Actor Billy Bob Thornton portraying the character Tommy Norris in an official trailer for the Paramount Plus series “Landman.” (Screen Capture/Landman, Official Trailer, Paramount+)

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Oil companies have always presented easy targets for demonization by the news and entertainment industries. Their operations are highly visible — the flares from a shale well can be seen from many miles distant — the prices they charge for their products can strain family budgets, and they have generally done a lousy job of engaging with the media and defending themselves.

Thus, they typically present the proverbial low-hanging fruit to be exploited by lazy script writers in Hollywood. Those who were in the industry in the early years of the Obama presidency will well remember that pretty much every TV drama series aired at least one episode centered on some highly improbable, often impossible, scenario in which people were killed by a hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — accident. Such stuff never happened in real life, but it sure made for compelling entertainment for audiences who did not know that to be the case.

Given this history, it came as no small surprise when the lead character in the new Paramount series “Landman”, the newest offering from “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan, delivered a stirring 2-minute monologue in defense of America’s oil and gas producers in Episode 3 of the show’s first season. Set in the aftermath of a tragic, fatal Permian Basin oilfield accident that actually could happen in real life, the scene features lead character Tommy Norris, played to near perfection by Billy Bob Thornton, schooling a young, environmentally conscious lawyer who is looking for someone to blame for the accident on the reasons why oil and gas are highly unlikely to be replaced by wind energy in her lifetime.

“You have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix that much concrete or make that steel and hold this **** out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane,” Norris says, pointing to a nearby group of 400 ft. wind turbines. “You want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that ****ing thing or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it. And don’t get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Tesla battery.”

The monologue goes on for another minute and a half, with Norris detailing all the myriad products made with oil and natural gas, and the fact that, “if Exxon thought them ****ing things right there were the future, they’d be putting them all over the ***damn place.” He isn’t wrong about that last part, by the way. ExxonMobil and its fellow major oil companies like Shell and BP have proven themselves to be pretty much agnostic about the nature of the energy-related projects they’re willing to pursue in recent years.

Those companies and many other traditional oil companies are willing to invest in most any project they believe to be profitable, sustainable and able to deliver strong rates of return to investors. Where wind energy is concerned, both Shell and BP spent years investing heavily in such projects but have been backing away from such investments over the last year as they have failed to produce adequate returns. ExxonMobil, meanwhile, is investing heavily in carbon capture, hydrogen, and even lithium production as part of a growing portfolio of projects in its Low Carbon Solutions business unit.

Back to the Tommy Norris monologue: When I re-posted the clip on LinkedIn and at my Substack newsletter, it went viral, indicating a high level of interest in what Thornton’s character had to say. That may be indicative of a rising recognition of the reality that the US government and global community have in recent years thrown away trillions of dollars in failing attempts to subsidize non-viable, unsustainable, and unprofitable alternatives to oil and natural gas to scale.

Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that Episode 3 of “Landman” aired on the same day when the media widely reported the COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan had ended in failure. It also came amid continuing reports that the Trump transition team is developing detailed plans to refocus US energy policy back to Trump’s promised “drill, baby, drill” orientation.

The times are a-changing, and guys like Tommy Norris will look like prophets soon.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By David Blackmon

Of all the destructive actions President Joe Biden took related to energy policy during his four years in office, his stroke-of-a-pen decision on his first day in office to cancel the cross-border permit for the Keystone XL pipeline system as a political payoff to his environmentalist campaign funders was perhaps the worst.

It was bad enough that Biden took that action to cancel the $8 billion project absent any finding that operator Trans-Canada (now TC Energy) was in violation of any law or regulation of the United States. It was even worse that he took that action despite the fact that Trans-Canada had already spent over $3 billion building much of the project with hundreds of miles of pipe already in the ground by January 2021.

Worse still are the realities that, along with cancelling the project, Biden canceled as many as 10,000 high-paying American jobs during the construction of the project, left America more dependent on oil imports from hostile nations like Venezuela and Iran due to lost imports from Canada and even cost the province of Alberta an estimated $1.3 billion it stood to gain from the project’s completion.

But the most damaging impact of all emanating from Biden’s craven act of crony politics was the loss of trust in the consistent, fair application of American law and regulations it caused. The cancellation of Keystone XL made it vastly harder for big companies to secure financing for big projects that take years to permit and develop because funders could no longer assume U.S. laws would be applied based on merit rather than political fiat. That advantage over other parts of the world that the United States has always enjoyed was severely damaged.

Last week, we saw a flurry of stories by major media outlets that the Trump transition team is working on plans to reverse Biden’s ill-considered order and trying to revive the Keystone XL project. While that is certainly a laudable goal, developments that have taken place since 2021 will likely limit it to a purely symbolic act.

First, TC Energy no longer even owns the rights to the project or its remaining assets. Those assets, along with the rest of the previously existing Keystone Pipeline system, were spun off into a new entity named South Bow Energy in June of this year. A spokesperson for that company was reluctant to comment when asked about possible revival of Keystone XL, saying, “As a new company, our focus and priority at this point is to continue to deliver energy safely and efficiently. Part of South Bow’s long-term strategy is to grow our business.”

Second, a few months after Biden’s destructive action, TC Energy announced it had cancelled the project and would not be seeking to carry on the fight. As a result of the cancellation, TC Energy then removed the hundreds of miles of pipe that had already been installed into the ground so that it could be repurposed for use in other projects.

Third, the rights-of-way for the Keystone XL project are no longer in effect. Nor are the permits for the project. Thus, any effort to revive it by South Bow would necessitate a repetition of the painstaking, years-long process of reacquiring all those miles of rights-of-way and local, state and federal permits.

This brings us back to the most damaging aspect of Biden’s political payback: Any such effort would without doubt extend into the next presidential term to begin in 2029. Who is going to be willing to commit billions of now-inflated dollars (thanks largely to Biden and his team’s policies) to a pipeline project that might well end up being cancelled should voters decide to elect another Democrat to the presidency in 2028?

So, while the desire by the Trump team to restart Keystone XL is commendable, the facts on the ground almost certainly mean it would be a purely symbolic gesture.

This current presidency cannot end soon enough.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.