What The Funk?

0:06 Hi, man. Hi, man. Hi, man. Hi, man. I had to make sure to listen to that, too, on your LinkedIn profile to make sure I didn't get it right. People say, Hannahman, it's actually Hannahman.

0:17 You can do that on LinkedIn. Pronounce your name so that the world knows how to pronounce it, and mine is that What percentage of people do you think call you Hannahman versus Hannahman and just

0:29 aren't sure?

0:33 If they've never met me, everyone. Really? Unless they have a German background or some other reason

0:43 to assume that it might be pronounced Hannahman. Most people see it as Hannahman. But then once they meet me, then it's Hannahman. Then they know Yeah, not Hannahman

0:52 like Cineman. Hannahman like Hannahkin. Like Hannahkin zeroes.

1:00 very good. I don't know if you probably don't drink on alcoholic beers. You probably drink beers with alcohol in them. But since I've been sober now for a little bit, I don't know, nine and a

1:09 half months or so, you're always on a search for like the best NA beers. And I think that my favorite is Heineken zeroes, which is ironic because I don't like Heineken's. I like Heinemann. I

1:20 don't like Heineken.

1:23 There are some zero flavored beers that are not bad. Actually, so my favorite story, but before we kind of dive into anything else about zero flavored beer, in college, we had a system dynamics

1:34 project where we had to design a machine that had a feedback loop and you had to control the feedback loop. And so we opted to do a beer pouring machine that poured the perfect beer. So you really

1:49 roll how much head you had on your beer. Of course, but we're doing this on campus with you know school materials and. got approval from the project, but their one qualification was like, well,

2:02 it can't be alcoholic beer. We can't have you guys chugging beers in the lab non-stop. Really? We did sample a bunch of non-alcoholic beers while we were building that. Well, that was a while ago,

2:15 and I know that it's gotten better since then. Yeah, nay beers are like the thing now. Look at Athletic. They got this whole amazing company built around it, and I swear you wouldn't know the

2:27 difference in flavor. Some of them are excellent. But Mark Heinemann, I am excited to have you on. You know, I wanted to have you on when Tim was here, I was a sponsor for one of the young

2:42 professionals in energy. Happy hours, you had me come on your podcast. When anybody does that, I like to return the favor, have you on ours, get to know you a little bit better. But I've always

2:52 found you to be very genuine, very authentic, very.

2:57 unconcerned with how people view you while still maintaining like a great level of respect within within our industry and within your your kind of core friend group. So who are you dude? I know

3:09 you're from Western Colorado. Why don't you give our listeners a chance to know who is Mark Haggad?

3:17 Thanks Jeremy.

3:20 That's very kind kind of you kind of words. Yeah, I like to say I've got my work face and I've got my non-work face. But also I like to be genuine. So the the short story is yeah licensed

3:31 professional engineer kind of technically minded but I also enjoy writing and I'm kind of personable. I love meeting new people and getting out and networking. I grew up in Western Colorado in a

3:43 small town called Rangeli for listeners that maybe unaware Rangeli is a small oil field town and so grew up working in the patch working for my dad. He owned his own natural gas company, and it

3:54 basically told me that I knew. I never wanted to work at oil and gas since I'm like to school to learn about

4:01 energy technologies. And then as soon as I, or halfway through school, I got an internship with an energy company that happened to be an oil and gas company.

4:12 It was literally their branding, right? It was the energy of Enter Plus. And I was like, well, it's oil and gas, but I guess I'll give it a try. And David Ramsey would have hired me for a

4:23 summer internship, which was super fun And I realized that being an engineer in oil and gas is much sexier than being a manual laborer. So it's like, well, maybe I can do this. But yeah, I spent

4:37 my career kind of doing all sorts of energy projects, engineering projects. I think of myself more as like a project manager than true like hardcore engineer, but I love everything about it, so.

4:48 And you're also, you like technology, and that could be because of your age, right? I think you'd be considered a millennial, right? Absolutely. Right. So, I mean, you've always come up with

4:59 a tech focus, and I even remember, Jesus must have been four or five years ago at Franklin Mountain, where you're working now,

5:08 getting referred over to you. I'm like, Who's this young guy that we're talking to? And they're like, Oh, no, that's the tech guy. Like if you got tech, you need to go talk to him. And it was

5:16 very clear that you had a really good understanding of sort of the holistic enterprise technology landscape, and probably lean toward more of the newer, more disruptive technologies, which I do

5:27 myself and feel a little bit of a kinship with you because of that. Growing up in Rangeli, so I'm a country guy myself. I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire, probably about 1, 500 people,

5:40 you know, a few hours from the nearest city and really liked it. There was no oil and gas there whatsoever. There are some windmills now, which is a total eyesore, at least for me. But talk to

5:54 me about what it's like growing up sort of in the middle of nowhere. And I'm guessing that oil and gas was like the big industry out there, right? Is that where most of the jobs were? So there was,

6:06 yeah, is the oil field that I say oil, but there's also gas field south of town. And, you know, the peon space and existed and kind of was up and coming. But there's also coal mines. So it does

6:17 route a mine that employed about 200 people in the town That I actually, I worked in for a summer job in between my first summer out of high school and then first summer after my first year of

6:27 college, worked underground as a manual labor, which if you want to be really good at calculus, go work in a coal mine for a summer. And nothing makes me study harder. I'm going back to school in

6:40 life, this could be my life. Nothing gets to you. It's great exercise, great work, but I don't know. I like to exercise on my time rather than for employment, But, um

6:53 I really enjoyed it. I always say it's a great place to be from. My dad characterized it as kind of like growing up in a first world country with a third world extraction industry, where we were

7:05 literally on the frontier.

7:08 It wasn't uncommon for my dad to grab four or five of my buddies on the weekends and we go and do projects out on our wells.

7:17 We would go strap tubing or take it to location. I'll never forget one of

7:23 the most vivid memories. We had a gooseneck trailer

7:28 and we were carrying about 3, 000 feet of tubing from the yard to location. And your dad had a workover rig that was coming over on Monday and they're going to swap out tubing. But he's like, oh,

7:36 we can save some trucking money and have the kids just come out here and say I'm paying them onto the table and get them greasy and dirty, right? And so, I mean, it wasn't super hard, but when we

7:47 were trucking the tubing to location, we went through this ravine. And for those that aren't familiar in Northwest Colorado is not the Permian Basin. It is rugged, it is mountainous. There are

7:59 gullies that get washed out. It is muddy,

8:04 the Permian Basin is so easy compared to that, like from a top to standpoint. And so we go through this ravine and somebody, but probably my brother, God bless him, hadn't locked the goose neck

8:18 Oh my God. When the trailer wheels went through the ditch, the goose neck trailer hopped off of the hitch in the back of the truck, landed on the bed of the truck and slid forward until about an

8:31 inch away from the cab. You know, and like we hear, of course, you feel and hear this happen. All heads turn around and are looking at it and my dad's driving and you can think is, oh my God,

8:42 I've got four kids and the four teenagers the car and there here's this 3, 000 pounds or joints of tubing like that are about to come through the cab windshield and crush these kids, like, and kill

8:53 'em, you know? And it stops an inch from the cab and then gets thrown backwards, right? Rips the tailgate off and like tubing everywhere. It's a disaster. That's awesome. Like the - Like the -

9:06 It's kind of a very real - It's kind of very real. It's like a four down, right? I mean, if this was, you know, TikTok days, that video would have gone viral, if you could have kept it, right?

9:15 I mean, like anything that's that close to fear or disaster, but doesn't turn into it, is awesome. That's fine. That's fine. I don't think at the time, we realized like how close to death we

9:29 were. Just like, oh man, that was crazy. Glad nobody got hurt.

9:35 Yeah, I mean, now some memories are going through my head of like basically near-death experiences, where it's just sort of like, oh yeah, I guess that's just sort of what happens when you're

9:43 like a teenager or whatever.

9:47 and makes me nervous since I have teenagers in my own. But that's fun. So you grew up kind of in the patch, for sure, out in a strangely good place to be from. And then you decided to go to CU.

9:59 So even though you're a Colorado kid, that's still a different world. I mean, Boulder versus Rangeli,

10:08 CU, you've got a lot of that out-of-state coastal money, people that are coming here. And even probably just like weather-wise, it's different Did you, how did you feel about CU? Did you like

10:18 going to CU? It was a phenomenal experience. Yeah, so Rangeli is very conservative, oilfield town, right? Like Bowton for all the

10:26 conservative parties, very party line.

10:34 And going to Boulder, it was the opposite, you know? And I feel like Democrats and liberals and progressives have this party line that, okay, especially with the DEI movement you can be anything

10:47 you want to be. And I was really excited for that to get to Boulder. I was like, man, I'm gonna like get to have varied conversations with people and like expand ideas and have different

10:57 perspectives, which was really helpful. And I did have that experience, except you can be everything you want to be in Boulder, except a Republican.

11:11 You can not be a Republican. You could be a Republican. So you know, I was always like, Oh, Libertarian, I like freedom You know, like, Oh, okay. And that kind of disarms people, but it was

11:20 really fun. Beautiful place to go to school. After four or five years there, I got my master's in mechanical engineering and focus on energy in the environment. So bachelor's and master's is kind

11:31 of a concurrent degree.

11:34 But after a while, you're like, Man, nobody here realizes that like oil and gas exist. Number one, there's no real conception of how like energies made or produced. Um, which I, and I'm

11:48 speaking broadly about kind of the town in, in the engineering school and I'm very biased, but I do think the engineering school is one of the best in the state. You know, I think minds, I don't,

11:56 I don't want to say anything bad about minds, but they get, they get a lot of hype. They get a lot of credit. Um, and of course being biased, going to see you, I think they have just as good,

12:04 if not a better, um, say mechanical program than minds and, and lots of resources for the school So very proud of my alma mater and, um, was thought, thought I got a phenomenal education and

12:14 made a lot of great connections. And I mean, it was through kind of their career program and department that I got into the oil and gas industry. It was like companies recruiting at CU, um, both

12:27 enterprise for one internship and then in Canada back when they were called in Canada for the next internship that got me kind of my full time job and industry

12:36 And now it's now it's inventive. Please consult with your doctor before taking of incentive.

12:45 You know, you say new cause of sudden drug pressure.

12:50 I went to work full time for invent, oh, sorry, in Canada immediately after school. So they did the interview process and then you get your full time gig. And

13:01 then as soon as I went in, they downsized and laid off 20 of the staff, including all the new grads, which it's joke in Denver is like, well, you haven't really worked in Denver until you've been

13:11 laid off by in Canada or now we've been to it for a long time. So and it's kind of true. Like there's a lot of people in

13:17 town that have gone through that organization and worked there. And I mean, they've done a lot of good business and a lot of good projects and they also had a reputation for a while for buying high

13:28 and selling low. That's no, that's true. But they've made it work. And they have a lot of really smart people there. You know, that's actually one of the things anytime I meet somebody who did

13:40 spend time at Oventiv earlier in their career they developed really strong professional training, right? And even the people who are still there are really, really solid. You know, for me being

13:52 like a tech guy and a sales guy, you always have to be cognizant of meeting your audience where they're at. And the conversation gets relatively deep and technical with OVENTIV very quickly,

14:05 regardless of role, right? Some companies, it's like, well, that's an accountant and all he thinks about is accounting. The people at OVENTIV in accounting or IT do think holistically about the

14:15 organization and technology. And I don't know if that's just simply like the caliber of resource that they have or the type of professional training that they offer, but it's the caliber is high. I

14:27 think it's a leadership that they - Well, think about the leaders of oil and gas companies, specifically. Yeah, yeah. They can be landmen, geologists, accountants, engineers, generally. Yeah,

14:38 yeah. And that background generates a different kind

14:46 for each organization. And traditionally in Canada, I mean, look at their past CEOs, almost all of them have been engineers. And so that mindset gets filtered down of like, okay, it's linear

14:58 thinking, process oriented, technology focused, like we can do better through operations, through design and through process implementation. And that's not like they're out hounding on, I mean,

15:11 they do, they've got a very effective commercial department, supply chain, and they put a lot of focus in contracts and deal making also, but it's not like they're a land based company where

15:22 they're like, well, did we get the best price per acre? And I mean, they try, you know, but like there wasn't as much focus there. And there's, you know, it's just kind of the nature of

15:31 organizations, like how is the culture generated and what's valued internally? And technical expertise and engineering mindset is highly valued there. I like that. See, that kind of insight helps,

15:45 right? 'Cause I have my own theories, but you actually lived it. And then eventually, like you said, some Adirplus, once you had Sundance, was Sundance a company you were at? Yeah, four and a

15:56 half years at Sundance. So you're at some bigger companies, publicly traded companies, and then it's been Sundance and Franklin Mountain. Talk to me a little bit about working for big companies

16:07 and then being like, a little bit of a cowboy at some of these smaller outfits. I don't know how big Franklin Mountain is, but I think it's pretty small. Yeah, we're super small. So, well, my

16:18 time at Sundance I mean, I was very conscious about kind of career choice and what kind of company I wanted to work for early in my career. I wanted like a medium-sized company that I could have a

16:28 lot of responsibility, a lot of autonomy and a lot of leeway to get the training and expertise that I would need for the next step in the career, you know, and my career,

16:41 which Sundance afforded them. I mean, it was a small company, a small team, and joined kind of at the peak back in 2014, and then had to live and endure playoff, downsizing, total reorg. I

16:56 mean, at one point, there was like three engineers on the team, it was like drilling completion, production, and we were running a multi-million dollar capital program still with like three of us.

17:08 That's awesome We were at one point,

17:11 we were chatting in the office about like Jurassic Park, and like, how did they put together this like huge industrial project? You know, where there's like these dinosaurs running around and like

17:25 they're losing control of the operation. And it just seems like there's nobody there. Like who's the helm of this, who's running this? And then like, what do the other engineers all these things

17:34 like? Okay, kind of like what we're doing now You mean like us, right? Yeah, this group, you mean us? Like.

17:43 It was like, oh, no, that's pretty funny. But no, it was awesome experience.

17:50 And it gave me the kind of expertise that I needed to go and be part of a small team to do a lot of different jobs. So I mean, in my career, I've touched just about every piece of the upstream oil

18:02 and gas industry, drilling, completions, production facilities, pipelines, project-managed, all of those, and that gave me the opportunity that one of my mentors had a startup, needed an ops

18:18 guy to come in and help with the startup. That project eventually got acquired by Franklin Mountain.

18:25 And since then, you know, Franklin Mountain's grown, and we've produced a bunch of wells and drilled a bunch of wells in Delaware Basin and southeast New Mexico, and kind of hit a bunch of our

18:35 targets and objectives. It's been really an awesome opportunity awesome company we're looking for. That's great. So, This is, it's a little bit rare, I guess, for people that are listening that

18:43 aren't in oil and gas, and that's probably, I don't know, maybe 20 of our listeners is personal contacts in mind. It may seem like a generic oil and gas engineer can do all of these things, but

18:54 being a production engineer versus being a drilling engineer, the completions engineer or midstream is completely different. Where do you sort of lean toward as like, your subject matter expertise,

19:07 or what you're kind of most passionate about as an engineer in oil and gas? Where do you think you slant to?

19:15 You know, I actually lobbied at one point for my title to be Renaissance Engineer. Nice. That one didn't fly, but when we started Franklin Mountain, I didn't, it didn't. Allow me the title of

19:28 Director of Engineering and Innovation, which like, what does that mean? It was just basically like, oh, can go and look at a bunch of different projects. So, honestly, I feel like a

19:36 generalist and feel capable of. diving into a bunch of different projects and asking questions. And a lot of it comes from a background of humility and not being good at things and having to ask a

19:49 lot of questions, but then also being given the reins for a lot of projects to go and do stuff. So by way of example, when I was at Sundance, we had two drilling engineers, we had a layoff, and

20:02 then it was down to me basically being the drilling department. Wow. And three months after the layoff, we decided we were gonna pick up three rigs at the start of the year. And so I had to put

20:12 together like a three rig program by myself, like go and hire all the contractors, put all the IADC's together, like

20:21 do the design work, do the operations, hire the whole team and the field team, and that was a lot of fun, right? But then like, okay, you do that for drilling, now turn around and go and build

20:32 some facilities, like to similar skill set, different technology. So, I don't know, that probably didn't answer. No, but big dollar, I mean, you basically said yes. Yes, but I mean, big

20:44 dollar, those are large capital outlay projects, right? Like you really can't screw it up. So for somebody to trust you with that, it says a lot, right? And shows that you've definitely

20:55 developed solid rapport with senior leadership. And you've mentioned mentors a few times and we're gonna get into all that. We're also gonna get into nuclear as well as your podcast. It's sort of

21:06 something I know that you're passionate about So we're gonna have to touch on that. But I'm hitting you with a surprise right now. Every once in a while, I want the funk. I like to do a quick

21:18 lightning round, right? Put you right on the spot and I'm just gonna say a name or a word or a thing. And you're gonna have to give me like the first couple words that come to mind, okay? So

21:31 we're gonna start with

21:34 David Ramsey-Mood.

21:39 Wow. Okay. I dig that. I dig it. Let's go with nuclear.

21:49 Prosperity. Oh, okay. We're going to get into that. We're going to get into that. Something timely here. Denver Nuggets. Winning.

22:01 Yeah. Right now, right

22:05 Let's go with a vintage.

22:16 Friends. Nice, nice. And then finally, Instagram

22:27 Dream Chase Live, happy, fun, laughing, adventure, travel, yeah, I feel, I feel like I know you I know you personally better probably than I actually do because of your Instagram stuff. I

22:39 think you've got a good mechanism to communicate who follows me on Instagram. Like it's really challenging because then like I'll go to bars and introduce myself to people and like Mark I've been

22:49 following you since 2016 and it's like, oh, cool. So you know me Yeah, but you are now that that happened with like Sean Forbes is a good friend of mine. Right. And I think once I followed Sean

23:03 Forbes, then it's like, you know, Lauren Liebelson and like all these other people that I've been following probably for four or five years. And then I meet them and I'm like, Oh, yeah, I know

23:12 you. They're like, Wait, are you stalking me? I'm like, No, I think you're just in my Instagram feed. Like, I don't know what else to say. Maybe we should connect on like in person to like

23:21 normal people people. But that's the way of the world, man. That's social media right now. Let's talk a little bit about the podcast that you put out and transition into the nuclear conversation.

23:30 I know you're bullish on nuclear and I am too. I don't think I have the level anywhere near the level of knowledge that you do, but Chuck Yates, my buddy, has a really positive outlook on it and

23:41 basically said, if we discovered nuclear now, it would be the greatest breakthrough in energy that anybody has ever seen. And I know that that's something that you subscribe to as well. So I'm

23:52 curious, like, where did this whole passion for nuclear come from and talk a little bit about your podcast?

23:59 Absolutely. So I mentioned I went to school to study energy. Didn't want to mean oil and gas. Went into oil and gas because that's the job. There's a career available, right? There's a job

24:09 available.

24:11 At the end of my education, I realized like energy dense fuels are some of the best things for humanity. And like the more dense the energy fuel is, the better it is for prosperity and like this is

24:25 a fundamental idea. of similar to finance, what's your return on investment in an energy project? On per unit of energy basis, nuclear projects have the best energy return on energy invested. If

24:39 you exclude the paperwork and man hours that it takes to get them licensed presently. So from purely physics perspective, like they're the best, they win, right? And so, I mean, I've been

24:51 passionate about it kind of my whole life but I had a revived interest a couple of years ago and just kind of really dug in on what would it take to like bring some of these reactors to reality and

25:02 like utilize the technology more. So I've been doing a deep dive on it for a long time. So you mentioned podcast. We have volunteered for young professionals in energy, restarted the Denver

25:14 chapter back in 2018. So YPE or young professionals in energy is a, I'll say very dislocated organization, each chapter functions very independently, program, our education piece in Denver was to

25:28 launch a podcast and we use that kind of as a platform to educate people. We could do a lunch and learn where we get 20 people to show up and it costs money to buy lunch for everybody or we could do

25:38 a podcast and reach 500 listeners, a bunch of broader audience all across the country, and it's much cheaper, so I love that medium, but I got kind of bored of the renewable and wind and solar

25:51 conversation and like those have their place and a slight tool for the job, but if we really want to decarbonize and

25:59 use the technology and use a system that in my opinion is better for humanity and will provide more abundance globally than like nuclear is the only way to go. So we've been on kind of an advocacy

26:12 train for that, you know, to be frank, like lobbying at the Colorado Capitol for some bills that have been in place and we've been recording much podcast in the background with. some technology

26:26 vendors with some legislators. And so we've branded that as fire to fission. And we just launched that podcast this week, actually. So we've got about 30 episodes recorded and a goal of releasing

26:37 100 this year to kind of move this advocacy piece forward. How do we bring these conversations about nuclear and basically talk publicly about all of the research that we've done and why we feel that

26:50 it's a great solution for society and for humanity? How do we make those conversations public? And how do we interview people and chat with them so that people aren't just hearing from me and Mark's

27:00 just preaching, oh man, we like nuclear, we like nuclear. So, and it gives me kind of a community to talk to about it also because if I just talk to my friends and girlfriend about it, then,

27:09 you know, they'll stop being my friends.

27:12 So, why is nuclear viewed with such like a negative slant? Like, I think that's a good idea. Is it because of some of like Chernobyl and some of the large-scale incidents and people are like, no,

27:25 we just have to get away from that. What is it that people are so anti, where I guess - Right now it's in the US and also globally it's not. So there's this mythology - Interesting. People don't

27:37 like nuclear. And it's just that, a mythology. Recent study came out and I'm liking on the firm that did it, but I'm sure if you're listening just looked it up, they could find it. 76 of

27:46 Americans support nuclear in 2023 It was 71 last year and in like 2018, it was like 50. So the tide has shifted and it is popular. Like people like it will want it.

28:01 The challenge

28:04 with anything or with a lot of industries is if there's not an easy way to make money in it, then who supports it, who actually like gets behind it. And so this mythology that nuclear was unpopular

28:17 and it's dangerous, which the, the fat. Anyone that says the nuclear is dangerous is lying or uneducated. It's probably uneducated. David demonstrates that it is safe and has been safe for 50

28:31 years. And didn't even need many of the safety upgrades that the industry has made. So this is an unpopular opinion, but it's one that should come out and should be talked about more, that the

28:42 nuclear industry itself has kind of been the biggest boogeyman because there weren't any financial incentives for the industry when they stopped, when plant orders stopped. The only thing that the

28:53 industry itself could sell was fear. Meaning we have to sell more safety upgrades. We have to sell more improvement, plant improvements. So anytime somebody says, well, look at Chernobyl through

29:04 my island, Fukushima. That's why people hate nuclear because there's these accidents. Totally not true. They hate nuclear because it's expensive. Why is it expensive? Because people have said

29:14 radiation is dangerous And then that's been allowed them to offer more safety upgrades. Sell more services to the industry and it's made it more expensive prohibitively expensive if you look back at

29:26 orders for nuclear reactors in the us I mean through my island happened the late 70s Order stopped in the early 70s. Why why were they canceling because it was becoming prohibitively expensive

29:37 Because the industry itself was out regulating itself like there is this radiation that Frankly like the NRC you got to inflated and did too much to protect against the yeah, it it stopped becoming

29:54 productive. So How many

29:58 No, keep going. I shouldn't cut you off. Keep going. Oh, you're good. The metric that I like to use to think about this is dollars invested per life year saved So if you think about nuclear how

30:10 many more dollars can we invest to save more lives and the years of life? And it's a really low return on investment. on the other end of the spectrum, what would be a high dollars invested per

30:21 life you're saved? Purchasing a helmet for riding a bike,

30:26 putting seat belts in the car, right? These are like tremendously high number of life you're saved for super low dollars, right? Like versus making safety improvements and nuclear power plants

30:38 radically unnecessary. So it's kind of, I'll say two prong or three prongs. So the industry itself selling fear, excessive regulations, and those two things resulting in it not being profitable.

30:53 So if we peel back some of the regulations, then it would be much easier to build cheaper plants and improve them, iterate on them, make them easier to build.

31:07 Still keep a high safety standard. I'm not saying don't make plants dangerous, but I'm saying peel back some of the regulations and requirements that people have to actually build these facilities.

31:18 And then the nuclear industry itself will be incentivized to promote itself and not just self-hear.

31:25 Well, I just learned a lot. I mean, that was probably the cliff's notes. I'm sure you could get much, much deeper and all that, but just some like high level basic questions for my understanding

31:34 and for our listeners. Like how many nuclear reactors, how many plants exist in the US? So plants, there's about 50, and there might be multiple reactors at each plant So there's mid-90s, like

31:49 92 or 94. And where are they? Most of them are on the East Coast, like East of the Mississippi, but they're like close to population centers, right? So these are massive power plants that are

32:02 really helpful and produce 95 of the time. Yeah, the capacity factors are super high, carbon free electricity, all the time generally, right? Like very, very, very valuable There's only one

32:16 left in California, but. the decision to keep it open was reversed a couple years ago, thanks to a bunch of grassroots advocates,

32:24 which is incredible. It's an awesome story if anyone doesn't know about the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant and Mothers for Nuclear. Go look it up. There's a bunch of podcasts about it, but it's

32:34 really inspiring what they've done to keep that plant open. The California governor did a total 180 on it where he used to lobby against it and say, we need to shut down nuclear power plants because

32:45 they're environmentally dangerous, which is a total farce and makes absolutely no sense, but did a complete 180. And so actually, we need to keep them open. And it's like our number one source of

32:54 carbon free energy. So like a step that plant in California provides 8 of the state's electricity. They're already having blackouts and brownouts. If they shut down that plant,

33:05 they're cutting off. And it's like the majority of their carbon free electricity

33:11 And like that point right there is why I could actually see some momentum. toward bringing these back. Because look, I mean, ESG and the Inflation Reduction Act, this is all about creating

33:25 innovative ways and even funding innovative ways to reduce emissions, to reduce methane in the atmosphere, which is great. Like I think we're all on board with that, but how do you do it, right?

33:38 How do you actually get there? What are the mechanisms to create technology that can make it happen? And then all of a sudden you're like, oh shit, like there's actually something that we could

33:47 just like turn on that does all of that. We have the technology, right? We have the way to get there. It's been around for many years, right? And it's better enough forever, right? I mean, to

33:60 me, it's really fascinating. I think it's an area that I wanna learn even more about. Is there a power plant in Colorado?

34:10 There's not a nuclear power plant in Colorado. There used to be. It was the Fort St. Frank power plant

34:18 A lot of people don't know that the structure that housed it is still there and you can go into it. A group of us went into it a couple of months ago, which was awesome. It's a really cool facility.

34:31 For a tech geek like me, I'm like, Oh my God, look, this was a high temperature gas reactor. It's like one of my favorite kinds. Oh, you can see the containment building and there's all this

34:39 old infrastructure. It was really cool, but kind of nerdin' out on it There are several coal power plants in Colorado, namely Comanche Peak down in Pueblo, and then the Craig Station in Moffitt

34:52 County and the Hayden Station in Rout County that are kind of right next to each other. Those are all scheduled to close, and Colorado currently doesn't have a good plan to replace them, and

35:06 they're not acting or moving fast enough to replace them with firm, dispatchable power sources So, Colorado just passed a bill which we advocated for, where we lobbied for, for the Colorado Energy

35:15 Office to. do a study and figure out, hey, what are we going to do once these coal plants closed? 'Cause we kind of just are throwing the video with the bath water. This is not a great plan.

35:26 We're going to have blackouts and brownouts in Colorado. And they don't know. So now the Colorado Energy Office has to do the study and pass the legislator this spring and produce a recommendation

35:36 to the legislator by 2025. Well, everyone says nuclear power plants take 10 years to build. These coal plants are going to be closed by 2030, like all of them by the end of 2030 It's 2023, a

35:50 recommendation by 2025. Like we won't have nuclear on until 2035. Like that doesn't make sense. Like we should be moving now in Colorado to replace these plants and acting now to like make

36:01 recommendations to the public utility commission, make recommendations to legislators, work with power companies, tell them it's popular, tell them we want it. Like, anyway, let's get me on my

36:11 soapbox. Like let me tell you how I really feel but this is, well, so then let's backtrack a little bit. Okay, so they're gonna shut down all these plants, these coal plants, right? Nuclear

36:23 plants have been shut down. Specifically in Colorado, with these coal plants, you said, there's not really a way to replace that power. How do you replace that electricity? So I ask you, are we

36:36 just going to have blackouts? Yeah.

36:40 Well, this was really sad, actually. So we attended a conference that was hosted in Northwest Colorado. It was called Joint Organizations and leading the transition, energy transition. Jolt,

36:51 and it was invite only, but we got an invite to go and talk to the plant managers of the coal plant, Hayden plant, the coal mine there. They had county commissioners. They had people from the

37:01 utility. And so there's a guy there from Tri-State that was talking about the plan to go to 80 renewables by 2030, right, when these coal plants close. And the audience asked, right? These are

37:14 people that are impacted in that community I mean, those communities depend on these cold jobs and they're going to basically be shuttered in ghost towns without them. And people in that community

37:24 asked, okay, well, if we're 80 renewable and that's our base, like what happens when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine? Like these are not making sources. And the Tri-Sia guys

37:34 response was, well, we're an interconnected co-op and we're gonna import electricity into the state from other states. And they said, okay, like Wyoming. And then the audience asked, well,

37:46 what are they gonna be doing in Wyoming to generate that energy? Coal. And they said, oh, it's a coal. Literally, that's what we said, right? Like, could've told you that. Wait, so we're

37:58 losing our jobs because Colorado wants us shut down, but Wyoming is gonna keep burning coal,

38:06 Utah is gonna keep burning coal, and there's one atmosphere. And, oh, by the way, China's gonna keep burning coal, like, and it's building coal faster. Yeah, we've ever built it. this

38:16 doesn't make sense. There was a very undertone, deep undertone of cynicism, I'll say, in the room. And

38:26 people talk about this just transition. This isn't justified

38:31 to be shutting down these communities and jobs without an adequate plan to replace them, you know?

38:40 It's very sober. It's nimbism, it's nimbism that it's finest, right? And I'm glad that people can get to the bottom of that regardless of how you feel politically, oftentimes like in Plymouth,

38:52 New Hampshire, right? Where I grew up. Beautiful rolling hills, picture, the white mountains, right, snow capped. It's really beautiful. And honestly, part of why I love Colorado and why

39:06 I've settled here and my kids grow up here and I've been here for 20 years, because it actually reminds me of New Hampshire just bigger. right? The peaks are taller and the weather's better. So

39:18 you can do more of the awesome outdoor stuff that I grew up doing all year. So they're skiing out there. There's everything. Well, now on the top of these rolling hills, there's windmills. And

39:29 the windmills generate power that goes to Canada. So I'm like, so now our view is actually ruined. And I have to stare at these huge eyesores. And what do we get from that? Well, we got more

39:44 traffic and bigger trucks driving through the town for seven years when they were building them. Right. And more dead birds. But who actually benefits from this? Not Plymouth, New Hampshire.

39:58 Right. So I mean, but people didn't really bother to do all that research. And now they're just stuck with them. And people in Canada are getting the benefit from it. So, you know, it's, it's

40:07 frustrating. Because you know, if somebody put, well, there's no oil in New Hampshire, but if somebody tried to drill a well out there and put and oil, well, a pump jack on top of that hill,

40:17 it would be an issue. And this is where perception versus reality is an issue.

40:22 There is a shitload of natural gas in Pennsylvania and New York, and you could build, it's not a big pipeline built to New Hampshire, and you could easily build a pipeline, I mean, you can't

40:32 easily build a pipeline, that's why they haven't. Every gas company in the Northeast wants to build a pipeline, but it makes tons of sense from a pragmatic and like human prosperity perspective,

40:44 like to have cheap and inexpensive energy in that area, but you know, these are details that we don't talk about. Nah, no, no, it's much different, and that's like probably an offline

40:54 conversation. I was in New York City last weekend for a wedding, I was in Manhattan, and I had a fun conversation with the cab driver, and of course, if a cab driver in New York tells you

41:03 something, it's gotta be true, right? So I didn't bother to fact check this, but he said, you know, obviously, the state of New York has banned fracking, and there's actually robust. natural

41:12 gas and probably even oil window opportunity in upstate New York, the state of New York, if you take New York City out of the equation is the second poorest state in the country to Mississippi. So

41:27 you really have a quagmire there where decisions are being made in Manhattan, right? By the governor and by people that are in Manhattan that affect what's happening in these effectively farming

41:39 communities that are very pro drilling for natural gas. And the rest of New York, if people haven't been there, it's not the city man.

41:50 100 of them ourselves, Shell also exist in New York. This is actually a near and dear to me. My dad put together a land play and bought a bunch of acreage in New York. And we've seen zero return

42:00 on investment from that, you know, which is probably good for me be working if, you know, that had been successful, but like.

42:10 you just be putting out more funny Instagram stories. So I could, I could live with that.

42:15 So, so where do you see your, your career going? Like you've got this real passion for, for nuclear, you have a ton of experience in oil and natural gas drilling completion production. Is this

42:28 something that you're eventually going to like either merge or start your own oil and gas company, start a nuclear company? Maybe that's too much to share, but I'm kind of curious, like, where do

42:38 you see your path taking you over the next five, 10, 20 years?

42:45 Yeah, I mean, I've told, I don't know, I feel very entrepreneurial. Time at Frank Mountain has been awesome. I'm like fully dedicated at program now, you know. But like, oil companies are

42:56 cyclical, the industry is cyclical, and we're all temporary. You never know where you're going to end up tomorrow. So always wanted to keep your eyes open. But I mean, my driving passion my

43:05 whole life is like produce energy for America in the world and so and do that best and whatever projects we can put together to work on to do that best next. Like, I want to work on those kinds of

43:17 projects. You know, as I feel

43:22 very proactive and, you know, growing up with kind of your parents that ran their own non-PA company. It's like, I've got kind of a different mindset than

43:34 perhaps what might be typical of some engineers that where it's like whatever it takes, right? Like, I mean, there's often been times that

43:44 I say, well, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get this project done, even if I have to like go out and do stuff myself, you know?

43:51 So that's pretty broad, but yeah, want to continue generating as much energy as I can for society. Yeah, it's energy production and I like that. And it's part of why like your branding does

44:03 surround energy. I've noticed that, right? Whether it be young professionals in energy, whether it be fission and fire. on being an energy centric podcast. You're doing a good job, I think, of

44:15 showing, hey, I work in oil and gas, but ultimately we're producing energy. And we want to produce as clean of energy as possible, which I think we do a good job of here in Colorado, and

44:23 hopefully we'll continue to do a good job of. Mark, we're gonna wrap up here. Where can people find you? LinkedIn, your podcast, where can people see, all right, where's this dude? I want to

44:38 talk to him about energy policy. I want to go on his podcast. I want him to come on my podcast. Where do people find Mr. Mark Hyneman?

44:47 Absolutely, so LinkedIn's great. Mark Hyneman, right, and we talked about the pronunciation, but the spelling was just like Chinaman without the C. So, yeah, pretty forward there. The

44:60 advocacy brand or energy think tank brand is a fire to fission, so that's the number two. We've got firetifissioncom, And then you search on any of the podcasts or YouTube media and you can see our

45:10 our podcast and listen to us interview energy industry experts and people that work in probably the nuclear industry, but we also want to talk to oil gas and maybe even some coal.

45:24 And then, yeah, if you're my personal friend, then I'll let you follow me on Instagram. So yeah, I

45:32 did it. I made it, man. I just wanted to say

45:38 before we wrap up here, I just wanted to say I feel like I've had some very real and authentic conversations with you over the past, really kind of year and a half where we've gotten to know each

45:49 other better. I think you're a great steward and representative of the younger folks in our industry and hope that you sort of continue putting that authenticity out to the masses because it's

46:01 important and that's something we preach all the time on here is being genuine. you know, being authentic and finding your true self. And I think for a younger dude, you've kind of already done

46:11 that, which I admire and my ask of you is just keep passing that on to others. So appreciate you coming on today. I appreciate who you are, what you represent. Thank you, man.