When the transcript becomes available, we will include it here. -Thank you!

David Blackmon [00:00:00] There’s a button that says go live. Well, there we are. Look at that. And. Okay, we cut that short. But that’s all right. That’s okay. We’re live here, folks. This is my second live podcast of the day. The first one was the the three podcasters walk into a bar yesterday. I recorded a live episode with Tom Nelson, the great guy. And, today I have Hugo Kruger from South Africa. Hugo, how are you doing?

Hugo Kruger [00:00:32] You’re good yourself, David. And thank you for having me.

David Blackmon [00:00:35] Well, thank you. This second time you’ve you’ve done our podcast. Really appreciate it. You’re such a wealth of information. For those who are not familiar with you, go. You can find him. You can follow him on Twitter. It is h k Kruger. No h yeah.

Hugo Kruger [00:00:51] It’s h Kruger TJ at Kruger. Com just search my name instantly and you’ll find me.

David Blackmon [00:00:56] Yeah, yeah. Great Twitter feed. What other social media do you do?

Hugo Kruger [00:01:01] So I’m on Substack as well. And then I’ve got a small YouTube channel as well. And then I actually right now is a weekly columnist for what’s South African newspaper called Independent Online on Energy Matters. And we’ve got a very good supporting editors. It’s one of the, I think, the second largest circulation in the country. And the editor is very much for free speech. So she puts me with a double church every week to give the counter-narrative, and I appreciate that. So there’s at least debate on the topic that go.

David Blackmon [00:01:28] Oh, that’s fantastic. It’s so, so great to you. And I, you and I write at several different publications too, all of which are very Pro-free speech give me all sorts of latitude to write about the topics that I’m interested in, that I think are important. The Telegraph, Daily Caller I guess I should say who they are. Forbes. You know, they’re all just, terrific, editorial staff and, free speech platforms, which are becoming, and sadly, an increasing rarity in our societies today, I don’t think.

Hugo Kruger [00:02:01] They are and the challenges that many publications are running out of money because people don’t want to pay for the news anymore. So it gets skewed to advertisers advertising. And the problem with that is then they get captive to the, you know, to the advertisers. I think some pushback against that. I mean, you seeing bloggers, seeing Substack make some money out of Substack as well for myself, and that’s gives me a better relationship with my subscribers, although I haven’t figured out because sometimes I annoy them. And so then they lose, I lose them, and I get a Duke Extreme. Yeah, me too difficult to figure out. I do not someone who doesn’t like me anymore, but I’m beyond the point where I care about that. I’m not old yet. So yeah, I kind of.

David Blackmon [00:02:41] Have that attitude, don’t you?

Hugo Kruger [00:02:43] So. Energy matters. It’s it’s interesting to note how dogmatic the debate can be. And when you say, I mean, I give you an example. A few months ago, I think you shared this also in your Substack. I wrote an article for Kalashnikov on the case for coal, just pointing out the obvious fact that it’s still 25% of the world’s energy and 35% of the electricity. It’s a massive amount of stuff. And yet people are saying, oh, we’re just going to get rid of coal plants tomorrow. I’m like, okay, fine, let’s do that. What is alternative system? How fast can you build it? Do you have it right standing ready? I mean, is there something school can do that even gas struggles with? Gas has got its own specialty, and you just want to get rid of it. And my argument is being sorry. I’m in favor of investing what makes business sense. And that means coal declines and died a slow death. Wood gas I don’t I don’t have a, you know, a bone about it. The problem I’ve got is that the government is choosing who’s going to win. And I just keep on throwing money at one solution. And and this is not how markets work. This is not our business. It’s supposed to work. Right?

David Blackmon [00:03:43] Right. And they’re throwing and throwing the money at, solutions like wind that that really are not a solution. They’re not a solution at all. To replacing baseload power generation. Reliably supplied 20 47A day by coal or natural gas or nuclear. And, that’s my biggest problem with it. You know, if they were actually, throwing money at solutions that might actually work, I probably wouldn’t have as big a problem with at all. I.

Hugo Kruger [00:04:13] Work this out. So if you take Joe Biden’s $1 trillion that he gave to these guys and you put it on nuclear, which is more expensive than. Oh, yeah, let’s let’s be honest. Okay? But if you put it in nuclear, you can replace a third of the US’s electricity. Okay? And you probably get better numbers. You get economies of scale going. So if you want to end the argument I’m like, okay, let’s take government money. We accept whatever your own economy government is and let’s just have a mass build of nuclear like friends did in 1990s. But why aren’t we doing that? Because they are, you know, greasing some forms. This is not really about the climate, is it? It’s not really about the most optimal energy solution. And, you know, I put a disclaimer in, yeah, I’ve worked on oil, I’ve worked in gas, I’ve worked in offshore wind, then I’ve worked in nuclear. So you can accuse me of being whatever bias, when plant, when the land makes some sense. But people don’t always want to play offshore. Wind is struggling. And then you’ve got the case. If you look at the flagship companies for these countries, which is South Australia, California and Germany, you find that they still have enough fossil fuel capacity to meet the demand. So even, say, burning less for fossil fuels. So you’ve got two systems running basically. Exactly. What do you do with the second system? You have to amortize it. What is it cost is very difficult to work it out. And if you can make any sense of it because, they keep on bailing out companies left, right and center. So you don’t actually know whether the actual electricity price you’re paying, that so-called cheap price is reflective of the market price. In some cases, it isn’t even cheap, you know.

David Blackmon [00:05:41] Right, right. Our system in Texas, our bills, our utility rates in Texas to 30% higher than they were when Joe Biden took office. Even though the price of natural gas, the marginal, which is usually the marginal, was designed to be the marginal price on the system that determined pricing the utilities could charge is incredibly low. It’s it’s it’s at the lowest point. It’s been around 15 years. But our bills keep going up. And why do they keep going up? Because we’ve added all these additional costs and fees onto the bills to amortize the second grid that we’re building with wind and solar. And and unfortunately, our government, even though we have a supposedly conservative state government, they they continue to try to hide the ball from consumers because they know it’s their bad legislative and regulatory decisions that have created the mess. And that’s that’s one of the great points you made when you were on last time was, was we need to go back to treating electricity as a service rather than a commodity, right? I mean, that’s not go ahead.

Hugo Kruger [00:06:48] We just we need to sell it like like cell phone contracts is my view. Cell phone contract. It works with its own all the time. And at that data usage, yes, it matters, but it’s not what drives the cost. The cost is driven. Emergency fuel, which in the US is natural gas, South Africa is coal. Diesel. Actually, so, you know, that is the price that should set what do you call the market price? I think we need to have a big debate as to whether or not the Enron lobbied for regulation model still makes sense with wind and solar on the grid, because your natural gas does not just provide electricity, it provides a capacity service. Now, many countries got around us by either by adding capacity charges or a capacity market. The Germans said, we’re going to have we’re not going to have that. And then when the price of coal gas shoots through the roof, they say, we’re just going to build out a company. That’s also not the market, right? So what I’m saying is, why don’t we do this? We have a fixed tariff and we try and reduce the consumption to, you know, some something much less. So you better still buy the same in the end of the month. And you restructured the pricing mechanism because I oh, what you can do is you can tell the solar on one charge, you can still compete on the condition that you’ve got what we call therm supply contracts. Right. Otherwise you’re going to slice it back up. It has to be part of your business model. And if you do that and you’re still competitive, maybe they are, then they should be allowed to compete. But the issue at the moment is that offsetting the full service cost to the end user and they passing the insurance costs on to the poorest households. And this is particularly pernicious in countries with national utilities like South Africa, where only one third of our electricity price is actually for electricity. So they didn’t go over solar panel comes and he says, I’m going to set off the full cost. And then we said, okay, what about transmission system? What about a distribution system? Is that going to fall on the utility. And we saw that in California as well. The utility goes bankrupt. Well they obviously the full service cost. And that’s what they now call the missing money problem in electricity okay. And who pays for missing money. Well the governments have got no answer. And that’s coming back to your question. We’ve got the second federal system to guarantee reliability. And that’s why your prices on going up and down, even though the sun and wind is free.

David Blackmon [00:08:56] Yeah. I owe you a debt of gratitude, by the way. When when we talked last year, you reminded me I had kind of lost sight of the fact that, the to the way we, structured our grid in Texas in the 2001 session of our state legislature was based on the Enron model, Enron lobbying for that system. And so since that time when I do media calls, I get media calls occasionally to talk about the grid. I always make that point that our grid was designed by the crooks who ran Enron. And.

Hugo Kruger [00:09:32] You know, which country was the first country to implement this was actually Chile of the Augusto Pinochet took power in a coup de Gaulle.

David Blackmon [00:09:40] Yeah.

Hugo Kruger [00:09:40] And he’s forced these so-called reforms into it. So you’re dealing with a despot type of system. Okay. So really top an Enron even back then were the predecessor to Enron. I don’t think they existed, played some role only. So you’ve got a system that grew out of criminality. Yes. And we basically just we just went along with that. And since the Enron scandal, there has not been a major restructuring in the US to actually push back against it. Now, I don’t think national utilities might have made sense. I mean, I don’t know what the base model is, but we need to recognize that the current model something is not right. Because you’ve got all these balancing authorities in the U.S. and all these gas because just standing idle like that.

David Blackmon [00:10:19] Yeah.

Hugo Kruger [00:10:20] And again, who pays for idle plants? Okay. Well it inflates a consumer, but it’s being hidden. So I would say no, all of that has to be priced correctly. So you can get consumer behavior that corresponds with what we’re actually selling people. And it doesn’t seem that the buy doesn’t seem to come through.

David Blackmon [00:10:36] No, it really doesn’t. You know, it’s it’s it’s such a complex thing. I mean, in Texas, you may or may not be aware we’ve already had, two different days in April, the mildest weather month every year, from Ercot, about concerns they may not have adequate generation on the grid to meet demand. Now, what’s going to happen in August and September? And people, you know, people, I understand that, yeah, a lot of plants were down during those times for for maintenance. But it all points to the reality that the thing is become so incredibly complex. The people at Ercot are very smart people, right? I mean, they really are. They’re very smart people. I know some of them. But the system is so complex, so burdened down with intermittent wind and solar that you cannot predict on an hourly basis. You’re not going to know what you’re going to have. And they get caught several days every year like that where they think they’re going to get 12 gigs from from wind, and they get four because the wind stopped blowing in West Texas unexpectedly. It’s just it’s almost impossibly complex for people to manage anymore. And, and that in and of itself is a problem, right?

Hugo Kruger [00:11:54] Well, operators are starting to speak out. This is what I’ve seen now. They they mentioned. Reliability is almost non-existent in our vocabulary a few years ago. Now they’re talking about the reliability criteria, and I’m seeing Australia making the New South Wales, I think, saying the coal is going to stay longer. South Africa said we’re finally going to extend the life cycle of the coal plants remains to be seen. If the government worked on it. Right, and you’re seeing signs of this stuff, you see even the Germans saying that we want to keep the coal longer for security measure. Why would they do that if that stuff is reliable or they just being precautious, maybe slightly cautious, maybe the old stuff can be reliable on. But, we’ll have to see. But what is going to happen? I mean, the only choice the system operator has during that case is to do what we’ve been doing in South Africa for the last 20 years. Loadshedding. Loadshedding was not is a manually induced thing. The system operator says we’re gonna switch off lights in some areas because otherwise you have a grid collapse. And if you have a grid collapse, Venezuela had it a few years ago. You’ve got miners trapped on the ground with no ventilation. I mean, it’s just going to be a disaster. So that is what, you know, system operators luckily have sort of this where they’re going to say where they’re starting to say we’ve got the contingency plans in place in case that happens. Now, what it come down is the system operate in the system. That is sort of what we’re actually talking about. As the Enron system is now coming apart, we don’t know which way it’s going to come. Right. And the system operator is now becoming a far more centralized platform authority than they used to have, and they’re going to start dictating and say, no, no, guys, we don’t put more of this stuff here. We need batteries here, or we need bigger gas plants or whatever, but we need to first sort out the reliability criteria. And then the magic question is, with all this complexity, how do you service that full service cost? Who pays for it? How do you look at that cost to the consumers? I mean, I don’t know how it’s going to play out. Countries have different solutions. So France has a capacity charge where you pay a fixed tariff. It’s not a lot yet. And they have a time of usage charge. Okay. In some cases the U.S. you still have the fluctuating rates, but even some states in the US, I think Chicago’s got capacity charges already. So it’s becoming very difficult to even compare these states with each other, because how much do I pay the end of the month if my town structures is different? I don’t know.

David Blackmon [00:14:11] Yeah, well, let’s go back to coal for a second. I know you saw the announcement from the G7 that, all the countries in the G7, in Europe, in the United States, Japan, pledged to phase out coal and they call it unabated, unabated coal, which for, for my viewers who don’t know, is, a coal plant is unabated. If it doesn’t have carbon capture and storage technology associated with it, okay. To take the carbon out, even though that’s a completely unproven technology as relates to coal plants and to natural gas plants. But the EPA is mandating it in the United States anyway. So. So the G7 agreement’s completely, consistent with the EPA regulation that was released last week. I have a pending column at the Telegraph that the headline is going to be, the G7 surrenders. And what I mean by that is we’re surrendering on the question of energy security. And I think that that agreement is essentially that, isn’t it? I mean, do you agree with that or not?

Hugo Kruger [00:15:18] Well, a few things to mention. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe quickly shifted LNG to call call. The call supply chain has always been geopolitically neutral. There is no war that’s been fought over coal, to my knowledge, because it’s everywhere. It’s so abundant, right? It’s got it’s got things that even gas and oil does not have, which is geopolitical security. I mean, that’s a big thing that you’re getting rid of, right? The country to watch on this is Japan. Japan last year said we’re not going to phase out coal. The leadership was quite firm that they will try and and reinvest into the coal value chain to try and clean it up, and they have pushed at that stage ammonia to be burned with the coal. And they said maybe that can reduce the CO2. Now it remains to be seen if that it’s going to work. Right. The other one that people are pitching at the moment is calcium carbonate solutions. So it’s like a soda can tap thing limestone. And apparently you can make a coal plant under those conditions. Competitors of natural gas. Yeah. Again where is your model. Where have you shown it to me. Like this is what you’ve been asking. Okay. If that works, fine. Okay then. But then the question is what do you do with all the CO2 now is, is a little bit of a lesson. Yeah. So Africa makes one third of our petrol for gasoline from coal okay. Yeah. Because of the fit because of the feature drops versus the company Cecil. It’s got the highest intensity of coal use in CO2 usage in the world just outside of just south Johannesburg. Replace coal. Cecil book. In the past I didn’t know what to do with the CO2. So they may dry ice. They could not sell all the dry ice. Just just too much of it. Okay. So what are you going to do with all the catch? It seem to I mean, are you going to pump it into concrete? Some people are talking off the magic price. People are coming out is I say if it’s between 65 to $100 a ton of CO2, then they might be a business case to capture some of the CO2. Yeah, and maybe that’ll work out. But again, you’re subsidizing an industry. And the question I’ve got with all of this stay with this is why are we doing this at all? No, I mean, I asked you this when you, in my mind for the first time is. Why are we even bothering with with this? Because look at what China and India is doing. They couldn’t care less. Okay, so what are we all sitting in the G7? Sorry, India and China is just saying we’re not going to go along with it, guys.

David Blackmon [00:17:26] I know the desire to have.

Hugo Kruger [00:17:28] An NPC and Vietnam. I mean, the Viet Nam is at a faster GDP growth in China in the last 10 to 20 years per person. Okay. Why? Because they are expanding. Called Vietnamese leadership posts on Twitter the other day said burn coal through their through the winter print, print going through the summer. We need gold and just keep on pumping because we want economic growth. So the Asians have figured it out. I’m very disappointed in Japan for not standing up enough. And also, we’ll see what’s going to happen in Japan if the Japanese are really going to go along with it or not. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can have an opportunity cost for walking away and attacking the coal value chain. That’s my view. I don’t know what it’s going to express itself as, but its used to be that coal is for the winter, and summer for extreme peak scares is the most flexible meter method. What’s going to happen? Gas is not going to become baseload, which sounds nice if you’re selling oil and gas. But what’s going to happen if there’s a freeze in the gas pipelines again? There’s a major thing in Texas. I mean, if you compare Alberta to Texas, last winter, Alberta was in trouble because it only had gas taxes at gas, nuclear and coal as a backup. Okay, so Texas was in a better position.

David Blackmon [00:18:33] Yeah. My big concern is in Texas, you know, and and and I understand the concerns about coal. But we have shut down two thirds of the coal plants that existed in this state just 15 years ago and replace most of it with natural gas, but also with, wind and and now more recently, solar. So I’m very concerned it’s created a real, shortage of dispatchable thermal capacity on the grid. And that’s something the legislature acted to try to remedy last time, and I don’t know, but it’s going to take five years to do it. So it’s a real problem on our grid. I, but I want to also, let’s switch for a second to the oil and gas potential offshore South Africa. It’s it’s obvious to me, increasingly obvious, I think, that South Africa is going to be a real strategic resource for oil and gas if the government allows.

Hugo Kruger [00:19:32] It, and for geopolitics and the sake of good hope used to before this risk around the Cape of Good Hope was where the European ships went around India. Right now the Houthis are attacking the ships. So where are the chips going? They’re going through South Africa at the moment. So our ports are doing well at the moment. Yeah. We our neighbors, I mean, we are in such a good position with the worst government in the world. It’s much worse than the U.S. government. Okay. We have Namibia next to extracting oil. They hit oil. Namibia is set to become, from just the early findings, the 10th biggest exporter of oil. It’s the second most attractive country after Guyana. Guyana is the most attractive at the moment. Total is the. And the French are helping Namibians figuring this thing out. They’ve had a long plan for last ten years. Mozambique on the other side as well. It’s doing the same thing. There was a bit of terrorism and they’ve now sorted it out. And they actually the self they started extracting. So South Africa is now in a position where we’ve got poor neighbors who want to sell you. Well, we can establish an LNG and oil industry. We already have oil but an LNG market by just buying from our neighbors. And then later we extract our resources. Because if you look at where the oil and gas is discovered, it’s in the Orange Basin, which was just south of where the orange, orange, South Africa’s two major rivers of oil in the orange River, where the orange River goes out of the oh, to the Asian to the north, you’ve got Namibian self SCO South Africa. Most of the areas in the south and even closer to the Cape of Good Hope. In Mossel Bay, there’s been another discovery. In 2006. The government knew about the gas field. They didn’t do anything. And six Richards Bay is in the other side of the country is an ideal place for imports because it’s closer to the sea lanes. It’s got all the Jupiter things, studies been done. Government doesn’t act on it. And then there’s another one which is much taller in Mozambique, where only pipelines, we can have gas to power. And that creates industrial demand for gas things. So we’ve got we’ve got the skeleton of an excellent natural gas infrastructure, but we don’t have a government or government only came out of gas in that masterplan last week. I mean, this is ridiculous. Okay. So you’re trying to Austin guys, we’ve had our deficits for so long. We’ve got all shortage of energy poverty, and you’ve got all this oil and gas sitting around you in this potential. Why aren’t you acting on it? Yeah. And if I was Joe Biden, I would say, okay, there’s a dispute between the US and South Africa of Israel. Why don’t you go knock on their feet and say, do you guys want to extract these guys? We can help you a little bit of that. And it’s become, let’s, let’s work out our differences here. And you can actually import establish a natural gas economy on the southern tip of Africa. And it’s a country has had historically good relationships with the US. I mean it’s an obvious business case.

David Blackmon [00:22:02] Yeah. Well, yes. Same thing. I mean, you see this in other countries too, like Canada with with Trudeau not wanting to do LNG, off the east coast of that country when there’s a tremendous business case for it. But, so much of it just gets eaten up in international politics. And, the US in.

Hugo Kruger [00:22:21] Canada is called Canada’s, what I would call a democratic oil state. That’s. Because hydro and nuclear at home, so they can only export the oil states have figured out nuclear by the way. So why is going nuclear? Why? Because the US is exporting oil. So they say, oh, we don’t use well domestically we’re going to export it. It’s like a diversion of the Pickens plan, you know, which was pointed out except the government of nuclear. Yeah. Doing it a bit more sensibly and argue that Texas should actually do. Why doesn’t Texas say, okay, we’re gas export state, why don’t we build nuclear plants? 40 years of none of these renewable folks coming into your country because they lost 40 years, and then you just export us into world market waste exports to the other states. I mean, you’d become even more richer. The Aussies should do the same thing. But Australia is banning nuclear. They’ve got a moratorium again. I mean, this is the other insanity. They want to save the climate, but they still banning nuclear. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to me.

David Blackmon [00:23:11] It’s insane. It’s absolutely insane. So is there no no hope, for for nuclear expansion in South Africa?

Hugo Kruger [00:23:22] Well, South Africa has got one nuclear plant and there is an area because they spent that this being again in 2015, the studies were done best location all cited. And the government just signals that they haven’t advanced that are they’ve said last year including since now we’re going to do it again. But, you know, is this an empty promise? I don’t know.

David Blackmon [00:23:40] But now once the election’s gone. That idea’s gone, right?

Hugo Kruger [00:23:44] Well, our blackouts ended one month after the election started. All they burning diesel, I don’t know.

David Blackmon [00:23:50] Yeah.

Hugo Kruger [00:23:52] I so.

David Blackmon [00:23:53] Sorry. It’s not funny. It’s not funny. I know, but. Yeah, it’s just also ludicrous.

Hugo Kruger [00:23:59] It is, you know, so nuclear will be in the in South Africa. The country is thinking he’s got the heads right at the moment. The Indians, the Indians are basically saying coal, nuclear and gas. India is now only establishing its natural gas, infrastructure. They actually using it economically inefficiently. They need to up their game a little bit. And I think India will be a country to watch for development. And again, it’s a democracy that’s doing the right decisions. You don’t see it all the time these days.

David Blackmon [00:24:26] No, that’s that’s true. Absolutely true. And of course China is also expanding its use of natural gas as well as coal. And also helping Qatar expand its own LNG export business. With that, they offer 18 new tankers, which is an.

Hugo Kruger [00:24:42] Enormous I mean, but but you see look at Al Jazeera, right? Al Jazeera is one of the most pro climate outlets in the world. Well, it doesn’t it’s not that it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that money comes from Qatar. Yeah. So why are they why isn’t Oil State promoting that narrative to Western audiences? Well, it’s quite obvious is what’s happening, isn’t that they want you to stop exporting so they can get the market.

David Blackmon [00:25:02] Sure. And the Biden administration is helping them with that.

Hugo Kruger [00:25:05] Yeah. The Russians are doing the same in Europe. I mean, Paris, where I’m sitting, it’s got some of the best natural gas in the Paris Basin. There’s not a lot of fracking here yet. We’ve got total going around the world exploiting natural gas. Yeah. And I’m like, we’ve got the skills even, but we’re not allowed to do it in France. Do we could have, you know, taken the Russian supply away from the Germans to, to Germany if, you know, if we had the infrastructure. But again, we’re not allowed to exploit it because, you know, gas is now dirty for the environment. It’s the same nonsense. So, yeah, I mean, but I’ll say this, I, I’m still optimistic that people are waking up to the facts. That’s my next question, actually.

David Blackmon [00:25:43] So when I talk with Tom, you know, Tom Nelson yesterday, he, he, kind of sent me back because he was so optimistic about how things are beginning to develop. Now. He sees a lot of changes happening. Just in the trends where we’re energies concerned, I, I, I am optimistic in the longer term, but, not so optimistic in the near term. I wonder what you’re how you’re feeling about the direction things are ahead.

Hugo Kruger [00:26:09] Well, I would say this the debate is become a bit more rational in the last few years, even though the government seems.

David Blackmon [00:26:15] Yeah.

Hugo Kruger [00:26:16] Yeah, but the people are debating, right? I think the government was still making the crazy moves. And I don’t know if that’s desperation on their part or not. But the the real debate will come from two countries. One is in there. We just talked about China I think is now over the demographic hurdle. Even the Chinese call is not, China’s only upgrading the coal stations at the moment, which is still a lot, by the way. Right. But the Chinese coal usage has gone a little bit down because they also expanding renewables and the expanding natural gas. We spoke the Indians have really now started upping the ante in coal and nuclear and gas soon to be. And then the other elephant in the room is that by the end of this century, 40% of the world’s population will be Africa. So there’s going to be a scramble for African energy. And what are we going to do? And the American leaders are almost unanimous in saying, listen, guys, you I mean, the message they sending to Europe, luckily, America didn’t colonize Africa, but the, the basically saying the Europeans is like, oh, we’ve heard this before. You’re saying we’re not allowed to develop. We can we can see this is colonialism. So back off a little bit. And if the debate is between development and climate, I’m sorry, but development is going to lose out. We’re going to win out at the end of the day. So the Africans are just going to say we’re not going to. Economic development, and we’re going to use whatever resource we’ve got, okay, to get to those levels. And that’s 40% of the world’s population. So what do you think you’re saying to the US and the US? You’re isolating yourself geopolitically if you continue on this path. And luckily in the US, half the population is awake. The less asleep the Europeans are law. Cause okay, except the French sometimes wake up a little bit.

David Blackmon [00:27:49] What they do. That’s true. They’re so interesting when it comes to this stuff. Because you’re right, they go through these parts of absolute rational decision making. And then. And then it all goes crazy again. Right? Where we in the US? I don’t know. It just all depends on how the presidential elections go. So, this has been wonderful. We’re, bumping up against time. I want to be sure to give you a chance to let people know where they can find you and follow, what you do on on social media and Substack.

Hugo Kruger [00:28:22] Oh, yeah. So I’ve got I’m on Substack. It’s, you can just search my name in Cinnamon Sugar Kroger and on Twitter as well. And then I write, as I said, for Independent Online, that can look at it in South Africa on energy matters, which is relevant to African energy matters. And I’ve got an article coming out on South Africa’s gas infrastructure, actually, what we should be doing and what we’re not doing, which is a long list.

David Blackmon [00:28:42] Oh, good. I’ll have I’ll have to read it and take notes and steal from it.

Hugo Kruger [00:28:47] You’re welcome to do something. Welcome to Distributed Stuff. Well thanks a lot David, I appreciate this.

David Blackmon [00:28:51] Hey. Thank you. I really appreciate it, Hugo. Best of luck. And and we’ll do this again soon.

Hugo Kruger [00:28:56] Thank you very much.

David Blackmon [00:28:57] All right. And thanks to the sandstone Group and Stuart Turley for hosting the podcast, our great producer, Eric Burrell. I’m David Blackman. That’s all for this time. And in street.

Fellow Podcast Travlers:

Mark LaCour, Editor in Chief, OGGN

Mark LaCour, Editor in Chief, OGGN

Paige Wilson, Host of Oil and Gas Industry Leaders and Co-Host of Oil and Gas This Week Podcast.  

OGGN Network

Stu Turley, Host of the Energy News Beat Podcast.

Stu’s LinkedIn is HERE

Sandstone Group Production Sponsor.