War in Iran Is Already Reshaping East Asia's Energy Future

Hello, I'm Stephen Carroll. I'm in Brussels where many of Europe's biggest decisions get made. And I'm Caroline Hepgett in London with the hosts of the Bluebeg Daybreak Europe podcast. We're up early every week day keeping an eye on what's happening across Europe and around the world. We do it early so the news is fresh, not recycled and so you know what actually matters as the day gets going. From Brussels, I'm following the politics, policy and the people shaping the European Union right now. And from London, I'm looking at what all that means for markets, money and the wider economy. We've got reporters across Europe and around the globe feeding in as stories break. So whether it's geopolitics, energy, tech or markets, you're hearing it while it happens. It's smart, calm and to the point. And it fits into your morning. You can find new episodes of the Bluebeg Daybreak Europe podcast by 7am in Dublin or 8am in Brussels, Berlin and Paris. On Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weiss and Thal. And I'm Tracy Alley. Tracy, it's April 9th, 9.05am. There's a ceasefire ish. It's sort of there has been something announced that's called a ceasefire. There does not seem to actually have been much of a cessation of fire per se. Maybe it slowed down a little bit. Some of the headlines this morning are about Israel continuing to strike hard in Lebanon. Iran saying that well, if there's no ceasefire in Lebanon, there's no ceasefire at all. But overall, at least as of right now, the market, et cetera, we saw that huge drop in oil Tuesday night. The market's still sort of buoyant, right? Still sort of resilient. Well, I think the important thing for the purposes of this particular discussion is if you take a look at what's going on in the Strait of War Moose, it still seems to be shot more or less and shout out to the Bloomberg function, Ecan, or Moose Go. You can see the number of ships that are going through that particular choke point. And I have two as of today, which is basically not like two today. There was some headlines about how maybe even in the good case, they would let through 10 to 15, which is still sort of nothing compared to normal ship traffic. So like nothing's back to normal. I was going to say two year point. I think the thing that's confusing everyone is we keep seeing these headlines about like a billion barrels lost of world supply or 20% of the world's oil supply now choked out because of the Hormuz situation. And yet, if you look at the oil price, you know, WTI brand, definitely up, but they're not up as much as you might think in the scale of disruption. I think many people feel intuitively the price should be higher. And then of course, there's the whole refined products situation, which is more extreme. And a lot of the prices that feel really extreme in general have happened. Or we see it in East Asia, whether it's like Singapore, Jet fuel, et cetera, or a lot of the headlines that you see about extreme rationing come from East Asia. I forget which country was they were like, you know, they're doing that classic thing of only drive to work. And if your license plate ends in an odd number on this day, whatever. Very 1970s. Yeah. And we're seeing a lot of these types of headlines, some in Korea, some Thailand, et cetera. So it also then raises the question, you know, the straight of Hormuz is closed. Maybe it'll be open. But does this change future energy trajectory in some way? Does this mean there's going to be more comfort with coal mining over the long term? Does this mean that economies are going to try to accelerate decarbonization efforts more intensely? Could this be a huge boon for the American LNG industry where we know we're building a lot of export terminals, et cetera? And if, you know, in pair, there's sort of sort of impairment to Katari, LNG, then I don't have huge questions about even just sending a side market price at right this second or this week. The future of energy. One thing about our current market moment is we are getting like a crash course in real time about the flow of energy throughout the world. As we will see in this conversation, like it is still very much geographically constrained east versus west. And so as you say, the big question is whether or not the east kind of, I don't know, scrambles even harder to adapt to this. Well, I'm very excited to say we do in fact have the perfect guess. Someone who knows about all this stuff, someone who's been on the podcast before, but we haven't talked to him in years, which is really sad because we really like the guy. And so very excited to welcome back onto the show, Alex Turnbull. He's an investor based in Singapore, but he's also a researcher with the Australian National University focused on energy security really knows the energy scene very well. Spence is time thinking about the present future of energy. So Alex, thank you so much for coming back on outlaws. Thank you very much. It's great to be back on. Yeah, really, really appreciate it. Talk about like right now, you know, this phenomenon that we talk about where your prices are up, but you know, by some measures, still within some sort of historical range, whereas the headlines that you see about ratcheting, etc. Like, well, this is extremely dire, etc. Give us your lay of the land from the, from the Asian perspective, from the perspective of East Asian countries. Like how dire are things just like right now without that, without that flow? Terrible, frankly, the challenge right now for Asia is that most of that credit supply does come from the Middle East. Or there are some countries which do have some domestic production, Malaysia, China, of course. But broadly speaking, Asia is a massive crude importer and principally from the Middle East, because it's the most proximate supply and Germany is the cheapest shipping distances and costs. So Asia is very heavily exposed right now and more acutely thinking about what the impacts might be, how they might want to preemce that the United States, of course, which produced a lot of oil, but still needs Middle Eastern grides for blending and refining also Europe, which has access to its quadrillion. How much do the spot prices actually matter at this moment in time? Because you know, you can look up something like Dubai, Oman or some type of oil that you would assume would be maybe flowing into East Asia and you can look at the spot price. But if it's not actually moving, does that like moving out of the street of Ormuz into Asia, does that mean anything? It does certainly for some grades. So for a money crude can still be loaded and this being loaded. Those are real prices, prompt brand. These are, and those are those sorts of trades are real. So you're often seen even for loadings from Yandu and Saudi Arabia, OSPs, which we know, indications of price are anywhere from 20 to 25 dollars above whatever the prevailing bread contract is. So in terms of like the knock on effects on the economy, we mentioned some of the rationing thing. Okay, yes, this is very, there's, they're highly exposed to it. What is it, is it hitting now? Is it, is the economic destruction already taking place? Like, talk to us about like just sort of like, I guess on the ground figuratively and literally, what are some of the ripple effects that we're seeing? You're certainly seeing serious constraints on consumption where they don't really have a lot of refining capacity and where there is, they just don't have large amounts of crude stories. So places like the Philippines and Vietnam are already under some significant stress. A lot of it is also driven by the fact is this kind of a question whether you need to get credit lines to be able to pay these prices. And ultimately, the decision of the refineries is if they don't have inputs, they have to shut the refinery down, which incurs a large amount of fixed costs and downtime and so forth. So a lot of the players are kind of living hand to mouth and trying to get whatever they can to stay open as long as they can. So that's how you have this extremely low interest to pay for prompt cargoes in order to keep these assets operating and running. But then the futures curve is out 30, 60 days. And that's a long time in the current federal context where you could get resolution or not. And so that that disconnect is going to remain, I think, so long as there is no sense of a clear path here. Who's not getting energy? Because all right, if there are some entities that are almost going to be completely price unsensitive. They have to keep the lights on. They're going to just pay whatever. So you get these huge short term spot prices. But volume is volume. And so who is actually being forced to turn off the lights or not run refinery or whatever, because they're getting outbid. If they're fewer molecules, they're fewer molecules. Yeah, I mean, certainly less high income countries in Asia. You'll start to see quite an acute crunch in the Philippines so that recently secured some cargo from China on one off basis. Some Vietnam are the same. You know, places like the Pacific Islands, they're in a not very good place. So it's already starting to begin the demand destruction starting mostly. they're mostly buying. So you mentioned refineries there and one of the headlines that's come up recently is Asian refining margins slip into negative territory, which would seem like a bad thing if you're a refiner. And I take the point that you need to keep these assets going because it's hard to shut them down and then restart them again. But if you're not making any money, how long are these refineries actually going to keep going for? Well, for some Chinese tea pub refineries, just small private ones, they live in a different political/economic context. And if they are told to stay on, they will. It depends on which, in many of these countries, you don't have purely market price fuels. So whether that's Vietnam or China, places where you have market pricing pass through, like Australia, the price of fuel is getting very expensive indeed. So in those situations, basically, where Tracy mentioned a refiner might be actually operating at negative margin, that's an environment in which the retail price of fuel is not liberalized. The government sets the price of fuel or sets them banned or something like that. And the refineries just have to keep operating until the next time that band has changed. Yes. Okay. Got it. Let's talk about right now, is there what's happening with USL LNG? Is it all being taken up by Europe? Is Asia trying to get in on the action or bidding for cargo? Is it like what's happening with American flows? American flows have got a mid-Nasia quite sharply right now. So Asian prices and spot in the JKM futures about European TTF, what type of transfer of facility futures for the next period? That could change quickly, but at the moment, Asia has a much higher urgency and willingness to pay as they go into summer, high-powered amount from cooling, air conditioning, and also just a much more acute dependence upon LNG in certain countries. So in Europe, you've all so you're going into summer, you have this solo and wind and it's not quite panic stations just yet. So I think Europe will be a little bit more slow to feel at storage, but then it just goes on till June or July, then that's when the real panic will set it. I'm Francine Lacquois, an award-winning journalist, and I've got a new podcast, Leaders with Francine Lacquois from Bloomberg Podcasts. I've interviewed everyone from heads of state to fashion icons about the news of the moment, but I've always been curious who are these people as leaders. I don't think there's one right way to be a leader. Make decisions. A poor decision is always better than no decision. Listen to new episodes every other Monday. So leaders with Francine Lacquois, wherever you get your podcasts. For Asia, how much of a role does Russian oil play right now in terms of replacing lost Middle Eastern supply? I mean, most of the Russian food was already been sold anyway and it was been sold very heavily into Chinese refineries and tea pots. So it's not like some of it was sitting offshore when it was going through a period of more robust year sanctions. The offshore barrels of oil and water has been dropping very sharply as all that crew has been absorbed into various places in India, China, like I said, say, "Yeah." So I think that has provided something to buffer to this shock because there was this backup of Russian crew that couldn't know it was quite sure whether they could pay for it, but that could be sanctioned by the US. But of course, that's melted away in the current context. You mentioned that the Philippines has imported some gas from China and I'm curious, like, what has China? We know they've been a big accumulator over the years generally of natural resources and they have strategic stockpiles and so forth. But right now, what are they doing and are they trying to place some role in stabilizing or easing the crunch for the region overall? I think they've been very strategic. They're not, certainly there's more or less control on exports of oil products right now, which is not very helpful for the region because they have over time been large exporters. They are clearly doing this in a very targeted fashion and I would assume there's other considerations behind that. Wait, say more. Well, for example, China has territory of the streets with the Philippines and Vietnam and the South China Sea and that now got something to do. Oh, so interesting. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Oil as geopolitical tool is the tail as old as I was going to say time, but I guess as old as what 200 years or something like that. Okay. So we were talking about the potential for an energy crisis to actually hasten decarbonization efforts in Asia. And this is something that came up before on an episode we did on China's T-Pot refineries. Are you seeing rumblings of that at the moment or are people still in sort of weight and sea mode? No, there's definitely been a notable pick up in certain areas where there was already a bit of momentum. So in Japan, they have been undertaking a number of nuclear restarts that will move you very tentatively as the public got behind nuclear and the politics became less challenging. That is all apparently accelerating now. So Japan will push very hard on nuclear restarts and more importantly, the public polling is really strong for it. So there's not a lot of political risk. And of course, Takahe Chiata massive election win. So she's in favor of the public's behind it and there's a matter of necessity now. So I think that's something I could assume is only going to move faster. And then in Korea, there's also, or a push for nuclear restarts, but that's moving quickly. China is doing some very pointed stuff to try to reduce LNG burns and use in chemicals. It's tricky to, if you've got a plastics plant that's kind of hard to do, but they're having a red hot go at it. And similarly, you're also something to see a staggering acceleration in EV adoption. If you do calls to order dealers around Asia and ask them how much time electric vehicles stand for lots down to single days and many of them are back up with now. So there probably wasn't even going. That's something you're doing. Are you calling up the car lots and asking them this? Yeah, of course. We'd say more about this and what would they have said? This is actually, this is a, this is not, this is new. It's not the ground information, but talk about this. Like, what would they have said a month ago? What are the type of dealers you're talking to? What would they have said a month ago and what are they saying now? I mean, you know, January, when there was, you would see B-wide E cars, for example, couple dealers in Australia, Singapore, other parts of Asia, they would be on a lot for 25 plus days. The inventory turns were kind of a bit slow and the market did a lot kind of cluttered. We're down to single-digit days in most places now. So anything China can produce out of the review sector, I think we'll get salt this year. That's just really the constraint is on the supply side, not on the demand side now. I don't know the degree of granularity that you pay attention to American politics. Are you familiar with, do you know who Thomas Massey is? Does this name ring a bell? Oh, yeah, yeah, he's a Kentucky from Congressman from Kentucky who drives a Tesla with a bumper sticker that said this Tesla is powered by Kentucky coal. So he's like, you know, he's a politician from Kentucky or a public engineer, a very pro-cold mind. He's also a pro-Tesla. So he has his coal-powered Tesla. Is that basically the sort of near or medium term future of Asia, which is like, OK, LNG is impaired. BYDs are flying off the lot. And so essentially we have a lot of like de facto coal-powered Tesla's driving around. Or sorry, coal-powered BYDs flying around. To a certain extent, yeah. I mean, it's also, there's also a very hard analytic math behind this. In the sense that there are the Straits of Hormuz do not, aside from the East Coast pipeline, which looks like it got pretty badly hit today at the last 24-40 hours, there is no way for that oil to make its way up otherwise. So this is very different to 2022 where you have sanctions, you have this in that, but the spice will flow if it can physically move or be moved by pipelines by rail or what have you. And so 2022, I was pretty sangled about the impacts in the oil market because Russia's got a lot of pipeline capacity in China to through Kazakhstan. And there was clearly not really the appetite to do full-on shadow-free sanctions that would be required to slot down. In this case, you actually just can't get it out. That's all there is to it. And so if you look at that vulnerability with oil, we're 20 plus percent of the market comes in the Middle East and LNG, which is about the same numbers. And then you look at say a big network flow graph model of global coal market, which I've done the coal is not really dependent upon choke points. But the biggest producers are places like But first of all, China produces enormous amount domestically. So what it's a lot just produced in India does too. Australia, South Africa, these are all places with access to open ocean, no quirky strengths. And so you don't really have to worry too much about whether some geopolitical event takes out coal. The most reliable option, of course, is just producing stuff in country, whether that's solar, wind, batteries, nuclear. But in a pinch, and currently, I think coal is going to have a bit of a comeback for that reason a lot. Yeah. Um, sending coal aside for a second, when you look at alternate sources of energy, do you have like, I don't want to say a personal favorite, but which one, which one of them do you think comes out on top in the sort of medium to longer term from this particular situation? It's like asking someone, well, you know, what one should I grow? What, what, what should I plant? I'm like, well, like I were on. So if you're anywhere close to the equator, we'll have a good solar resource, solar is crazy shape. And if you've got to be around batteries, we're also pretty shaped as that's, that's how to be. If you're somewhere in the Baltic or something, then it's weird, right? So I think the appeal with solar, which is that you can roll out very quickly, particularly with households. And it's interesting. You're already starting to see the impacts of Australia's government pushing residential batteries. And that is that the intraday spreads in power in Australia are very subdued. And the gas five generators are not really pricing the market. Anyone near as often as they used to and gas burns have actually collapsed as they have in California. So if you want to kind of decouple from gas prices, batteries plus storage, solar plus storage is a very quick fix and can be rolled out very quickly. And it seems to be working pretty well in Australia that the price impact of the shock is vastly less than 2022 already. This is really interesting. Talk about that spread. So in a, to some extent, would it be fair to say that a proxy or a gauge of how well solar plus batteries is working or affecting a market is not in lower prices per se, but in a diminishing spread between the highest and the lowest price of the day and that you have this growing, you know, that it's a sign of a sort of like pure power stability. Yeah. I mean, one thing in power bucks is a spark spread. So what is the, what is the cost to get out of bed for a gas five power plant? So you take the heat rate times one of the gas prices and you work out how many hours a day over a week are effectively priced by gas. And what happens, what happened in Australia was we had a lot of solar and don't much storage. And still the peaks were still very expensive because that was the gas plants you that could set the price. What's happened with this proliferation of storages that the gas no longer reliably sets the price in those hours and particularly in Australia where it's often somewhat all a gubbalistic market structure having a lot of residential batteries tied together in a mesh network, which then bids into the market is really crushing those, those picky times of the day. And that has a disproportionate impact on average daily prices. The problem in places like the UK is there's a lot of renewables. There's really no storage is they're not getting much benefit out of this because they still get price on the margin by gas. Is it just because they haven't made the, they have to bite the bullet and buy a lot of batteries from China or like what is, why is there the lack of storage to complement the renewables in the UK? Market structure design that they're fixing this right now and I'm sure they'll be in a very different place in two years. But it was a something of another side, I would say. So one of the things that stood out from a previous episode we did on the energy situation with our Bloomberg colleague, Havie Blas was he was talking about how the world is still very much divided between, you know, I. I guess east of the Suez Canal and west of the Suez Canal and if you're east at the moment, you have energy problems because of the situation in the state of our moves and if you're to the west, maybe the pressures aren't quite as acute just yet. And one of the things we keep hearing from the Trump administration is well, we have a lot of oil here in the US. We are hashtag blessed in carbons and molecules and all of that. When would you expect or would you expect at all? The pressures from the Middle East to start really filtering into the western part of the world? Well, I mean, like I said earlier, you're already seen it in LNG. So Asian buyers are outbidding European buyers for now. That's obviously pushing up prices for Europeans. You are seeing more and more tanker traffic from the Atlantic base and move towards Asia. As Asia just is happy to, this may be $10 or $15 more shipping costs, but they are willing to bid those barrels at this point they do not care. So the idea that any of these systems are going to be their affixions caused by shipping and time, but if the pull is and the need is that acute in Asia, we'll absolutely find it's vital to us to have a spare. This is Caroline Hyde. And I'm Ed Ludlow inviting you to join us for Bloomberg Tech, a daily podcast focusing exclusively on technology, innovation and the future of business. Every weekday we bring you the top headlines from the world's biggest tech companies. From finance to defense, AI to entertainment and from startups to the magnificent 7. We highlight the latest stories of the people and companies pushing the tech sector to new frontiers and the politics that shape global tech markets. We do this all every weekday, then bring you the most important conversations and analysis in our podcast. Search for Bloomberg Tech on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen. Join us every afternoon on your commute home and stay ahead of the tech news cycle. That's the Bloomberg tech podcast. I'm Caroline Hyde in New York. And I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts. So there is this view and I think it really started with some people have had the dream for very long time, some of the great pioneers of the industry. But then in 2022 with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there's like, okay, the future belongs to us LNG exporters. This is just we are keep growing export adding export terminals forever because there's just going to be all that we have all this gas and there's just incredible demand for it all around the world. Is that story at risk? I mean, again, like if part of the thing that's going to happen is that around the world, there is this political appetite for restarting nuclear and so forth is higher. Are there any weaknesses in the US LNG growth straight up lineup forever story? I think there's a lot of problems with it. But then mostly due to overall problems with gas. First of all, the gas turbines you use to build a power plant in nature are the same ones you use to build a data center. And the cost of a turbine is now, it's over $2,500 per kilowatt. It's used to be about $1,000. I mean, this is this crunch in gas-fight turbines is, you know, well, well, well noted, I would say. Then you have the issue, so you're kind of been, your customers have been priced out of using gas for that reason in life. Then you have this geopolitical risk attached to supply from the Middle East. There is no certainty that if there is some sort of toll on the straight support moves that the Houthis might say, well, I'd like some of that to please. And then we have another issue in the Red Sea. So I think while US supply is probably a lot of risk depending on the actions of the US government, of course, people are overall looking at this market and thinking, well, is this really what I want to build my power grid on? And the answer is probably not. So I got it. So US LNG, yes, that is this perfect substitute for LNG from anywhere else. The big question is, if LNG generally has the potential for such volatility, then maybe a country just decides, oh, yeah, okay, the US exists, but maybe a country just decides, this is not the future of energy for me. Yeah, then let's just look at this insight. Like I don't want this. This is far too much crazy in a five, six-year period. And I'd like something more in place. We're all full up on crazy. Yeah. So one of the reasons we wanted to speak to you is because you are in Singapore and you know, in Singapore, you can literally see that tankers sitting out there in the street of Malaka. But talk to us about the general vibes in the city as, you know, a big hub of oil trading. It's very interesting. People in the physical business are at the same levels of stress that are extraordinary. And then they look at their finds at equities and just, they don't get it. Yeah, we don't get it either. And it's also what is quite challenging is people who have been in the physical trade and deal in with this part of the world and have a deeper empathetic anthropological sense of how a toll is likely to be received in a lot of that world or whether that's a stable configuration, they have their doubts on whether we can get back to normal terribly quickly. So there's that people in government are taking this extraordinarily seriously, they're very concerned that they are Singapore, I think, is more than most places as a real sense of what a wartime economy looks like due to historical reasons from the fall of Singapore and World War II. And so I can tell that there is a real gravity and I think that's coming out. So it's some of the comments of the Foreign Minister of Indian Ballot Prision. Do you think, I mean, talking just pure politics like, okay, the US and Israel, they start a war and suddenly everybody around the world immediately has to do rationing, higher energy prices, etc. You know, for years it was this talk like, okay, the US is going to pivot to Asia and try to have closer relationships with some of the non-China Asia countries and so forth. And just generally, like, does this, we hear about the version of this conversation we hear most about is in Europe, right? And they're like, what is the future of our relationship with the US? What is the Asian version of this conversation and thinking about the future of the US, either as some sort of like business or political partner? The problem is this is that if this is what one side of politics is going to be about on a sustained basis, which is doing stuff which doesn't make a lot of sense and is very damaging and unpredictable. And the other side is maybe a bit of a wet noodle at times, but a bit more predictable. You kind of need to live through the full cycle, right? So it's over Republicans or what you're saying, they're more, okay, more stuff like this and the Democrats or the wet noodles. Many people. Yeah, maybe you'll agree. But I'm just trying to make sure, okay, keep going. Yeah, sorry. So I mean, so if there's that perception that there is going to be this regular source of volatility and also, you know, politics animated by things which do not really animate Asia, like evangelical Christianity or a desire for a catacombe or fighting with the Pope. And like, if this is kind of what the US is now, then there is going to be a natural desire to insulate oneself from it as much as you humanly can. And that there are real limits to what you can do. It's a big economy. It's very important. But, you know, food fuel, you know, basic material flow security, I think, is going to be looked at very differently going forward. And I think there is a, that will lead to a drive towards much high energy security, which is not going to go well with US efforts to promote fossil exports for sure. Is China the natural alternative in that scenario? I mean, we already talked about some shipments from China going to places like the Philippines. Are we seeing the emergence of that sort of energy diplomacy? I think what people have not appreciated well is that China responds well to strength, the US now responds well to strength. So who does Trump not mess with? China, because they restricted very Earths and basically threatened to put Detroit and the cardiac arrest and shrunk their shoulders. And I think what Europe in particular is missing is that there are hands they could play that may be not intuitive to them, but doesn't mean they wouldn't work. The IRGC appears to have beaten the US to the most humiliating geopolitical defeat since Suez. And it looks like they're going to get a toll out of it. So what does the takeaway from how to deal with the US going forward? But similarly, with China, I mean, they've been very aggressively coercive on material supply chains with technology. So I think this kind of idea that as a mid-sized power, you should be thinking that you need a pimped to keep you safe on the streets. I mean, actually, all the pimps are bad. We need more pampering. All right. You want to leave it there? I think that's a good play. That's a. All the pimps are bad. Strike me as a pretty good play. It's a little bit worse. True words. Sorry, that's a bit strong. But it's like. No, no, it's like a good. It sounds like a good, it sounds like a good spot to leave it. Alex Turnbull, it's always great catching up with you. Really appreciate you taking the time. Very interesting conversation. Cool. Thank you. Bye-bye. [music] Setting every single side, and there's a lot in that conversation to talk about, I think the story that I want to do more coverage of is essentially how solid is the US energy story, actually. Because I think there is this view that, okay, we're. We have achieved oil independence, basically. I know we still are bringing some blends of crude from our kinds of crude from anywhere else, but we have plenty of oil, and then we're going to have plenty of gas, and gas exports are going to go to the moon. And I think that Alex presents an argument, and there are good reasons to think that maybe the future isn't going to be gas-related. And there are reasons to not. For economies to not build an LNG dependent economy. And then, I think there are questions about, what if the oil depletes a little bit faster than people think and so forth. So I just want to do more on actual stress testing the assumptions about American domestic energy. Absolutely. And it's really interesting what Alex was saying about just the EV dealership, right? You can see some of this starting to happen, and the alternative so far is not turning to US gas. It's not even buying a Tesla. It's let's buy a BYD, right? The other thing, just on a pure basic oil and gas basis, I think to Alex's point earlier, there are these interconnections in the overall market, which we haven't necessarily seen, like, the pressure from one half of the world come into the other half of the world just yet. And there's an open question over, like, how that happens. Totally. The reason I'm not expressing myself well, but one of the papers I was reading from Alex's sub-stack, actually, or one of his sub-stack contributions is a paper from 2022 called the Myth of US Energy Independence. And so I think there is this like open question just on a pure hydrocarbon basis. How much of the hashtag "Blessed America" story, actually, is true. Yeah. No, I mean, like, you know, a lot of things don't seem to be going great. Some things are going better for the US than others these days, some not so much. I do think a lot of it's like, well, you know, at least we have energy. At least we're not like it's like-- On a relative basis, sure. But like if that were to change, if they were sort of get a re-assumption, sort of re-assessment about America's energy stability or energy independence or that would be like a very, that would be a really big story. I also just think, you know, it's very interesting that the nuclear re-exceleration, et cetera, that's happening in Asia. That there's political will now. There's nothing like an energy crisis to change, like political will towards nuclear power. And on that political will, his last point, which is like, what is the lesser that we keep learning is like strength matters. And it's like Trump hasn't gone very hard against China because China went very hard against the US. Iran may end up in a situation in which it comes out stronger than it was two months ago where it actually is collecting a toll, you know, getting a cash cow for the straight of Hormuz. So it's interesting his point where it's like, okay, Europe, other parts of Asia, like, what is the lesson that they learned from this? And maybe the lesson is that sort of like biting your time and trying to be friendly and obsequious, maybe that's not the answer. Maybe maybe stronger lions at the answer for global diplomacy right now. Also the pimps are bad. All pimps are bad. PSA. PSA. All right. Shall we leave it there? Let's see if it there. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alleyway. You can follow me at Tracy Alleyway. And I'm Joe Wyzenthall. You can follow me at the stalwart. Our guest, Alex Turnbull, he's at Alex B.H. Turnbull. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez, at Carmen Arman, Dashobinit, at Dashbot, and Kale Brooks. And for more odd-loss content, go to Bloomberg.com/odlodlod. So have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all of these topics 24/7 in our discord discord.gg/odlod. And if you enjoy odd-lots, if you like it, when we talk about the future of global energy, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening. [Music] This is Tom Keane, inviting you to join us for the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. It's about making you smarter every business day. I'm Paul Swini. We bring you complete coverage of the US Market Open. We cover stocks. even crypto all the information you need to excel. And I'm Alexis Christoffer's Bloomberg Surveillance also brings you the analysis behind the headlines. We do that through conversations with the smartest names and economics, finance, investment, and international relations. We do all this live each and every weekday that bring you the best analysis in our daily podcast. Search for Bloomberg Surveillance on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere else you listen. On the East Coast, listen at lunch. And on the West Coast, listen as soon as you wake up. That's the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast with Tom Keane, Paul Sweeney, and me, Alexis Christoffer's. Bloomberg Surveillance essential listening each and every business day.