The ANWR lease sale drew no bids at all. Not one company bid on any tract of the roughly 400,000 acres offered, days after Trump spoke of extensive drilling there under his administration; he reads this as a sign it will not happen. He mocks the Alaska development authority's move to blame Biden for costs, noting leases ran about $20 an acre.
Reserves are irrelevant unless producing them is profitable. He argues it does not matter how much oil lies in ANWR or Greenland: if it cannot be produced, brought to market and sold at a profit, it stays in the ground, so politicians and pundits should stop citing remote reserves.
Critics of Biden's offshore ban ignore Trump's similar one. Answering a clip calling Biden's new offshore drilling ban sabotage, he notes Trump also banned drilling in many of the same waters, with a ban that did not start until July 1, 2022, and says the clip nearly repeats a statement from Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.
The ban is climate virtue signaling with no effect on output. It covers the East Coast, which has had no lease sale in over 40 years, eastern Florida and the Pacific Northwest, not the Gulf where production happens. California has had a federal leasing ban since 1984 yet still drills on existing leases, and companies hold over 24 million acres of unworked leases.
He expects Trump to use the ban as an excuse. He predicts no impact on oil prices, gas prices or the climate, and reads the move as political theater that lets Trump blame Biden if he cannot bring down gas prices.
Biden's LNG pause only froze permits for new facilities. He says it stopped no current exports and no export terminals already under construction, and that exports skyrocketed under Biden. The administration imposed it under pressure from climate activists, pending a study of the climate impact of expanding LNG exports.
The study found US LNG displaces coal now but renewables later. He says the study pleased neither the fossil fuel industry nor climate activists. It found US LNG has so far reduced coal burning abroad, but projects that additional exports will displace more renewables than coal globally, which he agrees with.
The study's household cost estimate is trivially small. It put the cost of unconstrained exports at over $100 a year per household by 2050, a little over $8 a month. He calls that a huge miss when utility bills have already risen by more than that in four years, by thousands of dollars a year in some places.
Ratepayers pay twice for "cheap" renewables. He says utilities building wind, solar and transmission get subsidies more than 10 times what fossil fuels receive, then seek rate increases from regulators. Renewables are cheap for the builder, he argues, because customers pay through both taxes and bills.
He expects Trump to lift the pause, with effects years away. The comment period runs into the Trump administration, making a petition to Biden pointless. Because the affected terminals are not yet built and take years to complete, he expects any export impact only in the third or fourth year of Trump's term.
Mr. GlobalHow Politicians Play The Media, Their Donors, and Constituents Like A Harp.
Biden's "permanent drilling ban" makes Trump's lease ban permanent. News reports framed it as Biden blocking Trump. He says it covers the same federal waters Trump banned for 10 years, and bans new leases in certain places, not drilling, chiefly places visible from billionaires' coastal mansions.
Offshore bans are donor theatre with no effect on output or climate. He argues Biden and Obama issued theirs so groups such as Earthjustice and the Sierra Club could claim victory and raise money, and Trump did the same for wealthy donors who don't want to see platforms. Partisans then argue on social media while nothing changes.
Existing leases keep producing long after a ban. He says California has had a state ban off its coast since the 1960s and a federal one since 1984, yet drilling continues because holders keep decades-old leases indefinitely; they simply cannot get new ones.
A clean-energy company was ordered to remove a wind farm on Osage land. He says Enel built a wind farm in Oklahoma in 2011 without a lease from the Osage Nation. In 2017 the 10th Circuit ordered it to obtain a lease or stop operating, which he says it ignored. The final 2024 judgment requires removing all turbines and transmission lines, at about $300 million, plus $36 million in damages to the Osage Nation.
Legacy media ignore harm to tribes when green companies cause it. He waited 10 days and found no coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post or Bloomberg, only smaller outlets and aggregators such as MSN and Yahoo. He reads this as coverage depending on who does the harm: had it been Exxon, he says, everyone would know.
Mr. GlobalIt just feels like nobody knows anything anymore.
Low 2016 gas prices cannot be credited to Trump. A commenter cites AAA data putting 2016 average gas prices around $1.99 a gallon; he replies that Trump was not president in 2016 and accuses such commenters of picking the lowest year and attributing it to him. He tells them to look at 2017 prices instead, when Trump was in office.
Almost none of Texas oil belongs to the federal government. Answering a clip claiming Texas oil is all federally owned, he estimates the federal share at probably under one-tenth of 1%. Over 2 million acres belong to about 20 universities in the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems, generating over $100 million a year; private individuals and corporations own the rest.
"Fossil fuel" was a chemist's term, not marketing. Rejecting a claim that a marketing genius coined it, he attributes the term to Caspar Neumann, a German chemist and professor, in the 1750s.
Finite supply does not lift oil prices today. He argues price reflects current supply and demand, not estimated reserves underground; with perhaps 100 to 200 years left, finiteness has no effect. Only if just 10 years remained would producers stretch it out, cutting output and raising value.
US 2024 oil output has already set an annual record. He says 2024's daily average production has passed any year by any country in history, so the record would stand even if production stopped now; commenters asked why prices are still high.
Demand growth absorbed non-OPEC gains that offset OPEC cuts. OPEC produced about 37 million barrels a day under Trump, falling to 35, and is now about 3 million barrels a day below that level; non-OPEC producers added about 3 million. Global demand meanwhile rose from 99–100 to 102–104 million barrels a day, which he says is why oil is about $70 rather than $55 and gasoline around $3 a gallon rather than $2.60.
Landman is not a true picture of oilfield operations. He says Billy Bob Thornton's character does a job that does not exist in real life. A survivor of a three-fatality incident being back at work within days, and the pipe-trailer incident as shown, are things he says do not happen today, though they might have long ago. His own first day in the industry was replacing someone killed on location about 12 hours earlier.
The character interactions ring true, but mostly for an earlier era. He has seen, and been involved in, the kind of retaliation the show depicts against men who hurt a son, but says that was a long time ago. His wider point is that real operations are boring: a planned Discovery Channel reality show following his crew was dropped once producers saw it, so any oilfield show full of drama is staged.
Import volumes say nothing about the industry's health; profits do. The US imports crude grades it does not produce, and refiners buy foreign oil to refine and sell products back abroad. He answers a commenter who expected domestic drilling to lower gas and oil prices, saying "we" means oil companies, not the public.
Producers cut output and investment when prices fall, whatever presidents say. He cites Trump spending his presidency asking OPEC for more oil as evidence that US companies will not produce on command. New entrants would not put capital into oil while a president promises lower prices.
"Drill baby drill" runs against capitalism, he argues. Oil companies chase profit, not oil, and would as readily make money from wind turbines, solar panels or pharmaceuticals. He casts demands for cheap government-delivered fuel as socialist, and low wages as the commenter's problem, not the industry's.
Mr. GlobalOur immigration issue is not Canada’s problem.
US immigration problems are America's own failure, not Canada's. He says Canada already has stricter immigration and border enforcement, with fines for employing illegal immigrants over 30 times greater than in the US, where they go unenforced. In his reading, immigration stays unsolved because it is a political football.
Trump's public trolling of Trudeau seeks attention, not results. He calls humiliating an allied leader counterproductive, and the "negotiating tactic" defence worse: the three signs of a weak negotiator are being unprepared, complaining and being too aggressive.
Trump does not grasp how interwoven US and Canadian energy is. He says over a million Americans get electricity from Canada and over a million get natural gas from it. He cites the OPEC 2020 deal as proof of Trump's incompetence as a negotiator, calling it the worst deal any world leader has made.
Trudeau was weak enough to concede privately; public insults wasted that. He says Trump could likely have got most of what he wanted in a private meeting, but has now angered many Canadian leaders. He predicts neither country will cut the other off, and that Trump will get nothing yet still claim victory.
Mr. GlobalDemocrats Tried To Beat Trump In A “Who’s More Full Of Shit” contest and lost.
Democrats lost by trying to out-spin Trump instead of telling the truth. He argues Biden could have been honest about inflation and gas, energy and home prices — the reasons he gives for the election loss — but chose instead to attack oil companies and big corporations, probably on advisers' counsel.
Honesty would not have cost Biden his climate agenda. Rejecting a viewer's claim that the climate-activist left prevented candor, he says Biden would still have passed all his major climate legislation. His reading is that voters' passion for any cause, climate included, only goes as far as their pocketbook allows.
Mr. GlobalThe Media Needs To Stop Acting Like Everything Trump Says Is The New Law
Trump's statements are not law, and the media treats them as such. Responding to the report that Trump said investors of $1 billion or more in the US could bypass environmental regulations for faster permits, he says that is not something Trump can do because laws exist and he cannot change them by saying so.
The real news is what Trump said and why he cannot do it. He faults Aaron Parnas, whom he otherwise praises, for presenting the claim as if it would happen without explaining that it is not within Trump's power.
Mr. GlobalWhy we will reduce drilling activity for oil in 2025
Drilling budgets follow the oil price cycle and shareholder returns. Responding to Chevron cutting its CapEx by $2 billion and drilling less in the US in 2025, he explains that companies drill more when oil is around $120 a barrel and can still return plenty of cash, but must cut budgets when they expect $65–70 a barrel for a sustained period.
He expects oil rigs to fall and gas rigs to rise slightly. He does not expect the total rig count to change drastically, because he expects natural gas prices to rise in the near future, pulling some rigs toward gas while oil-directed drilling declines.
Producers are wary of Trump from his first term. He says producers watched Trump get foreign countries to flood the market while US companies went bankrupt at a rate of about one a week. His own reading, stated as certainty rather than sourced, is that Trump's return was a major discussion point when the CapEx cuts were decided, alongside the cycle itself.
The minimum wage anchors pay well above the minimum. Rebutting a viewer who said it no longer matters, he argues the $7.25 federal minimum is the starting point for wage negotiation, so people earning more still earn less than they should; he puts the average hourly wage at a little over $11. His illustration: at a $2 minimum, earning $4 is "twice the minimum" yet still leaves no money in your pocket.
Mr. GlobalYes, you can make gasoline from tar sands.
Canadian oil sands crude can be made into gasoline. Rebutting a viewer's claim that it is too dirty and only good for byproducts, he says gasoline can be made from almost any fossil fuel, even coal; once upgraded, oil sands bitumen is basically oil and is refined like any other. He concedes it is much dirtier and more energy-intensive to produce.
Any oil removed from the market moves gasoline prices. He argues the grade is irrelevant: taking any barrels off the market, Canadian oil sands or Venezuelan, raises the price of oil and therefore of gasoline.
Mr. GlobalThe Federal Minimum Wage is 4.93 an hour not 7.25. I explain why.
Inflation has cut the real federal minimum wage by a third. The $7.25 an hour set in 2009 now has the spending power of about $4.93 (he also rounds it to $4.90), so in his framing the effective minimum wage is $4.93.
Politicians promise lower costs instead of higher wages. He argues politicians and big business prefer pledges to cut gas, heating, energy and mortgage costs, saving people $100–200 a month, over paying them perhaps $400 a month more. In his reading this appeases workers with a little breathing room while keeping wages near subsistence.
The media's main problem is self-importance, not bias. He relays a Jonah Goldberg article in The Dispatch arguing the media believes it can define what matters to the public; exit polling shows the issues it hammered during the election ranked at the bottom of voters' priorities. The video is also a promo: code "Mr Global" gives a free month of The Dispatch.
OPEC is defending a price floor, not unwinding cuts. It is reported that OPEC decided at a meeting that day to keep its production cuts through March; he predicts a further extension at the end of March. He reads the aim as letting demand growth catch up with supply in a market he calls mostly balanced but tipping toward oversupply.
He still expects an oversupplied market in 2025. He says demand will not catch up by the end of March and the decision will not change the oversupply, but it will limit how far oil prices fall in 2025.
US oil production growth is flat despite better annual averages. He expects the 2024 annual average to come in about 400,000 barrels a day above 2023, but says that reflects a much stronger first quarter of 2024 than of 2023. Output now is barely above December 2023, and he expects it to stay flat.
Record output came with far fewer rigs. He shows rig counts peaked two and a half years earlier and have since lost over 250 rigs, more than 30% of the fleet, yet US oil and natural gas production hit records in 2023 and he says will again in 2024. He credits technology and science, not rig numbers, and says people in the industry grasp this least.
He expects oil rigs to fall and gas rigs to rise under Trump. He says this is not driven by any Trump policy but by lower oil prices after two years of record production, and by higher natural gas prices after a period of low prices from overproduction. He expects the overall rig count to hold roughly steady only because gas rigs are added.
US crude imports track refining, not domestic need. Since 2005, when he says US consumption peaked, production has risen by 8.5 million barrels a day while imports fell only a little over 3 million barrels a day. Refiners import crude, refine it and ship products back to the source countries; imports have risen slightly over the last 18 months as refining capacity grew.
Oil tariffs would hit refiners and invite retaliation. Rebutting a viewer who said domestic drilling means no tariffs on oil, he argues all US refiners importing crude would pay the tariffs regardless of where products go. He expects retaliatory tariffs on US oil exports to follow.
More US production means more exports, not fewer imports. He compares refiners to an alternator maker that imports parts globally, assembles them and sells worldwide: some output serves the US, some does not.
Keystone XL cannot be "reopened"; it never operated. The original Keystone has run for 14 years, while the XL was 8% complete when Biden cancelled it and the pipe that was laid has been dug up. He expects TC Energy would need a new permit, then face lawsuits and perhaps 10 years in court.
No pipeline opening has ever lowered prices, he argues. He says gas rose over a dollar a gallon in the four years after Keystone opened and rose significantly after the Alaska pipeline opened. He calls the lower-prices promise a line oil companies give politicians to win approval.
Trump, not Biden, was the one begging the Saudis. Biden asked Saudi Arabia only to undo the OPEC 2020 deal, while Trump's 2018 pressure crashed the market, drove up US oil and gas bankruptcies and cost 30% of drilling capacity. The OPEC 2020 deal cut production by 10 million barrels a day, and when the Saudis refused Biden, he used the SPR.
Fracking was not limited under Biden. He cites a 2023 record for Permian wells drilled and completed, and over 2,000 wells on federal land in the last two years against a level Trump never reached. He offers the commenter a bet of any size that Trump's gas-price plan is to ask Saudi Arabia for more output.
US producers are already at full output, leaving nothing to unleash. He quotes the CEO of Exxon saying Trump will not be able to unleash new energy production because US production is not constrained and there is no near-term opportunity to unleash more, because most US operators are already optimizing production. He reads this as producers already running at maximum output.
He reads the remark as rebutting four years of Republican messaging. In his view it contradicts the claims of the Republican Party, the American Petroleum Institute and big oil that Biden held back the oil and gas industry — the argument he says he has been making for those four years.
Trump inherited low prices from a huge global oversupply. An EIA outlook the week before he took office in January 2017 expected only slight crude increases through 2017 and 2018. He cites $50-a-barrel oil, $2.40 gas and 3 billion barrels of working oversupply left over from the late-Obama crash.
The 2018 crash was Trump's own doing. He says Trump promised Saudi Arabia sanctions on Iranian oil, got higher Saudi output, then granted Iran waivers, double-crossing OPEC. Bankruptcies averaged one a week through the last three quarters of 2019, before COVID, and 30% of drilling rigs were lost.
OPEC 2020 was OPEC's revenge, and it hurt consumers under Biden. He reads the two-year 10% production cut as retaliation for 2018, lasting until 18 months into Biden's term and producing the highest US gas prices. He calls it a huge driver of global inflation and says refining capacity was also lost.
Consumers gained almost nothing from the crash Trump caused. He puts the saving at 7 cents a gallon and weighs that against a bankruptcy a week and later record gas prices, and says gas never touched a $3 national average when Trump did it.
US oil exports are higher now than in Trump's final year. He answers Dennis Quaid's claim that America was energy independent and exporting oil under Trump but now begs Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, using charts that show exports up about 20%. He also contrasts Russian production and US imports of Russian oil across administrations.
Russia's oil windfall came from the OPEC 2020 deal. Prices reached $120 a barrel because of Trump's OPEC 2020 deal, he argues, so Russia earned more despite cutting output by 10%. Prices fell once the deal ended.
Biden asked the Saudis once, to end OPEC 2020. By contrast, he says Trump spent his whole administration pressing Saudi Arabia for more oil and also authorized a release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.