You're listening to the oil and gas this week podcast with Mark LeCore and Paige Wilson.

This is the show for busy oil pros who quickly want to keep their finger on the pulse of the industry.

You're listening to the Oil and Gas This Week podcast brought to you by IBM.

This is a show for busy oil pros who want to quickly keep their finger on the pulse of the industry.

Thanks for joining us for episode 316.

We got some rain after 47 days or something like that. It was zero rain. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Not much. No. Right. Speaking of enough, we actually started getting reviews again, which is great. If you'd like to leave us review, it's very simple. Just go to the show notes and click on the link if you want to try to remember it. So I love the podcast.com forward slash OGTW. Leave a review helps your peers find us. Plus, we have fun. Just read them on the air. Especially when they're talking crap. You want to read it? It's a five-star review. Just the thing. I hate waiting for Bloomberg to finally get around to talking about the oil sector just for it to be 90% fluff. Now, I don't have to. Very good podcast. Thank you. From college band fan from the United States. Love it. See, you can leave something that simple. That was actually a good review. Let's get into news stories. All right. First one, this is actually breaking. U.S. to cancel Alaska oil gas leases issued under Trump.

Yeah, so this is obviously a purely political move.

Nobody was planning on drilling in Alaska because it cost too much money.

And so this is the U.S. Interior Department literally today, about two hours ago,

said they would cancel oil and gas leases in a federal wildlife refuge.

Those leases were granted by the Trump's Republican administration.

One of the things that's going on here is they're taking about 40% of this refuge and they are

making it illegal for anybody doing any exploration or production on it.

And they're doing this to protect the native wildlife like the polar bears

and the reindeer. You know me, Paige. I love wildlife. I'm not making a joke. I really do. Polar bears

are their highest numbers ever. In fact, polar bear numbers are so high that the Alaska wildlife

fisheries service are expand the hunting so they can remove bears from the population. So I find it hard to believe that

this is done to protect, at least the polar bears, maybe the caribou, I don't know how well they're

doing. But it's timing and the fact that nobody was drilling there anyway. And the fact that

administration spent enough time to make sure all the media outlets covered it and the fact

they did it so last minute.

It's obviously a political ploy. I do feel sorry, though, for the people in Alaska, the workers

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