The Energy Question Episode 49 – Karr Ingham EVP Texas Alliance of Energy Producers

 

David Blackmon [00:00:05] Hello, Welcome to The Energy Question with David Blackmon, I’m your host David Blackmon. And with me today is Karr Ingham, one of the really great individuals in the Texas oil and gas industry. He’s the executive VP and economist at the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, and he is the creator and maintainer of the Texas Petro Index, which we’re going to talk about here at the top of the show. How are you doing Karr?
Karr Ingham [00:00:33] Well, I’m doing great, David how are you doing this morning? Thanks for the kind words, by the way. I feel the same way about you
David Blackmon [00:00:40] Karr and I have known each other a long time, a long time gosh, 20 years now, probably.
Karr Ingham [00:00:45] Oh Yeah, Yeah every bit of that. Yeah.
David Blackmon [00:00:47] Yeah. It’s time flies when you’re having fun, right? Time.
Karr Ingham [00:00:54] In fact, my life is passing me by.
David Blackmon [00:00:58] Well, you’re making good use of it, though. Well, that’s the import.
Karr Ingham [00:01:02] Thanks
David Blackmon [00:01:03] So before we get into, you know, just talk about, you know, your background and also how, you know, the concept behind the Texas Petro Index and what gave you the idea in the first place of creating it?
Karr Ingham [00:01:19] Sure. Well, first of all, I live in Amarillo, Texas, right now, in the North country. I grew up farther north than here, but still in Texas, actually in that little northern panhandle town of Stratford, Texas, which is about ten miles from the Oklahoma State line up there that I grew up on a farm and ranch ten miles northeast of there, yet out in the middle of nowhere, just dangerously close to the state of Oklahoma up there and been in Amarillo for quite a while.
Karr Ingham [00:01:48] And so my schooling is in economics and years and years ago, back in the early to mid-nineties, I worked at a great bank here in Amarillo, Amarillo National Bank, which at that time was it may still be the largest privately held family-owned bank in the country. And so this bank still does a little piece of work called the Umbrella Economic Pulse. So what this does is just take a group of local economic indicators and scrub them through a spreadsheet and model and spit out one number economic index on the backside of that.
Karr Ingham [00:02:25] And so when I worked there because my schooling was the economics of this piece of work landed on my desk. With all due respect to Emerald National Bank, I never want to be a banker one day in my life, but I was there for a couple of years and this was the outgrowth of that, frankly, because I thought, well, that’s a great idea and I couldn’t use their model for so I had the source set about creating my own. And so I came up with this model for tracking local economies through this indexing process.
Karr Ingham [00:02:57] And one of the early places I began to do this work in the latter half of the 1980s was in Midland, Odessa, and I had very little exposure to oil and gas that I grew up in the world. I worked in DC once upon a time for our then-Congressman Bob Bolger. I did his AG and trade work, not oil and gas work, and then was his district guy for a while. And this was all centered around farming and ranching, not oil and gas, although we had a lot of that up here. But you can’t do general economic work in Midland, Odessa, in the Permian, without turning yourself into an oil or gas guy.
Karr Ingham [00:03:34] And so I began to track oil and gas indicators there, and I kind of created a separate little index to lay alongside the general economic index in Midland Odessa, called the Texas Permian Basin Petroleum Index, just to sort of inform, you know, the impact of that industry on the general economy there. By the way, the general economy there is that industry that’s not all the route to it.
Karr Ingham [00:04:00] But this caught the attention of Bill Stevens, who was then the executive director of the West Central Texas Oil and Gas Association. They merged with the North Texas Oil and Gas Association in 2000 to become the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, a statewide organization.
Karr Ingham [00:04:17] And then Alex Mills, who ran the Alliance, engaged me to put together this piece of work called the Texas Petro Index, which is, again, just a tracking device for calculating growth rates and tracking business cycles in the upstream or exploration and production part of the Texas oil and gas industry.
Karr Ingham [00:04:36] So we roll that Texas petro index out in 2003, I believe, to great fanfare, frankly, in Houston with the media there, the oil and gas trade press. And so this has been a thing that’s brought a lot of media attention since then. And again, its job is to inform not only oil and gas operators about sort of where we are in the cycle and what that looks like, how this has changed structurally over time, but also policymakers.
Karr Ingham [00:05:05] What is the ongoing relationship of the oil and gas industry in Texas to the Texas statewide economy? What is oil and gas employment look like? What share of the overall economy does it make up? How is this changing over time? What does it look like in the regions around Texas where we produce oil and gas, North Texas, East, Texas, South Texas, the Permian? What’s the impact of the industry on Houston?
David Blackmon [00:05:28] So you break it down by region?
Karr Ingham [00:05:30] Actually do not talk about it but you can take a lot of that data and just look at how it continues to affect the region. So the only two things that I do now are a statewide piece of work and then the Permian Basin Petroleum Index.
David Blackmon [00:05:45] Okay.
Karr Ingham [00:05:46] But it’s but it still helps to inform what’s going on in North Texas, which is sort of the legacy region, north Texas, west-central Texas of the alliance, but also, of course, some Houston has been and I would say still remains the global capital for oil and gas. They seem to want to fancy themselves an energy transition economy down to the dollar you’re talking to now. But that’s still an oil and gas town make no mistake about it.
David Blackmon [00:06:15] Yeah, they they don’t like to admit it the city government, they’re, you know, and really, I mean, it’s not just the Sylvester Turner administration there, but I mean it’s been the case for really probably since you created the index.
Karr Ingham [00:06:30] Well, that’s true.
David Blackmon [00:06:32] The city doesn’t want to admit that it’s.
[00:06:34] Well, in some respects I mean, you know, they still they’re still generally friendly, of course, to the oil and gas business. Are many of them there? But it just seems like we can scarcely keep ourselves from wanting to jump on the energy transition bandwagon in some respect. And my goodness, you know, if I were in some position of leadership, there might feel the same way but I’m not and I don’t.
David Blackmon [00:06:59] Yeah. Well, I mean, so. So they indexed it to a large extent. It really is a good measure of the general health of the industry. Right. Historically?
Karr Ingham [00:07:10] Oh, without a doubt. I mean, that thing has proven to be very effective and responsive to cyclical changes in the industry. But now having the opportunity to look back on this, I mean, we’ve had so we based this thing in January of 1995. And the reason we picked that point in time was we didn’t want to we may be in the alliance leadership then.
Karr Ingham [00:07:37] We didn’t want to go back all the way to 1980, for example, and try to capture all of that craziness. So this is sort of a modern index but there were significant events in the oil and gas industry in Texas in particular in 1998, 1993. So when you go back far enough to capture those and then just bring this thing forward. So when we roll this out, you know, again, in 2003, that was the seminal economic event in oil and gas we captured up to that point.
Karr Ingham [00:08:13] But think about what we’ve now captured since then that’s okay by the Texas federal index, where the massive run-up in oil and gas activity between 2002 and 2008 when crude oil prices went from 20 bucks a barrel to nearly 150 bucks a barrel, natural gas prices went from a buck in a quarter up to eight, ten, 12, 15 bucks and the BTU.
Karr Ingham [00:08:39] And even as high as crude oil prices were this that period of time, which you well know was when the Barnett Shale was being cracked open.
David Blackmon [00:08:48] Right.
Karr Ingham [00:08:49] So even though we had crude oil prices of 140 bucks a barrel during that six-year span of time, 80% of the rigs in Texas were drilling for natural gas, not for crude oil. And they were principally in the Barnett and some other places and the Permian was still pretty crude oil intensive. And so what was.
David Blackmon [00:09:07] Yeah, but it was all the old conventional stuff.
Karr Ingham [00:09:10] You got it. You got it. That’s absolutely right. And so and then what knocked the well, knocked the industry off its tracks then was the Great Recession of 2008, nine And then and then off we go with the second fantastic period of expansion in which crude oil prices exceeded 100 bucks a barrel they didn’t get as high as they were previously.
Karr Ingham [00:09:37] And then all of a sudden we flip-flop the crude oil prices recovered, natural gas prices do not. And then we began to apply these production techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to the Permian and other places. And this is the period of time in which we explode, literally explode U.S. domestic and Texans led by Texas Broadway crude oil and natural gas production, crude oil production in particular.
Karr Ingham [00:10:05] And so during this period of time, we began to really grow U.S. domestic crude oil production. And so so this was an extraordinary period of growth and all of this is transformational stuff because we’re figuring out how to produce vast quantities of crude oil and natural gas with technology.
Karr Ingham [00:10:28] And at that time, we’re still needing vastly more drilling rigs, vastly more oil and gas employees. And we peak down at the end of that cycle in late 2014 in terms of both rigs and in for I, we have never been as high, in fact, nowhere close.
David Blackmon [00:10:49] And we had over 2000 rigs active at one point, right?
Karr Ingham [00:10:53] Nationally we did, yeah. We had nearly a thousand in Texas in the final weeks of 2014. And then, of course, what happens in 2015? Well, the nasty downturn in 2008, and 2009 was, I would say, a demand-driven event. We had a global, national, global recession that stoked energy demand which sent all these crashing downward.
Karr Ingham [00:11:17] 2015 2016 No such thing the economy is doing just fine US economy’s growing, the Texas economy is growing, the global economy is growing and we have a much nastier down for 2015 and 2016 than we did in 2008 2009. This was a supply-driven event because the U.S. is on the way to doubling and then more than doubling U.S. crude oil production again, with Texas leading the way. OPEC is really backed into a corner because they don’t know how to respond to this extraordinary production increase in the U.S.
Karr Ingham [00:11:54] They hold off on production declines and they hold off and they hold off and they kept thinking, oh, goodness, the U.S. is now the swing producer operators are going to respond to these crushing prices in a hurry. Production is going to fall far and fast, so they maintain a high level of production most of the way through this massive crash. And this was indeed a bloodbath the downturn here we lost tens of thousands of oil and gas jobs in Texas, the rig count cratered and then we began to recover from this and another cycle that is driven by different things.
Karr Ingham [00:12:31] The 2010 2014 -15 increase was driven by increases in recounts and deployments and permits and well completions and all these things. And we’re beginning to grow to produce the recovery post-2016, up until well, COVID made probably 2019 back end of 2008 was driven by production itself climbing to record levels. This occurred in 2018, really nationally and in Texas, exceeding older records, which were from the early 1970s.
Karr Ingham [00:13:10] And so we’re establishing new production for crude oil and natural gas, by the way, without record rig count, so without record employment. In fact, both of those are vastly lower than they were in late 2014.
Karr Ingham [00:13:23] And so this increase, which is again captured by the Texas Petrol index, is driven by, number one, the volume, the sheer volume of crude oil and natural gas production in Texas, and then the value of that production as well because we’re recovering prices that were fairly decent.
Karr Ingham [00:13:42] And actually the downturn in the Texas statewide oil and gas economy that we connected, COVID was actually in place for all of 2019 before COVID came along. Driven by what? Well, prices were weakening somewhat, for one thing, but the nature of the industry was changing and this is a phenomenon that you’re familiar with, something.
David Blackmon [00:14:04] That’s sort.
Karr Ingham [00:14:05] Of like in there liken it to a hamster wheel leading up to this point where tons and tons of cash is just thrown into development, the acquisition of acreage and the drilling of wells and what begins to happen in 2019? Well, two or three things began to happen in 2019.
Karr Ingham [00:14:26] First of all, investors are getting a little tired of this and they want some return on this investment they don’t want to plunk every dollar and then another three or $4 on top of that. Into new development. They want some return on their investment and who can blame them for this? Well, this does have a dampening impact on drilling activity. What else was happening in 2019? Well, we were flaring a lot of natural gas in 2019, particularly in the Permian, because with every barrel of oil.
David Blackmon [00:14:55] Didn’t have enough pipeline capacity,.
Karr Ingham [00:14:57] Not enough pipeline. So. So there’s a big spotlight on flaring in the Permian, which I think I mean, if you’re drilling an oil well in the Permian, but you have no disposition option for the gas, it’s going to come up with that oil you have to think twice about that. We were still drilling a lot of wells out there, but not as many as we would have absent this natural gas.
David Blackmon [00:15:18] Right.
Karr Ingham [00:15:18] And so then comes COVID the quickest.
David Blackmon [00:15:23] Wait before you go to COVID. Wait. Third, before you go to COVID, though. I think it’s important to point out that because I think most people don’t realize this, that shift from the drilling frenzy into focus on the return of investment to investors is part of the natural cycle of the development of any oil and gas resource in history. Right? This is not it’s not something unique to US shale in 2018 and 2019 and there’s much we talk about that because there’s a real misunderstanding, a lack of understanding about the reality of things in the general public.
Karr Ingham [00:16:05] Well, and it’s not only unique to oil and gas and all of its long history, it’s not unique to the investor community and oil industry. Yeah. So the things that have happened in oil and gas, these transformational events that have occurred, the investor sentiment that comes along with this, none of this is new or unique industries of all kinds endeavor to do what the oil and gas industry did so, so famously and overtly and noticeably.
Karr Ingham [00:16:44] And that is to become more efficient over time to produce more with less and at a lower cost. And my goodness, the industry has done this in spades and contributed, by the way, to an extraordinary consumer outlook. And we’ll talk more about that momentarily as well.
Karr Ingham [00:17:07] But again, this investor sentiment thing as well is the fact it’s pretty simple. I mean, just consider yourself plunking investment dollars into anything at some point. If you’re not getting a return on those dollars, you’re not going to continue to plug that money into it it is that simple.
Karr Ingham [00:17:24] And so, again, this is not a souring of investors on U.S. oil and gas or the shale industry. It is just the desire on the part of investors to achieve a return on that investment. And there is nothing remotely unusual or suspect about that, in fact. How could you not suspect that this is what they would want? And so these are natural, as you properly suggest these are natural market outcomes. And I do not care that it’s not my place to say what investors it ought or ought not to do with their money when it is their own decision.
David Blackmon [00:18:07] Sure.
Karr Ingham [00:18:07] Effected by things that want to skew markets and if they determine and when they determine that they want a different outcome for the dollars of their investing. Who are? Who am I? Who are you? Who is who? Who’s anybody else to suggest that this is somehow problematic or right or wrong or reflects a changing sentiment and again, sort of a salary on the industry, which is ridiculously how this was portrayed on the face.
David Blackmon [00:18:40] And what really for the companies. You know, hasn’t this investor pressure to kind of calm down, stop this drilling frenzy, and focus more on economies of scale and improving processes and rationalizing headcounts and all that?
David Blackmon [00:18:57] Hasn’t it really for the companies, you know, here looking back now and 2023 produced a healthier state of the industry here in Texas than you probably otherwise would have had because you have so much less debt now, even with COVID intervening.
David Blackmon [00:19:17] And you have these companies now in a stable and steady program from year to year, you know, which have not been the case during that, you know, initial development build out of the Permian and the Eagle Ford, right?
Karr Ingham [00:19:32] Yeah, that’s exactly right. One, by the way, let’s. I’d give short shrift to the Eagle Ford or Ford, as you say. I think I’ll just I’ll call them the Eagle Ford what do you see written down it looks like two words Eagle Ford, but I guess that’s just one word.
David Blackmon [00:19:47] Yeah, I was I was corrected by a fella, Conoco Phillips, early in the play, and I’ve been careful about that ever since.
Karr Ingham [00:19:54] So there you go. Well, this was one of those fantastic things that occurred in that kind of ending of the cycle girl cycle in 2008 and then kind of spanning the recession and then moving on past the recession through 2014, 2050.
Karr Ingham [00:20:14] There was scarcely a barrel of oil produced out of this formation called the Eagle Ford or Eagle Ford until about 2008. And so this thing blows on to the scene and begins to produce extraordinarily rapidly rising quantities of crude oil and natural gas as if the state of Texas wasn’t impressive enough in its energy profile and what were contributing nationally. This was a big part of the state’s contribution to U.S. growth and oil and gas production.
David Blackmon [00:20:51] Yeah, we were the only healthy industry in the United States in the first term of the Obama.
Karr Ingham [00:20:55] I believe that. I believe that is correct and so now, you know, so this was a really blooming rose in that period of time and it got all manner of attention. And meanwhile, though, I’m sort of noticing that the Permian is sitting over here and it’s just sort of rumbling and percolating underneath the surface a little bit.
Karr Ingham [00:21:18] You know, the Eagle Ford’s getting all kind of attention about its fantastic growth because going from zero to, you know, pretty high quantities of production gets a lot of attention. And we have production growth in the Permian at that period of time. But it is not yet what it was going to be because, again, it’s it’s like you got this new shiny rose over here called the Eagle Ford and it’s fantastic. But you’ve got this old thing called the Permian over here. But it again, it just feels to me like it’s dialing up to do something.
Karr Ingham [00:21:50] And sure enough, these are these extraordinary increases in productivity begin to take root in the Permian as these production patterns that were developed for natural gas production in Barnett and other places are beginning to be deployed in and in the Permian. And then boom, off we go.
Karr Ingham [00:22:10] And so the Permian in both Texas and the Mexico I always think about this, in 2010, the state of Texas produced about 20% of all of the nation’s crude oil. Well, that’s pretty impressive. That’s one fifth from one state. You know what that number was? You know what it is right now, 42%, 22% of Texas production or pardon me, U.S. production comes from from Texas alone.
Karr Ingham [00:22:35] The interesting thing about this is the Permian was the Permian, even including that Mexico, was always producing less of the nation’s total crude oil than the state of Texas was. That’s now flip flopped.
David Blackmon [00:22:47] Yeah.
Karr Ingham [00:22:47] So the Permian as a whole, including New Mexico, is producing more this about 45, 46% of the nation’s crude oil comes out of Permian now. So these these two or three counties in New Mexico have really grown activity in production. And so these are extraordinary outcomes and they should be straight out.
David Blackmon [00:23:08] The I don’t know if you track this, but wouldn’t Texas be like. If it was a country just Texas?
Karr Ingham [00:23:17] Yes.
David Blackmon [00:23:18] Wouldn’t Texas be the fourth or fifth largest producing country on earth if it was a standalone?
Karr Ingham [00:23:25] I have tracked that and then I was really tracking this back in the early part of of 2022. And I haven’t looked at those numbers since then. So I need to be a little bit careful about this. But Texas, at its peak, pre-COVID, was producing a little over 5.4 million barrels a day. The U.S. was producing at its peak in late 2019, about 13 million barrels a day. So you’ve got you’ve got the U.S. in first place as a country producer, followed by Saudi Arabia and Russia, I think, and they start to fall off of that.
David Blackmon [00:24:13] Right.
Karr Ingham [00:24:14] And exactly.
David Blackmon [00:24:16] Back to what? 12.6 in March.
Karr Ingham [00:24:19] Not that.
David Blackmon [00:24:20] Right?
Karr Ingham [00:24:20] About that. Yeah, but I mean, most of us thought, though, that both in Texas and nationally, we would have recovered pre-COVID daily production levels. And we have yet to do that either in Texas or nationally. So it’s been kind of a slow slog upward in terms of production increases for probably two or three reasons, one of which is that drilling activity has been a little subdued because of the things that we’ve talked about. But the other of which clearly is just this open hostility by our own government to U.S. domestic oil and gas production.
Karr Ingham [00:24:55] And this particularly takes place and takes hold on federal lands where the US government has a lot more say about this. Thankfully, we have very little of this in Texas. Yeah. But nationally, you know, once upon a time again, pre-COVID crude oil production from federal lands and waters was approaching about 25% of national production and so you can cut into this pretty easily.
Karr Ingham [00:25:18] And you also have, in addition to the US federal hostility to domestic oil and gas production, increasing blue state hostility. I mean, just think Colorado or they just seem intent on putting that industry out of business and independent operators up there in particular. Yeah. Mexico to New Mexico. My goodness this is the this is the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg. And they they won’t shoot that goose I guess.
David Blackmon [00:25:48] Crazy. It is. You know, we fund like 40% of the state budget.
Karr Ingham [00:25:52] That’s right.
David Blackmon [00:25:53] Want to kill it?
Karr Ingham [00:25:54] That’s right.
David Blackmon [00:25:55] Boggles the mind. I on the transition. So on the energy transition, you know, we we hear all this talk about it. And I know you have as an economist views on this. And one thing I talk about and write about a lot is the fact that we’re trying to replace these energy dense, high energy density forms of of energy like fossil fuels and nuclear with these low energy density forms.
David Blackmon [00:26:28] And it defies the laws of physics and the laws of thermodynamics but doesn’t it also isn’t what we’re trying to do also stand in defiance of the laws of supply and demand, right? Because demand for our for oil and gas keeps going up, right?
Karr Ingham [00:26:46] Demand for energy keeps going up, which means demand for oil and gas keeps going up. I mean, there’s still supplies, depending on how you want to slice this, 85% plus of energy is still provided by fossil fuels. Now they have to throw coal into the mix there as well. We’re talking about power generation.
Karr Ingham [00:27:07] But particularly in terms of of powering transportation we’re simply talking about oil and gas. And so, yes, that’s absolutely right. I mean, I’ve got a I’ve got a favorite saying that I tend to give a at when I give speeches and presentations.
Karr Ingham [00:27:31] And it is this the foundational laws and principles of economics and I might throw in there physics as well, but the foundational laws and principles of economics are not are not set aside or altered just because we’re talking about something you have to feel strongly about. You can wish that they didn’t exist, but they do and unfortunately, they’ve been around for a long time. They call them laws for a reason the law of supply and demand these are pretty sacrosanct things in economics.
Karr Ingham [00:28:02] And no, they cannot be done away with so it’s not going to change. The same thing I would suggest applies to physics, which I know considerably less about than I do the economics are way too far off into that but you’re exactly right. All right.
Karr Ingham [00:28:16] So the bigger question about this transition and you used an interesting word a minute ago and you would have no you would have no reason to think that this word was remotely interesting to me when you said it and this was this word we he just said, we are trying.
David Blackmon [00:28:33] Oh, yeah, I do that too much.
Karr Ingham [00:28:35] Well, I’m not suggesting you do it too much, but I always wonder and have begun to wonder. And it began to I wouldn’t say push back, but to raise the question of who we actually use, who is And this is a very common phraseology in our politics. We have to do this, we have to move our economy beyond this fossil fuel dependent and driven economy to a clean. We have to do this. We have to do that.
Karr Ingham [00:29:12] Well, somebody needs to tell me who we is. Exactly because whoever makes that statement, that particular statement, we have to we have to get off fossil fuels. We have to. Well, in that case, we does not include me. So I have a disagreement not with you, David Blackmon, but with you, Whoever it is that says this to me, this is not a view that I share.
Karr Ingham [00:29:42] At least in terms of taking a coercive governmental action that moves us off of where markets would take us if we just left this to markets alone, if markets ultimately take us through a transition. Believe it or not, I have no issue with this at all. Sure, it’s ultimately move us away from oil and gas to what comes next. That’s how this is supposed to work. So we have a disagreement yeah. In you, me and whoever would make that statement. And how do we settle these disagreements?
Karr Ingham [00:30:22] Well, we have we have historically in the U.S. settle these disagreements and let’s call one a political disagreement and one an economic disagreement. An economic disagreement for me is pretty easy to settle. I have nothing to say about it you have nothing to say about it the market has everything to say about it. I am passion. Your passion. Whoever. Whoever would make such a statement about moving us off fossil fuels and onto renewables or whatever comes next, or they’re crazy passionate about this.
Karr Ingham [00:30:58] But we have a disagreement about this and how do we settle this? Well, I can either bludgeon you over the head or you can bludgeon me over the head and force me to comply with your point of view or I can do the same to you. Or we can just slug this out in the competitive marketplace and let it determine what comes next. So that’s a pretty simple solution,.
David Blackmon [00:31:20] Right but of course, everything’s now political, right?
Karr Ingham [00:31:24] Well, of course.
David Blackmon [00:31:25] Everything’s become politicized and then another thing and I wonder if you agree. We have we have a growing energy crisis. It started in Europe it’s becoming more of a global thing. And it’s all every bit of it is driven by policy, by public policy. If the market was left to function and determine things, we wouldn’t be having these crises all over the place.
Karr Ingham [00:31:54] All of that, I believe this is exactly right. I mean, Europe’s attempt to go green has backfired on them. The in the in the unimaginable. Well, actually, it was quite unimaginable. You know, those of us, I think, to have have a propensity to look ahead and try to understand what the spin out effects of these sorts of moves may be, could have really seen this coming.
Karr Ingham [00:32:19] And the only thing that for me personally, you know, I have a little bit of a conundrum about, as you well know, we’ve had this discussion before. I’m the ultimate free trader and I’m the ultimate free trader because I believe in the autonomy of the individual in making his or her own economic decisions.
Karr Ingham [00:32:40] And if and you know, nations do different things well, some nations are set up to because of the natural resources they have or maybe don’t have a competitive advantage in many respects. Russia is one of those nations. They got lower energy, they produce more than they consume domestically and what would they do with the rest of it? Well, they would send it out to other parts of the world and to some of their European neighbors there and make it available for them.
Karr Ingham [00:33:16] Well, this shouldn’t be a problem until you throw politics into the mix and tyrants add to the mix. Yeah. Yeah. There’s so much discussion about Nord Stream one or two and about this reliance on Russian energy. If you throw all the rest of this nonsense out, it makes perfect sense when you think about it they’ve got it we can access it by land through pipeline or or undersea through a pipeline or with the case maybe we can use your access to our advantage.
Karr Ingham [00:33:47] And of course, because of politics, this has blown up as well. But I’ve no issue with energy trade among nations, and that includes Russia and Europe. I’m sort of in the minority in that view, I think, and was even then. But this is the thing that and normalized political circumstances would make a lot of sense.
Karr Ingham [00:34:09] But in addition to now being unable to rely on Russian supply of natural gas, they’ve they’ve cratered their own energy infrastructure by doing away not just coal plants, but trying to trying to evaporate nuclear as well and rely entirely on renewables, which is just nonsense, pure farce. And so these moves that these nations made it don’t stand a further dollar stand. Why witnessing this, we would presume to go down this path at all and yet here we are.
David Blackmon [00:34:42] It’s like we’re copying the same game plan. Listen, man, I am afraid we are running out of time here. But before we for we stop, I want to give you a chance and I didn’t. I should have done it upfront to tell people where they can find you, where they can find the Texas petrol index so that you know the people so our viewers can keep up with. With you.
Karr Ingham [00:35:03] Absolutely. Well, I. I would not be an oil and gas economist were it not for this great organization called the Texas Alliance of Energy Research. And that that that’s just a fact. Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, a statewide upstream oil and gas trade association in Texas. We represent principally independent operators and their interests both in Austin and Washington, DC. So it is for them and for our members and for the industry in Texas and also nationally, frankly I do this work.
Karr Ingham [00:35:33] And so we release a petro index every month at a news release we put it on our website Texasalliance.org so you can find it there and we’re getting to getting ready to reconstitute a monthly publication called News Line, which we sort of center with the Texas Pedro Index.
Karr Ingham [00:35:51] So just go to our website, TexasAlliance.Org Just do a search on the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. You can find that information there you can find our information there. Connect with myself, our president, Jason Modglin in Austin. If if you want more information on the Tex Pedro index, the oil and gas industry in Texas in general. But but again, I’ll do this for them and that’s where you can find this piece of information.
David Blackmon [00:36:21] Well, fantastic, man we just scratched the surface here I have like a dozen other questions I was going to.
Karr Ingham [00:36:27] And I had, like a dozen other things I really wanted to rail on.
David Blackmon [00:36:30] So let’s let’s.
Karr Ingham [00:36:31] Let’s do it again sometime.
David Blackmon [00:36:33] Absolutely. We’ll get back here in a month or two and do it again and I really appreciate your time. Hope you have a great weekend and that’s all for this Episode of The Energy Question. I want to thank Stuart Turley and the Sandstone Group for producing our show and our excellent producer, Eric Parel. I’m David Blackmon, signing off for now.
 

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