The Insurance Industry That Quietly Runs Energy
0:00 you're all away in Zurich. That's right. So what time is it? The nine?
0:08 We are 20 past nine in the evening. So you've already had a whole day.
0:13 Yeah, mid morning start and sort of gearing up for just having a little bit of a chat with you. Yeah, I mean, it's great to be here. So thanks to the opportunity. And yeah, just have to start
0:25 with a quick disclaimer that all opinions are shared on my own and don't reflect that of any organization.
0:33 Yes, these are, you only represent Rodney today. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, so we have Rodney and you are our first virtual guest. There's also co-host Julie, but she's not here. She's a, she
0:48 doesn't always make every episode because she is important and has lots of duties while I'm just the video guy
0:56 Yeah, we have Rodney here. who, you know, we were going to have a whole conversation about insurance and the involvement of that industry within the oil and gas and energy industry in general.
1:07 But, you know, I think there's a lot to cover and talk about other than that. And I think we planned on telling kind of your whole story. You have almost three decades of experience, right? So
1:18 why don't you just, you know, why don't I sit back, Drake on this La Croix and you tell everyone about your fascinating history in the industry Yeah, OK, yeah, no, it's come up as a sort of a
1:30 topic of discussion recently. Obviously a couple of posts and, you know, people wanting to sort of, you know, thinking about transitioning and pivoting out of the oil and gas industry or just
1:43 career development, generally speaking. So, you know, for me, we're at it all again, you know, growing up in New Zealand, sort of grew up in a geological paradise. I didn't really appreciate
1:55 it at the time, you know.
1:58 the landscape kind of found me in a way. I was always drawn to the field work side of things, I must say. So I love being outside. And so I kind of gravitated more to the field work side of things
2:10 of geology. And it just sort of found me. And at university, they were offering good timetables, offering great field trips. And at the end of my degree, it's kind of like, OK, what now? Well,
2:23 you know, mining sounded like a nice lucrative career for a New Zealander, so off I went. That's kind of - that's really as simple as it got. The landscape basically shaped me very early on. Kiwi.
2:37 Yeah. New Zealand is very fascinating to people here in the States. Besides Lord of the Rings, I think everyone understands that it's known for its beautiful geography and kind of like pristine
2:50 perfectness. Like, everything there is perfect, and everyone there lives forever, and whatever. The industry, I guess I wouldn't have known outside of my experience here at Collide, but
3:02 recently I have learned that if I'm thinking New Zealand, even Australia, I'm thinking about mining, not exactly, oil and gas, even they're doing offshore on the west coast of Australia. And
3:15 they do have gas and oil plays on land there. But when it comes to New Zealand, I have no idea what's going on there. I don't know y'all's energy mix. I don't know anything I just kind of think of
3:27 it as the perfect bubble island. You took here in the South Pacific. Yeah, a little bit of the sheen has come off New Zealand recently. But yeah, when I grew up, it was very much the ideal
3:42 energies, well, geological playground.
3:46 But in terms of energy, I mean, there's a gas deposit on the west coast of the
3:51 North Island but it's not really until I got to Australia. basically in the sort of my geological class, there was, you know, 13 of us we went off to Australia, you know, quite early on and got
4:03 on the oil and gas track quite early and it was really going into the desert and the Cooper's Basin, the Simpson Desert, you know, there's a vast desert landscape where, you know, sort of my
4:15 entry point into the oil and gas industry was as a mud logger. That was back in the mid-90s,
4:22 this was before, while GPS was sort of around, but, you know, we were given hand-drawn maps on four by, you know, four-wheel drives and
4:33 a nine-litre container of water and maps where these land rigs were and we sort of had to make our way out there. I mean, looking back on it now, you know, it was a wonderful sort of foundation of
4:44 experience of the oil and gas industry but, you know, quite an adventure to get to these
4:50 these rig sites were following sort of the rig. the rig tracks, if you like. Yeah, I actually, I got a firsthand experience like that 'cause I don't know if you noticed, but last July, I went
5:02 out to the Northern Territory and I was with some of the guys from like Empire and Tim Boren and all that stuff they're doing a big play in the beat-a-loo. And I got to go through like these back
5:15 road mazes essentially, but you know, I did have the help of Google Maps that just somehow knew we were there, even at like six hours inland in the outback Pretty crazy and desert out there. Yeah,
5:28 I mean, it's vast, remote, stunning. Anybody who spent any time in the desert, you know, they'll appreciate sort of what it offers. Of course, you know, it's isolated, but it's quite
5:40 a stunning landscape to experience. Yes, I was in the Cooper's Basin. It's an old oil and gas field now, but it's funnily enough coming full circle now they're looking know, making you, it at as
5:50 a
5:52 sort of a, a CCS carbon capture and storage hub now. So it's kind of coming full circle sort of 25 years later. Yeah, so that was my sort of first real entry point into the oiling gas. And you
6:04 know, those were the days, you know, a little mud logging shack and the drilling supervisor would sort of come in and plonker an old bag of cuttings on the table and you'd have your sort of, you
6:16 know, very rudimentary drilling
6:19 parameters there and you'd just sort of please make sense of this and report back to me in the morning, you know? So, you know, small teams, vast landscape, big challenges, but that was kind of
6:29 my start of my journey in the oil and gas industry. I mean, what was it like back then in Australia? Because they're so known for their regulations.
6:39 They're just so, you know, there's some kind of crisis that's kind of going on now that I hear about, like on the East Coast where they have all this gas in them but they're importing it in, right?
6:49 Like, was it a lot like that? Australian tangent. How would
6:55 you compare the time you were there, the look of energy to today? Yeah, it's hard for me to look back and see when this developed.
7:06 It's just my personal opinion that Australia should be an energy
7:10 giant. It's been sleepwalking for
7:16 the last 15, 20 years, even probably at the time that I was there, but I was so deep in my
7:24 Cooper's base and old-school patrology cuttings, and I didn't really look at the greater energy landscape. But I get your point, yeah, for the last, it should be an energy giant. Yeah, I mean,
7:36 you say opinion.
7:38 I mean, people are just starting to realize that now, I don't know, but I'd almost call it fact. But we don't need to be talking about Australia. They'll figure it out They'll get there. What
7:48 happened next? You know, you're in the desert. And yeah, then was in the desert. And then, you know, as you sort of, you know, I followed a sort of the typical linear route through the oil
8:02 and gas industry. And I ended up in the Gulf of Mexico and Houston actually, where you're currently sitting, fond memories of my time in Houston. So I was with Schlumberger, oil and gas service
8:14 provider. And they needed, it was kind of in the days where they were doing a lot of cross-training So you would be doing a little bit of my dogging, you'd be doing a little bit of LWD, MWD on the
8:25 side whenever there was room for it. And I remember specifically ending up on, there was kind of my first, you know, this was the start of deep water drilling, you know, the high pressure, high
8:37 temperature, those were the days. And I was on an NSCO 7500 semisub platform. And I went out on the helicopter, no safety training, No nothing arrived out on the green water. Canyon prospect,
8:52 NSCO 7500, and I was told at the time by the recruiter that I was going out there to assist RIG UP for this job, you know, it was a state-of-the-art campaign at the time, huge amounts of
9:05 technology everywhere, and I remember going out there and just, you know, it was basically myself and what has become a good friend of mine out there rigging up and putting these cables up and all
9:19 of these places on the side of this platform. So that was kind of, yeah, that was my fore-round, sort of deep water oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Wow. And there were little
9:31 stints in California, kind of going back to small mud logging containers, shallow wells, constant rig moves, some time down in Mexico as well, sort of onshore But those were sort of my first sort
9:45 of deep water experiences. That's our age.
9:49 Yeah, so that was the contrast, right? So you're on these small dinky little land rigs, rig-moving every month to being on these big semi-subs, you know, bigger teams, but still sort of that
10:04 practical mentality of just getting stuff done. I'm assuming that's it, that's already so much, then here you are present day, or is there more stories in between? No, no, then it's, you know,
10:15 the boom and bust cycles are the oil and gas industry And those were the days, you know, in Houston where tools were lying in the shed, and people were looking for other opportunities and just
10:27 through sort of luck, really I ended up in the UK sector, coming more back to sort of well-site geology work.
10:36 Yes, I was involved with the Rosebank field, which they are still deciding with it to produce this field in a fantastic field, you know, some it's the. The surface location is halfway between the
10:51 Faroe Islands and Northwest Scotland. So sort of, you know, it's an arctic proper. Was on a drill ship at the time, massive drill ship, the Stena Karen. And this drill ship, just to give you a
11:03 sense of the size, you couldn't, it wasn't, it was too wide to get the girth to go through the Suez Canal. So it actually had to go around the Cape Horn and up the west coast of Africa to get up
11:14 there. So yeah, we were, I was on that project for the better part of about a year and a half, I think in the UK sector. So that was geo-staring days. So we've gone from, you know, simple
11:25 little dinky regs in Australia to deep water, high pressure, high temperature wells. And now we're talking about geo-staring a little thin reservoir, but quite an extensive reservoir. So we were
11:38 just, you know, guiding the geo-staring tools and the cleaner sands along this reservoir to sort of maximize recovery So was, is this what's considered like? deep sea, or what does they call it?
11:50 Yeah, no, that is deep sea. Yeah, I mean, the, the, the riser was in, I think it was, it was about 1500 meters of water from memory. But yeah, it's, it's deep water. Yeah. What do they
12:01 call that area of a body UK? They, they say, there's like a name for the area. Is it just deep sea or is it there's something more specific, the North Sea or something like that? Yeah. Yeah.
12:14 So the North Sea is the area between Norway and, and the UK. But this is, this is on the west coast of Scotland. Yeah. So, yeah. So sometimes, you know, crew changes were a nightmare because
12:27 the weather was very unpredictable. There was, a lot of the time was sort of waiting on weather and, you know, some amazing storms out there and in the Arctic up there. And I remember it was that
12:40 sometimes we read the crew changing out of Scotland, an old military base in the north. waste of Scotland or Aberdeen or the Faroe Islands themselves. Wow. I mean, yeah, you talk about the
12:51 utopia of New Zealand. Every, you know, a lot of people have seen the Faroe Islands. They're like these like vast, lush, like crazy, like mountain shapes. And then there's like a beautiful,
13:02 like one house on it. And it's like someone just lives there. It's like, is it like, I mean, you're in the middle of the sea, but like, do you see any of this geography around? Is it beautiful
13:11 or is it just cold and miserable? Well, cold and miserable, but, you know, when you were flying in and out by helicopters, you know, those images, those classic images that you see at the
13:21 Faroe Islands, yeah, that is exactly what it's like, yeah. Wow, that's incredible. What is, let's, you know, this isn't gonna be the deep sea offshore episode, but, you know, what is it
13:33 like just going from land to the rig, even like Faroe Islands, like, like, what is it? What is just any stories or memories or just, what's that process like? It sounds kind of crazy. Enduring.
13:45 Yeah, I mean, it's just a, you know, it's a question of adaptability. You know, you're there, there's a sense of camaraderie on the regs. You've got a specific role to do.
13:56 Yeah, the landscapes are incredible. You know, I could talk about sometimes up in Hammerfest in the north of Norway. You know, those are also
14:05 a very incredible experience that you have on, you know, as part of your sort of your daily job with the Northern Lights above the rig And, you know, vast snowy landscape and just sort of
14:18 incredible people, hardy people that live in these places like in Hammerfest and the Faroe Islands. I mean, how old are you during all this? Like, you can't have a family, friends. You've
14:29 already traveled around an entire world. Like, what does that like? Yeah, I mean, there's a certain point of time where this sort of occupation will become more difficult, I'd say, you know,
14:41 if you have a partner and kids. You know, I did have young kids at the time, although I was working in Norway at the time when the kids arrived. I met my wife in Houston, actually, so very fond
14:53 memories in Houston. Wow. But yeah, so when the kids arrived, you do look at things a bit differently and you want to fix rotation or you want it more of a sort of a regular schedule to obviously
15:05 spend more time with the kids. So I started looking for other roles and sort of led to my time in Norway You know, I was working on the Norwegian sector for about eight years and that, that covers
15:16 sort of stavanga through to, to hammer fish. Like I talked about before, it's a refinery town in the far north of Norway. And there I had a rotation where I was doing the good years. I was doing
15:28 sort of two weeks on four weeks off. So that was brilliant for sort of family life. Yeah, it actually kind of works. I mean, I have my own kids too. And, you know, I think it's healthy to
15:37 separate, you know, from them, you know, whether it's you and the kids or you split the kids, you know, The young one sticks with mom and then the other one gets. that for a few days. So, you
15:46 know, kind of adapting and just making it work. That actually sounds pretty interesting, you know. Yeah, I think two and four is a, you know, it's, it's, it's a nice schedule. And, you know,
15:57 the best feeling was, you know, standing on the platform, you can hear the helicopter blades and you just switch off, you switch off for four weeks and you're, you're home dead for four weeks.
16:09 And even, you know, coming back to sort of my nine to five job now here in Zurich, you know, I would one would argue that I was, you know, more switched off and sort of a family present person
16:21 and that to four schedule. Yeah. You don't take work home. You know, you don't sleep on it. All right. Well, that's already so much, but I have a feeling there's more. Yeah. Another sort of
16:32 boom, bust cycle. And, you know, at the time, I was part of a small team of well site geologists, operations geologists in Norway. And there were simply too many projects
16:44 or geologists needed. And I just started looking around, I was based in Switzerland, being based in Switzerland, sort of kept my family in the one location and I would travel for work if that
16:56 makes sense. So they've always been
16:60 had the stability here in Zurich. So I just started looking around at what kind of subsurface guy with what my sort of experience do locally
17:12 And I came across a radioactive waste disposal project which kind of sounded a little bit sci-fi at the start, but I was also quite curious. And it just turned out that, you know, perfect time
17:24 they needed somewhat of my background to lead the sort of the exploration phase and in particular sort of bring more petro physics into the work program. So it was like a scientific project It was
17:39 very data orientated. exploring the subsurface. No resource extraction. So it's a real sort of mind shift. You're drilling wells to acquire data. What exactly is this waste disposal industry?
17:53 How do you explain it in a simple way? Yeah, I mean, so the nuclear industry here in Switzerland, they have quite a legacy of nuclear waste. Currently, it's sitting in a processing plant in the
18:07 north of Switzerland, and they want to find a long-term solution and store it in the subsurface, and they've identified a clay layer, a clay formation called the
18:19 Opelinus clay, and it's about
18:26 600 meters to 600, six to 700 meters deep in the north of Switzerland. And they would like to build a sort of an underground facility and to store the. the high-level waste and the low-level waste
18:42 and this clay layer. And so I was part of the exploration project to sort of de-risk that safety concept so they'll do the geological investigations, not just the boreholes but a whole seismic
18:56 program,
18:59 also geomorphology, surface assessment. I was part of linking the dots with the geological investigations by drilling a series of boreholes in the near vicinity to prove that the clay layer was
19:17 remarkably boring to store the waste. There's no fractures, there's no flow, there's no chimneys, et cetera to get for the radioactive waste to come into contact with a water table in the future.
19:33 Is clay known to be the best way to store nuclear waste? Yeah, now there are three different rock types globally. Obviously, there's no clay up in the Nordic countries and Sweden's probably been
19:47 the forerunner for binding solutions. But they obviously have the granite up there so they don't have the clays. And then,
19:59 yeah, you can mount and that's an interesting one that is sort of more like a
20:05 tough formation really It's not like a clay. So, yeah, you've got two or three different rock types that are kind of acceptable and the disposal safety cases for waste storage. That's cool. Well,
20:15 I haven't really had anyone in our community or in our bubble really have that experience where I've heard that. Obviously, we deal a lot with CCUS
20:32 I hear like, you know, they like to go to salt domes and other things like that. So it's pretty interesting. Yeah, that's the other one. That's the other one. Yeah. So it's salt. You know,
20:39 Germany has a big history with salt. Yeah. So that was the third one on the salt, salt clay and granite. Nice. Okay. Man, that's crazy. It's like, there's a lot of public perception about
20:53 what we're doing underground, you know, we're drilling and mining and then we're putting stuff back in there, right? And you think about fracking and there's, you know, people hear lots of,
21:03 it's more of the negative side when it comes to fracking, what people hear and think and understand. And then when it comes to carbon capture, it's like, oh, yeah, get rid of it. Put it in the
21:12 ground. Screw it. You know, when it comes to nuclear waste, you know, that's everyone, I mean, you would picture like the Simpsons, like cartoons, like these barrels of green bubbling with
21:23 like skulls on them Like, obviously it doesn't look
21:29 like that, but what is like the public perception of storing nuclear waste. I don't even know what we have done in the past and what we do now current day. Yeah, no, I think, you know, it goes
21:39 back sort of, you know, 40, 50 years ago. I don't don't quote me on when the program started. And again, it was the, you know,
21:48 the US and Germany, they were sort of the forerunners for finding locations and they both kind of chose for better or for worse, you know, salt layers. And that comes with, you know, it comes
22:02 with its own pros and cons, or by the way, all rock layers sort of comes with their own benefits and minuses. And for whatever reason, and, you know, in the former times,
22:13 you can go back and look it up, but, you know, not to criticize anybody, but they had some issues, and at least in Germany with water and flow into these earlier projects. And it wasn't
22:25 communicated. So, That leaves a sort of lasting impression on the public, right? They're very attuned to these sorts of things, especially if it's not communicated in a timely manner. So that's
22:36 kind of, in a way, that's where you get these stories of the public perception against nuclear waste disposal. But I think, in recent, the last decade or so, various countries, whether it be
22:54 Switzerland or I was involved, or France, Sweden, and Canada, they're making good progress in terms of sort of proving their safety case and they're making, it's coming a long way. There's still
23:11 a lot to do, though. There's obviously a lot of legacy waste. And if we think about the whole nuclear renaissance coming, we're gonna obviously be generating one can call it waste, one can call
23:24 it's being fuel, that it will be spent fuel. We do need to find a solution for a lot of the material, and one might look at advances and recycling and things, but there will still be spent fuel,
23:38 and one could look at it as a temporary solution, one could look at it as a more of a long-term solution. Well, we'll save the gritty details with all that for another episode, because that sounds
23:49 very fascinating. But fortunately, or whatever word you want to use, you just kept going from the desert in Australia to the Gulf of Mexico, these offshore rigs, their nuclear waste. I mean,
24:03 how diverse does a portfolio get for someone in your industry? What comes next after this? What comes next? Yeah, then it's the world of insurance. So yeah, the Swiss project, it was sort of
24:18 the field work aspect, the exploration side of things was coming to a closure and, you know, a big part of my.
24:28 contribution to that project was sort of bringing the workflows, those established workflows are the oil and gas industry like the PICTrophysics and the geomechanics into the project and making sure
24:38 that, you know, we got the best possible data. But once that sort of that, you know, exploration field work was coming to a closure, sort of had my eye on the horizon, you know, what else can
24:51 a guy with my subsurface experience do? And, you know, it's just sort of standing. I don't think, you know, talking to my colleagues now, you know, I've been in the insurance industry for two
25:02 years and talking to my colleagues, it's actually a very natural thing to fall into insurance. But I was just sort of standing on the side of a football pitch, you know, watching my son play
25:10 football and I was talking to another father. And he happened to be an underwriter at an insurance company. And we just got, we got exchanging and he found what I was doing was interesting and
25:22 decided, you know, they had some interest in carbon capture and storage. and, you know, having been involved in a geological disposal project, you know, I could give some feedback and, you
25:33 know, gave an internal talk to the company that I'm with now and sort of the rest is history. Okay. I mean, you said you like you kind of naturally fell into insurance. I mean, it didn't sound
25:46 too natural. How exactly does that work? Well, what I meant was people in the insurance industry. There's, I don't think, well, there'll be some, but typically a lot of people that, you know,
25:60 a lot of my colleagues, they sort of fell into insurance.
26:04 But if you think about it now, you know, like a lot of the work that I'm advising or ground truth or de-risking is, you know, projects that I was involved with in the past, I made reference to
26:17 the Cooper's Basin in Australia, right, that's going to become a
26:23 CCS project. I'm quite familiar with the geology there. So, In a way, it kind of made sense. My main point was
26:29 that it was just a very sort of a natural process to have an exchange, some common interest. I was curious about what they were doing, they were curious about what I was doing, and yeah, that's
26:44 how it came to fruition. Yeah, you got the actual experience to make the right decisions you're dealing with. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I lived this, this type of
26:55 risk for many years as we've gone through. So, you know, that accounts for a lot when you've got underwriters, you know, they really want to understand the risk. So what does the day-to-day look
27:06 like in this insurance industry? Obviously, there's a big conventional portfolio, but they're also very focused on the transition side of things. And you mentioned CCS, hydrogen, whether it's
27:19 natural hydrogen plays,
27:24 a big renewables portfolio as well. So sort of a day to day, it's very much sort of project based. There's a couple of things that I'm working on on the conventional side of things. There's quite
27:37 a few things in terms of carbon capture and storage. It's obviously it's a new type of risk to the insurance industry. There are a couple of new products in order to price to make sure that they get
27:52 the premium right, and they offer those products to the industry. And obviously a big part of it now is there's a lot of interest in nuclear as you're probably aware and Houston. Maybe can you
28:07 compare the insurance industry you're in to like car insurance or insurance I would use on my expensive camera gear? Like what exactly are you de-risking or supporting? Yeah, okay, so I mean, we
28:22 off. We often think of insurance as like, you know, our personal surroundings, whether it's for a car or a home or your life coverage, but the role of insurance really extends, you know, far
28:35 beyond the individual. This is kind of industry insurance, you know, it's sort of like the, you know, it's a foundational pillar for the global economy. Nothing moves without insurance. So in
28:48 an industry like the energy industry, you know, it just wouldn't be able to operate at that scale if these projects are not insured. If you're looking at sort of the business lines that I've been
29:00 working with of late, you know, the carbon capture and storage or utilization and storage, you know, it's geologically driven, right? So if you can't prove that you've got a safe store at the
29:12 end of your value chain, that business case collapses. So that's a real incentive for the insurance industry to try and understand that risk. The simple thing to come back to what insurance means
29:26 is if you think about a lot of
29:30 the fire protection in your home, a
29:35 lot of the devices in your
29:39 studio, a lot of the devices that you might have, whether it be fire alarm, fire extinguishers, these are all exist because the insurance industry demanded it, right? Exactly. It just didn't
29:52 magically appear. So there's a lot of benefit from the insurance industry.
30:02 I do a lot of talks at the moment about the energy transition space, whether it be
30:08 CCS coming up with any of the other transition products. It's really changing the mindset of using insurance as a sort of a strategic enabler rather than sort of like a back-end expense.
30:24 Whereas most people perceive it as that personal eye, it's a car insurance, it's the house insurance. Or if you were in a conventional project, you would go to the far right-hand side of your
30:34 procurement list. I'm going to sputter well, okay, what do I need here? I need insurance now. So in the transition space, when these products are new or anything new, you know, they need to be
30:46 sort of
30:48 earlier engagement Right, yeah, it's not exactly comparable to what we see commercially is, you know, personally the way the cars and stuff like that. But could you maybe explain, I mean, we're
31:03 not trying to like sell your company or what you'll do, really. But what is like a product or like a package, you know, that you offer and is there like, I'm assuming there's like different tiers
31:15 to it Yeah, so for, you know, like, well, let's go to something that may be the the listeners are more familiar with it, it's carbon capture and storage. And for 90 of that
31:28 value chain, there are insurance products to cover that policy whether it be property damage, business interruption, construction. These are things that the insurance industry has 60 plus
31:42 experience with, and they can price that accordingly because they have 60 years of experience and data But with things like the potential leakage of CCS or if an operator were have to give back the
31:60 credits, the ETS credits, the carbon credits, if they were have to surrender those credits. Those are two new products that the industry hasn't had to price before. And of course, if you've only
32:13 got 12 industrial scale CCS projects globally over a sort of
32:20 15, 15 year time frame, that's quite difficult to price. So we've been developing a pricing model that would, that we could offer clients to cover those products that the market, not all projects
32:37 will be needed, but what we're seeing at
32:43 the moment is the leakage risk is is going to be required in most locations. Right. It's always tricky to itemize, you know, what your product is and come up with these prices and stuff or let
32:58 alone convince someone they need it. I mean, this is an optional service, right? Like, what is the issue with these projects not choosing insurance? Operators have their own captive insurance,
33:12 so they might bundle it in their own insurance policy. But other jurisdictions might request, you know, the government might stipulate that they need insurance for the liability of the risk of a
33:28 leakage, you know, of the carbon that's being sequestered leaking to the surface. Okay. So it just depends on the jurisdiction and the, you know, it's an evolving industry at the moment and your
33:43 regulations are changing, that, yeah, just trying to keep up to date and the different jurisdictions, you know, everybody's trying to get the year around, you know, what the CC is looks like in
33:53 different jurisdictions. But yeah, it's an exciting space. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack that, you know, out of my wheelhouse, this is the 101 podcast. So I can only go in so deep until I lose
34:07 track of what the hell we're talking about But you know, I had someone unreasonably who works in DC here in the US. She's dealing with a lot of CCUS stuff when it comes to permitting and regulations.
34:20 And I'm kind of getting a vibe of like a similar, you know, conditions you go through. Is Switzerland the best place to be in your industry? Is it more complicated? Is it more neutral? What is
34:34 it about Switzerland specifically? Yeah, no, there's no real subsurface industry in Switzerland, you know, they've never explored for hydrocarbons and mining is very small and things like that So
34:46 from a pure subsurface geology place to be, it's not really a great location. I chose it as sort of a, you know, location for, you know, sporting activities, you know, lifestyle and a good
35:00 pace to raise the family. But, you know, when I, the team that I support are international, it's a global, global company. So I support the team and most, if I'm honest, most of the energy
35:13 risks are written through London. So yeah, your days of going back to the field and all that is done and you get the pick and choose where you are. So it doesn't really have to do with anything.
35:26 Yeah, no, obviously when we started the conversation, it was all about the field work and
35:32 I guess fill the field work bucket with my sporting activities and get the kids out in the outdoors and show them what it's all about and make meaning of the landscapes around here Yeah, that's great.
35:45 I think you've put in your time, you deserve all that. Yeah, yeah, the times and the deserts and jungles and Arctic, it's
35:57 nice to reflect on, but
36:01 yeah, it's not easy with the family, I think. Right, a lot of cool stories out of it, at least, you know? Yeah, lots of good memories, you know, it's just sort of going through what we might
36:12 talk about tonight, you know. Yeah, it's been a nice journey. And this is a thing, you know, we don't really appreciate the oil and gas industry for what these opportunities have been able to
36:26 provide, you know, it's, it gets a sort of a bad rap that it, you know, it is, we are where we are today because of the oil and gas industry. There's no two ways about it. Could it do a better
36:38 job? Yes, it absolutely could, you know, the careers that people have had, like myself, going through it, just been amazing. Is it the way that it was now? I'm not sure, you know, people
36:48 were sort of, you know, colleagues of mine that are still in the industry, you know, things have changed
36:56 a little bit. But I still think there's good opportunity there. And it's obviously it's gonna be around for a lot longer whether we can openly talk about that or not. Yeah, that's great. Why
37:07 don't we kind of end talking about more of this holistic look at how everything is an energy? Here in the US, we got a president screaming drill, baby drill, and we love all the money we make from
37:21 our industry. Even that, there are a lot of people against it, and it's pretty political over here, but what is the view over there in Europe? I mean, you're sitting there in Switzerland saying
37:33 with the right mindset, saying it doesn't matter what you think, we're gonna survive and live off this stuff for another century, no matter what happens What kind of things do you pick up from the
37:45 culture, the society there in Europe? The energy realism that you have on your side of the Atlantic, I think is, it's a little bit lacking on this side.
37:59 There's some great technologies, renewable energy. Obviously, it's contributing to the energy landscape in Europe that I think there's a sort of an awakening now most of our grids, especially if
38:14 we look at the Iberia blackout, I'm not too sure if you were familiar with that. There was an event, sort of April earlier this year, where basically Spain and Portugal and the Southwest France,
38:24 but it's basically shut down for 24 hours, right? Yep. And that was a lot of that behind that, is this sort of this push behind this mantra of 100 renewable energy. And I just think it's gonna be
38:38 very difficult to achieve that certainly in the time frames that we're all sort of, you know, the net 050.
38:48 So I think there's a sort of an awakening that's happening in the last couple of years, more and more people are talking about it. And I think under the surface, whether we openly talk about it or
38:59 not, I think there's a realization that, you know, we're going to need some forms of fossil fuel for far greater lifespan than what we thought and renewables will come on. But it's a much longer
39:13 game than what we're talking about now. Yep, you said it right with energy realism. That's a really good way to put this talking point I like to bring up. Energy realism is realizing that
39:30 2050, 100 renewables may not be what's going to happen The mix will definitely increase and get better and better, but that might just be too soon. Energy realism, it's a nice way to finish on
39:46 that.
39:48 I think we've taken energy security and affordability for granted in a way
39:56 Now we've got to write a column for a
40:04 subsurface magazine calledEnergy Matters and they've been quite vocal about it. sort of a reconnection with their energy, understanding you know most of the people just put a plug in a plug socket
40:17 and they're fine but if we really understood what was needed to power that device that you were plugging in or to you know when you go down to the to the tank station to fill up your car what was
40:30 really required to achieve that I think you know most people really don't appreciate what's going on behind the scenes to get us there. Yep we spread the same messages here over in Texas at Collide
40:45 but to end it yeah you know I was reading some of the articles you wrote I think it's really cool what's some of the favorite your favorite pieces you've covered in a last year and what do you want
40:56 people to check out? Basically there is one code energy realism or a return to energy realism.
41:03 There's other ones where I talk about the the nuclear waste storage projects that there's a couple there that readers can check out and read up on probably better than what I conveyed in the podcast.
41:15 Now there's also ones about CCS. Yeah, so those are the sort of the topics that I cover, you know, energy matters and we should appreciate it. We should have a bit more realistic conversations
41:27 about energy going forward and what the energy transition means. You know, we're probably at a stage now where, you know, we've come to a point of the end of energy transition 11 and what will
41:39 what will 20 look like and, you know, nuclear looks like it's, it has a good future and that future make-up should we be able to clear some of the regulatory hurdles and skill, upskill, and next
41:58 generation of people to provide us with the energy. And I talk a little bit about energy density, the energy density ladder,
42:08 you know. For a long time, we were going for the next energy density product, right? We were going for a wood to coal, from coal to oil, oil to gas, gas to nuclear, and then all of a sudden,
42:19 sort of in the mid-80s, we started, oh, sorry, it was sort of around the Kyoto Protocol time, we sort of lost our way of it going to lower energy density products, which have made the
42:34 electricity prices increase So, yeah, we need to sort of resolve that issue. Yeah, we were doing so good, and here we are now.
42:47 No, but it's a realization, we're in the, what's called the adaptability trough, right? Yeah, right. Rodney, I think that just about does it? You know, everyone, welcome to the Energy
43:00 Transition 20, and let's hope we make it out. No, thank you.
43:08 Thanks for listening and for the invitation and, you know, to the listeners out there who, you know, the industry that you start in might be, might be just the one that shapes the horizon that
43:19 you end up chasing, which is kind of where I am now, it's coming full circle. Yes, literally full circle as this man has circled the entire globe multiple times. Yeah, no, it's been a, it's
43:30 been a great journey. So no, it was a pleasure to run through it and talk about it and pick out some nice little nuggets I hope that you continue being on people's podcast. You've got a lot to talk
43:42 about it. I would love to hear, I mean, I can almost get into depth of each stint you've gone through in your career. I would love to hear it. So keep writing, keep showing your face, and I
43:53 would love to tune in. No, thanks a lot, Jacob.
