The Crude Life

Some interviews arrive dressed as policy panels: formal tone, clean talking points, a neat arc from problem to solution. This one doesn’t. The conversation between Terry Etam—BOE Report columnist and author of The End of the Fossil Fuel Insanity—and Jason Spiess comes in sideways, like a porch-light chat that accidentally wanders […]

📅 January 2026 (All Month)Joplin History and Mineral Museum Closed for Renovation & Route 66 Exhibit Build-OutJoplin, MissouriThe Joplin History and Mineral Museum closes for the entire month of January 2026 for remodeling and exhibit updates, including the completion of a new 100th anniversary Route 66 exhibit. The museum is […]

For years, Venezuela’s oil story has been framed as one of collapse: broken infrastructure, sanctions, corruption, and a state oil company hollowed out by politics. But in early 2026, that story shifted. Not because Venezuela suddenly changed—but because Washington did. Two pieces of reporting tell the deeper story. Axios revealed […]

  Tulsa’s Route 66 Capital Cruise in May will be an official Guinness World Record attempt for the largest classic car parade. The Route 66 Centennial celebration in Tulsa is scheduled for May 30th and is the day when this record breaking attempt will be put into motion. Tulsa Regional […]

Route 66 Was Never Meant to Be Famous When U.S. Route 66 was commissioned in 1926, it wasn’t designed to be remembered. There were no grand dedications, no monuments planned, no expectation that the road would one day appear on postcards, license plates, coffee mugs, or tattoos. Route 66 was […]

By the eighth episode of Season 2, Landman finally stops pretending it’s an oil-and-gas show. There are rigs in the background, sure. A crew camp here, a heat reference there. But Episode 8 does something far more uncomfortable—and far more honest. It abandons the machinery and turns its lens inward, toward decision-making […]

Paramount+ just added a major “plus” for fans of mixed martial arts. Come Saturday, January 24, 2026, the streaming service will be the exclusive home of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) events in the United States and Latin America. Now, instead of paying to watch each bout on pay-per-view television, UFC devotees can subscribe […]

  By the time cameras caught the “Happy Trump” lapel pin and the jokes about ballrooms, the serious part of the White House meeting had already taken shape: a president promising “total safety” and a fast track into Venezuela, and a room full of oil-and-gas decision-makers quietly calculating whether any […]

Few roadways hold a place in the American imagination like Route 66 — the ribbon of asphalt that once carried hopeful migrants, adventurers, and dreamers from the shores of Chicago to the Pacific at Santa Monica. In 2026, that highway turns 100 years old, and the celebration will be nothing […]

Fire & ICE, a storytelling brand dedicated to honoring the cultural, mechanical, and societal impact of the internal combustion engine, is marking the 100-year anniversary of historic Route 66 with the release of a new tribute book celebrating the road that helped shape modern America. Underwritten by The Crude Life, […]

When Guy Coviello, president of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce was asked if the amount of oil and gas produced in the third quarter of this year by a new horizontal oil and gas well in Ellsworth is good news for the area’s oil and gas industry, he offered […]

Did you buy your first car? I did. A 1974 Mercury Cougar — and it came with character baked in. The clock ran backwards. Not metaphorically. Literally. An old-school line clock that ticked in reverse like it was daring you to notice time differently. The tape deck? That didn’t work […]

A quiet squall is brewing in the Gulf — one that juxtaposes the promise of American energy independence with the political pushback of states determined to protect their shorelines. At the heart of the storm is a federal plan to open federal waters off Florida’s coast — and other long-off-limits U.S. waters […]

  This episode of the Landman Season 2, Episode 7 Review & Reaction podcast plays like a “take-two” editorial meeting that accidentally turns into the real show: not a beat-by-beat recap, but a pressure-test of the series’ credibility—and what it’s teaching non-industry viewers through word choice. Jason Spiess of The Crude Life and Warren […]

On December 29, 2025, Lebanon and Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in Beirut to supply Egyptian natural gas to Lebanese power infrastructure — a practical, long-anticipated step toward addressing Lebanon’s chronic electricity shortfalls and costly reliance on fuel oil. The agreement was signed by Lebanese Energy Minister Joe […]

For years, the Canadian pipeline debate has been framed as a question of growth: more barrels, more exports, more production. But a sudden geopolitical shock in South America has shifted that framing almost overnight. The conversation is no longer about expansion. It’s about survival. Following the capture of Venezuelan President […]

Before smartphones, before playlists that followed you everywhere, there was the car stereo — a dashboard altar of knobs, dials, lights, and limitless possibility. It wasn’t just music. It was identity. It was freedom. It was your entire emotional weather system, wired directly into the Fire & ICE experience. Your car wasn’t […]

WARNING: SPOILERS ahead for Landman season 2, episode 6. Jason Spiess and Warren Martin, Kansas Strong, aren’t just recapping plot beats—they’re diagnosing a genre migration in real time: Landman is sliding away from “oilfield mechanics” and into “family drama with an oil patch backdrop,” and the hosts treat that shift like both a […]

Holiday parties are supposed to be the easy win on the calendar: show up, shake a few hands, toast the year, disappear before the karaoke starts. But in this conversation, Jason Spiess, The Crude Life, and executive coach Joe Sinnott, Witting Partners, treat the season like what it really is for […]

As U.S. military action in Venezuela reverberates through global energy markets, major news outlets are framing the unfolding “oil war” through sharply different lenses — markets, geopolitics, infrastructure reality, and long-term leverage. Taken together, these accounts reveal not just what’s happening in South America, but how energy power is being […]

Over the past few years, the global mobility conversation has been framed as a one-way street: internal combustion out, batteries in. But a series of recent developments across automakers, policymakers, technology firms, and consumers suggests the road ahead looks far more like a roundabout than a straight line. From Porsche’s […]

This episode review plays less like a “what happened in the patch” recap and more like a relationship-and-power decoder ring. Jason and Warren keep circling the same idea from different angles: Landman is shifting from oilfield spectacle into character mechanics—who controls whom, who’s bluffing, who’s cornered, and who’s quietly building leverage. The […]

One of the most discussed scenes in the recent Landman episode isn’t about cartel violence, family drama, or oilfield bravado. It’s a financial conversation—short, dense, and easy to miss—that left a lot of viewers confused. They’re talking about insurance. But not the kind most people know. Specifically, they’re talking about captive insurance—and once you […]

For more than a decade, the Permian Basin has been defined by abundance—and imbalance. Oil production surged ahead of infrastructure. Natural gas became a byproduct looking for a buyer. Prices collapsed at times, flaring spiked, and midstream buildout raced to catch up. Now, Chevron is proposing something different: instead of […]

For decades, Alberta’s underground story has been told in barrels and BTUs — pressure curves, porosity maps, water cuts, decline rates. Now, quietly, that same geology is being asked a different question: What else is dissolved down there? East of Olds, Alberta, a pilot facility operated by E3 Lithium has crossed […]

Pipeline expansion across the Appalachian Basin holds the key to solving the nation’s energy crisis, according to industry experts, though state policies and regulatory hurdles continue to restrain development. The issue, as well as other natural gas production issues and solutions, took center stage in Erie as industry leaders and […]

  In the Appalachian Basin, nothing moves in straight lines—not rivers, not gas markets, and definitely not strategy. That’s why Antero Resources’ latest deal set isn’t just another acquisition headline. It’s a map of how one of the most disciplined operators in the region is rearranging its chessboard before the […]

Landman’s fourth episode of Season 2 slows the pace just enough to let the characters breathe, and Jason Spiess and Warren Martin lean into that shift in their latest Landman reaction show. After a run of outlandish, almost operatic story beats earlier this season, Episode 4 feels like the moment where the […]

Jason Spiess and Warren Martin aren’t doing standard TV recaps anymore – they’re running a pop-culture safety meeting with a side of cartel finance and coyote theology. Their Landman Season 2, Episode 3 breakdown turns what could have been a simple “here’s what happened” summary into a layered conversation about […]

Paramount+ announced that its hit original drama LANDMAN has officially been renewed for Season 3, cementing Taylor Sheridan’s oil-patch epic as one of the platform’s most powerful performers and one of the most culturally resonant series in modern energy storytelling. The news arrives on the heels of a record-breaking second […]

Jason Spiess and Warren Martin sound like two guys who meant to take Sunday off and somehow ended up working anyway—and that energy pretty much sets the tone for this podcast breakdown of Landman Season 2, Episode 2. Podcast Reaction & Review: The Crude Life with Jason Spiess & Warren Martin (Kansas Strong) […]

Landman Season 2 arrives with the feel of a fresh drilling program rather than a straightforward continuation. Paramount+ uses the premiere to re-survey its characters, restake their emotional acreage, and lay out the pressures each one is about to face. For returning fans, it was familiar enough to keep the engine warm. […]

In the long and complicated story of American energy, some of the most powerful chapters come from people who never signed up to be part of the narrative. “Sarah’s Oil” is one of those chapters—a film that reframes a century-old petroleum discovery through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl who […]

  US supermajor ExxonMobil and German chemicals giant BASF have announced that they will partner on a methane pyrolysis pilot in the US that would produce so-called “turquoise” hydrogen. While “blue” hydrogen is produced via natural gas in processes that generate carbon dioxide, which has to be captured and stored […]