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David Blackmon [00:00:00] Before we go into our interview today, I wanted to let everyone know we have a new sponsor for our Energy Question podcast. The US Oil and Gas Association, USOGA for short. First established in 1970, USOGA has been an effective and creative voice for the industry for more than a century now. USOGA is dedicated to educating the public, policymakers and legislators at the federal, state and local levels about the value of the domestic oil and natural gas industry. If you’re in the industry and not currently a USOGA member, please consider joining the association as a way of helping it tell your story to the policymakers whose actions impact everything you do each and every day. You can start that process by contacting you, so get it through its website USOGA.org. Thanks so much to USOGA for sponsoring the Energy Question podcast. And now on with our show. Hey, welcome to the Energy Question with David Blackmon. I’m your host, David Blackmon. And today my very special guest is Doctor Robert Brooks, the CEO of RBAC one of the global leaders in energy market simulation systems. Robert, how are you today?

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:01:21] Well, I’m doing great. Thank you. We’re both in the in the great state of Texas I see. So

David Blackmon [00:01:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. God bless Texas. That’s all I can say. I’ve been here all my life, and I guess I’ll die here someday soon. So, I.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:01:37] I wasn’t born here, but I got here as soon as I did, you know?

David Blackmon [00:01:40] There you go. Like Davy Crockett. Yeah. Well. Well, first of all, should I. Should I call you Doctor Brooks? But I call you Robert. Should I call you Bob?

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:01:53] You can call me anything you want. Pretty mad. But. Yeah, normally my, friends and and colleagues just call me Bob, and, sometimes, you know, it needs a little more formal contacts. We get, you know, Doctor Brooks, but, but, you know, that doctoring business that happened a long, long time ago. So between friends, Bob is fine.

David Blackmon [00:02:18] Okay. All right, well, here we go. First, I, you know, I our audience is first time I’ve interviewed you, so our audience won’t be familiar with your company. So take a few minutes to talk about your company, what you do and and what exactly is involved in energy markets, simulation systems.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:02:37] Okay. Well, you know, for a very long time, you know, really, all my life I’ve been interested in mathematics. Okay. So, in one form or other, but, it’s always been applied mathematics. You know, something that has a definite goal as opposed to some abstract or theoretical. And, as I, as I grew up and found out more about the world and in college and graduate school and so forth. I actually had an opportunity to, learn a lot about energy systems. And, you know, it’s largely in one way or another, logistics is moving something from one place to another. And of course, this can be done well or it can be done that. I mean, there’s a whole subject called logistics, right? Which has to do with basically trying to get stuff from here to there, you know, where it’s needed from where it’s produced, where it’s needed in an efficient manner. Well, there’s a whole mathematics that’s involved in, in actually, modeling or simulating, that whole kind of operation. And, one of the things that I learned in, in college is that, you know, if you if you formulate this thing correctly, not only can you get information about flows of, of product from one time to another, whether it’s cargo or whether it’s natural gas or water or whatever, but there’s also information you can use to get prices. So, it’s very interesting. If you do it correctly, you could actually simulate what a market should be like. Now, they’re not always this way. Of course, they’re not always efficient and so forth. But it’s kind of like an ideal, an ideal situation. Ideally, this is how things should flow. Ideally, this is how, you know, pricing should be in the market. And, as you get a little bit more and more, sophisticated in this whole thing, you realize, well, you know, it’s not ideal. You know, there’s all kinds of barriers and difficulties and congestion and and constraints and so forth. So you learn to add those into the equation and try to make it more, more, more real. And so that’s what we do. You know, we are focused in natural gas although we have them natural gas liquids for example. And and in the past have worked with other commodities, including even oil and, and freight, coal and various other kinds of energy commodities. But, what we do is we produce a, set of software products that we license out to the energy industry. And, by the way, government or other organizations to. In order for them. To be able to, simulate what, the, what the the system might look like the natural gas delivery system might look like in the future, you know, based on different decisions that are made. And so by doing so than an energy company, can. And basically get a better sense of, you know, the way that things are going and therefore make better decisions for themselves regarding their own investments. And, an energy regulator, for example, or a government agency, can also do, forecasts of what things are likely to be out into the future, but also can apply it to policy making. So, you know, the hope is that by doing so, they will be able to look at different possible policies going out in the future and then decide among them, regarding, the objectives of the energy system, which should be, you know, to deliver product at a low cost, you know, to the consumer, while still being able to, make it worthwhile for producers and transporters to operate. So, you know, that’s the idea. And, we’ve done very well. We started quite a while ago. And we have. I don’t know, 25 or 30 licenses, something like that. And then, you know, occasionally they ask us to do studies. And so we do studies using our own software as well, you know, for various, again, organizations, to help them, whatever their purposes are. You know, we’re involving again, focus almost entirely on natural gas.

David Blackmon [00:07:10] So. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:07:13] Hey, I was going to. The last thing I was going to say is our focus was on North America until fairly recently. But we did well enough, in that particular area. Feel like we really understand the, North American gas delivery system, which includes Canada and Mexico as well as the United States. And so a few years ago, we decided to shift our focus in and, tackle the whole world. And that’s a bigger problem, obviously. But, you know, we’ve done that, and we have a really nice system called G2 M2 Global gas market model. It doesn’t sound right anyway. G2 m2. So. Yeah, that’s right, G2 m2. Global gas market model. And, it’s, getting off the ground and, you know, the the people that are using it, are very happy with it. It’s really meeting their needs. And, you know, that’s what we wanted. You know, what we want to see in the end is, better energy decisions and policies made globally, because in that way, it’s going to benefit the most people. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s the idea.

David Blackmon [00:08:27] Well, we’ve had so many upsets, in the global system for delivery of natural gas since particularly since Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine. And, the blowing up of the Nord Stream one and two pipelines that took place and that kind of rejiggered everything in terms of where, where cargoes were going from the United States and from from the other exporting countries, with a major focus on Europe rather than Asian markets. But now we have the Houthis in the Red sea and, the disruption that’s causing in the shipping lanes for, for LNG and pretty much everything else trying to avoid the Red sea. And I guess having to go around the Cape of Africa to, to get to their markets. What, what kind of impacts is that having that you’re seeing, on the global LNG markets?

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:09:22] Well, you’ve, you’ve sort of thrown a bunch of stuff at me, right? Yeah. I mean, it’s true, though. I mean, it is, but, the, you know, the main let’s just start with the last thing first. Yeah. I mean, the major impact is really on Middle Eastern, gas supplies and LNG supplies to Europe, because previously, they’ve been able to travel from, let’s say, Qatar, in the Persian Gulf, around, Saudi Arabia, and into the Red sea, through the Suez Canal, through the Mediterranean, and then to market. But now, they’ve decided even the, you know, even the guitar. At first they were, you know, going to continue, but they’ve even decided that it’s too dangerous. Yeah. I mean, Argos, there were lots and lots of money. Yeah. So, it’s very important. So they have to go around the Cape of Good Hope. And Africa. Africa’s huge, by the way. If you look at a map. Europe. Africa. Is that some little thing? I mean, it’s right. So I did a calculation yesterday in preparation for this, call, and it the voyage is actually 75% longer, to get to Zeebrugge, Belgium, which is a major hub in Europe. By going around Africa rather than going through the Suez Canal. So you can imagine if you’re increasing, the distance, that means you’re increasing also the time that it takes. And so it’s ten, 15 days longer. It’s 75% longer in terms of time. And basically the cost of transportation is directly proportional, almost, you know, with time. So you’re almost doubling, you know, the, the transportation costs associated with those cargo. So that’s, that’s not in you know, that is big. I mean, that’s. So there are those things, we had a, you know, that’s more like a, geopolitical in a way, or, you know, something like, but, you know, we have a situation also that’s a little bit similar in Panama, which is, the lake, gap in, in, in Panama, is, suffering from, I guess, low rains for, for quite a while. It’s, it’s, depth is, is really low. And that means it’s harder to operate the Panama Canal. And so they’ve had to reduce the flow volume through the Panama Canal, which means that ships are waiting longer to get through again. You got that time lengthening and a lot of LNG, shipping, is, they’ve just decided instead of going through the Panama Canal, they’re going to go around the tip of South America. So it’s almost identical kind of a situation, you know, to what you you had, but probably even worse in terms of overall distance. So there you have a more natural phenomena, weather related phenomena. And it’s a persistent one. And, the the fact is that you can actually do that kind of modeling with our software. In other words, we can basically say, let’s cut off the, number, or the, the volume, the rate at which LNG tankers can flow through the Suez Canal or through the Panama Canal over a one month period, or a three month period or a 12 month period or whatever. And look at what you know, what the effect is going to be. And it’s, considerable in terms of, prices. Yeah. That, again, in Europe or, not so much in Asia, of course. And, you know, the Suez Canal cut off or the Red sea cut off is much, you know, worse really than. And then the cut off of or reduction in the Panama Canal. What would be even worse and really worse. And we’ve done this, study also. Something that pops up every once in a while is the potential for Iran, mining, the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah, yeah. Which is a narrow body of water, you know, between, the, Arabian Peninsula and Iran. And if that were to happen, I mean, and and cutter LNG was cut off total. I mean, that would have a huge effect. The, global market. Now, I don’t think it’s really high probability, you know, to give, you know, because the Iranians, I think, have too much to lose, themselves by all of this. But, you know, the point is that you can actually study this in advance and see what kind of impact that you possibly could, just why that.

David Blackmon [00:14:25] Actually happened once before, right back in the 1980s. And Ronald Reagan retaliated by sinking half of the Iranian Navy when they did it. So, yeah, I think they probably wouldn’t want to do that now again.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:14:39] Yeah, but there’s a little difference between Biden and Reagan as there is.

David Blackmon [00:14:43] Yes there is.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:14:45] So, do you mind if we just talk one or a little story?

David Blackmon [00:14:48] Yeah. I’m sorry I interrupted you there. Sorry. And.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:14:50] I was fine. Yeah. This is actually a pretty interesting story and reflects well on us, so I’m going to tell it, which is that, of course, in 2022, we had, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, that began that war. And then there were all the repercussions of that. But actually, you know, this is something that started even before, at the end of 2019, the transit agreement on Russian gas pipelines across Ukraine ended and had to be renegotiated and. You know, prior to that, there was through the various ways of getting Russian gas into Europe. There was about a 180,000,000,000m³ per day of natural gas was coming from Russia through, Eastern Europe to Western Europe. So, the Russians and Ukrainians haven’t been getting along for a long time now. And, lots of stuff has happened. But they did renegotiate an extension, a five year extension, which, by the way, ends at the end of 2024, which happens to be the year we’re in, to deliver 40 BCM, quite a bit less 40 bcm of gas per year across. Ukraine into Europe. Now, the strange thing is, while the war has been going on. Actually, that agreement has been actually pretty much.

David Blackmon [00:16:33] Delivering the gas. Yeah.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:16:34] And it’s like there has to be some kind of cooperation on the part of the Russians, the Ukrainians, to actually do that in some kind of agreement. Not to bomb the hell out of the pipeline.

David Blackmon [00:16:46] Right.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:16:47] Now. It’s the weirdest, weirdest thing. So in any case, it ends at the end of this, this year, and we don’t know what’s going to happen. It could be zero. You know, probably will be, you know, at the end of this year. But anyway, so there was a big reduction anyway at the beginning of 2020 and then we had Covid. Okay. At the end of, we had 20. Yeah. 2020. 2021. Okay, so the volumes didn’t actually match up to 40 BCM because demand was way down. In any case, 2022 comes and prices go crazy through the ceiling and everybody’s worried about $100, per million BTU gas in Europe and so forth and so on. Anyway, we start running our bottles, and it’s really weird because we were looking at our models and prices peaked out like in October, September, October and started coming down fast in the model. Now this is you know, we were at World Gas Conference, okay. And we could already see that this was starting to happen. I went to another conference, I think, in October or whatever, and I had to decide, am I going? Am I going to actually deliver these results? Everybody’s saying gas is going to, you know, go like this. And I’m saying it’s going to go like that. I decided to deliver the results anyway. And sure enough, that’s what happened.

David Blackmon [00:18:20] That’s exactly what happened.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:18:22] Yeah, exactly what happened. And so, you know, number one is that means, actually our models are pretty good. All right. You know, which is nice. And number two is it also speaks to, I think, the resilience of the market even globally. It’s I would say, you know, we haven’t really had a global market until the US started delivering a lot of LNG. Yeah. But you have the resilience of the market, including Darwin, when those Europeans actually want to get something that they can actually do it. And, and so they have and, you know, it’s worked out very well to the point where, you know, I’m looking and I’m saying, well, I don’t know that Russia and Ukraine have to make much of an agreement next year. I’m not sure that it’s going to be that much needed. So we we actually did a study where we say, okay, no more Russian gas, you know, flowing into Europe. Nothing on Nord Stream. There’s still one of those four pipelines is still intact. So theoretically, yeah. A certain amount of gas. But nothing through Ukraine, nothing through Belarus. Still, you know that through the south. Fine. But but that gas is only going to go to Turkey and Southeast Europe. It’s not going to go into Central Europe in this, in this approach and see what happens. And we see in the long run, you know, after a few years, it doesn’t matter. Prices are up just a little bit compared to what they would have been. But it’s almost like, well, why did you know? I mean, it’s it’s not good news for the Russians.

David Blackmon [00:19:57] No it’s not. Yeah. That’s terrible news.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:20:00] Oh. And what are you going to do? I mean, let’s say they win the Ukraine war or the Ukraine gets in, or if they work a piece or whatever, you think they’re going to go back to business as usual in Europe? I don’t think so.

David Blackmon [00:20:13] Yeah. They won’t. They shouldn’t need to. Now, we’ve had this decision by the white House, which I think is probably been a little overblown in the media. To delay the permitting process for LNG, additional US LNG capacity export. Through the, you know, through the after the elections over. And, you know, I slammed it just because it’s obviously a purely politically motivated thing, but but in terms of really having a major impact on America’s ability to remain a reliable trading partner in the LNG space, assuming that the permitting processes resume after the election, that’s not really going to have a real major impact on, the industry’s ability to keep delivering LNG to Europe. Right?

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:21:07] I. I honestly think you’re right. I don’t think it’s going to have a major impact. Although I have to say, we haven’t actually run this scenario yet. Okay, okay. I’m busy doing some other things, so. But we intend to. Believe me, we do it. And it’s very easy, really. All you have to do is, you know, make some assumptions. Reasonable assumptions about delays on the beginning, say the startup dates of some new projects or just cancel the projects because some of them will be canceled. You know, some of the some of these developers are hanging by a thread, right now already. I’m not going to name names, but, you know, you could probably know which ones. And they, you know, they, you know, projects look good. Actually progress was made in terms of getting sponsors and so forth, and then nothing happened. And then you have others that are, of course, doing well. And, and, you know, I think the major impact would be, existing developers who have maybe projects either on the drawing boards or actually projects that are already started if they are not restricted by the Biden administration from continuing, you know, with these current projects, existing exporters, then then actually they’re going to benefit some down because these are their prime. It’s a competitive thing. You know, the, the new guys in town are not going to play the game, or they’re going to be late to the game. And by that time, you know, the, contracts may be made more with Qatar or other, East Asia, I mean, East, Africa, Southeast Africa or other places. But, you know, even thinking about all of these things, you know, you look at the rest of the world and, and you could say, well, you know, there’s a lot of uncertainty in America because the current administration is certainly, you know, very anti fossil fuel and, and if the administration were to change, we know that, for example, Trump would be very pro energy and pro LNG and so forth. So that could change things. But still, even with all that, I think the US is still. The most reliable. Maybe next to cutter. You know, cutter is not going to let any of this, geopolitical stuff interfere with their business. But, you know, even, like Southeast Africa, I mean, they’ve had so much, you know, they’ve got plenty of resource, but.

David Blackmon [00:23:46] You know, do from.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:23:48] You know, getting that off the ground. And so, you know, Southeast Asia, you know, there are some projects, but they’re kind of played out and they’re going to end up being more important, more LNG strangely, in their I said, Southeast Asia, I meant more like, you know, Indonesia and Malaysia. Yeah. Yeah. Southeast Asia could grow, you know, as in terms of market. You know, Vietnam and the Philippines have already made some commitments. But they’re. You know, relatively small. You know, but but it’s good. You know, it’s good to kind of differentiate your market so that it’s not just all the big players, but you start getting the others in there, too. So other than China as the. Dragon in the room, you know? Yeah, in the elephant in the room. And if you had all of South Asia, there’s a huge potential in South Asia, you know, for LNG. And, it’s starting to happen. And the LNG market could grow, but. It has to be affordable.

David Blackmon [00:24:55] Right?

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:24:56] And you just can’t. You know, I mean, no, no doubt producers would like to have high prices and so forth, but it’s like, I think you have to be satisfied with producing efficiently getting your, and transporting efficiently, operating efficiently, and take a reasonable rate of return on your investment.

David Blackmon [00:25:19] Yeah.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:25:20] But, you know, otherwise, honestly, even our models show, you know, there’s limited overall, there’s limited growth in the overall LNG market unless you can get to that point. So, you know, potentially with the number of people that are in Africa, you know, that’s also potentially a future market. But it’s a ways away. And, if you if you would, listen to African leader energy leaders like Isaac and some others. You know, they are promoting something which I think is very much, correct, which is, you know, we don’t want to be, forever raw material suppliers to the rest of the world and to the Western world and China. We don’t want to do that and continue to be, undeveloped, continue to be poor. We don’t want that. And we don’t want to just be markets for the West, either. We have resources ourselves. What we should be doing is developing our own resources for our own development. And the West shouldn’t be telling us that we can’t do it because it’s not wind and solar. You know and you know, he’s he’s made and others have made very strong arguments. I agree with him. But, you know, in terms of the big picture, you know, what that would mean is actually if if they do develop, go on that development path and they actually develop the, their gas resources for their own, economic, welfare and so forth, then they’re not going to need LNG, either from United States or from other places, because they’ve got plenty of themselves. So anyway, bottom line, I think we’re pretty much stuck with Asia. South America is potentially also a bit of a market, but it’s always very quixotic, you know, and drive viable.

David Blackmon [00:27:21] So unstable.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:27:22] Yeah. So, anyway, those are sort of big picture, my view on this whole thing. And, thanks for asking that question about Russia, because it’s really, you know, fascinating.

David Blackmon [00:27:32] Here it is. It’s it’s amazing. Before we wrap up, we’re getting short of time, but I want to also touch, on the the U.S. domestic delivery system for natural gas. Which, of course, in recent years has been, so geared to deliver gas to the, LNG export facilities, in some parts of the country. What are you seeing there? Just in terms of of needs, with the infrastructure, in the US delivery system in the, the next several years.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:28:05] Well, I think, you know, people are still talking about, LNG and more, infrastructure for LNG. And this is primarily in Texas and Louisiana. Right. The good news is that, intrastate pipelines don’t have to get for approval.

David Blackmon [00:28:23] Yes. Okay.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:28:25] So they don’t have to get, you know, the Biden administration to agree. They do have to get people in Austin to agree, and in Louisiana to agree. But, you know, traditionally, that, you know, even though there’s starting to be pushback and Austin is actually a pretty liberal city. But still, you can go around Austin, you know, there you can plenty of land in Texas and, you know, the. You’re right. And there’s plenty of gas in the Permian and various other, you know, places. So I, I don’t really see an interstate issue so much, but from an interstate issue, for sure. There’s a lot more resistance than there ever was in the past. And, rubber stamping, these projects, anymore and certainly under the Biden administration or any administration that is going to be largely influenced by, the Greens, then it’s going to be difficult. There are certain places where you just can’t, you know, it’s like State of New York. You can’t, I mean, even if New England wanted more gas, you’re not going to get a pipeline through New York, you know? So I there’s there’s lots of issues that we can discuss that are very interesting. David. Maybe maybe today’s not the right time. Maybe next.

David Blackmon [00:29:51] Time. Yes. Exactly.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:29:54] I wouldn’t say I wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t be worried about. That is a major issue at this point.

David Blackmon [00:29:59] Good. Well, great. That’s good news. So let’s, let’s wrap up. Just tell everyone how they can get in touch with RBAC. We, our audience is, you know, made up largely of executives in the industries itself, in the energy space. So there may be people wanting to get in touch with you, let everyone know how they can get in touch with you and, follow what our backs are doing.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:30:24] Okay. Well, great. Well, I mean, it’s really simple. It’s just RBAC.com or WWW dot RBAC dot com is our website. All the contact information is on that. So I always called it our back. Yeah. And then all of a sudden we started hearing people call it our back. And so we decided not to correct him. I mean, okay, that’s what they call us. So. Okay. So RBAC com, RBAC com and, the contact information is there. Plus, if you’re an executive and you don’t want to wade through the, technical discussions or whatever, you can send your, your technical guys and they can review the contents of the website. Although it’s actually pretty interesting, to be honest with you. And we’d be happy if anybody, you know, we’re, you know, we we’ve had a policy for a very long time, David, that, you know, we talked with folks and, you know, we tell them the truth. You know, what the what are they? And in terms of what they’re trying to solve, okay. And if they’re trying to solve a problem that we don’t address and our systems don’t address that, we, you know, we’re we’re pretty straight with them. We’re not like a consulting company that, you know, can do anything. You know, if you’ve been part of a consulting company, you know, it’s like if somebody is going to pay money, we can do it.

David Blackmon [00:31:48] Right? Yeah. What do you really can or not? You’re going to try?

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:31:52] Yeah. Yeah, we’ll figure it out. But we’re not that way. We do. You know, we’ve got very specific products with very specific goals. I think we do a really good job of supporting our customers were well known for that. And, you know, we want our customers in the end, you know, the bigger goal is our contribution to the United States and to humanity, if you will, is to try to help people make better decisions about something that’s really important, which is energy. So so that’s it.

David Blackmon [00:32:25] And that gets harder and harder to do as things become increasingly complex over time. It’s amazing how much more complex the complexity advances. You know, just year over year. It’s incredible. Anyway.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:32:39] That’s true. That is true. And there, you know, there’s always good signs and there’s good developments. And, you know, I mean, honestly, I mean, I don’t I don’t really know truthfully the truth or, you know, the degree of truth and that carbon dioxide is bad for our you know, I’ve heard of both sides and, but, on the other hand, if we had some real breakthroughs in some, nuclear fusion or something like that where our electricity could be produced, reliably on demand, not by solar power, but more than 50% of the time or wind. Again, same thing, but actually reliably, without having to burn stuff. I would say, okay, let me if you could do it safely and you can do it efficiently and so forth. Well, I think that’s a great future. And to be honest with you, I think we started looking longer term. We have to go that way and. Right.

David Blackmon [00:33:45] Well, eventually you’re not going to have a choice eventually. Yeah.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:33:50] That’s right. But here we are now. And if you want reliable energy, I’m sorry, whether you like it or not. You know, fossil fuels are, basically the only reliable energy that we have planet wide. You know, at this point. So, so, anyway, I’m in it. You know, I’m. I wasn’t always this way, David. I mean, I was a student once, too, you know? So, I mean, I, I hated fossil fuels when I was a student, but, you know, as you learn more and more and more, I wasn’t in Texas, by the way. So as you learn more and more and more, you see. You okay? Well, now I, I’m getting I’m understanding. You know what? What’s the reason and rationale? And by the way, they’re not all devils that are working, you know, in this, you know, these are actually good people trying to do their jobs. So anyway, now we’re getting a little philosophy. Sorry about.

David Blackmon [00:34:45] Well, we’ll do we’ll do another we’ll do a follow up on this and talk philosophy. That’ll be good. Okay. I, you know, I think could have a really great discussion on philosophy about energy.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:34:57] We’d love to. We’d love to. Thank you.

David Blackmon [00:34:59]  Thank you so much. Yeah. Well thank you. Really appreciate. This has been fantastic. I’ve learned a lot in this discussion, and, that’s always a great thing. That’s always what I’m trying to do with these, with these, episodes. So I really appreciate it.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:35:14] Well, you’re welcome. And and, by the way, I appreciate your articles. Do I read them every time it says David Blackmon, I read it.

David Blackmon [00:35:21] Well, yeah, I get myself in trouble sometimes, but, but, there’s never any shortage of things to write about.

Dr. Robert Brooks [00:35:28] That’s true. Okay. Well, thanks.

David Blackmon [00:35:31] All right. Well, thank you. And and thanks to our audience for joining us today. Thanks to the sandstone Group for hosting our podcast and to our extraordinary producer, Eric Parel. I’m David Blackmon, signing off for now.