiana, school in Louisiana So Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and they all worked hands-on on in oil rigs Oil drilling and gas, one worked offshore and became a welder But those three guys were three of the most talented junior officers I had Because they weren't afraid to get their hands dirty They understood the importance of hard work And they were really open to learning, so Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed that And by the way, can you guess why those three people ended up on nuclear submarines in the late 1980s? Uh, we had a pretty big downturn in the oil and gas business And they needed something to do? Exactly, I think it was about 19, it was about 1984 and 1985 Yes, price of oil dropped from in the, I think close to $40 a barrel down to 10 Maybe below 10, that's exactly right, yeah, 86, spring of 86 was very bad Yeah, so that's why these guys said when they graduated from college they joined the Navy to see the world and get a job But they, they were some of the best nuclear folks I've ever met And I think that one of the things I always look for And when I'm doing any personal work is people who have had some experience direct hands-on Understanding how things work rather than simply paper designs or Or ideas and never really implementing ideas and putting them into hardware So I hope that you enjoy that period of your oil and gas career as well Oh, it's wonderful, and actually if it weren't for my dad Maybe I'd still be doing the oil and gas, rough necking and stuff But I tell you what, it really helped me even though it wasn't the in the area of where I pursued my career Because my career has been mostly in land and legal issues But it's really helped me as a team player and as a manager because You know if you just all you know is land management or regulatory Then you don't necessarily relate well to the engineers and the geologists and everything else So my broad experience in the field work and in oil and gas production and in drilling Really helped me establish better relationships with my co-workers over my career Which I think it helped make me a better a better team member and a better manager It's always easier to relate and get credibility when people believe that you at least walked in similar shoes Yep, exactly And from my standpoint when I look at hiring people You know a lot of the work that we do in my profession Is out in the field in the courthouse you know when you start out in land management You normally spend time out in the field In the courthouse checking records trying to find established land ownership and figure out who owns a piece of land And then meeting with landowners and you know really not in the office And as time has gone on there's a lot of kids that go to college get their degree And they want that corner office right out of college with a big salary And I tell them when I teach to them and when I interview them I like I'm not interested in hiring anyone Who hasn't spent time in the field because if you don't understand what's going on in the courthouse and in the field Then you don't know how to supervise people who are doing that And so I tell college students you need to spend a summer or two working in the courthouse and working in the field And you know you don't want to do that maybe maybe you think you're above that but I'm not hiring anybody who doesn't actually have that kind of experience And that's good advice So tell us a little bit about what a land guide does in the oil and gas business What is your real part of the value chain? So you know the United States is is almost unique in the world in that we have private property rights especially related to minerals You know there are a lot of countries where people have the right to own surface But in most countries all of the minerals are owned by the government So a few exceptions Canada I think there's a few very some noble people in England and in Australia that maybe have some very very limited mineral rights But for the most part we can say the only countries where you have a large-scale mineral ownership is the United States in Canada So if you're an oil company and so I guess I should plug my company since they still pay my salary I work for a company called Fulcrum Energy Management in G Capital and we if we want to go out and drill well We have to have the right to drill the well We can't just go on anybody's property to drill that well We have to have acquire the rights to do so now if you're operating anywhere overseas other than the United States or Canada You would just go to the government if you want to drill a well in Poland you just go to the Polish government The government owns all the minerals in all these countries but in the US a large portion of the minerals are owned privately Probably 60% or more And so if I'm going out into Western Kansas and I want to drill an oil well out there I have an idea a geologic idea a geologist or geophysicist has said hey this would be a great place to drill an oil well In order to go out to have the right to drill that oil well I have to go out and make an agreement with the person who owns the mineral rights So I go and I can't make an agreement with the person who owns the mineral rights unless I know who that is So the kind of the foundational part of our job is is trying to figure out who owns that land And then going out and talking to them and getting an agreement which will allow them to They will grant you the right to enter their land and drill a well and you'll come to some agreement as to how you will compensate them in cash and in royalties for that And the way a land man normally figures out this is they go to the courthouse now you can do a lot of this online but there's a lot of courthouses where you still have to actually physically go to the courthouse And you have to look at title back to inception so you say okay that you go back in time and the original land was owned by the US Well, let's say it was really Native Americans but the US you know have sconded with that land So now the US claims ownership to the land and you see that there's a deed in 1870 from President McKinley to XYZ to Rod Adams great grandfather And so we know that the first private ownership of that land was Rod Adams great grandfather Now you have to follow the chain of title and figure out what did Rod Adams great grandfather do with that land He sold it to someone else and then that person died and it went to his wife and then she died and it went to her three kids And then those three kids had kids of their own and then basically you build a chain of title and figure out now these nine people own this bright piece of property so Foundationally you try and figure out who owns the land and then go figure out how are you going to acquire the right to drill there and in many cases Those mineral rights have already been acquired by another company like Chevron and so once you do all this work and you get to the end and you find out Chevron owns Instead of going to the landowner you go to Chevron and you say hey Chevron We see that you own this land you're not doing anything with it. You want to lease we'd like to acquire your oil and gas lease Because we want to drill a well there and Chevron may say you know no, I'm not interested or they may say yeah sure We'll sublease it to you on the following terms. So that's the essence of what a landman does I've always wanted to talk to a landman about this piece of information and I find very interesting the mineral Rights and the surface rights are not necessarily owned by the same person that correct That's quite often the case in places where there hasn't been a lot of oil and gas development Typically it's not that untypical for them to be remained the same because most people just sell the land and the minerals go with it There's no particular value assets to the minerals so a lot of times and not producing areas That's the case but if you get into place where Oil and gas is production is prevalent what'll typically happen is Rod it, Rod inherited this land from his grandfather And then he wants to sell the land but he knows that there's valuable minerals So he'll sell someone else the surface and retain the minerals for himself And so this is a very common thing and a good part of the oil producing areas where the oil Where the mineral ownership the mineral estate is owned separately from the surface estate. That's true Yeah, sometimes leads to some rather Surprised land owners when the mineral rights owner decides to start drilling or extracting From there there estate is that correct? Absolutely, I mean this is a big area of a conflict in Colorado where I live right now because For many many years oil and gas producers have been producing oil from the Denver, Julesburg Basin And it has been a very inhabited area and so then all of a sudden as oil and gas became more valuable A lot of the ranchers sold off the surface of their land to housing developers And these are people who moved in from California or Wisconsin They moved to Colorado for the great Colorado life They're going to build a house and then they find out that somebody else owns the mineral rights and in most states The courts have held the mineralite and the mineral estate is the dominant estate Which means that a surface owner cannot keep a mineral owner from developing their minerals now there's certainly laws in most states now that afford the surface owner's thumb degree of protection. But the reality is, is that a lot of these people who moved here from California, Air Wisconsin bought the house had no idea that somebody else owned the minerals that eventually someone's going to come in and want to develop the minerals underlying their house. I think it also, I think I learned about this reading about some effects in the Dallas Fort Worth area when the Barnett shale play was really hot. That was the secret. Yeah. There was some drilling in people's or not necessarily directly in their develop yards, but somewhere on their property that they were surprised that they couldn't stop it. Yeah, that's exactly right, Barnett. Because the Barnett shale started on the periphery of the Fort Worth area, but as it is, it grew into the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex into dent and into Fort Worth. And so the further that field extended, the more it got into populated areas. And I'm sure for 100 years people had no idea that the minerals had been severed from the surface. And this is interesting. So this doesn't just affect oil and gas operations because I'm currently working on a story for my sub stack about the current conflict between the mineral owners, which is the Osage tribe in Oklahoma and a wind developer. I don't know if you've heard anything about this. Yeah, Robert's been talking about that quite a bit recently on his podcast. That's the case where the Osage tribe owned the mineral rights and people forget that rocks counted minerals. Exactly. Yeah, and I just actually last weekend was in Osage County interviewing some members of the tribe for my story. And it's fascinating because it's an insight into kind of the arrogance of the wind developer and the lack of knowledge of an overseas because this is an Italian company that came in and really didn't understand what they were doing here. They got bad legal advice or something. And what happens is they came in and got leases from the surface owner and a lot of Osage County, which is the Osage reservation. A lot of the surface is owned by non Osage members. And so when the allotment occurred, each Osage member of the tribe was given a piece of property and they could do whatever they wanted to the surface. And that a lot of those surface rights were sold to other people. But the tribe itself retained all of the mineral rights in the entire county. So if you if in this particular case, if you were to build a house or let's say you're going to build a Kroger grocery store and you bought the surface rights, you would have the right to use the surface to build that Kroger and you would also have the right to a reasonable amount of the subsurface, not the minerals, but the subsurface. So if you wanted to dig a footer or foundation for that grocery store or if you're building a house, if you wanted to build a basement or a swimming pool, you could use the subsurface a reasonable amount of the subsurface, even though it's not actually surface, but you have the surface owner is afforded the opportunity, the right to use a reasonable amount of the subsurface, but not for mining. And so what normally would happen is a wind developer would come in and they would dig holes to set the foundation for those wind turbines. And typically every state's different, but it typically the surface owner has the right to dig the hole and put into the foundation and they bring in concrete and rock to stabilize that that wind turbine. And that's perfectly fine because they have it mined in any of the minerals. They haven't profited from the minerals. They've used some of the subsurface, but they haven't profited from the minerals themselves. But what this Italian developer did is they came in and they mined, but they took, they dug the rock out and you to make room for this foundation. But instead of bringing in concrete from, you know, from Tulsa or someplace, they said, well why don't we just use this rock? And so they took the rock, they loaded it on the trucks, they took it to a processing plant, crushed it into various types of usable construction materials, and then they used that same rock to create the foundation, the cement, perhaps even the roads, and they used that without a mining license. So they would have been totally fine digging the hole, but once they took the rock and made commercial use of that rock, it was considered mining. And so the tribe reached out to them and said, you can't mine our rock and you have to get a permit from us and the Italian wind developer N.L. said, you know, pound sand, take a hike, we're not, we don't care, you know, that's not how we do business. And so the tribe turned around to the U.S. government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs researched it and they came to the same conclusion that N.L. was illegally mining this rock. And so they sent a cease and desist order to N.L. and said, do not, do not mine anymore rock. Now that didn't mean they couldn't continue with the wind farm, it just meant they couldn't use the Indians rock to do so. They needed to bring in rock from a rock warrior from a scenic factory in Tulsa or say in springs or something. They could have done it correctly, but instead they just gave the middle finger to the tribe and to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and continued to build the plant using illegal rock. And so the federal government came in and sued them on behalf of the tribe and said, this is illegal and had they done the right thing from the beginning probably what N.L. would have gotten in my view is probably a slap on the the rest and some modest fine. But they continue to fight this for 10 years and so the court is finally grown disgusted and the court is said not only are you going to get fined and not only do you have to shut down the wind farm but we're going to make you dismantle the entire wind farm and at a cost of probably about $300 million. And so it's a landmark case but it shows the importance of having a good land man and understanding the difference between federal and surface rights and it's not just oil and gas guys who need to understand this the wind and solar people need to understand it too. Yes, I always need a good land man. And for that matter if nuclear is doing it, I mean they need to be aware of the same issues because if you're going to build some underground containment in order to meet the rules for protecting your reactors and you know some of these nuclear designs anticipate digging holes you know 50 hundred maybe even more than 100 feet deep. You know I think you probably have the right to do that as a surface owner but you may not be able to use those materials. Yeah it's also come to into the realm of interest for the consolidated interim storage facility at least the one that was is being proposed for eastern New Mexico because in that case the county had a piece of land. They bought a thousand acres of land and they went out and tried to get somebody to come and build a consolidated interim storage facility there. They thought that'd be a great use of their land and take advantage of their nuclear expertise. They have several other nuclear-focused businesses there like an enrichment plant and they're fairly close to the whip facility. So they did attract a party to do that whole tech. They developed it. They've even had a whole tech even went all the way through getting a license but nobody ever recognized that the piece of land they owned was the land not the mineral rights. Yeah and so you're with this case you know we're working on a story on this as well so go ahead. So the bottom line is that the mineral rights owner has standing within the court system to say we don't want that facility to be built on top of our minerals. Yeah I'm not sure I'm not sure that the mineral owners have standing to prohibit it and this is a very complicated case. I think they I think that they have the right to make sure that they are that they have the right to coexist. I don't think they have an exclusive right but this is an interesting case and I'm following it closely because I think that it can give rise to the belief that oil and gas people are anti-nuclear and all the people that I've talked to that are related to this case have emphatically stated that maybe truthfully or not. They've emphatically stated we're not anti-nuclear we just don't want this waste disposal site right here. So I'm currently doing the research on this. I'm hoping to take a trip out to West Texas to an Eastern New Mexico to look at these sites later this year and I'm working on a on a sub-stack article to kind of address all these issues in a way that everybody can understand. I'm looking forward to reading that but it does introduce the topic that also stimulated my invitation to you. I'm rather famous maybe in a very small area of the world for repeatedly pointing out the fact that oil and gas interest and that's a broad term in my view have much stronger motives for slowing or stopping nuclear development than people who are honestly concerned about clean air, clean water and open spaces. In other words people who deserve the title of environmentalists and you of course as a leader of an oil and gas executives for for nuclear maybe have a different point of view. So let's chat about it. All right and I don't know that we have a different point of view but because I haven't talked to you about this before let's be honest I admit to reach out and pick your brain about this because as I have gone down this road of advocacy for nuclear energy a lot of people have said you know there's some people who think that art industry is against the nuclear industry and I was like I can't find any evidence of that. I don't know what they're talking about and they always say well I don't know what the evidence is but you need to talk to Rod because he'll tell you and so I tried to listen and study you know your views on this and and so I guess maybe I should backtrack and say you know how the how I got into this and why I got into this kind of advocacy. I'm so I'm about your age my kids are grown. I still work but kind of my my hobby the last few years has been doing some teaching education very concerned about the dialogue of energy the energy dialogue and obviously energy policy both here in the US and around the world so I've been keenly interested in helping forge a better dialogue and so I started getting more interested in nuclear energy about 2020 because I was starting to realize that having a clean energy transition without nuclear energy seemed increasingly unlikely and it seemed to me like nuclear energy was going to have to be a much bigger part of that equation so that was just a general recognition on my part I wasn't taking any action on that and to be truthful the the general idea that nuclear was important turned to action through two of our mutual friends Robert Bryce and Mark Nelson so when they closed both very good people great people and I'm good friends with both and I just talked to Mark a couple of days ago I just I can't say enough good things about Mark but he he and Robert inspired me to get go from and understanding that nuclear was important to advocacy for more nuclear and that happened around the time that New York and Governor Cuomo and River keepers forced any point nuclear power plant in New York to shut down And of course, you know Robert generally podcasts once a week and it's always great even in the weeks when it's some subject other than energy. I always hear him say, I'm going to talk this week about something other than energy that they do. I really want to listen to it and then often it turns out to be one of the best subjects anyway. But that week that they shut down in the point. Robert was so mad about the gratuitous shutting down of that plant by Governor Cuomo and, you know, the blue-haired ladies in Manhattan that he did four consecutive episodes of the Power Hungry podcast on four consecutive days and he called it Indian Point Blackout Week. I don't know if you listen to that, but by the time he did. By the time he finished with those four episodes, I was very angry about the idea of shutting down perfectly good, safe, clean, paid for nuclear power plants providing clean energy at an affordable price for purely political reasons, maybe very angry. And so Robert made me angry enough to take some action. And then the first action I took was Colleen Martinelson because one of the four people he interviewed during that week was Martinelson. I did not know who Mark was, where he was from. I didn't know anything, but he was so captivating on that interview. I mean, he is a good interview. Obviously very smart as well. And I found a way, I reached out to him. I can't remember from LinkedIn or Twitter how I did, but immediately we connected and we bonded immediately. It was funny because I didn't know him and I just talked to him on the phone. But he's from Oklahoma City. My mom lives still in Oklahoma City area and my mom grew up there. It's been our entire life there except when we lived overseas. And it turns out, you know, his dad's in the oil business, my dad's in the oil business. We found out that his great uncle, so his grandfather's brother worked in the North Sea at the same time with my dad for the same company with Phil Fertroy, him in the North Sea in the 1960s. And we just had so much in common and it turns out, you know, he went to Cambridge on a on a scholarship to get his masters in nuclear engineering and that scholarship was given to them by a really good friend of my parents, who is the former CEO of Phil Fertroy. So Mark and I bonded immediately and of course I didn't know anything about nuclear advocacy. I didn't know anything about what I could do as an oil and gas person, but he kind of put me under his wing and started teaching me the ropes and involving me in organizations and he involved me in the safety of a canyon group, the safe palisades group. I was very active, but I would listen into the meetings and try and listen and learn from these meetings about advocacy, nuclear energy, you know, motivations of parties and all this sort of stuff. He really took me under his wing and helped me along. And one day in the fall of 2021, he called me and said, if you're really interested in getting involved, I want you to go with me to Germany. We're going to go to Germany in November and we're going to the Adel estate protest, but we're going to rally in support of keeping this six nuclear power, the remaining six nuclear power plants open. And so I did. I just hopped a plane and met Mark and actually I talked to him for a year and a half, never actually met him. And so we met over there in Germany and I met a bunch of other nuclear advocates from all over the world. And it was kind of an interesting time because a lot of those people who were there really were kind of confused why an oil and gas guy would be there as you can imagine. A lot of the emphasis in an interested nuclear energy in the last five years is coming from a recognition that that is going to be required for climate change. I am not into nuclear energy just because of climate change, but a lot of people that is a primary motivation. So if you've got very strong feelings of the importance of mitigating climate change and that's your reason for being a nuclear energy. And a lot of those same people do not like oil and gas people. And so I have to take my eye out of it again tomorrow and say he was very good about shutting people down. People would kind of shun me or not be interested in it. And he'd say, look guys, if this guy is here to help us promote nuclear energy, I want to quit with the, you know, quit with the, but funny baloney. Don't, don't, if he's oil and gas guy, he's still on our team. So credit to mark and the Robert Bryce for getting me into the advocacy for nuclear now fast forward to the fall of 2022. I was on our weekly phone call with Diablo Canyon. And at that time, they had already saved Diablo Canyon. What a phenomenal effort by a phenomenal group of people in California to start from grassroots for nothing. And in a short period of time, save that plant. It's nothing short of amazing what those people did. Heather Hoff, Paris Ortiz wise, Ryan Pickering, all that whole crew, what they did to save Diablo Canyon is amazing. But after they saved it, then they didn't rebranded their group from save Diablo Canyon to save Diablo Canyon because they believe their work was not. They're still lost to do. We want to extend the life not just five years, but we want to extend the life of Diablo Canyon for 20 or more years. We want to remove the, the prohibition of new nuclear in California. So that organization that saved the out of mechanics still extremely active in trying to do other good and necessary work for nuclear energy in California. So I remained involved in that organization, mostly on the periphery, mostly listening to phone calls occasionally, you know, doing something directly. But for the most part, I would just dial into the phone calls, listen and learn. Usually I'm on mute. I normally don't say anything. I'm listening to the real pros. And one day in October or November of 2022, one of the members of the organization made some snide remark about how we know. We know that you people in the oil and gas business, hate nuclear energy, and we know that your industry actively undermines our industry. And I just couldn't abide by that statement. So I did take myself up a mute. I said, you know, guys, I just have to say I don't believe that. I obviously don't speak for all power many millions of people that work in the oil and gas industry. And I'm sure there's somebody somewhere who is anti-nuclear, but I am not aware of it. I've been in the oil and gas business for 45 years. I personally don't know anyone who's anti-nuclear. And to be quite frank, most of the people I know are actually very pro-nuclear. And so I made that statement in front of all these nuclear people. And then I got to thinking, you know, is that really true? And I made a jerk of myself for saying this in front of everybody. And I started asking around my friends. I thought, maybe my paradigm, maybe my perceptions are incorrect. And I started asking around, and literally I could not find a single person in our industry who is anti-nuclear. So then I decided, here I am flowning around, trying to be a nuclear advocate. But I don't know what I can really do for the cause. I mean, the oil and gas guy, I still work full-time. You know, I'm not out there holding up banners in California, you know, say Diablo Canyon. What physically can I do? And I had this idea that maybe one thing that I could do to help the cause of nuclear energy is to help dispel this myth that nuclear, that oil and gas does not like nuclear energy. And that oil and gas companies are actively working against nuclear energy. So I had this idea that we would draft up a declaration of support. And, you know, beyond that, I didn't really know where it would go. Part of me was wanting to kind of prove to my friends in the nuclear industry that we're not anti-nuclear. And I really just thought it might help the public dialogue to have a bunch of people in the oil and gas industry come out in favorite nuclear energy. Because you don't see people in the wind industry, you know, endorsing coal industry. You don't see people in an anti- gas industry supporting, you know, natural gas openly. I mean, supporting solar openly. So, you don't see people in natural gas supporting coal. Yeah, exactly. So, to have their competitors. Their competitors. So, it has somebody who have a big group of important people in our industry that came nothing by supporting nuclear energy, other than the satisfaction of the gas industry. And, you know, within the satisfaction of knowing we're speaking the truth. I thought that's a powerful message, both to the nuclear industry, but also to policy makers. Because we can go and say, look, we don't make our living in nuclear energy, but we feel strongly enough about it that we're going to come out and support it because it's the right thing for public policy. And it's the right thing for your children and grandchildren. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I had this idea, but I thought, well, I don't know if this is a good idea, if it's just kind of a folly on my part. And I also don't know if I got the gravitas to pull this off. So, I texted or emailed a friend of mine. You may or may not know him. Name Chris Wright, who is the secret. Yeah, Chris, Chris has been on the show before. I like the show. Chris is incredibly brilliant. He's an inspiration to most of us in the oil and gas business because he's willing to speak the truth and not going to go hide in the cave because somebody doesn't like oil and gas. He's just great. And I knew him well enough to reach out to him and just almost immediately. He texted me back and said, I love this idea. Let's do it. So, we started drafting this. You also know Mark Heinemann. Yep. Yep. And so Mark is a friend of mine as well. And so I started drafting this. He should call it okay, too, isn't he? Yes, yes, he is. And, and I started drafting this declaration. That took me longer than it probably should because I was, it was the holidays. Thanks for giving me Christmas. I have my own job. I got family. And it took a couple of months. And I wanted to get the right tone. I wanted to have enough information in it, but not too much, but not too little. And we finally settled on about a two page declaration at the end towards the end. I got Mark Heinemann and some others. Emmett Penny and some others involved in helping me to do the final drafting of the declaration. I sent it over to Chris Wright and said, hey, take a look at this. What do you think? Do you think we've done some good work here? And if you do, you know, let us know your comments so we can make some changes and we can get you to sign this. And he said, I love it. Exactly the way it is. He signed it on the spot the very day. And I think it was George Bernard Shaw who once said, if I would have had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. It sounds like you took enough time to write a short letter, which is sometimes very difficult to do. Yes, we did. We spent the, if you've read it, the first page is basically an acknowledgement of how important energy is. Why we need more energy, not less. Why we need energy for the world to solve poverty, solve climate. You know, all the reasons energy is important. And then the second page was kind of a list of things that we need to do better to make nuclear. To help us develop more nuclear, both in the United States and also around the world. And so that was our two pages. We had originally plan to have a third page. That was going to be nothing but specific suggestions for the NRC. But I couldn't get a consensus on what those what those were. And I realized that was not in the, I'm not in the camp of buying C4 by the way. You know, and I'll be honest, Marcus could I talk to a lot of people who off the records said that's what they wanted. They did not want. They said, we will never go anywhere in this country unless we blow up the NRC and start over. And I, we don't have time to start over. Yeah. And I, I realized that was a silly thing to say. But at the time with listening to all these people say that, I had about come to the conclusion that that was the right answer. And then Mark, Mark came into tell one day he said, Hey, I'm going to be coming through Denver on a flight to California. I got about an hour and a half layover. Can you come out to the airport and we can sit down and go through this final draft of this declaration. And we did. He said, we got to work with the NRC. I mean, there's just no way we can start from scratch. Obviously, there's problems, but we, you know, you cannot say C4 the, the, the. And so he taught me out of. that and he was right in the end. You know, a lot of good things are happening at the NRC, not enough, not fast enough, but a lot of good things are in, and Mark was entirely right on that. And as I recall, the letter that what it mainly said in the letter, which is what I've been saying for a while, is that the NRC simply needs to have its mission emphasized to be in alignment with the Atomic Energy Act, which tells them that nuclear energy is good and beneficial and needs to be regulated to be safe, but with the idea that you're enabling it to happen, not that you're making it safe by not having it. You're entirely right. I mean, actually, it's one of those things where if they would just follow the mandate, then we'd be fine. It's just that they're making up additional mandates and, you know, get things are getting in the way of them doing what they have actually been charged with doing. So, over the years, I think that what's happened is some people who have been appointed to lead the NRC have emphasized only one portion of the mandate to the exclusion of all others. And that's, you know, it said that they continue to say a war focused entirely on nuclear radiation safety, and we have no mandate to help the industry in any way, which is absolutely not the way it's the laws written. So, I do want to go to a discussion about why I say oil and gas interests, or actually sometimes I say it more generally as fossil fuel interests have the motivation and the demonstrated history of slowing and sometimes stopping nuclear development. And it's not people like you who are professionals, who are interested in producing energy and interested in, you know, serving the needs of the customers and all the things that professionals do. Yeah. What it is is the people who know very clearly, although dating back all the way to the John D. Rockefeller era, that oil and gas and coal is far more profitable when there's just a little less than what the market wants to have, because that drives prices. If there's just a little bit too much, prices crash like they did in 1986, and like they did in 1999, or I came up with, they didn't 2014, and when those gloves occurred, there was only somewhere between a few percent, maybe 10% for a little bit too much in the market, and cause the price to drop dramatically. I mean, heck, the natural gas prices in 2008 with a 5% change in the demand dropped from $12 a million to $3 a million, maybe, to you, and then kept going down from there. No, you're entirely right. And the old saying is there's a very big change that's can result from, there's a very small difference between a shortage and a excess of supply. 1% excess supply can cause a outsized change in price of any commodity. So that balance of supply and demand is always very precarious whether it's orange juice or natural gas or whatever. I totally agree. And I also know that when you say oil and gas interests, you're not talking about people like me, or the average oil and gas professional, or the average oil and gas company. I mean, oil and gas interests include food. I mean, I don't think that oil and gas interests say yes, I do think that he's been working probably against both the Western oil and gas interests by poisoning the well on fracking, and probably been working against German and other nuclear power. So he can sell more gas. I fully agree with you on that. Yeah, and some people say, well, that can't be right because Russia builds nuclear power plants. And I say Russia doesn't build nuclear power plants in their custom donations. The nations that are then about Russian oil and gas don't buy Russian nuclear power plants. Yeah, they might get maybe with the exception of a few of the former client states. Sure, and maybe Turkey, but I mean, you're right. They'll build a nuclear power plant for South Africa, because they don't have a pipeline to South Africa, but they're not going to build a nuclear power plant and build German Germany. Right. Because they want to sell gas to those countries. So you and I are not that far apart because I agree if you include interest like people like Putin, yes. And of course you're right about the Rockefeller Foundation. But let's be honest, the Rockefeller Foundation was really, they were funding science and biological studies back in the 50s and the 60s. By this time, they probably still had a lot of their money coming in from oil and gas interest, but they were not actively involved in oil and gas. And so if they were funding, if the Rockefeller Foundation was funding science that was advancing LNT theory and Alora and all these other things, if they were doing that, first of all, that's 70 years ago. And second of all, they really were an oil company and they're not doing it now. And so yes, I will concede that maybe the Rockefeller Foundation who was not an oil and gas company but surely got some of their money from oil and gas was probably doing that in the 50s and the same way. We know they were doing the 50s and 60s, but that is a really long time ago. So I don't think it's that, historically it's pertinent, but it's not germany to today. I don't see that happening today. Well, there's still some happening today. For example, the discussions or the efforts in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois to provide a floor price for nuclear power plants that were uneconomic in markets that were supplied by low cost natural gas, sometimes the gas prices were low because they lost some of their sales because of wind, but the wind also affected prices. I think you may have mentioned that wind can afford to sell even negative prices when they get the production tax credit. But anyway, there were efforts in those states. The American Petroleum Industry joined officially with the stop nuclear bailout, or stop nuclear bailout or no nuclear bailout, organizations, they paid for the mailings. They, you can still find on the API website, blog posts and stuff about the fact that we shouldn't be bailing out these uneconomic nuclear plants, we should allow them to shut down. That's what the market is saying. Of course, what would happen if the nuclear plants shut down permanently because of temporarily low prices? You're correct. And I was unaware of this until recently and Eric Meyer at Generation Atomic, educated me about this effort. And so I was unaware of that. I just still think it's an outlier. I don't think it represents the oil and gas industry as a whole. And I have talked to API recently about this. And of course, I have a talk to everyone at API or the very top person at API washing DC, but the executives that I have talked about has said, we are not going to talk bad about nuclear energy or any other energy type, whether we have in the past or not. We're not in the business of doing that anymore. And we are of the belief as I am that we need more energy, not less. And we're talking about nuclear energy in addition to not in lieu of other types of energy. So, but I acknowledge that it sounds like API was involved in some efforts at some point as you said. This is just a couple of years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Now I agree. And I was not aware that until a few months ago when Eric Meyer brought this to my attention. And I since been talking to API about that. But so you're right, there is, that's out there. But that does not represent most people that I know. And I'm personally not aware of any oil companies and I'm not seeing there aren't. There's some secret behind the scenes. Closed door meetings were some shenanigans may be going on. But I'm not personally aware of any oil companies or even oil service companies in today's day who is engaged in any sort of anti-nuclear. In fact, we know now that there's a lot of oil companies that are really dabbling in nuclear energy, which is phenomenal. Because even two years ago, when I first started this, that was not really happening. And a lot of this diving of oil and gas companies in an nuclear has happened in the last two years. Yeah. Well, and that's it. Again, I want to make it, and I started off our conversation with pointing out how much I enjoyed working with oil and gas educated people, people from the oil and gas industry. And I've had a number of my classmates and former shipmates go back into the oil and gas business as they left the Navy because it's engineering fields, the technical field, it's one where their skills are valued. And the type of people that I know and love, they do great in oil and gas. It's my point is in bringing this up. Is to help people understand it's not the environmentalist. And don't blame the environmentalist or the blue-haired ladies. Don't blame Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the fact that Cuomo had people on his staff who very clearly and officially and even gotten trouble legally. We're working to shut down Indian point to shift the sales from Indian point onto some newly constructed gas power plants. It would be supplied by a pipeline to that very nice Marcella shale, which was at the time, mean sometimes Marcella shale gas is selling for under $1 on MMB to you. There's not enough demand for it. But if you close off, close 2200 more 2020 megawatts at nuclear, the amount of gas required to supply that is something like a third of a billion BCF every day, 0.3 BCF per day to supply the output from Indian point. So again, it's not necessarily professionals. It's people at the very top levels, the business decision makers, the marketers, the traders, those people that are, and sometimes they're corrupt politicians. They're the ones who are deciding to make room in the market for their particular favorite source by taking nuclear out of the market. That's what happened in Germany, by the way. That's literally what you can find in the energy one documentation is that there was a decision made that to build renewables and add those into the market where the market wasn't growing, something had to be taken out of the market to make room for it. Yeah. And the whole guy said a lot more political powers than the nuclear guys did. Yeah, the story is that the power lines in Germany, you're being clogged up with this darn, dependable nuclear energy. Let's clean out the power lines so we can make room for this instantaneously produced, wind and solar, and of course, it's preposterous. And I'm glad you brought this up because of course, I think I'm probably a little naive about some of this as well. I, in some ways, I wish we had talked about this three or four months ago offline and not online. So now you're educating me online. But I think we should work together about this because I absolutely absolutely agree. We're not free. And I've been working hard over the last few years to develop relationships with people like Mark Hyman and a few others who are very skilled at building businesses in the oil and gas industry, but who recognize that their future lies in building nuclear businesses. I don't know if I mentioned to you or if you're aware that as a result of my podcasting and blogging and deep diving into energy issues for the last 30 years, I met some people who wanted to invest in nuclear advances, advance nuclear. Sure. They see it as an area for oil, for growth, particularly in energy transition. So I joined nuclearization capital initially as an advisor. And now I'm a partner in nuclearization capital. Our business is finding companies that have great leadership and great technologies and great business plans and helping them get to the next stage. One of the things I'm interested in doing is to try to talk to as many oil and gas people as I can about what we're doing. Because the Humberk curve really does exist. Of course, if you find new ways to develop resources that you know exist, sometimes you can stretch out the peaks a little bit more. But there is an indication that, or there's always been an indication that wells are discovered, they produce, they start producing a little bit more, they produce a little bit more than they start slowly not producing it much. Because it does deplete. That's why there's a deplicing allowance, right? Yeah, no doubt they deplete it. And most of the modern wells that are drilled are drilled in unconventional or shale reservoirs and the decline of those reservoirs is much steeper than conventional. So one way, the only way you keep production up in the new reservoirs and the unconventional reservoirs is continue development. You don't drill wells anymore and then put them on production for 40 or 50 years like you used to. I mean, the decline rates on a lot of the new wells are 78, 90% in the first year. And then decline will level out and the wells will produce for a long time, but at a much lower rate. So no, there's no doubt. But at the same time, when there is a tremendous amount of oil and gas, I'm not here to promote oil and gas in any way. I'm not, I make my living, there's tremendous amount of oil and gas left. And what we've seen is, is that over the last 50 years, technology has exceeded depletion. And I have no reason to doubt that that will continue for some period of time. And I think, you know, I mean, this is what most people in the climate conversation, maybe even in the nuclear conversation want to hear. But I doubt in my lifetime that we will see a reduction in oil and gas use worldwide. We will see some in the US in certain places in California and Colorado. And we will see some reduction in oil and gas use in Europe. But I'm, I may be wrong, but I think, you know, when my last day is here in 10 or 15 or 20 years from now, whenever that is, we will be using it in real terms, more oil and gas in 20 years from now than we are now. We're using 102 barrels, a million barrels a day. Approximately now, maybe getting closer 103 million barrels a day. And, you know, in 20 years, I would not be surprised if we're using 110, 115. Now, as a percentage of total energy used, oil and gas will continue to decline. We're going to see lots more nuclear, lots more solar, and lots more weigh-in, lots more geothermal. As a percentage of the whole oil and gas is in a decline. In real terms, I'm not sure we're going to see any real reduction. I mean, some people would like to see it by 2030, 2022. I personally don't see a reduction in actual use of oil and gas in the next 25 years. I'd be surprised. Well, I agree with you under business as usual. And I also want to make it very clear that I would be in a complete hypocrite if I said something to the effective, I don't like oil and gas. I'm a big oil and gas consumer. I always have been. I like to drive. I like to play around on power boats. I like to keep a comfortable house. I am an oil and gas consumer. And I recognize the value of those molecules. But I also recognize the value of those molecules. of my great, great, great, great grandchildren and don't want us to use it all up now. I would like to see us build enough other types of power, particularly nuclear, because that's what I like. Build enough other types of power to gradually reduce the amount of oil and gas that we consume and use it for those applications. It's very, very hard to reproduce. Aviation is one of particular. I personally laugh when people put shipping into that category because we've had nuclear powered ships at sea since January of 1955. But yeah, actually shipping shipping should be one of the easiest things. And I think I remember Mark even maybe talking to you saying that by 2030, that may be an area where we see some progress may quicker than other places. I'm not predicting it necessarily. But I can see we're shipping commercial shipping that putting small nuclear reactors on cargo ships could be one of the first things that we see actually proliferate in some scale. Yeah, I'm hoping that's true. And then, nuclearism capital is made an investment in that particular direction. Among others, we like the idea of ocean going shipping. And it's well proven that it's a great way to, if you want to move a lot of weight real quickly across the ocean, you can do it with a nuclear power plant. We've been doing that with aircraft carriers for the 40 years now. So 50 years. 50 years. Yeah. We already decommissioned the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier after its 50th birthday. All right, well, we're on the same page because first of all, if you make me aware of areas where the oil and gas industry is actively fighting or undermining nuclear, I want to know about it. Because I don't personally don't want to see that. And if I do see that, I would like to be a voice of reason why we should not be doing that. And then, of course, I am all in with you on, I mean. But I'm pretty sure you don't have any influence on Vladimir Putin. No, no, I can't do it about those types of things. I'm talking about domestically. I see so much positive happening generally, obviously, in the whole, the industry as a whole. But what's going on in the oil and gas industry in regards to nuclear is almost mind boggling to me what's happened in the last couple of years. And you know, Chris Wright, you know, they've invested in OCLO. Yeah, I know that Chris's firm is one of the things they've invested in even before OCLO was in cleaning up their power supplies to their drilling rigs. Because they're a service company. They bring all these, all this power-hungry equipment out. And instead of having it all being driven directly by diesel engines, they electrified it with clean burning gas turbines and that sort of stuff. They've done so a lot of work to try to make those, they're kit as clean and as quiet and as environmentally friendly as possible. So I think Diamond back also just signed an agreement to use nuclear, I think it's an OCLO machine company that's taking the time to do this. Yeah, that's the next logical progression. We've had a big push. Even in West Texas, where the push has not been as big as it has been in places like Colorado, because we got so many people living close proximity to our OCLO gas production. There's been a big push in Colorado to clean up the service companies like Liberty and Halliburton, partly for the emissions, but also partly for the noise. And that push is now starting to become more popular in Texas. And the next logical conclusion, we've taken it from diesel to a clean electric fleet generated from natural gas. The next logical iteration for that, and this is where I'm sure Liberty's coming from is small modular reactors that can electrify their fleet using nuclear energy, which is cleaner than natural gas. And that's why I think that we're going to see a lot of innovation, not only in oil and gas companies using the nuclear energy to clean up their operations, but also I think oil and gas has so such a high level of engineering competency that you're going to see oil and gas companies and service companies actually being the ones that develop these small reactors. They have the skill set, the project management abilities. They have the manufacturing capabilities, the management abilities to actually be the ones that make small nuclear happen in the oil field, and in refining in other related areas. Yeah, like offshore. Yes, definitely. And I mean, there's some offshore contractors and shipyards and those kind of infrastructure that has really got some an amazing set of skills and capital equipment that can make nuclear saying in some cases. I agree. Yeah, there's an awful lot of crossover and I'm really happy to hear people talking about it this way. And I have to say that one of the bits of evidence that I've used at least in my own mind about the oil and gases, the interest, not again, not the professionals, but the interest. Their philosophy towards nuclear has been to give it to silent treatment. For the last 40 years, we weren't building much and they said, well, not much going on there. So we weren't not interested. The public's not interested. We're an energy company. We'll invest in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, algae. And they don't say they won't invest in nuclear activity, even me even mention it. It's just a silo tree. And the silo treatment is a very effective tool, by the way. But it is changing. It's obviously changed a lot in the last two years because we no longer see that silent treatment. I'll tell you something you may not know, because I don't know that there's very much you don't know about this. I mean, honestly, you are the granddaddy. And but a couple of years ago, when I was in Berlin for the first time with Mark Nelson. So I've actually been back twice to Berlin because last year in 2023, they closed the last three nuclear airplanes on April 15. So just a year ago. And I went back with Mark and a bunch of other people. Again, we had no illusions. We were going to keep them, make them change their mind. But we went to show support for the idea that nuclear is really important. And we hope that I think what we hoped was that we would be part of the conversation to ultimately change minds and maybe restarts some of those nuclear power plants in Germany. I don't know if that's just pie in the sky or not. But I did go back to Germany last year for the same reason. But my initial trip to Germany in 2021, I met some people from Norway. And I was thinking to myself, these are some pro nuclear advocates who had come to Berlin to meet Mark Nelson and these other people. And I was starting. surprised because of course Norway has an embarrassment of riches. Oil and gas, they've got some, they've got hydro wind. I mean why wouldn't the Norway be interested in nuclear, but they had these nuclear advocates there and I was fascinated to talk to these young people in Norway who were promoting nuclear energy for Norway and I thought yeah that'll never happen. I mean you just got too many other good easy things to do. But apparently I was wrong as I usually am. Norway there's a lot of talk in Norway now about nuclear energy. Now you're not seeing that from the traditional politicians they don't want to hear it, they're still in the pocket of a lot of these wind and solar companies and they want to tow the line in Europe that it's all solar, all renewable, all electric economy. But there is I mean really some really strong interest in Norway for nuclear energy and so just I just want to make you aware of this. There's an offshore oil and gas conference held in Sevantor. I believe it's held every other year. And I also believe it's the largest oil and gas offshore conference anywhere in the world. Usually 60 to 70,000 people attend this conference every year. It's huge. And it's exclusively an offshore oil and gas conference. However this year the pro-nuclear people in Norway are bringing nuclear energy to the conference to bring to start the conversation of how important nuclear energy is to Norway. They recognize they're going to need nuclear energy in addition to their other embarrassment of riches. They realize also that the companies who can make this happen are the oil and gas service companies. They're the companies who still can do large projects. They're the companies who can still do projects on time and on budget. They have the engineering staff, the R&D staff, the supply chains, the project engineers. And so I think that they that the natural the logical solution for development of nuclear particularly in Norway offshore onshore and in other places in Europe is using the existing oil and gas service companies. So they're bringing nuclear to this offshore conference for the first time. And our kind of in an iron both have agreed to be on a panel to discuss nuclear energy and the how oil and gas and oil and gas service companies may be part of that. We're both going to be on that panel in August in this Devangrid, Norway. Wow that sounds very exciting. You know one of the opportunities that has been discussed by some of the companies that we've been talking to is using nuclear energy off shore to create synthetic hydrocarbons using the hydrogen and carbon that is available offshore and can be combined if you've got plenty of heat and electricity to do it. That's very interesting and I had not heard that. I was just thinking in terms of using you know there's a lot of energy used out in the offshore and it's it's it's it's dirty because you're not running power lines out there so it's usually diesel but that's can't be and it's in this funny that people don't realize it's they can't burn the stuff that they're taking out of the ground because it's not refined yet so it has to be refined diesel brought to you from a fairly lifting supply line to get offshore. Yes but I had not heard your proposition, your value proposition of creating synthetic fuels using the nuclear power and the resources that are coming out that is a very fat. I'm going to need to follow up with you on that. Right because remember the ocean is mostly this stuff called hydrogen or dihydrogen oxygen and then there's a bunch of dissolved carbon dioxide in the ocean as well so both hydrogen and carbon are readily available out there and hydrogen carbon is still wonderful molecule. All right so we are past our one-hour point. I really appreciate your time Doug and and hope that we maintain contact because I'm really I'm really interested to hear more about this offshore conference and again the for those who really want abundant energy it needs to be the best of the above. I'm not an all-the-above kind of guide. I thought that when I was a pretty good test taker back in the day and I never remember all of the above being a very effective answer. It was usually A and B but not C. I agree I mean in a perfect world and I think most people that I know feel the same way in a perfect world we would just be using a lot of nuclear energy and but as a realist I know politically and practically for some period of time it's going to be it's going to be all of the above but I think Brett Kugelmas correctly stated you know I don't know what's going to happen in 2030 but I know by 2100 we're going to be about 99% nuclear energy and I think that's probably true and so it is like you said it should be the best of the above and that right now that's that's nuclear nuclear energy so I agree with that and I before I sign off I want to take I'm so glad we got together and I appreciate it I realize now that I didn't need to be scared of you but I mean I'm not sure about it over no no but I'm all joking aside I mean truthfully you are so well respected in the industry and the reality is is people like me we're just Johnny come late you know I just came to the nuclear game back in 2020 and I mean although I was thinking you know I grew up at the same time you did I grew up in a period of time in the 60s and 70s were nuclear energy was prevalent I never thought twice about I assume we would always have nuclear energy we'd always have more nuclear energy I was never anti-nuclear but then I went on to do my own career in oil and gas and in reality you have been doing this your entire career there's not very many people who can sit here and say I had been advocating for oil and gas since the day I get this hurt like you have and so that's hard too because I'm sure there's been some pretty dark times and for you to be able to do that we all need to take our hat off and tip our hat to those of you who have been doing this the entire time you were on the right side of history the entire time and those of us like me who just come to it lately we we owe a lot to you so congrats to you and you you deserve all the accolades that you receive for being the grandfather of our industry and but seriously I'm so glad we met because I can see now where I could have another five hour conversation with you about a lot of stuff I mean we just skimmed the surface on a bunch of these subjects I want to learn a lot more I see now where there's a lot I can learn from you and make me a better advocate for nuclear energy so I'm excited that this is not the beginning of a lot more conversations with us well I'm not above saying flattery will get to everywhere so I appreciate the kind words I sometimes have had to answer some tough questions about why I kept doing what I was doing as a times I kept doing it there were some dark times it hasn't been rosy I entered I got really excited about nuclear when I realized I really hated the idea of being dependent on people in far off lands selling their oil and gas to us as you and I have realized we're bone the same year I wanted to get my I was so excited by getting my driver's license directly on my 16th birthday and when I was 14 there were my long gas lines at gas station and I thought to myself I don't want that to happen to me and then happening to you when I was in college you were 14 during the air of oil embargo that means that you were born in 1959 oh you are the same year as me yes I remember those times as well I just moved back to the states actually with that that happened I've been living overseas my you know most of my childhood and just moved back to the states in 1973 so those were those are trying times and you know we have the US has not had the kind of energy security that we have now I don't like to use the term energy independence ever going to be energy independent but we have we've been selling trade and and moved back and forth all the time there's no independence there it's strength energy strength we have so much energy strength right now and imagine our energy strength if we were to double or triple the amount of nuclear energy we use and use nuclear energy for process heat for refining and for car factories and whatever else we would be that much more strong I'd feel much much better but we're in a better place now than we've been in a long time but now it's time to to ratchet up this nuclear I just don't know how to do it it's just such a hard nut but we're we're going to figure it out this is the first step in moving forward talking to you today yep well good I'm glad we talked and we're going to continue talking but for now I've been talking with Doug Sandrich from Fulcrum Energy anything else you want to say you'll meet you you said something about a sub-stack you got a sub-stack name that you want to tell people about yeah it's it's my it's under my name Douglas C. Sandrich sub-stack that also goes under energy ruminations easiest way to get ahold of me is on LinkedIn I don't dabble that much in Twitter but I do a lot of LinkedIn and then yeah subscribe to our sub-stack I'm looking forward to getting out this article about the Osage tribe and then also an article about the the nuclear waste facilities in West Texas I've got all sorts of ideas so I just fit them in when I can great good talk when you dug I guess it's time to say get back to work all right let's talk soon thanks for your all right bye bye