Energy Markets & Oil's Future

Oil and gas doesn't move in isolation from the rest of the economy, and these five episodes make that case directly. Josh Hoeft explains why the cloud runs on natural gas, walking through modular power plants built in blocks to meet gigawatt-scale data center demand. Rick Westerdale, who moved from Exxon Mobil to the U.S. State Department, describes leading the Gorgon LNG project in Australia and the sanctions strategy built around what Europe could actually replace. Brian Horn talks about the energy economy itself: how regulation and geopolitics move energy costs, and why he mentors young geoscientists through stories like Stone Soup. Doug Sandridge draws on 45 years across oil, gas and nuclear to make the case for education over blame in energy policy, and for treating nuclear waste as a solvable problem rather than a disqualifying one. Marcus Jones rounds it out with the harder economics: supply chain shifts, mergers and a changing energy mix, and why he says the downtimes will eat a project alive without a real margin of return. Read together, these episodes are less about any one well and more about the forces — power demand, policy, capital — that decide what gets built next.