Trump’s looming energy crisis (featuring Mr. Global)

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Find Out podcast, episode 33.

We have a great guest today,

an expert in the oil and gas field, probably the most well-known oil and gas expert on TikTok, that's for sure, with almost a million followers.

But he's also had over 33 years in the business, and he's going to tell us all about Trump's plans for energy and whether we're going to make America great again for energy or if we're going backwards.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is

just stop right there.

Episode over.

No, we don't even have to bring him on.

Ladies and gentlemen, Matt Randolph, otherwise known as Mr.

Global, is joining us today.

Mr.

Global, it is great to have you.

Man, I'm excited to be here.

I've been excited to be here.

Ready to do this.

Great, great, great.

So

Donald Trump has offered or has said that he is going to usher in a new era of energy independence in this country by drill, baby, drilling.

He talks about it all the time.

Tell us, what do you think about that?

Is he making America great and making us energy independent so we don't have to get oil from anybody else?

I mean, has it already happened?

No, no, no, no.

That's not a thing.

He's

advocating our energy independence to OPEC, basically, on his third day in office, was the first time he asked OPEC to increase production.

So, no, we're not.

He is, nothing he claimed about energy and oil and drill, baby, drill is a thing that's happening in any way, shape, or form.

We've lost, I believe, 72 rigs to date, year to date at this point.

Oil prices, EIA predicted yesterday, oil prices are going to go deep in the tank.

It's going to be really bad.

So we're on the front end of what's likely about to be a huge oil market crash, which is going to erase all of the progress this country has made towards energy independence in the last 20 years.

That's basically what's about to happen.

So I wrote a question, though.

To the average person,

so I'm an idiot.

How is this going to change my life?

Right, exactly.

That's exactly the question.

So like, if the oil market does crash, how does the average person get affected by that?

So, you know, for the average person in America, they're going to be happy because they're going to have, you know, really low gas prices.

Oh,

that's what I was worried about.

That's not good.

That's great.

But the problem is, yeah.

The problem is that's very temporary because

we are handing more control back to OPEC.

So moving forward, whenever they decide, decide they can simply cut production and we will go back to five, six, seven dollar, you know, whatever gas when they decide they want to make their money again.

So that this is the problem with abdicating that control, with handing that back to OPEC.

Now they get to decide.

And not that they didn't have a lot of influence always in what happened here, but we had regained some of that control.

We had a lot of leverage with our production.

You know what I mean?

We're about to lose that.

We're about to lose all of that.

And

so, yeah, that's it.

You know, some people will think it's great, but oil and gas is, I believe, still about 7.5%

of our GDP.

Yeah.

And there's going to be a lot of job losses.

And those are very high-paying jobs that we're going to be losing,

you know, probably $150 a year on average.

$150,000 a year.

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

I'm guessing, but it's right around there somewhere.

Yeah.

And how many jobs are we talking about here, generally speaking?

Well, it's really hard to say because over the last five years, the labor force in the industry has already shrunk significantly due to AI and efficiency and technology.

And so

it's hard to say, but

it could easily, easily be 100,000 jobs.

Easily.

It could easily be

and that's across all sectors.

You have to keep in mind, for every oil and gas job that's created, you create two and a half other jobs that support the industry, you know, outside the industry.

So it does have a huge ripple effect in manufacturing.

Steel.

Steel is huge for the oil and gas industry.

So when that industry goes down, it takes a lot of other industries down with it.

So is that the angle that, because I'm certain that half of the political spectrum is going to paint this as a good thing that, you know, gas is below $1.50 a gallon.

Is that the angle that you're going to fight that with?

Is

look at all the jobs that are lost?

Well, I'm not going to necessarily fight it.

I'm just going to say this is what's happening.

And that's why I think people like your content is that you're so

non-partisan.

But gas won't be under $1.50 a gallon.

It's not going to be that cheap.

How much do you think it'll go down?

Well, so for comparison, and plus, you got to keep in mind that inflation exists in the industrial marketplace as well.

So, you know, during COVID, when oil was, oh, it even went negative, but let's say when it was around $25 a barrel, the national average got down to $1.87.

We're not going to get there.

I don't think the national average goes below two.

Even at his wildest lies, it still won't beat it because he's already claiming that it's below two.

Right.

Yeah, even in the most devastating period for the industry, it won't be as cheap as he says says it is already.

That is exactly right.

Well, right.

I think your point that, like, yes, we've had $25

a barrel oil in the past, but

which you would think, oh, that's cheap to drive, but it was also during a period in which the entire economy essentially was driving and no one was driving.

So like low gas prices are great in theory, but they're also, as you're sort of pointing out, is a signal to a much larger problem, which is, you know, six-figure job losses on jobs that average in the six-figures, which then you just take that money out of the economy.

That means they're not buying the groceries that they normally do.

You know, this

we've been in this like world of inflation for a long time.

So people are excited for prices to go down.

But prices go down for a reason.

And they are sometimes good.

But in this particular case, it sounds like it is extra bad because it's also going to accompany a lot of job losses, which are going to put strains on the economy that is already, many people are saying that we are either in a recession or getting close to one.

And this is just going to exacerbate that problem.

Yeah, I remember in the in the Great Recession,

pulling up and I was fresh out of college and economic anxiety, job losses, it was not good.

This would have been like early 20, early 2009, I think.

I remember pulling up at the pump and gas for the first time in like 10 years had been, it was like below a dollar fifty a gallon i think it was like a dollar 29 and i was like well at least gas is cheap because everything else is completely fucked so yes let's remember i know a recession's coming fucking arizona tea says they've got they're gonna have to go above 99 cents oh there you go that's the ultimate market that's the ultimate one yeah but the savings in your gas will offset the cost of the can when you go into the gas station and buy their

well i have a question though like i in my not that trump is strategic in any any of this stuff, but is Trump's strategy here you think, hey, I could just tout low gas prices.

Like, I don't care what happens to the industry long term.

I don't care that in 10 years this is going to be a disaster.

I want to be able to sell low gas prices right now to make me look good and to have the midterms look good for Republicans.

Like, do you think that's why he's doing this?

Or are there other elements that we're not seeing as to why he's doing this?

Well, certainly.

And, you know, it's

for me to try to pontificate on what Donald Trump is thinking is impossible.

But

the claim will be, it'll be to cripple Russia, right, in the Ukraine war.

That has been his strategy, supposedly,

is to bring oil prices down, that it cripples Russia's economy.

And then, you know, plus low gas prices will obviously be good for the election.

But the real issue I have with it is that it is completely antithetical to any free market principles to ask foreign nation states to compete with U.S.

businesses and to put them out of business, essentially.

Like that is at its heart what he is doing.

Right.

U.S.

companies.

Well, he's America first, though, remember?

Well, you know, even the largest U.S.

oil companies, as rich and powerful and greedy and evil as they are, they can't compete with a nation state.

You know what I mean?

So to get OPEC to flood the market, which is exactly what's happening, and to sink a lot of companies in the process is just,

it's about as anti-American as you can get.

And he did the exact same thing in his first term, which was why I told everybody

two years ago, we were never going to drill, baby, drill.

That's not a thing that's ever happened under Donald Trump.

So

I've worked at the, in the Obama administration, I was at the Interior Department, which deals with all of the leasing of oil and gas, both onshore and offshore on public lands.

And we had something that I wasn't necessarily a huge favor of, which was the all of the above energy approach.

And then Joe Biden sort of took probably a more progressive turn on that.

But still, you know, they were increasing the amount of production onshore and in the waters off of the United States.

So a lot of people, Trump in particular, were saying that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris destroyed energy production in this country.

Barack Obama destroyed energy production in this country.

Can you set the record straight on their record as far as domestic energy production, which we can include renewables as well?

Did they destroy the industry?

No, we became more energy independent than ever under Biden for sure.

So energy is measured in BTUs, and that's how we do it.

So I think when Donald Trump left office, we were

We were about one quadrillion BTUs net.

So we produced produced a quadrillion BTUs more energy than we consumed in the United States.

When Joe Biden left office, we were producing nine quadrillion BTUs more of energy than when he left, than when he came in.

So we expanded.

In four years?

In four years.

And a lot of that, a lot of that was due to renewables.

A lot of that was due to natural gas production.

And of course, we had record oil production.

And when you measure energy independence, you measure every single form of energy.

It's not just oil and gas.

And energy independence has nothing to do with the price of gasoline or the price of anything.

It's just how much do you consume?

How much do you produce?

Wasn't there more domestic oil production during Biden's administration too, though?

Like, didn't he have the peak ahead of where Trump was at his highest point in his first term?

Yeah, 2023 set a record.

2024 set a record.

2025 will actually set a record too, but that record will occur while oil production is declining.

And

the reason 2025 is going to set a record is because

in the early months of 25, we produce so much more than we did in the early months of 24.

You see what I mean?

We were at our peak.

When Joe Biden left office, we were at our peak oil production.

So Donald Trump gets handed this peak oil production for the first quarter of his presidency.

It's really hard to not break the record when you have that big of a head start.

It's like that's the ultimate Trump situation.

Everything he does, he just walks right into it.

48 months of consecutive job growth, and within six months, he's absolutely shitting the bed and he's going to come out.

So, yeah, but look at January and February.

Yeah, exactly.

It was, I always compare it to black unemployment.

When Donald Trump came into office, I think Obama had lowered black unemployment.

I don't know the exact number.

It's like six or 7%.

He comes in, lowers it by like another half a percent, and he's the black, you know, champion because he lowered it this much more, literally born a foot away from home plate.

So he just takes credit for everything.

It's ridiculous.

I'm curious too, like his,

some of my like the MAGA people in my life, their whole thing is like, well, when we get energy prices down, it's going to drastically lower the price of everything because supply chain and all that shit.

I know that is like there's a granule of truth in that, but how much do you think overall prices of all goods within the supply chain can actually be affected by what's coming with OPEC?

Do you think you can see significant price reductions, or do you think there's really not going to be much of a difference?

So, gasoline prices will drop,

home heating prices will increase drastically.

Home gas for utilities

and electricity will both increase drastically.

All of the other stuff,

it's not, it's not going to do anything.

Um, just because a product is cheaper to deliver doesn't mean you get to buy it cheaper.

They're just

going to put that money in their pockets, so it's probably going to offset the tariffs, yeah.

Yeah,

some company saves a few grand on shipping a truckload of something somewhere.

That's not, you don't get that, like,

they're not going to pass the 50 cents to you or whatever.

Energy goes down by five percent, and tariffs go up by 18 percent, and

somebody comes out ahead and his name is Donald.

Yeah, so

can you explain?

So you said the gas prices will go down, but home heating will go up.

Yeah.

Why are some going down and some going up?

So one of the big drivers of natural gas production in the United States is what we call associated gas.

So you have multiple types of wells in the United States.

You have oil wells and you have gas wells.

Oil wells produce a fairly significant amount of natural gas themselves too, and we call that associated gas.

So when oil production starts declining rapidly, that means that natural gas production will decline because we'll see big declines in associated gas production, mainly out of West Texas and the Bakken.

So we will actually see natural gas production decline.

while natural gas demand is climbing and while electricity demand is climbing.

So I would expect natural gas prices to rise, home heating bills to rise, and electricity bills to continue rising.

Now, I have a question, though.

So I read, I think it was on RFK's blog, that if you are getting low on,

if you don't, if you need to heat your house and

heating oil is too expensive,

but gas is cheap.

Can you just pull your car in, prop the door open?

I think that's the way you're supposed to do it.

Run the car and let that heat, because cars get hot, guys.

like several

open the oven too kerosene i think is also an alternative a good alternative absolutely just you have to keep the window

really tight

i was actually thinking that the rfk was going to propose putting all the vaccines into the heating systems because he doesn't want people to have their flammable burn them all up you could you could burn books in your driveway and burn vaccines on your patio and then you get the surround heating and then nobody's burning oil guys we're revolutionary climate change slow i I think we figured it out.

We get it, guys.

Can we publish this on Forbes?

Will they let us publish this?

Yeah, can you write this up for us?

Top five hacks for Donald Trump's editors.

I don't know how long it'll stay up, but I can certainly publish it.

It's all right.

I already put it out on Timu Twitter, so we're good.

So part of what I'm so glad that you're on here for is to help dispel some of these myths that I actually think Democrats have done a poor job of fighting back.

Absolutely have.

And one of them, one of them is,

surprising, yeah.

One of them is, you know, if we, if oil companies, what Trump and Republicans say is that Democrats have been a hindrance to the drill, baby, drill, they're not giving us permits.

And when I was at the Interior Department, I think there was somewhere in the neighborhood of, there were, I thought it was tens of thousands of unused permits.

So can we talk a little bit about this?

These energy companies saying that they didn't have the ability to drill in the United States.

Is there any truth to that

at all?

No.

Or no.

No.

Okay.

No.

Have you ever played the game Risk, the old board games?

It's a great game.

So oil companies try to control as much land as possible, not necessarily because they want to drill on it, but because they don't want anyone else drilling on it, right?

Right.

So when you're talking about all these outstanding permits on

BLM land,

It's because they're literally playing a real life game of risk with our public lands.

They're securing as much acreage as possible just to have it

so they can compete in the space and other companies can't come in.

People don't realize that oil companies compete against each other just like

Walmart and Target.

They really do.

They're not competing over the products they sell.

They're competing over contracts they can secure.

They're competing over acreage.

It's more of a two countries competing with each other than it is two companies, but they absolutely compete with each other.

And that's what those permits are.

And Biden introduced a use it or lose it system early on in his presidency, where if you secured a permit, on BLM land, you had so much time to use it or you would lose it.

And that was an attempt to counteract what oil companies were doing because they would secure these leases and with never had any, they would get them cheap too,

never had any intent to do anything with them.

And then they would just renew them every time they would expire and they would just keep them forever.

And one of the things that, sorry, this is an important one.

One of the things that I don't think people understand is how much are the oil companies purchasing these permits for, basically like buying our public lands, essentially?

The leases or the permits?

It really depends.

Yeah, the permits are cheap.

I haven't looked recently.

I think a permit

is,

I think it's $10,000,

if I remember correctly.

That's it?

Jesus.

With their billions in profits.

That's like a penny.

Yeah.

It's literal pennies on the dollar.

Yeah, it is.

And in addition to that, the royalties that oil companies were paying on BLM land back to the U.S.

Treasury

were the same royalties they were paying in 1920.

The U.S.

taxpayer was receiving a smaller royalty for minerals on public land than any other mineral owner in the entire country.

So the average is somewhere around 18 to 20 percent.

The U.S.

taxpayer was getting 12 and a half percent.

And, you know, when Joe Biden said, hey, we need to come in, we need to bring this up to industry averages.

It's basically what he was doing, you know, bring these royalties up to the average that, you know, across the industry.

And the Republicans lost their minds.

And you would have thought that nobody was ever going to drill in the United States again simply because we were trying to ensure that the U.S.,

yeah, the U.S.

taxpayer is getting the same thing that the billionaire that owns millions of acres of minerals gets.

Yeah, that was pretty controversial as well.

Well, and that's a lower, and that is a lower tax rate than the average American taxpayer pays.

So like they were actually getting a huge benefit from that.

And then tell the audience, what would, so they all say every time this happens, they all say that's going to cause gas prices to go up.

Do you think that what would the effect of going from 12 and a half percent to 18 percent have on the price at the pump?

Zero.

Average person even notice it?

Zero.

Zero.

It would have the same amount of effect the Keystone Pipeline had.

Absolutely zero.

Okay, let's, I want to talk about this for a second because I would also

come into my feed, or I've seen it on my feed, which you must see at times a billion.

I don't know how you possibly deal with it.

Like how, like, all these people who are like, now that Donald Trump's here, the Keystone Pipeline can be built.

Oil's gonna flow.

Which it, correct me if I'm wrong, the pipe, the pipeline was already built.

And it was the, there was like an an extension through the United States in which they would ship the gas to Asia, right?

Wasn't that essentially what it was?

Yeah, Excel was, I believe, phase four of the total Keystone project, but the original Keystone pipeline is built and running.

Yeah.

That's a good thing.

And like, so when Biden canceled it, not a job was lost, right?

Because it was like an extension.

It was eight, I believe it was 8% complete.

It's not accurate to say not a job was lost.

There was workers

in the construction.

There were contract workers, pipeliners.

But the funny thing about the Keystone, you know, when the original Keystone opened under Barack Obama, you can literally look, and this wasn't caused by the Keystone opening, but it is

indicative of what

when the original Keystone opened, gas prices rose.

and stayed high for four years, over a dollar a gallon more than they were before the Keystone was finished.

And it has nothing to do with the Keystone, but it's just proof that a single pipeline anywhere in the world has no impact on global oil markets or gas prices.

It's just not a thing.

Yeah, that's interesting.

So, all this stuff Biden did, did we see any like real-world benefit of these things working?

Like, I think they all sound like smart ideas, especially the like, you know, use it or lose it thing.

Did that actually have an impact on the market, or was it just not enough time to really affect it?

Uh, the use it or lose it was never implemented.

And so, wonderful.

one of the things,

one of the issues that I had with Joe Biden, and

I'm a supporter of, you know, all energy, right?

And

I feel like the market will drive us where we need to go.

I told you guys yesterday solar is going to decimate everything, and I still believe that.

I think fossil fuels will be phased out by the market.

But one of the issues that I had with Joe Biden and his energy policies, the things he did that were supposedly anti-oil were very ceremonial in nature they weren't things that had any real boots on the ground type impact you know you ban drilling somewhere where nobody's drilling you you you pass a policy that has no impact on nothing like and he did this very strategically and politically right so if he did something

good for renewable energy,

then he would have to do something that looked good for oil and gas or vice versa.

If he did something that wasn't positive for renewable energy, like if he approved the Willow Project, right?

In a smaller scope, he did allow that to go through.

But he was always

anytime there would be an announcement about fossil fuels or any policy that he did with fossil fuels, either the next day or the day before, right around, there would be some policy announcement about renewables.

And he did this his whole presidency.

But a lot of the things that Joe Biden did were more, I felt like it was more pandering to voters than it was having an actual impact.

That's very Joe Biden.

The ban on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico,

it was already banned.

You know, Trump had had it.

Gulf of America.

Stop it.

So Trump had banned drilling in the Gulf.

until 2028.

And Joe Biden comes in and bans drilling in the Gulf.

It had already been banned until 2028.

And I felt like, and I'm not a political strategist by any means, but I felt like all he did was give them more ammo against him to do something that meant nothing because it was already banned.

Does that make sense?

And like I said,

I'm not a political strategist, but everyone in the country was freaking out because Joe Biden banned drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, I think one thing that people don't understand is that, you know, who controls those states around the Gulf of Mexico, right?

They're all red states.

So there is this drill, baby, drill narrative within the Republican circles, but it's also very NIMBY as well.

Like Governor DeSantis doesn't want his beaches covered, even though he's not doing anything about climate change, but like he doesn't want his beaches covered in oil.

Right.

Or Louisiana or Mississippi, Arkansas, you know, all of those states, Alabama, Texas, all of them don't.

don't want it.

So it's really interesting because they all know how dangerous some of this is, and yet they push it in other places as long as it doesn't affect them.

But um, I do want to talk to you about renewables because obviously we've talked a lot about oil and gas, and as a left-leaning podcast, our listeners are probably like, Oh my god, what are you talking about?

I got a question.

Go ahead, Luke.

You start.

Why is he so afraid of windmills?

They cause cancer.

I just don't get it.

I don't see it.

5G birds.

Something.

Have you seen what has happened to the whale population in Ohio?

It is like

it is on its last legs.

Like, we're about to lose all the whales, especially around the Toledo area is big.

The Toledo area.

The Toledo whale.

Yeah.

The great white, man.

The famous Great Lakes whales.

Yes, they are very endangered for sure.

So, the biggest complaint I hear from conservatives about wind turbines, and people hate it when I say wind turbines.

They want me to say turbines,

but I'm from Oklahoma.

Anyway,

is that they're ugly.

Yeah.

They're ugly.

I don't like,

yeah.

I mean, I think

in many instances, they can be beautiful, depending on the backdrop and the scenery and everything.

Right.

But I've never looked at a wind turbine and thought, oh, that's gross.

Like, what?

So, so I have a genuine, I have a genuine concern about turbines.

If you have too many turbines in one area and they're all spinning, does it risk speeding up the rotation of the earth?

Because there's,

I think, because it's like there, you can't have that many fans in one spot.

Like, it's just science.

I got an idea.

We'll use the wind turbines to blow away the hurricanes.

That's correct to do that, right?

They wanted to use fans in Florida to blow a hurricane away.

Did he really want to do a nuclear bomb?

He wanted to,

yeah, nuclear bumps.

I mean, either that one.

It wasn't both.

It was either nuclear bomb, the hurricane bomb.

Okay, everybody turn their fans on and turn the fans at the point, put them on the beach.

Take your box fans out.

Like we're going.

A lot of extension cords, like really long extension cords to get them on the beach.

so theoretically it could it could speed up the rotation of the earth if it was in fact round which we know it's not so it doesn't speed up which is true it doesn't speed up more of a

situation right

yeah it speeds up the the rate of speed which we travel the sun because it's flat so next year you might fold the paper though 362 days next year instead of 365

we're probably gonna go flying off

right?

There's that billionaire who's spending like $2 million a year to keep himself young or whatever it is by injecting God knows what, but we just need to turn all the fans in one direction and it will solve the problem.

Is it true that Donald Trump hates windmills or wind turbines because of

some projects in Scotland next to his golf courses?

Because that was my understanding of why he hated it so much.

He's definitely had a lot of terrible things to say about wind turbines in Scotland.

That is absolutely true.

Okay, but we're going to ask you right now, Mr.

Global, do windmills cause cancer?

No.

No.

Great.

Do they speed up the rotation of the earth if the earth is round?

No.

Can you use wind turbines to stop a hurricane?

Not yet.

Okay.

All right.

I think we've covered all of the things.

Okay, so, all right.

Can you use the wind turbines to power the fans to stop the hurricane?

It's like it's an indirect thing.

That's why you had to pause.

Sorry, I have a question.

because

we

come on, be serious, you guys.

God damn it.

Fuck.

Exports and tariffs.

Like, this is something that Biden just didn't ever talk about.

But I know for a fact, because I think I've watched enough of your videos that we've exported and I went and looked it up so that I don't say something that makes me sound like an idiot.

But we export

to make me sound like an idiot.

No, to make me sound like an idiot.

We exported more millions of barrels of oil under Biden.

I'm looking at the numbers right now, ranging from like 100, like 90 to 130, 140 million barrels a month for his entire presidency, compared to, you know,

20 to 60,000, 80,000 a month under Trump's first term.

What is going to happen?

Now that he's injected tariffs and now that there's this massive trade war, he's claiming that the trade deficit with the world is the greatest, like it's an emergency.

It's a fucking economic emergency is what he's actually claimed.

And yet he started the trade war, which now risks

one of our largest exports.

Yeah.

So first of all, if you look at the amount of oil we export today, it is the exact same amount.

of how much we have increased oil production since 2016.

So what that means,

and if you remember what happened in 2016, that's when we lifted the 40-year export ban, right?

So we were producing a certain amount of oil.

I think it was around 8, 9 million barrels a day.

And then we lifted the export ban.

Every single drop of oil we produced, in addition to what we were producing then, has all been exported.

We have not retained a drop of that oil.

100% of it's been exported.

So

that's another thing where you're like, okay, why is energy independence that important if we're just exporting it?

Of course, there's like geopolitical implications to that.

But as far as

I've never gotten any clarity on how the tariffs actually impact oil and natural gas, we don't know, honestly, what is tariffed and what's not for a lot of things at this point.

By design, I think.

Because every other day it changes.

I was even trying to research how tariffs could be impacting home electricity prices and electricity prices, like in the Northeast Corridor, where where they get a lot of their electricity from Canada.

Even the companies in Canada are like, we have no idea what's tariffed and what's not.

We don't even, you know, and the companies in the United States are like, we don't know.

Like, do we pay this?

Do we not?

Like, nobody knows what's going on.

So

it's safe for the economy when nobody knows what's going on.

Uncertainty is crazy.

When it comes to gas prices, people have asked me for a long time: hey, you know, when oil was $70, you know, 10 years ago, gas was $2.

And now when oil is $70, gas is $3.

Why is that?

And they think the oil companies are gouging them.

And what's happening is how much gasoline and refined fuels we're exporting out of the country.

That's what's happening, right?

How much gasoline are we sending to other countries?

How much diesel?

That's keeping our supplies in the United States lower and driving up those prices.

So

I guess you could make the argument that it's a form of price inflation in the United States by, you know, purposefully exporting to more lucrative markets.

But that's what's causing it, is all of these exports.

And I'm not opposed to exports

at all, but I am opposed to exports when they start having a very negative impact on U.S.

consumers.

And so that's what I'm concerned about with LNG.

That's what I was when gas prices were $5 under Joe Biden.

I wrote a letter to Senator James Langford and said, hey, we need a trigger law in place that when the national national average price of gas hits a certain number, those exports have to be reduced for a specific

days and prices have to stay at a certain level for a certain period of time.

And then the trick, it would just be a trigger law.

And I couldn't believe he actually responded to me.

He called me on the phone.

I'm driving down the highway.

I was like, hey, this is Senator James Lankford.

I'm like, what the hell?

That's a pretty good impersonation.

He was like, he really appreciated it.

He thought it was a great idea.

And it was, they had discussed doing that, just in a different sort of form, but doing something similar to that.

But what happened is what always happened as soon as gas prices started dropping, they just forgot about it.

Because

we don't fix things until they're on top of us and destroying us, right?

We tasked with the fact that we're doing the house is on fire first.

Yeah.

When the house is on fire, that's when we put water on it instead of installing sprinklers to begin with, right?

But yeah, so nothing ever came of that but that's what i'm looking at like

i i'm i'm looking at like india china i i don't i'm not i'm not you um but looking at where the world gets its oil they're they're buying more from us than ever before uh and and you look at these biggest the biggest developed nations um the in terms of growth rate if we start a trade war with everybody and we add tariffs to everything and they retaliate against one of our largest exports, which

besides like education is energy.

That's going to push these growth markets elsewhere.

And I know India is looking at ramping up their consumption of oil from Russia, which is going to strengthen Russia and hurt the United States at the same time.

I mean,

how is this making America great?

How is this fixing the tariffs?

How is this fixing the trade war or the deficit?

He's making everything worse.

It's almost like he has no plan and he just wakes up and reacts to whatever's in front of him.

I think you know peter navarro

said the word terrorist

you know i i honestly don't think he has a clue what he's doing uh india has been ramping up their purchases of russian oil for quite some time i think last month they got up to two million barrels a day china has increased their purchases and it's because it's cheap right

it's because of the the price caps which i do agree with but you have to understand

when we sanction russian oil and we put price caps on russia all the things we do to Russian oil is never intended to take it off the market because Americans can't stomach high prices.

So it's like we have to keep the oil on the market, but we also have to figure out a way to punish Russia.

So we do the sanctions and then price caps, but that also gives an opportunity to countries like China and India to buy a ton of oil and store it strategically, which is exactly what they're doing.

China is putting a million barrels a day of oil in their strategic reserves.

As a matter of fact, their strategic reserves are completely completely full, and they're now storing it in other reserves, which is basically a bunch of big tanks outside.

So they're buying up this oil.

They're buying up the oil and that's why oil prices haven't crashed yet is because they're absorbing all of the surplus for future.

And didn't Donald Trump recently threaten Prime Minister Modi in India and tell him to stop?

And Modi basically gave him the double finger salute and was like,

no, I'm not going to listen to you and just ignored him.

And I think then Trump is like,

tariff conversations have been delayed.

We're going to do another 30, another 90 days or whatever like that, which is what he always does when he loses is just kick it down the camp down the road and hope everybody forgets.

The India thing is nuts.

So yeah, he threatened them 25% tariffs.

Their response initially was to increase.

the amount of oil they bought from Russia.

So it was not only no, but not only we're not going to stop, we're going to buy more.

And the reason they were going to buy more, because they were like, okay,

these cheap prices might be ending soon if the war ends.

So we're going to buy as much as possible.

So they actually increased their oil purchases.

And then he came back, okay, 50% tariffs.

And yeah, Modi said, whatever.

I don't, I don't care.

Like, do what you got to do, bro.

And, but.

We did

hear that some refineries in India had actually paused buying Russian oil until further orders from higher ups, right?

So I don't have a clue what's going on in India because we're getting conflicting messages from both sides over there.

My sense is they will continue buying that oil.

Everyone has seen Donald Trump's, basically, Donald Trump, you know, he likes to talk about who holds cards.

He has shown all of his cards, and it's the same three cards in three-card poker every hand.

He's shown, you know, a two and a seven and a six or whatever.

So

off suit, off suit.

You know, it's just the nine, just like the additional 90 days on chinese tariffs like so i think all these countries are just like ah he'll just extend it we're not gonna sweat it you know

as they as they make more serious long-term agreements behind the scenes right so that they never have to deal with trump again yeah i mean that's so i have a question in the same realm but on renewables because trump is obviously taking the investments we were doing and reversing them and obviously putting us in a long-term poor position to be developing developing our technology in that space.

China appears to be doing the polar opposite, which is heavily investing into it.

How much of a disaster could this theoretically be for, let's say, 10, 20 years down the line when everybody's naturally shifting to renewables and clean energy, and we've been not investing in it for a long period of time thanks to Trump?

Like, how long is it going to take for us to notice, like, oh, China's fucking killing us in this?

And it's thanks to this fucking moron?

Yeah, we're, we're really already seeing it, but it's going to be a disaster.

It really is.

So

here's the thing.

If,

you know, they want to push natural gas and they want to push nuclear energy.

The last nuclear energy project we completed in the United States, the Vogel down in Georgia, it took 10 years to build it and it went over budget by like $35 billion.

And the ratepayers in Georgia are going to have to pay higher utility rates for the next 60 years to overcome their overages on building that nuclear plant, right?

So, and I'm not opposed to nuclear, but we need energy quickly deployed and proposing all these projects that take 10 years.

Like, what are we going to do for the next 10 years?

Just sit in the dark.

And then natural gas.

The thing with new natural gas power generation, with all the tariffs, it's almost impossible to get the things you need to build a natural gas power plant now.

It takes years and years and years.

And in 2026, we were set to add, I believe it was around 85 gigawatts of new renewable power, solar and wind in the United States.

That's in one year.

That nuclear plant that took 10 years to build is one gigawatt.

It's one, okay?

We were going to add 85 with renewables.

So this idea that we can just go do nuclear, it's you can't like, you can't go down to the parts store and buy what you need to build a nuclear plant.

every single piece has to be manufactured right this it's not a

you know we don't have a henry ford moment when it comes to assembly lines to build nuclear plants

um so it really depends on

i think the positive thing and it's it's it's really bad to say this i think electricity prices are going to be so high that people who write checks and i tell people all the time if if if there's wind farms and solar farms or or oil rigs or whatever, if they're being stood up, there's somebody writing a check to pay for that.

There's some investor writing a check.

I think investors will continue to write checks for renewables because it's going to be so much more lucrative because of how much power is going to cost, which is not good for us.

It's going to be good for them.

I think wind is going to get hit bad.

I think it's going to hurt wind more than anything.

And I think solar is going to dominate.

And I told you guys that yesterday.

It is definitely going going to set us back at a time when we should never be set back, right?

Yeah.

Power consumption in the United States is growing for the first time in 25 years and it's growing rapidly and we can't keep up.

We simply cannot keep up because we're fighting over power sources like anybody cares.

Right.

When I turn on the lights at my house, I could give a shit what's making that electricity.

It could be a hamster in a cage in the backyard for all I care, as long as the damn lights come on.

Well, we might get to to that point.

Woke windmills, silly.

You can't support the woke windmills.

Well, you said something to us yesterday that was deeply concerning.

And so, but we're going to share it with everybody else.

But exciting.

You made a comment, correct me if I'm wrong, that there are going to be scenarios if things continue on the trajectory that they're on right now, that some people could be paying more monthly for their electric bill than their mortgage.

Holy shit.

Absolutely.

And

it's already happening.

And especially, you know, people that are connected to the PJM, I'm sure you've heard of PJM Interconnect, all that story about them, of, you know, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, up in that area, Amaron.

People, about a year ago, well, it was over a year ago, I started warning people about the electricity prices that were coming because I was starting to see how these auctions were working.

And, you know, when I first said that someday your electric bill is likely to be more than your mortgage, I was, I was like, everybody was so mad at me.

They're like, oh, you're just a fear monger.

You're trying to get clicks and views on the internet.

And I'm like, okay, just wait and see.

And

people started sending me their electric bills.

And this summer, I've gotten, people have sent me electric bills where their bills are higher than their mortgages.

I've seen electric bills over $2,000.

Oh, wow.

And

I'm talking about a 14, 1,500 foot square foot house.

Like a three-bedroom, one or two bath home.

I'm not talking about five, six thousand square feet, you know, properties.

I'm talking about middle class residential suburban homes.

And, you know, I've seen.

I've seen a ton of like $1,500, $1,600.

I've seen a few over $2,000.

And these people are like having to choose between, you know, do I eat?

Do I keep the lights on?

Do I, you know, they're, they're having to pick and choose.

And of course, it is the hottest part of the summer, so the bills are really bad right now.

Right.

Right.

And what I've told people, you know, I said, just pray for mild temperatures.

That's the only thing that can help you right now.

But I would also recommend to anyone listening, if you're experiencing this, if you've ever heard of an energy audit, call your utility company.

Most of them will come out and they'll do an energy audit on your home for free and tell you where you're losing power, where you're draining.

That could easily save you $100, $150 a month.

If your utility company doesn't do it, you can go to energy.gov and they have a template where you can do it yourself.

And I would highly recommend everyone get an energy audit, especially if electric bills are something that's hurting you at home.

Do an audit on it.

Trump kept energy.gov up.

I didn't know if we just scrubbed all that stuff.

For now, it's still there.

There's some Confederate flags and the Ten Commandments are there now, but it's there.

Yeah, scroll down.

You got to scroll down a little bit.

Scroll down past the true social ads.

Yeah.

So, so then, okay, so we've obviously raised the alarm, which is understandable.

And I think even, you know, people were estimating, I think it was with the big bullshit bill, you know, energy prices going up something like $400 a year for folks.

You're talking about more.

What would we need to do to counter that?

Like, we're not saying Trump would do it.

I'm more, this is more of a message for people thinking about people running for office, say, next year and three years from now.

What would work?

What do we need to do?

The first thing we need to do, and I know people hate price caps,

but a lot of what's going on right now is so every year or two, depending on the grid operator, what they do is they auction off basically space in their grid.

So they hold an auction and these companies bid on how much energy they can pump into that grid.

The grid operator, like PJM, it's a non-profit, right?

PJM is a non-profit and they run a grid, but all of the utility companies and power companies put power into the grid.

So PJM holds an auction.

And what they do is they try to determine what power demand is going to be for the next two years.

How much power demand they forecast versus how much power can be produced is what basically drives those auction prices.

It's just like auctioning anything else off, but you're auctioning space in the grid.

And that's what's happened to electricity prices over the last few months.

And that's what I predicted was these auction prices went up 10, 20 fold in some cases because there's so much power demand from data centers, which we need to talk about.

There's not a great deal of power capacity.

you know, the power, the ability to generate more power, because we've been very lackadaisical laxadaisical with creating new power capacity.

So it's caused these auction prices to go through the roof, and now it's reflected on people's bills.

A price cap on those auctions should have already happened.

PJM put a price cap on their next auction, but even with that price cap, it's still like 10 times higher than it normally historically is.

That's the first thing.

We need a full-blown effort,

like a World War II style effort in upgrading our grid.

We have 110,000 miles of grid upgrades to make.

And in the last five years, we've completed 2,000 miles of it.

It's going, it's, and so for 20 years, our energy consumption did not increase.

Did energy efficiency and all of, you know, you see your energy efficient appliances and cars are more efficient.

We completely forgot about our grid and we did not maintain it.

And

it's not able to withstand all the new data centers and what we're trying trying to ask them to do.

I was going to ask about data centers and AI and the impact on this.

I mean, that's something we haven't gotten into, but it's not going to get better.

And EVs, because we were told forever, the grid can't handle EVs, which is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

It has nothing to do with EVs.

But

we really need.

You know, Donald Trump is declaring all these national emergencies, not because they're actually an emergency, but because that's how he, you know,

at the executive branch.

We actually do need an emergency when it comes to the grid.

We need

some type of full-scale coordinated effort with government and companies because it's only going to get worse.

110,000 miles need to be done.

We've done 2,000 in five years.

That's like, we need to do that.

That needs to be done in the next five years.

And the problem is it's so difficult.

There was a ton of subsidies pushed towards high voltage transmission, but people don't want to invest in that because to run high voltage transmission lines across six states, you're talking about tens of thousands of landowners, tens of thousands of permits, tens of thousands of contracts and agreements just for one freaking power line.

So I understand why it's not getting done.

It's because it is such a monumental task legally that it can't get done.

Like nobody wants to do that.

I can invest $10 billion in that, or I can invest invest $10 million, $10 billion over here in something that's going to start paying me returns in a year.

Like people will park their money where they're going to get a return and high voltage transmission lines is not it.

Jesus.

Well, so we're screwed.

In other words, start saving your money, basically.

We literally need like a TVA type program.

You know, remember the Tennessee Valley Authority?

Tennessee Valley Authority.

We actually need that for our grid.

That is exactly what we need.

I know people don't want to hear that because socialism, but whatever.

That's what we need.

Socialism.

I think to end on a maybe more positive note,

just so people don't stare too closely at what's directly in front of them.

Trump's bullshit in 2017, 2021 was mostly fleeting.

He did a lot of damage.

And then Joe Biden delivered 48 months of consecutive job growth because he had all of this opportunity to clean up all of the fucking messes that Donald Trump made.

So, you know, looking at 2026, 2028, what are the things and maybe who are the people

who you want to see start the process of cleaning this up?

Because as you describe, if we make these investments, this is New Deal level shit.

These are good paying jobs.

This is infrastructure that will unleash economic productivity in ways that Donald Trump couldn't possibly fathom to understand.

Those things are like this opportunity is right in front of us.

It's going to be painful to get there, but what would that look like to you in the next

two to three years?

As far as the people,

the people and the policies, or just pick your poison.

You know, to give me a give me a plan for a decade of dominance in the next 37 seconds.

So here's the here's

the problem that I see.

If gas prices went up by 50 cents, it would be the biggest story in the United States.

Everyone would be screaming and crying every day about gas prices.

People's electric bills can go up to $2,000 and it's not even on the news.

It makes absolutely no sense to me.

So I think, first,

awareness of the problem is key.

There's no awareness that this is happening, even though it's happening across the country.

There's like, you know, why isn't the news running this every day?

The fact that people are literally facing homelessness possibly because they can't, because of their utility bills.

I think awareness is huge.

And once you bring that awareness on a national level and make it a big story, then the people will come and the policy will come, right?

But I do believe it needs to be a huge government driven effort, like New Deal type, Tennessee Valley Authority type.

That's the only thing that's going to fix it.

Leaving this in the hands of corporations, which is what we've done for the last 30 years, is the reason where we are, where we are today.

Do you mean corporations don't have the individual's best interest at heart?

No, no.

I thought they did.

I thought they were really about me, the little guy no i mean mine doesn't and i'm a nice gosh you know we are we are dangerously close to criticizing late stage capitalism and i'm gonna have to i'm gonna

i'm gonna have to log off danger

um well i it's funny because i you're you're totally right i think that you know the funny i one of the reasons i think that it's it's like that is because there is a giant sign outside of every gas station that shows the price and so the press can go and take the shot and say look how this has gone up whereas if you start talking about kilowatt hours and all this stuff, everyone's eyes were in the back of their head and you're showing them like a paper bill and they're going to go, I don't, I mean, I look at my bill and I go, I don't know what the hell any of this is.

I don't even know what to do.

I just look at the

wake up and it'd be bankrupt.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, anyways, we've got a lot of educating to do.

We're just at about time.

We've got our segment that I hope.

Hope you're going forward.

We do.

Before we do that, we just want to thank Mr.

Global Matt Randolph for being here.

Please go follow him on TikTok and on YouTube and all of his other channels.

It's a really great conversation.

What did I say?

Did I screw up?

You said TikTok and YouTube, but I think Mr.

Global wants to get big on YouTube more than on TikTok these days.

Yeah, TikTok's about dead.

I think so, too.

I was just reading the body language in real time.

That's all.

Yeah, well, we all know that the sale is coming and the algorithm changes.

So you have to work on

YouTube then.

But before we let you go, we want you to stick around for everybody's favorite segment that we sometimes do and sometimes forget.

Is it going to be?

Do you remember the song?

No, it's a good thing.

Ladies and gentlemen, get fucked by Luke.

I gotta think of a fucking title because get fucked with Luke and also get fucked by Luke.

Neither work well.

I think it's in your name.

As long as Luke is in the room while somebody's getting fucked, that'll work out.

Oh, I don't like that any better either.

There's no way to make this work.

Luke, sloppiest SimTro ever.

Floor is you.

Sloppy.

Oh, yeah.

Go ahead, Luke.

No, but it goes out to the people who are willing to sit back and, for one thing, watch Donald Trump fuck the oil economy into the ground because in exchange, they get to fill up their $1,000 a month pickup truck for slightly less money.

And also in exchange, they watch human rights violations and, you know, huge fascist policy get implemented.

But my pickup truck is real cheap to fill up.

So I'd like to invite those malodorous fucking halfwits to get fucked because it's just not good for anybody.

And I can promise you that none of them are upset about the fact that their neighbor has to pay two grand to fill their fucking electric or to pay their electricity bill a month because it always comes back to selfishness with them.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's very true.

They just put solar panels on top of the Dodge pickups and it'll just solve all of the problems.

You can't roll coal with solar.

That's the problem.

Oh, God.

Rolling solar.

I'm from rolling solar.

I'm from a small town.

And so like, the number of times I've seen people roll coal is fucking insufferable.

Every day.

It's just insufferable.

Hey, the solar will light up those blue lights they put under their fenders.

Yeah, you know, it's the fucking Walmart LED lights.

That's right.

How do we make this a thing?

That's our next episode.

Rolling solar.

Rolling solar.

That's a new t-shirt.

New t-shirt, maybe.

New t-shirt.

They all gotta put a Rivian on it.

They all get a surplus cyber truck with solar panels and they can roll solar with the LED lights.

It'll be great.

I love it.

And put the Toyota, like I saw one, I saw one of those stupid trucks in Brooklyn, and they literally put the Toyota letters on the back of it because they were so ashamed that it was a Tesla.

But I drive a Toyota truck.

I don't want them associated with me.

I like Toyota.

Dodge is the key problem here, but we can move on.

All right.

Well, I tell you what, guys, we managed to talk about oil and gas on a progressive left-leaning show for an hour.

So I think we should have fun.

And Mr.

Global educated the shit out of me.

Yes.

And we had some jokes in there, and we all learned a lot.

So once again,

Mr.

Global, thank you very much.

We have all been fans for a long time.

I have seen your content for a long time.

And if you, everyone else, you should go follow it because even if you're not an oil and gas fan, it affects the economy and it affects

the prices.

And that's why we are having this conversation because we also want to point the fingers at the people who are causing a lot of this mess, not all of it.

And so I think this was one of the episodes I've learned the most at.

So thank you for that.

Your video about Landman is my all-time favorite.

Oh, I haven't seen that one.

I don't remember that one.

That's the thing with doing these videos, and you do them so much.

You're like, I saw this video

from like three days ago, and you're like, what?

But, anyways, and just finally for everybody, you know, as we as we always talk about, if you want to support our work,

go and subscribe on our Substack.

If you can pay, that would be great.

It helps us keep the lights on.

Well, at least for now, we're going to need

electric bills.

The lights are going to be way more expensive.

Yeah, and also,

I'm going to be in the dark for the next few episodes.

We're going to have to have a hand crank to get the internet going.

But

yes, go to findoutpodcast.substack.com for that.

And we have merch at findoutpodcast.com.

Once again, thank you everybody for listening.

Mr.

Global, thank you for joining us.

And we will be back on Tuesday.

Have a great weekend, everybody.