The Oil Industry – RJ Burr

RJ Burr:
We have what we anticipate about 30 to 40 million barrels of oil sitting from 9000 to 14,000ft. I don’t want to drill 9000 to 14,000 foot wells. It’s not our expertise. Just because we don’t want to drill them doesn’t mean that oil is not there. We are already in contact with other oil companies that love nine to 14,000 foot well. We bring them in, let them drill those deep wells, but we don’t do it for free. We look at their holdings and if.

RJ Burr:
They have wells down to 9000ft, we just utilize our reserves. We let them drill it, we keep a piece of it. They let us drill on theirs, they keep a piece of it. We’ve expanded our reserves by using our in ground reserves.

Dana Robinson:
Exit Plan is a podcast for business owners and those who want to be business owners. I’m always in search of the lesser known stories of entrepreneurship. In the exit Plan podcast, you’ll hear stories from startup to sale and hear from the professionals who helped business owners achieve their exit. Hosted by me, author and private equity manager, Dana Robinson. Along with my co hosts and guests, you’ll hear real stories, tips and tools that will help you plan for the exit you want, whether you are still working as a day job or running a business. Let’s get started with this episode of the Exit Plan podcast.

Dana Robinson:
Hey everybody, it’s Dana Robinson coming to you with the exit Plan podcast. And this session we are going to learn something that I don’t know anything about and most people think I’m a know it all. So I’m super excited to become knowledgeable around the oil business. I got RJ Burr with me.

RJ Burr:
RJ, how you doing today?

Dana Robinson:
Doing good. Thank you for taking the time to give me, my listeners and anyone else that runs across this podcast an education about the oil business. I love the entrepreneur story because you are an entrepreneur, not just an oil man. So you’re going to have to teach us a lot about oil. But I’d love to know, you know, how did you end up getting into business does take you back to your origin story.

RJ Burr:
This is all I’ve ever done. I’ve been in the oil business my entire life, third generation. My grandpa did it, my uncles did it, my dad does it, my cousins do it, my brother does. I mean, it’s all we’ve ever done. My dad brought me to the field when I was seven years old for the first time, went to Luling, Texas.

RJ Burr:
And I don’t know if any y’all been to Luling. But it has a unique odor in the air that if you don’t know what it is, you might say it stinks. As a seven year old, I thought it stunk. And asked my dad, I said, dad, what’s that smell? He said, baby, that’s money. And we go out to the patch, and I saw those pump jacks, you know, the horse that goes up and down, and I saw him across her, and I was hooked. I knew what I wanted to do now when I got in business, graduated high school, earned my first partner three months later and haven’t looked back. This is really all we ever do now. The biggest. I lovingly, jokingly say we’ve had two lives in oil. Our first life in oil ended here about 12-13 years ago when marathon oil bought the family company.

RJ Burr:
At that point in time in my life, I was in a little different mindset. Looking back on it, I would say I was more of a salesman who happened to be in oil, and we just happen to be really good at it. My second life in oil started here about eight years ago, to be in July. It’ll actually be eight years.

RJ Burr:
We retired when we sold the business. Took me a couple of months to realize I wasn’t going to make the PGA tour. And took me another. No year, two years to finally go stir crazy and went to my dad’s house one night. My brother was there as a.

RJ Burr:
Guys, it’s time.

RJ Burr:
And they were. They agreed it was time to crank back up. And the difference between the first life and the second life is one we don’t have to do it. You know, I’m fine. I can cash it in and not work again, and I’d be fine.

RJ Burr:
Well, not having to do it.

RJ Burr:
But then the second side of it.

RJ Burr:
I didn’t realize how many people truly.

RJ Burr:
Didn’t understand the oil business in America.

RJ Burr:
And that’s a major problem, because most people have negative connotations over it. Most people. Oh, I’ll say it this way, I’m an old movie buff, and I love one of my favorite movies, is the usual suspects. And one of my favorite quotes from that movie is the greatest trick the.

RJ Burr:
Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

RJ Burr:
I mean, I just thought it was profound. I mean, it just kind of.

RJ Burr:
It rocked me.

RJ Burr:
Well, when I look at what has.

RJ Burr:
Happened to the oil industry, I modify that pitch a little bit.

RJ Burr:
And basically, the greatest trick environmentalist ever.

RJ Burr:
Pulled was convincing the world that oil was bad.

RJ Burr:
And we fought.

RJ Burr:
And don’t get me wrong, there have been some bad actors in oil.

RJ Burr:
I’m not, I’m not saying that we’re, we hold harmless in some of the things that have happened there. There have been some bad things that.

RJ Burr:
Happened because more millionaires have been made in oil and oil and gas than any other industry.

RJ Burr:
And so when you have an industry.

RJ Burr:
That lucrative, it is going to attract.

RJ Burr:
Bad actors as well.

RJ Burr:
And the biggest thing, the biggest misconception.

RJ Burr:
Is most people aren’t aware of who the actual american oil industry is.

RJ Burr:
You know, take, take the crash from 2020 on April 20, 2020, when the prices bottomed out. If you went and asked the average.

RJ Burr:
Person, hey, how did that affect the oil industry?

RJ Burr:
Most people would have said, it’s Exxon.

RJ Burr:
They can handle it.

RJ Burr:
When in truth, those weren’t the companies that were hit.

RJ Burr:
When you look at the american oil.

RJ Burr:
Industry, 83% of our oil, 90% of.

RJ Burr:
Our gas and more than 90% of.

RJ Burr:
The wells drilled are drilled by roughly.

RJ Burr:
9000 independent companies that average twelve employees or less.

RJ Burr:
That’s the american oil industry. And so when that crash happened, those were the companies that were hit by it.

RJ Burr:
And so when you look at the.

RJ Burr:
Overall who the american oil industry is, most people don’t realize that, that it’s small mall and paw companies. Now don’t get me wrong, there are some massive independent companies there. There’s some very large independent companies out there.

RJ Burr:
However, the vast majority of them are Ma and Paul.

RJ Burr:
Companies are people that you go to church with, people that you see at the grocery store. That’s the american oil industry.

RJ Burr:
And so when you look at the whole story that is told from american.

RJ Burr:
Oil, I truly believe the modern world did not begin until America drilled its.

RJ Burr:
First oil well in the late 18.

RJ Burr:
Hundreds when we started producing oil. And oil introduced the evolution of the human condition like it did through energy, through transportation, through products. I mean, most people don’t realize that there are 6000 products can be made from one barrel of oil. From all plastics to make to cosmetics to, oh heck, to sports equipment. Anything with poly in it is oil.

RJ Burr:
And it has a root. I mean, you could randomly go to.

RJ Burr:
Any city in the country and randomly grab somebody and I’d be willing to bet they’d have two or three products of oil on them and not even.

RJ Burr:
Know it from computers too.

RJ Burr:
You know, it’s, it’s crazy. In fact, the clothing, right, clothing, polyester.

Dana Robinson:
The products that make your shoes, the, the wristwatch, plastic, little tips on your shoelaces. Yeah.

RJ Burr:
You know, and, well, I was, I.

RJ Burr:
Was in the kitchen here at the office.

RJ Burr:
It was before Christmas here two christmases ago. And it’s all, it’s about 6630 in the morning. Nobody’s at the office yet. I’m just kind of planning out the.

RJ Burr:
End of the year, and I’m making.

RJ Burr:
A cup of coffee, and I’ve never done this. I mean, I’ve been doing this more.

RJ Burr:
Than 30 years now. And I’m sitting there and I look around, I said, well, that was made with oil.

RJ Burr:
That was made with oil.

RJ Burr:
And I started listing off everything in the kitchen that was made with oil.

RJ Burr:
And by the time I was done, I was, I was blown away. And when I got back to my.

RJ Burr:
Desk, I said, well, you know, Jay.

RJ Burr:
You’Ve been doing this your whole life. And if you didn’t realize that, how many other people out there have no idea?

RJ Burr:
And so we made a movie to really, to represent that we, oh, we kind of, we tried to make it funny just to be a little informational.

RJ Burr:
Movie, but we called it a morning without oil.

RJ Burr:
And we took just the average american couple, had them wake up. I was doing the voiceover on it, and they get out of bed, their alarm clock goes off and said, well, hang on, guys. We’re doing a morning without oil. This needs to change a little bit. And so we reverse them, put them.

RJ Burr:
Back in bed, and remove all the products that are made with oil from, from their home.

RJ Burr:
And so we follow them from the.

RJ Burr:
Kit from the bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen to the husband leaving for work, and we show you what a morning without oil would truly look like.

RJ Burr:
And if you want to see, it’s at Pan x us.

RJ Burr:
Learn, y’all.

RJ Burr:
We put that website together specifically for.

RJ Burr:
People who have never looked at the oil industry.

RJ Burr:
We have oil and gas 101 there. Just kind of gives you the basic foundation of knowledge. Oil and gas 102 shows you the tax benefits. It’s, in my opinion, the greatest tax benefit out there. It’s, now, I’m not a CPA. Don’t set me in stone. I can just give you a typical rule of thumb. But you put your money in an oil deal, say you put 100,000 in.

RJ Burr:
Drilling program, Uncle Sam’s roughly gonna pay.

RJ Burr:
For 30, 35,000 of them.

RJ Burr:
How that means you what that means.

RJ Burr:
In dollars and cents. If you owe at the end of the year, if you owe Uncle Sam.

RJ Burr:
150,000 in taxes, you now I’m 115,000 in taxes. It’s an above line deduction.

RJ Burr:
And so it’s a, it’s their incentive.

RJ Burr:
To, hey, it’s Uncle Sam’s way of saying, hey, we need the oil.

RJ Burr:
And so is that a.

Dana Robinson:
Just let me pause for a minute. That is, that’s outside investor. Passive investors get that as a. So if you invest in oil, you get to write off the whole investment.

RJ Burr:
Depends on how you. Yes, you do.

RJ Burr:
Depends on how you invest in the.

RJ Burr:
Deal, whether it’s against active or passive.

RJ Burr:
Like in our partnerships, we run a Reg D 506 C, and it is a limited partnership. Well, in that partnership, you can invest.

RJ Burr:
As a general partner, and the main.

RJ Burr:
Difference between the two is your liability and your taxes. Or you can invest as a limited partner, is a general partner. Your liabilities are for the entire investment. That’s where we have insurance policies, everybody we contract with. And once we capture the tax benefits, we automatically convert everybody to a pet, to a limited partner to lower their liability.

RJ Burr:
Or you don’t have any active income.

RJ Burr:
From our partners that in there that are through their income earning years and.

RJ Burr:
Have passive income coming in. They just invest as limited partners and.

RJ Burr:
They get those tax benefits against their passive income. And so it’s really now as liability, you’re limited is limited to the amount that you invest. And so that’s really the main two differences. But yeah, you can have them against active income. In fact, most of my partners in their income earning years, that’s where they.

RJ Burr:
That’S where they invest.

Dana Robinson:
Talk to me about the ecosystem like I’m novice. I understand business really well. I’m in, I’m in private equity fund with landscape maintenance companies and blue collar businesses. I’ve been part of an h vac. I mean, roll up, you know, kind of broad in my business acumen, but I know nothing about sort of the ecosystem. If you got eleven person companies and there’s thousands and thousands of those, you know, when I look around the oil business, who’s doing what? What are the different business kind of layers?

RJ Burr:
There’s really three different. You have the upstream, midstream and downstream. Your upstream is finding oil. That, that’s the finding and producing. That’s what we do worldwide. Your midstream is getting it from the fields to the facilities. Downstream is the products that come out where, where we set is in the upstream. And what really started all of this, when we, when we got back together eight years ago and we were reading the tea leaves and looking at everything.

RJ Burr:
Going on out there, we noticed that.

RJ Burr:
We called them the converging factors there.

RJ Burr:
There were several things coming together that.

RJ Burr:
Hadn’T come together before and people were just ignoring it. And so we were kind of going.

RJ Burr:
Well, hang on, something else has got to be going on, because it doesn’t.

RJ Burr:
Take a rocket scientist.

RJ Burr:
When you look at, oh, just look.

RJ Burr:
At demand right now, we’re running anywhere from ten to 20 million barrels a.

RJ Burr:
Day, short on what we consume versus what we produce.

RJ Burr:
You say, okay, well, does that look to go anywhere?

RJ Burr:
Does demand look to be going down.

RJ Burr:
Because there’s a gap there?

RJ Burr:
Well, no, they anticipate that to be.

RJ Burr:
Over 30 million a day by 2030.

RJ Burr:
Because as we were talking, you have, 83% of the world is just now.

RJ Burr:
Beginning to use oil.

RJ Burr:
And so I really don’t see demand going anywhere, so.

RJ Burr:
Okay, well, if demands going up, what are we doing with supply? Well, in 2013, we invested worldwide, roughly.

RJ Burr:
A trillion dollars in upstream development, finding.

RJ Burr:
More oil to replace what we produced. We’re going to be lucky to hit.

RJ Burr:
300 billion this year.

RJ Burr:
So you have investment worldwide to find.

RJ Burr:
More oil is down almost 70% in the last nine years.

RJ Burr:
Hmm.

RJ Burr:
So demands going up, yet we’re not.

RJ Burr:
Finding enough oil to replace what we produce. Okay, that seems pretty obvious what’s going to happen with prices there, unless there’s.

RJ Burr:
Something to replace it with.

RJ Burr:
So you go look to alternatives. Well, doing a deep dive in alternative energy, there’s nothing out there that can feasibly replace oil and economically replace it.

RJ Burr:
I mean, to generate the. And we’re not even talking about the.

RJ Burr:
Products made with oil. We’re just talking strictly energy. You know, take, take solar panels. If you took the most advanced solar panel on the market, it would take a solar farm the size of New Jersey, and it would require the sun to shine 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, at Arizona summertime intensity to produce.

RJ Burr:
The amount of energy that we consume is a nation.

RJ Burr:
It’s not going to happen. Same thing with solar, with wind farms. Now, when I look at solar panels, and I don’t want to be negative.

RJ Burr:
Nellie, I don’t be the Susie ray of sunshine, you know, I don’t want.

RJ Burr:
To break people’s hearts, but the fact matter is they discovered the first solar panel in the mid 18 hundreds. If they hadn’t figured it out by now, chances are they’re not going to. It’s going to take some wizard of smart, some kid that we don’t know, he’s in some basement he’s doing. He’ll figure something out. He’s going to invent something. It just hadn’t happened yet. Well, until then, we have oil. So you look at those three like, okay, well, if there’s demands going up, supplies going down, there’s nothing to replace oil with.

RJ Burr:
Surely I can’t be the only guy who sees this. Well, then you look at who are most of the commercials. You see when they’re talking about green energy and all that. If you see an oil commercial, commercial from Exxon, a commercial from shell, isn’t it? Normally, we care about the environment. We’re investing in green energy. We want to find an alternative energy. Well, why would they do that? When you sit down and you research it? Well, there could really be only one of two reasons.

RJ Burr:
Either one, they’re altruistic.

RJ Burr:
They truly believe the product they’ve been producing for decades is killing the world. So they’re willing to wreck their company, to lose their part, their stockholders, money, all in an effort to save the planet. Hey, they could be doing that.

RJ Burr:
Who am I to say they’re not altruistic? Or they see what I see.

RJ Burr:
They see the way the wind is.

RJ Burr:
Blowing and they go, okay, we invest.

RJ Burr:
In all this green energy, what are we going to get?

RJ Burr:
We’re gonna get social loving.

RJ Burr:
Everybody loves somebody who’s trying to save the world.

RJ Burr:
But two, they’re gonna get tremendous tax.

RJ Burr:
Benefits for putting that money in green energy.

RJ Burr:
Now, remember, they know the same thing I do. They know the end of this story already.

RJ Burr:
So when it doesn’t work, how much.

RJ Burr:
Is the oil they already have going to be worth at that point? I don’t know which one they’re doing. I know which one I think they’re doing. And so you look at all this, and then you take into account the.

RJ Burr:
True american oil industry. This was everything we saw coming. Now, what we saw was Russia and Saudi Arabia.

RJ Burr:
Whether you like President Trump or not is irrelevant.

RJ Burr:
What he did was he took the power from OPEC.

RJ Burr:
OPEC had been basically the ruler on.

RJ Burr:
Oil prices for 70 years.

RJ Burr:
And when we started producing as much.

RJ Burr:
Oil as we did, all of a.

RJ Burr:
Sudden, OPEC didn’t have as near as much power.

RJ Burr:
They didn’t like that.

RJ Burr:
And so you saw Russia and Saudi Arabia increasing production.

RJ Burr:
Well, why were they doing that? Because most of your shale companies need.

RJ Burr:
At least $50 a barrel to pay their bills. If they could push prices down to 35, $40 a barrel, all of a sudden, these american shale companies are in trouble. It was essentially economic war.

RJ Burr:
Now, the dirty little secret is they.

RJ Burr:
Needed dollar 50 a barrel also.

RJ Burr:
And so what we were betting is that they would think they could last longer than the shale industry. And so when you go through american.

RJ Burr:
History and you look at all the economic crisis, there are always one or.

RJ Burr:
A group of people that come out.

RJ Burr:
Of the other side looking like geniuses.

RJ Burr:
And when you string their stories together.

RJ Burr:
They really have two common characteristics they share. The first, when the crash happened, they.

RJ Burr:
Were liquid, they had cash in hand.

RJ Burr:
And could make a move. Second, and probably more importantly, when their opportunity presented itself, they had the courage.

RJ Burr:
To push that cash in the middle.

RJ Burr:
Of the table and make a move.

RJ Burr:
And so that’s really what we were gearing up for. We had cash in hand, we were ready to go.

RJ Burr:
And then all of a sudden COVID came.

RJ Burr:
And while the trigger was different, the.

RJ Burr:
Result was the same.

RJ Burr:
Really the only difference was it took.

RJ Burr:
What we thought would take twelve to 18 months to play out and it crunched it down into 30 days.

RJ Burr:
And so once we had our initial.

RJ Burr:
Of the market crashing, then we had.

RJ Burr:
Our, okay, guys, this is what we thought was going to happen anyway.

RJ Burr:
And so when everybody else is kind of pulling their sales in to ride out the storm, we opened them wide open. And between that day and now, we’ve made, I believe, 24 different acquisitions. We’ve secured what we believed, about 100 million barrels of oil in reserve.

RJ Burr:
And now all we’re doing is developing it.

RJ Burr:
We’ve hit nine of the last ten partnership wells. We found several million barrels of oil, about 1600ft of total pay, about 45 different pay zones.

RJ Burr:
It’s just, that’s basically what we did. I’d love to say we were rocket.

RJ Burr:
Scientists and we reinvented the wheel, but no, we, for lack of a better term, we stand on the shoulders of.

RJ Burr:
Giants and get what they left behind.

Dana Robinson:
So when I look around like I’m in California, so we have an oil field up in Bakersfield. They actually, it’s, it’s California’s a. It’s oil, oil city, I think they call it. But you know, go up there and it’s surrounded by, by the pumps and you know, there’s little roads going up to each. Talk to me about, you know, like, is every, every little road going up to a pump, is that owned by some investment group like yours or landowner?

RJ Burr:
Or landowner.

Dana Robinson:
So it’s. A landowner owns some land and mineral rights. They collaborate with someone that’s looking to discover oil, like you, they partner with you to see if they can find it, tap into it, if you can. Then you start pumping oil and then that goes to the sort of distribution layer, I guess, of the ecosystem.

RJ Burr:
Yeah. And basically let’s, well, take us.

RJ Burr:
We like salt domes and the reason.

RJ Burr:
We like salt domes and I won’t get in the weeds, basically it’s a big body of salt from deep down below.

RJ Burr:
It pushes up towards the surface. That creates the traps.

RJ Burr:
That’s what traps the oil well. Back in the wild west, days of.

RJ Burr:
Oil, your salt domes were the first.

RJ Burr:
Geological formation that they could identify.

RJ Burr:
So a lot of your old oil fields were salt domes.

RJ Burr:
Well, your old oil companies were a.

RJ Burr:
Lot like spoiled kids and that a spoiled kid’s favorite toys, their next toy. So what they do, they’d go out, they’d hit a well on a spot, cut back flips, they’ve hit all this oil.

RJ Burr:
Then they’d go up and they drill it. You know, next couple of years, they drill a handful of wells around it. Maybe 510, 15 wells produce all this oil.

RJ Burr:
They’re tickled well.

RJ Burr:
Then all of a sudden, they hit a well 5 miles away.

RJ Burr:
Well, heck, they just pick up all.

RJ Burr:
Their operation and move over there and start drilling over there.

RJ Burr:
Well, how much oil they leave behind. At that time, they thought they got it all. Well, over the next 60, 70 years.

RJ Burr:
You might have companies come out and drill here, drill here, drill here around that salt dome.

RJ Burr:
But a lot of them didn’t completely.

RJ Burr:
Develop the zone, the salt dome the.

RJ Burr:
Way you’re supposed to.

RJ Burr:
And so what we do is that’s what we look. We look for salt domes, and there’s.

RJ Burr:
A certain way you develop them.

RJ Burr:
And if you know what you’re doing.

RJ Burr:
You’Ll look at them and you can determine whether they developed it properly or not. Take the, take the Choctaw where we’re at right now.

RJ Burr:
Between the mid 1920s, when this field was discovered, and, oh, roughly 2000, there.

RJ Burr:
Had been more than 250 wells drilled.

RJ Burr:
On this salt well.

RJ Burr:
That data is, a lot of it is public data.

RJ Burr:
All.

RJ Burr:
You know, when they, when you drill.

RJ Burr:
A well, you run a log on the well.

RJ Burr:
It’s basically an open hole. You have a little tool you drop.

RJ Burr:
Down there and it reads, it tells you what’s in the well.

RJ Burr:
Well, the data you got from running a log in 1940 is very similar.

RJ Burr:
To the data we get today when.

RJ Burr:
We run a log.

RJ Burr:
Only difference is our computers are a little more advanced.

RJ Burr:
Our pictures are a little prettier.

RJ Burr:
But if you know what you’re looking.

RJ Burr:
At, you can tell what these wells.

RJ Burr:
Had in them and you can pull.

RJ Burr:
Up their production report.

RJ Burr:
I mean, you see it. It’s a, it’s a picture of it.

RJ Burr:
And so you’re going through all these.

RJ Burr:
Logs, and you see, on average, you can build a profile of the field.

RJ Burr:
You know, hey, most of these wells.

RJ Burr:
Had multiple stacked pay sands meaning you’d.

RJ Burr:
Produce each one of them one at.

RJ Burr:
A time, had long production life, anywhere from 20 to 40 years. And they produced anywhere from half million to a million and a half barrels of wool. And so you look at all these.

RJ Burr:
Well, then all of a sudden you’d.

RJ Burr:
See a log that looked just like the others.

RJ Burr:
Beautiful, stacked past hands, good porosity, good permeability.

RJ Burr:
This well should produce half a million to a million and a half barrels of oil.

RJ Burr:
Then all of a sudden you look.

RJ Burr:
At the production records and you go, hmm, it only produced 50,000 barrels. I wonder why. And so you keep looking through the.

RJ Burr:
Logs and all of a sudden you see another one just like that.

RJ Burr:
And then you see another one and you see another one. Well, once you go back and dig out the stories, you find out why didn’t these wells produce? Well, it turns out there are two reasons. One, greed.

RJ Burr:
Two, sand.

RJ Burr:
These guys were in competition with all their guys around them.

RJ Burr:
So when they had hit one of.

RJ Burr:
These wells, they’d want to turn it wide open and peruse as much as they could. Well, if you had a big cup with crushed ice and coke in it with no lid, and you just wanted.

RJ Burr:
To drink the coke and not get.

RJ Burr:
The ice in your mouth, you’d have.

RJ Burr:
To block the ice with your lips or your teeth. You’d have to gently drink that coke.

RJ Burr:
Not to get any ice in.

RJ Burr:
That’s how you have to produce these wells. You can’t just turn it wide open. Well, that’s exactly what they did. They took that cup and just opened.

RJ Burr:
Up and poured it in.

RJ Burr:
They got the coke, the ice and everything else that was in that cup. Well, when these guys turn these wells wide open, yeah, they’re going to get a lot of oil. However, these wells also produce sand. And so when it produces that oil, boom, the sand goes right up the casing. Next thing you know, a promising well.

RJ Burr:
It turns into a 3000 foot column.

RJ Burr:
Of cement and they just walk away. And so we literally have wells all over this field telling us where the oil is. We know it’s there because they didn’t produce it. We got the logs, so all we’re doing is going and drilling well right next to them. We done it five times. Now we’ve hit five different wells and.

RJ Burr:
Then we’ve offset those wells and hit another four wells on the off.

RJ Burr:
So the really, like I said, we.

RJ Burr:
Stand on the shoulders of giants to get what they left behind and we’re just willing to.

RJ Burr:
Now, we love reason.

RJ Burr:
We love salt domes. I’m not going to make it sound.

RJ Burr:
Like it’s that easy, because salt domes, it’s very difficult drilling.

RJ Burr:
It really is. That, that’s. That’s one of the reasons we love it, is because it. You have to have a certain level of expertise, and it eliminates a lot of the competition. Most people don’t want to drill salt on wells. Well, secondly, because what, the minute reason I told you a minute ago, because they’re the oldest formations there, most of these were.

RJ Burr:
Had a lot of oil left behind.

RJ Burr:
And, well, like the Choctaw, where we’re.

RJ Burr:
At right now, we think these guys could let 100 million barrels sitting out there.

RJ Burr:
It’s $70 oil.

RJ Burr:
That’s $7 billion. It cost us two to 300 million.

RJ Burr:
To develop the entire thing. And we were talking about earlier about.

RJ Burr:
How we do this. We do it through individual investors.

RJ Burr:
I have pretty much every partner we have, I’ve talked to multiple times, because.

RJ Burr:
I’m the one you’re dealing with.

RJ Burr:
This is my family’s business. You have to make sure that we’re the kind of people you want to do business with. Now, we have some syndicators out there that raise some money for us, but for the most part, I’d say 95% of our money is raised by a.

RJ Burr:
Couple of guys in this office.

RJ Burr:
And we’re not a huge operation, but we’ve been doing a long time, and.

RJ Burr:
Honestly, our goal there has been one.

RJ Burr:
Major, and it was when two companies merged. And a major is 100 million market cap. There’s been one major generated on american.

RJ Burr:
Oil in the last 40 years.

RJ Burr:
We won’t be the first one to.

RJ Burr:
Do it on our own. Hmm.

RJ Burr:
We’ve already. We’ve already got 100 million barrel head start, we think, and we’re going to keep buying and.

RJ Burr:
Oh, COVID taught me a couple of things.

RJ Burr:
But one of the main things it taught me, if a country doesn’t control.

RJ Burr:
Its food, medicine, or energy, somebody else does.

RJ Burr:
And I can’t do anything about food. That’s not my, my line of work. Can’t do anything about medicine. That’s not my expertise.

RJ Burr:
I gotta can do something about energy.

RJ Burr:
And somebody is going to consolidate this american oil.

RJ Burr:
It’s too vital to us.

RJ Burr:
And how I look at it, if it’s going to be somebody, why not make it somebody who actually cares what happens to it? And so that’s how we look at it. And, you know, everybody’s in the oil business, whether you want to be or not, we all pay the prices for it. And if we’re one of those few rays of sunlight. Then get that revenue flowed and coming the other way towards you. Sign me up six days a week and twice on Sunday.

Dana Robinson:
Dana Robinson here.

Dana Robinson:
Quick plug for my book, the king’s fly swatter.

Dana Robinson:
You can see it here behind me. If you’re watching this, I’ve got it in my hand. It’s a beautiful hardcover book, printed to make it giftable, something that you can share with a family member buy as a gift.

Dana Robinson:
So this latest book, it’s a fable.

Dana Robinson:
About a person who has a really crappy job.

Dana Robinson:
Let’s just start there. This is a book that most people can relate to because we’ve all had crappy jobs. This is the story of Ubar, a servant in the court of a babylonian king who masters his boring, monotonous job and then learns to listen to the king, hearing him rule the kingdom while quietly swatting flies behind a cane. Eventually, Ubar becomes the wisest and most successful man in the kingdom. The story is fun, and it’s easy to read, but it’s not mythology. It’s my story. And as I shared the idea with colleagues and friends, I learned that it was their story.

RJ Burr:
And guess what?

Dana Robinson:
It’s your story if you’re at a job of any kind, one that you love, one that you hate, one that’s just enough to get by. This little book gives fresh perspective on how to leverage that job to get.

Dana Robinson:
You something greater than a paycheck.

Dana Robinson:
The lessons in this parable are entrepreneurial lessons, but not what you might think from the current entrepreneurial zeitgeist. If you or someone you know are looking for a real pathway to entrepreneurship, here’s the secret. Your job is the way out of your job. It’s counterintuitive, but once you see how it works, you can’t unsee it. Learn the way of the fly swatter from the parable of Ubar and from the stories I share from my 30 year business journey. You can get a free copy of the King Splice Water by going to danarobinson.com.

Dana Robinson:
I definitely don’t want to get too political, but I want some help with the optics versus the reality on alternatives. The reality, like you said it, we’re all wearing polyester things on our feet, you know, and the rubber that’s there, the toothbrushes that we’ve got, the bristles, the plastic handle, the your cell phone, your computer, everything. So oil is around us, and yet we have this kind of. This negative connotation, as if oil is actually the source of all the social ills. Is there a world where we still incentivize trying to find alternatives, hoping that the kid in the basement that you said is going to invent the thing. We don’t want to shut down oil because of the unsavory reputation. And at the same time, you see where I’m going.

RJ Burr:
You would have societal collapse.

RJ Burr:
Yeah, the modern world would collapse without oil.

Dana Robinson:
Right.

RJ Burr:
And maybe that’s what they want. Because it makes no sense. I mean, it literally makes no sense. I was. I was seeking.

RJ Burr:
I was speaking at CPAC last year.

RJ Burr:
And I told the guys, look, don’t.

RJ Burr:
Take my word for it.

RJ Burr:
Don’t take my word for it.

RJ Burr:
Do this.

RJ Burr:
Get on your computer and just type in oil field and hit images. Then open up another window and type in lithium mine and hit images. And then you tell me which one’s destroying the earth.

RJ Burr:
And I heard a statement backstage there.

RJ Burr:
That I’d never thought about it like that.

RJ Burr:
And because I want everybody to have free energy. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love making money in oil, but if.

RJ Burr:
Everybody had free energy, my life would be easier, too. That means I would get it, too.

RJ Burr:
If we had free cleat.

RJ Burr:
Well, if you want to do. Why wouldn’t you just focus heavily in oil and do that?

RJ Burr:
And I heard somebody back on, they.

RJ Burr:
Said, look, you can’t control abundance. If you have abundance, then there’s so many options on where to get it from. You can’t control it. However, you can control scarcity. And if you remove all the energy, then you get to choose who gets it. You get to act a certain way if you get it. Now, I don’t want to say that people are that diabolical, but, man, after the last couple of years, would you put it past them?

RJ Burr:
I mean, I look at COVID and.

RJ Burr:
You look at the things that they had us do as a society that now we know we’re absolutely based on falsehoods. Well, you have a lot of people going, hmm.

RJ Burr:
I mean, I was one of those guys.

RJ Burr:
I look at some of the conspiracy theories that have been floated over the years, from Kennedy to 911 to all those.

RJ Burr:
And my mind before all this was, no, surely my government wouldn’t do that. No, they wouldn’t do that. There’s something that we don’t know about, but they wouldn’t do anything to harm us. Well, now you go, well, hell, yeah, they would.

RJ Burr:
I mean, I don’t think anybody can say they wouldn’t come at you and.

RJ Burr:
Gut you if it did them good. And so now you have everything that we dismissed is. Is conspiracy. I’m not saying it’s true or not. However, you now re examine it with a different set of glasses on. You pulled the rose colored glasses off, and now you’re actually looking at the.

RJ Burr:
Fact that you had a guy release.

RJ Burr:
A book that says, no, Kennedy’s three.

RJ Burr:
Different entrance wounds for bullets.

RJ Burr:
It couldn’t have been one guy.

RJ Burr:
I mean, you.

RJ Burr:
I mean, that it’s.

RJ Burr:
Forensically. I mean, this guy’s one of the sharpest reporters I’ve ever seen. And so you’re like, okay, hang on. Maybe they did assassinate it. I don’t know. But I know that I’m questioning a whole lot more than I used to, because when I look at green energy, like you and I were discussing earlier, it doesn’t make sense.

Dana Robinson:
I mean, let’s talk about not making sense. So if, you know, I’m in California, so there’s this green, you know, this pressure. We’re going to. We’re going to get all the cars electric and get all the homes on solar. Talk to me about the reality of that. If all of California, which is, you know, as an economy, like, the fifth largest country in the world, has all the possible.

RJ Burr:
It’s impossible.

RJ Burr:
There’s.

RJ Burr:
You don’t have enough energy, period. I mean, the day Gavin Newsom announced that. Did you catch the news later that night?

RJ Burr:
Please don’t plug your cars and you’re.

RJ Burr:
Going to crash the grid. We can’t do it there, that we don’t have the infrastructure. I mean, logistically impossible. That’s where I was saying earlier. If your goal is to save the earth yet, to do that, we have to destroy it. That’s exactly what we would have to do. I mean, once again, don’t take my word for it. Search out how many pounds of material you have to move.

RJ Burr:
Basically, dig in the earth to make one lithium battery. Think about the weight of the cars. If everybody went to electric cars, those cars are almost twice the weight of your average car.

RJ Burr:
What do you think that’s going to.

RJ Burr:
Do to the roads? You know, so there are so many logistical problems that it’s impossible now, I’m not going to say it’s impossible.

RJ Burr:
We’re Americans. If we put our mind to it.

RJ Burr:
We could do it.

RJ Burr:
If the world was going to end.

RJ Burr:
If we didn’t do it, we’d figure.

RJ Burr:
Out a way to do it.

RJ Burr:
I do believe that, that America still exists.

RJ Burr:
However, you’re asking me to do something.

RJ Burr:
That every fiber in my being says is B’s. It’s just, you’ve lost that right to command me like that.

RJ Burr:
You know, I trusted you. I trusted you. I gave you benefit of the doubt. I gave you benefit of the doubt.

RJ Burr:
No, you’ve lost that.

RJ Burr:
You’ve lost that trust. And so now you lost that right.

RJ Burr:
To tell me exactly. No, I will not.

RJ Burr:
Well, you’re going to get arrested.

RJ Burr:
Well, guess what?

RJ Burr:
Go ahead and arrest me because I’m not doing it.

RJ Burr:
Yeah.

Dana Robinson:
So let me sort of play through my own logic, because I’m asking you to teach me the. If there isn’t a scenario where we rely on oil because of its abundance and its simplicity, while we develop alternatives, because the alternatives are themselves more invasive, more impossible as a solution. So electric cars, unless they find out another way to, besides lithium ion for the storage of the energy, aren’t, are never going to be a solution?

RJ Burr:
I don’t, I just don’t think so. I really don’t.

Dana Robinson:
I mean, now and then, you know, there’s no way we could get enough solar on the rooftops to basically free ourselves of, of the need for big.

RJ Burr:
Power plants unless they figure out a new solar panel.

RJ Burr:
I have no problem with alternative energy. I have no problem with electric vehicles. If you showed me an electric vehicle.

RJ Burr:
That will do what my 2500 hd.

RJ Burr:
Diesel will do, hey, I’ll do it tomorrow. You have to let the free market choose. You can’t force me to eat a pile of crap and then tell me.

RJ Burr:
It’S an apple pie and I’m going to like it.

RJ Burr:
That’s what they’re doing. They’re not letting the free market work. Because what’s going to happen if you let the free market work and you let the incentive of the free market.

RJ Burr:
Work, somebody’s going to come up with.

RJ Burr:
Something that’s going to be better than what we’re doing right now and people will naturally go to it. I saw a news report from CB’s.

RJ Burr:
Or NBC, one of the two, and I haven’t been able to find it. I’ve seen it multiple times, so it’s not something that I’m getting older. Maybe I saw it and maybe it was a movie.

RJ Burr:
No, I’ve seen it multiple times, but I can’t find it anymore. It was a news report in the.

RJ Burr:
Mid eighties and this old boy, I.

RJ Burr:
Think it was out in Iowa or something like that, had invented an engine.

RJ Burr:
That could run on water and literally.

RJ Burr:
Stopped his car in the middle of the interview, got out, took a bucket and dipped it in a thing of water on the side of the road.

RJ Burr:
And poured it in, and they were.

RJ Burr:
Running 85 miles an hour. Well, that dude mysteriously died like a.

RJ Burr:
Week later, and all of his research disappeared.

RJ Burr:
Well, once again, not a conspiracy theorist.

RJ Burr:
But I saw the news report, and.

RJ Burr:
That made sense to me. Maybe it was a hoax, maybe. I don’t know. But if you let the free market work, somebody’s going to come up with a way. Because I think it’ll be flying cars. I think they’ll try to get rid of all of this.

RJ Burr:
You know, you look at the ease of the.

RJ Burr:
Of the drones and how they’re figuring.

RJ Burr:
That out, and so.

RJ Burr:
And even with that, once again, doesn’t make sense to go electric because of the weight.

RJ Burr:
I mean, so you’re.

RJ Burr:
There’s so much logistical that you’re going to have to do to change all this. And then you look at, okay, well, what could we do right now that burns cleaner, burns hotter and is better for the environment?

RJ Burr:
Well, natural gas and nuclear, we already have them. You could.

RJ Burr:
You could put a converter on every car. You could run a pipeline to everybody’s garage. You no longer have to go to the gas station. You could plug it up, fill your car up at night. And most of the infrastructure is already built. Most people already have gas pipelines to their house. Well, that’s one route. I guess that just makes too much sense.

RJ Burr:
Or let’s say nuclear. You mean to tell me we can run the most advanced subs on the planet on nuclear energy, yet we can’t do it here?

RJ Burr:
No.

RJ Burr:
Bull. We’ve let a movie from 40 years ago keep us scared. And so there’s ways to do it and accomplish their goals. Because here’s what is the kicker of the entire environmental argument. I believe everybody has environmentalist in them.

RJ Burr:
I don’t believe there’s one person that.

RJ Burr:
Wants to live in trash.

RJ Burr:
I don’t believe there’s one person that.

RJ Burr:
Wants to live in filthy.

RJ Burr:
The one of my favorite things to do every day is when I walk out of my front porch and I.

RJ Burr:
Look at the 30 acre field out in front of my house.

RJ Burr:
It’s beautiful, it’s manicured, it’s dialed in.

RJ Burr:
Why, it’s mine and I love it. And I’m going to keep it like that. Well, if that’s not environmental, I don’t know what is. And so then you start looking at all the other, you know, you talk about the CO2. Well, I’m one of those simpletons that, well, what feeds on CO2? Isn’t it plants. Well, wouldn’t more CO2 mean more plants? Well, it means things are getting warmer. Well, you have areas that are so cold right now, they can’t have growing seasons. Maybe a little warming weather will help them.

RJ Burr:
What about the areas that get too warm? I believe modern technology will be able to irrigate those entire areas. We literally have oceans that we can desalinate for water if we need to. And so there are solutions. But it. So it makes no sense. It’s just, I guess.

RJ Burr:
I guess my dad taught me a.

RJ Burr:
Long time ago that if it violates.

RJ Burr:
The one plus one equals two, then don’t even worry about going any further, because it’s not two.

RJ Burr:
What they’re telling us is 2.12.5. Hell, and sometimes it’s nine.

RJ Burr:
But don’t believe your lion eyes.

Dana Robinson:
Again, I’m a novice to this space, both in the business and even the politics of it. I heard, though, that a very large environmental summit, that a lot of the big oil representatives were either trying to show up under other credentials because they wanted to be there and weren’t invited, or were somehow disinvited. It just made me wonder, why would you not want the representatives of big institutional oil and traditional, I guess, for lack of a better word, showing up at environmental summits and even participating in that dialogue? I mean, does there need to be that dichotomy? Are they unwelcome? Is this just demonization to polarize people?

RJ Burr:
Yeah, I mean, the only thing I can think is you have a certain segment that are set in what they’re.

RJ Burr:
Going to believe doesn’t matter.

RJ Burr:
The data, doesn’t matter what you put in front of them, they are firmly.

RJ Burr:
Convinced that humans are destroying the earth.

RJ Burr:
And I guess that, I mean, man, it’s like, in everywhere you see, it’s like the crazies of the inmates running the asylum. I mean, the fact, and I don’t want to beat up Greta Thunberg, but.

RJ Burr:
The fact that that little child has influenced anybody’s decision making process. You got to be kidding me.

RJ Burr:
Are you the weakest person on the planet?

RJ Burr:
That you would be shamed by a child spouting nothing?

RJ Burr:
That in that.

RJ Burr:
I think that’s the biggest problem.

RJ Burr:
I think the biggest problem we face.

RJ Burr:
Is they’ve demasculinated America so much that.

RJ Burr:
When people see something wrong and they shout you down, you’re a racist, you’re.

RJ Burr:
A homophobe, you’re a bigot, whatever, they want to yell at you.

RJ Burr:
And so people just hadn’t wanted to fight that fight, and so you, you ignore it.

RJ Burr:
Well, now it’s beyond the point of.

RJ Burr:
Ignoring now if the emperor is wearing.

RJ Burr:
No clothes, you have a lot of people that have no issue saying the.

RJ Burr:
Emperor is wearing no clothes, and that’s at the point we’re at. Because now you’re not talking them making a little change that some of the tree huggers in Oregon can go do this, that and the other.

RJ Burr:
No, no, no. Now they’re wanting to implement changes here because they know that’s, now you’re impacting my life.

RJ Burr:
And if you’re going to impact my life, by God, I’m not doing it.

RJ Burr:
Just because you said so.

RJ Burr:
Now don’t get me wrong. It’s, it’s like the military.

RJ Burr:
If we are truly at risk from something, I’ll be the first one to sign up.

RJ Burr:
I’ll be right there. But, no, you’re not, you’re not sending.

RJ Burr:
My kids over to do what? Are you crazy? Because that’s not, you know, they’ve wasted. How many lives have they wasted? And I’m the, I’m the most patriotic guy out there.

RJ Burr:
I think we are the greatest country that ever lived.

RJ Burr:
I don’t think there’s a close second.

RJ Burr:
I think we’ve had divine providence.

RJ Burr:
I think, no, we’re not perfect. We’ve made mistakes. But by God, we’re the only country in the history of the world that has tried to fix our mistakes, and we paid dearly for it. You look at, look at Mexico. Just look at the immigration issue we’re facing right now. Do most Americans not remember the mexican american war? Do most Americans, did they not read that in their history book where we actually occupied up to Mexico City? If we had done what every other.

RJ Burr:
Country in the history of the world.

RJ Burr:
Had done, Mexico would now be a part of America. But we said, no, guys, we don’t want Mexico.

RJ Burr:
Here’s where we’re going to draw the line.

RJ Burr:
You have that.

RJ Burr:
We’ll keep California and everything north.

RJ Burr:
And we gave them back their country and we’re the bad guys. And so we’ve allowed people to bastardize our story. And I’m through with it.

RJ Burr:
I’m personally, I mean, I don’t, I’m not belligerent.

RJ Burr:
I’m not looking for a fight, but.

RJ Burr:
By God, I’m not going to let somebody spout something that’s inaccurate and not.

RJ Burr:
Say something because that’s what we’ve allowed to happen.

RJ Burr:
And now you have people that will stand up, that goes back the reason I said that, it goes back to the environmental movement. You will no longer browbeat me because I’m arguing with Santa Claus. Santa Claus is giving out coal.

RJ Burr:
Yeah.

Dana Robinson:
I’ll defer to smarter people on all of those subjects because I want to actually draw it back to the business side of things because it’s just not, I don’t have enough knowledge of sort of history, american history and politics to opine and I’m not sure it’s my platform, but I do. I’m super intrigued by the business and I want to, I try and get toward somebody’s business journey. Toward the end of my interviews I want to know if you’ve made a mistake you can share that people can learn from and a lucky or best thing that you’ve had happen in business. So two sides of that entrepreneur coin and don’t share something that you’ve signed a non disclosure on. Every entrepreneur has got a failure. I love the stories because they’re so telling about what you do differently and then everybody’s got a big win. And what happened to make it happen?

RJ Burr:
I would say error. The biggest error I think a businessman can make is not trusting their instincts. You were given instincts for a reason and when something is telling you that it’s wrong, man, chances are it’s wrong. And so trust your instincts.

RJ Burr:
The, the best and the worst oil.

RJ Burr:
Deal I’ve ever done were tied together in one. It was back in my first life in oil. I’m in my mid twenties, we had.

RJ Burr:
Just raised $4 million, which at that.

RJ Burr:
Point in time was a huge rage raise for us. We just raised $4 million to drill.

RJ Burr:
6000Ft vertically and 6000ft horizontal.

RJ Burr:
Biggest well we’d ever drilled. And we go out, we drill the well, dry hole. Nothing, not enough, not enough oil to change it in car wasn’t even worth trying to complete. And so like good little soldiers, we call all the partners, tell them spot died, other tax benefits, we’ve lost everything. And as much as that sucks, that’s, I mean that’s what we do. Good, bad or indifferent, I’m going to tell you exactly where it’s at. And so that’s what we did, told them all it was gone. And so about a week later we get a call.

RJ Burr:
We had a 50 a guy that.

RJ Burr:
Owned 50% of the well with us.

RJ Burr:
And he calls and said, hey, just want you to know the marathon just bought my 50%.

RJ Burr:
They’re calling you next.

RJ Burr:
Now at that point in time I really didn’t have a say in the company. I was more fly on the wall. I just sat and absorbed everything. And so I remember sitting in my dad’s office, listening to them all talk over the decision. And dad goes, you know, if marathon just bought Mister bridges out, they know.

RJ Burr:
Something we don’t know.

RJ Burr:
And so we wouldn’t sell.

RJ Burr:
We said, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll raise our money, we’ll match it. And then you go be marathon.

RJ Burr:
Go drill the well, go operate the well. We don’t want to have one saying, what y’all do out there?

RJ Burr:
Y’all go do your thing. We’ll just keep half of it.

RJ Burr:
And so we had to turn right back around and call every one of those partners that we had just lost.

RJ Burr:
$4 million and offer it to them.

RJ Burr:
Say, look, here’s what happened.

RJ Burr:
Here’s what we’re doing. We have to offer it to you first before we offer to anybody else. Well, thank goodness every partner but one picked up their position again. We raised another 4 million. We came down and went this way. Marathon came down and went that way.

RJ Burr:
They did the exact opposite of what we did.

RJ Burr:
That well came on producing over 6 million cubic feet of gas a day, paid the first 4 million off in.

RJ Burr:
Less than nine months, paid the second.

RJ Burr:
4 million off in less than 24 months, and produced at those levels for.

RJ Burr:
The next seven years.

RJ Burr:
We ended up from that well going.

RJ Burr:
On and drilling another, I want to.

RJ Burr:
Say ten wells with marathon, each one.

RJ Burr:
Of them about like that.

RJ Burr:
And then a couple of years later.

RJ Burr:
Marathon comes back and they wanted to.

RJ Burr:
Take those wells down to 18,000ft.

RJ Burr:
And when we were sitting there looking.

RJ Burr:
At it now, at this point, I.

RJ Burr:
Had grown a little more in business and I had a little more of an opinion. I looked at him.

RJ Burr:
This math doesn’t work.

RJ Burr:
I said, if we do this, it’s.

RJ Burr:
Going to take us 25 years to.

RJ Burr:
Get all our money back.

RJ Burr:
So our partners will kill us. And so we had to tell them no.

RJ Burr:
And when we told them no, marathon, I guess the best way to say.

RJ Burr:
It is they godfathered us.

RJ Burr:
They came back and made us an offer we couldn’t refuse, and they bought the entire company. And that was when we entered into early retirement. That ended our first life in oil. And so that $4 million dry hole turned into our deal with marathon.

Dana Robinson:
Fantastic. So I’m always talking to owners that want to sell. That’s private equity. We’re looking for somebody’s that inflection point. I get a lot of resistance from people that feel like, man, I’m going to sell you my landscape business, my h vac business, and then what am I going to do? And I always say, look, you’re between 45 and 60. You’re going to have a three to five year non compete go golf, go do something. And you’re going to be back. If you really love this, you’re going to be back in the game and you’re going to be back in the game having sold your business and you’ve got some control at that point.

Dana Robinson:
It sounds like you had a longer stint between the sale and getting back in the business. Does it ring true? And what would you tell another owner who’s listening to this thinking about selling their business?

RJ Burr:
I can see it from both sides.

RJ Burr:
I can see it from both sides. I have several partners that sold their businesses and it was worth. Worst decision they ever made. They regret it. They have the money, their tickle. I mean, they’re not sweating anything financially, but they’re going stir crazy. They missed their business and they had built it to a point that they.

RJ Burr:
Know how, they know to do it.

RJ Burr:
Again to that level will be another lifetime. And so now that I have some that did it, and they haven’t looked back and they’ve been happier than you know. So I don’t know.

RJ Burr:
I know I went stir crazy.

Dana Robinson:
You’re back in the business and you’ve got the knowledge and the economic structure to not have to make decisions under the gun.

RJ Burr:
Well, and that’s what most people, when you look at the oil industry and there’s nothing, and I say this to CYA, there’s nothing academically to back this up. This is just a 30 year experience in the industry. Your oil and gas, the independent producers.

RJ Burr:
In America, every one of them starts.

RJ Burr:
Off doing what we call chasing oil. And basically you have a guy or a group of guys that want to be oil man. They raise some money, find a prospect, they go and drill the well.

RJ Burr:
For 99% of them, that’s it.

RJ Burr:
They missed the well. Can’t raise any more money out of business.

RJ Burr:
Well, for the lucky few that hit that first well, they found job security for as long as they have wells to develop that property. Now, while they’re developing that, they’ll drill other wells, trying to find other lily pads.

RJ Burr:
Once they get done developing this one, they’ll jump to this one.

RJ Burr:
This one, a successful old man, looks back, he’s 60, 70, 80 years old. He’s found five, maybe ten of these lily pads. However, he has spent his entire career chasing or.

RJ Burr:
And what we mean by that doesn’t.

RJ Burr:
Mean he’s not good at what he does, doesn’t mean he hadn’t made a.

RJ Burr:
Lot of money doesn’t mean he had made his partners a lot of money.

RJ Burr:
What it means is he had to produce everything he found to keep that engine going. He was never able to get ahead of the curve. That’s where the vast majority of Europe.

RJ Burr:
Independent producers spend their entire careers.

RJ Burr:
I believe the rarest event is when.

RJ Burr:
They go from what we call the.

RJ Burr:
Chasing oil stage to the producing oil stage.

RJ Burr:
The biggest difference is when you’re in.

RJ Burr:
That producing oil stage, you know you’re on top of the oil. Doesn’t mean you’re gonna hit every well you drill.

RJ Burr:
Might have mechanical failures, might have a.

RJ Burr:
Couple of dry holes, but you know, when you drill that well, you should.

RJ Burr:
Run through oil every time.

RJ Burr:
But more importantly, you have enough reserves in the ground that you can utilize those reserves to acquire more reserves.

Dana Robinson:
Got it.

RJ Burr:
Prime example, our Choctaw field. We have what we anticipate about 30 to 40 million barrels of oil sitting from 9000 to 14,000ft. I don’t want to drill 9000 to 14,000 foot wells. Can I? Yes. Have I done it before? Yes. Could I do it again? Yes. Do I want to? No. It’s not our, it’s not our expertise, it’s not our, it’s not our lane. Well, just because we don’t want to drill them doesn’t mean that oil is not there. We are already in contact with other oil companies that love nine to 14,000 foot wells.

Dana Robinson:
There you go.

RJ Burr:
All right, we bring them in, let them drill those deep wells, but we don’t do it for free. We look at their holdings and if they have wells down to 9000ft that we want to drill, boom, we just utilize our reserves. We let them drill it, we keep a piece of it. They let us drill on theirs, they keep a piece of it. We’ve expanded our reserves by using our in ground reserves. When you get to the producing stage, that’s when you’re truly in the oil business.

RJ Burr:
Now, for people, and I don’t like toot my own horn, but for people that wonder what we’ve done, this is.

RJ Burr:
The second time we’ve done it.

RJ Burr:
First time marathon oil bought our company.

RJ Burr:
Second time we plan on taking this one public.

RJ Burr:
We want to build the biggest oil company, America. Now, are we going to be able to?

RJ Burr:
I don’t know.

RJ Burr:
I know that I’m gonna have fun doing it. I know that my boys are now old enough that my son, he’s now the fourth generation burr. He just started here. He’s 23 years old. I wouldn’t let him come to work for me out of high school. I made him go get a job with somebody else, learn the real world, learn what a boss does and learn. And once he grew up, now it’s time for him to come in and be a part of the family business. And so I’m not going anywhere.

RJ Burr:
And we plan on building this thing.

RJ Burr:
As big as we can build it.

RJ Burr:
Now, you shoot for the moon, or you shoot for the stars and you hit the moon. I don’t know if I was talking to a guy the other day, and he said, what if you’re wrong? I said, well, if we’re right, we’ll turn 2300 million into 7 billion. I said, but if we’re wrong five times over, we still turn 2300 million into 500 million. As you think you can find a way to spend 200 million profit?

RJ Burr:
Well, yeah.

RJ Burr:
I said, what do you think you could do if you could spend six and a half billion profit? That’s the window of what we’re looking at. And so, no anybody, if you want to see what we’re doing, panex.us/learn. That’s probably the best place to go.

RJ Burr:
Or send me an email. Rjburr@panex.us. I take on all comers, answer any questions. I give my partners two guarantees. One, if you give me a call and by chance I don’t answer, I will call you back before I go to bed. Two, if you ask me a question. That I don’t know the answer to. I’ll find it for you. Other than that, this is all we go. Head down, tail up, and we keep plowing till corn starts growing.

Dana Robinson:
Love it. Thanks for coming on the Exit Plan podcast, RJ Burr. Find RJ on LinkedIn again. Let’s have the URL for finding you on, on the website.

RJ Burr:
It’s a, it’s a Panex.us learn is the website. My email is rjburr@Panex.us. And you can find, heck, you can find me anyway. Just type in RJ Burr. There’s a, there’s another dentist. There’s a dentist named RJ Burr. But I think it’s just me and him in America. All right.

Dana Robinson:
One of a kind in a lot of ways.

RJ Burr:
Thanks, RJ, Dana. Have a great one.

Dana Robinson:
Thanks. You, too.

Dana Robinson:
Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Exit Plan podcast. I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to hit me up with questions or comments by emailing me at hello@danarobinson.com or leave comments and questions by calling 858-252-7785 call 858-252-7785 and leave a message.