I had no interest in playing chess until my son asked me about it after watching an episode of Bluey.
Thank goodness he has no idea what he’s doing, because soon he’ll be killing me.
Time is on his side.

There are only so many stories you can tell, whether in fiction or in business.
In fiction, we have the hero’s journey, and stories of betrayal, romance, redemption, etc.
In business, you have only so may stories as well. Maybe your product saves money, time, or lives. But its value proposition is likely not as unique as you think.
How can you hope to stand out if we’re all telling the same stories over and over?
Style. Aesthetics. It’s not what you say, but how you say it.
This is true of fiction. And business as well.
Mid-2023 state of energy 🎙️
Just taking a moment to reflect where we are in our energy needs in the middle of 2023, with the help of micro.blog’s Wavelength app
Transcript
So as I’m gearing up to get back into oil and gas/energy, I’ve been hearing a couple of themes repeated over the last few days.
One is that oil production will peak in 2030.
A lot of logic is that the Permian will have peaked and we will have drilled most of our prime locations. This makes sense.
You always drill your prime locations first to get that return immediately and impress your shareholders. Also, you’re gonna get less from wells right now. There’s gonna be higher degradation, less initial production right off the bat, and we’re drilling less just in general.
So if that all remains the same, yeah, it checks out.
Another thing I’ve been hearing repeated is that by 2030 at least 35% of all new vehicles will be electric. Maybe higher than 50%.
This is at a time when we’re pushing for renewable energy, notably solar, and all these different types of energy will be fighting for the same precious metals, which we will need to increase four, five times, six times as much, depending on what exactly you’re talking about.
So what are the environmental concerns of that? Mining those minerals. Not just environmental, also political, and how exactly are we going to get those minerals so fast and make everything we need out of them?
Energy is going to be a big problem in coming years, and it’s one that we need to get right.
Going back to the Stone Ages is not the answer. That doesn’t really benefit anyone. And trying to keep developing nations from using energy to grow into the new world is also not an option. It’s also very hypocritical of us, already developed, to expect them to stay stagnant.
While people’s perception of nuclear is changing and becoming more positive, the unfortunate fact is that nuclear takes a long time to get online. So even if we started today, we probably would not have enough nuclear to really make a difference by the coming of the next decade.
So what we have to accept is that every energy solution comes with trade-offs. There is no easy solution, so we have to be mindful about what trade-offs we’re willing to make and to be honest about the consequences.
Again, there just is no easy way where everyone wins 100%, and we have to find that right balance because, again, this is too important not to get right.
Mic check 🎙️
I dropped $10 on the micro.blog Premium subscription. So I might as well see if I can get a podcast/microcast going.
Transcript
Mic check, mic check.
This is Jake LaCaze.
Hard to believe it was only early last year that I was announcing to y’all that I was leaving oil and gas and trying my hand at marketing.
It was fun for a while, until it wasn’t.
Now I’m headed back into oil and gas.
Well, I’m really kind of headed back into energy, though oil and gas will be my immediate job responsibilities.
It’s an exciting time to be back in the energy space: Oil and gas is embracing other forms of energy. They’re no longer standing on their own.
It’s kind of like we’re all in this together. We know what’s ahead. We know what the stakes are.
We’ve got to figure it out.
Getting our energy portfolio right won’t be easy.
There are challenges that lie ahead, but with challenges come opportunities.
Necessity is the mother of invention. We’re at a time where we need innovation wherever we can find it.
That’s the journey I see myself on in the coming future, looking at the whole of energy and trying to figure it out and see what fits where and just exactly can we fix the problems we have ahead in a pragmatic way that benefits all involved.
So if you’re interested, come along.
Let’s figure this out together.