transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Hey there, Odd Lots listeners. Joe and I are very excited to announce that we will be holding our first ever live show in London.

Speaker 2:
[00:07] That's right. We've done shows around the country, around the US, a fair amount. Always a lot of fun, made guests, record live episodes on stage, fans of the podcast get to meet other fans of the podcast and so forth. But this is our first time doing one of these outside the US, in London, as you said.

Speaker 1:
[00:23] So if you want to come hear some live recordings of Odd Lots episodes, if you want to hang out with me and Joe, if you want to hang out with other Odd Lots listeners, then you should definitely head over to bloomberg.com/oddlots where you can find all the info there and purchase tickets. It's going to be on the evening of May 7th at Wilton's Music Hall. Doors open at 6 and the recordings start at 7.

Speaker 2:
[00:45] Yeah, there's still a few tickets available. So go look on the website, go look through our Twitters. The ticket link is also in the show notes to this episode. So go buy a ticket before they sell out.

Speaker 1:
[00:55] Hope to see you there.

Speaker 2:
[00:58] Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Speaker 1:
[01:14] Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Speaker 2:
[01:18] And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Speaker 1:
[01:20] Joe, in the Odd Lots tradition of spring of 2026, I'm going to start this podcast by saying that we are recording on April 17th at 1 p.m. 101 p.m., yes.

Speaker 2:
[01:31] And of course, the reason we have to specify dates is because this is yet another episode about commodities, oil, war on Iran, and so forth. We've already had multiple mixed headlines today, but by and large, even with the mixed headlines, and again, who knows what's going to happen. But the market is moving past the acute phase of the war pretty clearly.

Speaker 1:
[01:52] Possibly. Possibly.

Speaker 2:
[01:54] Right now, the market is moving past it.

Speaker 1:
[01:57] The market is certainly interpreting this as moving past. Yes, absolutely. But again, things are very fluid. They can always change on a dime, which they have been. I'm convinced that one day in early 2026, we'll be able to record one of these energy-related episodes without saying exactly what time and date it is, but not yet. However, I think that no matter what happens with the status of the ceasefire, it seems very clear that what we've just experienced has been, I'm not even sure if you could say a wake-up call, but certainly an acute phenomenon that is being interpreted very differently by different players in the world.

Speaker 2:
[02:32] I would say three things that regardless of how this ultimately resolves itself are on my mind right now, and they all relate to past episodes. Of course, we did that episode with Bob Brackett. We talked about, okay, this is perhaps going to be a change in global and net gas flows, maybe to the benefit of American producers of LNG, depending on how much that can be expanded. We did that episode with Alex Turnbull, who said, in East Asia, there's going to be an appetite for restarting more nuclear plants, and also we've seen this surge in EV buying there. Already a change in East Asia. And then I'm thinking back to our, and this was before the war, but our most recent conversation with Jeff Curry, who talked about this sort of, the story of global commodity hoarding, and this being like a sort of real post 2020 story in generally, and so wondering whether this will accelerate structural shifts towards more resource nationalism, et cetera.

Speaker 1:
[03:28] Resource guarding, yeah. I mean, whatever you can say about the current environment, one thing seems very certain, which is if you compare where we are now to say, I don't know, 2018 or 2019 before the pandemic, it just feels so different. If you think about that energy environment, it was all about cheap US shale. It was about lots of money flowing into green energy and ESG and aiding the energy transition. Russian gas was going to power Europe for pretty much forever. And now we are just in a very different world. So the long-term trajectory of the energy layout, let's put it that way, seems to have been altered no matter what happens immediately with Iran. And who do we call when we want to talk about longer-term structural changes in global energy markets?

Speaker 2:
[04:16] Only one name.

Speaker 1:
[04:17] Only one name. So I'm very happy to say that we do in fact have the perfect guest again. He's coming back on the podcast. Daniel Yergin, he is of course Vice Chairman of S&P Global. He's the author of The Prize, The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, basically the book on oil history. As well as the new book, The New Map, Energy, Climate, and The Clash of Nations. So Dan, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 3:
[04:43] Well, thank you. And as you said, it could not be more timely, but things do change very quickly.

Speaker 1:
[04:50] Yes. Okay. The caveat is right up front. But I guess if we go back to early March, I would just love to get a sense of what you were thinking as you saw some of these headlines about the Strait of Hormuz being closed. Because for anyone who's read the book, I mean, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is basically kind of the nightmare scenario, which has been looming in a lot of energy analyst minds for a very long time. And here you were seeing it actually happen. What was going through your head?

Speaker 3:
[05:20] Well, it was that, in fact, the nightmare scenario that had been not only for energy but for strategic planners for decades had happened. I think it's one of those things that people looked at as a scenario but thought it would never happen. But then it happened and it does change the world and it changed the way people think about energy. We've had supply chain shocks, but this was the mother of all supply chain shocks in terms of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Speaker 2:
[05:46] Look, if the ceasefire is durable and the strait opens up in a short period of time and we're like, okay, it made sense that oil prices surged but didn't go to say $200 plus. Because we'll be able to say it in retrospect, it turned out to be a short war, we had buffer stocks, et cetera. Nonetheless, I think in the middle of March, there was this feeling that something is weird because you have the mother of all supply shocks and what's like, and the aunt of all, what's like the aunt of like, what's like?

Speaker 1:
[06:22] Oh, you mean, I thought you meant the actual insect and aunt.

Speaker 2:
[06:24] No, no, it's like the mother of all supply shocks and then the aunt of all like, price spikes.

Speaker 1:
[06:28] You used to say like second cousin removed of all price spikes.

Speaker 2:
[06:30] Yeah, the second cousin removed. I mean, it was like, it was...

Speaker 3:
[06:32] Well, remember, we had two different prices going on at the same time. We had the Brent, the futures price, which was always saying, well, this is going to end and prices are going to come down. And then there was the dated Brent, the near term, which said, we are having a major dislocation and prices are really going up. And we'd never seen that dislocation on that scale before. It was like two different visions of the world almost.

Speaker 2:
[06:53] So actually, why don't you, I've read like 10 explainers on some of these gaps between the front month price and the dated Brent, or the quote physical price, et cetera. But how were you at the time thinking about this gap? Was it as simple as the market simply does not believe that the straight will stay closed?

Speaker 3:
[07:12] Well, I did think that there was a difference between how the financial markets, which were processing things like statements by the president, statements from Iran and so forth, looking at the future and the way the physical market, the industry market, and at Ciro Week, I remember one of the CEOs said in one of the dialogues that risk has been underpriced in the market because I think from the industry point of view, they saw there are major dislocations, and those dislocations are playing out unevenly across the world. Asia hit the hardest, Europe feeling it, and then the US mainly seeing it in terms of rising prices and the gasoline pump, but no problem getting supplies. But in Asia, a big problem getting supplies.

Speaker 1:
[07:54] So I'm glad you mentioned Sierra Week, and this is also one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you. So Sierra Week, which is the sort of annual energy industry gathering in Houston every year, that took place in sort of mid to late March, smack dab in the middle of all of these very changing headlines, which we've been discussing. What was the mood like over there when you were talking to actual participants in the market?

Speaker 3:
[08:20] I think in terms of actual participants in the market, particularly the CEOs of the companies on the interviews that I did on stage platform, they were all feeling that there was a real dislocation, a real scramble. They were worried about getting their employees to safety, worried about the safety of their colleagues, their facilities, and then just how these markets are going to be supplied, and what would be the demand destruction, what would happen to price. So they were very concerned with the logistics of having lost the biggest supply of oil that had ever happened in history. And by the way, it was not oil, oil, but also natural gas, which people have focused on, because I think there was less awareness of how significant it was in terms of LNG. And then I think the eye opener that maybe all these scenarios that people had been doing for the years about the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, people had not thought about fertilizer, they had not thought about petrochemicals, they had not thought about sulfur, they had not thought about helium, which the semiconductor industry in Taiwan desperately needs. And so actually one of the other things that came out of this was the recognition of how the Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia, have become much more integrated into the world economy. And by the way, there were also exporters of one other extremely valuable commodity called money with the size of their reserves.

Speaker 1:
[09:38] Well, I'm glad you just listed a bunch of odd lots episodes basically. I feel like we've ticked each of those boxes in separate episodes, including Gulf capital, so that's good. But just going back to Joe's question, do you have a framework in your mind to explain why the physical market and the actual CEOs of energy companies are freaking out versus what's going on with the futures price or was going on with the futures price?

Speaker 3:
[10:02] Well, I think it is because the futures price is responding to so many forces there. And people investing in futures, a lot of them, they don't have to worry about supplying a customer. They don't have to worry about how do we get jet fuel to ensure that the airplanes keep flying. And as you know, in Asia, flights have been canceled. In India, you know, restaurants were closed because they use LPG for cooking and they didn't have enough cooking LPG for that. So for Asia, it was a real shortage situation. And I think that's what, if you have a global perspective, that's what you were coping with. In the United States, you know, one difference between this and previous energy crises, the famous energy crises of the past, I've written about in my, in The Prize and The New Map and so forth, is the position of the United States so dramatically changed. And that has been a huge buffer for consumers in this country and for the economy.

Speaker 2:
[10:53] Had it not been for the war, how much would a zero week in 2026 have been dominated by conversations about powering AI data centers and so forth? How much would that have been the story had it not been for the war in Iran?

Speaker 3:
[11:09] Well, it was anyway. We had the president of Google, the president of Microsoft there. We had people from NVIDIA, from other chip manufacturers. It was a real change. The focus was the tech industry meets the energy industry and how do we get along and kind of this panic about do we have enough electricity, particularly in the United States. And I would have said it then that energy security had shifted from oil and gas to electricity. But of course, with this crisis, it was backed up, also it was about oil and gas. But that was the big discussion that ran through it and about particularly the role of natural gas because on the one hand, the US has built up this big LNG industry, which plays a much bigger role in our economy than people recognize. I mean, our latest numbers are 75% of the value of all semiconductor exports is represented by LNG. You know, twice the value of all Hollywood and television and entertainment exports. But now, natural gas is coming back into what's already significant but more significant for electric generation. And what a change from the Biden administration, which wanted to have hydrocarbons out of electric generation by 2035. So this question of what are the supply chains to assure electricity to support this AI boom, which is represents in the United States about half of GDP growth.

Speaker 1:
[12:33] So what were people saying on that front? So we've had episodes of the show where we've talked about maybe over capacity when it comes to building out energy for data centers. There are still plenty of people out there who think that the energy demands are just going to be so enormous that we're always going to be playing catch up. There's a debate over who should bear responsibility for building out that new energy supply. So should it be the tech companies themselves or someone else, even if it's a strategic technology? What are you hearing on the ground?

Speaker 3:
[13:04] Well, I think these tech companies are going to be much bigger players in electricity than they would have been in the past. I remember again the CEO, the president of one of those companies said in 2008 when they built their first data center, they didn't talk about electricity. They didn't worry about electricity. So it's been a huge learning. And as one of them said, we've had to learn to talk to the power industry. A software engineer, maybe, I don't know, it's a month or two of work to do software. It's seven or eight or 10 years from an energy company for an engineer to get a project done. And that's the gulf between the two of them and the sense that there is a race. And it's always said it's the US-China race, but it's also a race very definitely among companies to build capacity. Now, one question I think you were getting at is that the sense that there is the contrarian view that ships will become more efficient and maybe electricity demand will not be as great as it is. But at this point, every time you talk to a utility executive, they say, and we heard this at Sarah Week, when they had years and years of no growth or very flat growth in demand, they'll say this year it's going to grow 5% or it's going to grow 8%. And there are only so many electricians, there are only so many transformers. So again, those supply chains are very important there too.

Speaker 2:
[14:37] How much do you expect to be truly internalized or vertically integrated within the tech industry when it comes to energy? We see headlines from here and there, like Google will make an investment in a small modular reactor startup. I never know how serious that is, or from time to time, it's like, oh, Metta hired an energy trader, and this is new, and this is different, et cetera. What do you think that the big tech companies are ultimately going to internalize as we need to have this be as part of our core competency rather than we are going to work with some third-party partner on it?

Speaker 3:
[15:18] We can see that they've hired people who come out of the energy industry, either from the oil and gas industry or in electric power industry, so they're building up the capacity to do that, and their investments show it. You mentioned one company, but look at Amazon. They've invested in X-Energy, which is a small modular reactor company, and I think the idea is that, and I hear from other of these tech companies too, will invest in them and help drive down the cost and see them as part of the way of meeting the electricity demand. I think I know I wrote down, as you said, the themes that you had talked about on nuclear. I mean, this crisis is a boost to nuclear, but I think AI has been a big boost to nuclear in terms of the sense among tech companies that nuclear has to be part of the picture. And just this morning, I was talking with the head of one of the largest government funds and they're invested, a non-US fund and they're invested in fusion. So there's just a different attitude towards nuclear. And I think the needs of the tech companies is one of the things that's really driven that.

Speaker 1:
[16:29] Well, actually, on this note, I wanted to ask you about renewables and the green energy transition and all of that. It feels like in some parts of the world, recent events in the Gulf have maybe hastened some of that transition. Although I can't even call it a transition because as we discussed with Alex Turnbull, it's like, yes, people are buying a bunch more EVs, but those EVs are going to be powered by coal for the foreseeable future because there's an energy shortage. What exactly is going on with renewables now? Are people still seeing that as a substitute for traditional energy, or is this more of an addition to bolster, I guess, diversification?

Speaker 3:
[17:07] Well, first, we have to note that over 90 percent of the new electric capacity worldwide that was installed last year was wind and solar. So it is a growing business. Secondly, like I've heard of an example of a project in Vietnam that was going to be done with LNG, they're buying solar panels. I think that wind and solar gain less about climate now and more about part of diversification, part of energy security. So I think that dialogue, that has changed maybe, and certainly we'll hear it in Europe, and I hear it at least not from everybody, but from people in the United States as well. So it's a different way of looking at wind and solar as a way to be more independent, more secure, more diversified. Doesn't answer the question of how you can power an airplane or the fact that only about 6% of the new cars being sold in the US today, even with this crisis, are EVs.

Speaker 2:
[18:03] It's pretty crazy how little EVs have taken off. You know, here's something I think about, like in the US, we are obviously, our lands are blessed with commodities, including abundant oil and gas, especially since we've gotten really good at high-tech sideways drilling and all of these things like that. Could it be a curse in the sense that the world is going to electrify one day, maybe not in our lifetimes, but one day there will probably be electric airplanes, right? Batteries will eventually get good enough and airplanes will no longer need jet fuel, etc. Is part of the story that the US is going to stay on this path of the internal combustion engine and so forth, in part, because we are just so blessed with fossil fuels?

Speaker 3:
[18:52] Well, I think that's part of it, that I think I'm just reflecting on that. I think that's part of it. It's part of what consumers want. I think that the notion that there would be this big pickup in electric cars hasn't occurred here. In Europe, I think it's about 20 percent. Then you go to China and of course, it's much higher because not only the price point, but also government policies of all kinds. You're not going to get a license for a new car in Beijing unless it's an electric car. But here's some numbers that may not be clear. I mean, we were looking at this when we were doing our copper study because electric cars use almost three times as much copper as a conventional car. It turns out that in 2025, about 22, 23 million electric cars were sold worldwide compared to the entire US new car market of 16, 17 million new cars. So you see that it's happening worldwide. Now, a big portion of them are in China, but China is also really, they have reoriented their exports much more to outside the United States and even Europe to the developing world, and they're going to really be pushing their electric cars. But of course, you do need reliable electricity supplies if you're going to have penetration of electric cars.

Speaker 1:
[20:10] I just want to go back to the situation in the Strait of Hormuz directly for a few minutes. So you mentioned initially that this was something that people thought would never happen because the stakes were so high. If Iran...

Speaker 3:
[20:24] They would do scenarios about it, but assume that all these things could happen, but not that.

Speaker 1:
[20:29] Right. So, I mean, this is the surprising thing. It actually happened despite the stakes being so high and despite the world relying on the strait for 20% of its oil and gas. What's your take on why this particular moment? What are the conditions that allowed the closure of the Strait of Hormuz?

Speaker 3:
[20:50] Well, I think it was the war. Here's a war in which the United States, the mightiest military, was at war with the country, as I heard somebody remark the other day, half the GDP of Belgium, but with a lot of missiles and a lot of drones, and kind of leading to a standoff, and it was a moment for Iran to pounce, even though the very senior leadership was destroyed right at the beginning of the war. Clearly, they had decentralized. This was a war, when you look at the amount of drones and missiles they had, and they continue to have, this is a war that they had prepared for for a long time, the struggle with the United States, and they seized the moment, and maybe it's the advent of drones that was able for them to pull off, saying that we control the strait, and when you send your ship through the strait, you'll follow the route that we tell you, and by the way, it's actually a canal, and you're going to pay a toll, and the toll is going to go to the IRGC. Maybe it was the capability of drones that enabled that.

Speaker 2:
[21:48] Let's say the strait reopens, but as you mentioned, all the cheap drones, the Shaheed drone may be enough, and Iran has a lot of them, and they'll probably keep producing a lot of them. Maybe that is enough to close the strait even against the mightiest military in the world. Does that permanently change how the world thinks about energy security? We see that because they were capable of doing this, therefore, we know it could happen again, right? We know it could happen down the future, and does that change energy planning?

Speaker 3:
[22:21] Yeah, I was thinking the beta test for World War II was the Spanish Civil War, and in a sense, the beta test for the new world of warfare is Ukraine, and now we've seen it played out in the Gulf with what Iran does, and I think it introduces a sense of risks that wasn't there before. I remember I was in Kuwait in January when they were announcing new policy for investment, international investment in their oil and gas industry, and it felt very optimistic time. It felt, and you've had that excitement, really the optimism around in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia. Well, it's not going to be as optimistic now. And I think there is going to be deeper thought about energy security and diversification and what kind of security premium, and by the way, also that you need to spend more money, more share of your sovereign wealth fund on defense. So I think all of those changes, I mean, we don't know what the full outline of this settlement is, if it is a settlement. But we do know that it is going to be a different world than the one that existed before the war began.

Speaker 1:
[23:33] Do you see the possibility or I guess, in what sense would this particular eventuality like change oil routes and markets? But if the US maintains some sort of control or input in the Strait, collecting a toll maybe alongside Iran at some... At one point, I think Trump was talking about this being on the table. How would that change global oil flows if you had a sort of like US involvement in that particular area?

Speaker 3:
[24:00] Well, that would be a pretty dramatic expansion of the authority of the US. I mean, some have talked about a international authority which would be composed of Iran, Oman, and the UAE, which are the three countries that border the strait that some sort of international system. But I think also that for the Gulf countries, for Saudi Arabia, I don't think it's tolerable for them to be paying a toll to Iran and having Iran have that domination over supply and having those funds that they pay go to the IRGC, which apparently is what would be the destiny of those funds. So, I think there's things here that are just unresolved. And obviously at the top of that list is the strait, along with what Iran is or is not going to do in terms of nuclear weapons.

Speaker 2:
[24:51] I'm glad that you said there's going to be a different world regardless after the war, because thank you for giving us the headline that we're going to use to run this episode. Always nice to get a nice clean phrase like that. But what else could we see in this different world? You mentioned how the Gulf regions would react or maybe completely find it unacceptable for Iran to take that toll. But what else do you see as some of the potential fallouts in this different world after what we've seen? I like the way you put a beta test to it. Ukraine may have been a beta test for this. I don't want to be dark, but we see the incredible power of drones here. What else do countries do for their own energy security in this different world?

Speaker 3:
[25:36] Well, one is drone capacity, and a year ago we heard that Ukraine was told they had no cards. It turns out they do have cards, which is there are no countries more experienced in terms of dealing with drones, and there is the president of Ukraine in the Gulf doing drone deals with those countries to give them protection. I think there are other consequences too. I think that I guess we will call this the Hormuz crisis. It sounds like the Suez crisis, the Hormuz crisis. That works. But I think it also accentuates really a crisis for NATO, which really began with, of course, well, it has years in the making, but over Greenland, and now you have the Europeans talking about a NATO without the United States, and so I think the relationship, there's been less focus on that, but I think that's one of the lasting questions that come out of this too. You know, one thing that you don't see and let, you don't think about unless it's not there is trust, and trust has been eroded, things have become more transactional, and yet to solve, really, to deal with global energy issues, you need kind of global cooperation. That was the very fundamental idea that led to the establishment of the International Energy Agency as a way to coordinate so that you don't have sort of bruising competition among countries.

Speaker 1:
[27:00] If I could ask you to put your sort of macro hat on for a second, if I think about the current world, it seems like one where people are going to be more focused on energy security. Maybe they're going to be building out their own production capacity, their own stockpiles of oil. They're probably going to be increasing their defense budgets. Maybe it's also a world where smaller powers, because of drones, are able to mount their own offensive campaigns and sort of hold the line and create their own choke points in different geographies. When I think about that world, it strikes me as inherently inflationary. Does that seem to be the case for you? Is there a new term premium that comes about, I guess, because of everything that we've just seen in the Gulf?

Speaker 3:
[27:46] I think you're absolutely right. I think it really began. What drove that incredible development of supply chains so complicated, I remember looking at one for automobile parts that looked like a bowl of spaghetti, was the fact that it drove down costs. It was all about efficiency and increasingly security, predictability, reliability, resilience has come to the fore in it. I think as you described, that is going to be even more true today. So, spending more money on defense and trying to localize production, build security, and that's inherently adds costs that were not there. It's reversing a trend that had been decades in the making. So, I think that builds it in.

Speaker 2:
[28:46] You know, obviously, the AI industry needs the energy industry, or it needs energy expertise, and so either it will be working more closely in partnership with companies, it'll bring some of it in house. When you were down in Houston, did you hear anything about the reverse in terms of how AI is going to change energy, in terms of the usage of artificial intelligence or robots in terms of production and mining and all that?

Speaker 3:
[29:13] Well, absolutely. Certainly, we had a big mining track there and more of that now. Robots, by the way, are also copper-enhancing, which goes back to this whole question about this kind of potential gap in copper supplies that you need for electrification. Again, supply chains back on the table in a different version. But of course, the question there is, what does it do to jobs? What does it do to efficiency? And I think every CO was talking about how we're applying AI in all these different cases in our companies. And probably there's the same anxiety about jobs there, what the future of work will be that you see generally reflected. And we'll probably hear more about as we go into the November midterm elections.

Speaker 2:
[30:00] You know there's a part in Land Man where they're at an oil industry gathering or something, and they see a robot. One of the providers is there, Shelley, it's like, you could replace some of your workers with robots. But also, to Daniel's point, after we build humanoid robots, probably the first thing that they'll be used for is to go into the copper mines so that they can reproduce themselves and then build more robots. That would be the-

Speaker 1:
[30:26] I don't even think they have to be humanoid.

Speaker 3:
[30:29] I believe that's the movie script that you're working on right now.

Speaker 1:
[30:33] The thing is, Joe, if you keep talking about Landman, I'm never going to watch it because I'll feel like I know all of that already.

Speaker 2:
[30:41] I do think that's the real thing. It makes sense though, it's going to be all about the copper to keep building robots for national security. So what are you going to do?

Speaker 3:
[30:48] I see your movie where the robots go down there and they're reproducing themselves. Yeah, they got to get that copper so they can make more robots. Yeah. I think there's one other thing that's important to talk about, which is assuming that we are going to go into a stabilization and a more ceasefire, etc. How long does it take to actually recover from this? And I think this goes back to Tracy to your comments about inflation. It's not going to be... This is not something that's solved overnight. And at least it will take probably, if peace breaks out, you know, maybe a couple of months before the oil markets are back in position. Because remember, the last tankers had already left and had docked from before the war. Inventories have been run down. So... And the captains have to be sure, and their crews have to be willing to go through the Gulf. And so it's a couple of months before the oil market starts to get back into balance. And then I know one of the COs said that if you look at the overall disruption, including petrochemicals and everything in the destruction of refineries, it might be as much as two-thirds of a year before things are really cleared up and back to normal. So there's no light switch here. And so that will be reflected in prices.

Speaker 1:
[32:05] Yeah. So just going back to AI and electrification for a minute, I mentioned in the intro that one of the things that's different to today is the almost complete absence of ESG investing in today's world. So we used to hear so much about it pre-2020. And I got the sense, maybe this was a bit of advertising, but you certainly got the sense there was a lot of money flowing into ESG funds for green energy or socially beneficial programs or whatever. You do not get that sense today at all. Is there a possibility though that ESG sort of gets re-branded either under an energy security umbrella or under a sort of AI electrification umbrella and we start to see capital flow into it in a meaningful way yet again?

Speaker 3:
[32:55] Well, I think that's a very reasonable expectation. And I think we'll see even the tech companies still have their net zero objectives. So they may be using gas, but then they'll be looking to invest in renewables as well to show that they're net zero. So one of the things that we've got to get used to in the United States is to have these 180-degree swings from one administration to another. And I do see that people, one way that people kind of invest in energy but still maybe have ESG in the back of their mind or concerned about it, you re-brand it as infrastructure. And then you're not investing in energy, you're investing in infrastructure. And infrastructure is generally considered a very good thing to invest in as long as you get a return.

Speaker 2:
[33:38] You know, we mentioned some of these big megatrends that the war has brought to light, including obviously the resource nationalism. Is the potential for US LNG exports, is that tapped out? Like, are we already going as fast as we can to build out that capacity? Or plausibly, could it even, is there an even further, a higher gear that that could go into?

Speaker 3:
[34:02] Oh, there is much additional capacity in process. Gutter has a very big expansion plan, but we'll see the US coming on with it. If we had been having this call, you know, if we're in January, of course, and looking out on 2026, the big concern would be, is there going to be too much LNG capacity and market? But there is a concern, too, about demand destruction. Will people feel as confident about it? You know, Southeast Asia have gone back to coal, or will they push in other directions, renewables? But I think still, we expect, you know, roughly that by 2040, the LNG market could be 50% bigger than it is. But of course, that market has to be there, and it has to be at a price that people are willing to pay and competent. And it also means, I think, countries, and this is a question, there are a lot of Europeans at Sarah Week who were there about tying up US LNG supplies long term and wanting to have those supplies. But, you know, there's always the question of, you know, wanting to be sure that the US is a reliable provider, and you're not going to see something like the Biden administration where they put a freeze on LNG. But US LNG is by far the largest supplier now, and with part of gutter really damaged, at least for a few years out of, it will be even more reliant on US LNG.

Speaker 2:
[35:28] You know, I have another question. So the US is just such an energy powerhouse now, with both respect to oil and gas, obviously. And we're oil independent, although I know that these things are technical because of refining capacity and so forth. But we're an oil powerhouse too. I'm just sort of curious, however, like costs in the oil field are rising. Is US oil self-sufficiency a guaranteed thing for decades to come? Or would it be plausible, like with shale decline rates and rising domestic costs, et cetera, that the US ever like sort of returns to, I don't know, what it looked like in the 90s or something like that. Like how guaranteed is our oil security just because we've had these sort of 20 really good years?

Speaker 3:
[36:15] You never want to say anything is for sure forever because things really do change. And even, I think Tracy, your remarks at the beginning about how the world looked in 2019 and here seven years later, the world looks very different. So many changes could happen. I think there's been the general view. And this, you know, there was a debate really at Sear Week among the CEOs about shale that question. Some saying, well, it's plateaued or going to plateau pretty soon. Now it's plateauing at a very high number. I mean, almost 14 million barrels a day and maybe going a little higher than that. Others say, no, technology is going to unlock. The recovery rate is now like 7% and if you can get it to 10% or 12%, it will go on longer. So I think at least if we look out a few decades, the US will continue to be a big producer of oil unless something dramatically changes and even longer that we have very abundant gas. Forever things can change, policy can change. If you have a Bernie Sanders administration someday, it will be a very different picture than what we have today.

Speaker 1:
[37:23] Again, going back to the Strait of Hormuz and your book, I looked up how many times you mentioned the Strait of Hormuz in The Prize and it actually wasn't that much. It was like just four or five times, but then I looked up how many times you mentioned Iran, and it's like 500 times. Iran is really central to the history of oil. You would say the situation is very central to our thinking about oil. What's been most surprising to you in watching these events, historic events really unfold over the past month or so?

Speaker 3:
[37:56] Well, I feel what I'm struck by is the continuity that the Iranian oil workers went on strike in 1978, and that was the beginning of the Iranian Revolution, and then the second revolution where the Islamists captured the whole system, and chanted, Death to America. So in a sense, it's like this war has been brewing for 47 years. But it is interesting because of course, oil was discovered in then Persia and Iran in 1908, and Winston Churchill made the decision to convert the Royal Navy from coal to oil, and it was going to be dependent on Iranian oil. In parliament, people were saying, you're going to be dependent on Persia, that's very dangerous. He came up with, well, first of all, he said the prize of the venture is world mastery itself, and that's where I got the title of the book from, and then he said the basic axiom of energy security, which is on variety in oil is the source of safety diversification. So that continues to be the principle, even though at that point he was making the Royal Navy very dependent upon Iran, Persia, but so it is how central Iran has been to the oil story since 1908, and here it is today, we're in 2026, and it is still central. It's not the large producer it was. There was a day when Iran and Saudi Arabia vied with each other to be the biggest producer in OPEC, but its ability to influence what happens in the entire Gulf and to shut down the Gulf shows that it too has a form of mastery, which it has exerted with drones and missiles.

Speaker 1:
[39:35] Yeah, for sure. I realized I actually have one more question, which is, are you also watching Land Man down alongside Joe?

Speaker 3:
[39:42] Well, I watched it, and there was that famous episode at the wind turbine. The hero got in an argument with the lawyer from Houston. Yeah, the woke lawyer. That's right, about how everything, including everything she was wearing, was made an oil product. I thought that was really interesting. But then I stopped watching it because of the subplot got a little sidetracked. But then I started watching it again. So now I'm not up there with Joe, but I'm going to catch up with it because I got to find out how the oil industry really works and what better way to learn that by watching Landmen.

Speaker 1:
[40:18] You need to ask for a cameo, I think.

Speaker 2:
[40:20] They should. In season three, they really should. You know who has a cameo in it? Who? The owner of the Dallas Cowboys. There's like a scene where he comes in and he talks about-

Speaker 1:
[40:31] They're really important people in the oil market.

Speaker 2:
[40:33] Yeah, exactly. He talks about his first oil lease or something. He actually tells a story about his daughters went to college and he paid for it by doing an oil lease around where their dorm was or something. I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[40:44] It's really good.

Speaker 2:
[40:44] But I think we're putting this out there in the world, that Taylor Sheridan-

Speaker 3:
[40:49] Would you put a recommendation in me? I'd love to do a walk-out.

Speaker 2:
[40:52] We're doing it right now. Taylor Sheridan needs to have- You know what needs to happen?

Speaker 1:
[40:56] Well, first of all, Taylor Sheridan also needs to come on Odd Lots.

Speaker 2:
[40:59] But this is the scene. The scene is at Serowheak, and it's you interviewing the head of M-Tech's Oil. It's Daniel Yergin interviewing the CEO of M-Tech's Oil or actually Billy Bob Thornton. I don't want to give a spoiler if you ever got to the very end.

Speaker 3:
[41:20] No, no, no.

Speaker 2:
[41:21] About expansion plans live on stage. That would be such an Easter egg for oil nerds to see.

Speaker 1:
[41:28] That would be great.

Speaker 2:
[41:30] We're putting that into the world through this episode of Odd Lots.

Speaker 3:
[41:34] I'm all on board with it. If you could just make it happen.

Speaker 1:
[41:39] We'll try.

Speaker 3:
[41:40] I know your show is very influential, but this is going to demonstrate the true power of your show.

Speaker 1:
[41:45] Okay. So we actually need to make this happen now. Okay. Dan, that was fantastic as always. Really appreciate you coming back on Odd Lots and fingers crossed on the Land Man cameo.

Speaker 3:
[41:57] Thank you. Great to be on with you both. Thanks a lot. We'll see how it all unfolds.

Speaker 1:
[42:13] Joe, that was very fun. I really hope you're going to get, like, if there's anyone.

Speaker 2:
[42:17] That would be a great scene.

Speaker 1:
[42:19] That would be fantastic. There's a lot to pick out of there. I mean, one thing I thought that was really interesting just in the context of geopolitics was the point about the drones, and the idea of this new technology being an enabling factor in allowing some powers to assert control over areas that perhaps would have been much more difficult to assert control over before.

Speaker 2:
[42:40] Sometimes while we're doing episodes, I'll browse on my computer and look something up. I'm at the Wikipedia page, 2011 Iran-U.S. RQ-170 incident. Do you know what that is?

Speaker 1:
[42:52] No.

Speaker 2:
[42:53] It's when Iran captured a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aerial vehicle. And it is believed that this is a pivotal moment in being able to reverse engineer the technology of that drone that then became an enabler of the Shaheed 191. And that this idea, it's like, are we seeing like sort of the beta tests for World War III here, or beta tests for war, starting with Ukraine, this, there's like an incredible leveler of the playing field or the ability of a non...

Speaker 1:
[43:27] A non-military superpower.

Speaker 2:
[43:29] Lesser power is to inflict incredible, to put up an incredible fight in some respect. You know, that incident in 2011 could be like sort of like a key moment in history that doesn't get enough attention.

Speaker 1:
[43:43] Wait, since you're quizzing me on history, even though it's recent history, which oil company is descended from the Anglo-Persian Oil National? I can't remember the exact name, but Iran State National Oil Company. What is it now?

Speaker 2:
[44:00] BP?

Speaker 1:
[44:00] Yes. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[44:01] Well, you gave it away with Anglo.

Speaker 1:
[44:02] I did, didn't I? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[44:04] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[44:04] Did I say Anglo?

Speaker 2:
[44:05] You did. You said Anglo. So there's like a RLSTAR from Britain.

Speaker 1:
[44:07] Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I totally gave it away.

Speaker 2:
[44:09] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[44:10] I'm going to have to come up with a better question. All right. Well.

Speaker 2:
[44:13] Next time.

Speaker 1:
[44:13] Next time. Shall we leave it there?

Speaker 2:
[44:15] Let's leave it there.

Speaker 1:
[44:16] This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

Speaker 2:
[44:21] And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at TheStalware. Follow our guest, Daniel Yergin. He's at Daniel Yergin. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodbrie. It's at Carmen Armin, Dashiell Bennett, and Dashbot, and Cale Brooks, and Cale Brooks. And for more Odd Lots content, go to bloomberg.com/oddlots. We have a daily newsletter on all of our episodes. You can chat about all these topics 24-7 in our Discord, discord.gg/oddlots.

Speaker 1:
[44:45] And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you also want Daniel Yergin to get a cameo on Landman, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.