TBNS: Is Your Power Bill Higher Because of Data Centers & AI?

Adam Butcher joins Brian Nichols to reveal what's actually driving your electricity bill higher and why blaming data centers and AI misses the real story about America's energy supply. Everybody's pointing at the data centers. Adam isn't. He's the President and Managing Partner of Basin Ventures. He's managed over $1.25 billion in oil and gas projects for more than 50 players in the industry and deployed over $500 million into minerals and royalties. He's a land guy - leases, title, ownership - which means he sees the part of this story nobody on cable news covers. And he came on with a number that stopped me cold. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level since 1983. Roughly 35 days of cover. Draining every single week. Adam's take? Cheap oil is a mirage... and we've been hiding that with artificial levers instead of taking our medicine. So I brought him the stat sheet. Retail electricity up 7% in 2025. Up roughly 40% since 2021. Utilities requested $31 billion in rate hikes in 2025 versus $15 billion the year before. Another $9.4 billion in Q1 of 2026 alone. Virginia has 663 data centers, Texas has 405, together over a quarter of every data center in the country. And Adam looked at all of it and called data centers the new boogeyman. We get into Venezuela and why 2028 is the real timeline. We get into why he says he's always made more money under Democrats than Republicans. We get into the LNG export shutdown, ERCOT's grid math, Zuckerberg's city-sized facility outside Shreveport, and why he moved his fund to 50/50 oil and gas betting on a 2027 boom. Meet people where they're at. Most folks don't care about megawatts... they care about the number at the bottom of the envelope. So that's where we started. CHAPTERS00:00 Somebody's Paying For The Wires02:26 Billy Bob Made Us Famous03:35 The $60 Call He Made In June04:05 Cheap Oil Is A Mirage08:03 Venezuela Won't Save Us Until 202811:48 I Make More Money Under Democrats13:23 The LNG Shutdown Nobody Talks About15:24 The Snake Problem18:27 What Oil Should Actually Cost22:11 We Have To Take Our Medicine22:46 Your Bill Went Up 40 Percent25:05 Data Centers Are The New Boogeyman29:15 Texas Needs 5X Its Power31:06 Final ThoughtsCONNECT WITH ADAM BUTCHERBasin Ventures: https://www.basinventures.comAdam's bio: https://www.basinventures.com/team/adam-butcherLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamwbutcherSUPPORT THE SHOWCardio Miracle - https://cardiomiracle.com/TBNS - use code TBNS for 15% offCONNECT WITH BRIANhttps://[email protected], Facebook, Instagram: @BNicholsLibertyRecorded at Cardio Miracle Studios in eastern Indiana. New episodes Thursdays. Educated. Enlightened. Informed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  Texas set an all time power record this summer. 91,000 megawatts. And that sounds like a lot, and it is. And it's the single fastest growing customer on that grid. It's not a factory. It's not a hospital. It's not even you. It's a warehouse full of computers. Guessing what word comes next? AI. Yeah. And somebody's paying for the wires that feed it. Check your last bill and I think you might figure out who that is. Yeah. Let's talk about that.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Well, hey there, folks. Welcome to today's episode here of the Brian Nichols Show. I'm excited to jump right into all things power. And of course, yes, you paying for those AI companies? Question mark? We'll talk about that. But first, a quick shout out to today's sponsor, Cardio Miracle. We're going to talk about Cardio Miracle later in today's episode. But if you're very curious, head to cardiomiracle.com/tbns. And you can learn more about Cardio Miracle and how, yeah, it's the best heart health supplement in the world. But stick around, we'll talk about that later in today's episode. But jumping into the topic at hand, my guest today, he's managed over a billion and a quarter dollars in oil and gas projects for more than 50 different players in the industry.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  He's deployed over $500 million into million minerals and royalties. But specifically why I want him on the show today, he's a land guy. Leases, title, ownership, all that and more. So while everybody on cable news is pointing figures and arguing about megawatts, Adam's looking at who actually owns the dirt underneath all of it. He's got a poly side degree, history, history degree and an MBA, which means he can read a lease and he can read some legislature. He's the president and managing partner of Basin Industries, Adam Butcher. Welcome to the Brian Nichols Show. How you doing?

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Hey, Brian. That's the best intro I think I've ever had.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Oh, well. On the back, I'll do, do that and I'll thank my producer. Adam, thanks for joining the show. Really looking forward to digging into the topics at hand, which of course we're going to dig into AI. I gave a quick summary of your background, but who better to share a little bit more of who you are and a little bit more of the why behind why it is you do what you do. So the floor is yours, Adam. Who are you? And give us a little bit more of the backstory.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Prior to about five years ago, I would, I would hesitate to tell people I'm a landman. But now Billy Bob made us famous. So I'm sure people thought whenever you were introducing me, maybe Billy Bob would pop up on the screen. But alas, it's just me. Sorry, everybody. But yeah, I'm a landman. What that means is we put the deals together. We put the projects together. You know, oil and gas didn't just happen. It costs a ton of money. It costs a ton of time and resources. People are working all over this country, doing not just drilling operations, but are, that are actually doing the lease negotiations, the acquisitions, the title work in the courthouses. We're doing all kinds of things in this space.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  And that was my discipline. I'm a land guy by trade.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  In a prior iteration of our company, we had 1,000 folks in 18 different states, putting projects together for everybody you've ever heard of and dozens of companies that you have. So that's sort of the background of where I come from and how I look at a lot of this stuff. And it really informs, I think, you know, how our team views what we do here today.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  So before we jump into anything else, I'm gonna go back to June, only like a few months back. And you were on record saying that oil wasn't crashing to $60, while basically what like every TV analyst said it was. So fast forward to today, obviously that's not the case. It's like, what, over $100 a barrel? It's like, I think 105 somewhere in there. I think that was the last, at least I saw. But I mean, what did you see that all the experts didn't see?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, Brian, we watched the fundamentals. We, we're not getting, the whole issue here is we have lots of artificial levers that are pulling on the marketplace. We have tariffs. We have China buying and then not buying. We have war. We have all sorts of things that are going on, pulling the markets all over the place. And we live in unprecedented times in terms of access to information. So the president can literally live stream his plans on blowing up a country. And that will send markets into all kinds of disarray. I'll tell you a little anecdote. About a year ago, what, as we were approaching liberation date, right? The rollout of all the tariffs. We're watching oil in the 75 range.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  And then we see the tariff rollout and oil crashes all the way down in the 50s in the matter of hours. Now, did that, did that all of a sudden changed the way that oil and gas was viewed in the world? No, what it meant was everyone thought, you know, all the analysts, all the bots, all the trading algorithms, they thought, well, this is going to signal a giant global recession. So oil needs to fall because demand is going to fall. The bots and the algorithms have no idea what to do with the current lay of the land. So when I said that prices won't fall into the 60s, it's because what I'm watching is the fundamentals. I'm watching the SPR, that's the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  I'm watching it sit at all time lows, at all time lows. So we've been tracking this now back through January of 83, 1983. We're below where we were then at 298 million barrels. And we're draining, every single week we're draining it. That has artificially kept prices from going well into the 150 range, in my estimation. We're sitting at about 35 days of cover, meaning we have about 35 days.

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• 7:07Speaker 02

  The supply has now dwindled way down because of the war and other factors. So we're just sitting in an environment where the supply and demand structure tells you that cheap oil is a mirage. And that's what we hammer over and over again. Cheap oil is absolutely a mirage. We should not be, right now it's at 85 West Texas. We should not be living in that environment. Right now, the fundamentals probably tell you that we're actually doing well.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  So the obvious answer, I feel, at least Adam, I think it's obvious. And maybe keep me honest here, is that back a few months ago, we engaged in this, it wasn't, it wasn't a military operation. I think that they called it like a police operation or something down in Venezuela. Long story short, Nicolas Maduro, who wasn't so friendly with us, he's gone. And now we have a much more friendly government, friendly air quote government down in Venezuela. And Venezuela, I mean, known for being one of the largest producers of oil down in South America. So is there an opportunity to start to tap that resource once again? Or is there something in the way?

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, there absolutely is. It's obviously the largest known discovered oil field in the world. They have the most proven reserves in the world. There's a couple of things that go along with that that need to be considered, the kind of oil that's produced. So it, it takes a lot to refine that oil. Now that's, I guess luckily for us, what our refineries along the Gulf Coast are mostly set to handle is the, the heavy crude that comes from places like Venezuela. See in the United States with our shale oil. And then in the Saudi Arabia area and all of the Middle East where they produce, we produce what's light sweet crude. It's a different kind of grade. It's easier to refine, but there are, there are less things you can do. In Canada and Venezuela, it's heavy.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  There are more things you can refine out of. So there's two things with, with Venezuela. Like, like I said, the, the, the kind of crude that it produces. But also everything that's happened over the past 20 years in Venezuela isn't going away just at the snap of a thing. I think that, I think Chevron and Conoco, they, they want to believe. I think, and they are, they're, they're going back. They've, they've ramped up, both of them have ramped up their production. So have some other companies. I think we're, we're now bringing in 411,000 or so barrels from Venezuela a day. Or that's, that's what the production has bumped up to. So that's, that's substantial.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  I think that's up from like 200 ish thousand when we jumped in there. So that's roughly double. But it's still a long way away. We're, we're looking at like 2028 before Venezuela can officially kind of be this buffer state that the United States shale was. Shale oil has always been the buffer and that's what's kept oil from going, you know, bananas on the, the open market and kept the Middle Eastern countries in check. But Venezuela does have the capabilities to do that. It's just what's going to happen? You know, we have these four year cycles, right? With presidents, we have, we have two year cycles with Congress.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  So what, if you're a company that is looking to invest tens of billions of dollars into, into something and you have no idea what the policy is going to be? You know, it's not, it's not Chevron's fault that they got burned really bad in the last go round with Venezuela. It's also not Chevron's fault that they're not super excited to just immediately double and triple down on a new investment. But Venezuela is a great opportunity. We actually look at Venezuela as something that maybe we could try to figure out a way to invest. And I know, I don't know if you're familiar with Harold Hamm at Continental Resources. He's a, he's one of the legends in our business.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  He actually is putting together a Venezuela kind of opportunistic sort of fund, if you will, to go explore down in Venezuela. So there are opportunities there for sure. It's just a matter of can you trust it?

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Well, and that goes on both sides of the aisle to your point, right? Pun intended, because it's very hard to make any business decisions in America when you see the political environment change every four, every two years, right? Even in some cases, look no further than 2008 Obama to 2010 with a Tea Party wave, right? I mean, talk about a whiplash in literally two years' time. So we've seen that happen and we can see it happen again. And I guess that leads to the question, so what is the answer? If policy is getting in the way, I've always looked to entrepreneurship to kind of be the answer. So what are you seeing in the entrepreneurial space that's starting to address some of these areas where government's making it very difficult to find some success?

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, you know, I can have my own politics and I also can speak to politics in terms of how it affects business. So I always say I've, I've always made more money under Democrats than I have Republicans. And that's from being in the oil and gas sector. And the reason is traditionally their policies are kind of wonky enough that they scare everybody and they throw everything into kind of chaos as far as, you know, oil and gas and the global environment. But they've never shut us down. You know, that's, that's kind of a misnomer. That's, that's something that doesn't really happen. The drill, baby, drill. That sounds great on the campaign trail, but we've never been shut down. Federal leases, that's where we can have that limited, but you know, we have private mineral ownership in this country.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  We have private oil and gas companies in this country. The government doesn't really impact if, you know, if we want to put together some capital and go drill a well on Farmer Joe's land. The government really doesn't stop us from doing that, even if it's the most radical green kind of president in office, they really don't stop us from doing it. Now, under Biden's administration, I will make one, I guess, caveat to that. They did shut down liquid natural gas exports. Now, that was a huge problem, not only because we have a willing partner in Western Europe. They would take every, they would take every ounce of natural gas that we have, pretty much. If we could liquefy it, put it on a ship and send it over and sell it to them, they

• 13:22Speaker 02

  would take it because they are right now beholden to a bad actor on the eastern front.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Bad actor, obviously being Russia, right?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, correct. They, they control all the natural gas that comes into Europe. I don't know if you've seen some of those documentaries of, of some of those old Eastern Bloc countries where food costs X, you know, getting to point A to point B costs Y, and then their actual gas to power their home costs like 3X all of them. And they, that's what they're beholden to. So when the Biden administration shut us down from liquid natural gas exports, that effectively killed our, I guess, incentive to drill in the natural gas fields. I know that at some point in this discussion will lead into AI because everything does. But with the natural gas production in this country, you know, the liquid natural gas exports, that's a huge deal.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  So my general philosophy is I'm a big supply and demand guy. I'm a big free market guy. I think that if you're a willing buyer and I'm a willing seller, and if I want to do the work to procure the product, if I want to take a widget and put another widget together and make a thing that you want, I want to be able to sell it to you. And if you want to buy it, I want you to be able to buy it. And I don't want anybody telling us what the price has to be other than me and you. If you think the price is too high, you won't buy it. And then somebody else will come and sell it to you for a cheaper price. I think all of that works. When government gets in the way and subsidizes things, when government gets in the way and puts artificial levers on things that are easily tracked and easily measured, I think

• 14:57Speaker 02

  it confuses the issue and I think it compounds future issues. It doesn't, it doesn't really protect us from anything in the long run. It just kicks the can down the road. Sometimes we, we've got to take our medicine. And if, if high oil prices inbound are us finally taking our medicine because the SPR is drained, because Cushing, where we keep all of our commercial stocks, is at rock bottom. If all of that is the case, well, then what that's going to do is incentivize a whole bunch of companies to pick up rigs and go drill a whole bunch more wells. That's how you drill, baby, drill.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I forget who, I think it's Tin Pool. He uses the example of perverse incentives where they, a small village, I think it was in India, and they had this whole quota where there was, because there's a lot of snakes, right? And the snakes were attacking the villagers. So they were like, why don't we must stop the snakes? And they started going through and they gave a price per head for snakes that the villagers would, would turn in. Well, guess what happened? More snakes. Why? Because villagers were like, oh, this is a profit source. So they started breeding snakes and releasing them and then bringing them into the village. So it's like you, you can have this intention from a policy prescription, but when it comes to how people will actually react to the policy, you can't control human behavior.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  And actually, we had Duke, Duke University professor, Dr. Adrian Bajon here on the show. He's one of my all time favorite guests because he is not only, you know, he's big in the science world, he has this idea called constructive law, which is the idea that things in nature will move towards the, the path of least resistance, right? And he goes into the, the nitty gritty from the science standpoint, but then he also applies it to human psychology. And you see this, right? You walk down the sidewalk and you're going towards a nice apartment building, right? And everybody can imagine this, there's the big fountain in front of the, in front of the apartment building and there's that sidewalk that goes alongside the fountain. And your place is over 45 degrees angle to the right, but the pathway keeps going up

• 16:58Speaker 01

  towards like a little set of stairs that you have to go up and then go around in order to access the next sidewalk. And you're like, but I can just walk right there. And guess what? You're not the first person to have that thought. Hundreds of people ahead of you have had that same thought because there's a, a, like made pathway from people walking that route organically because it's the path of least resistance, right? That's, that's the path they wanted to go and they're going to go, go there. So I say all that, when you look at, at the economics, there is a demand, right? That demand is there, it's very real. But we've seen the supply and especially here from a policy standpoint, being artificially restricted in one area, but then on the other area, the, the actual reserves, to your point,

• 17:40Speaker 01

  being now, you know, gotten right up to the point where we no longer have the reserves necessary to help curtail the price. So this is the ultimate kind of example of what happens when government goes in and tries to pick winners and losers. And I say all that, I get nervous because I see a lot of this with the Trump administration kind of doing this in other industries, look no further than their investment, I believe is in IBM. And I also believe in Nvidia, because at that point you're kind of dictating where you want the market to go, but are you actually dictating where the, the, the consumer base really needs it to go? And I guess I've got, want to go back to one of the things you raised earlier, like without certain levers, that oil might be around the $150, you know, mark.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  I mean, is that the, the, the area that it would be today if there was just no government intervention or to be dramatically lower? Like what, what does that?

• 18:32Speaker 02

  No, I think, I think you're, I think you're on the money with that. So oil should be, I guess, depending on should is kind of a loaded word and, you know, disclaimer, disclaimer, I don't know. But I think oil could be in the 150 plus dollar range if the artificial levers were gone. So let's say we didn't have a strategic petroleum reserve that we have drained to the lowest point since before 1983. And at that point, we were increasing our product or increasing our supply in the petroleum reserve. Now we're decreasing it. Let's say that we didn't have, well, our ability to supply the world with, with crude would be dramatically reduced.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  We could not have continued to export what we had exported, use what we need to use, and essentially kept the world in the 80 ish dollar range. We could not have done that without the SPR, but we're not the only ones. Lots of countries have an SPR and they have, they have run theirs as well to try to flood as much oil onto the market as possible. Again, with this idea that the Iranian conflict, war, action, whatever you want to call it, is a temporary thing and that at some point in the near future, we're going to have some sort of resolution that, you know, everybody's going to get back to normal and then, you know, let's just get through this and then oil will just get right back where it was. Well, I just think that's a fundamental misunderstanding of how oil and gas works

• 20:03Speaker 02

  and what it, what it takes to commit billions of dollars to capital expenditures. I think, you know, overseas, offshore, onshore here in America, companies are looking for some degree of stability before they go commit to projects. Very rarely can we just say, oh, oil's $100 this month. Let's go pick up 20 rigs and then go drill and complete 20, 30, 40 wells. That's not how this works. We're on year, two year kind of cycles here. So, you know, rigs, for example, when we were in the hundreds, not too long ago, rigs didn't pick up. Rig stayed the same.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Companies didn't trust that we're sitting here in a, you know, true supply shortage. So we're just sitting here riding this out and it's great for our investors. It's great for public company shareholders. It's great for obviously the bottom lines of all these companies because they're not committing to new CapEx and they're just pocketing these profits essentially. But you can't vilify them for that because A, they don't know what's coming next and B, are you going to still be, you know, against them when oil tanks to 30 or 40 and they're in the red? You know, are you going to feel bad for the oil companies? Of course not. But this is why, again, true supply and demand matters. I kind of equate this, and if you'll just allow me to, I equate this to the beef market. I like steaks.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  I don't know anybody that, that doesn't like steaks and burgers and beef has been a real issue in this country. It's been too expensive, right? The problem is cattle ranchers have not had the price needed to to create new herds, to to increase grazing grounds, to to to make the industry what it should be. Because every time they get an opportunity to make a little money, to increase their their business, to do the business the way they want to do it, they're undercut by imports from foreign countries. That's what we just did. We undercut all of our cattle ranchers here in America, who were going to use that money to increase their herds, increase their grazing grounds by importing beef from Argentina

• 22:13Speaker 02

  that was sketchy and got people sick. And the same thing is true in oil and gas with, unfortunately, in my opinion, this administration, it's whenever whenever something is happening that is not super popular on the internet, we do something that may not be in the America-first interest just to kind of put that fire out. And like I said earlier, we don't take our medicine. And at some point, we've got to take our medicine so we can be healthy and we can be back on the right track. So we can start filling the SPR. So we can get Cushing back where it needs to be. And so we can truly drill, baby, drill and be energy independent and all the things that we want.

• 22:53Speaker 00

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• 23:36Speaker 00

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• 23:53Speaker 01

  Speaking to the the the beef conversation, Congressman Thomas Massey, friend of the show. Prime Act, right? That was another answer right to this this issue, allowing local butchers to compete with these these massive conglomerates that are out there. So, I mean, again, there there are so many ways that we can try to approach this. But it seems that there's, to your point, there's sometimes a lack of incentive from certain players because of the the fear of touching whatever third rail you're not allowed to touch, right? And then, you know, going back to something you raised up earlier, that the company is not necessarily taking a step to make those infrastructure investments. One area we're seeing lots of infrastructure investments is data centers. And of course, what we're seeing with the data centers, Adam,

• 24:36Speaker 01

  is this increase in people raising a weary eye towards AI, not just in terms of their experience using AI, especially in my day job, the customer experience world, because nobody wants to have AI replace a real human being when they're calling customer support or customer service with an actual issue. But different conversation for a different day, looking specifically at the the actual tangible costs, right? So just year over year, since 2025, retail electricity rates are up 7%. Since 2021, up 40%, which is just absolutely bonkers. Utility rates went up $31 billion in 2025 versus $15 billion the year prior.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Another $9.4 billion requested in Q1 of 2026 alone. Nearly half of those 2025 requests were not approved yet. As of early 2026, electricity altogether up 42% since 2029, while CPI is rose 29%. I say all that, let's look at the data centers. 663 in Virginia and Texas, 405 respectively. Together, they make up over a quarter of all US data centers. And, I mean, do we see the increase in the the bill of your average person's electricity bill? I mean, that's the question. Give me the version of a normal person. You know, what they'll understand is my bill went up for electricity.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  How much of this is due to the data centers that are opening down the road, next door, in the next county, et cetera, et cetera?

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is, it's it's really interesting and it's all topical. This is happening right down the road from my house, from my office. We have a fight between two cities, actually, where a data center has been approved by one city and it's on the the city line of the city next to it. And of course, the other city does not want it and they're fighting with, you know, about water issues, power, whatever. This fight is playing out on the internet, which is all housed in data centers. It's being thought out by AI in people's posts, which is all from a data center. I find all of that a little amusing. I'm not, I think the data center is the new boogeyman.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  And and, you know, I'm not, I'm very hesitant to look at a thing and just say I'm 100% in that category. And data centers, I think, are are right now such a a boogeyman, I think, maybe unnecessarily in the country. And I'm looking at this from an infrastructure perspective, from a power perspective, but then also from a where are we going perspective. From the infrastructure perspective, this is no different than oil pipelines. You know, we need more access to clean burning all American natural gas. Put that on a T-shirt and sell it. We need more access to natural gas. There's a reason why Zuckerberg is building

• 27:35Speaker 02

  a Manhattan-sized data center in Louisiana, right outside of Shreveport. There's a reason he's doing that because it sits right next to the Haynesville Shale. There's a reason that lots of our data centers in Texas are all throughout West Texas and more are needed. I think there's about 250 or so that are planned. And I say that in quotes because Governor Abbott just put the big halt on new data centers. So who knows where that's going to go? And again, I think a lot of it is, you know, irrational fears of a lot of things that have been overblown. Yes, there are concerns with water. Yes, there are concerns with power usage. But we also, if we're not doing this, China is.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Now, are we just going to give way to China dominating the next frontier in technology? I can't imagine that we want to do that. So what we've got to do is we've got to figure out how to power these things. And to that point, you know, I I mentioned rigs earlier. Well, you can kind of look at energy and where it's going by rig counts today because those are wells that'll come online in 12, 14 months, depending on completions time. Natural gas rigs have have jumped. So nobody's drilling for natural gas when you're looking at prices around 265 in MCF. That doesn't move the needle.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  What they're betting on is an inbound boom in 2027 and 2028. We run a lot of data on AI, but we've run a lot of data that kind of has developed our investment thesis that 2027 and 2028 are going to be sort of a golden age for natural gas. That that can just sound to some people like, oh, you guys are going to make a lot of money doing this. Well, I sure hope so. And I hope our investors make a lot of money doing this, too. But we need all of this natural gas to power everything that's to come. If you look at the infrastructure for natural gas pipelines in this country, one of the great things that the Trump administration has done is they have they have loosened all the red tape, all the nonsense that goes into simply putting a pipe

• 29:45Speaker 02

  at a safe distance under the ground to transport the power that we all use. Right now, natural gas is the only thing that can jump up and meet the demand. It's not wind, it's not solar. It could be nuclear, but nuclear is a 10-year project. You know, it's it's not anything that like, you're not going to decide today, oh, I want to have, you know, nuclear power go power the DFW area. But if you, the whole DFW area is on natural gas power, you know, because of everything that comes in the Permian Basin and to our east in in Louisiana. So I think we're looking at, you know, in Texas, let me give you a scary stat here as far as like our Texas residents are concerned. Right now, the estimated power,

• 30:30Speaker 02

  and I think our our grid, ERCOT, is kind of known for being the the most ridiculous, unstable grid maybe in the country. But ERCOT is is currently predicting that we need about five times our current electrical production to satisfy the inbound data centers. Now, that's why the governor put a halt on data centers, at least for the moment, to do a little more research, do a little more understanding of how are we going to power all this stuff? But that's Texas. And of course, we want to lead the way in everything because we're Texas. But that's a lot of power and and that's going to take a lot of natural gas. Sure, wind and solar are going to have their part.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Nuclear is going to have its part. But natural gas is going to have to carry the day in a lot of this, especially if we want to do this as fast as we all think that we want to do this. And and I'll tell you a little, I don't know, a little inside information here. We're we're we're jumping heavily into natural gas in our funds. That's kind of our business model. We put together funds that kind of have a a piece of oil, a piece of natural gas, and that way you're not a crazy person and staring at the price of oil all day. You know, watching the price of gas all day. You know, you're protected against both. But, you know, whereas we might have done funds that are 70, 30, 80, 20 oil to gas, now we're closer to 50/50. We believe in it that much.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  It it's the it's the thing that's that's going to get us to the next thing. That's for sure. I heard a the CEO of a multi-billion dollar international corporation say that on a call, that they believe that natural gas is the thing to whatever's next.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Well, there, there is an interesting way to, to put a pin in today's conversation. We like to do the little segment called Final Thoughts. I'll kick things off and I'll let you take us home. I'm glad you mentioned nuclear because nuclear has been a dirty word for, for quite a number of years, namely because of how catastrophized the various nuclear incidents have been over the years, namely Chernobyl, Fukushima. And, and that is something I think we look to today. The safety standards are night and day, especially when you compare and contrast the, the overseas disasters relative to the safety standards and the practices here in America. So I fingers crossed, pray that nuclear does become more of the conversation,

• 32:55Speaker 01

  especially for our energy independence. You know, whatever they're doing with nuclear submarines, just copy and paste that across the country, guys. That, that would seem to be a good idea. But with all that being said, right, looking at the role natural gas plays, absolutely, without a doubt, it needs to be part of the conversation. And anybody who's pretending otherwise frankly has their head in the sand. And, you know, I was literally just down in, in Dallas and you can see it, right? The, the Dallas area, the Texas mentality, it is very forward thinking. It is very innovative. And, and I think that's for us, something that as an entrepreneur myself and seeing the, the entrepreneurs I work with on a daily basis, you, you see that there is a desire to solve the problems that we see in the world.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  And for me, that gets me excited to see that there are, you know, people down in Texas, for example, leading the way, but also folks like you, Adam, who are going out and fighting the good fight. So that's my final thoughts for today. With that being said, bring us home. Where do you want the audience to take away today's conversation and any, any calls to action that you like to leave folks with?

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just think, one thing for yourself, as, as you, as you look on the TV and you hear all the personalities talking about things, think for yourself, get your data for, for yourself. You can always check out our feeds. I'm on Twitter at the Texas Oil Man. I'm on all the platforms is that if, if you want to check out what we're talking about in the office, what we're thinking about every single day, go check us out on all the socials. You can find us at basinventures.com. See how we do what we do, why we do what we do, and what we think about that's coming down the, the pipe. You know, we're, we're trying to be forward looking in, in the energy space, which if I could tell you what the price of

• 34:38Speaker 02

  oil would be a year from now, I'd be a billionaire right now. But we can do our best to look at supply and demand metrics and figure out what we think. So check us out and I'd look forward to talking to anybody that wants to talk about it.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Adam, it's been an absolute pleasure. And folks, if you got some value from today's chat, you know the drill. Go ahead, give it a share when you do, tag yours truly at B Nichols Liberty. You can find me on X, on Facebook and on Instagram. And The Brian Nichols Show is powered, I feel like PBS, we're powered by viewers like you. No, we're powered by our phenomenal sponsors like Cardio Miracle. So go ahead, give them some love. And when you do, please let them know that you heard about them on The Brian Nichols Show. You can actually do me some love by using my, my coupon code, which you just go to cardiomiracle.com forward slash TBNS. You're going to get 15% off your order. And by the way, folks, if you enjoyed the show, whatever version you listen to it in, believe it or not, there's

• 35:33Speaker 01

  another version. If you watched the show on YouTube, Rumble, X or Facebook, well, you can take The Brian Nichols Show on the go. You can put us in your pocket because we are also a podcast. So head to your favorite podcast catcher like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, wherever it is you consume your podcast content, hit that subscribe button. And of course, hit that little notification bell because we have episodes airing every single week. We have well over, what, like 1,100 episodes, I think somewhere in that ballpark now. And I guarantee at least a handful of them have left educated, enlightened and informed. With that being said, folks, thank you for joining us here on today's episode. Adam, any final words before we go ahead and say goodbye?

• 36:15Speaker 02

  No, just put that on a t-shirt. Clean burning American natural gas.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  There you go, folks. Send me the design. It's going on the store. With that being said, Brian Nichols signing off here on The Brian Nichols Show for Adam Butcher. We'll see you next time.

• 36:25Speaker 04

  Thanks for listening to The Brian Nichols Show. Find more episodes at brianickelsshow.com.

• 36:33Speaker 00

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