Live from the exhibit floor of the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in beautiful Bismarck, North Dakota, this episode kicks off a massive three-day broadcast celebrating 75 years of the historic Bakken play. Host Scott Hennen balances his jet lag from a recent trip to Norway with full-throttle interviews featuring the absolute heaviest hitters in global energy, aerospace technology, and state legislation.
First, Bernie Bourgeois from Chevron details the multi-billion-dollar acquisition of Hess and breaks down how cutting-edge “chemical EOR” literally washes subterranean rock to maximize American energy prosperity. Then, legendary local public servant Lynn Helms uses a pizza analogy to explain why the U.S. is barely on “first base” when it comes to oil recovery. State Representative Mike Nathy takes us inside the legislative trenches to expose the real economic data surrounding data centers and look ahead to a critical upcoming Republican primary. Finally, we talk to UND aviation graduate Grayson Miller about real-world life-and-death drone warfare, tracking how elite Ukrainian “Spider Web” drone swarms managed to set the Russian military back by multiple decades.
Standout Moments & Timestamps
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[43:00] Squeezing the Shale: Bernie Bourgeois from Chevron explains the global integrated brand’s massive production footprint, moving four million barrels of oil a day around the world.
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[43:42] Washing the Subterranean Stone: Bourgeois delivers a fascinating technical breakdown of Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), detailing how specialized solvents act just like hand soap to alter rock characteristics and make oil more “slippery”.
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[44:11] Unconventional Permeability: A masterclass in geology as Bernie describes tight rock unconventional formations, explaining that the microscopic pore spaces in shale are less permeable than a kitchen granite countertop.
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[44:31] The Emerging Argentine Frontier: Chevron’s shale general manager maps out the world’s top shale assets, crowning West Texas’s Permian Basin a behemoth while identifying Argentina as the next massive global resource destination.
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[45:34] Seven Slices of Pizza: Former Director of Mineral Resources Lynn Helms stuns the hosts by revealing that current technology has only extracted a meager 15% of the oil trapped in the Bakken and Three Forks formations—declaring that nobody would buy a pizza, eat one slice, and throw the rest away.
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[45:54] Geological Records vs. Extinction Climate: Helms cuts through standard political rhetoric to discuss real geological history, noting that the Earth’s climate has constantly shifted across millennia and tracking how special interest groups managed to weaponize the education system against fossil fuels.
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[45:71] Keeping 10 Billion Alive: A sobering look at global agriculture as Helms reminds the audience that without liquid petroleum to fuel modern transit and farming infrastructure, the planet Earth could only produce enough food to keep 2.5 billion people alive.
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[46:13] The Tuesday Hot Dish Menu: Kevin Flynn drops into the studio to read off the legendary home-cooked lunch menu for Petroserve USA locations, tracking everything from Swedish Meatballs on 45th to Tater Tot Hot Dish at the Cheyenne location.
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[46:56] AI and the Frack Throttle: Helms details how high-compute Artificial Intelligence systems have completely revolutionized heavy operations, taking over hydraulic frack truck throttles to read and adjust system analytics in milliseconds.
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[47:18] Brownie Points and Colby Cheese: State Representative Mike Nathy joins the program to walk down memory lane, swapping high school stories about bribing an iconic English literature teacher with fresh Colby cheese and crackers from Hill Grocery.
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[47:46] The 9 Billion Dollar School Fund: Nathy maps out exactly where North Dakota oil revenues travel, tracking billions of dollars directly funding K-12 public education via the Common Schools Trust Fund, financing major water projects, and alleviating local property tax bills.
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[47:79] Exploding the Data Center Myths: Nathy soundly rejects local anti-tech narratives surrounding Applied Digital’s high-compute facilities, explaining that their closed-loop gel system uses no more water than a single standard house while actively driving down utility rates for the region.
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[48:48] The 1.6% General Fund Discipline: Representative Nathy drops hard budget numbers to push back against extreme spending narratives, proving that North Dakota’s ongoing general fund budget has been tightly held at an incredibly conservative 1.6% increase per year.
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[49:28] Mineral Scale Deposition: Kevin Black from Credence Energy Services takes the mic to explain the chemistry of oil extraction, describing how mineral-packed brine coats pumps and wellbores—and how proactive chemical maintenance prevents $250,000 catastrophic failures.
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[49:69] When Oil Went Negative: Black shares a visceral memory of watching Maria Bartiromo on Fox News during the onset of COVID as global oil prices famously went negative—a crisis that directly inspired his team to invent new capital-efficient extraction chemistry.
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[50:57] The Sunshine Law Hurdle: Black pulls back the curtain on his role as chair of the Board of Higher Education, detailng how the brutal transparency of state public records laws makes it incredibly difficult to recruit top executive talent from Ivy League schools.
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[51:14] The 20 Regulations Rollback: Congresswoman Julie Fedorachk calls in from Washington D.C. to report on massive federal progress, noting that out of 20 crippling energy regulations presented to the Trump administration and Doug Burgum, 17 have already been successfully rolled back or repealed.
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[51:89] The Trust Lands Completion Act: Fedorachk outlines a vital common-sense land swap bill moving to the House floor, allowing voluntary management swaps between state property, BIA land, and active coal mining infrastructure to benefit local tribes and taxpayers.
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[52:14] The Year-Round Summer E15 Victory: Fedorachk details a historic legislative win for heartland ag producers, eliminating outdated seasonal fuel restrictions to lock in a stable, year-round market for American E15 ethanol.
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[52:55] Project “Spider Web” Decimation: Recent UND graduate Grayson Miller leaves the hosts breathless with a tactical breakdown of Russian bomber base attacks, mapping how Ukraine used waves of inexpensive $2,000 hobbyist drones to cripple the Kremlin’s offensive fleet for decades.