"An Exercise Of Minimizing Overall Ridiculousness" Featuring Rob West, Thunder Said Energy

We are very pleased today to be sending you a special 4th of July COBT. For our Canadian friends, we hope you had a fantastic Canada Day this past Saturday. For all of you celebrating the 4th today, we hope the baseball, hot dogs and apple pie are all flowing! With some grilling of course!
 
For today’s special show, we were delighted to host our dear friend Rob West. Rob is the fascinating Founder and Lead Analyst at Thunder Said Energy. His background includes research at Redburn and Stanford C. Bernstein before he struck out on his own in 2019 to start Thunder Said. He has some of the most unique impressions, observations, and analysis on the changing energy world and we were delighted to have him. What we can also add is that we had the great honor of visiting with him live in Estonia on Sunday as part of the lead-in to today’s discussion. Getting to know Rob has been and continues to be great fun.
 
Today’s crew included Mike Bradley and Arjun Murti. With this being a critical half-year mark, Mike took some time in the lead-in to review market and energy sector statistics, changes in oil and natural gas rig counts, OPEC’s plans for cuts in production, and the significant market cap of tech giants compared to energy. Arjun chimed in and told his family’s remarkable story of coming to America and living the American dream. The story resonates as loud as ever on a day like today. Arjun also reminded us all of how "the energy transition needs to transition" to being one focused on the many billions of people outside of America, the US and Canada seeking the freedom and prosperity that comes from available reliable energy. Overall, Mike and Arjun really got us going as we turned to Rob.
 
The discussion with Rob today centered around a handful of key topics. First, his continued concern that we need to achieve energy surplus if we are ever going to achieve real decarbonization. His fear now, like ours, is that we are not only not heading towards energy surplus but we are instead headed for more energy shortages. Second, we discuss his latest thinking around AI and how it might be the answer to many of the world’s supply chain and logistical and even technological problems. AI is clearly the new new thing and it was really fun kicking it around with Rob. As a third big topic, Rob has more than a few thoughts about his adopted country Estonia, including the latest from its neighbor Russia. He tells the gripping story of how the recent events with Wagner were perceived in Estonia, and reminds us all how Estonia resisted EU efforts to get the country to switch to Russian natural gas back in the day. As we wrapped up, and as part of our 4th of July and overall "freedom and independence" theme, we reference a paper Rob penned on how energy (oil) supply determined the fate of so much of World War Two (available here). On this day when we pause to say thank you for our freedom, reflecting on the role of energy in national security seemed super appropriate. Rob’s article on the war and oil’s role is fantastic.
 
As you might recall, Rob has joined us on COBT before. The first time on January 4, 2022 (episode linked here) and more recently on November 20, 2022 (episode linked here). We don’t expect you to go back and listen/watch those, but some of you are becoming COBT history buffs so we at least want to give you that chance! 
 
The first half of the year has been both eventful and stimulating. We count 32 COBT segments, 26 Super-Spiked pieces from Arjun, 8 Gener8 podcasts with Brett and Jeff, and 25 Market Wraps from Mike. Every week we feel like we get a little bit