Alex Epstein on fossil fuels, nuclear's lost 50 years, and why energy deregulation is the key to AI's power demands

So, it's good to see you [applause] again. You brought us books. Thank you.

Yeah, just in case.

Good to see you. Welcome to the show.

Welcome to the show. You don't have to have these happy dads. That's for later. [laughter]

We have a happy dad investor coming on the show. Uh but uh for those who don't know you, please introduce yourself. How how are you describing yourself these days? Obviously, you're an author. The book is Fossil Future. You can get it wherever books are sold, I'm sure. Yeah, traditionally I do energy expert and philosopher because I actually think philosophy is the reason people disagree about energy.

Okay.

And then these days it's really independent policy advisor since most of the stuff I do is is behind the scenes with government trying to get them to adopt energy freedom policies.

Interesting. Uh do do you do you feel like the book touches on the philosophical debate around energy?

Yeah, it touches would be would be an

would be an understatement. Yeah, I I mean I I think of my life really or the last 19 years in energy have been basically two things. One is trying and and the one the book addresses is trying to shift the conversation from an antihuman conversation

to a prohuman conversation about energy and and actually I think did we meet at Hereticon? Is that where we might have met at Hereticon or one of Peter's other things? But uh I I gave an example in my talk there that I think is the easiest way to see that we have an anti-human way of thinking about energy, which is I'll ask people, hey, which of the following words would you use to describe our current relationship to climate? So, are we in a climate crisis? Are we in a do we have a climate problem? Do we have a climate nonpro? Or do we have a climate renaissance? M

and you know that audience is going to be more might even consider renaissance but most people won't right most people will say crisis

or problem and then the extreme is nonpro

but then I I share the data which you can actually look at the rate of deaths from climate disasters such as storms and floods extreme temperatures etc and it's very clear-cut and we have this just incredibly dramatic 98% decline in those deaths

which would imply Renaissance,

which would imply Renaissance

and that's over like a hundred years.

That's over the last hundred years. Yeah. And if you go back further, it's it's even it's even more. And then if you look at the data in terms of

Yeah. There was something even even with the California wildfires a year ago, I think there was something like 30 deaths, which was the most deaths in a in a in a fire in recorded history in California to from from what I remember.

Yeah. And I mean wildfires is actually I was going to mention the economic piece of it. Like even economically, if you adjust for GDP growth, the damages are flat.

Uh so you would say it has to be a renaissance, right? I mean, we're we're much less threatened from climate than ever.

And if you think about that in fossil fuels and you think for a minute or two, you think, well, that actually might have to do positively with fossil fuels because fossil fuels power the irrigation systems that alleviate drought. Drought is actually the number one climate killer historically. Yeah,

they obviously give us heating and air conditioning to deal with extreme temperatures with with and even uh abnormal temperatures and cold is by far the bigger killer than heat. And we have all kinds of sturdy infrastructure and storm warning systems. So it's this really interesting phenomenon where what actually happened is, as I put it, fossil fuels didn't take a safe climate and make it dangerous. They took a dangerous climate and made it safe. But the interesting question in terms of philosophically is why is it that so many people say we're in a climate crisis even though from a climate livability perspective or a prohuman perspective we're in a climate renaissance and and I'm telegraphing it a bit which is that they're they're not looking at it from a pro-human moral perspective. They're looking at it from an anti-human moral perspective. But but specifically the perspective that our goal should be to reduce or eliminate our impact which is the idea of of being green.

Yeah. Is there a factor here of just uh like like media awareness like the the fact that you know in in times of old you wouldn't if there was a fire like the Palisades fire you wouldn't see that everywhere for weeks on end but now there's much more visibility so I hear about an earthquake over there or a storm over there and so it feels like there's more happening

that's a mechanism that people can use but of course they could use the opposite mechanism I mean they could say and this would happen all the Look at this. Look at this minor climate problem that 100 years ago would have been a total disaster. Like compare this to the Galveastston storm 100 years ago. So my conclusion is the people leading the charge who think it's a climate crisis, like there are a lot of people who are just ignorant of these facts. But the people who know these facts, who know that we're at a we're in a renaissance from a climate livability perspective, they're evaluating the state of the climate not by how good it is for humans, but by how little impact we've had. So their goal is an earth with minimal human impact and by that standard we are in a climate crisis because we have had some

impact. So my view is if our overall impact is positive for humans that's a good thing. Their view is if there's more impact that's a bad thing and this is this illustrates that this is overwhelmingly a philosophical disagreement. So whether you view today if once you know the facts about climate livability whether you view it as a climate renaissance or climate crisis that's not based on science nobody nobody has disputed these facts I mean New York Times tried everyone tried nobody has successfully vivik really popularized this when he ran for for president because he he learned this in fossil future and no everyone tried to refute him and nobody could do it so it's it's only that you have a different what I call in philosophy or what we call in philosophy standard of evaluation you're looking at the same facts but you have a different measuring stick. And my my basic contention is if you look at fossil fuels in a balanced way from what I call a human flourishing perspective, the benefits are obviously far far greater than the negatives, including climate wise. But but that's that's why like I have the moral case for fossil fuels and fossil future, which is about why global human flourishing requires more fossil fuels.

But it's the number one thing I'm doing is I'm just changing the yard stick by which we're measuring it. And I'm using [clears throat] that very consistent. I think AI is taking the wind out of the climate crisis sales in the sense that climate crisis was uh a powerful story for the media industrial complex because

let's say you know have a slow news news day or week that TV can just show a big chart on the screen of a bunch of counties and they're all red and it looks looks really bad just because the the the way the graphic design is done. Uh and now we have this like uh uh worldwide uh sort of systemic fear of this impending I I feel like

oh so you just people are talking about AI not climate we're just using way more energy gas turbines but then there's also the media story of just giving this sort of like media the media industrial complex loves a sense of impending doom

like Eleaser Udicowski is more popular than like Al Gore as of yesterday or as last year. Yeah, that content is getting much.

AI Doom is just a is just a bigger meteor

right now. It's much more the energy side.

The energy side, but the Doom side really concerns me. And AI is actually the only issue I'm considering getting into

in terms of mastering it and mastering how to communicate it just because I feel like there's

nobody has really mastered it from the prohuman pro technology side

and it's hard to

No, no. I I said this yesterday. I mean, the tech industry right now suffers because nobody can nobody can speak in into a a a let's say like the Super Bowl demographic. If the tech founder went and talked at the Super Bowl during the halftime show and they were like, "We're going to automate all the jobs." Everyone [laughter] would be like,

"Boo, I'll hit the boo button. You can't do but but like boo like this guy sucks. Get him out of here." and and so so it's been very difficult and and people talk about UBI and the sort of post scarcity element if you can just bring a bunch of robots online. Uh but nobody especially at the labs I feel like has I I don't even think um this idea of like a personal tutor or personal expert in your pocket is really I don't think people appreciate it that much even though the labs talk about it. So finding the pro-human narrative I think is super important. It's something that's like critical to the industry because I think we're in the second the beginnings of like the second real tech lash. You had the sort of like social media tech lash era. Now we're in the AI tech lash era. And it's only going to get worse if we just keep promising the world, hey, we're going to automate your job away. you're motivating me to this is the tension in my life right now because

you know I've been working energy for a long time and we've gotten to this point where the opportunity like a lot of the debate has shifted and I've had some role in that but also the politics have shifted where I and others have never had more opportunity to actually change the policy for the better but then AI

you're kind of getting shiny shiny object

well I'm not [laughter] deterred yet but it's but also I like I need to innovate in AI actually for what I'm trying to energy and there's

anyway so so it's it's tempting but I would just say if anyone here is watching who thinks that you might be able to be this I would much prefer to help you and teach you what I've learned in energy and apply to AI then do it myself would be more of a matter of like I got plenty to do in energy but but there needs to be somebody doing this so Alexstein.com just send me uh

can you can you set the table for me on like the state of American the American energy industry because uh I grew up at at a time when the big oil companies were the biggest companies in the world. Exon Mobile was the largest company in the world and then now we live in the era of big tech and I'm wondering if uh the big oil companies are still well-run like they don't feel founder. They don't feel like they're in founder mode. I don't know the names of people who are running large energy companies. I can't Elon Musk where I can

kids at elite universities are not like you know juniors being like I'm working in oil and

I'm older than you guys and I I I remember cuz I I was at um one of the top math science high schools in the country than I was at Duke and I just remember thinking later because I myself had no interest in fossil fuels at the time and a little bit of an aversion uh I'm like looking back none of those brilliant people wanted to do this like it wasn't aspirational So interesting.

But is it is it is it an industry where the product has such insane product market fit that you can you don't need the most elite uh executives operator.

You get some but so here's the thing is I don't think oil and gas has attracted overall the best of the best. There are definitely some brilliant people.

Uh the bad news is that electricity is much much worse.

Okay, explain that. So well so the thing about oil and gas is in a lot of this the two variables are going to be what's the degree of freedom in the culture in the [clears throat] in the political system for achievement because that's going to determine largely the economic upside and then there's the issue of the culture. So with the culture obviously there's been huge hostility toward oil and gas and of course coal as well

and that that deters a lot of people early from even wanting to go in. The positive of oil and gas is that it's um within the energy industry, it's by far freer than many many other parts of the energy industry. If you look at say particularly in Texas, you look at where the Perian basin dominates, you can get a permit to drill in the Perian in a few days. Now, if it's the Texas Peran, if it's the New Mexico Perian on federal lands, much different story. You know, that that stack of paper is probably 10 times uh higher. But there's a lot of a lot of oil and gas doesn't involve federal permitting which I hope we talk about trying to fix that at the moment. So what that means that you can act a lot more quickly on good ideas which attracts good people. Now, if we shift to the electricity sector,

I had I real quick I had a last year I was at a at kind of a VC founder dinner and uh one of the one of the founders there had

some some company I think in advertising, but he had a piece of land in California that he was just he had been drilling for oil. He just had like a small like kind of lifestyle business. That's crazy.

But he ultimately uh there was some new regulation that was getting passed and I think that basically put him out of business. Weird.

Yeah. I mean the Cal I admire all these people in California to some extent Colorado and it's it's hard. I I I actually refuse to invest in energy just because I advise politicians and it creates conflicts of interest, but I just say as a as a hypothetical investor in

a postconlict era. [laughter]

No, I mean I'm I'm very extreme about conflict avoidance.

I I appreciate that.

But but it's it's Yeah, California is really hard. I mean you can you can of course imagine high risk high reward things, but it's just you look at the governor. You would think we import so much oil, wouldn't we want to produce some? And

yes, and there's I mean there's a bit of a shift there just as there is in New York and and uh and Massachusetts. They're a little bit more open.

But it's it's bad. But if we take if we take the power sector, I mean, first of all, we're talking about something that that is institutionalized as a monopoly

in the first place. And then not to go into too much detail about the power sector, but there's we started quote unquote deregulation, which is just a new and in many ways worse form of regulation. We start that a couple decades ago. And broadly speaking, there are two really big types of electricity systems. One is a traditional utility model where the utility does everything. So they have the generation, what's called the transmission, so the longer distance travel, and then the distribution, which is the more local stuff. So in that you can imagine that doesn't tend to attract the best people because like a lot of monopoly type things, like a lot of the military stuff, it's a cost plus model. So and you get paid for spending more money. you get paid for incurring more.

But then as bad as the market is a mess in part because they allowed once intermittent solar and wind came on they allowed that to be treated as a reliable power source when it's not in fact a reliable power source. Now it has utility but it's primarily a fuels saving device. So people think like oh you hate solar you hate it's not about that. It's just what does it functionally do. What it functionally does uh in the vast majority of cases is it saves you fuel on a reliable power source because most of what we need in electricity is we need ondemand electricity and with a solar panel or wind turbine you can't get on demand electricity it's both the existence and the amount is weather dependent so if there are situations such as say China with coal where they have you know a lot of coal power and they need enough coal power they need that much capacity to meet their peak demand but if you have a bunch of solar And particularly if they overbuilt a bunch of solar that they were trying to sell to the rest of the world and it it didn't work as well as they thought. You can you can have basically colar, right? Coal plus solar where every time the sun shines. Yeah. To what extent the sun shines, you're saving fuel and depending on your fuel cost that can be efficient. Now it tends to be efficient at lower levels versus uh versus higher levels. But so the electricity markets got screwed up for many reasons, but that was the biggest one where if you allow solar and wind to compete as reliable sources, it screws up everything. And in particular, it screws up the economics of the reliable sources. Yeah.

Because if they're not, if it's a monopoly and one person owns everything, you can decide, hey, I'm going to pay this much for solar for fuel savings and you can make it work when it works. But if you have a quote market where all the generators are competing independently and you allow solar to be its own independent generator whenever it's available, that natural gas plant doesn't benefit from the fuel savings. It loses operating revenue. And so this is what we did to all the reliable power plants on the grid. Is we subsidize the hell out of solar and wind, spammed the grid with this fuel saving infrastructure, but on the power markets, it doesn't benefit them. So it's screwed up. So this this gets technical but you can imagine that a lot of the people who have succeeded in this field are there there can be a scam element. You have some smart traders but their efforts are not going to a productive thing. So it's both

talent level issues with the utilities but then you even have some smart people in the markets but their intelligence isn't being welldirected because it actually can screw up the grid. And then the culture has push pushed so many people into the green space where the relative opportunity was much less than in fossil fuels and in nuclear if you had a proper market. So that's that's it's really bad situation.

Nuclear uh get us up to speed on how you're thinking about nuclear these days. It feels like there's incredible energy both the government just announced a $2.7 billion grant yesterday and uh it feels like there's nuclear startups for the first time in my lifetime getting funding. learned yesterday that we get enriched uranium from Russia

or we did not used to.

Yeah, there are other people who can do it too. So I

I know you know you you wrote that really interesting essay yesterday on um energy production and I think in in your space that there's many forms of energy production but the main thing is going to be electricity production and specifically it's dis what's called dispatchable or reliable electricity production. So on demand, we could talk about how AI fits into that, but in general, I think there are four things that have screwed that up. And one is the near criminalization of nuclear power.

The issue with that is

that's a hard one to unwind quickly. So if you if you look at there's a lot there's this attempt at a nuclear renaissance and and I'm working as hard as anyone to try to make that happen but we don't yet we're not yet having any kind of rapid build of new nuclear infrastructure you know since the establishment of the nuclear regulatory commission in 1975

we only started building any reactors from we only started conceiving and completing reactors in 2023 which are the Vogal plants in South right in South Carolina and they were

when did they actually you're saying they didn't

there nothing that went from conception to completion from 1975.

So they got completed in 2023

2023 but with you know 10x cost

overruns. So we have now there there was already some progress before this administration. We had what's called the advance act which was a significant improvement tried to redirect the NRC. They're definitely much better people at the NRC now. So they're headed in in a much much better direction. Congress both Republicans and Democrats are aligned. But we're just talking about something that

we've lost arguably 50 years of potential progress because we had we had something in the late60s where nuclear was by many estimates the cheapest form of electricity and the safest in terms of reliable electricity. It was already true with that technology and we somehow

the safest cleanest.

Yeah.

Yeah. Obviously.

Yeah. I mean the talking point that I hear about the NRC is that we haven't approved any new nuclear reactor designs but we also haven't just been copy pasting the ones that work. So it's like twofold problems and

and this the nuclear industry is fascinating in terms of communication because their their usual thing is just we have to change everyone's opinion about perception about nuclear and then we can do stuff and

which I think that the public is more pro-uclear than they think even historically right now it is. I think what we have to we have to do what you're looking at which is say wait a second

we could already produce these large nuclear plants and get this incredible result. Why don't we fix that problem first? Because we actually know how to do these things. They're all these exciting companies doing new things.

But but part of the reason is these communications people have an aversion toward traditional nuclear because they it has these negative associations. But you have to you have to kill those associations. You have to kill the idea that this was uniquely dangerous. No, it was uniquely safe. Like Chernobyl uh has nothing to do with what we would ever do in the United States. That was like a half weapon, half reactor. And even that damage doesn't compare to the damage done by a lot of other things in the Soviet Union. I mean, as one economist put it, Soviet toasters probably did more damage

than [laughter] I don't know that's a stat, but that's

No, no, no. I

nuclear it's like what we need to do is we need to fix the political stuff as quickly as possible

and we're getting some funding there, but we have to recognize that it's the overall problem is just a political restriction problem. Yeah. So that is a very exciting thing to do but it is the least near-term sure

of the four things. So the other things are I mentioned the electricity markets are screwed up. Okay that's part of a broader pref set of preferences for solar and wind

or for intermittent energy let's just say and the other piece of that which I was involved in and has largely been fixed but not totally is the subsidization of intermittent energy. So that was in the big beautiful bill. That was a lot of what I spent 2025 on is killing as many of trying to help people who wanted to kill those kill as many as possible. So, we've got the nuclear criminalization. We've got the preferences for intermittent energy. The biggest thing by far is we have the prohibitions on reliable solar, reliable fossil fuel energy. And that's you'll hear about things like the endangerment finding. There was the Biden clean power plan 2.0 that basically made it illegal for existing coal plants to function for any new natural gas plants to be built past a certain date. So, and then we have the general permitting problem which is anti-development permitting. So you just imagine we had all of these factors restricting the supply of electricity and then we had the previous administration and others artificially increasing demand through electrification, right? Forced electrification. So trying to shut off natural gas and homes trying to force us to use EVs, which I'm totally in favor of people using freely, but we pay over $50,000 per EV. Like taxpayers pay over 7,500.

No, no, no, no. That's just one small part of it. We could go into all the different subsidies cuz there's a lot of fuel economy trading where you basically get

It's wild. It's wild, too, because you get the subsidy and then the consumer buys a vehicle for $60,000 and it's worth half that in like 12 months.

Yeah. But it's it's also the way the fuel economy things work at the federal level and the California level. A lot of what they do is they set the fuel economy standards impossibly high for regular vehicles and then they give EVs this ridiculously low high fuel economy score and so everyone Tesla on down just trade makes huge amounts of money trading their emissions credits.

Oh, got it. And that's per vehicle that

Yeah. And this, by the way, this is something the current administration has been doing a good job at the exe in terms of the administration executive actions trying to undo a lot of these things,

but you want as many undone congressionally. So again, we have these these factors of artificially restricting supply, artificially increasing demand, and then of course the one you guys are focused on is the organic increase in demand

via AI. So the what I'm trying to fix is just stop restricting supply. How do you how do you predict that? Uh this feels like you know rising energy costs have always been a political issue. They're going to be like at the forefront I think of a lot of debates going forward. Politicians I imagine are going to try to score points by you know beating back data center development just because they know their constituents are going to cheer it on. uh how are you advising all these different players at the at the center of these debates on on how to how knowing that energy uh uh usage is going to go up dramatically uh with with data centers one way or another what what is your how do how do we kind of thread the needle

so there's there's what to advocate policy-wise and what to advocate messaging wise so let's start with messaging wise so one thing is to pin the recent and and baked in rises on the proper culprits. So there's an attempt to to um pin it on reducing subsidies. So it's in particular, I try not to be political about this, but there's this idea if Republicans reduce subsidies, therefore that's why your electricity bills go up. The timing doesn't even work on these things. The logic is actually the opposite. The subsidies uh by depriving one of the things they've done is they've deprived the reliable power plants of capital. They've had less reliable power. And so what happens is you have shortfalls in supply relative demand and that puts the market prices up in particular what's called capacity markets which you see particularly in regions like PJM, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and that whole region like those prices go up. So there's just this all this false narrative. So what people need to recognize is the reason prices are going up is because of prohibitions on reliable power and preferences for unreliable power and then artificial force electrification. like they need to understand that the data centers one thing people need to understand is new demand does not incre inherently increase electricity prices in fact usually what it does is it decreases electricity prices because you have the same amount you have relatively the same amount of capital spending spread out over more different entities so you'll have different you know um uh Bergam uh interior secretary former governor like he and Chris Wright secretary of energy have been pointing out hey North Dakota is looking really good price-wise and they've had massive increases in data because they've been investing more in energy.

Well, no, no, no. Because the data centers there's on any grid you have the peak usage and then you have the regular usage and you very rarely hit peak. So, when you have more demand, you're actually spreading out the cost among more. So, the the one of the questions with AI that's interesting is what's the flexibility of the demand profile going to be? Because the more flexible it is, the less you need to increase the peak, which is which is good to increase the peak, but that's the most expensive thing to do. The more you can use off peak, the more you're actually lowering prices.

Yeah. And this is already happening a little bit where sometimes if you prompt an image generator, it will in your in your in the middle of the day, it'll go across the world and it'll use it where it's dark there in the middle of the night because there's maybe more energy or something or like away from peak load. What do you think about uh my my question of uh you know energy production growth in America 2026? Uh are we going to see you know a break in the curve? Are we already seeing a break in the curve? Is this even the right question to be asking about just energy progress in America over the next few years?

I mean it's a good it's a good measure of progress particularly industrial progress to look at energy production in general

in a country and the fact that we've had flat electricity usage. Yeah. Yeah. And if you look at ours versus China's, I think we're at about 1/5if their industrial electricity

uh usage. So those are really bad signs. So it's a sign that you're being less productive than you can and often that you're offshoring things because you have such a restrictive anti-development

environment. With the electricity thing, it's

it's one of these things where I'm trying to create the future. So I try not like I'm trying to make but you're rooting for 5% growth this year.

Well, yeah. I'm rooting for the enablement of the capacity and the nice thing is you have a lot of smart people in the administration who are really interested in this problem. So that's that's a good thing at the margins because then you can you can make things happen more quickly.

You have private industry is very focused on this because of AI whereas they haven't been before. So you're getting a lot of ingenuity and and it's going to be really interesting to see

there's going to be a lot of things at the margins and we'll see how they add up. I mean, one thing is we use we're using very small oil plants, natural gas plants. Uh, you know, they're talking about using the backup generators in Walmart on the ground. Like, there's going to be these interesting questions and it's we have a new class of smart people who are now being added who whose now focus is on generating more dispatchable power. I love that. There's lots of things you can do. I mean, there's interesting things you can do with with batteries. Like you can, this I'm in agreement on Elon with like you can you can build batteries and you can charge them off peak. People think you need solar and wind to go with batteries, but actually the easiest way to deal with batteries and the way most batteries get charged today is you have a reliable source of energy and you charge it off peak, right? You can run your nuclear power plant at night and charge batteries and then for a few hours you'll have those batteries to meet peak demand. You can also what's called up rate natural gas plants. So a lot of the natural gas plants in the country were built a generation or two ago and they might get uh 30% less capacity than a new natural gas plant, but you can without without dealing with the fundamental supply chain issues in many cases. You can actually add capacity to hundreds and hundreds of existing gas plants. So we've got there's a lot of industrial potential. There's a friendly administration. What we have fundamentally though is ultimately the administration doesn't properly make any law. It enforces the law. administers the law. And so what we need as much as possible is to do things congressionally. So subsidies were one piece of it. The thing right now that I'm very focused on is permitting reform.

And that is cuz it's impossible to get permits for things or it's so [clears throat] difficult and I don't know how much time we have, but there's a lot there's a lot that needs to be fixed and it's it's actually hanging by a thread right now. We have a lot of time because you're our new energy correspondent, but we we can't let you leave without talking about uh the actions in Venezuela, how that's

impacting kind of global energy markets. Uh you know, everybody on X has their own theory of why we did it and all that stuff, but uh let's talk about realities of like how this can impact um uh just different geopolitical dynamics. All right, let me just say one thing to the audience because one reason I was excited about coming here is you've got, you know, a group of people that's very engaged, I think, interested in these issues, but that I don't always get to to speak to. And I just posted this on X, but I want people to know like if you find this exciting, we're hiring, and I just put out, you know, for one of my groups, Energy Freedom Fund, which is the only principled pro- freedom lobbying group in the world basically. Uh we are Yeah. $50,000 referral bonus if you can find anybody. Whoa.

Yeah. Yeah. [applause] And we have an assessment. There's an assessment that will tell us

whether you can do it or not. So, it's two hours. So, if if people are up for it,

it's worth doing. If you do a decent job at all, we'll at least give you good feedback. But, yeah, that's that's my limiter right now

in fixing these problems is we have enough money,

fortunately. But we have a talent deficit. So, this is one reason I wanted to come on today. So, let's talk about Venezuela. I mean, Venezuela, I try to be a master of energy and not pretend to be a master of other things. So, obviously, many aspects of the Venezuela situation are beyond energy. I think there's two really interesting things about this that are important. So, one is that this is not making a difference, a big difference to global oil markets in the near near future. So, we're talking about something where Venezuela is kind of like Venezuelan oil in some ways is like nuclear power, whereas it used to be good and it should have gotten better, but you know, you're talking about going

potential.

Yeah. Well, it's, you know, was once I think its peak was three and a half million barrels a day. So, right now we're at about 102 million barrels a day. Uh, and by the barrels barrel is 42 gallons. So, it's about, you know, 500 million gallons or so of oil, uh, you know, produced a day. And 1% of that right now, a little less than 1% is coming from Venezuela. And both because of how dilapidated so much of the industry is, how much incompetence there is, and also because physically the crude they use in terms of heavy crude is more difficult to process than other things.

It's it's not like this is just you're going to go from one to three anytime soon. So there's a lot of invest, you know, it's this is not any kind of slam dunk. By the way, Canada has in some ways better oil. It's a lot freer country. I think we're totally underutilizing Canada as a trading partner. So, it's an interesting I I think economically near-term it's not super interesting. It's not as exciting as people think. It's probably most exciting for oil field services. If you invest a bunch of money and send a bunch of people down there, yeah, that benefits Hallebertton and Schlumbumberge and that kind of thing. Also benefits potentially GF coast refineries who are very good at this kind of crude. Then they don't need to get it from Canada. So then it comparatively hurts Canadian people. So there's that whole thing. The thing I find most interesting though is that for the first time that I can ever remember, a pet issue of mine is now in the public or this pet is in the public, which is that all of these oil countries stole our oil.

Like this is a I'm I'm really I don't always agree with exactly how the administration is saying it, but it's very important. And read the the book The Prize is is really good in this regard by Daniel Jurgen. Yeah. Yeah. He he's he does he's not as judgmental as I am about this. He probably doesn't have as negative a judgment, but you just look in country after country, what happened was they had some, you know, random mild dictator type person or king or, you know, wasn't the most evil person in the world, but they made a very clear deal with the west. So you take Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia couldn't even find water

before we came there, you know, before the west and particularly the US uh came there and standard oil, right? And they couldn't find water. That was their that was their big problem at the time. And then we of course make it possible. We get what's called these concessions. So we're getting a kind of right. And what happens is just they keep pulling back on these things. And because of cultural and political forces at the time, nobody stands up to them. So they they keep stealing more and more and then they just totally nationalize it. They declare it their national heritage. They've totally broken the agreement and then they use this to fund some of the worst dictatorial behavior in the world. So I think it's very very important that people are now saying explicitly, hey, we had rights to that oil

and it's been stolen and there's

this has been me'd to no end over the last few days, which is, you know, the I when when when people

see Trump say that's our oil or something to that effect. People normally dunk on it because they're like, well, how could that possibly be the case? It's we don't own this is not the 51st state. It's not our land. But you're pushing back and saying, "No, we actually did originally have

Yeah. I mean, it's not we. It's it's specific companies, right? So, we need to be clear on it's it's not nec it's not the government's thing." But it is it is an interesting it's a real case of reparations because the seizures happened not too long ago. I mean, you're talking about a lot of them culminated in the 70s and then happen. You're talking about the 40s maybe through the 70s and 80s and then they even once they nationalize it, they screw over companies in different kinds of ways. So, I think this is a really good thing, but it needs to be talked about in a very precise way. One thing that that Trump will do that I think is wrong is like he he'll have sort of a feeling of like I want all these other countries resources. So, like I'm so excited about Greenland and even making Canada the 51st state and then talking about Ukraine in certain ways. And I think there's you're on really firm ground when somebody actually broke contracts with your companies. there there's a difference between like oh I'm really excited like having the mentality

and it would be nice to have access to that versus there was a time when there was a

a contract in place

and and access we can access them in a very real way by trading with them. So with Canada we have enormous opportunity that I think we're squandering right now. I think we should be there's a lot I mean Ukraine is a whole other issue but I think we should be supporting Ukraine a lot more. Um, so yeah, but but it is a really interesting narrative shift. That is a good thing.

Well, thank you for getting us up to speed. We have to jump to our next guest. We'd love to have you back on the show. This is fantastic.

Thank you so much. The book is Fossil Future. The author is Alex Epstein for stopping by. Uh before we bring in our next guest, let me tell you about public.com investing for those who take it seriously. They got stocks, options,