What The Funk?

0:00 Ladies and gentlemen, listeners of what the funk we're back with Jay Mac.

0:08 I guess I never called you that before. But now you're doing that.

0:14 I'll take it. Nice. We got, we got Jordan McGee checking in from Minnesota today. Not, not a Minnesota guy. Well, I guess maybe now I could classify you as now the oil and gas hub of the twin

0:29 cities,

0:31 which are you guys like the only oil and gas company based in Minnesota? There's a couple of smaller shops, but, um, but yeah, I think we're, we, we make up the, the lion's share of the

0:44 activity up here. Like geographically though, you're not that far from the Bakken. Like

0:52 it could be possible. I guess the bigger issue is, is just like, people who know oil and gas that actually live there, right? You're not in, okay, see you're not in Denver, you're not in

1:00 Houston, Dallas, Midland, Pittsburgh, even. So how do you find people, right? Which is sort of why you ended up there, right? Moving to Minnesota, right? But we'll get into all of that here.

1:13 I've been a little bit more inconsistent lately with recording the podcast, which I hate. That's just truly a product of travel. I really try to record every Friday, but it becomes super difficult

1:26 to do that when I'm on the road. And then I don't wanna travel with my microphone and with my light ring and all that stuff. So anyways, been a little bit slower, but we're here today in Jordan,

1:39 really, really thrilled to have you on. We met, she's 10 years ago at this point when you were in OKC at Warwick. We were young bucks, now we're veterans of the game. So I'll ask you the

1:51 question that I always ask to my guests is who are you, man? Who is Jordan McKee?

1:57 Yeah, thanks, Jeremy. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me and I was trying to remember the first time we met Yeah, ten years at least

2:08 I know we have overlapped in a lot of different areas, but I'm glad we've stayed in touch and now we can Take our friendship public

2:21 This is yeah, so who is Jordan McGee? I mean first and foremost I've got a great wife. I have two small daughters four-year-old and an eight-month-old. So

2:35 I'm still in the throes of it and You know, I Love to travel as much as I absolutely can I think My bucket list accomplishment was I really wanted to see and experience all seven continents and was

2:51 able to accomplish that a few years ago So

2:56 Yeah, absolutely love to travel, love to try new foods, try new drinks. I'm the guy at the table that will order the cocktail that comes out in the smoking dome and all of my friends are rolling

3:10 their eyes. But that's who I am. And then professionally, I'm the vice president of land technology at Northern oil and gas. We are the largest publicly traded non-op oil and gas company. And

3:28 like you said, we are based in the twin cities just outside of Minneapolis. Well, there's plenty of stuff that we could talk for a long time about. I didn't know, I know that you like to travel.

3:39 We've actually talked about that before in one of our just informal discussions. You've hit all seven continents. And now I've got questions. What's your favorite? What's your favorite place that

3:49 you've ever traveled to outside of the US?

3:53 I mean, that's an impossible question, right? But I think we absolutely fell in love with Africa. We went to the wine country of South Africa. It was breathtaking, beautiful. I mean, a really

4:12 amazing experience. And I think my wife, I give her a lot of credit. She's very patient with me When we first got married, I'd done a lot of traveling before we met. And so when we got married,

4:28 she was interested in traveling, but hadn't done as much. So she was thinking, you know, maybe Paris, maybe London. And I was like, no, I've already been there. Next on my list is, you know,

4:42 Safari and Zambia. So

4:46 we've gotten to go to some amazing places And

4:51 I, you know, If anything, it just reminds me how many more amazing places there are left to visit. It's, I like that. And was it Franz Schuch? Is that where you went? Yes, good job. So I

5:07 haven't traveled a ton. I mean, I've traveled a lot domestically, but my appetite has been fairly wedded from international travel more recently. When I did go to London in Paris, funny that you

5:19 mentioned those, which I liked London and I love Paris That's a longer conversation. But one of my wife's friends, now my close friends, started a biotech company in Cape Town, South Africa.

5:35 This is, I don't know, they must have moved there, 2006, something like that. I think they got a grant from the South African government and it was higher our, You know, but. biologists and

5:49 scientists to work at your company, and we'll give you some grant money to start the company here. So we went down and visited them for a couple of weeks in 2008, and they sort of put together like,

6:03 okay, you're here for two weeks, like this is your day-to-day agenda. And one of the weekends, we went to Wine Country, went to Francic, and that was awesome, obviously. Went to Gonsbye as

6:15 well, which is like the ocean, that's where like a lot of people go in like the shark cages. Oh, nice. And then for the second week, we went on Safari in Kruger National Park, which was super

6:29 fun. So yeah, that was really neat. Obviously it's like a long trip to get there. It takes like a full 24 hours, maybe more. And I remember by the end, my wife was just like, we just love each

6:43 other so much right now, don't we? sitting on an airplane for 32 hours together. But that's that's super cool. And I'm glad that you sort of pointed to to that one So like when you do travel,

6:57 right? do you Like like what do you like to do? Is it just like immerse yourself in the local culture? Do you like to stay in cities? Are you more of like an Airbnb on the countryside type of guy

7:10 like like what's your what's your strategy for international travel?

7:16 I've so I think there's an important distinction between vacation and travel, right? So a lot of people will go on vacation where they just want to sit at the resort pool for five days and never

7:28 leave and I Am don't have the patience for that. I sit at the beach for two hours. I say, okay, we've been there done that. What's next? So I To a fault will kind of over program everything and

7:44 try to pack in as much as I possibly can in the limited time that we have. You know,

7:52 I think the most recent trip that we went on, we did a little bit of winery visits in Chile. And the hotel that we were booking all this through was like, okay, you know, we've got this optional

8:08 excursion program, you can go visit

8:13 a winery. No, no, no, no, no. All the wineries, we can stitch together in an eight-hour period. And, you know, maybe they were right. Maybe that was a little too much, but we had a lot of

8:22 fun. And yeah, I got to see as much as we possibly could while we were there. Love it, love it. So let's go back further, right, to your upbringing. Are you from Oklahoma? Are you from

8:35 Oklahoma City? Is that your background? Yep, Edmond, Oklahoma. Edmond, Oklahoma. So oil and gas had surrounded you a little bit like, you know, uh, like it does when you're from a place like

8:47 Oklahoma. The oil wells aren't that far. You go into Oklahoma City, which Edmund is a suburb of. You see the big companies, right? You've got Devon, you've got Continental, you've got

8:58 Chesapeake, you have spin-offs from those companies. So I'm guessing just based on your age and the timing of all this, you kind of saw some of that boom with Aubrey McClendon and some of these

9:08 companies starting to grow. Where'd you go to school and did you know you wanted to get into oil and gas from a younger age?

9:16 When to school at OU, did

9:19 not necessarily expect that I would end up in oil and gas. Like you said, it was omnipresent, but

9:28 when I was actually in high school, I had a family friend that gave me an opportunity to start running titles So this was when I was 16 and I was trying out to push Matahaha County in Oklahoma and

9:45 running stand up title in the courthouse, taking notes on the yellow legal pad, and not to show my age too much. This was before digital cameras. I remember the first time somebody brought a

9:60 digital camera into the courthouse, and what an uproar that caused that people were now getting to take home images of the documents for free, rather than paying a dollar per page, like the county

10:12 had been used to charging. So, yeah, I was running title every summer and winter all throughout high school and college. And when I graduated, I ended up going full-time with that brokerage and

10:31 worked there for a couple of years. Got a ton of great experience. This was, like you said, the peak

10:39 shale boom. We were doing some, scouting projects, the double top secret probation my boss would come in and tell me to pack a bag for a week. And he would tell me where I was going the next day.

10:57 And got to go all over the country, checking records, helped set up a field office in Ohio before the year to go was really known about So yeah, I got a ton of really great experiences and then

11:16 kind of never looked back, just continued on in the oil and gas career. So you're a land guy. Like that's, you know, I tend to put people in buckets. I classify you as a land guy, even though

11:28 you're sort of like, your title actually is perfect for you because you are a tech forward land guy. And I think part of that is just, you know, like you said, You grew up seeing things the way

11:41 they used to be done, and now you've really leaned into an embrace.

11:46 The advantage is the technology can give to you, but a lot of land people are also lawyers. Did you consider law school at any point?

11:57 I did, 'cause you have a liberal arts degree as well, right? I do, yeah, a history major. Yeah, I was an English major. So the intent was to go to law school. I thought I was gonna get a few

12:11 years of work experience and then circle back. And once I started having fun in the industry, I just, all gas, no brakes, didn't wanna stop. Yeah, yeah, I mean, one of my friends, Steven

12:27 Hatcher, he's come on this podcast. He's the minerals guy for those people out there. He's created a nice persona and brand for himself. He is a lawyer, but he grew up in Louisiana, so he's been

12:39 around oil and gas And it's pretty cool to see like the versatility of that. resource, right? 'Cause I think of him as a land guy, minerals guy, then he's like, oh, yeah, some of your

12:49 contracts, I can review that to him, like, right, okay, you're used to reading contracts all the time, you're also a lawyer, he's like, right.

12:56 So that's neat. So then we met, like we said 10 years ago, shout out Marsha Vihal. She was at, I guess I was energy navigator, if you navigator at the time, we had like a pretty strict

13:09 agreement, like she would refer me in places where I couldn't sell the AFE workflow, because she had to get those deals, but then after she sold it, she'd be like, hey, there's other stuff you

13:20 can do, so meet Jordan, he's awesome. So set us up, we started to get to know each other, Warwick was like really small. To talk a little bit about Warwick, like what it was like back then,

13:30 and what is Warwick? I know they're still around, and know it's kind of a prominent company. I think some international, but primarily in Oklahoma City, how did you end up going to Warwick, and

13:42 what was that company all about?

13:46 Yeah, so after the brokerage experience, I did a stint at Chesapeake like most people in Oklahoma City did.

13:58 Yeah, that was really my second, that was my grad school was going to Chesapeake

14:05 And it was early 2014, the first wave of restructuring and management turnover at Chesapeake was occurring and

14:24 Chesapeake was a big company, but it had always run like a small company. And with this new management team, they were really trying to enforce a lot more big company policies and procedures and

14:37 formalities. I realized that I don't think that that's necessarily. My, what I'm cut out for, I prefer smaller companies where I can measure my impact. I can see

14:54 the value that I add. And so when I heard about Warwick, they were early on, like you mentioned, I think I was in the top, or the first 15 hires, and

15:11 they were still closing their first or second acquisition and needed a lot of help organizing that. So I jumped in there, like you said, they're still around, they're doing great things. It was

15:26 2014 when I joined. And if you remember kind of how, what was happening in the industry towards the end of 2014, we had some challenging years ahead of us, but give a lot of credit to Kate

15:41 Richards.

15:43 managed to still grow and

15:50 acquire new assets all throughout those next few years. And I helped onboard all those acquisitions, learned a lot about finance from her and the others at Warwick, had a great team helping me

16:07 implement new land systems, building out ways to more efficiently acquire any great assets, and then was there until I made the switch over to Northern.

16:24 So was Warwick an operator? Was this a non-operator investment firm? What were they? Are they?

16:37 They were both the PE sponsor and the management team. Kate would raise the money directly and then we would acquire the assets and manage them. So at the time, most of the time that I was there,

16:51 we were non-op focused. They have pivoted from that a little bit and have also diversified into more real estate. Like you said, I think they now have some European real estate holdings as well.

17:05 So you really dug deep into the non-op, right? Chesapeake obviously had a bit of everything, a huge operator, like I'm thinking the time you were there. They must have still had 50 plus rigs

17:15 running, drilling in various different basins. And then you go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum, more non-op focused, a lot smaller. And you were there for quite a while. And then

17:27 somehow this opportunity comes up and you end up in Minnesota. So talk to me a little bit about like the thought process. Like what was this like? Did you have kids yet? I'm thinking you were

17:39 married. big move. You're an Oklahoma kid. You've lived in Oklahoma. It sounds like your whole life, right? And then boom, all of a sudden, here's this random NOG out of Minnesota. And we

17:52 want you to work for us. And oh, by the way, we want you to move here. Like, talk to me about how did this transpire? And like, what was your thought process? Were you excited about it? Were

18:01 you scared about it? Do you have kids? Like, talk to me about this move

18:07 Yeah, it was a recruiter on LinkedIn found me and

18:13 this, you know, I already mentioned I love to travel. So if I've never been to Minnesota and if somebody offers me a free trip up to Minnesota, I'm going to take it. So at the time, it was kind

18:27 of nothing more than that. And

18:30 I was married, I did have our daughter at the time was about a year and a half. And it was really just being impressed by the senior leadership and the company, what they were trying to do and the

18:50 aspirations, what I felt like we could accomplish together.

18:54 And so you go up to Minnesota, right? You do the interview, you're impressed with the people. You're open to travel, but this is a move, right? This is a substantial move. You've never been to

19:04 Minnesota before, right? So you go up there, you do this interview Did you go up again and make the decision you were going to move there? How did your wife take this?

19:15 Went up for the interview, brought my wife with me, we spent the weekend.

19:21 We got a little bit of cold feet when it was spring break in Oklahoma, and we were, you know, which is basically summer in Oklahoma. And we are flying into Minnesota and are looking out the plane

19:34 window and see ice still on all the lakes and thinking. Oh, what have we done? But yeah, had a great visit that first weekend. I was really impressed by the area and

19:51 thought that the company was a really exciting opportunity and poised to do great things. Yeah, that's cool. I've been up there once and it was in the summer, and it was just awesome. The weather

20:03 never got above 75 degrees We went out on some boats on the lake, played some golf, went to a wedding. It was spectacular. It actually reminded me a little bit of where I grew up in New Hampshire,

20:17 where you deal with super cold, long, gray winters, but the reward for that is then what you get in the late spring, summer, and early fall, where it's like there's very few other places I'd

20:32 rather be, right? So it's like you have to put in that time to get the other time. And now right now, it's probably getting like - Really hot in Oklahoma, and you're like this is kind of nice

20:41 here, right? This is this is my time to brag. Yeah

20:45 You know, I didn't expect because in Oklahoma you've got Summer which is brutally hot and then winter is just kind of gray and rainy and I didn't expect to fall in love with the four seasons of

21:01 Minnesota as much as I have so you know Autumn getting the first the first year we were here for autumn I thought oh no the leaves are starting to turn we have a trip planned We're gonna be gone for a

21:16 week and come back and we'll have missed it I didn't know that Minnesota fall actually lasts for a proper two months three months And it's all about the apple orchards and fire pits It's a good time,

21:32 but you know, I'm sure you can relate coming from the Northeast It's fun to have snow on Christmas, and we've always loved getting the white Christmas. What they didn't tell me is that there would

21:46 also be snow on Easter, which we're still getting used to.

21:52 Yeah, the snow's nice, the cold, not as much, but you do make a really good point about the four seasons. And I think for me growing up with four seasons, when I decided, I guess when I was a

22:03 young adult, to move somewhere, like I did want warmer weather than what I grew up with, but I still wanted four seasons and Colorado has that, right? We've got a true four seasons. Fall's

22:14 probably a little bit shorter than I would like, but I just feel like if you do get used to that, you get used to having the occasional snow day, that it's hard to get away from that. You know, I

22:24 mean, I'm sure you just get used to it wherever you're at, but it's like, where do you get these random breaks from if your weather's good all the time, right? I want a snow day Yeah, the.

22:35 the opportunities that it opens up. I mean, like you said, in the summer, it's all about boat life and going out on the lakes and taking walks along the shorelines. And then in the winter, it's

22:49 a completely different world outside. They're doing big festivals out on the frozen lake. There's cross country skiing, ice fishing, you know,

23:05 it's a completely different world outside. Pond hockey, ice fishing, stuff that doesn't happen in Oklahoma, I'm going to guess, right? For sure.

23:17 Let's talk, let's talk NOG for a second, right? So, so your background, I think at, at Warwick and Chesapeake, and even when you were like in high school, prepared you well for a, you know,

23:27 a large, non-op position company like you took with, with NOG. What has it been like since you've been there? Has the company grown substantially? Like are you one of the only people that they've

23:41 moved out from other places? Or has this been somewhat of a theme where they say, Hey, we want to stay here in Minnesota. We're going to grab people from other patch cities. Is the thesis

23:53 generally the same as it was when you went there is just kind of growth at all costs? Like give me a bit of a sense of like culturally and then I guess organizationally what you've seen in your time

24:04 there.

24:06 Yeah, the thesis is really to grow the production disproportionately to growing the headcount. So we have grown a little bit. I mean, but we're still only 40 employees, company-wide, and doing

24:19 120,

24:22 000 BOE per day. So I mean, we've got a lot of assets, 10, 000 wells, 250, 000 med acres. We have a lot that we're managing and trying to leverage technology rather than just hiring more

24:40 headcount. Yeah, and on the moving front, so who else did they grab other people from other oil cities? Are you the only one? We've, most of the recent hires have relocated, yeah. Yeah, yeah,

24:55 which I buy, right? And I'm sure most people like it too, right? It's a change of pace And like you said, that's sort of four seasons approach. So you're a VP of LandTech, which is not an

25:09 overly common title, I'll be honest. Did you negotiate that you wanted that title? No, don't just make me the head of land. I wanna be the head of land technology. Let's make sure that we put

25:19 that in there. And why is that like, it's, I mean, I kinda can guess the answer, right? If you're not gonna grow through headcount, then you're likely gonna grow through technology adoption,

25:32 right? So like, what does - What does that mean? Like, what is the job of a VP of land tech? What do you do?

25:40 Yeah, I mean, it's,

25:45 you're right, it is a an unconventional title, but when I

25:53 joined, which this is about three years ago, the company was at

26:00 a pivotal moment where they had historically been bocking only and had been doing a lot of things in a way that made sense when your assets are exclusively in one basin, but it was a lot of Excel, a

26:20 lot of email, and the management team, as they started to look at acquiring assets in the Marcellus, in the Permian

26:34 recognized a need for more modernization. And so that's where I stepped in and started to reconsider some of these legacy processes and how could we accomplish this aim or more with

26:54 more technology, less people. And with land, like at least my understanding of it, it's document heavy, right? So you've got leases and you've got title and you've got lots of paperwork. Does

27:07 that lead you to maybe being on the forefront a little bit more when it comes to AI? Like, I don't know, I deal mostly just with digital, but if you're dealing with paper more, like do you feel

27:19 like that lends itself to actually embracing this whole AI trend in terms of like, well, we're not gonna add more people to do the physical process stuff. We have to be on the cutting edge of this

27:33 We are, I mean, look, with any new technology, we're taking a measured approach. Right now we're focusing really heavily making sure the foundational pieces are rock solid. So

27:51 AI is only going to be helpful if your data is good to start with, but we are

28:00 certainly,

28:04 looking at it heavily and starting to test applications for it, this whole generative AI. I mean, I know it's, I think people are starting to get sick of hearing about it so much, but

28:18 it is

28:20 going to be, the people who are ignoring it are going to be left behind for sure. Like maybe people are sick of, hearing about it. But like, you could probably have set that in like the mid 90s

28:31 about the internet. Like, all right, enough with this whole internet fatter. I just give me my newspaper, right? Yeah. And get out of my way. And look what's happened. I could see something

28:41 similar happening with AI. This is not a trend. It's not a fat. It's not going to go away. In fact, it's only going to continue to improve. We're in like the bottom of the first inning or

28:51 something like that as it as it comes to AI, at least as I see it. And I do see a lot of application On the the land side, like it just fundamentally makes a lot of sense. Yeah, you scan a

29:04 document, right? Comes off the computer, have your AI algorithm kind of do a quick read through and tell you what the document says. Like that's kind of nice, right? That's like mimicking a

29:13 human task and saving a lot of time.

29:17 So just sort of one small example of what that could could look like

29:22 You know, question for you on kind of operated versus versus non-op. Like you've seen both. Like culturally, are there big differences between like a true non-op focus company versus an operated

29:36 company? Is it just sort of all like one in the same? Like tell me a little bit about some of the similarities or differences if you see any in working for an operated company versus a non-op.

29:47 They're pros and cons. I mean, there are certainly aspects that are

29:55 easier or more straightforward when you're only dealing with non-op assets, but then there are other challenges that are unique to non-op. We don't have

30:10 direct control over the data that we receive. And so we're aggregating and we have over 100 different operating partners. And so we're getting reports in potentially 100 different formats that we're

30:26 having to. or AFEs from all these different partners that we're having to assimilate and manage.

30:39 And then in order to have the same production volumes, like I said, we have to buy a lot more assets. So the amount of data that we're dealing with is potentially five or 10 times as much as if we

30:58 were an operator. So

31:02 there are unique challenges, but I think that's also our opportunity because

31:16 we have ownership in so many wells. We have potentially more data, more visibility into the basin than anyone else We own in over half the horizontal wells in the bucket. And I don't think there's

31:24 anyone else who can say that.

31:27 No, so interesting, so you kind of like, if I'm reverse engineering this, understand a lot about a lot of different operators based on what you receive from them, right? I mean, I would think

31:40 that that's kind of a unique place to be as a company, where then maybe you have your preferences of who you do want to work with or who you don't want to work with, even just based on how easy it

31:52 is to get a hold of information from some of those companies Like that to me, that's a little bit, it's unique and fascinating, right? It's almost in some ways like

32:03 what I've done in my career where yes, if you work for an operator, right? You're at one company, right? And you're sending out your revenue statements and you're sending out relevant information

32:11 but you're focused on your company. Whereas if you come in as a consultant or a salesperson, you're going to all these different companies, right? And you kind of get a different scope of the

32:21 whole ecosystem. And maybe get a little bit more information you would if you were just working for one single company. So that's neat. Like do you guys meet with other operators and spend time

32:34 with them and talk, like go to their operations where you have non-op interests or is it like much more hands-off than that?

32:45 All of the above. I mean, it depends on the nature of our ownership. We've been doing a lot of joint partnerships with operators where we have a more hands-on relationship with the assets and we've

33:01 also have more of what maybe most people think about with non-op where it's just a purely minority ownership that you're buying into. So it varies.

33:15 Got it, got it. So you're a publicly traded company. So I have to be careful the kinds of questions that I ask But as a publicly traded company, like. I'm curious, right? Like differences in

33:29 working at a publicly traded company in your role, right? Versus working at a privately funded, you know, oil and gas non-op company. Is it the same fundamentally for somebody like you, or is it

33:43 like significantly different by like, there are certain procedures and compliances that we have to follow that may have been slightly more loose in

33:51 non-public companies?

33:56 Largely the same. I mean, the investor money is still

34:04 the most important thing. So regardless of whether it's public or private, you're still held to a high standard in your controls and processes. From a public side, there is obviously living your

34:20 life quarter to quarter, not taking vacations when you know that these - certain reports are going to be due.

34:30 That's one difference, but largely, I would say it's the same. It has been a good learning experience to

34:40 have experience in both.

34:46 I've had people on from public companies, too, where it's slightly

34:53 different. There's a different level of approval. There might be a PR person, whereas a lot of these smaller private companies don't have that. But then there's also ideas and thoughts around like,

35:04 Hey, I don't know how many people are going to listen to this podcast a few hundred. Let's say four or five hundred people listen to this podcast. But if any of those people potentially are

35:13 investors, shareholders in your company, they don't want you to release the podcast around the same time of an earnings call, right? Like it's really kind of more tightly controlled from that

35:25 perspective. I don't get it. It's somebody's job. Want to hold anything down. We can't have any information getting out whatsoever, even though we keep it pretty vague.

35:34 But really interesting to me, like, what, you think my podcast is going to move the needle at all? It's like it doesn't matter, right? Like there's just checks and balances and things in place

35:42 that have to happen. I want to put you on the hot seat for a minute and not that I haven't for the last 35, but ask you some questions that maybe I hadn't prepared you for or just sort of get your

35:55 take on. So one that I love asking people is what advice would you give to your younger self? Like whether that's you at 18 or that's you at 21 or even 25, like, you know, wisdom is the greatest

36:12 teacher and I'm curious what you would tell younger Jordan McGee

36:20 Yeah, there's. probably a lot there, but I think one thing that I was afraid of early on, I didn't wanna close any doors to future opportunities. And so I was nervous

36:41 to specialize in any given area And I mean, nana land technology is about as niche as you can go. And it's been a great career. And I think the advice would be to not be afraid of specialization

37:05 and to be recognized as the subject matter expert in a given area Well, I would say that you've done that pretty successfully. Well done, you've got a title that only two other people have. I mean,

37:21 I could search Zoom info, but nonetheless.

37:25 In terms of like your stint in Minnesota, you think you're gonna be there for the next 20 years? Like are your kids gonna grow up and be like Minnesota kids? Or is like they're a tug on you to come

37:35 back to Oklahoma? Like you're, I'm assuming your wife's also from Oklahoma. My wife's from Oklahoma. She actually did a stint in Houston before we were married So she had to buy a completely new

37:47 wardrobe coming up here. But

37:51 yeah, I mean, our four year old said Oofda the other day. So she is definitely growing up pure blood, Minnesota.

38:03 And we certainly hope to be here for the long run. I think all the ingredients are there. So that's our goal. That's awesome. No, that's cool Where's the next place that you're going to travel

38:15 international?

38:18 Like I said, we just wrapped up South America. I gotta get there. So I don't know. Yeah, got me tips, any recommendations?

38:32 You're so much more like well traveled than I am. Like I had such a good time in Paris and London, but I think, you know, London was like more for work. Like that was a business trip And just due

38:45 to the difference in time zone, I was going in at the equivalent of two in the morning, Denver time, which is 9 am. in London, and working until whatever that is, 11 am. Denver time. So then I

39:00 would go back to my hotel and I'd be getting peppered with emails and text messages and stuff. So I started realizing, I'm like, ugh, this doesn't work. You can't work like two time zones, right?

39:09 'Cause then you're truly working 15 hour days I just don't do well with that. I think everybody has like their own capacity for what? they can do and be effective with. And I tend to top out, like

39:22 55, 60 hours a week. There's only so much time I can stare at a screen and be effective. Some people are workaholics. Like I've kind of had to accept like, I will definitely work hard. But at

39:33 some point, 55, 60 hours, it's like diminishing returns. So, you know, London was cool. But then I was just like, man, I gotta go to Paris. I wanna go check this out. So Paris was really

39:45 cool. And I think one of the things I like about it is I've always loved the Olympics, especially the summer Olympics. And Paris has the Olympics this year. So to see like the contrast between old,

39:58 'cause there's a lot of really old in Paris, whether it be buildings or museums or art. And then the new, which is like building brand new facilities and courts and bleachers and things for the

40:12 Olympics coming up, was like a really neat and cool contrast I think if I had more time. I probably had a little bit more East. I really want to go to Greece, right? So you could rabbit hole.

40:25 Have you been? Yeah, we did Athens and Santorini would love to get into some of the smaller islands, the lesser known, more authentic islands. Yeah,

40:41 I mean, I'm with you, man. My mom's side of my family is all Greek, right? So I came over from Greece or wherever they came from to get to Massachusetts. So my mom has been there a few times,

40:56 my dad's been there, even my younger sister's been there, I'm like, yeah, I need to get to Greece, right? I was even looking up flights to Athens on the flight back from London. I'm like, this

41:04 could be a problem I see where all my money could start to go.

41:09 Yeah.

41:12 I mean.

41:14 Parris is a great recommendation. And like I said, my wife is still itching to go. It's been a long time since I was there. I'd love to go back. Yeah, yeah. The Olympics should be awesome.

41:24 Just the like aesthetic visuals are gonna be, are gonna be tremendous. And you know, I'd never been to Japan. I would love to check out Japan, right? See that? Same, yeah.

41:38 That would be, that would be a ton of fun. So final question, right? Just want to throw this out to you.

41:48 You have pretty good insight into the oil and gas space, right? And as well as the technology space. Tell me like, what does the oil and gas industry look like in 10 years? We talk about

42:00 sustainability. We talk about, you know, the energy transition or energy addition. We talk about geothermal, talk about hydrogen.

42:12 I'm just kind of curious from a high-level perspective. Do you think it's gonna be similar to how it is now, sort of based on what you've seen? Or do you think like the composition of energy that's

42:25 provided to people will look substantially different? 'Cause 10 years is, believe it or not, kind of a long time.

42:34 gosh, that could be a whole different podcast.

42:40 And you know, if I,

42:44 if I could read the future, I think

42:49 I'd be in a completely different spot right now.

42:54 So I think there's a lot of interesting potential. I think oil and gas will definitely still be around. I think there's going to be a lot of

43:05 advancements in technology that allow the entire industry to be more efficient and tighten up controls. I know the ESG space is still very

43:20 acutely watched and I think that you'll see a lot of transformation continue in that area But, like you said, I know there are a lot of. other interesting potentials. I mean, the ones you

43:38 mentioned, Kimmer, if you mentioned Lithium too, I mean, there's a lot that's

43:45 that the same type of drilling and extraction technology or the same type of real asset management can translate to Yeah, good call on Lithium. I think for me, geothermal is incredibly interesting

44:06 right now, as it seems like there's a new geothermal company popping up like every day or at least every week. And my whole thought process is I get it. Like if you look at some of the companies

44:18 that are doing geothermal drilling, like fundamentally, it makes sense. My whole thing is like, how do you know where it is? Like it's a little bit different for oil and gas where you have these

44:29 like proven plays, right? It's a longer running industry. Geothermal though, like where's the data, right? Like there's not like the whatever, IHS or in Paris for geothermal data, I don't

44:40 think, right? So there's probably an opportunity on the tech side there. How do you know where to go? You just go near a volcano or something? Like for me, maybe I'm just not smart enough to

44:49 fully understand it, but how do you know where this geothermal resource is, you know? I'm not looking for an answer for you, but I'm just curious to me, it seems like it's harder to find.

45:02 Yeah, I think you

45:05 just identified your next guest. You gotta find somebody, somebody on the geology side that's really chasing this stuff. You know, from my perspective, I feel like my responsibility is managing

45:16 whatever assets we acquire. So, you know,

45:20 they're all real assets and. It's my job to figure out a way to keep track of the contractual rights and obligations associated with whatever type of energy or assets we acquire. Yeah, so that's,

45:36 that's fun, right? Without revealing what NOGs are, it's totally possible that all of a sudden, something hits your radar and you're like, well, this is different. Okay. I'm going to need to

45:46 find a way to manage this right here. This is not as traditional, but that's, that's, I think some of the fun stuff that you have going from a, you know, a future standpoint. Jordan, where can

45:57 people find you? Where can they find your company, you know, Northern and Jordan McGee? Where you at?

46:05 Yeah, I'm available on LinkedIn. Like I said, we are a small team, but we are, I'm hiring in my team right now. So I would love people who are interested in learning more to reach out to me

46:21 directly and then our. our website, energyinkcom and New York Stock Exchange energy. There you go. Well, Jordan, I really appreciate you coming on. I know this is your first podcast, which I

46:37 always love. I love getting people on for the first time. You did a nice job. And I also want to thank you for kind of your openness in terms of A, exploring new technologies and then B, being

46:51 open about what some of the challenges are with specific technology solutions and broadly within the energy space. So my advice to you is just to continue down that path of exploring new technology

47:05 and finding better ways to do things, because you truly are the VP of land technology for the oil and gas industry.