He predicts utility bills will be worse next winter than the $1,200-$1,400 bills seen this past winter. He cites EIA estimates of domestic natural gas consumption rising nearly 2% to 92 billion cubic feet and LNG exports rising nearly 20% to 14.2 billion cubic feet a day, leaving storage refill season starting roughly 600 billion cubic feet behind last year.
Next winter's natural gas is already pricing above $5, up from about $4 this past winter. He attributes this to Bank of America Securities forecasting demand growth exceeding 4.1 billion cubic feet a day, plus drilling companies holding off on ramping production amid political uncertainty.
He expects a hot summer to worsen the situation and dismisses an academic's reassurance. With temperatures already hitting 90°F in Oklahoma in March, he argues a hot summer limits inventory builds, and he pushes back on a USC Marshall energy transition director's confidence, warning prices could approach the $9-10 levels last seen before the fracking boom.
He argues press secretary Caroline Leavitt's misinformation attack on the media is hypocritical. Responding to a clip of Leavitt accusing Jeffrey Goldberg and the media of manufacturing hoaxes, he notes she was given a platform through a role he says her husband's money helped secure.
He says Democrats let Republican claims go unchallenged. He argues Republicans are handed open microphones to accuse Democrats and the media of misinformation without pushback, citing sex-change-in-schools claims as an example he says go undebunked.
He faults Democratic leadership, naming Jasmine Crockett, for failing to counter-punch. Despite what he calls a daily supply of contradictory or false Republican statements, he says Democrats lack the "balls," quoting Scarface, to challenge or shame them the way Republicans do to Democrats.
Is Trump Falsifying GDP Numbers? Please Answer If You Know.
He questions whether a new "gold-adjusted" GDP metric was added to soften recession forecasts. He says the Atlanta Fed's GDP forecast for Q1 stood at negative 2.5-2.8% weeks earlier and has since improved to negative 1.8% under the original method, around the time the Trump administration said the GDP calculation needed changing.
A newly added "gold adjusted GDP" line reframes the outlook from contraction to growth. He reports this alternative model, which adjusts for gold imports and exports, shows 0.2% growth versus negative 1.8% under the standard calculation, and he says he has never previously seen such a metric used.
He is not certain who added the metric or whether it is legitimate, and asks viewers with expertise to weigh in. He frames the open question as whether the administration is adjusting GDP methodology to avoid the appearance of an impending recession, without asserting an answer.
He says his October 2024 warning that a Trump presidency would cost oil and gas jobs has been borne out. He reports over 30,000 job losses in the industry by late March, attributing this to companies cutting staff even before any drop in oil prices materialized.
He argues policy uncertainty under Trump, not the Biden administration's policies, is what's paralyzing industry investment. He contrasts this with the Biden era, where, despite industry disagreement with the policy, companies "knew what he was going to do" and could plan billion-dollar investments accordingly.
He reports rig counts falling and job losses spreading across the energy sector while gasoline prices stay elevated. He cites gas prices around $3.16, higher than at Trump's inauguration, and predicts continued job losses even as energy demand grows faster than in decades.
He argues the US-Canada trade deficit is largely a byproduct of oil, and of deliberate US policy. He cites 2024 figures of about $350 billion in US goods sold to Canada versus $412 billion in Canadian goods sold to the US, and says the gap is driven mainly by oil purchases, not manufactured goods.
He says the US intentionally built up Canadian oil imports as a national security move. He reports Canada's share of US oil imports rose from about 15% twenty years ago to today's dominant position, replacing Middle Eastern and OPEC supply, a shift he says the US helped engineer by investing in Canadian pipelines.
He predicts the deficit with Canada will shrink while deficits with Middle Eastern producers grow again. He frames this as preferable, since he says money sent to Canada supports a security-aligned partner while money that would otherwise go to Middle Eastern countries "funds terrorism."
He argues the Trump administration missed an easy chance to defuse the Signal group-chat controversy by simply admitting fault. He says presidential administrations rarely take responsibility for mistakes, and doing so here would have been the fastest way to end the story politically.
He says the administration instead chose to fight the story for months by deflecting blame. He reports officials blamed Biden, the reporter, and the publication rather than the people responsible for the chat.
He frames the refusal to admit error, not the chat's contents, as the larger problem. He compares the response to workplace conduct, arguing that scapegoating in place of accountability would get an ordinary employee fired.
He rebuts a claim that oil rose 20% when Biden signed the Keystone XL executive order. He says oil actually fell the day of and days following the signing, taking a couple of weeks to return to its prior level, contradicting the viral claim.
He argues the true, simpler point — that gas prices were higher under Biden overall — gets buried under exaggerated claims. He says people undermine a valid argument by reaching for a "home run" instead of the accurate, still-damaging version of the story.
He frames this as part of a broader pattern of people misrepresenting basic facts online. He offers to help correct the record but says it requires the person to first acknowledge being wrong.
He argues the country's core problem is the belief that the opposing party offers nothing worth keeping. He says this belief pushed both parties further apart until the extremes became self-fulfilling, damaging the economy, healthcare, and education along the way.
He says each administration erasing the prior one's work sets the country back rather than forward. He compares this to why oil companies won't drill in ANWR, since a billion-dollar investment could simply be reversed by the next president, illustrating how policy whiplash discourages long-term commitments.
He warns the endpoint of this dynamic is one side eventually holding power permanently. He predicts this outcome as the logical result of continued zero-sum politics, while noting listeners' likely disagreement as evidence, in his view, that the pattern is already entrenched.
He argues Western clean-energy efforts won't meaningfully affect the climate given China and India's coal expansion. He says China is adding 200 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity and will soon generate more electricity from coal alone than the US produces from all sources combined, with India following a similar coal-heavy growth path.
He calls renewable energy in the West fundamentally a business model rather than a climate solution. He says the Net Zero by 2050 goal "was not a thing" and reiterates a prediction he's made before, despite past criticism, that economic growth will continue to be prioritized over environmental policy.
He predicts AI's energy demand will further strain the trade-off between economic growth and emissions. He argues green energy will have to match fossil fuels' output capability to displace them, which he says isn't happening, and frames the climate outcome as effectively already decided.
He argues a defense-secretary group-chat scandal over Yemen war planning won't produce consequences because voters don't demand them. Reacting to a senator's question about the chat going unanswered, he says the public tolerates official misconduct as long as their side "wins."
He blames a bipartisan culture of tolerating lies for eliminating accountability in politics. He says this is why no one is arrested or fired over scandals, comparing it to a football coach kept regardless of conduct as long as he beats a rival.
He says the underlying acceptance, not any single official, explains how unqualified people reach powerful posts. He cites Pete Hegseth's appointment as Defense Secretary as an example, arguing half the country supported it based on loyalty to the person who chose him rather than his qualifications.
He disputes Trump's claim that tariffs drove a Hyundai manufacturing investment, saying the deal predates his presidency. He notes the announcement itself credits the Biden administration's push for US-based manufacturing and related EV subsidies, which he says explains the investment better than recently threatened tariffs.
He argues corporate investment decisions like this take years to plan and aren't triggered by tariff rhetoric within weeks. He points out Trump has repeatedly threatened tariffs without fully implementing them, undercutting the claim that this investment responds to tariff policy.
He says consumer demand, not the president, explains why companies build cars and steel plants in the US. He cites high US demand for vehicles and notes a Louisiana governor's longer-running work on such projects, arguing credit is being misattributed.
Natural gas prices have more than doubled year over year, from $1.78/MCF to $3.90/MCF, on a tight first storage build of the season. He attributes this to storage entering spring roughly 650 billion cubic feet below last year's level after one of the coldest winters in years, particularly in the Northeast.
He identifies record LNG exports, falling production, and record summer heat as the three drivers behind sustained higher prices. He says prior low prices discouraged production even as demand and exports rose, and that hotter summers increase electricity-driven cooling demand, both limiting how much inventory can be rebuilt before next winter.
He predicts a prolonged run of bullish natural gas prices and warns deregulated states will see the sharpest bill increases. He notes this week's inventory build was only about 8 billion cubic feet, calling it negligible, and expects a hot summer followed by another cold winter to compound the squeeze, particularly in the deregulated Northeast Corridor, West Coast, and Texas markets.
He reads a new 25% tariff on countries buying Venezuelan oil and gas as retaliation against big oil, not just a Venezuela sanction. He connects it to a prior meeting where oil executives reportedly told Trump they need $80 oil to "drill, baby, drill," which he says the administration didn't get.
He says Chevron and Shell were seeking new customers for Venezuelan oil and gas in Europe and Trinidad and Tobago as US sanctions cut off other markets, making the tariff a direct hit on their pivot. He frames this as punishing companies indirectly since Trump won't criticize big oil outright given its political power.
He reports oil trading above $69, nearing $70, amid Middle East military buildup, new Venezuela sanctions, and delayed April 2 tariffs pulled back over recession fears. He argues these combined pressures are pushing oil and gas prices up, reiterating his view that weakening the economy is not an effective way to lower prices.
He says Unleaded 88 (15% ethanol) is safe for most vehicles despite being cheaper than Unleaded 87 (10% ethanol). He clarifies it is not the same as E85, which exceeds 50% ethanol, and says the lower price reflects a subsidy, not lower quality.
He cites decades of real-world use and EPA testing as evidence against harm claims. He argues hundreds of millions of cars have driven tens of billions of miles on the fuel without mass problems emerging, and that modern anti-corrosive components and non-rubber fuel lines address the concerns raised about ethanol.
He recommends checking the owner's manual, since some vehicles, especially those built before 2001 or classic cars, aren't rated for it. He says E85 should only go in flex-fuel vehicles and not be substituted into standard engines.
EPA Pulls Massive Offshore Wind Permit (With A Twist)
The EPA pulled the federal permit for a 1.5-gigawatt New Jersey offshore wind project, citing construction-phase air pollution concerns. He notes the project, built by Atlantic Shores with Shell as an investor, lost its clean air permit over an emissions rationale he treats as pretextual.
He identifies the group celebrating the permit pull, Save LBI, as led by liberals rather than conservatives, which surprised him. He names Dr. Bob Stern, a former Department of Energy official and Obama campaign worker, as the group's head, and says its real goal is pushing turbines 30-57 miles offshore, out of sight of Long Beach Island.
He compares this to Trump barring drilling off Florida's coast, arguing both cases reflect "not in my backyard" motives dressed up as environmental concern. He frames the episode as evidence that opposition to visible energy infrastructure crosses party lines when it affects a group's own coastline.
He disputes claims by Trump and investor Kevin O'Leary ("Mr. Wonderful") that ANWR drilling could pay off a large share of the national debt. He cites EIA estimates of about 10.5 billion barrels in ANWR and calculates that, at a 16.67% royalty rate and $70/barrel, the royalties would cover only about 20% of one year's interest on the debt.
He extends the math to show even total global oil control couldn't solve the debt. He calculates that if the US owned 100% of global oil profits at 100 million barrels/day of world consumption, it would still take 36 years to pay off the national debt.
He says he doesn't believe O'Leary actually believes his own claim and attributes it to political messaging. He argues the idea that natural resources could pay off the debt is "a fantasy" with no realistic scenario behind it.
He argues energy, not military or financial power alone, will determine which nations dominate the future. He illustrates household energy inequality by noting a single home refrigerator uses more power than 25% of the world's population consumes.
He links US geopolitical ambitions toward Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal to a drive for energy and resource dominance. He argues nations that take energy security for granted, including the US, are unusual globally, since even many industrialized countries can't reliably count on power being available.
He says roughly a billion people worldwide have no access to energy, which he ties directly to lost economic, educational, and social opportunity. He argues lack of energy access disproportionately traps women and children in unpaid labor, and predicts wars will continue to be fought over energy control.
Time For Class! He Who Controls The Energy Rules The World.
He argues energy, not military or financial power alone, will determine which nations dominate the future. He illustrates household energy inequality by noting a single home refrigerator uses more power than 25% of the world's population consumes.
He links US geopolitical ambitions toward Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal to a drive for energy and resource dominance. He argues nations that take energy security for granted, including the US, are unusual globally, since even many industrialized countries can't reliably count on power being available.
He says roughly a billion people worldwide have no access to energy, which he ties directly to lost economic, educational, and social opportunity. He argues lack of energy access disproportionately traps women and children in unpaid labor, and predicts wars will continue to be fought over energy control.
He accuses Energy Secretary Chris Wright of posting misleading "promises kept" propaganda about falling gas prices. He says the cited figures — $3.46 a year ago versus $3.07 today — are accurate but omit that gas was actually a penny cheaper on election day than it is now, undercutting the "promise kept" framing.
He notes Republicans previously called gas at $3 in late December, just months earlier, the lowest in four years, which he says makes the current framing inconsistent. He argues the same price level was cast as evidence of Biden's failure and is now cast as evidence of Trump's success.
He frames his objection as being about dishonesty itself, not the price of gas. He says he was already reporting falling gas prices six months earlier and was dismissed at the time, and that the real issue is being lied to, not the few-cent difference in price.
BYD announced a 1,000-volt EV architecture enabling a full charge in about six minutes or 400 km added in five minutes. He confirms the technical claim but says this milestone alone doesn't mean fast EV charging is imminent for consumers.
He argues the charging infrastructure needed to deliver that speed doesn't exist yet, including in the US. He says building a car capable of the charge rate is separate from building chargers that can supply it, and that plugging such a vehicle into today's superchargers would only charge at current speeds.
He predicts this remains a distant prospect, especially in the US given its slow transmission buildout. He notes the US hasn't finished its existing charging network, let alone one supporting this new standard, and says such fast charging wouldn't be done at home regardless.
He argues Google's "clean" Oklahoma data center isn't adding clean power, just reallocating it. He reports Google signed power purchase agreements for 724 megawatts from Oklahoma solar farms, using as much power as over 700,000 homes, while only one of those solar farms is newly built for the project.
He says the homes previously served by that existing solar power will now largely fall back on fossil fuels. He cites EIA data showing a new megawatt of wind or solar displaces less than 20% of a megawatt of natural gas capacity, meaning roughly 5 megawatts of wind or solar are needed to offset one megawatt of gas.
He concludes this is a reshuffling of clean power rather than a net emissions reduction, though he still welcomes the jobs. He argues companies buying up existing renewable supply to claim cleanliness pushes remaining consumers toward dirtier sources without improving the state's overall energy mix.
He argues Trump's Ukraine peace push, aimed at lowering oil prices to cut inflation, rests on a flawed assumption, citing 2019 as precedent. He notes oil was about $10/barrel cheaper in 2019 than 2018 after Trump moved to crash the market, yet inflation rose that year, with energy, food, and — via lumber tariffs on Canada, now reimposed — home prices all increasing.
He says ending the war wouldn't necessarily lower oil prices anyway, since Russia and Saudi Arabia have no incentive to cut output. He argues Russia keeps producing and selling at sanctioned discounts while both countries' economies depend on current price levels, meaning supply and pricing power stay largely unchanged.
He warns that lower oil prices could squeeze already-tight natural gas supply and push electricity costs up instead. He also argues that even successfully lowering inflation enough to cut interest rates would raise home prices further in an already tight housing market, offsetting any gain at the pump.
The side opposing anti-intellectualism has adopted misinformation too. Prompted by a clip of a man asking whether Canada will build pipelines and ship LNG to Europe and who is telling the truth, he argues that seeing misinformation work, "intellectuals" abandoned their core beliefs and began lying on energy and climate, which only helps the anti-intellectual side.
Net zero by 2050 was always impossible. He says the official road map shows the world was years behind from day one, and that politicizing climate as with COVID led both sides to lie: every storm blamed on oil companies, every blackout on renewables.
Energy should have been framed as security, not climate. He argues demand will skyrocket regardless of climate change, and that presenting it as a national-security need for all sources would have avoided the fight; instead the push to eliminate oil ignored that every society, its food, water, electricity and even the COVID vaccine, rests on fossil fuels.
Escalating partisanship is pushing both parties toward authoritarian control. He says each side believes it needs total control to win and sees its own overreach as virtuous, as Biden's supporters did and Trump's now do, and expects this to outlast Trump; Canada's choices will be made by politicians, not the truth.
The viral claim of states running out of gas is false. He traces it to a TikTok video by a pastor, built on an old story from when Hurricane Milton hit Florida, which then spread nationally. The "gas shortage by state 2025" website people cite, with figures such as 23% of Georgia stations dry, carries June and May 2021 dates at the bottom of the page.
The 2021 shortages had specific causes that no longer apply. In May 2021 the Colonial Pipeline was hacked and went down; by June a post-Covid shortage of tanker truck drivers meant gas could not be delivered, made worse by having to truck what the pipeline normally carried. He says there is no state-level shortage in March 2025.
Claims of record-cheap gas and oil are false. Answering a Trump clip saying oil is down to $65 a barrel, he says it is not there yet, though it probably will be soon at this rate; the national average is $3.08 a gallon, against $2.98 in December, so gas is not at a four-year low.
The lies cover for an economy with no good news. He argues supporters push gas and egg prices because that is where ordinary people feel the economy, while it tanks and people lose jobs, producing a "bizarro world" where collapse is celebrated.
Trump can only deliver cheap gas through a glut or collapse. He has long said the two routes are OPEC flooding the market or the economy collapsing; gas was already trending down for a couple of years, and 10 cents a gallon saved means nothing against $300,000 wiped from a retirement fund. He thinks a recession looks likely.
Bob's "record" production gain under Trump is cherry-picked. In the clip, Bob cites 13.2 million barrels a day a year ago, 13.3 million at year-end and almost 13.6 million now, calling it more growth than all of last year; he counters that this compares a weekly figure with a year-ago point and an annual average, and output exceeded that level in December.
Presidents do not set oil production, which has fallen since inauguration. He says production has fallen since Trump took office but that is not Trump's fault, just as 2024 output was not Joe Biden's doing; not one rig is working because Trump is president. He accuses Bob of deliberate misinformation to give Trump credit.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has become a Trump mouthpiece. He says Wright, once a rational voice, told oil and gas executives at CERAWeek that shale could boost production even at $50 oil, a claim he says no one but Trump believes; he cites this as why he won't enter politics.
The Alaska-versus-Iran restrictions claim misreads Biden's record. Answering a clip of Wright saying Alaska faced more restrictions than Iran, he argues Biden limited drilling only where no company wanted to drill, and approved the Willow project, one of Alaska's largest.
Industry has no appetite for ANWR. He reads the Alaska line as setting the stage for ANWR drilling, and points out that oil companies placed not a single bid in the last two ANWR lease sales.
Countries don't trade energy; corporations do, for profit. Answering a viewer who asked why the US can't power the three states Canada supplies, he says cross-border energy flows reflect company choices rather than need, and adds that Mexico also sends electricity to some southern states and that Canadian oil and gas are a large part of the picture.
The tariff fight is about Trump's need for attention. He argues the tariffs have nothing to do with the economy or fentanyl, noting Trump now trashes US–Canada–Mexico trade agreements that were his own.
Republicans turned Canada into an enemy overnight. He says the party spent years naming China and Russia as the main threats, said nothing against Canada until Trump's inauguration, and that the US does not need this fight with its closest allies.
Oil's fall is sentiment, not fundamentals. He says oil has tracked the Dow down on recession fears, tariffs and uncertainty, while a chart of global balances he shows still has the market well under-supplied.
The OPEC+ increase will net out as a supply cut. Traders forgot that Kazakhstan has overproduced its quota by about half a million barrels a day; once it complies, the 138,000 barrels a day OPEC+ increase leaves a net loss. US output is down about 150,000 barrels a day in recent months, and the EIA's STEO forecasts tightening through mid-year. Oil recovered a couple of percent to $67.67.
Gasoline will stay above $3 despite cheaper crude. Even after oil fell more than $10, gas is $3.08 a gallon; he notes prices climb from the second or third week of March with the switch to summer blend, so only a complete oil collapse would bring a meaningful drop.
Lost refining capacity has decoupled pump prices from crude. In Trump's first term, oil at $65 to $67 meant gas well below $3 a gallon; now reduced refining capacity keeps gasoline inventories too low and record refined-product exports add to it. He expects gas prices to rise from here.
Inflation-adjusted, oil is already at the old break-even price. In a clip, former Pioneer CEO Scott Sheffield says today's price equals $50 of 20 years ago, public companies' cash break-even including dividends is $50 to $55 a barrel, and US production fell in 2015-16 at true $50. He agrees: "$70 is the new $50."
Producers stop drilling long before break-even. He argues a company holding, say, 10 million barrels of reserves will not sell at break-even when waiting could earn $20 to $30 a barrel more, and shareholders expect a real return, so break-even is the wrong threshold to discuss.
Falling prices would collapse rig counts faster than ever. Rig counts are slipping but still within range; if prices keep falling he expects declines to accelerate quickly, because rigs now finish a well in two or three weeks rather than six months.
Fundamentals will win over today's psychological selling. He says the entire drop is negative sentiment over Trump, tariffs and the economy, and that fundamentally oil should not be as low as $66 to $67 a barrel; traders are pricing a crumbling economy.
Republicans target the Education Department to deflect red-state failures. He says 24 of the bottom 25 states for education are red states, none of the top 10 are, and red states take more federal money than blue ones, yet Republicans blame the Department of Education and want schooling returned to the states.
Trump can cripple the Department but not abolish it alone. He argues Trump can leave it largely dysfunctional for the rest of his term; blue states' funding would be little affected, but Title I and special education for children with disabilities would take the hit.
He expects the red-blue education gap to widen sharply. Already massive, the disparity would grow if red states run education themselves, he argues, since in his view they do not prioritise funding it; parents there will need to step up far more.
He predicts the Department survives because Congress protects its jobs. However loyal members of Congress are to Trump, he says, they are more loyal to their own seats and will not let it go.
The "four-year low" gas claim is false on its own chart. He says the creator making it was standing beside a three-year chart, not a four-year one, and gas was cheaper for weeks only a couple of months earlier, which anyone can check at the pump.
Attention-driven content has no incentive to be right. He contrasts creators who say anything for followers with his own aim of informing people, arguing even those who reject his politics acknowledge he is right on oil and gas, and asks how such claims would survive a live challenge.
Gas prices are exactly where they were on Election Day. Answering a supporter's clip celebrating Trump over gas prices, he cites the EIA average for all formulations at $3.19 a gallon on Election Day and $3.19 today; prices rose nearly 10 cents after inauguration and came back, which he likens to Democrats celebrating a similar retreat under Joe Biden.
"Drill baby drill" is not happening; output has fallen. He says US oil production is down almost 200,000 barrels a day since Trump took office, and that even a genuine drilling push would take at least a year to show in the numbers.
Only an economic crash brings gas down meaningfully. Repeating his long-standing view, he shows the Dow Jones and oil prices falling together as evidence that lower fuel prices are coming through a weakening economy rather than policy success.
Record LNG exports are pushing US gas prices up. He cites a report of US natural gas at more than a two-year high on record LNG exports and supply concerns, says February 2025 exports were the largest in history, and notes planned projects are likely to triple them.
Renewables-heavy Europe is what is driving demand. He argues the world must choose gas or coal because renewables are not cutting it; the top buyers of US LNG, a $25 billion-a-year market, are led by the Netherlands, France and the UK, which he says have the most renewable energy per capita.
He expects natural gas prices to keep climbing long term. Showing the past year's chart, he says there will be dips and rises, but the long-term trend will be upward as export capacity triples.
Utilities are using gas prices to inflate delivery charges. He points to $400 to $500 delivery charges on bills, noting $10 gas in 2022 did not bring the bills seen in 2024 and early 2025, and says the fees fund utilities' renewable build-out. He advises planning long term to cut utility costs because it will get much worse.
Car Interest Tax Deduction Not For The Working Class
The car-loan interest deduction only helps people who itemize. Answering a pro-Trump clip praising Trump's plan to make interest on American-made car loans deductible as a win for working people, he notes anyone taking the standard deduction gets nothing from it.
Few working-class taxpayers itemize; top earners dominate. He cites only 1.2% of the bottom 20% of earners itemizing, 2.5% of the 20-40% bracket and 5% of the middle, about 13% overall, with his chart showing 91.5% for the top 1% and 72% for the top 5%.
Those who itemize largely already deduct vehicle costs. He argues itemizers are mostly self-employed and already write off mileage and maintenance, and many top earners pay cash for cars, so the new deduction adds little and does not reach blue-collar workers.
US oil imports are a business, not a matter of need. He argues companies import crude because they profit from refining and selling the products; no government official is setting imports by comparing production with consumption, so how much the US produces has nothing to do with it.
All recent US production growth has been exported. He says 100% of the increase in US oil output since 2016 has left the country, and the US already produces more than 10 quadrillion BTUs of energy beyond what it consumes.
More drilling will not reduce imports by a drop. Even doubling total oil production would leave imports unchanged, he argues; any Trump-era increase, which he does not expect in the first year, would be exported as under Biden and Trump's first term. He calls "energy dominance" and self-sufficiency talk from either party nonsense.
Hydrocarbon chain length determines what each product is. He explains that shorter carbon chains make lighter compounds: the shortest, around two carbon atoms by his account, are natural gas, then gasoline at around four, then diesel, then heavy oils. Refining is breaking these chains down and putting them back together.
Crude is first boiled to vapor at a gravity-set temperature. The crude goes into a boiler and is heated until it vaporizes; heavier crude, with a higher boiling point, must be heated more, and lighter crude less.
The distillation tower sorts the vapors by boiling point. The tower is hottest at the bottom and coolest at the top; rising vapors condense on its plates as they reach their boiling points, yielding heavy oils at the bottom, then lubricating oils, gas oil, kerosene, gasoline, naphtha and gas at the top. This thermal fractional distillation is the first step before further processing.
Trump's offer of fast-track citizenship reverses his long-held immigration record. He cites over 107 Trump tweets containing "aliens", 10 on birthright citizenship, an executive order trying to end birthright citizenship, and administration plans to deport 10 million people to Mexico, Central and South America, with some sent to Guantanamo Bay.
He reads race as the only explanation for the reversal. The beneficiaries are white South African refugees, whom he contrasts with Haitians Trump accused of eating pets. They face no $5 million gold card or IQ test. He says he does not oppose admitting genuine refugees, but calls the double standard glaring and sarcastically congratulates the president for "evolving".
Cutting off Ukraine predictably emboldened Russia. He argues that after weeks of Trump vilifying Zelensky and propping up Putin, the White House blow-up and the halt to all US aid, Russia sharply ramped up attacks and struck and sank a Swiss-owned civilian cargo ship; Trump is now surprised and threatening more sanctions.
Trump lacks the knowledge and humility to out-negotiate Putin. He says a real estate developer who won't learn the history or heed advisers is outmatched by someone who has done this his whole life, and that chest-pounding and flag-waving have never produced a peace deal, whatever Trump says about wanting fewer lives lost.
The US is almost wholly dependent on Canadian potash. Responding to another creator who raised the issue, he says the US gets something like 95% of its potash, the base of fertilizer, from Canada, whose share of world supply he compares to OPEC's share of oil.
Ethanol from fertilized corn holds down all gasoline prices. He says ethanol adds about a million barrels a day to fuel supplies, lowering pump prices even for ethanol-free gasoline, though its all-in cost is probably higher than regular gasoline's.
A potash cutoff would hit fuel before food. Alternatives are Russia, China or Belarus, none of them friendly; if fertilizer ran short, he expects food to take priority and the US to lose that million barrels a day, pushing ethanol and non-ethanol fuel prices up significantly unless supply were found elsewhere.
Potash may be a stronger trade weapon than Canadian oil. Not being a potash expert, he guesses Canada could sell it to more markets than its oil and so weather a trade war, though he thinks the trade war is all but dead and "just a game."
Trump's trillion-dollar Saudi investment figure is not plausible. In the clip Trump says Saudi Arabia will invest at least $600 billion in the US and he will ask the Crown Prince to round it to about $1 trillion. He counters that $1 trillion is three times Saudi Arabia's total annual budget, the equivalent of the US pledging $15 trillion to Saudi Arabia.
He reads the repeated trillion-dollar deals as a pattern of inflated claims. He cites the trillion-dollar LNG deal with Japan, which he says would take 650 years of Japanese LNG purchases at current prices, and the trillion-dollar Ukraine minerals deal, and faults the public for accepting each without challenge.
The commentator's USMCA defense contradicts his own earlier claim. In the clip, a pro-Trump commentator says Trump scrapped NAFTA in 2018 for USMCA so Canada and Mexico could no longer take advantage; he notes the same person said two hours earlier that both countries charge the US exorbitant tariffs, and asks why tariffs are needed if USMCA fixed it.
Trump did attack Canada's sovereignty. Against the commentator's claim that no one questioned other nations' sovereignty, he says one of Trump's first moves was telling "Governor Trudeau" Canada would become the 51st state, which means ending it as a sovereign nation.
Trump has disowned the trade deal he signed. He points to Trump calling it the most horrible trade deal he had ever seen, despite having signed USMCA and taken credit for it.
The Mexico tariff delay effectively exempts nearly everything. After US automakers won an exemption the day before, Trump exempted all goods under USMCA with Mexico for another month, as he predicted; he notes USMCA covers almost everything, and reads it as Trump realizing tariffs hurt the economy, suggesting he stop listening to Peter Navarro.
The tariffs' purpose is unclear, and their defenders are exposed. He speculates about a negotiating tactic, a news-cycle distraction, a show of dominance, or a ploy to sink the stock market for a quick profit, and asks Republicans why, if tariffs are so good, they keep getting delayed as the economy weakens.
First-quarter GDP outlook remains deeply negative after revision. He reports the Fed's forecast improved from a 2.8% contraction to 2.4%, still really bad; two quarters at that pace would mean a deep recession. He also cites a Gallup poll putting trust in media at an all-time low of 31%.
Nationalization would require crashing prices, and only OPEC would cooperate. Responding to a question about using low OPEC prices and "drill baby drill" to break the private sector, he agrees that would be the only route: drive prices low enough to bankrupt companies, then buy everything. US producers would never join in driving the price down.
The US cannot afford to buy its oil and gas industry. Privately held acreage alone is worth roughly $2 trillion, paid up front, plus an agency of at least 50,000 people to manage it, some of which could fold into the BLM. Owning the upstream, midstream, marketing and retail chain adds about another $3 trillion; selling minority shares, as with Saudi Aramco, would cover a tiny fraction.
The investment would never pay back if the goal is cheaper energy. He estimates any return would take well over 50 years, by which point a national industry would no longer be needed. A cheaper route, letting federal leases expire and running alongside private firms, he suspects would not work well.
Nationalization only works early in a country's industrialization. Doing it after becoming the world's largest energy producer is, in his analogy, like buying Tesla stock at its peak and expecting to get rich: you lose money.
The Canadian offer gave the president everything rather than defying him. In the clip Danielle Smith proposes doubling Canadian crude moving south, promising jobs and lower fuel prices. He says Canadians praising her for telling Trump off have it wrong, the "we'll sell it elsewhere" threat is empty with no route to other markets, and he suspects she wants Trump to take Keystone XL.
Doubling Canadian imports would make Canada the sole US supplier. The US imports oil from about 46 countries, and he argues it lacks the capacity and storage to double Canadian volumes and keep the rest. Relying on one trading partner for such an important resource is, in his view, unwise even when it is Canada.
The jobs and price benefits are overstated. The infrastructure would create construction jobs, but pipelines employ few people once open, and he dismisses the promise of lower prices for Americans as "not a thing."
Saying America needs no Canadian oil undercuts years of pipeline complaints. Addressing Trump sarcastically on his claim that the US does not need Canadian oil, he asks why Trump, Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan and Lindsey Graham spent four years saying the Keystone XL cancellation drove gas to $5 a gallon. He welcomes Trump to his side and asks for it in writing on White House letterhead.
Dropping Canadian oil means buying from hostile producers instead. The replacement would be OPEC, and he mocks the idea of replacing the closest US ally with nations he describes as funding terrorism, and suggests Republican voters would pay more for gas if told it meant owning Canada.
Earlier Russian oil purchases helped fund the invasion of Ukraine. He says the US bought a lot of Russian oil while Trump was president, and tens of billions of dollars of it in the couple of years before the invasion, then cut it off without harm, proving it was never needed. His sarcastic reading is that the US financed Russia's invasion and then Ukraine's defense.
Canada's dependence on US trade mirrors America's on China. Answering a video arguing Canada needs the US, he grants that 75% of Canada's exports go to the US but says the US's own biggest trading partner is China, which it calls its biggest enemy.
The video's energy and defense complaints don't hold up. He mocks the claim that the US "allows" Canada to sell it discounted oil, notes the video blames Trudeau for shutting down Keystone XL when Republicans usually blame Biden, and answers its point that Canada spends 1.38% of GDP on defense against 3.8% for the US by saying America chooses to spend nearly $1 trillion a year.
Anti-Canada sentiment was manufactured by Trump. He argues followers have adopted Trump's hostility wholesale, when Trump's insults, such as calling Trudeau a governor, are a negotiating tactic he uses because his base enjoys it rather than something he means.
Democrats keep failing to back the women who warned them about Trump. After a clip of Kamala Harris saying that with Trump as president Putin would be sitting in Kyiv and that dictators want him back because they can manipulate him with flattery, he says Hillary Clinton also predicted what Trump would do and Democrats didn't turn out for either.
Far-left leadership and identity politics alienate a more centrist base. He says apart from Biden, whom he calls somewhat centrist, party leaders sit well left of a membership that includes many centrists and some center-right voters, and that catering to groups rather than broadly shared issues is why he left the party to become an independent.
Conservative creators' worry about looking bad comes years late. He responds to a Republican creator telling peers to stop claiming the no-tax-on-tips and overtime bill had passed, saying that ship sailed about 8 years ago. He cites the belief that kids were getting sex changes in school, and the idea that renaming the Gulf of America let drilling restart, when he says drilling never stopped.