Mark LaCour has been in the oil and gas industry for over 25 years. He is the founder of Modalpoint, a market research and strategy company focused on this industry. His expertise has earned him a reputation as a trusted industry “insider” and independent third party researcher. He has since extended himself into new media territory, where he has the top oil and gas podcasts all over the world, is a sought after public speaker and author on the topic, sits on several of the oil and gas boards, and has one of the top presences in social media when it comes to thought leaders in the industry.
Some people think that the oil and gas industry has been totally misunderstood over the years for its supposed negative effects to the environment, but there are good stories that the public never hears. Today, I am joined by a good friend of mine, Mark LaCour who wants to debunk these myths. He’s a guy who’s been in the oil and gas industry for a while now and he’s out here telling us what the narrative is really like behind the scenes. From this episode, you’ll also get to learn a great deal about applying innovation to tried and tested systems without losing the essence of your company or industry, and just really keeping an open mind because you never know whether the next opportunity is staring you right there in the face.
2:32 Mark tells us about what’s going on in the oil and gas industry right now
7:10 As we head into the future, our energy mix is changing
13:18 Oil and gas companies have internal venture capital groups and they’re looking for entrepreneurs and giving them resources
16:33 How the industry is totally misunderstood
22:17 The oil and gas industry is driven by the culture of safety
30:24 Mark talks about the recycling situation in the US
34:52 How cooperating with other industries tends to bring the oil and gas industry up to modern standards faster
35:35 The two big major threats facing the oil and gas industry right now: lack of talent and negative publicity
38:15 There is a need to figure out what we can do to help the world without being intrusive
43:22 Mark's passionate plea to entrepreneurs
"Be open-minded. One of the worst things you can do is to think you know it all."
GET IN TOUCH:
MARK LEARY:
www.linkedin.com/in/markhleary
www.leary.cc
MARK LACOUR:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/oil-and-gas-expert-speaker/
https://modalpoint.com/
Production credit:
Engineering / Post-Production: Jim McCarthy
Art / Design: Immanuel Ahiable
June 16, 2021, Wednesday
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
industry, people, hydrocarbons, oil, gas industry, world, problems, years, money, chevron, big, company, business, africa, gas, mark, houston, technology, china, running
SPEAKERS
Mark LaCour, VO, Mark
Mark 00:00
So we're rolling, cool. We are live. This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson Leary. My name is Mark, I have a passion that you should feel in control of your life. And so what I do is I help you get control of your business. And part of how I do that is by letting you listen in on a conversation between two people geeking out on something they love, usually in some part of the entrepreneurial world. Today, we're going to turn it a little bit, we're gonna talk about something you probably wouldn't normally expect us to talk about today, we're going to talk about the oil and gas industry. And we'll see if we get something interesting out of it. It's a fascinating industry, especially right now. But I am joined by a wonderful guest, a friend of mine, a guy who I'm inspired by, a guy who's been in the oil and gas industry in various ways for like 25 years, Mark, you've been doing this a long time. I'm scared to do the math, but at least 25 years. Yeah, man. So you talk to people about oil and gas all day long in all aspects of oil and gas, and certainly in Houston, oil and gas. And that whole industry affects a whole host of supply chains in Houston and Texas. But it's really a global impact. And now is a very interesting time. And we're not going to talk about about politics today. But you know, there's a political landscape to this. So I really didn't really introduce you. But Mark LaCour, my friend, welcome, sir. How are you?
Mark LaCour 01:16
Awesome. Thanks for having me. I tell you a funny story about my degree in wildlife management. So high school, four years of Marine Corps after being cold and wet and shot out for four years, I decided that wasn't a career for me. So I went to school to save the planet and got a degree in wildlife management. Get out of school reality slaps me in the face because this is an ad, only job I get was with Wildlife and Fisheries for 14,000 a year. So I've never used my degree for anything except I'm on the board of directors. So the APIs in America Petroleum Institute here in Houston, and I'm the Director of Public Relations, I'm only guy authorized to talk to press. So I had a woman from the Sierra Club was interviewing me about the rigs reef program. And that's where they take production rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, clean them up, chop them up, and drop them ocean floor to build artificial reefs. And she was she what she was really trying to do is get me angry. So I could say something out of character, so she could get a good quote, but I've done it for too long. You can't you don't get under my skin. And finally she got frustrated. And she goes, Well, what do you know about wildlife? And for the first time in my life, I got to go Actually, I have a degree in wildlife management, and you the only time I've ever used my degree. But if she did that she would fact check me She didn't believe it all. there's any way I could work in oil and gas industry and has a degree in wildlife management. Man, so what's going on in the oil and gas world? Dude, it's it is is utter chaos. And for everybody that's listening that doesn't think we will pull us back into entrepreneurship and running a successful business. Just Just listen, because we will. But the only gas industry right now is just came out of a hellacious year, your 2020 was the only time in my memory where we had both a decline in consumption, right. So the whole world was shut down. So people weren't buying lipstick, or car tires, or jet fuel or gasoline or diesel. And at the same time, that the prices of hydrocarbons to crude oil, natural gas suppressed to the point that for a couple of days, it was actually negative numbers. And for anybody out there, no, they weren't paying you to take the crude oil. But it was a horrendous year and the industry has come through it very well, very lean. The industry, it's coming out of 2020 is a different industry that went into 2020. And even though a lot of people lost your jobs, and a lot of people are suffering from COVID and unfortunate has been some deaths out there. The industry is coming out better than it has ever had before. So it's just a good time right now to be in the industry.
Mark 03:31
So that's a good point there crossed the pantheon of industries, there are industry still really hobbled. And there's a lot of industries that are fine and a lot are thriving and oil, oil and gas is on the one to 10 scale one is shattered and 10 is never been better. What would what was the rating you
Mark LaCour 03:47
give it? So 2020 it was a negative one, right? Right now we're we're at about a five but we're headed toward the eight or nine, you know, in the next 18 months, 1218 months. But you spoke you said something really interesting marked as some businesses thrive. So the audience may not know this, but I somehow accidentally have managed to have the top oil and gas podcast in the world. All sponsored by companies I've heard of like Amazon, IBM, Hewlett Packard, technipfmc, Baker, Hughes, blah, blah, blah. And our business actually grew 107% in 2020 I thought I was gonna have to go out and get a real job. Thank God, because that was not going to happen for you. To do it, I would have done it. Lord knows what I would have done in a global thing McDonald's would have hired you even McDonald's would have done it. I think there's something appealing about going to work and slinging burgers all day and then when you're finished no cell phone going off, no word things about past invoices, no crew problems but I'm
Mark 04:44
making it truth you would have been back there in the kitchen you would have been shaming everybody making more burgers and everybody else you would have been crushing it and but you wouldn't be eating any of it because because you can't see from the audio on the podcast, but clearly you work out man so you take care of our stress relief. Yeah,
Mark LaCour 04:59
I don't get that. Am I gonna choke people? So the gyms probably a better option?
Mark 05:03
The tough industry oil and gas you got to be tough if you're not if you're not a roughneck you better be able to be a roughneck if Yeah, if it comes down to it,
Mark LaCour 05:14
the industry is is is coming out this very lean industries come out adopting much more technology in different processes. And at the same time, we're facing a talent shortage of epic proportions. Because most people nowadays don't want to come work in my industry, because they think our industry is destroying the planet. And we're not gonna go down the political route. But let me just tell you, the oil and gas industry is not destroying the planet. If
Mark 05:37
I want to dig into that, like without politics, I do want to get as close as possible because it's really practical, right? It's really about the future industry.
Mark LaCour 05:43
Yeah, well, so the hydrocarbon molecule, which is what crude natural gas is made from is most valuable molecule to mankind. A couple instance, always give to people is things like space travel. So literally, it is there's no fuel that has enough energy density get us out of our gravity well, other than hydrocarbons, so SpaceX, which is doing some incredible stuff recently, right now in their their generation of rocket engines. They're running kerosene and liquid oxygen. Well, kerosene comes from crude oil. Their next generation of rocket engines, which could be more efficient, are gonna be methane and liquid oxygen, methane is natural gas. And to make it really interesting, regardless, if you believe in a green creator or not, you look at our solar system. Right at the halfway point, there's a planet called Saturn. And around Saturn, there's a moon called Titan. And you know what Titan is covered with Mark. Either carbons, very good lakes of liquid natural gas, it is a refill spot. SpaceX has already already done the low orbit engineering to drop pumps on that on that moon to pump up the liquid natural gas to refuel spacecraft. Now, with Elan musk involved, you never know what's legit, and what's designed to drive market one way or the other. But, you know, that's a perfect example how valuable hydrocarbon molecule is. And here in in Europe, we use less and less of it for fuel and more and more of it to make stuff. That stuff is important to modern lifestyle. A Tupperware carpet, lipstick, duct tape, all comes from hydrocarbons. And so as we're heading toward this new future, our energy mix is changing. The thing is our energy mix has always changed right? In the beginning, we use biofuel, we burned wood. Not that long ago, more, we thought the best way to lead our house was to kill whales. That was not a good long term strategy right? at all. So that's when
Mark 07:24
we upgrade our problems. Right? That's that's the nature of humanity, we upgrade our problems to the next least worst alternative we have access to.
Mark LaCour 07:31
Right. And so that's what's happening. Now you're seeing and I love alternative energy and lift solar and wind, hydro, nuclear, it's all just energy, hydrocarbons, just energy. But the thing is, you need those hydrocarbon molecules to make those windmill blades, you need the hydrocarbon molecules to make the insulation on the wires that are running the solar panels. You need hydrocarbon molecules to make the vital and that he says to hold the Tesla together. Right. And so I'm an industry is not going away. But to my original point. Because we've done a horrible job as an industry and educating the public people think we're destroying the planet. Nobody wants to come work in our industry. And we're an industry of engineers and project managers. What happens? We can't hire engineers anymore.
Mark 08:10
Okay, so you said something that actually I'd never thought of before? Because it seems like from the political landscape, the industry always seems like it looks like it's under attack in some form or other. But But I didn't, I didn't think about it until you just said that. That is a that is a detractor for people who look for jobs. And so you've got a supply and demand problem both in that scenario. So it creates a double a double bind for the industry. It's not attractive, it's not attractive on the supply, or the demand side.
Mark LaCour 08:38
And the number one job today, we're recording this and made that we can't hire for his data scientist, you know why all the data scientists would rather go work at Google, or Amazon because it's cool, instead of going to work for Chevron or Exxon. So that how do you fix that problem? And the only solution to fix that problem is technology. Right? So if we can't hire enough data scientists to run our business, what do we do? We create algorithms that can replicate the data scientists and please no hate mail from data scientists. I know that right now, we can't replicate that. But I'm telling you, it's coming. And if it comes from anywhere, it will be from our industry, we're good at doing large, complex, expensive projects that drive business results.
Mark 09:18
That's it because I've very much seen as both the positive and the negative. And like usually I'm describing it as the negative. The big dollars involved create a lot of money driven behavior as opposed to purpose driven behavior. And I've I sort of assessed that the oil and gas industry historically was entirely money motivated. And the alignment of people getting jobs and working for companies was entirely based on how much money it would produce. But as the industry has evolved, and margins have shrunk, and oil prices have stayed say lower sustainably without expectation of rapid increase. Companies have to really ask questions like why us? Why are you going to work for us? What impact Are we going to make and it's forced an industry ask them hard Questions about purpose and long term impact, things like that. I think it's really good and healthy to ask that. And so are you seeing that same kind of evolution that people are saying like, Hey, you know, yeah, we're oil and gas. And there's something there's some substances,
Mark LaCour 10:13
of course, that actually I want to break down a couple of things that you that you touch base on. So one thing is big oil and big money. In the US, the big money from oil is the government. Not the Chevron's, and Exxon, so I'll give you perfect example, the government owns the hydrocarbons to the mineral rights in the Gulf of Mexico, right? The state's own a little bit, and then you get past the state board, and the federal government owns it, they auction it off. So just recently, an auction, a deepwater Gulf of Mexico, and the winner of one of these bids was, no, I can't tell you the name of the company who lookups public knowledge, actually, I'll tell you, it's Exxon. Anyway, they spent $1 billion for a lease, this is a pay as you go, Exxon had to write a check for $1 billion to the federal government, and they have no money coming in from that on out. And if you're lucky, you have a 70% chance of making money, it's gonna take you four years to make money. So you can't be an oil and gas industry, unless you have big money, it's expensive to do this type of work, go to any truck depot anywhere in the world where they filled up truckers, there's 100 years with the diesel spilt on the ground, who even cares, right? So we've always been worried about the environment. But what happened, Mark to your point is that investors kind of drove the bad behavior. For years investors pump money into the oil and gas industry looking for growth, not returns. So when you're in that growth, mindset, you do anything and everything to grow. And that's where you get some of the bad behaviors and acquisitions and the way you treat people and the way you treat countries or local communities, that's all changed. So a lot of investors have gone, the ones that are left want profits, not growth, and a part of being profitable is actually being able to treat your people, your stakeholders, the local communities, you operate in the government, you are very in the right way. Right. So you see a fundamental change in the way we do business. And it's good for everybody. It's good for the industry. It's good for the public, it's good for the planet.
Mark 12:02
That's it's a really powerful, he said about big, big money, big problems. I mean, the military has been responsible for that kind of thing. You know, space, space travel in general, right? Big money, big problems you we love to vilify bureaucracy and large government. And because there's a lot of waste, and it's very difficult to control. And if there's a bad decision being made, it's really bad. And it's really prolific. But you're to your point, it's very difficult to solve. I mean, think about the pyramids, right? Who's who's written a check to make pyramids like that isn't like slave labor did that. And so that's extreme. But with this increased pressure for purpose, social responsibility, is there is there we see the oil and gas industry and maybe its intersection with private industry as a place that miracles can happen?
Mark LaCour 12:54
Yes. And what's really fascinating to me about that, is, say 15 years ago, the oil and gas industry wouldn't talk to you if you were a small company, because you were a risk. You know, why should shell do business with a two man shop? Because the odds are you go out of business shells go into business with large companies, that all flip flop and all of the big oil and gas companies which pay attention entrepreneurs, you're looking for capital and get ready to tell you something most of y'all have never think of all the big oil and gas companies have internal venture capital groups. So you have shell technology ventures, you had Halliburton labs Ges, which is their tech group that just spun up from Halliburton, you have Chevron technology ventures, all of them have tech ventures. And why? Because they know what they need to compete in the future is not going to come from Microsoft, nothing. It's Microsoft or IBM. Right? They know, it's gonna come from some two man shop in Illinois or in the Czech Republic. And so they're out there looking for those entrepreneurs that they're funding them. And given them not just money, but resources. You take a company as big as Exxon Mobil. Imagine if you were a tech startup, a two man tech startup and came up with a way to do remote monitoring on a well or whatever, right? And you sold it to Exxon. Well, Exxon, investing money into your company to grow you at the same time, Exxon Mobil's going, look, we're a $400 billion a year company, we need your product, well, you instantly have one of the biggest companies in the world as your customer. So not only do you get venture capital input, as far as capital and engineering expertise, you just picked up one of the largest companies in the world as your first client, you know, so. So the industry as a whole is is looking for innovation looking for change, which is historically not what we do. Now, does
Mark 14:26
that put you as a small company in a position to be making a deal with the devil?
Mark LaCour 14:32
It depends on the consider the devil. So you know, I run a small company, we're no longer startup, we're at the Small Business stage. We get probably once a week we have venture groups or a different type of capital groups reach out want to invest in what we're doing, and we don't want the money. We don't need it. So we don't take it. But one of the things you have to be careful of in any company in any industry, regardless of oil and gas or whatever, is as you grow as a small company, you become an acquisition target, right. You have bigger companies have more capital, you have more resources, you That instead of building the market share, they want to buy it, we've done it ourselves. I bought a podcast in 2020, because it was easier for me to buy that audience than it was me to grow it organically myself. And so that's what you have to worry about. As far as deals with the devil. You know, if the incentives are done right, in the industry, and in the government regulations, the devil doesn't have a lot of hold. The problem is when you don't have those oversight, so I'll give you a perfect example. Have you ever heard of a Chinese or Russian oil spill? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. So they answered, the question is no, you've never heard of a Chinese or Russian oil spill. That means one of two things. That means they're either better at it than Americans and Europeans, or they don't tell when they make a mistake. Whereas we have a guess I have a guess on that one. Yeah, we here in Europe, when we make a mistake, which we'll use a spill as a mistake, we tell because it's the right thing to do. So the devil is not big oil here. Right? If you want to look at someplace where things are being done, right, look outside of Europe, in the US.
Mark 16:05
So the idea of I guess, oil and gas is a misunderstood industry. It's interesting to to say to say that, because it's so big, and there is so much money. And how what's the truth of that? Is it is it? Is it? Is it a poor, misunderstood, misunderstood industry? Is it an industry that is trying to repackage to be to look more responsible? Or where is it in the in the spectrum of good and evil?
Mark LaCour 16:32
So industry is totally misunderstood. And we as an industry need to take, we need to own that it's our fault. No hate mail from engineers. But because most of us industry is made up of engineers. For the last 50 years when anybody says something wrong about our industry, whether on purpose or an accident, we don't stop to correct them. Not politics, not opinions, it's just facts. Right? Little Thing I rattled off about space travel. Nobody knows that. Right? why don't why does nobody knew that? How about this one, you know, who spends more money fighting aids than any government or non government agency in the world, it's Chevron. Nobody knows that. He spends more money fight malaria. In fact, malaria will be cured by this company, Exxon Mobil. Once again, Exxon Mobil doesn't talk about that Chevron doesn't talk about that technique. FMC doesn't talk about the schools, they build in Nigeria, to make sure that these kids get educated, right. And so as an industry, we've, we haven't talked about the good stuff we do. And then you lay your social media, we're now one person can have the ears of 1000s, right? And Ella said, you have this situation we're in where the rest of the world thinks that we're bad guys. And we're actually not we power the world. We make modern life possible. We make modern medicine possible. We make Tesla's possible, right. Super ironic. Yeah. Yeah. The paint the insulation, the vinyl did, he says the plastics, all that comes from hydrocarbons. And so as an industry, we need to own that, which we're starting to do. Now. What's happening now is the oil and gas companies are looking at things like renewables, and they're not looking at his competition at all, because they're not they're looking at as Can I make money from that, you know, who would be better to lower the cost of solar than somebody like Exxon that could buy and build at scale? Which, by the way, you know, we're lithium ion batteries came from Exxon, you know, why? Because we operate in the middle of nowhere. And we tend to like light, lightweight, energy dense batteries. And so we just invented them, right. So so the industry as a whole is making that corner. The problem is some people in this industry are using this as a chance to greenwash which doesn't help anything, right. It's a PR marketing type of thing, where, look how green we are, you know, we're gonna be carbon zero by X amount of time, you know, we're heavily investing in wind. If you're doing that, for the right business reasons for your stakeholders, your employees, the communities you operate in, that's great. But if you're doing it just to try to blow pee or smoke over the rest of the world, that only hurts all of us, you know, be true to yourself. I love the way Chevron's handle it, Chevron is going, yes, we're going to reduce co2 emissions, this is how we're going to do it. No, we're not gonna be co2 neutral by 2025. We may never be co2 neutral. Yes, we invest in renewables, but we invest in renewables that make a profit, right. And we're gonna take some of those profits and invest back into the parts of renewables that aren't making a profit to see if we can lower that cost. That's the right way to do that.
Mark 19:16
Yeah, I'm finding a real interesting polarity of morality in this and compare it to the military because military. Well, I mean, it's it's a deep well, the philosophy military solves tons of problems historic throughout through history, probably more than any other United States. You can maybe you see it as an extension of government, I don't know. But the when you when life and death on mass scale is in question. You solve problems. And if you've got kind of unlimited budget for for political or emotional reasons, you solve lots of problems. And the oil and gas industry is you know, it's super lucrative. And I think that I learned a lesson A long time ago. One of the core values I worked with this company I sold my business to actually was to keep the company strong and the belief with this core value was that you If we make sure we all keep the company strong, we can take care of ourselves and our clients, and we need to be strong to make strong decisions. And, you know, it's interesting to describe like, the oil and gas industry is been historically about, we stay strong financially. And so we can conquer Khan, any problem, that's an interest, like, strong at what cost, and I leaves an ambiguity of, well, you know, we're not going to, we're going to save a lot of birds, not all the birds. And that's, that's gray area for somebody who's like, you know, we got to save all the birds.
Mark LaCour 20:36
So, first thing, I'm a Marine, so very much very believe in strong military, and we do solve problems. And sometimes the way you solve a problem with the least loss of life, is by being ferocious. A lot of people don't understand that, that there are people in countries out there that don't like us for just who we are. And when they want to start problems, and we need to stop it, if we can stop it ferociously and quickly, it actually saves lives, it looks brutal, that's because you're not on the front lines. So So to your point, the military does solve extremely large, complex problems. industry. So for years, we always use that command and control model. But there's a reason for that. Mark, if you look at what my industry does, we are literally drilling in the ground to get something that's explosive and flammable. And then we're gonna move it, right, yeah. And we're gonna turn it into Tupperware, that's a dangerous that I mean, can you imagine being more dangerous, you know, and so because of that, when you get out of the ground with
Mark 21:33
explosives, and super high powered things, you know, the dangers the hole,
Mark LaCour 21:39
in my industry, if I make a mistake, I'm not gonna lose a customer, I'm not gonna lose a bid. If I make a mistake, people are going to die. Right? It's a different level of consequences. And so in my industry, if there's a process or technique in place that we've used, and nothing has leaked, nothing has blown up and nobody has died for 20 years. We don't want to change that process. So when you bring something new to my industry, the first thing I think of is what is the risk of me switching? Unlike something like big box retail, like Walmart, Home Depot, you bring them something new, and they go, what is the benefit of me moving to this, right? It's a subtle thing that's different. But it's all driven by the culture of safety. Because we can't make mistakes in this industry, we have to have zero defect manufacturing, we have to have zero mistake policies, processes in place are horrible stuff happens to people, and we don't want that to happen. So that's the part that a lot of people don't understand. That's where that command and control structure comes from, that most oil and gas industry still uses to this day. Now, what's cool is this new younger workforce that's coming in, is looking at us old farts like me and go, we can still say safe and do stuff differently, which is like, at first it was like a rebellion like, No, no, no, no, no. And then I thought about like, yes, that's what we need for somebody to understand that they can still do it safely, and have innovation. And that's what's happening right now. And it's wonderful.
Mark 22:59
So I think the essence of what this industry has still still continues to do is to have that strength. And it has a very traditional, will make the hard decisions where it's a tough industry, that's a very tough industry, like we are not going to protract a lot of hard conversation, we are just going to go and make the changes, immediately pain, pain or no pain. And like you said, it's just it's brutal, like the Marines were it's a brutal industry in that sense. And it's been very powerful. And it leverages that strength. And harshness is harshness for good things. And that's, that's the essence of the heart and soul of that industry. I think it's a toughness. And so how does one leverage that preserve that into a kinder, gentler future, without sacrificing that strength and the ability, that big money that solves big problems and the big power that solve the big problems?
Mark LaCour 23:54
I'll let you know when we get there. Cuz that's something I'm wondering myself. So historically, people come up through the ranks. So if I go talk to some VP at, you know, let's say, we'll pick shelf I'm gonna talk to some VP at Shell here in the US. The odds are he started as a roughneck out in West Texas, 18 years old, right? worked his way up through the company. And now he's in a budget a position of power, he has budget, he makes decisions. However, if shell loses control of a well guess what, the seven year old guy will go in his closet, get his boots, his hard hat out, put them on, go back out there, because he's done it. He and he and he's worried about his people. The person that's replacing this guy is probably an MBA, Ivy League school, super smart. He's never put on a pair of steel tools. He's ever picked up a torque wrench, right? And so where is all that knowledge that allows leaders in my industry to balance power with doing the right thing? Where does that go when the new set of leadership's don't understand fundamentally how the industry works in the ground up, there's a bunch of technology out there is trying to address that with the drain in knowledge, the knowledge gap, all that sort of stuff. I haven't seen anything I think that is make a norm difference. So to be up to this new leadership, this new younger leadership that's coming in to figure it out.
Mark 25:05
So as this conversation has really changed, maybe think about something I didn't think about before. And that is, you know, I do want to save the birds like all of them. I'm actually probably closer to that guy than you might think. But I'm very fearful of the loss of the toughness of the industry. Because I think that's very valuable, extremely valuable, the toughness of the industry. Really, as you described, the NBA isn't going to have the till still towboat experience. And that's that's a cultural impact that the toughness factor that I don't want to see it get soft. And because I want toughness to solve big problems with tough solutions.
Mark LaCour 25:39
Yeah. So the industry will stand up to politicians, either here in the US or anywhere in the world, very few industries do that, when it's the right thing to do. I do want to circle back around to this, this being closer to saving all the birds. So I'm an environmentalist my degrees in wildlife management. Amen. Awesome. Yeah, I didn't know that. I did not know that. And so one of the things you have to understand is extinction is part of the natural lifestyle. Right? So 91% of all life on this planet has went extinct before mankind existed. extinction is normal, right? The ebb and flow. So right now in the US, there are more white tailed deer than in the history of North America. Why? Because we've killed all the predators, we've increased their food supply. So white tailed deer eat in an area called a browse area, not grass, not forced the in between, right. So we've increased that area. So now we have overpopulation of deer in North America. And guess what, every winter, if we don't control that population, they starve to death, about 7%, the herd will starve to death. So what do we do? We hunt? Why do we hunt to remove enough of the deer so that the rest of the herd can survive through the winter? So that lesson applies to all different types of wildlife and all different types of levels. And if you don't understand that, you can screw it up. So we had a company called recon Africa that's drilling in the Congo Basin right now, a great group of guys did an incredible scientific research, made some incredible discoveries. And now they're catching flack in public in social media, because they're saying, okay, you're out there drilling oil wells in Africa and killing wildlife. Here's the reality, in the area they're drilling in there has not been wildlife for 50 years. Why? Because there's no jobs. So you know, what the villagers have to do kill the wildlife to sell on the global meat market to make a living. So they killed all the wildlife. The first thing a recon Africa did when they came in, is they drilled water wells. So now they can form so they have jobs. And recon Africa is now providing the locals with jobs. So guess what, they don't have to kill wildlife anymore for the meat market. It's the wildlife coming back. That's this type of stories that the public never hears where this small oil and gas company went into part of Africa that had zero wildlife because it was so economically depressed. And now the wildlife coming back with the help of this company is drilling for oil.
Mark 27:53
You I also I meant to ask this question earlier, and that was for the skeptics asking the question of is that activity for optics? Is it is it to look better than they are? And I'm kind of kind of thinking this through. Like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. It's an economic engine that when running healthy, takes care of that stuff. And and in a sense, like if it if it was because it's automatic, you don't have to worry about the system will will automatically Hey, what's going on, we've got to balance things out because we have to the consequences are too high. And that people are watching these things to make sure that kind of outcome comes out in
Mark LaCour 28:31
a world is changing, right? So right now, a majority of our population on this planet live a rule Agra, Gary lifestyle. So you're in China, you have 10 kids, that's your workforce, you farm, and you make enough food to feed your family for the year and hopefully a little bit extra, so you can sell so you have some cash by 2050. That same family what's the generations after we'll be living in a city. So three quarters of our population by 2050 booth living in cities, guess what they're gonna need. Carpet Tupperware, light switches, adhesive duct tape, Tesla's all stuff made from hydrocarbons. So the, the ability to pull the entire planet up to Western standards, if they want is totally dependent on cheap, reliable, abundant energy. And the only way we're going to get there is with hydrocarbons. And please no haters, I understand the mix is changing. I have I'm putting solar in my own house, I get it right. But the reality is, you're not gonna ever get on a med vac helicopter because you're having a heart attack and that helicopters electric in the physics just don't work. electric vehicles are great. I don't know if you've driven a Tesla, Mark, but don't because you want it right away. It's not an electric car. It's an awesome car that happens to be electric. Right? And so electric cars are coming to make a lot of sense, but you're not gonna have the ability to remove hydrocarbons for energy mix, nor would you ever want to. Another thing 60% of the world's fed with fertilizer made from natural gas. You wouldn't tell 60% of the world you're not gonna feed them. I don't think so.
Mark 30:00
So it's a complex industry because I was gonna ask the question about reverse logistics and renewable or reduced waste and that kind of thing. But it is interesting, just as you said that it reminded me that the it's a very complex industry of consumables and things that do get recycled and things like that. Because every time you say Tupperware, I actually have anxiety because I think of like, old Tupperware, like, recycle it and all the plastic that gets thrown away.
Mark LaCour 30:23
Let's talk about recycling here in the US. The odds are that if you have recycled trash cans here in the US, your recycled goods are still going to landfill. For a longest time that was shipped to China, where it made physical sense for people to hand sort that the rubbish and then actually recycle it. Well, all of a sudden, about five years ago, it was no longer economic may no longer economic sense. So now even though you have a recycle bin, and you take the time to wash out your glassware, and throw it in Recycle Bin, it's ended up in the landfill anyway. So from a reality point of view, what we want to do is minimize our impact to the environment in the landfill. To your point about plastics, old Tupperware LPT made from PT, that stuff is rough, man, you leave that stuff out in the sun, it's gonna take a few 100 years for it to decompose right. Now with that said, that glass water bottle right next to it will take a few 1000 years. So the glasses is much more detrimental to the landfill than the plastic. So the secret is making plastics that now decompose in landfill, which nobody wants to talk about. But it is the reality of how to help not solve the problem, but minimize the impact. And that's what we're doing right now. You see all the stuff about plastic waste in the ocean. 91% of that comes from China and Africa. Why they have new garbage infrastructure. So here in Europe, we started off living in villages, and eventually we had roads, we had horse drawn carriages. And eventually it had to start sweeping the horse poop out of the way. So they invented sewers, then then we start trash pickup out of the cities. So we have here the US 250 years of garbage infrastructure that we've relied upon that we've built sewage garbage trucks, landfills, incinerators. They don't have that in China. They don't have that in Africa. So what do they do with their waste? They throw in the rivers, and guess what ends up in the oceans. Right? So So once again, a major problem plastic in the oceans. But the solution is not minimizing drinking straws at Starbucks here in the US that makes zero impact. Why spend that money and that mindshare to do that, which is typically purely a marketing play, versus you could actually go to Africa and help them build incinerators and actually make a difference with the global plastic probably in the oceans. So one of the things that the only acid she does really well, is that type of stuff. You know, right now, Baker Hughes is working on recycling and incineration programs in Africa for that exact reason. You never hear that right. And they're doing it, they're getting to make it $1 off of it, the government subsidizing it. But the bottom line is the people that live in those areas, we have a cleaner environment, and they're not impacting our oceans.
Mark 32:50
So how far along is the industry on making this stuff? Well branded, understood. And I think about cars. My parallel is the auto industry, like dodge and Ford, and almost all of the American automakers just started looking like crap. Everybody was like, they're all junk. And if you're buying American strictly out of loyalty 20 years ago, maybe you're somewhere in there. They said, Well, this isn't working. And so Dodge, and Ford, and Chevy, and a lot of certainly, I think they all do a good job. But certainly I think dodge and Ford, in my mind come to the front is like, I have a totally different view of them. But it took 10 years or 20 years for them to do that. It where's the oil and gas industry on figuring out that this is going to be a full court press for a decade or longer and making progress on this awareness? I
Mark LaCour 33:34
would say that about halfway through, if you look at the bell curve, you still have companies in this industry that still think the old way, the whole command and control. I'm company x, so you do what I say or I'm not gonna do business with you. Yeah, but that has changed a lot. You see a lot of companies partner. And speaking of automotive, you're seeing a lot of oil and gas companies partner outside of our industry, which is wonderful. You know, you look at airline industry, they've had predictive maintenance for 40 years. We don't that's retarded. Well, why are we gonna shut down a well, that's making a million dollars a day to change seven O rings, and we're not sure we need to change the seven O rings. We have the technology, the airline issues had it forever. And so things like that, that partnership, then other things bleed over. Right? So if we're working with the airline industry to learn how to do predictive maintenance, do we also learn from the airline industry how to control people? And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, as far as fluid flow of people, right? How do you get a whole bunch of people in a small space orderly without causing trouble? And so and then what does airline industry do? Does in the airline industry learn? Oh, there's a better way to hedge jet fuel because I didn't know jet fuel is simply kerosene. Yeah, jet fuel is simply kerosene with a few additives, add it to the right. So that learning back and forth tends to bring all boats up, you know, rising tide lifts all boats that that cooperate back forth tends to bring my industry up to modern standards faster, and at the same time, educate other industries about what the only gas industry truly is it's not happening fast enough for but it's a beautiful thing to watch.
Mark 35:04
So it reminds me of the idea of the LeapFrog industry. So if it's a blow, it's a big industry with lots of money, but it ends up being kind of ossified. It can't change fast enough. I mean, it can go the way of Starbucks if a revolution comes. And it can come swiftly and without, without apologies, like Netflix did is the oil and gas industry is or their site, your threats to it like that, that could just sort of chip away at the room.
Mark LaCour 35:34
We have two big major threats facing us right now. One is the lack of talent and people's not wanting to come work in our industry, which is totally changed. And 50 years ago, if your son or daughter got a job at Chevron, like you were super excited. And speaking of Africa, if you were in Africa, and your son or daughter got a job, the whole village would celebrate, right, because it was money and shoes and medical care and all that stuff. And now let's say a teenager in Africa doesn't want to work for Chevron because they think they're destroying the planet. And so that's probably our biggest hurdle that we're facing is negative. But the other thing is our world is growing, our population is growing, the demand for hydrocarbons are going up. Now here in the US, we've managed to increase and forget about the ups and downs, the last couple years, let's look at 10 year chunks or 20 year chunks, we've matched increased the production of hydrocarbons to the point that we're we're not reliant on outside sources anymore. And we've reduced our greenhouse gases and reduce co2. Now, that's a big pat on the back for the US. But remember, Mark, we went through our industrial revolution 100 years ago, China and India and Vietnam are just now starting to go through that. So their global emissions are going up there. They're also out there looking for hydrocarbons, all the trouble you're seeing with China and the China, South China Sea, is for hydrates, which is basically crystallized hydrocarbons that sit on the ocean floor, like imagine just picking up gas, like in your hand because it's crystal, right. And so and so, you know, what do we do? What what are the Europeans and Americans do? Do we go to China and say, you have to put catalytic converters on your car, you have to invent lynburn technology, you have to get rid of coal fired power plants, because we went through all that ourselves, you know? Or do we let China do the natural evolution through its industrial revolution, it gets the point where we are now where our environment, which we may not know this, if you remove all the cars in us today, if you're magic, it would drop our air emissions by 1%. Our cars burns so clean now, my 2020 Infiniti sit in my garage at 80 miles an hour, has one half the output of missions that my 1965 Mustang has cut off in the garage. So Larry, my Mustang cut off, not even running pollutes more than my infinity run. Why? Because not yet the Mustang had no seal fuel system, right, so that it was finished to the atmosphere, no catalytic converters, not only did it not have lean burn technology, it used carburetors, which intentionally put too much gas, right, so you didn't burn it all. So that was just in the 60s and 70s. We made that difference. The same things going on. Now in the developing worlds. electrification, electric vehicles are awesome, but they're for the wealthy, you're not going to see electric vehicles adopted by the world as they become much cheaper than they are now. And they will we'll get there we need a breakthrough battery technology. But as a whole, we got to look at the world, not just what's going on here in the US and not just what's going on in Europe, and figure out how we can help without being intrusive.
Mark 38:27
It's it's very complex, and it's so it's based on the optics and and I thinking about the car. I've I love that. When I run along the road, I'm concerned about getting hit. I'm not concerned about coffee. Yeah, if the car passes me and I and I'm very well aware that when I was a kid, it was it was a known thing. Like if you ran or walk past a car that drove past you, you had to
Mark LaCour 38:52
like hold your breath. Remember, and that's not remember acid rain. Yeah. You know why it's gone. My industry fixed. Remember the smog over LA, it's gone. Our water and air pollution peaked in the 70s. Our air and water so much cleaner now that was in 1977. But people don't know that. And once again, that's here. Because we're prosperous enough to do that sort of thing. We're prosperous enough to lose a half a mile a gallon because we put in catalytic converters in our car. We're prosperous enough that we can throw away glass bottles. Most of the world can't afford to make class bottles much less. Just throw them away, put them in the landfill, right. I live in here outside of Houston, Texas. I'm in a 3000 square foot house. I probably burn eight kilowatts of electricity a day keeping my house cool with air conditioners. I got six big screen TVs pretty good. Half a dozen computers. Why? Because we're that prosperous. And we take it as normal. It's not normal. The restaurant doesn't have what we have.
Mark 39:49
Yeah, it's the organic fruits and vegetables thing you know who can possibly feed feed their kid non organic fruits and vegetables like well, people in a country where they get they're happy to afford anything if they say and that's it. In one
Mark LaCour 40:00
so my favorite story about that, I don't know if you ever seen this, this this group of engineers, I can't matter where it is in the country, I think it's in the Midwest somewhere. And every year they have a pumpkin chunkin contest. And they build these mechanical devices. And the goal is who can throw a pumpkin the furthest, right? So they have air cannons, they have catapults, and so actually had a business acquaintance of mine. That was actually from birth to death. You know, the, the, the amount of deaths based upon client, climate impact has dropped 85% last 100 years, people no longer die of thirst, starvation, heat and cold like they used to, once again because we have cheaper London, abundant, reliable energy. But the rest of world doesn't always have that. So people still starve it.
Mark 40:44
And it's so it's so cool. It's close it close yet so far, I've got a friend who, from Nigeria, who is smart, very well educated, exceedingly exceedingly capable entrepreneur, who, when we had our ice storm here in Houston was all of a Texas right. So better part of the week, most of Texas was shut down without power. And it was it was very cold. And it was it was actually really hard. It's very hard. We was very, but but for him, he was like, so the power's out. And, like, I did homework for six years with like candlelight, because the power went out every night and like what's different, there's nothing, nothing different here. And so for us, we were we were very shocked by that. But and this is, you know, this is just otherworldly. But, you know, this is a guy who lived it. And so it's real. It's real right now that we are very privileged
Mark LaCour 41:30
and we are very privileged. And it's um, it's one of the things I do with my son is every other year, I take him to another country because I want him to see how the rest of the world lives. Most of world doesn't have two cars, they don't have a Starbucks every corner, they damn well don't have Home Depot and Lowe's, where you pick up building materials, you know, and last year took you to Brazil to consent Paulo to the favelas, which are the slums outside of San Paulo. And to this day, my son still brings up like dad, because they don't have clothes. And I go, yeah, yeah. And so now he's so thankful that he has clothes, he gets it right. The other thing I do is the years I don't take him out of the country, I've taken a different American cities because most Americans don't even know their own country. You know, we're sitting here in Houston, how many people in Houston have been to Pittsburgh or have been to DC or have been to, you know, Miami or, you know, we have a lot of cool stuff in this country. You just got to get out and go see it.
Mark 42:19
Yeah. Well, man, we've covered a lot of ground. And I love, love the conversation. It's been it's been, it's been a learning experience for me which all these podcasts do for me. And if people don't get that that's the whole thing. For me, this is my opportunity to learn and I just record it so people can hopefully learn some things too. But anything you want to add to the conversation we didn't cover.
Mark LaCour 42:41
So for the audience out there, when you think of all the guests don't think that we're an evil empire, trying to just worried about money. Think of us as powering mankind, think of us as powering the future. Space travel won't happen without what we're doing. Give us a break. We're trying to always do the right things. We make mistakes. But you know, what we fix? You know, you're in the Gulf of Mexico right now. It's cleaner, post BP Macondo that was pre, right, we cleaned up better than it was before. Now, we spent a lot of money, but we did it. We did the right thing. So you know, give us a break. We're here trying to help everybody.
Mark 43:15
Man, I'm grateful for that your perspective? What is your passionate plea to entrepreneurs right now?
Mark LaCour 43:22
eyes wide open, right. So I've been down the entrepreneur route myself successfully. Luckily enough a couple of times. The one of the worst things you could do is think you know it all and think you know, where your business and I'll tell you, I don't know if I ever shared this story with you. So I sit on this podcast Empire, sponsored by some of the biggest companies there there are right? When my marketing guy first brought me the idea for podcast eight years ago, I thought was a stupid idea. I literally said that's a stupidest thing I've ever heard. Because back then, it was a challenge right now to understand how to download an mp3 file. There was no apps, you're working with XLR cables and digital recorders. And it was hard, right? So I was so wrong about the potential podcast. So if all the entrepreneurs out there, just be open minded, eyes wide, open, swivel head, you never know what the next opportunity is right there staring you in the face.
Mark 44:09
And downs, especially if you're in Houston or Texas or keeping Alberta, anywhere where there's access to a lot of oil and gas industry. There's lots of opportunity that could be in transformation. And there's lots of money and opportunity that is being created by these companies that you may think of is part of the past but as you're saying, are very much going to be part of Absolutely. Well, look, man, this has been great. Mark, if somebody wants to follow you, you're not hard to find you got you've got podcasts scattered all over the world. But how does somebody find you if they want to kind of
Mark LaCour 44:42
keep up so the easiest thing for the podcast is go to OGG in calm oil and gas global network. Oji gn.com. That's where all the shows are all this new stuff we're doing. We're doing some got some sponsored clubhouse rooms coming out. If you want to follow me, Twitter's probably the best. So it's Mark underscore Luke core. Ma rk underscore la co you're on Twitter, I will actually reply to you I'm not yet at the Joe Rogan level where I just don't reply to anybody.
Mark 45:10
That's awesome that you keep it real. So man. Well, Mark, it's been awesome. I'm grateful for the everything we covered and I hope people follow you and stay plugged in and see the opportunities of what's going on in your world. And, and that's it for today. That's our time. And so if you thought this was valuable, please give some feedback. We love all the feedback good and bad. Get this podcast get this link this information in the hands of other people who might get value from it, and so they can tap into the lessons as well. We will see you next time on you're doing it wrong with me, Mark Anderson.
VO 45:39
This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson Leary for more episodes and to subscribe, go to lyric.cc