Episode 181: Collin McLelland, Digital Wildcatters
Today's guest is Collin McLelland, Co-Founder & CEO of Digital Wildcatters.
Digital Wildcatters is a multimedia platform that offers podcasts, videos, and in-depth blogs detailing ideas to make the oil & gas and energy sectors cleaner and more efficient.
Digital Wildcatters was founded in March 2020. Through Collin's podcast "Oil and Gas Startups", a show that started as a hobby, he has built a go-to platform for oil & gas tech and cultivated a community that wanted to disrupt the status quo. Collin grew up in the Permian Basin in West Texas, the largest oil and gas field in the contiguous 48 states. After graduating high school during the 2008 Recession, he worked as a wireline operator drilling oil wells and a project manager at Enventure Global Technologies where he managed the expandable casing installations on drilling and completions projects across the United States and the Gulf of Mexico. Most recently, Collin co-founded Stealth Startup a funded fintech company in the oil & gas sector.
While Collin’s background may not be that of MCJ's typical guest, I believe our purpose is to create bridges to tackle the massive problem of climate change. I was looking forward to speaking with Collin because of his experience in the oil & gas industry. Collin walks me through Digital Wildcatters, what the media company is working on, and why oil & gas needs to evolve. We also have a lively discussion on how climate impacts Collin's work, what role the government should play in the energy transition, and why Collin believes transitioning off of fossil fuels can create energy poverty. Collin is a great guest and we have a fascinating conversation.
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded September 30th, 2021
In Today's episode we cover:
An overview of Digital Wildcatters, the company's mission, and Collin's background in oil & gas
Definition of "roughnecking" in context with the oil & gas industry
What led Collin to believe the oil & gas industry needs to "evolve or die"
How climate factored into Collin's motivations to found Digital Wildcatters
What clean energy actually means
How Collin thinks of the carbon problem we have and how to fix it
Why Collin puts a distinction between weather and climate and how he sees extreme weather events due to climate change affecting our world
How Collin sees the massive climate/pollution misinformation campaign led by some of the major oil & gas companies
Why Collin thinks that the stakes are still high and climate change has not been overblown
What gives Collin the confidence to distrust the existing climate models
The problem of deploying the existing solutions, how they can get us 80% of the way there, and the political barriers to deployment of climatetech and why Collin disagrees with it
The role government should play in the energy transition and why it's such a loaded question
How to balance the right thing versus short-term profitability
A discussion about how transitioning off fossil fuels will cause energy poverty v. how climate change will create energy poverty if we do nothing
The way that Collin believes the energy transition should play out
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
Digital Wildcatters: https://www.digitalwildcatters.com/
Collin's podcast: https://www.digitalwildcatters.com/podcasts/
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Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here, I am the My Climate Journey show host. Before we get going, I want it to take a minute and tell you about the My Climate Journey, or MCJ as we call it, membership option. Membership came to be because there were a bunch of people that were listening to the show that weren't just looking for education, but there were longing for a peer group as well, so we set up a Slack community for those people that's now mushroomed into more than 1300 members. There is an application to become a member, it's not an exclusive thing, there's four criteria we screened for, determination to tackle the problem of climate change, ambition to work on the most impactful solution areas, optimism that we can make a dent and we're not wasting our time for trying and a collaborative spirit, beyond that, the more diversity, the better.
There's a bunch of great things that have come out of that community, a number of founding teams that have met in there, a number of nonprofits that have been established, a bunch of hiring that's been done, a bunch of companies that have raised capital in there, a bunch of funds that have gotten limited partners or investors for their funds in there, as well as a bunch of events and programming by members and for members, and some open-source projects that are getting actively worked on that hatched in there as well. At any rate, if you want to learn more, you can go to myclimatejourney.co the website and click the become a member tab at the top, enjoy the show.
Hello everyone, this is Jason Jacobs and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you and I can help. Today's guest is Collin McLelland, co-founder at Digital Wildcatters. Collin is known as FracSlap on Twitter, and I don't remember how I came across him, but I started following him a while back and he's an interesting character. He was a roughneck when he started his career in West Texas, he spent over 10 years in the oil industry, he worked offshore and on land operations across the Western Hemisphere, and Digital Wildcatters sounds a lot, from a distance, like what My Climate Journey is except instead of exploring climate change and the best ways to help, it explorers oil and gas and the future of that industry.
Now you might think what is a climate change podcast host doing bringing on someone who's covering the future of the oil and gas industry? Well, it just so happens that whether we like it or not, fossil fuels play a huge role in powering our society, and they certainly have historically, and those companies, whether we like it or not, have an important role in our future. So I wanted to understand what's going on on that side of the world, wanted to know how Collin, who grew up in oil and gas, is thinking about the problem of climate change since he's been covering it more on his show and also just learn from each other and see if we could have a meeting of the minds. Now we do not always agree in this discussion, but I have a lot of respect for Collin for coming on the show, I learned a lot from him, I hope he learns something from me, and I hope you all learn from this great discussion. Collin, welcome to the show.
Collin McLelland: Hey man, thanks for having me on. So I wanna give a shout out to you and the My Climate Journey team and the cell that you brought on, Cody Simms, I think it was last week, that's a huge addition, so I'm excited to see what you guys put together, I know you guys got some cool things cooking up.
Jason Jacobs: Oh, thanks so much. Well, I saw the team picture that you posted recently, it looks like your team has been growing quite a bit as well.
Collin McLelland: Yeah, we are, we've experienced a lot of growth at Digital Wildcatters here, over the last six to eight months, so it's exciting times for us for sure.
Jason Jacobs: Awesome. Well, I was so excited for this discussion for a number of reasons, but a big one is just that there's the energy world and there's the climate world and there's some overlap across, but there's also some distinct areas that don't overlap and you play in a world that oftentimes is demonized by the climate crowd for, for better or for worse, yet you also care about climate, so like that right there, man, like we could probably spend way longer than we have on the show to, to dig into all of that.
Collin McLelland: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think I come from a unique position in the fact that I grew up in the oil and gas business, right, and so depending on who you talk to, some people won't even give me the time of day to have a conversation because I come from oil and gas, right, and so definitely some interesting dynamics there.
But you know, wh- what I think is what's interesting with My Climate Journey, what you guys are doing is that climate doesn't necessarily mean everything is related to energy, right, you guys have a lot of conversations and have a lot of people in the community that aren't directly involved in the energy industry, but I think when you look at the energy industry, one, it's the most important industry in the world and it's so complex and so dynamic, and I think that a lot of people in the general public, they automatically default to the energy industry when thinking about climate change, you know, whether it's oil and gas is bad, renewables with wind and solar is the future, that's where everyone kind of defaults the conversation too, and I'm fortunate that I get to live at that intersection of energy and I get to be in the middle of it all because it's just never-ending conversations on a day-to-day basis.
Jason Jacobs: Well, I did not grow up in oil and gas, so we, we have quite different backgrounds, and I didn't grow up in the climate world either, I mean, you know, since we've talked before that I grew up as a technology entrepreneur, in completely unrelated stuff, doing digital fitness and, and stuff like that, and the last few years, I've been learning about climate, but I think kind of coming in without all the preconceived notions and like, you know, venom that have... you know, that's been condition for people to feel and, and stuff like that, it sometimes can lead, you know, to a different set of conclusions, but at any rate, before we get too far down the path, what is Digital Wildcatters, let's just take it from the top.
Collin McLelland: Yeah, so Digital Wildcatters is actually a lot like My Climate Journey, you know, we're media company that started off in oil and gas and now we're in the broader energy industry, and so we have a very engaged community of energy professionals that are very forward-thinking and wanna to disrupt the status quo. And so got our foothold in oil and gas, that's where we got started, and that's where the... primarily, most of our content is made around oil and gas, and that's where most of our community comes from, but as we expand into other energy verticals, you know, we see the same challenges, you know, whether it's in geothermal or electric vehicles or distributed energy systems, there's just a lot of opportunity to create content and cultivate communities around those places. So I tell people that aren't familiar with the energy industry or media, I tell them that we're the Barstool Sports of oil and gas, it's kind of a good analogy for us. We have a podcast network, we do live events, we have a popular newsletter and we do videos and things of that nature.
Jason Jacobs: And when you started the company, w- w- what was the mission around it? I mean, clearly you said it was oil and gas-focused, but within that, what you're trying to achieve?
Collin McLelland: Yeah, I guess, you know, let me give you a little bit of a backstory on me because Digital Wildcatters came about very organically. And so I grew up in West Texas in the middle of the Permian Basin, which is the largest oil and gas field in the United States or at least in the Lower 48. And so I graduated high school in 2008 and it was in the middle of the Great Recession, and it was in the middle of an oil and gas downturn, and I've always been an entrepreneur, so I didn't want to go to university, school just wasn't my calling, and anyways, around 2009, 2010, the oil industry started to pick back up and I ran into a friend at the gym and he told me, "Hey, yeah, I- I'm roughnecking on drilling rigs and I'm making $4,000 every two weeks," and you know, I'm this 19, 20-year-old kid, and I was like, "Man, you're making $4,000-"
Jason Jacobs: And what's roughnecking for anyone that, that isn't familiar with the term?
Collin McLelland: Yeah, so roughnecking is... those are the guys that are out drilling the wells, it's a bottom-of-the-barrel job, very blue collar, very dangerous and very manual labor, so, you know, if you ever kind of see the cliche oil field worker, they're usually portraying a roughneck. And so I started doing that work when I was 19 years old and started learning how to drill oil wells, and really kind of fell in love with the oil and gas business, you know, I'd always been surrounded by these big oil men, so I had this vision of, you know, "I wanna become the biggest oil and gas guy out of Texas."
And so I just started learning the industry from the ground up, and so I started drilling wells for a couple of years, and then once I learned how to drill a well, I wanted to learn how to complete a well, and so I went and started working on frack jobs and running wireline on those frack jobs, and I won't get too much into the technicalities of that, but you know, this is really at the beginning of the Shale Revolution in the United States, you know, you're talking 2011, 2012 timeframe, so things were really picking up. And so I learned a lot of just really great information and picked up a lot of knowledge in drilling and completing wells, and in 2014, I took a job as a project manager in Houston for a company that was a subsidiary under Shell.
And so 2014, my wife and kids, we moved to Houston and this is where things kind of started getting interesting and really where the genesis of Digital Wildcatters came to be because in 2014, I started seeing the rise of social media, and so I started building Instagram accounts that were focused around like business motivation and started putting out content on those and monetizing them through ads, and I started looking at the oil and gas industry and noticed that there was no one putting out content in the industry, one of the biggest industries in the world and there was no one that was kind of seen as a content producer or creator.
And so I started writing content on LinkedIn and started [laughs] doing really well with that content on LinkedIn, and you know, for me, I looked at the oil and gas industry as a very traditional and boring industry and it was ran by a bunch of boomers or old people in suits, and so I was thinking, "Hey, I see Silicon valley, I see, you know, all these tech founders and tech companies, and that's cool, I want oil and gas to be like that." And so really came out with a mission of, "Hey, we want to challenge the status quo in oil and gas," and our tagline... kind of my tagline from this video I made was oil and gas companies have to evolve or die, and that's what's really stuck with us over time.
And so around 2016, I started... you know, you really started seeing tech entrepreneurs in oil and gas, and this is kind of a by-product of the democratization of computing through cloud computing, AWS, you started having a lot of tech founders pop up in oil and gas that were engineers, and you know, they saw a problem within oil and gas operations, or they saw that they were making $100 million decision based on an, an Excel spreadsheet, they started going and building tech solutions for those SaaS-based products, and I thought this was super interesting, but the main problem that you had back in that timeframe was that there was a lack of capital for early-stage energy tech companies or specifically oil and gas tech companies.
And so I started talking to coastal VCs trying to kind of be a connector for the ecosystem and bring some capital into the space, and these VCs would always ask me where they could go to learn about oil and gas tech, and there wasn't a single place on the internet, and so I just started a podcast. Me and my buddy Jake who's now my business partner said, "Hey, what if we just started recording these conversations and telling the stories of oil and gas founders, and actually giving them a platform to talk about what they're working on, the challenges that they saw within their company, and how did they get the idea for their product?"
And, you know, sounded really niche, startups called oil and gas startups, who's going to listen [laughs] to that, and it ended up blowing up and doing really well and becoming this tangible platform that engineers were coming to and listening to our podcasts to figure out, you know, what new technological solutions were out there, and for the first time ever, founders had a place to come tell their story and share what they're working on. And so we became really known for just providing a surplus of value and creating this tech ecosystem here in Houston and, you know, broader Texas and Oklahoma and Denver, and really creating something of value for the tech ecosystem and people at oil and gas companies that wanted to adopt new technology.
Jason Jacobs: Uh-huh [affirmative]. And so wh... it sounds like when you started, it was really kind of shining a light on what was happening in oil and gas using some of these new tools, when you say evolve or die, what made you think it's evolve or die? How did that perspective come about and why did that perspective come about?
Collin McLelland: Back then, I thought that there was gonna be a liquidity crunch in oil and gas, and you've seen that play out today. I thought that the private equity model was broken in oil and gas, and if you just looked at oil and gas companies, I mean, they just had a huge amount of data and they were always, you know, 10, 15 years behind Silicon valley in deploying technology... digital technology. When you talk about like physical downhole technology of drilling a well, what we did over the last 10 to 15 years was unbelievable, but digital technology, there were behind and it's just not a way to run a company, especially when you have such a complex business model that is just filled with so many variables.
So when I first came up with that evolve-or-die tagline, that's what it was really based on, was, "Hey, you're gonna have to focus on adopting new digital technology and software that allows you to be more efficient and scale operations," and so that's like... back then, that's what it really meant, and then I [laughs] think if you fast forward to today, where we're at in a 20, 21 timeframe, you look at, you know, the pressure from ESG as the world looks to find new energy solutions, oil and gas companies are back to that main point of, "Hey, you have to evolve or die, you have to move with where the world's moving to," and so I think that, you know, that's kind of a timeless mantra [laughs] to run by that you have to continuously be evolving.
Jason Jacobs: Uh-huh [affirmative]. And how much was climate change on your radar when you went down this path, if at all?
Collin McLelland: I wouldn't say it was all my path at all or on my radar, it wasn't something that I was really thinking about, you know, back in the day as I was coming up the ranks, and I didn't really start thinking about climate change until, let's say, within the last two years, and really thinking about how do we transition to other energy sources while also being pragmatic about it and making sure that essentially [laughs] society doesn't collapse?
And, you know, I think that when you look at oil and gas, you have a lot of people that believe in climate change. I think that outsiders probably think that oil and gas workers are close minded and they don't listen to data or facts, and there are climate deniers, which, you know, there are climate deniers and oil and gas, but for me, it's like, you know, regardless of climate change, you know, one, we shouldn't put carbon up into the atmosphere, we should just be good stewards of the environment regardless, which I think a lot of oil and gas companies do think like that, but second, fossil fuels, if we talk about oil, gas and coal, they're a finite resource, so sooner or later, we have to figure out new energy [laughs] sources regardless if it's from climate change or we just have to figure out ways to power the world as we run out of other precious resources, so I would say with like within the last two years is when it really came on my radar, and I started thinking about it on a macro level when it came to energy.
Jason Jacobs: When climate change first started coming on your radar, how did that affect how you thought about the future of your industry?
Collin McLelland: Yeah, that's a great question. I- I'd retweeted a senator, I think it was a senator actually from Massachusetts that said that natural gas is not clean energy, and I'm gonna preface this with saying, you know, what is clean energy? What does clean energy actually mean? Because if you look at any energy source, there's pros and cons and all of them have dirty aspects to it, right, whether we're talking about nuclear fission, you know, you have radioactive waste as a by-product or if you look at solar and wind, what do we need to have that become commercialized? We need to ramp up battery technology and production, and to do that, we have to strip mine the earth for metals, and so, you know, really looking at what is the definition of clean energy, it's actually hard to define, but when I look at the oil and gas industry, I really focus in on natural gas, I believe natural gas is "the transition fuel of the future," natural gas is the one thing that can displace dirtier coal.
And, you know, we look at... we talked about the energy transition, but one thing that I really like to talk about, Jason, is that we're not really in an energy transition right now, we're in an energy addition. Energy demand keeps scaling up and wind and solar are getting added to the power mix, but they haven't displaced anything, we actually haven't even displaced coal.
You know, if you've seen the energy crunch here over the last few weeks to a month, everyone's kicking on coal-fired plants to meet energy demand, and so when I look at the role that oil and gas plays in the energy transition, I really look towards natural gas being be transition fuel that's cleaner than coal, can displace coal, we have an abundance of natural gas in the world, so it's cheap and it's economic, it's reliable, and it's a great... when you add it to solar, wind and nuclear, it's a great power mix. So I think that all change happens in steps, I don't that you're gonna [laughs] have a change overnight when it comes to energy because it's just impossible, so you have to do it in step changes and I believe that natural gas is the bridge to that change.
Jason Jacobs: Well, I'm not a climate scientist and you're not a climate scientist, but I have to ask just given that seems like you kind of stand top of these things and take learning seriously, what's your assessment of how big a pickle that we're in as it relates to the carbon that's already up in the atmosphere and the changes that are locked in no matter what we do? How big a hole are we in?
Collin McLelland: Yeah, you know, I'm not educated enough on the topic to like really go in depth and talk about it, I can tell you that, you know, I know a lot of people... You can go back to the '80s, actually I just saw a post from 1989 yesterday that talked about, you know, how the world was gonna be doing from climate change by the year 2000, and so I try not to get caught up in macro-level events that I can't control personally, and I know that there are people out there, you know, that have climate anxiety, that, you know, think about the world ending in the next few years due to climate change, and, you know, we can't personally change that, and so it's not worth being stressed and having anxiety about it, but we got to work towards solutions to make the world a better place moving forward in the future.
And so, you know, if you run off this assumption, "Okay, you know, we have X amount, you know, parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, it's locked in, we can never change that," you know, I... [laughs] that's exactly what it is, right, we can't change it, but we can work towards a better future, and so that's how I think about it, and I also think about energy transition in, you know, like I said, a pragmatic manner of how do we do it...
You know, th- there's risk, right, so either, "Hey, if climate change is as bad as some models predict that it is and we needed to remove all dependency of society on hydrocarbons today, what are the second-order effects of that?" Society collapses, and so we died regardless, [laughs] a lot of people die, and people, especially in the United States, I think that we're very privileged to have access to cheap and reliable energy and we always have, and we don't understand that there's billions of people around the world that live in energy poverty and they die as, as a result of that, and so we have to balance, "Hey, how do we make the world a better and cleaner place without also collapsing society in a irresponsible manner."
Jason Jacobs: So when you hear about things like rising extreme events in frequency and in magnitude, when you hear about droughts and famine and places in the world that become unlivable or, or more places that are already that way today, when you hear about an increase in pandemics and, and things like that, I mean, is that... do you view that as fear-mongering? Are those concerns overblown, or, or do you think that the challenge of climate is as existential as the most vocal scientists and others who are concerned make it out to be?
Collin McLelland: Yeah, I mean, personally, one thing that I get annoyed about is conflating weather with climate, and so you can't just have, you know, a hurricane or a flood or a fire anymore without it being pointed towards climate change. So I think it's important that we do need to look at data that actually matters, so for example, it's like, hey, hurricanes, okay, we've had hurricanes all throughout mankind, right, so it's not just a direct correlation with climate change, but let's look at frequency, let's look at strength of those hurricanes and you can start to use that data to point to, okay, you know, there are some actual underlying changes in the patterns of these storms, and so with that, you know, I think that there is a lot of data that can point towards that.
Like, hey, hurricanes specifically, like I live here in Houston, you know, I've lived through Hurricane Harvey, I've lived through those events, and so it's easy to think like, "Yeah, you know, this could be a by-product of climate change," but the answer... you know, what's the solution to that? And I think the problem that we have right now with energy production and energy consumption is that our energy consumption keeps scaling up, like I said, the demand for energy keeps scaling up, and it scales at a pace that renewables can't keep up with, right, and so we keep this reliance on hydrocarbons, whether it's oil and gas or coal, and so I think when we're talking about climate change, it's like we have to figure out new technologies, both on the consumer side, that allow us to consume less electricity and less energy, and then on the energy production side, "Hey, how do we figure out how to produce that electricity or produce energy in a cleaner and more efficient manner?"
And there's really... you know, there's not a great solution to it short term, I mean, these are all long-term things that we're, that we're talking about, right, so, you know, for me, yeah, I realized that, hey, weather patterns are a by-product of climate change, but we can't change what's been done up to this point in history, all we can do is change what we're doing moving forward, and like I said, you know, you bring up famine and things of that nature, well, we'd have famine... if we stop using hydrocarbons today, we'd have famine across the globe and you're already seeing this food shortages because of inflation in commodity prices and natural gas prices, like this is a real thing that's happening today, and so, you know, when you're talking about these topics man, they're extremely complex and intricate, and you know, there's no way that you or me or any scientists could possibly understand it all, [laughs] you know, holistically, and so it takes a lot of just smart people from different angles to have conversations and talk about solutions and the second-order effects that come from different actions.
Jason Jacobs: Well, and clearly a lot of good has come from fossil fuels, I mean, gosh, they essentially [laughs] powered the whole industrial revolution and the, you know, the lifestyles that you and I, and, and others that have been in a privileged position to do so have been taking advantage of, at what point do you think that the fossil fuel companies knew that they were essentially putting their trash in the atmosphere and it was eventually going to come back around? Because, I mean, I've read that they've known for, you know, decades and decades and, and have actively withheld that information, and, and misled the government, misled the public and, and essentially carried on active disinformation campaigns, I mean, do you, do agree with that assessment, and if so... or either way, how, how do you think about culpability there, if any?
Collin McLelland: Yeah, so, you know, when you talk about they, it's like who's they, and in this case, you know, you... it could be Exxon, right, and referencing Exxon and Exxon having internal information that, "Hey, you know, climate change is real and we're contributing to that." I think, you know, one thing that's important to me and important for Digital Wildcatters, that I've seen as an obligation, is that oil and gas is so much bigger of an industry than Exxon. If you look at the United States, there are thousands of oil and gas companies and they look nothing like Exxon, they look nothing like Chevron and they look nothing like Shell, and so when the general public thinks of oil and gas, who do they think of? They think of Exxon, they think of Exxon hiding information about climate change, they think of BP spilling hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the ocean, and that's what the public image is for oil and gas.
And so when I look at like Exxon, it's like, I don't know what Exxon was thinking internally 20 or 30 years ago and the thousands of other oil and gas companies didn't either, you know, Exxon isn't a reflection of the oil and gas industry as a whole, and so whatever information they might've had, it wasn't even available to anyone else or, you know, there was nothing around it, and so when I look at things like that, like I don't think it does any good to bash Exxon today because most... the people that are at Exxon today had nothing to do with that, right, and I think if you look at like some of the work that the major oil companies do today, it's very progressive and they really support renewables.
And so I don't think that it's very constructive to go back and bash major oil companies for that type of stuff, and, you know, I think when you talk about the modern day oil and gas industry, it's like no one really touched that, no one even knew about that stuff, we found out about that stuff when, [laughs] when the general public found out about it. You know, I have... like, I don't identify with that, I can't relate to it at all, that wasn't me that did it and that's... you know, millions of people would feel that same way. So I think that, you know, people have a right to be mad about that and have anger towards Exxon, but is that productive? I don't necessarily think it's productive, and is it a representation of the entire oil and gas industry? Absolutely not.
Jason Jacobs: Well, when I think about the transition, I mean, you said evolve or die, I mean, it seems clear to me that one way or another things will transition over time, and I understand that everything has trade-offs, but we'll move towards a world where the externalities are factored in, mostly because we'll have to, I believe, if we want to keep the planet habitable by humans and other lifeforms that rely on it. So I guess one question I have for you is do you believe that those are the stakes, or do you think that that narrative is overblown?
Collin McLelland: I don't think the narrative is overblown, and I think that is the stakes, but when we look at energy transition, one, the general public hates energy infrastructure, it's not just oil and gas, it's not just nuclear, you're already starting to see this with NIMBYs, you know, whether it's a wind turbine farm that wants to be built and needs a transmission line ran through a neighborhood, and the neighborhoods shutting it down, and so you're going to have problems scaling out energy infrastructure regardless of the form of energy. And then also, you know, if we look at rising energy consumption and energy demand and say, "Okay, we need this to all be renewables," there's barriers to that happening as well. Like if you look at the price to produce solar panels right now, I mean, it's skyrocketing due to inflation, and so that becomes a barrier to being able to scale the technology.
And then you look at nuclear, like nuclear, everyone that I know in oil and gas is so supportive of nuclear, but nuclear is much like oil and gas where it has a terrible public image, and to me, nuclear is the answer, like it's the future, and I don't know if it will ever be adopted just because of the, the public image that it has. And so I think that the problem is, is that, one, you have a lot of policymakers that aren't educated when it comes to energy and the physics and economics that are associated with that, all they know is, "Hey, we want wind turbines and we want solar farms," and they don't understand how our actual energy infrastructure is built and how it works and how it has to continue to work. and like I said, like, I think it's great, you add solar and wind to the energy mix.
Like I am super bullish on distributed energy, solar panels plus battery single-family homes and, you know, small commercial buildings across the US, like I do think that's the future. I do think electric vehicles are the future, and with EVs, it has nothing to do with saving the world or improving the climate, it's just that electric vehicles are a better product than internal combustion engines, and so you look at that and it's like, okay, well, EVs are a better product and they'll get adoption for that, well, now electricity demand going up, and the problem is, is that a lot of people think that electricity comes out of a wall, that [laughs] electricity actually has to be generated, and how are we going to generate that? The answer to me is natural gas and solar and wind and nuclear.
But, you know, if you look at the transition timeline of oil and gas, like when does that, when does that actually happen? Like when does the world stop using oil and gas completely? And it won't be in my lifetime, I believe that 100% and it may not even be in my kid's lifetime, I think that we're going to be that reliant, at least on natural gas, I think if electric vehicle adoption happens, the demand for oil will go down significantly, but I think that demand for natural gas will increase.
Jason Jacobs: Uh-huh [affirmative]. And I, I heard you say that you don't think that the narrative or the risk of keeping the planet habitable for humans, that that's a valid concern, and when I hear you talking about the energy transition, I hear you talking about energy poverty, which is certainly valid, I mean, gosh, if there's people... you know, a billion plus people that don't have access to even basic electricity, then who are we to judge to say that they can't have a thing that we've had for, for so long? And, and I hear you talk about how energy demand is continuing to increase and how we're adding renewables but we're not taking away because the demand keeps growing, but how do you weigh those trade-offs when the risk is keeping the planet habitable for humans and other lifeforms? If you were only looking at it through the vector of habitable humans and other lifeforms, would you want to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible?
Collin McLelland: Yeah, I mean, if you buy into the thesis that, "Hey, you know, we have limited time here on earth for the planet to be habitable," then you would look at oil and gas-
Jason Jacobs: D- do you buy into that thesis Collin?
Collin McLelland: You know, like I said, I don't think it's as urgent as some people think, I think that, I think that CO2 and methane do have an impact on the climate, but I think that different models can point to different things and I'm not qualified to-
Jason Jacobs: I mean, I'm not a climate scientist, but I mean, from what I can gather, there's overwhelming consensus around climate scientists that it is as urgent as that, so, so what gives you the confidence not to believe them? 'Cause I, I don't want to believe them, but I believe them because it's their craft, it's what they do for a living, and it's not what I do for a living.
Collin McLelland: Yeah, I mean, there's one thing that I know about models and they're wrong, whether it's underestimated, overestimated, like it could... like our trajectory could be worse than what m- models point out to, you know, but like I said, like I can go back in time with the archive [laughs] that we have on the internet and I can find articles from 1989 that say the same exact thing, and say that the world is going to be underwater by the year 2000. And you know, there's actually...
There's a book that Chris Saka recommended on Twitter the other day called The Psychology of Money, and it actually kind of really got me thinking about the world, because it had this great chapter talking about why is the world so pessimistic? Why is society so pessimistic? Like why do we... why are we fascinated with the worst-case scenario? And I really started thinking about that a lot, and you know, [laughs] it had this great, it had this great example of in the Great Recession an article ran on the front page of the Wall Street Journal was quoting a professor, I can't remember which university he was at, but he talking about how Russia... the United States was going to break into pieces and Russia was gonna own, you know, the west half of the United States and Mexico is gonna own the south, and this was a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal during the 2008 financial crisis, and you look back at that in hindsight and it's like, that was crazy that that was even ran, something that, that pessimistic, when, you know, in reality things weren't that bad.
And so I think that, you know, when you look at the human element of it too, people gravitate towards worst-case scenario and I'm a very optimistic person, and I believe that, look, humans have the ability to outwork any [laughs] problem that we're faced with, I mean, that's what has separated us from literally every other animal on, [laughs] on the... every other species on the planet, and so I think that...
You know, I know a lot of smart scientists too, that don't agree with some models out there, and like I said, you know, I'm not a scientist, I'm not the one modeling, I can only go based off of the data and the information that I have, but when I look at it in historical context, like these things have been said for generations, and like I said, I think that just one, being a good steward of the environment, we should do like, "Hey, what does it hurt for us to remove carbon out of the atmosphere and wean off of fossil fuels?" I don't think that that hurts anything, so we should do that, oil and gas is a finite resource anyway, so we need new energy sources, but yeah, you know, I think that humans tend to gravitate to worst-case scenario and, you know, will use data to do that as well.
So, you know, I don't think that either one of those worst-case scenarios is great, like, hey, either the earth burns up and becomes inhabitable or we get off of oil and gas today and society collapses and we're, you know, ridden with famine and we all die that way. [laughs] So it's not like... either one of those solutions isn't great, and so the only way that I think that we can think about it is in step changes of like, "Hey, how do we do this in a responsible manner where we don't collapse society, but we work towards a better environment as well," and I don't think that there's any answer... like I don't think that there's any answer or solution outside of that thinking.
Jason Jacobs: And I mean, outside of the thinking of worst-case scenarios, the way, the way I think about it at least is, it's more like a slider where it just like the longer takes, the worst the consequences and the more unnecessary suffering during the, the transition, does that... I mean, do you agree with that, disagree with that?
Collin McLelland: Yeah, I mean, I agree with that too, but I think, you know, what's interesting about us having this conversation right now compared to if, if we had it two months ago, look what's happening around the world, there's people in Europe that may not be able to heat their homes this winter because [laughs] they don't have the energy to do so. You know, you look at Texas, we had that polar vortex, people died because their homes were so cold and they couldn't heat them, and so, you know, what I think about is energy production, and, you know, we talked about energy poverty, I think there's 3 billion people in the world that cook their, their food with, you know, animal poop, with animal dung, like that is their... that's their biofuel to cook their food, and I know that I don't want to live that life, you don't want to live that life, and so we have to balance, "Hey, how can we make the planet habitable while also not regressing and going back in time in our current lives."
And then you brought up a great point earlier too, is like, you talk about the energy poverty, what gives you or I the right to tell someone in India that they can't use fossil fuels to increase their quality of life when we've built this massive nation doing the same thing, and I think that kind of gets into a broader topic of carbon taxes and you know, how we even things out there, but, you know, it's a very complex conversation because I- I'm a firm believer that if we ended oil and gas production today, that we would all... we would be in a very big bind and there would be a lot of deaths associated with that, so I think that the only chance that we have is we have to think about this on a timeframe that allows step changes, and there's really just not a way outside of that.
Jason Jacobs: Well, I've heard again and again and again as I've been making the rounds and talking to the smartest people that I could find since... I mean, I wasn't informed about any of this stuff coming in a few years ago, but with resounding consistency, I've heard that we already have solutions that exist today that can get us most of the way there, like upwards of 80% of the way there if we just deployed what we had, and what we're lacking is not solutions that don't exist today, it's just the political will to get them deployed as far and as wide as, as they need to, how do you feel about?
Collin McLelland: Yeah, you know, that's interesting to me, I don't really agree with that, you know, maybe there is political barriers, but... like here's the thing that I say about oil and gas companies and the role that they play in the energy transition, is that oil and gas companies are the most capitalistic companies that you'll ever find, right, and so they don't care what the energy source is, like this whole, like this whole idea that it's Exxon, Chevron and BP stopping energy transition is just complete BS, like it... that doesn't exist. If you look at what they're doing internally, these companies would pour money into renewables if the economics made sense for them, right, so, you know, I don't know, like the people that you're referencing, you know, what they're talking about, but like, if you look at...
You know, let's look at wind and solar, for example, the problem that we have with wind and solar right now is that we just don't have the technology yet for commercial battery capacity, and so that's the main barrier right there, I don't think it's necessarily deployment, it's just that we don't have the technology.
Like you can go out to West Texas... actually, you know, where I'm from, you know, I told my story about growing up in the oil field, it's actually one of the biggest wind turbine powerhouses in the country too. People don't know this, but Texas is the number one state for wind-generated power as well, so I grew up with oil pumpjacks, huge wind turbine farms, solar arrays, like I saw it all where I grew up, and the problem is, is that, you know, out in West Texas, you produce X amount of gigawatts of electricity, but you can only get so much of it out and distributed across the state because it's in so much of a remote location, and so battery capacity is really the barrier there, and you know, this actually... We were talking on my podcast the other day because like Bitcoin mining... actually, I think that you guys in- invested in Crusoe-
Jason Jacobs: We did.
Collin McLelland: ... if I'm not mistaken, yeah, so Crusoe, great friends of mine, you know, they're mining off of flared natural gas, so this natural gas that's a by-product of oil production that doesn't have any infrastructure to get it to a pipeline, Crusoe takes that waste in natural gas and converts it into hash rate in servers to mine Bitcoin, and I think that conversation extrapolates over renewables as well, is that, "Hey, if you have a wind turbine farm that doesn't have the battery capacity and it's generating, you know, an excess of electricity, now you can start mining Bitcoin to make that project economic." But, you know, I don't think that there's barriers from the oil and gas industry to deploying new energy projects, I mean, if they can make money on it, they'll do it and there'll be all in on it.
Jason Jacobs: I mean, when you think of carbon emissions, for example, or, I mean, any, any GHG, certainly m- methane could also be put in this category, but I mean, isn't it waste and isn't pumping into the atmosphere without any price on that externality the equivalent of just littering at massive scale?
Collin McLelland: [laughs] Yeah, this is... so this is a funny point to me too, you know, when you talk about oil and gas companies and methane emissions and rogue emissions, trust me, no one wants to have the least amount of emissions than oil and gas companies because that's literally their product, right, [laughs] and so they're just letting their product escape into the air, and it is waste, and i- it's both... it's economic waste, and you know, those are our na- nation's resources and, you know, they just get burned into the air, but it's also just it's waste and it's bad for the environment as well, that we're just releasing hydrocarbons into the air essentially, but you know, my favorite and you know, you can appreciate this because you're a tech guy and obviously Digital Wildcatters is based around energy tech, and my favorite area of energy tech right now is at the intersection of oil and gas and sustainability, and so you have a ton of startups.
You know, we about the technology that's available today, we can produce natural gas with zero emissions and zero methane rogue emissions. You have a ton of technology out there that is designed and deployed for methane detection and methane leaks and capture and things of that nature, and so that's actually where I get most excited is, "Hey, if we're going to produce oil and gas, let's clean up that act and let's deploy new technology to make oil and gas production cleaner." And, you know, you can look at the Environmental Defense Fund, they stay on top of this, you know, monitoring all of this methane emissions in oil and gas companies, and even they said, "Hey, we've monitored thousands of oil and gas sites and have found no emissions at those sites," so it is possible to produce oil and gas with no emissions, and so that's actually where I get most excited at.
You know, I hate the goals of, "Oh, you know, we're going to be net zero by 2050," I'm like, "Hey, what can we do in the next 18 months? Like what can we do to make an impact today?" And I think one of the biggest places that we can have an impact is deploying technology in the oil and gas industry that makes the oil and gas industry cleaner.
Jason Jacobs: And what I've heard from you, and you've not said this explicitly, but it, it sounds like a lot of what we're talking about is kind of markets, if you just let the markets run. When you're dealing with a problem like climate change, I mean, yes, if we let the markets run, we'll eventually get there, and to your point, there are some barriers that might at least slow that process. There is a way we could move faster than what market forces would allow and that's with the government stepping in with impactful policy, for example, is that a good thing if the government does that, and if so, what form should it take, and if not, why not?
Collin McLelland: Yeah. Okay, so loaded question there because I have a lot of different thoughts. So let me [laughs] pick out, you know, where I wanna, where I wanna to start with there because I am very much a free markets and capitalistic guy, but also I think when it comes to things like energy and like healthcare, like I don't see any way around it without some government intervention, and so I, I think there's pros and cons to this conversation.
What I want to start off with is there's a story that I like to tell with Shell, and you know, Shell had a court mandate earlier in the year that they had to reduce carbon emissions by the year 2030, and it was widely celebrated across Twitter and other social platforms, seen as a win for climate, here's the problem, does that court ruling affect the demand for hydrocarbons? If that answer is no, then essentially all we have done is we've transferred the production of hydrocarbons from a top-tier operator like Shell to a lower-tier operator that doesn't care about the climate as much, and guess what, a few months after that court ruling, Shell started divesting assets. They sold a refinery in Deer Park City to Pemex, so essentially we said, "Hey, Shell, we don't want you producing hydrocarbons, you have to cut emissions," and Shell says, "Okay, we're going to start divesting assets," and they divest it to Pemex, who if you don't know is Mexico's national oil company and does not have a great record of health and environmental and safety.
And so you look at moves like that and the second-order effects, and I don't think that that was a positive step for climate. I've done a lot of work for Shell in some of their biggest projects in the Gulf of Mexico and I can tell you right now, it is one of the most high-tech, top-tier and safety and environment-oriented operations, and so I think that that's a step back to have them start divesting assets to national oil companies, and so I look at that as a negative, second-order effect of rulings like that.
And something that I've been trying to dive into a little bit more and I'm nowhere near educated enough to really have a strong stance on it, but something I, I just... I find an interesting thought topic is the idea of carbon tax, and I think that on paper, it sounds great, but I don't have faith in governments to implement a carbon tax without it getting abused in some way or manners, but I do think that that's the way that, hey, that's how you kind of level the playing field for people in third-world countries, you say, "Hey, United States, you got to enjoy 100 plus years of prosperity that is directly correlated to having access to cheap and reliable energy, how can you deny that from us having that same thing?" I think that you might be able to alleviate that a little bit with carbon taxes, and I think that we are kind of moving in the direction of seeing carbon taxes, but again, like I haven't really put a ton of thought into that system yet, but, you know, I think... like I said, I think that there can be pros and cons.
I think if you look at some of the world's innovation today has come from governments, you know, pouring money into things that wouldn't have been economically feasible for private companies to do, so I see the benefit there, but I also think that we need to be careful in what we do, just kind of like that Shell example.
Jason Jacobs: Are there times in life where the right thing to do isn't necessarily the most short-term profitable thing to do?
Collin McLelland: Yeah, I would say so, but also our world is built on economic markets, right, so, you know, when I look at climate technology specifically, I'm a big believer in superior products and superior economics win, and I also am very cognizant of, "Hey, if we allow free markets to operate, maybe we don't, we don't get there as fast as we should." So I think that to answer your question, yes, there are things that we should do that don't make sense short-term, but also we gotta do it in a way that's responsible because the government... I mean, I don't think this is a surprise to anyone, but the government's not always [laughs] the most efficient in doing those things, and, you know...
I, I saw a video... I don't know if you saw this video on Twitter yesterday of a clean coal plant getting demolished, and I think it was like something like $8 billion that the government had poured into that and it was a failure, and so they have a knack for burning capital in the pursuit of different types of projects, so yeah. You know, it's definitely... I kind of sit on both sides, like I, I see pros and cons of both.
Jason Jacobs: Well, picking up on a point you made earlier, you were talking about energy poverty and how, you know, if we just rushed off of fossil fuels, then we would be leaving people without that access to basic electricity high and dry, and they would suffer, and it's not fair, and I guess coming back around to that point, you know, it's the people in developed nations, it's the Western countries who have been the primary emitters, yet the people who will be the first to bear the wrath of a change in climate are the people that contributed the least to it and have the least resources to adapt or to have resilient infrastructure or things like that, and so if you just let more market forces run, I mean, isn't that unjust to the same people that not factoring in energy poverty is unjust to, and why doesn't that bother you as much as it does when you're talking about transitioning off of hydrocarbons?
Collin McLelland: Yeah, I think that's a thing for me, is like when you look at all of these policies, the people that are always affected are people of lower income, right, of lower-middle class to anyone that's in, in poverty, and so when I look at the energy transition and... you know, like one thing that...
I know some people on the climate side and like some of my climate tech founders, like they don't like to focus on energy consumption, but like what I look at is, like look at Microsoft Xbox network and how much energy it consumes, and if you look at like little things like that, overall, our energy consumption in America has just skyrocketed, right, of electronics that are continuously plugged into our house, meanwhile, these billions of people around the world, you know, you mentioned that they lose electricity, they didn't even have electricity in the [laughs] first place, I mean, these people are... they're as poor as poverty as it gets, and so for me, I try to be cognizant of like, "Hey, I was born as a White male in the United States, I won the lottery [laughs] when it comes to, you know, just genetics and where I was born into in," and I try to think about people all across the world in that manner, and I don't think that... it's hard for me to be in their shoes and to like really understand how they think, right?
Like one, I think that we as a developed nation should be on the forefront of science and technology and figuring out issues like climate change, but also how could we sit there and tell someone in rural China or India or Pakistan or wherever it may be that, "Oh, hey, no, you can't burn fossil fuels to have the luxury of taking a hot shower or making dinner because we messed up the planet?" And I think that's a really tough... it's a really tough subject to quantify and wrap our heads around, but I can't get in the shoes of someone in one of those developed nations, but I do think that we have an obligation to use our resources and our technology and science to figure out solutions while also being cognizant and realizing that we need to lend a hand up to other nations.
Jason Jacobs: So rather than asking you, you know, if you could wave a magic wand and, and have the transition play out in the ideal way, I'm gonna attempt to just describe what I think your answer is based on what I've heard from you so far, and then you can just correct me where I, where I get it wrong, but it sounds like, look, climate change is a problem, but it's overblown, and it's still a problem, but it's just not as dire or as urgent as a lot of these experts are saying that it is. Energy is critical, and first and foremost, we wanna make sure that we have abundant energy to fuel the lifestyles that we've grown accustomed to, and to help lift others up into those lifestyles that haven't been in them already. Government should stay out of the way, largely, and just let the market forces do its job and then we'll transition when we transition.
Collin McLelland: Yeah, I think on the government point, I don't have a strong position on that, of whether government gets involved or not. I'll tell you like my ideal, my ideal scenario for energy, I'd like to elaborate on that a little bit. So I think, you know, my ideal energy power mix for the world moving forward in the future, let's call it next 20 to 50 years, is we really spend a lot of time in distributed energy with solar panels and battery technology deployed across homes, apartments, small commercial buildings. I, I can tell you right now, I'm looking at doing that at my house in Texas because I believe that Texas is going to continue to have grid problems over the next few years, so I wanna be able to have access to sustainable energy, so look, I'm gonna set up a solar and battery grid at my house, so I think that that's the future.
I think that electric vehicles are the future in terms of being a better product, so, you know, we can essentially displace any emissions from internal combustion engines and gasoline there. In a perfect world, I think natural gas is the, the transition fuel if you look at... like let's take Amazon, for example, Amazon is working on electrifying their short-route fleet, so all of their delivery vehicles are being electrified and their long-haul vehicles are CNG, compressed natural gas, 'cause we're just so far away from electric vehicle on long-haul trips, so they're using compressed natural gas because the emissions over diesel engines are significant. So really utilizing natural gas in those ways, and then adopting nuclear, nuclear fusion, and then, you know, hopefully in the future nuclear fusion, I hope that becomes a thing.
And so if you look at nuclear fusion, Jason, I think that comes back to like your point of governments' involvement, like governments really need to be behind a technology like fusion and dumping money into that because, you know, it's not gonna be economic for a long time, and so the R and D in that needs to be pursued, and it's gonna be governments and universities that are doing that, right, so for me, that's kind of like what ideal power mix looks like and then continuing to build out wind. And you know, I'm not as big of a fan in commercial solar arrays, I think solar makes perfect sense in distributed networks like on houses, like I said, I don't think it makes sense on a commercial aspect. Wind turbines, I do think makes sense, so I'd love to see big commercial wind farms in that mix and then distributed solar across houses, and then I think that you do that and that leads to significant change in carbon emissions.
And then you talk about what we're doing on the carbon sequestration side, you know, whether it's... I think it may be a little over-hyped right now, but I've got some like really smart [laughs] friends that are working on that side. You know, one of my buddies, Moji, over at Cemvita, he's working on taking CO2 that we've captured from the atmosphere and turning it into ethylene, which is a feedstock, and so literally taking CO2 and then reconverting it into energy.
And so for me, I think on the climate topic, I look towards innovation to solve all problems, and, you know, I think that we can do that in the energy space. And it's gonna take, it's gonna take some education in the market to get people comfortable with natural gas and nuclear, but that is a material step change, one, if we can get off of coal as a whole and get coal out of the mix. I mean, we're not making any impact if we're still [laughs] generating a significant portion of our energy from coals, so that's how I think about it. You know, I really think about things from the energy aspect because that's what I know and that's what I'm passionate about, and also cognizant of, "Hey, we have models on climate change, you know, we need to act fast," but I think humans ultimately win, I think that we figure things out and I'm very optimistic in our ability to do that.
Jason Jacobs: And how does your perspective align with your peers that come from traditional oil and gas, is it representative, or are you too climate for oil and gas and too oil and gas for climate?
Collin McLelland: [laughs] That's a, that's a great question. You know, I think there's a lot of people like me, like I'll tell you, you know, the other night I at dinner with a couple of petroleum engineers who were just, you know, so giddy about their Teslas that they had on order waiting for 'em to be delivered, and again, you know, it came back to Tesla being just a superior product. So I think there's a lot of people like me, I won't say that I'm necessarily representative of the whole, I don't think that that's ever good to have a blanket statement like that, and, you know, I think in oil and gas, like what I've seen...
You know, I have a ton of climate tech founders, right, so I'm fortunate that I get to see both sides and interact with both sides, and I think in oil and gas, you do have some on the far side of the spectrum that, you know, they're climate deniers or they think that renewables are a scam, things of that nature, and then you go to the other side of the spectrum in climate, you have idealists that don't take into consideration the implications of the energy industry, you know, like I've discussed on this podcast of, if we were to get rid of oil and gas today, what would happen, and so the people that I like talking to and actually building things with, typically sit in the middle of [laughs] that spectrum, and those are the types of people that I think are gonna figure this out.
Jason Jacobs: Awesome. Anything I didn't ask that I should have or any parting words?
Collin McLelland: Man, I don't, I don't think so. You know, I love what you guys are doing at My Climate Journey, I really love, you know, seeing a focus on things outside of energy that- that's kind of opened up my eyes to... you know, a lot of people like yourself are wanting to come from tech or consumer or wha- whatever industry it may be to work on climate, and, you know, my first thought was always the energy industry, but seeing that there's ways for those people to help out in other industries, you know, whether it's material sciences or whatever it may be, I find that to be super interesting, so keep up the good work and doing what you're doing and telling stories, and we'll be over here figuring out the world's energy problems.
Jason Jacobs: Sounds good. Well, let's definitely make this an ongoing dialogue. I learned a lot, you gave me a bunch to think about, and looking forward to tracking your progress and evolution and for you to do the same as I'm continuing to learn every day.
Collin McLelland: Yeah, thanks Jason, I appreciate you man.
Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here, thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co, note that is ".co" not ".com," someday we'll get the ".com" but right now ".co." You can also find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes, the lawyers made me say that. Thank you.
