Unleashing California: How Mike Umbro Is Turning Depleted Oil Fields Into the Grid's Biggest Battery

Peter Brecht00:00

Hello, everyone. On today's episode, we're joined by Mike Umbro, founder and CEO of Californians for Energy and Science. We talk about what's happening on the ground in Kern County, California's regulatory landscape, the Sable offshore opportunity, refinery closures, and his groundbreaking GEOTES technology that turns depleted oil reservoirs into energy storage batteries. Please hit subscribe and join us in supporting independent energy. All right, enjoy the show.

Peter Brecht00:25

All right. Welcome to the Local Energy Podcast. My name is Peter Brecht. I'm here with my co-host, Wade Spear. And our guest today is Mike Umbro. He's an energy entrepreneur, investment banker, and the founder and CEO of Californians for Energy and Science. He's also a partner at Premier Resource Management, where he's pioneering geologic thermal energy storage, which we'll call GEOTES going forward from here. Basically, they're taking depleted oil reserves and turning them into massive batteries.

He's passionately talking about California across all ends. If you're talking about operators, producers, politics, he's there talking about it and just the economic engine of Kern County. So Mike, welcome to the show. The very first question we ask everyone that comes on the show is, did we land on the moon?

Mike Umbro01:13

Wow, that's a great intro and then great follow-up question that I was not expecting. I must not have seen any of the intros to your show. Did we land on the moon? I am going to say yes, we landed on the moon. I believe that the United States landed on the moon. And I don't know if they were going to make it to Mars, but the moon, yes.

Wade01:20

Hahaha!

Peter Brecht01:23

Yeah.

Wade01:27

I'm with you. I'm with you.

Peter Brecht01:27

All right.

All right,

Perfect, perfect. And Mike, I've said it many times over, whether I've talked to people on Collide or even on the show, but you're truly one of the best spokespeople for the oil and gas industry in California. And now your project is actively taking shape. So what's the activity been like in Kern County lately? It seems like there's a glimmer of hope. I mean, I've seen some drilling rigs on your lease out there and I'd just love to hear about kind of firsthand what's going on out there.

Mike Umbro02:05

Yeah, I appreciate that. Was very, I try to be vocal about what we're doing in California, what we're trying to do. The rigs were not actually on our lease. So those were around our lease. I actually went and visited the operator this week, Monday, and it was fun to see rigs in oil field, oil country. It's just, it's amazing how empty the skyline has been on the west side of Kern County.

Peter Brecht02:14

Okay.

Mike Umbro02:31

Given what's there. So it's, I have fun talking about it. It's not a fun topic. So I like to try to make it a fun topic, but it's definitely not fun times, but now it's a glimmer of hope. The rigs are picking up at one is more than zero out there. So yeah, yeah.

Peter Brecht02:51

Totally. Absolutely.

Wade02:52

Infinitely more,

Right? So start.

Peter Brecht02:55

Well, we'll talk about the GEOTES tech. Want to spend a good amount of time going through that. And, I've seen the videos and I don't know if you still work with Yannick, but, I've been a copy of them a few times and just like all the 3D stuff he's put together in the videos over the past. So excited to talk about GEOTES and then share a little bit of that, but to kind of roll back a little bit. So you started out in investment banking, analyzing up-and-deals from Morgan Stanley and Bainbridge.

Mike Umbro03:05

Mm-hmm.

Peter Brecht03:20

That's not, I don't think that the typical entry point for oil and gas, but what did that lens teach you about the challenges of oil and gas that maybe operators might never come across?

Mike Umbro03:24

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I challenges that operators won't come across is something that I have learned the hard way, the challenges, because as you say, I started in finance. And in that role, putting myself in my 21-year-old mindset then, I'm like, okay, I studied economics, went to Pepperdine, I'm from San Diego. I have no ties to the oil and gas industry. And I fall into this situation in

2005 to 2008 where my first real job was at Morgan Stanley. That's when Master Limited Partnerships and Upstream Oil and Gas Production rolling assets into Master Limited Partnerships of Public Vehicle to get production growth. The whole world at that time was running out of oil. This is just before kind of all the oily shale booms start picking up in that timeframe.

Wade04:07

Mm.

Mike Umbro04:26

I was sourcing deals from just a transactional perspective. Can I put a buyer in front of a seller that has existing production, drilling upside, a 50-50 mix of oil production and gas production, and bolt-on acquisitions in the area if you're finding success, all the kind of the typical deal criteria. And so I did that for

10 years in the investment band. Still have my investment banking registration, but then you go, I went to the operator side. Said, I didn't want to be in the finance world per se day to day. Want to, I want to run an operation, own production. And that's where you learn about the challenges, which are insane. And so I could talk about that in detail if you want, as my, as my biologist is calling me right now.

Peter Brecht05:17

Yeah.

Mike Umbro05:21

And literally while we're talking, which no, I don't, don't, but that's a great segue to give you the key challenge as a California operator is the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA. It is the number one challenge that we face and it's a challenge to...

Peter Brecht05:27

If you need to take it, can, Mike. Can edit it. OK. All right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Umbro05:44

Adhere to all the environmental standards that it means to be an oil and gas producer, protecting air, water, land, being a steward of the environment in California is the hardest job I've ever had. And that's the one I chose in 2017 when I became an operator instead of a finance guy.

Peter Brecht06:02

I mean, it.

To me, it's kind of I, you, I'm a San Diego and I'm a Californian born and raised. I won't leave for many reasons. Probably a majority of that reason being my wife is a surfer. And if you grew up surfing, you can't leave it. But I mean, so anyways, I understand the tie that you have to your home state, but it would be a lot easier to go to another state and maybe do the same thing. So I mean,

Was it really just, this is where I'm from and I want to stick with it? Did you see an opportunity? Again, you're an advocate for California now. Did you think through that part of it as well in making that decision? Or did that come later?

Mike Umbro06:39

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Wade06:39

Right.

Mike Umbro06:44

Yeah.

Being an advocate definitely came later. And I think it's important to just continue to note that that timeline. When I started my career, California, wasn't on a mandate to eliminate oil production in the state of California. It wasn't on a mandate to eliminate every refinery in the state of California. So the whole perspective has changed in Sacramento. And then as I've

Progress in my career back then we were the number three producing state in the country. We were a powerhouse traditionally dating back to the discovery of oil in the state in the late 1800s. And fast forward to where we're at today, there's been 130 plus years of really successful track record of producers producing the resource.

Peter Brecht07:22

Mm-hmm.

Mike Umbro07:34

In the early 1900s, California was the number one producer in the world. We helped win World War II in the Pacific theater by ramping 42 % over World War II. We were a million a day producer before the 80s crisis. And then we become, we're still without, I wouldn't say without trying, but all the way to when Newsome comes in and really shuts everything down.

We're still producing half a million barrels a day without trying. Those are just slowly declining resource in the state. That's how I frame my stewardship perspective of, we've continually improved as an industry and beautified the state over 130 years. Why all of sudden are we bankrupting the state to get on a net zero paper?

Paper audit of our emissions, not an actual audit, because now we're seeing the Straddle Hormuz close and our 25 % imports coming from Saudi and Iraq stranded over there. And now you see the ramifications. So we've gone from one end of the pendulum to the other. That's just, I can't even answer the question shorter than that.

Wade08:31

BLEH

Peter Brecht08:56

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Umbro08:56

Like there's

So many offshoots to where we could go with that. But it's anyway, I'll pause, but that's kind of the setting the table of the environmental perspective.

Wade08:59

Right.

Peter Brecht09:04

Yeah.

Well, the word that you use that I love is stewardship, right? And I know California operators and producers have done a fantastic job. I mean, going back to something that I learned from you, which is the barrel of oil from California is the cleanest barrel of oil on earth, right? Just because of the regulation and all the things that we have to follow and go through. But, I guess it's, and this is kind of where it ties into your GEOTES. And I'm excited to get there as well.

But before we get there, you're obviously you've, you've memorized a lot of fantastic facts and you, understand the landscape really well about now we have all these refineries closing down as well. And I guess where I'm going with that is you are constantly getting new information in, and I'm curious. What's one thing that no one could prepare you for, as you stepped into that advocacy position, like

You've gone to DC, you've gone to Sacramento, you spent a lot of time with these people, but what is something that like you didn't expect to come across in that position?

Mike Umbro10:10

Hmm. I think how hard it is to...

Have a voice that

Presents something actionable. Still haven't seen a lot. I'm only seeing action from our federal government right now. And it's just so slow and hard to make change. I think I knew it going in that we've had 20 years of really hard left environmental control over Sacramento in the legislature. But how hard it is for them to act unless it's an absolute crisis is something that I did not.

Have an appreciation for. But I never really started speaking out with the intent of being political or influencing politicians more so than just saying, this is how hard it is to operate right now. And it's unnecessary. We can produce and protect the environment at the same time. As someone like Wade in the mid-continent is

Peter Brecht10:46

Yeah, it is bizarre,

Mike Umbro11:09

Watching every day like wow we can achieve records in Texas and Oklahoma in terms of production and the environment's great there, too it's It doesn't need to be this way you that's compared that's the hardest message to relate

Peter Brecht11:18

Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, wait. It's it

Absolutely. And I don't and again, I know you probably didn't select, you you everyone looked at you in the room and they're like, man, this Mike guy, we got to get him up there. And then they nominated you to go do all this. So like you probably inadvertently got into that, but it's been fun to watch. And it's funny too. So we haven't had anyone from California on our show to talk about, oil and gas and mostly because there's not really been much to talk about other than like, man, these headlines are terrible and hard to come through and figure out.

I remember going to CIPA last year and it kind of felt at that point like, I think that kind of the feeling was, okay, we've come to the end of the line. Like this is, you we're running into that wall now and things are going to change. So it's kind of an interesting dynamic, like even having Wade in Oklahoma and hearing the stuff that he gets to do compared to over here. So it's just a very interesting dichotomy. Hopefully, I guess another point too is, you you mentioned all the things that we've done in California too in the past historically and

That very well could happen again, it's just going to take the right, the right people in, to make that change happen. And it probably starts, unfortunately, from the political side, right? So got a lot coming up on that side of things here in the state, and hopefully we can pull through. So. All right. So we're importing 70 % of our oil from places like Iraq and Guyana. What is if we look at the offshore for a moment?

I've seen you talked about sable offshore quite a bit and I think Phil Mickelson and you have exchanged a message as well Which is really cool today, but you know offshore is there any difference in you know? If we look offshore versus onshore or is it is it better is it worse is it more difficult? It is the same is there you know anything there that we should be taking note of?

Mike Umbro12:50

Yes

Yeah, Lefty's probably the most informed golfer. He's definitely the most informed celebrity Californian I've seen talk about oil. And I'm sure he has a strong interest in seeing Sable succeed. The most interesting thing on Guiana and Sable is, yeah, Guiana is an offshore play right now.

Peter Brecht13:11

Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

Mike Umbro13:26

If it moves onshore, it's moving into the heart of the rainforest. Right now it's offshore. And so the little bit of environmental research I've done on the Guiana barrel, it is our fastest growing import in addition to Brazil, which is mainly offshore production in Brazil. So why is California sourcing?

So much product from Guiana and Brazil. It's because it's a heavier crude and it matches what the refineries are set to take in California. But they're still flaring offshore, tremendous amounts of natural gas. And that's a new resource. So I would imagine until they get some significant gas infrastructure built out there, there's gonna be a huge amount of flaring. And the little bit I've researched on Guiana, those emissions,

The heavy ends of those emissions ultimately make it back onshore in the form of rainfall into the Amazon rainforest. So long term, I'm concerned about that for the people in Guiana. I don't know. I haven't studied it in Brazil. And then the other takeaway I'd say from those countries is China's heavily invested in oil and gas production in those countries, as are Exxon, Chevron, the big oil companies, which have to be there to

Operate and make these plays successful. But then I look at a Sable Offshore and what we know about the Sable Offshore production is it reduces natural seat pressure. It produces from that Santa Inez unit. They have three platforms out there and we've seen studies from UC Santa Barbara over

15 years between the 80s and 90s in coordination with NASA and NOAA and federal agencies and satellite imagery, collecting data showing that the natural seeps, when those platforms were installed by Exxon and when they were producing and ramping up, the natural seeps declined. The reservoir pressure declines because you're producing that barrel out of the reservoir or those barrels out of the reservoir.

You're reducing the amount of seeps. Install hoods in the subsurface, these big hoods that collect the seeps and then they pull the oil as it separates from oil and water because they have different gravities. So now you're cleaning the ecosystem, the marine ecosystem in the Santa Barbara channel. You're literally removing all those volatile organic compounds that are naturally seeping out of the reservoir because you're producing it.

Wade15:43

Mm-hmm.

Mike Umbro15:59

And it's actually a great example of free market, what we call free market environmentalism, where an oil and gas producer can come in and clean the environment and make thousands of jobs and make product that literally feeds our refineries. So fast forward to turning those platforms were shut down. We can talk about that, but turning them back on today, that's 60,000 barrels a day of production, just like that.

And here when we're looking at the Permian Basin and can we get more out of the record production? We're seeing already. I've heard CEOs say yeah, maybe we can squeak out another 200,000 barrels a day under this war scenario Maybe we can try to do that So compare that sable is saying I can give you 60,000 barrels a day just by allowing me to turn on a pipeline The federal government is is saying well, that's a lot of oil

Peter Brecht16:44

Yes.

Mike Umbro16:55

So that's kind of where it lies with the environment and the local impact.

Peter Brecht17:00

Yeah, it's been interesting because I have a very limited understanding of how the Fed can control, that chums in and the state, can't say it's like that's a very, I think a very, very interesting conversation to have there. And I don't know much about it, but it's been fascinating to kind of. Well, I'm curious, does the Fed really have the ability to step in and take that kind of control over something like that? Because like what I've heard is that.

Wade17:14

Mm-hmm.

Mike Umbro17:16

Well, what do you want to know?

Peter Brecht17:27

Okay, Sables operating in, California water, it's not fed to like, how does that work? What is the real, what's the truth behind that? It's very difficult to kind of figure it out with all the headlines.

Mike Umbro17:37

Yeah.

So that's a very important distinction. So the Sable platforms are in federal waters. They're beyond California state waters. So it's federal platform, it's federal infrastructure, it's federal pipeline, it's access, it's federal mineral rights. They're getting paid a tremendous...

Wade17:47

Mm.

Mike Umbro18:00

Amount for that production. It's a great economic impact to the federal government in the form of the royalty that's being paid. And so it's intrastate pipelines when they turn it on. So the federal government, oversees the platforms, the pipeline connecting it to state water, and then the pipeline that goes really all the way into Pentland Station, which is central California. So that

That oil gets piped all the way into central California and then it's now making its way south Chevron El Segundo is refining it. So I think they have absolute total control over the Defense Production Act and that's what has Sacramento Governor Newsom and everybody so pissed off. There is not a damn thing they're gonna do about it.

Peter Brecht18:42

Yeah.

Right. Okay. I think I'll sleep a little bit better knowing that, right? Like if that's, it's a great thing to know. And on that subject of refineries, we're, I think we started the year or it was last year. Think we had 12 refineries and I'm probably off on the numbers, but, these are slowly either being repurposed or okay. So they're slowly being repurposed or shut down. Can you, I guess where are we currently at with the refinery situation?

Mike Umbro19:02

Nein!

We had nine we saw What was it Santa Maria Phillips 66 Transition to biofuel so that's shut down, you know local takeaway for Santa Maria onshore production Which has hurt that area Santa Barbara we saw Phillips 66 in in Torrance shut down

Peter Brecht19:20

Mm-hmm.

Mike Umbro19:32

So that took, think, 149,000 barrels a day off refining capacity, and it'll become an import terminal, importing finished fuels. So the refineries don't go anywhere. Sacramento kind of presents this as, this is gonna be great for the local community. Actually, it takes fewer jobs. They shut down the refineries and you get more ships, so you get worse emissions. And now we're seeing Valero Benicia has, they've stopped.

Refining since January it's reported. So they're actually formally shutting down Cold here completely this month and so Anecdotally, I don't know. There's one station I drove by in San Diego here that the geese the diesel price It's turned off. I don't see the green. I meant to say great. The green numbers are off I think we're gonna start with a diesel shortage and it's gonna start with

Peter Brecht20:13

And

Mike Umbro20:21

Stations around California that are not selling a lot of diesel anyway. They're like, well, I'm not selling a lot of this anyway It's eight, it's going on eight dollars a gallon. I'm not gonna have it

Peter Brecht20:31

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, eight. I think it's $8 and 19 cents at the station. And granted the one next to near our home is like, I think the highest in the area, but it's still crazy to see that number. And I,

Mike Umbro20:44

What are you paying, Wade?

What are you paying out there for gasoline and diesel?

Wade20:49

High threes. I mean, to give you an anecdotal story, my son, he's a sophomore in high school. He's got a lot of buddies. They're all getting cars and all that stuff. And one of his best friends got an F-250 diesel from his grandpa in Texas, in California, gifted to him because he just can't afford the, he can't afford the diesel price, you know? And it's just absolutely crazy. But I mean, that's the...

Peter Brecht20:49

A dollar.

Mike Umbro20:51

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, take it.

Yeah.

Wade21:15

That's the situation that we're facing. And, we hear about that stuff and it really does. I mean, it makes, it makes me kind of thankful that we don't, that we don't have a situation like that where we're just constantly having to fight. I mean, I feel like we've got, good protections and good agencies, whether it's the railroad commission or the Oklahoma corporation commission that are, making the people who maybe wouldn't be the greatest stewards, be good stewards, and meet requirements and make sure that they're operating well, but.

It's not so prohibitive that we can't go out and drill and produce, you know.

Mike Umbro21:45

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you guys, when you have a problem, you fix it. You had the induced seismicity issues with water injection and you you manage you say, okay, we got it. We got to cut back our injection. We got to manage it throughout the, throughout the region. You got to coordinate among operators and the agencies and that that's what is not available to California operators anymore. And I don't think that'll be forever. I think they will have to have us cause it's getting

Back to the refineries. It's getting so bad that the federal government is saying, Defense Production Act, we will keep these refineries open. Let's see what happens with Valero. Think there's a strong case to be made with Valero's Benicia refinery providing 100 % of the jet fuel to Travis Air Force Base. Extend that across 50 military installations across the state of California. You really need the federal government to keep these

Critical infrastructure pieces in play.

Wade22:48

And I think you kind of hit on it earlier whenever you're talking about why people make decisions or why people move. I feel like whether it's government especially, but even in business and a lot of other things, personal lives even, there's an inertia to change and an inertia to movement. And it's going to take really hitting on a pressure point, some kind of a crisis or something to really drive that change. The other thing too that you were kind of talking about

Mike Umbro23:10

Totally.

Wade23:13

It's interesting to me because when you talk about California, you talk about Sacramento, right? And like that's where all the laws and all these things are coming out of. It's really interesting to me because in Texas, the laws and everything come out of Austin. And I don't think Austin is really representative of kind of what's going on in a lot of other parts of the state. Demographically, it's very different. And on top of that, I think there's a lot of Californians moving there for probably really great reasons, but.

Mike Umbro23:28

Mm-hmm.

Wade23:39

There's a part of me that kind of wonders what those, kind of demographic changes are going to result in in terms of regulatory changes for oil and gas and kind of how the state functions and operates as well. I don't think it's going to be this huge doom and gloom that a lot of people talk about, but at the same time, I think there can be some very subtle things that happen in there that that could result in some kind of boots on the ground, adverse effects for us.

Mike Umbro23:47

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Huh.

Yeah, yeah, and I think you're right. It's this inertia. And right now the inertia is almost to a halt. We got down to, I don't know the exact number, three drilling rigs drilling for oil and maybe a couple for geothermal. Half a dozen rigs in the whole state was what it was down to. We only drilled 21 new wells. Everybody likes to talk about permitting and the permitting, we're going to get 2000.

Wade24:23

In the whole state?

Yeah.

Mike Umbro24:36

New drilling permits in Kern County with Governor Newsom signing SB 237. It's like, I don't care how many we can theoretically permit. Imagine putting a cap on any kind of permit for a pump, let's say tomato production. You can only sell X amount of tons of tomatoes per year. It's like, It's a ridiculous concept.

Wade24:58

Right.

Mike Umbro25:02

If you look at just what's been drilled, 21 new oil and gas wells were drilled in 2024, or excuse me, yeah, 2024 in California, a few more in 2025. And now only 500 permits have been accepted in Kern County so far this year. We're basically, call it halfway through the year. Like operators, the big operators, the Chevron, the CRC.

The big independence they've already gone out and gotten those permits they're not going to get more permits for this year so you're you're you're only gonna see you a couple hundred wells actually drilled this year in the state of california which still is historically hundreds of years all-time low so we're at the inertia it has the sacramento shut it down they shut it down as far as they can shut it down and now that inertia getting it back up again as you know you know

Wade25:31

Right.

Right.

Mike Umbro25:54

Staffing up rigs getting equipment getting people getting the money the investors to come, you know Investing in it. Are you really allowed to do that now before I give you the money? So this inertia is gonna build now. Yeah. Yeah, and what I believe I'll stop I'll stop. Sorry Peter I'll stop talking on this topic in a minute, but We need to really use the next back to kind of the question

Wade25:55

Right.

But yeah, nobody wants to be on that bleeding edge.

Peter Brecht26:13

You're good.

Mike Umbro26:20

On advocacy, we need to really use the next two and a half years that president Trump remains in office to get the inertia back into California, specifically the California upstream and midstream and downstream, the whole petroleum industry in California. We need to get the federal inertia behind us to get it going again and getting it, and that's going to be sable offshore and unleashing West Kern County and unleashing the LA basin and unleashing the refineries. We've got to get the inertia.

The actual activity is what really matters versus the allowances granted to us by Sacramento.

Peter Brecht27:03

Right.

Yeah. Well,

It's when I go out and visit Oklahoma and Texas, it's like the culture there is so different too, right? It's, just, you land and I mean, there's pump jacks right there on the airstrip, it's a whole different animal.

Mike Umbro27:20

Mm-hmm.

Peter Brecht27:22

I would love to, I guess, learn more about GEOTES and I've watched, there's a video on YouTube. It is, it is a great segue. I've watched the, there's a demo video on YouTube and I'll, put the link in there. I don't think it's on the Californians for Energy and Science channel. I think it's on a different one. But I would love to, so where are you at with your GEOTES project? And really.

Mike Umbro27:26

It's a good segue, actually.

Peter Brecht27:44

Maybe give a high level overview of like what the technology actually is. Cause I've asked if other people have heard about it and the answer has been no, I've never heard of that. I'd like to learn more. So curious, if you could help kind of fill in some blanks there.

Mike Umbro27:57

Yeah, it's exciting technology. It's upstream oil and gas transitioning, I guess, to geologic thermal energy storage or GEOTES. And what we know about the oil reservoir is that it's trapped oil over geologic time. So you have subsurface faulting and strata that has a container, so to speak. And so that

Container is the oil reservoir, which we're converting to a battery. And we're doing that by way of drilling production and injection wells into the subsurface at a depth of about 2000 feet. So our reservoir is about 2000 feet. You do put that link up there, people can watch this four minute video that explains how this works. But the surface infrastructure that we're using is concentrated solar thermal.

Peter Brecht28:41

Yeah.

Mike Umbro28:50

In the form of parabolic trough mirrors, not the power towers that scorch birds, the Ivanpaw project that just went bust. No, this is proven technology. We have over 500 megawatts of nameplate capacity installed on the California Independent System Operator of just this trough technology. So the trough technology has been on the grid for decades, but it does not have

Cost-effective storage. So the trough technology has become obsolete or uneconomic as we've had photovoltaic and lithium batteries deployed on the California grid. And those costs come down lower than trough technology. So we take the trough into the oil field. We say, okay, what does the trough need? It needs storage. What does the oil field need? It needs a heat source in California to charge the reservoir.

At the surface, we use the trough to heat a working fluid to 700 Fahrenheit. That goes to a heat exchange. When we produce the oil and gas reservoir, we sell the oil. So the oil gets removed as a contaminant from the subsurface battery. And we're left with brackish water. So we're just left with brackish produced water from the reservoir that goes to the heat exchange and gets heated to 500 degrees. And then we inject it.

It's a closed loop cycle using only produced water to heat the subsurface porous permeable sandstone reservoir. So we're heating, a block of reservoir at a depth of 2,000 feet, which means no mining lithium, which heats up as Wade's phone is catching fire right now. The same thing is happening to the California grid. These lithium batteries, where you live, there was a...

Peter Brecht30:31

Right, right, right, right.

Mike Umbro30:37

There was a SDG &E project that they were trying to put in. It finally got canned, and because those fires take, they don't burn out until the cells stop catching fire. There's no way to put them out. And so for us, that's all in the subsurface, no fire risk. And what we'll do is once we heat the reservoir to 500 degrees, we'll take it from about 100 degrees to 500 degrees in the subsurface.

Peter Brecht30:39

Yeah.

Couple miles away, yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Mike Umbro31:03

We then dispatch 500 degree heated water to a separate heat exchange. And on the other end of that is a steam turbine power generation set. When we turn that on at peak and night when the California grid needs it instead of a lithium battery, we can come on for twice the duration, five to six hours a night. Dispatchable, stabilizes the grid, provides power to the grid.

And provides a thousand hours of storage in the case of a seasonal demand event or aka winter time. When there's less sunlight, we could be on for a thousand hours when a big storm rolls through and covers us with rain throughout the Central Valley. So that's kind of the long version. The video will explain it in four minutes, but I'm kind of tying in all the market pieces.

Peter Brecht31:40

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, well there's, it's a great visual too. It takes you underground or walks you through how everything works and gives you great visuals on that. I'm curious. Like I always wanted to ask like, what's the manpower that you would need to run something like that? Is it just, okay, we're going to big, put a big fence around and it runs on its own or do you need to have a pumper that goes out there every day to check it? Like what's that look like?

Mike Umbro32:17

So, in terms of staffing this, the construction jobs will be thousands, at commercial scale. The day to day operations of the company were remote. I envision us corporately staying around remote and then to run it in the field, you're going to have, pumpers out there, technicians out there to monitor, there's a lot of water movement. There's that there will be surface infrastructure, solar infrastructure to maintain.

That's routine maintenance. Well-born maintenance is routine maintenance. But you'll have constant support from production crews and crews that are in the area. So service companies will be deployed throughout the year, whatever that maintenance protocol looks like and how often we'll need to do that kind of field work. But it's a lot. It's a lot of moving pieces.

Peter Brecht32:50

Okay.

Yeah,

I'd imagine so but you're still very much in this the wheelhouse of oil and gas right because I guess what I'm looking at is is this is this creating a type of job where man we have to go learn a whole new set it sounds like it the skills are very much transferable so that's at least a good thing to kind of think through it's not like you're reinventing the wheel entirely

Mike Umbro33:13

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. The beauty of GEOTES is it is it's supporting oil and gas jobs with traditional, drilling opportunities and production rig work. It's supporting anything related to the CST, the concentrated solar thermal. So that's even more jobs, pipe fitters, workers, electricians, and then it's the geothermal power generation. So then you're, talking, power.

Peter Brecht33:44

Yeah. Okay.

Mike Umbro33:53

Power generation equipment and turbines and all this cool power plant opportunity. It's jobs on tops of jobs on tops of jobs.

Peter Brecht34:04

Yeah, yeah. It's awesome.

Because you look at when you talk to people that are, producers and operators and you start talking about, okay, hey, we got like talking about lithium batteries, right? Going back to that, because I think it's just a or, wind or solar, it's it is a it is a different type of energy production. And so a lot of it feels like there's almost a split in the room, maybe not maybe not necessarily.

Mike Umbro34:25

Very different, yeah.

Peter Brecht34:31

Like they disagree with it, but it is like, that's a different kind of industry entirely than what we're doing. But it sounds like test. It's like right in the middle of everything. And it's a really cool thing to see. So we're. It is, yeah, it's.

Mike Umbro34:36

You

Yeah. Yeah. It's a bipartisan technology. We were awarded

Money under the Biden administration. We're approved under Trump. I mean, it's win-win. And even with a win-win technology, Sacramento still can't move. I mean, that's how ridiculous it is.

Peter Brecht34:51

Yeah. Right.

Yeah,

If there was a marketing slogan, that's the one I go with is yeah permitted under Biden and approved under Trump. I mean, that's pretty cool. I love it. Well, that's fantastic. So I'll have the video up. Kind of get to some practical things here. So when you and I I think we first met maybe a year and a half ago, we were talking about

Mike Umbro35:03

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Peter Brecht35:20

You're like, consuming or buying local oil and sort of along the vein of like a cultural thing in California is like, we got to buy everything organic. And I know everyone out there thinks we're a bunch of hippies that, just kind of hang out and, go surfing all day. But, we're actually trying to make moves over here in the energy industry too. But like what it like, we practically can't buy local energy at this point, because the reality is we just don't have it. So like, how should we be like,

Mike Umbro35:43

Mm-hmm.

Peter Brecht35:48

If you were a consumer, are a consumer in California. How are you thinking through, where your energy is coming from? And, you know, if you had to go on next door and post something, in your local community, what would you be sharing with the people that are in your particular neighborhood? Is there anything that maybe we're missing or not talking about?

Mike Umbro36:04

Yeah, can they can anybody can follow me on X Mike Umbrough, I'm not anonymous. So I just posted a video this morning about the story out of Iran and Iraq that Fox News covered yesterday, $800 million of Iranian crude oil being hidden in Iraqi tankers that are spoofing or turning off their transponders and trying to move Iranian barrels. And we've imported 276 million array Iraqi barrels.

Peter Brecht36:10

Yeah.

Mike Umbro36:34

Over the past four years. So how many of those barrels were Iranian? What's happening? What are we really accomplishing with our climate goals? And what is Sacramento doing to be helpful in this global conflict? Just saying President Trump caused a war in Iran and prices to spike. Well, we're uncovering a lot of truths about the California ecosystem and where we're sourcing petroleum products. And it's not looking good for the environment and it's not looking good

For the consumers that are getting just ruined by $6 gasoline, $7 and 50 cent diesel. And they can, the general public can go on our website, energy and science, energyandscience.com and look at Unleash California 2026 tab. And we're posting reports on the California energy emergency, reports out of Professor Rector at UC Cal Berkeley,

Peter Brecht37:17

Mm-hmm.

Mike Umbro37:30

From Michael Miche at UC Marshall School, from Sean Hyatt on the power crisis from the USC Marshall School. So that's a great resource if people wanna just go find those documents and load them up into chat GPT if you want the easiest way to do it, download them from us, load them up in chat GPT and start asking questions. That's the easiest way to inform yourself and it's really terrifying.

I think that's the power of AI in advocacy too, is if we can get the common person that's starting to use AI to just uncover how the world works, it's not a good place for California, specific to Sacramento's implementation of cap and trade or cap and invest and all these regulations that are shutting down refining. It's not good. It's not good.

Peter Brecht38:24

Yeah. I would like to say, first of all, your website overhaul looks fantastic. The amount of information on there. Second to none, man. I mean, I, you have more reports than I can, I could spend time going through and it's like, yeah, AI is my friend there. Yeah. It's doing good. You guys are doing fantastic there. I have like, maybe one or two more things, but, is there something, in the intersection of energy economics and environmental policy,

Mike Umbro38:29

Nice. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's looking good.

Sure.

Peter Brecht38:50

That we're not talking about, but should be. So if you look at sort of like, obviously the economics in California is different, but like looking at Kern County, I think that it adds, I think $4.6 billion to their economy there just in Kern alone. But, is there anything there that we should be thinking about, especially with energy, economics and environmental policy?

Mike Umbro38:52

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. This is great segue because we just had this report fueling Kern County, the contribution of oil and gas workers on Kern County's economy. And this was done through Californians for Energy and Science and Cal State Bakersfield. But it says exactly what you're saying. It's $4 billion of economic impact to just Kern County. Then so you look at that, the refineries and

Peter Brecht39:23

Yeah.

Mike Umbro39:39

Benicia Valero shutting down, that's multi-billion dollar impact to the city of Benicia. And so it's 8 % of the GDP of Kern County, it's a huge percent of the GDP of the state of California. Professor Miche talks about this. If we're shutting down the energy producers in California, we're shutting down the whole economy because it's the first.

It's the first, it's the leading indicator of an economy is the energy economy. You want that to be vibrant. You want people using energy. You want people employing people. You want it staying within our state economy. Yeah, I encourage people to check that out too. We're going to load that up on the website. So.

Peter Brecht40:20

I

Look forward to it. In terms of careers, right? If I was in my 20s, and I know you're very involved, like Pepperdine and Berkeley, you're talking all over with these students. What's the mindset of these students? Because I would look at energy and be like, well, California is not a place I'm gonna go for the education on that. Turns out Berkeley's got some fantastic professors and brilliant minds that are thinking through a lot of this stuff.

Mike Umbro40:34

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Peter Brecht40:44

I talked to a couple of the students, texting on regular basis and they like to send me pictures of stuff that they're doing. It's really cool. But what's the mindset of the students? Like where are they at? Cause it's, I think it's such a great thing that you can sort of imprint your thoughts and the direction early in their education.

Mike Umbro40:49

Mm-hmm.

All right.

Yeah, it's so true. And I spoke to a group of, I don't know, it probably 20 or 30 in a classroom. I was supposed to be there in person, but I was sick last week. But there are 30 kids at 7 PM. No, it was eight, eight o'clock at night wanting to hear about my project. And these are mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, electrical engineers.

Peter Brecht41:17

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Umbro41:26

You name it, these civil engineers, environmental engineers, these are the biggest and brightest minds coming up in our university system at the top school in the state or schools in the state. USC is a great school as well and Pepperdine with public policy and what they're doing in energy. They want to know where they're going to get jobs. That's how I kind of lead them to this holistic environmental perspective of saying, if you shut down

The oil industry or any industry in the state of California, where are you gonna go get a job? And these are the students like, obviously not everybody goes to college with this intent and purpose. These are the students that are going to have top jobs the day they graduate. That's what they wanna have. And that's what is not available to them in California. And they ask me, am I gonna be able to work in an AI type job?

Peter Brecht41:57

Yeah. Right.

Mike Umbro42:20

In California, because right now I'm getting offers from Google in Austin, Texas, but I'm not getting offers from Google in San Diego, which Google has a big present down here, or in the Bay Area at their campus in Palo Alto or wherever they are. People want to stay here. These kids want to stay. They grew up in the best climate in the world. They want to stay here and they want to know there's job opportunities here. So I think that's the best way that we can educate them on.

Peter Brecht42:36

Right. Yeah.

Mike Umbro42:49

The benefits, the tremendous benefits of our industry, which far outweigh the costs of the environmental costs. But currently, the way it's been presented to these students over the past two generations has been, don't allow energy production in this form or fashion because it's gonna be bad for the environment. It's actually not true. It's really bad for the environment not to produce local energy.