Big Digital Energy
Welcome to Big Digital Energy with Chuck Yates, Mark Meyer and Kirk Coburn. Weekly news in energy covering oil and gas and cleantech.
Hormuz Deadline Expires, Diesel Crack Tops $102, Meta Wants 10 Gas Plants | BDE 08.18.26
The sixty day clock on the Islamabad MOU ran out and nobody blinked, so Hormuz is still a coin flip and the diesel crack just printed 102 dollars, bigger than the price of crude itself. Kirk, Chuck, and Mark get into why nobody will build a refinery, how FedEx surcharges quietly lock in higher prices, and whether Meta and Entergy are about to hand Louisiana ratepayers a very long bill. Plus live questions from the Collide audience and a heartfelt sendoff for OJ Brigance.
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Amazon Builds a 7.6GW Gas Grid, EOG Strikes UAE Shale | BDE 08.14.26
EOG drilled two wells in the UAE that look suspiciously like the Eagle Ford, and Chuck has a theory about why. From there it's Amazon dropping a 7.6 gigawatt private gas plant on a West Texas ranch, Vivek Ramaswamy flipping the script on Ohio data centers, and a cattle rancher whose herd is spooked by the noise. Power demand is rewriting land use and politics at the same time, and we are here for it.
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Trump Steals Warren's Windfall Tax, Chevron Becomes Microsoft's Landlord | BDE 08.04.26
Trump wants the oil majors to hand their profits back to the public, and the crew has opinions. From taco trade whiplash in the Strait of Hormuz to Chevron reinventing itself as an infrastructure landlord through the Microsoft Kilby deal, this Collide roundtable unpacks windfall tax theater, BP fleeing a 78 percent North Sea tax bill, and the hidden demand destruction quietly showing up at Applebee's. Plus bling, beaver nuggets, and a heartfelt close.
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Every Gas Shortage Call Has Been Wrong, PE Dumps Assets & SLB Chases GPUs | BDE 07.28.26
Somebody spent 18 months modeling every well, pipe, and storage facility in the US gas system and came out calling for a shortage by 2028. Collide is not buying it, and the receipts go all the way back to Greenspan. Then it is deal season, with Magnolia grabbing Wildfire and Matador stacking up two more, all cash and no leverage. Plus SLB is quietly building a billion dollar data center business with Liberty, and somebody deserves a raise for selling that one.
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Iran Kills US Troops, Houthis Blockade the Red Sea & Oil Shrugs | BDE 07.21.26
A listener named gopher27 fired back with Bastiat, Krugman, and Thomas Jefferson, and what followed might be the sharpest debate this show has had in two years. From whether Walmart really guts a small town to Middle East escalation rattling crude, a hurricane aiming at the refining corridor, and the messy fight over data centers, water, and farmland, the guys chase it all down.
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Trump's $32M Hormuz Toll, Houthis Break Truce & Oil Nears $90 | BDE 07.14.26
Slap a 20% toll on oil tankers, add drones that can sink a ship for less than the price of a pickup, and you get a Strait of Hormuz that keeps running out of off ramps. From there it spirals into why a 141 year old Ohio brick maker got hammered by its power bill, how data centers are quietly rewiring the grid and hollowing out small towns, and whether big oil earnings are about to spark another round of Washington theater.
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US Bombs 90 Iran Targets, Oil Yawns, & Russia's Diesel Export Ban Detonates Crack Spreads | BDE 07.09.26
Four energy supply shocks landing on three continents at once, and somehow the oil traders got bored before the generals did. The crew works through strikes on Iran, Russia's diesel export ban, and how drones you could build in a garage are quietly rewriting global markets. Then a turn into Palantir CEO Alex Karp warning that the big AI models are out to eat their own customers, why the knowledge stuck in your employees' heads may be your best data, and what Collide is doing to capture it.
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Trump's Big Oil Witch Hunt, $58 Cracks Spike & California's Refinery Graveyard | BDE 07.03.26
Gasoline creeps past four bucks and everyone reaches for the same villain, but the real story lives in the refining margin, not the gas station down the street. Arjun Murti of Veriten joins Mark Meyer for a holiday-weekend conversation on why big oil doesn't set your pump price, how refining flipped from the worst business in energy to the best, what California's shrinking refinery count really signals, and the Lee Raymond mindset that still shapes how smart operators ride the cycle.
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Trump Blinks on Iran, Cushing Hits Tank Bottoms & Warren's Big Oil Shakedown | BDE 06.23.26
Cushing is scraping tank bottoms, the SPR is back at 1980s lows, and somehow there is room to argue about soccer, the World Cup, and the audacity of parking your car at the Buc-ee's pump. Kirk and Mark break down the new Iran MOU and what the Strait of Hormuz standoff means for crude, why production keeps slipping while exports surge, and the recycled windfall profits tax playbook out of Warren and Whitehouse. It lands on the SpaceX IPO and the builder versus blame mindset worth chewing on.
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Lee Raymond Dies, Oil's Pavlovian "Deal" Swoon & Gunvor's $300M Enron Sequel | BDE 06.12.26
Lee Raymond gets his due first, the Exxon legend who turned the Valdez disaster into a safety overhaul and still holds the record for oil's biggest merger. Then it's whether the Iran deal is real or another oil market head fake, why trading houses like Gunvor are buying gas wells instead of pipelines, and the data center that paid fifty five million just to get its power line built four months early. Waha gas math, flaring pain, and a questionable David Lee Roth show close it out.
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Paxton vs Talarico Goes Nuclear, ERCOT Chokes Data Centers & BP Burns Its Boss | BDE 05.28.26
BP just fired its chairman after eight months, and that somehow is not even the wildest thing this week. The Texas Senate race opens with Ken Paxton and James Talarico already swinging, vegan campaign ads and all. ERCOT's interconnection queue is buried under 410 gigawatts of data center dreams at a 1.5 percent approval rate, so off grid gas starts looking real. Plus a quant trading lab built with Claude, Cushing draws getting tight, the shaky Iran ceasefire, and a Wuhan study with some nerve.
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Microsoft Kills Claude Code, Tank Bottoms Loom & NextEra's $67B Dominion Grab | BDE 05.22.26
Venezuela is suddenly back on the table after being branded un-investable, and the tone shift has Mark and Kirk picking apart who blinked and why Exxon's posture lines up with Chevron's quiet move next door. Summer driving season is squeezing crude inventories, Microsoft pulled the plug on Claude Code licenses, NextEra swallowed Dominion for $67 billion, Devon dropped $2.6B on a Delaware lease sale, and XAI is running 46 turbines without federal permits. Physics keeps showing up uninvited.
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Reacting to Joe Rogan's Deranged Oil Take, Climate Doomsday Dies & Claude Mead Caged | BDE 05.14.26
Gas hits $7.90 a gallon in LA and Joe Rogan blames Big Oil, so Chuck and Mark grab the mic to set the record straight on California's fuel island, refinery shutdowns, and why nationalizing oil sounds great until you actually think about it. From there it's the death of climate model RCP 8.5, Anthropic's Claude Mead and the Glass Wing trusted partner group, EIA's call for higher residential power bills, and Geraldo Rivera's wild plan for the Strait of Hormuz.
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Iran Trade "Syndicate," SPR Drops Below 400M, & Musk's Memphis AI Power Play | BDE 05.07.26
Kirk and Mark fly solo while Chuck takes a break, and there is plenty to chew on. Crude took a hit on Iran peace talk leaks, and a suspiciously timed 925 million dollar short has even Marjorie Taylor Greene calling out insider trading. From there it is the upcoming Trump and Xi summit, SPR refill chatter on DoD lands, the voodoo science of reserves accounting, exec comp tied to flaring mitigation, and where Anthropic fits in the gigascale power buildout.
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Permian Gas Goes Negative, Brent Tops $100, UAE Dumps OPEC & LIV Golf Implodes | BDE 05.01.26
Petroleum inventories are screaming lower, the SPR is down under 400 million barrels, and gas prices are creeping up just in time to sour the midterms. The guys break down the UAE walking away from OPEC+, Saudi PIF pulling the plug on LIV Golf, the brewing knife fight between AI data centers and the petrochemical industry over Gulf Coast gas turbines, and Permian gas trading at less than nothing. Plus a salute to David Allan Coe.
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Trump Begs Shale to Drill, Heathrow Jet Fuel Hell & EOG Cracks the Buda | BDE 04.24.26
Chuck and Mark rip through a week where the White House hauled oil and gas execs in for a drill baby pretty please moment, and capital discipline still isn't bending for $100 oil. They pick apart Trump's energy executive order and its cycle time problem, flag EOG quietly locking up Madison County's Buda play, unpack Paul Sankey on Heathrow jet fuel and Australia's refining collapse, then close with Rick Perry's push to legitimize ibogaine treatment for addiction and PTSD.
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Iran Talks Collapse, $100 Oil Rips & Ro Khanna's Windfall Tax Disaster | BDE 04.14.26
Chuck's back, freshly upgraded to co-founder, and Kirk and Mark have plenty to catch up on. This week the guys dig into the Iran nuclear standoff, JD Vance's Islamabad trip, what $100 oil actually means for US producers, Ro Khanna's windfall profits tax proposal, the case for moving BP to Houston, and a proper sendoff for Astros legend Phil Garner.
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$100 Oil & Drillers Still Won't Drill, Fertilizer Crash & Harold Hamm's Bet | BDE 03.31.26
Oil markets are under siege and Kirk and Mark aren't sugarcoating it. From the Iran supply shock draining global inventories to the fertilizer fallout quietly heading for your grocery bill this fall, no topic is off limits. They also break down why US producers aren't just drilling on command, the capital discipline story behind the rig count, and Continental Resources' Mercury Pecos Power project proving Harold Hamm still runs circles around everyone.
Chuck's latest blog:
https://collide.io/old-man-coffee/18-months-ai-s-coming-divide-haves-vs-have-nots-and-it-s-already-ugly
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Big Tech's Dirty Energy Secret, Avatar's O&G Shark Tank & The AI Divide | BDE 03.27.26
Kevin Krausert, CEO and Co-Founder of Avatar Innovations Inc., brings a story that starts with a vegan roughneck and ends with a venture studio that's quietly changing how oil and gas companies innovate from the inside out. Chuck and Kevin get into the Avatar model, some clever bets that actually paid off, the coolest ideas that flopped, and why Kevin thinks AI early adopters in energy are about to leave everyone else in the dust.
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Qatar LNG Wiped Out, $200 Oil in Asia & Iran's Endgame | BDE 03.20.26
Chuck and Mark are back and wasting no time getting into it. Qatar's LNG infrastructure is heavily damaged, a Red Sea refinery just got hit, and oil markets are absorbing a shock that the IEA apparently never saw coming (surprise). The guys break down regime adjustment vs. regime change, what a prolonged Strait of Hormuz disruption could mean for a global recession, and why gas prices matter more politically than anyone wants to admit. Then somehow they land on Mean Joe Green, Chuck Norris, and Astros opening day.
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"Robinhood for Oil & Gas": Tokenized Energy, Blockchain Deals & Permian Access | BDE 03.17.26
Oil and gas deals have always been a handshake-and-know-the-right-guy kind of business, but Tokenized Energy is changing that. Chip Simmons and Adrian Macias, co-founders of Tokenized Energy, along with Tim Pawul, President of Minerals and Royalties Authority LLC, join Chuck to break down how blockchain is turning exclusive oil and gas investments into something anyone can access from their phone for as little as 500 bucks.
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Iran Goes Hot, Oil Spikes & Sells Off, IEA Eyes the SPR | BDE 03.09.26
Oil prices swung wild overnight and the BD War Chronicles rolls on. David Pursell joins Kirk and Mark to break down the SPR numbers, the Jones Act waiver, and why the IEA's emergency reserve is starting to look more like a price cap than a crisis tool. They also get into Iran's mosaic defense, Strait of Hormuz shipping chaos, and why reservoir damage fears are mostly noise.
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US Bombs Iran, Oil Barely Flinches, OPEC Ramps & the Regime Change Gamble | BDE 03.03.26
The Persian Gulf just became a live fire zone and crude is barely flinching. What does that tell you about where oil markets really stand? David Pursell, EVP Planning Reserves and Fundamentals at Apache Corporation, joins Kirk and Mark to break down the US strikes on Iran, why this is nothing like Operation Midnight Hammer, what OPEC is actually capable of producing, how strategic reserves are everyone's insurance policy, and whether the real story here is regime change, not barrels.
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Texas Railroad Commission Candidate on Zombie Wells, Injection Crisis & CCS Scam | 02.23.26
Hawk Dunlap, 2026 Republican candidate for Texas Railroad Commission, pulls no punches on zombie wells, produced water injection, and why carbon capture is a taxpayer funded scam. From 27 years of international well control across 100 countries to excavating 150 leaking wells on a Texas ranch, Hawk brings the kind of boots on the ground credibility this conversation demands. The primary is March 3rd.
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Chevron Buys Texas Ranch to Dodge Lawsuit, Wind Blade Graveyards & Musk's Space AI | BDE 02.13.26
Kirk, Chuck, and Mark cover Chevron's settlement to buy a West Texas ranch rather than face trial over decades of alleged pollution, Ken Paxton's lawsuit against a fiberglass recycling site turned wind turbine blade graveyard, and Elon Musk's plan to put AI data centers in space powered by solar panels. They debate whether the space data center concept is real or just Musk messing with software guys, discuss BP suspending share buybacks to reduce debt after their energy transition distraction, and reflect on Expand Energy leaving Oklahoma City nearly a decade after Aubrey McClendon's death, marking the end of...
Devon-Coterra Mega Merger, Data Center Cancellations Spike & Rubio's Mineral OPEC | BDE 02.06.26
Kirk Coburn, Mark Meyer, and Chuck Yates tackle Devon's $58 billion merger with Coterra—a Delaware Basin land grab with Marcellus as an afterthought. They break down why scale matters when your cost of capital beats everyone else's, why Oklahoma keeps building great companies Houston eventually swallows, and why data center cancellations reveal America's infrastructure crisis. The real insight? PJM's grid failures prove you can't bolt 21st century AI demand onto 20th century infrastructure with 19th century permitting. Plus: Trump's trade flurry, China's mineral monopoly, and why we have 2 icebreakers while Russia has 54.
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Winter Storm Fern Flops, ERCOT Grid Survives & IEA's $15 Trillion Oil Mistake | BDE 01.29.26
Winter Storm Fern exposed the grid's contradictions, New England burned 40% oil for power while sitting 300 miles from the Marcellus Shale, ERCOT's batteries sat idle during $2,000/MWh spikes, and solar panels disappeared under snow. Meanwhile, the IEA quietly restored their realistic demand forecasts after five years of transition fantasy, revealing a $15 trillion underinvestment hole. Toby Rice reminded everyone what actual energy leadership looks like by getting wells back online in a hard hat instead of pontificating from Davos.
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Trump at Davos, Natural Gas Spike & Continental Energy Halts Drilling | 01.23.26
Kirk, Chuck, and Mark reunite on the Big Digital Energy Show to dissect the week's chaos - from natural gas spiking 75% in five days while Waha trades negative, to Trump's Davos windmill rant and the mainstream media's Greenland invasion hysteria. They break down why Harold Hamm's decision to shut down Continental's drilling makes perfect economic sense at $70 oil, debate whether 50% well-level returns ever translated to actual corporate performance, and explain how OPEC's Amine Nasser is signaling that global spare capacity is actually lower than the 2.5% he's publicly claiming. Plus, the crew explores how AI-native workflows are creating trillion-dollar opportunities...
Trump vs Exxon on Venezuela, Chevron’s Caution, & Conoco’s $6–$12B Problem | BDE 01.19.26
Venezuela’s “open for business” moment gets a reality check, plus a wild Chavez-in-Houston story that tells you everything you need to know. Mark and David Pursell unpack why Exxon and friends are hesitant, what the EIA gets right and wrong, why the forward curve is the real lie detector, how Iran risk actually moves barrels, BP’s renewable hangover, and Tesla casually speed-running a lithium refinery in Texas.
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Landman Pay Stagnates, AI Hits the Field, & NAPE Signals a Bigger Energy Shift | 01.14.26
Landman day rates have basically been stuck in neutral since 2000, and Kyle Reynolds of RBG Permian walks Chuck through why that’s turning into a real problem as the field vets age out. Along the way they hit what AAPL actually does, why records still aren’t fully digital, how AI is speeding up title work without replacing judgment, and why NAPE is quietly turning into a marketplace for way more than just oil and gas.
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Year-in-Review: WTI Whiplash, EIA vs Texas Data & Venezuela Shock | BDE 01.09.26
Oil prices, gas at the pump, Venezuela headlines, and a brutally honest scorecard on markets, politics, and global conflict all collide as Chuck and Mark walk through what actually mattered this year. From WTI whiplash and frack spread confusion to Trump’s energy strategy, midterm math, and why narratives keep beating fundamentals, this one feels like a whiteboard session that got a little too real.
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Can Venezuela Replace the Permian? Not a Spigot + What to Watch Next | BDE 01.09.25
Headlines love tossing around Venezuela’s “303 billion barrels” like it’s a magic switch, but the reality is messy, expensive, and slow. Mark and David Pursell, Adjunct Professor of Petroleum Engineering, walk through why heavy oil, busted infrastructure, and shaky politics make this a long-cycle rebuild, not a drill-and-chill moment, plus what to watch in markets when the story sounds too easy.
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Public E&P Is Broken, Cambridge Activism, & Why Energy Stocks Stay Unloved | BDE 12.24.25
Trading rigs and rock samples for spreadsheets and shareholder battles, Mark Viviano, CFA from Kimmeridge walks through how he stumbled into energy investing, why shale rewired valuation thinking, and how the sector managed to grow like crazy while lighting free cash flow on fire. The convo hits consolidation, why big institutions mostly hide in the top names, and why activism plus a technical bench might be the only way to get boards to move faster.
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Collide AI 2025 Wrapped Part 2: Scaling AI From Proof of Concept to Production
Catching yourself rereading last year’s VC emails while you’re back in Silicon Valley is a pretty good way to realize how wild the last 12 months have been. Colin, Chuck, Canisius, and Todd break down how Collide AI is turning fast POCs into real production workflows, why change management is the actual moat, and how a stacked forward deployed team plus community driven distribution is setting up 2026 to be the year everything scales.
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Collide AI 2025 Wrapped Part 1: Why Forward Deployed Engineers Ship When AI Pilots Fail
Collide AI 2025 Wrapped Part 1 turns into a real talk on why forward deployed engineers win where AI pilots stall, with Michael Cortez, John, and Nick Smart swapping war stories from completions, geophysics, and the startup trenches while they map out how Collide Enterprise moves past basic chat tools into search plus workflows that actually hold up in the real world.
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2025 Community Year In Review: How Collide Evolved This Year (And What's Next)
Collide basically did its own Spotify Wrapped and the punchline is simple: the community doubled, the conversations got more technical, and the team got way clearer on what Collide is now and where it’s headed. Crystal, Todd, Jacob, and Sydney walk through 2025 stats, why events evolved, how Energy 101 came back, what university partnerships unlocked, why Collider AI took a pause, and the platform upgrades and community goals lined up for 2026.
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Ford Takes $19.5B EV Hit, BP Dumps CEO, & Trump “Blockades” Venezuela | BDE 12.19.25
Studio one glow up and the gang is officially back as Kirk Coburn, Chuck Yates, and Mark Meyer trade Texas football and tamale truths, then jump into Ford’s EV write down, BP’s CEO shuffle and what it signals, a quick tour of PE continuation funds around Ascent, and Trump turning up pressure on Venezuela before sliding into holiday stories and band lore.
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Can One Governor Candidate Rewrite Alaska’s Energy Future?
Adam Crum brings some serious Alaska energy, literally and figuratively, as he sits down with Chuck to talk about where the state’s headed and how he thinks it can get there. He opens up about everything from playing football at Northwestern to steering Alaska through COVID, all the way to why he thinks the state’s future depends on smarter energy development, fixing outdated policies like the Jones Act, and protecting the culture that makes Alaska, well… Alaska. It’s a mix of big ideas, real talk, and a few stories you probably haven’t heard before, all centered a...
DOE's $1B Nuke Bet, China’s Coal Loop, & Al Gore’s COP Circus | 11.21.25
Chuck and Mark crank up the camp as they riff on the Landman season two premiere, bouncing from the show’s oil-patch chaos to the real-world energy circus. They torch the DOE Loan Programs Office’s messy reputation while breaking down its latest billion-dollar moves, like the $1B revival of Three Mile Island for Microsoft and AEP’s $1.6B transmission upgrade, along with its surprisingly strong 3.3% default rate and Tesla’s quick 2013 repayment. Then it’s off to China, where a coal-to-liquids boom big enough to replace 1.3 million barrels a day pairs with thorium molten-salt reactors and plans for a 200-MW n...
Congress Chaos, FAA Close Call & COP30’s Amazon Irony | BDE 11.15.25
COP30’s giving big “save the trees… after we bulldoze them” energy, and Kirk and Mark are all over it. They roast the idea of hosting a climate conference in the Amazon while clearing land for roads, hotels, and runways, right as private jets zip overhead and new drilling permits get stamped. It’s peak irony, wrapped in green branding. They unpack the politics, the money, the energy realities no one onstage wants to mention, and why these climate summits keep feeling more like PR tours than solutions. Sharp takes, spicy commentary, and a whole lot of uncomfortable truth about what...