"Stop Talking, Start Working" – Leif Johan Sevland, Offshore Northern Seas Foundation

[music] For our COBT listeners and viewers, it's Maynard Mike and Carl Leopanov. He's a venture partner with us who does a lot of work in Norway. And you'll see why we wrote him into this because today we're going to talk to Lafio Hansevlund. Laf is the president and CEO of Offshore Northern Seas Foundation. You know it more simply as ONS. And we know it more simply in the energy world because ONS every two years has a huge energy conference in Stavanger. It's coming up on August 24th. We're excited to go. It's going to be the center of the energy world for that week. Carl is part of the scale ups, you know, effort or division if you will of ONS, which puts the focus on new innovative companies. We've been fascinated by everything that's going on in Norway. And Norway, life as we as we start to talk to you, Norway is just a fascinating energy piece of the world. It's obviously in Europe, but it's a huge oil and gas producer. It's an incredible, beautiful country. We just can't wait to talk to you about your background. I should have mentioned you were the mayor of Stavanger for many years, about six years. And so now you're leading no in us, but we can't wait to visit with you about the conference and all your perspectives on the world. So welcome to the show, sir. Thank you, man. Out the pressures to be on the forward conversation and not at least to host you at the ONS in the late August, it's going to be a great week. We're going to be a fantastic week. It's really going to be fun. Mike, I don't know if you've seen the agenda, but we'll have life and Carl talk about it. But it's it's really quite cool. A lot of perspectives and then obviously a European foundation, I guess, if you will, too. It's going to be fun. Anything you'd say, Mike, about the markets in particular before we jump in. Yeah, I know this is, you know, we're shooting this early Wednesday. So, you know, I'm going to give you some stats and maybe those things changed by the end of the day, anyways. You know, it looks like, you know, yesterday on COBT, we talked about the trifecta, right? Lower interest rates, lower oil prices and higher equity markets. We've got two of those today. You know, bonds look like they're going sideways, but Crudel is down another dollar to like WTIs down to 75. But the Dow is up another six to 700 points. And that's because of Amgen, you know, Goldman Sachs and Caterpillar, right? They're about 300 points to the 600 point moving in the Dow. So just a repeat of, yeah, today. So just a repeat, like I said, things could change, you know, later, later this morning this afternoon. You know, what I would say is, you know, we covered the old stuff. I mean, you look, the Iranian stuff is still out there. We keep talking about, you know, basically a deal with Iran. We'll see what happens there. This is on and off. Crud has come down quite significantly, 13, 14 dollars in the last week, we can a half or so. And so Crudel looks, looks to us to be oversold. And if we have, if we do not have an agreement, we go back to striking them. You're going to see a massive rebound and all the prices, but that's what we are right now. The one last thing I'd probably say is just from an energy, you know, stock stamp. When we got a lot of energy companies reporting today, Devon Energy and PSX are sort of the two names we're looking at. But the one thing I want to basically tell you about is like, we listen to an Aramco Saudi Aramco conference call. Yes, they're quarterly earnings call. And it was, I would encourage all of our listeners to listen and look at that transcript. Extremely bullish macro framework there. Obviously, all prices are really, really, you know, down here as of late. But I think, you know, they make a really good justification or really good frame for why Crudel over the next couple of years is going to be more elevated than people think. So I would say look at that. Some really good information. And Ramco second quarter call with them in back to you. Yeah, very interesting. Well, we'll, we'll attach a link to the earnings call so people can can have a listen. Well, uh, Lave and Carl, thanks so much for joining. This is really, I tell you, we're delighted to be, of course, leaving Houston forced to vanguard in August. And I'm just, that's a winning trade, you know, right off the bat, but getting to come to the, to the energy conference and hear everybody and see what's going on is going to be great. Maybe I jump in with you. Your role, how do they talk into this? Because this is a big role. It's a lot of work. Tell us a little bit about, we're involvement. I have a fantastic team. I have it. We have a lot of comedies like Carl working, setting up and it's just lucky. We are an extremely important place to be. We are global energy forum. We started with oil and gas. Now it's everything within energy is on the agenda. And we are covering the whole world versus extremely important to have, of course, we have a European outlook. We are based in Norway and what happened in Europe is important, but we know that the growth, most of the people are not living in Norway, not in Europe. They're living in Asia, they're living in Africa, and we also need to have perspectives, dialogues, discussions about the future and what's going to happen. So we are scattering around 70,000 people. We have more than 1200 different speakers coming in. We have a fantastic area downtown. We had the biggest dancing floor in Europe, actually, in the evenings with a lot of debates going on in the evenings until midnight. A lot of fun. It gets atmosphere to do business. You just said something. I want to just carry some on our mind a little bit. You mentioned debates. And the world has lost seemingly its ability to debate stuff a little bit. Too much polarization, too much hardened positions. And I think it's kind of the spirit of this podcast and really the whole firm to try to what are ways that people can get better answers by having real discussion. Talk to us about how that will work at the conference or any perspective you have. Actually, and we say, "As it is to our speakers, we rely to have the true story. There's no reason to coer anything. We would like to have debates, discussions and dialogues, as it is. And we have an open platform. And we believe in dialogue. We believe in discussions. We believe in the team for this time is courage. We believe that people should race up, give their voice, spread the world. And out of that, actually, we are able to build the future. We see that we have a polarized world. And we also need to admit that even if there is a war going on in Ukraine, Russian who, even if there is a huge conflict in the Middle East, you see it too, a mission. Don't take care of it if it's the war going on. The temperature, the climate, things are changing in the world. And we need to sit down. We need to discuss things and we need to be together with about it. And that's about the story about ours. You mind sharing of the 70,000 people, which is obviously huge. Like, what are the flavors? I assume it's all flavors, of course. But like, we're predominantly what type of people are coming? Are there investors coming? Are there policy people? Again, I assume it's kind of everyone, but do you mind categorizing them a little bit? My answer is yes and yes. This is the worst question. We have more than 70,000 people. I would say one thing. Decision makers are coming. Our nest is a place to be. And we know in our exhibition, we see huge and so loud, we have all the energy operators being there. And the CEO is Gambira. And the opening ceremony, we have IEL from Shell, we have Patrick from Total Energy, we have Andos from Ekpinur, etc. So this is not like a few people in our nest is setting up something, making it and it went. We are bringing in the people, the top people coming and they are staying for the whole week and they'll be all over. And that means that we are having discussions about the Middle East. We have discussion about how to solve the climate challenges, which is not stopping us. Now we need to see how can we have investors for the future. Would it be the next moon? What happened in 1973? What a Middle East and the embargo was at that time. France said something quite wisely actually. We don't have any oil, but we have plenty of IDs. And that was the start of the new clip, the nation of France. And I think we're going to see a lot of movement in renewables, out of what's happening in an unpredictable situation within oil and gas in the Middle East right now. That kind of discussions can be made. We have leadership style looks and we will have people to be open, frank and tell the story. So a little bit, if you'll forgive the analogy, so you're doing it in stave anger, that's an oil and gas town for lack of a better way to say it. Kind of like if you do a energy conference in Houston, Syrah, Houston is at its foundation, an oil and gas town. Do you think that that that ends up making for a more complete conversation around energy that you have. the roots in classic energy and it's a good foundation off of which to have a conversation. I think what we know has been a hydro pollination for many, many years and most of the energy we are consuming is hydro poll. We have a huge industry to that and then we have since the early 60s, 70s we have the oil and gas industry as well. I think that's actually we have been working with this for quite a long time and I think our approach to the reality is realism. The industry know how it works, we have the competence, we have the systems, we have the ideas and we have great people. We all believe in the diverse future but still oil and gas but cleaner oil and gas than we are producing today and then we see a future even in Norway, solar, offshore wind, biogas etc etc. And all these kinds are coming together and I think as you are saying our fundament that we have been working with industry, we know the industry, we know the society and we have been working oil and gas and renewables together since 2008. I think that's a very good, if I may say, very good position which we have made and Norway as well, clean country, beautiful nature, but then significant oil and gas producer and exporter, one of the most important for Europe is the gas and going to continue with that for a long time. We do a lot of oil and gas activity in Norway as well and we're going to do that for a long long time but we need to do it cleaner, cleaner and capable. Carl, the innovation community in Norway is pretty fascinating. You were involved, God bless you, we had you at TPH and got to know you there and then you went to Norway to the startup lab and you did all this startup incubator, tech stuff, now you're kind of out on your own and then we've roped you into helping with our fund. Talk about the, I keep hearing more and more people saying I'm going to Europe because there's talent there and there's innovation there and the overall economy is maybe, you know, it's not doing as well and those companies and innovators are looking outside of Europe. I don't know, Leif, I don't mean to say out negative, but there's just something going on in the tech community. I'm not doing it justice, but please describe what you think are the trends. Yeah, no, I think you summarize the relatively well. What I would say from my seat having been in the tech world is specifically in the Nordics for the last five, eight years. I think that the major trends in the last two and really the last year are combination things. One is this movement to industrialization. So like there's a, there's, yeah, segmentation of the Nordics where Norway has kind of divided itself out a bit, focusing on, especially with an energy and industrial side of things into like physical AI, robotics, heavy industry because that's where the country has a lot of history. And that's sparking a bit of a resurgence or maybe not resurgence is a wrong word, a intensity in the startup community that's really, really vibrant. You have a lot of robotics companies. You have a lot of industrial AI happening opposite, maybe on the, if you look at Sweden, which is more software driven, it's much more kind of pure eye driven. If you use view amount and look at Europe as a whole and the Nordics as a whole, there is this trend where there's this feeling of a real awakening. There's a feeling of, okay, we need to, we have, we have a responsibility to kind of to become a little bit more independent. We have to, we can't be as dependent on US technology anymore. So sovereign AI is a big thing that you hear. With that said, there's this interesting thing that, you know, that lemma that's happening that access to early stage capital is really, I mean, virtually is really difficult to come across when you compare Europe and the US, then there's just more zeros than just about every excel sheet in the US when it's early stage funding, whether it's customers, whether it's pilot projects, getting things off the ground is a lot easier in the States. So what you see is this trend of companies and founders trying to build a build in Europe, retain ownership as much as possible here, but tap into the US market. And that's because like you said, talent is cheaper and, you know, if you're trying to hire a developer in San Francisco with a European fundraising budget, it's, it's really, really difficult. But the talent itself is just as good, arguably just as good in Europe. So this internationalization and reindustrialization is probably the biggest trend right now and a movement away, I would say, from correction from the climate side of things, where, you know, when you visited two, three years ago, not that there was overheated, I would say, on the climate side, and there's been a adjustment to a correction to reality around that. So summary, like a correction around the energy and climate side of things moving towards reindustrialization and trying to internationalize companies while retaining ownership in Europe is essentially how I viewed things over the last year or so. Yeah, Leif, I looked at the conference agenda before I walked in and you've got a lot of great speakers, including our own management hold here. So that's a good thing. And, you know, you know, I think about the Sarah conference and when you go to Sarah conference, they always have a theme going into the conference and, you know, maybe some thoughts on what are the themes that you hope to hear from this call or is there an overriding theme and, you know, what would you hope to basically get out of the conference when people walk away? What are the two or three different things you would like them to basically remember or recall or just take a walk, take home with them. And then we set a team. We have one world every time. And the world this year is courage. And what we are doing is actually we raise that on the agenda. We do that in different perspectives. Normally, before we start our next year, we try to predict how would the world situation be in one year. And that's never been easy, but the time being is not easy at all. But we see that we have we have a climate crisis going on. We need to admit that. We need to do something around that. We have a, we have a, the Paris Agreement. We have we that we have political leadership. We have political leaders for the time being, having the same courage. Then we also know that every time something happened, it's normally sometimes the politicians are making a decision. I was making a speech, but it's actually the technicans people. It's innovation, which is taking us photo. And we need to actually highlight and bring to the table innovation in all perspectives. And Norway has as Karl Satt, we have had so many people who are working with with different challenges within energy industry. And they have all this shown innovation. And we really like to bring that in F now. So and then not at least, we are sort of like, because if you're going to find the solution, I would have had them around the world, we need to have a dialogue between the southern part, the northern part of the world, which is extremely important. And we, we are bringing people together. We have roundtapers. We have a lot of different systems where we have global leaders from South, from being together, having discussions, and trying to find the pathway from the region. So if I say, what should people when they are leading the oneness, what should they say? Energy is extremely important. Energy is actually the help for everything we have to do. And we need to find a clean way of doing it, making it affordable, and also bring innovation to the table to be sure that we have the solution for them. You made a really good point at the end. You said affordability too. I think that's a big theme that we're seeing in the US, especially as data centers are growing. You're having a lot of push back in the data centers because people are getting, they're not, they're getting, they're ill-informed on what the benefits are. But the affordability issue seems like it's the biggest issue that's arisen of the last couple years. Maybe talk about that theme into your conference. Exactly. We know the challenge, and we have seen it. You can say, if you're in the US, the power prices in Europe, the gas prices around, and what do you think you'll need us? They know that we need to do changes, but we're not able to do that if it's not affordable for the human beings, for the average people. So we need to find solutions of this being, being possible to do for tomorrow. And that's the discussion we got. Yeah, I was wondering, leave, because you've been part of ONS since 2011. So you've seen many different themes, and there's always topics that are more top of mind than others as you go through time. From a US perspective, so help us with this. When we talk about Europe, and of course, we're sitting here in Houston surrounded by all our friends or business people. And so there's this mentality about European industrial activity, European security. And those two things are always jumping out as like, it's very important. It actually comes up with California too, you know, just to pick a place. But those things always jump out as from here, like, oh gosh, those are the biggest concerns that Europe has got to change its energy policy so that it can improve its industry so that it can afford all the things it wants to do. Is that help us with that? Because I feel like we're sort of stuck in that American way of thinking and we need to tell us where we're right, wrong. How do we adjust that? Because I'm just speaking for us, like, but it feels like that's when we're talking about Europe, that's what we're always stuck in. Is that little contact? I see. I also think Karl could add to that question actually, but if I may say, I think most of Europe is doing perfectly fine. There's a lot of innovation, with a lot of good things happening around. There was a shock for especially Germany and some other countries. There was an IEBT for gas from Russia, though to depend on gas from Russia, that it made an energy shock back a few years ago. And then also there has been some of the countries that had an energy policy being, I could use the word naive once again, and which has brought challenges for those countries. We need cheap energy, affordable energy, and we need clean energy. But we also need industry, but people could work. We need people making it a car in Europe. We make all the kinds of things in Europe. So we can't make Europe and you see them in any way. But also I realize to say when I'm traveling around in Europe, meeting people in different countries, see all the technologies, see all the innovation, see everything happening. It's fantastic. It's fantastic. And sometimes when I'm at US, I'm not sure if that picture is clear from the, I think you're right. I run US. I don't think it is. Karl, you should jump in, but I think that last piece is definitely missing from a US perspective. Yeah, I would agree. I think that there's, it's kind of like the flip side of this from the US. Like I get asked in, like being in Norway all the time, I was like, Oh, you know, what's the US's view on X or how come you guys see this as why? Whether it's politics, whether it's, you know, socioeconomic, economic conversations. And the answers or cultural, like, and Karl, nobody did them say about anything in the US. I don't know what you're talking about. That is, that my point is like, I would almost argue that the distance, the cultural difference or the distance between, you know, pick the polar opposites in the US, whether it's Hollywood and then the Bayou and Louisiana or whatever is that's almost a distance is might be further than the points you find in Europe. So there's this, you know, there's this summary, this summary of the US from a European perspective is oftentimes what happens when US is looking at Europe. Yeah. That you don't necessarily get the, you know, the, the, the dynamism that's happening in the Norwegian energy industry is not credited enough relative to maybe the sluggish nature of other countries or, so there's this like this broad generalization that tends to happen that overlooks a really high, you know, if you're at the upper echelon of innovation in Europe, whether you're in London or you're in Stockholm or you're in Paris, those are companies that and compete technologically and in a lot of ways with anything you find in the world. But they, I think from a branding, storytelling perspective, struggle with the getting lumped in with everything else that's happening. Well, this is a fascinating point and it's actually come up around here. Well, you, you referenced it, Lafe with your France example. You can't summarize, you know, broadly, the countries are so different. One place we've been talking about recently is Poland and Poland's doing a number of things in energy, which are, you'd say, I don't know, looks more like Texas than it does some other place like there's just some elements of all this that it's a great point. The technology needs to be emphasized. The quality of the people, of course, needs to be emphasized. But also the diversity broad based is something I think people obviously miss. You can also mention that if you may, man, you know, the Russian foreign Ukraine, of course, and it's nearly in the middle of Europe. And I'm proud European, seeing how the European nations and be standing together since that work. Working together with the support for the Ukraine in Norway, we have extremely refugees coming from Ukraine, good people, hardworking people, we support them. We spend a lot of money with military aid to Ukraine and this has been, well, that's had been something for you. That has actually also brought Europe more together than we have seen in the past. And then maybe it's not as visible as it is in the U.S., but be around, have around, go to Sweden, go to Finland, be in Norway, go to the UK, see all the technology, see all the progress, everything happening, and also especially within renewable, because we saw when the Russian work came that we needed to have kind of more diversified energy supply than we had in Europe, not only in a way that we have oil, but more than that. And all of this you're going to see within a few years, is a kind of laboratory with a lot of plenty of new companies coming up. Do you think there'll be just a couple of flavors, a life of you know, I'm asking, but, you know, nuclear certainly gets a lot of attention globally, but in the U.S. and in the U.S., it's a lot around S&R and micro technology. We even did a fusion show here a couple weeks ago, what was really interesting. But so do you mind talking about nuclear and do you mind talking about, you know, could we see, what's the outlook for oil and gas in Europe, or are we going to find, you know, more efficient ways to drill, more places to drill, like what might those two pieces look like, you know, in Europe, crystal wall, if you will. Thank you, and actually, good questions. Within nuclear and you will see, there's no, I don't think you've been united, European strategy out of that. You see the different countries. On one side, you have France being strong nuclear nations, the 1970s, I mentioned. On the other side, you have Germany, which goes down 11.2% of the energy supply with turning off the nuclear factories. And this small medium size, a lot of interest to that. None of them are built yet that I could see, but plenty of them being planned. Other countries also see the through chain and nuclear factories as a plan. It's still being quite expensive back to the energy prices and to affordability. But we see a move and a lot of interest, a lot of ideas, but not so many decisions on the table yet. Speaking about oil and gas, yeah, the biggest one is Norway. We have a used coastline. We have, we are making discoveries. We are able to produce especially gas for a long, long time and supply Europe with that. The UK part of the North Sea is less activity, not so fresh political environment to support that. They are having the challenge with the production and not too many new opportunities for the time being. You could use some poll. Ventus discoveries, though, use discovery there. We have some different activities, but mainly it's got the other resources being produced in Europe. So I think the main is the pie of oil and gas. The European side is going to be Norway in the future as well. You know, because we have most different acting on it and things are happening in different places. Different ideas also about the should we go for oil and gas in the future. I think we have got a realism as the war in Ukraine coming up that there is no alternative and it's take time to build a new system. Well, I think that's, this is one of those good examples because you do this every two years, I believe. If you go back in time, maybe two conferences ago, if you'd said in 2026, you'll at least be debating doing more oil and gas in Europe, that would have been a big change from what we were talking about a couple of conferences ago. Absolutely. And we have our teams have been different over the years, but we have a we see the what's happened in Ukraine, what's happened in the Middle East has changed the picture for sure. Lafe, anything on a lot of the discussion lately around technology anywhere in the world often gets back to defense technology and defense spending, driving technological innovation. Anything on that flavor that'll show up at on S whether it's drones or aerospace or anything like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as Karl mentioned, we have quite sophisticated drone industry in all way. But I, you know, We have seen many years ago we used the examples what the offshore industry did for the space industry. You know all the equipment being used on the nodes in the nodes C being able to be used for the space industry. And we see the same with the defence industry. A lot of the things being used within oil and gas are also being encrusted for the defence industry. So there was a huge, there was a coastal rink there. And technology is technology. It's different industries with the technology, especially the same many places. I've always grown, things happen underwater etc etc. So we're a lot of the companies. We see a lot of the companies in Norway, service providers, been working with oil and gas. They say we are not only oil and gas, we are energy. No one else will work with defence, they will work with nuclear, they will work with everything. Do you mind since you were the mayor of Stavanger, when you said that comet, we're not just oil and gas, we're energy. Stavanger as a town is a city. Do you mind just telling us a little bit about it and and how much of it is, quote, classic oil and gas and how it's changed and how it keeps growing? I think that's just an interesting and what does it like to be mayor of Stavanger? You've got to tell us. That was, Stavanger at that time was the richest city in Europe I think. So it was quite okay to be the mayor. I was in the office for 60 years, but very closely together with the different mayor of Houston, probably on the year was the first mayor I was a color with back to 1995. Stavanger has developed, Stavanger has changed. Stavanger is quite poor city when this all started in the mid 60s, became one of the richest cities in the world, quite dependent on oil and gas actually. Then we said around, must be more than 20 years ago, that we need to diversify because we know energy will be there forever. Oil and gas is going to be there for a long time, but it's up and down, up and down the whole time. Stavanger has worked really intensely to diversify the economy and have today quite solid base with other industries, other prospects as well. We have built, we were at the European capital of culture in 2008, which we said that we are going to be the most interesting place to settle down if you are young and will like to establish. This is the place. Let's build the place for young people. We also know that the young people coming in, they have all this innovation, they have all the dreams to be able to create it. So out of this, we have a quite okay and diverse economy in Stavanger. A lot of people are working in the energy industry, money with oil and gas, but also with a lot of other things as a part of our community. I think nearly one third of the people are born in another country in Norway. So we have people from a lower world, we are a small city, a good city, and you will see if when they will be here in August. We are opening up, actually as I mentioned in the beginning, when we are closing down for the day in our conference center, we are opening up a hub. With pavilions, with music, with the dry food, and we are continuing the discussions, the debates in the evenings. A lot of the same people which have been on the stage on the day, they are going down, the tires left for the day, and then we have the fresh good debates continuing. So it's live in the city. See it's funny, Leifah, I was thinking like God that sounds like so much fun and then you said and we are going to do more debates and I was like oh no, it sounded like a perfectly good evening before all those debates showed up. You got to do a few of that. You know I form a politician and I love the debates so I'm just kidding. And the king is opening things up, tell us about that's a unique feature. You don't have many conferences that a king opens, that's kind of cool. The king and the royal family has been a part of our nest since 1974. The king is our patron, has been for many many years and we have a very close relationship with the family. Unfortunately this time there has been a lot of different things in the family, but some of the family members have been to the hospital and the conferences also having here they are having just civil writing at the same day as we do the opening of ONS. So no guloph going to be the king this time, but they're going to be the next time and you have been there before. So they're good friends of the foundation and we have a very strong support of them and we also have a very good understanding that if they're not able to join us for the first time since 1974. Oh well I feel bad highlighting it I'm sorry that that's not happening this year but no but it's understandable you know they have a good reason not being a very good reason. Life you mentioned young people, young people come in this devanger building lives and and how important they are to to innovation but you know there's just so much when you look at young people and you hear about their issues and you see their talents and think about their dreams there's just so much so much we can all learn and if they're stressed and unhappy our collective future doesn't look good and if they're happy and engaged in innovating our collective future does look good. What would you tell us about young people and energy in Norway and how they think about the future and their lives this is kind of an interesting topic. First of all the energy companies is some of the most attractive companies for the young people than all of it when they're finishing the university degrees companies are eckinu, arco, bb, arco system as they are searched they will live to be a partner. So is that a branding of the company is good and the future for the young people is mentioned within the energy industry. Then we have extremely young talented people in our country as the rest of the world it's just fantastic to see and to follow. At the ONS we are on-roaring that we have our own future leaders program which is ongoing for two years. In addition to that we have around six thousand six thousand young people attending ONS being a part of our program. So they will be invited they are the old guest of ONS and there's a lot of the leaders will meet them, be together with them, discuss the future with them and it's so important we have so much great young young leaders for the future and we need them. One and each other. Yeah I'm thinking that sort of AI and innovation is going to be a big theme in the conference and maybe there's a question for Carl and Lafes. Every time we talk about AI it really is a race for dominance between the US and China and we never hear Europe mention in that conversation and I guess my question is are we missing something? What does it take for Europe to get into the game just from a technology innovation or whatever are we am I misreading that or is it you know Europe is a distant third and they need to get into the game or just some maybe thoughts around it from both of you. Where is the European mindset? Do they feel like they have to be dominated as well and how do they get there? It's a really interesting question because I do think there's the last I feel like I've seen over the last year a change in this conversation. This is maybe the area where you see this the this the bureaucratic side of Europe holding the innovation back more so than other arts because I do think the speed at which the US and China are adopting and and innovating in this in this space is like it's incredible. So when you look at the numbers and this is you know this is if you compare it historically to any any sort of sector the funding that's going into the into the ad space in the US and China is like next level it's not nearly at that speed in Europe that said and because there's a lot of focus on risk there's a lot of focus on regulation and and unfortunately that that oftentimes hamper's a lot of the the slows down the the speed of which the founders and early stage companies want to work. The flip side is that there's been a revitalization room you know whatever word you want to call it around this because of a combination of the you know changing political landscapes wars across the world kind of hard hard hard hard hard to what life was talking about in terms of sovereignty and having stuff built in Europe and at home Norway in particular has has decided that we see like the data centers being built in Sweden you see more there's a lack of compute power across Europe but Norway kind of in within the physical AI space is where Europe is starting to see that okay here is here's something that we can do we have a history of building incredible heavy machinery doing industrials at a level that competes globally. So it's when putting together the program for the scale-ups conference because as you mentioned at the beginning I've shared that that board for the last two years and the first year of that is really just deciding what we're going to talk about which what are the topics that are going to be the most relevant year for now which is a difficult question to answer but we have you know the board is everything from corporate leaders to venture capital. to founders to incubators, ecosystems. And I think there are 10 panel discussions throughout the four days, four of them, before we even started, we'll reserve for AI. And that's going to be everything from, okay, how is the AI movement putting pressure on the climate situation? What are the new drivers for use of energy that we need to be talking about? And so instead, of having, it kind of backs your question, man, out of what the conference looked like two or four years ago, there's a very clear climate conversation around the climate crisis. Now it's more what are the elements? What are the factors that are driving putting pressure on the energy system that are going to cause them putting us in a difficult situation? So data centers is absolutely a central part of that conversation. Then it's on the physical AI side and it's industrial AI. That's what Norway's focused on. And I think that there's, that's where you're going to see a lot of the development coming in the next five years, specifically that implemented into defense and dole use. That's where we've seen a ton of, I mean, the amount of companies applying to the startup level incubator, for example, that are focused on that and are receiving a lot of early stage funding attention, which is typically a leading indicator. Is astronomical relative to dim, the number of companies that are starting every year? I think it was an extent of the off-match outside and I don't have any so much to add. I feel, of course, there's something with a speed which we need to follow in Europe. And we need to simplify what we are doing. And we have a lot of, we have the EU, we have a lot of different stations, different standards and we need to have one kind of policy around that. AI use not dominance. Otherwise, I think we are on the train, but we have other places where the train is moving faster than Europe for the time being. Yeah, you know, the only thing I would add is I mean, Europe being in that conversation is really, really good for the rest of the world. We need a balance. Well, it's also fascinating because when you, that framing that you had there is, there's AI technology development and then there's sort of AI adoption. Because I was thinking, life we had, this probably been a month ago or so, we had Carl Hersvik from ACRBP come on COBT and he went through kind of piece by piece of his company, everything they're trying to do. And it's phenomenal. It's got to be, you know, amongst the leaders in oil and gas, globally in terms of AI adoption. So, but it's also not to belabor this, but in a different world, we would have said it's the West versus China. And now we are starting to think, Carl, you hit on some of this point, people are starting to think more in in blocks. And that's just a new feature of today's world. Well, life, what did we, what did we miss? What did we not talk about? I mean, we got, we got a credible agenda. We got 70,000 people. It's global. We're having fun at night. We're debating what, what else did we not touch on? We are meant to the young people, the extremely young people. That's fantastic. You're going to have the dialogue. I think actually, encourage for me, there's not a, to follow up the courage, the team. It's the need for action. If I could give one advice when people are sitting on the planes back to the US, back to Africa, back to ACRBP, where would we are going? Think action. We need, we need to speed up whatever to happen. All the challenges are still there. And they haven't been solved. Everyone needs energy. They need clean energy. They need affordable energy. And it's our responsibility to give them that energy. And then politicians need to take actions, technology leaders, innovators. You, me, Carla, Haviswick, Kyle, everyone. We need to follow stop talking, start working. I think that's the main message for the future and the different next move for ONS 2028, actually. Then I could go back and deliver the results. I'll leave that. Stop talking and start working. Oh, we're talking. I guess we better. Well, the lay of this been fantastic. We've loved working with your team. We're super excited to be there. Carl, you're a gym. Love you like a sun. And we're so excited. You're doing stuff with us on the venture side. And also just bridging this, this gap was come up, you know, this, the certain mindsets you get in these mindsets. And it's important to break those down. So you're doing so much for that. So thank you guys. We're excited. Well, I just feel very pleasure. All the best. And thank you for reminding and look forward to continue the good relationship and continue the cooperation. So thank you to all of you. Absolutely. See you soon. Couple of weeks. You're awesome. Thank you. Bye bye.