The Crude Life

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 […]

The Permian Basin has always been defined by motion — from the slow pump of a jack on the horizon to the roar of a high school crowd under Friday night lights. That energy doesn’t just come from oil. It comes from people. And lately, West Texas has been quietly diversifying […]

The Crude Life founder Jason Spiess took the stage along with Warren Martin of Kansas Strong to keynote the 68th Annual Eastern Kansas Oil and Gas Association’s annual meeting, held at the Prairie Band Casino & Resort in Mayetta, KS. Sharing the stage, Spiess and Martin underscore a larger truth: the future […]

In a move underscoring Texas’ growing appetite for reliable, on-demand energy, Vistra Corp. has announced plans to build two new natural-gas-fueled dispatchable generation units in the heart of the Permian Basin, adding 860 megawatts (MW) of capacity to the state’s electric grid. The $ investment—part of a broader $ 2 […]

The global energy sector opened the week in classic contradiction — profits up, patience thin, and politics circling every pipe, turbine, and tank. From Shell’s steady trading gains to a new natural gas storage hub in Louisiana, the world’s appetite for hydrocarbons remains unshaken, even as rhetoric leans green. Yet […]

While headlines often chase the newest solar field or battery breakthrough, the week’s most consequential energy stories came from something far less glamorous: methane. From the landfills of Iowa to the bus depots of Pennsylvania, this colorless gas — once treated as a nuisance — is quietly being re-engineered into […]

Every city, from Jakarta to Joliet, faces a paradox: the more modern a community becomes, the more waste it produces — and the more power it demands. Landfills are filling faster than we can build them, while grids strain under the surge of electric vehicles, data centers, and extreme weather. […]

From FERC’s cautious approval in Appalachia to a landfill-powered gas plant in New Jersey, this week’s energy stories all share one throughline: the infrastructure is expanding, but the confidence is tempered. Across every region — from the Delaware Basin to the Siberian frontier — developers, regulators, and governments are trying […]

In response to rising reports of stolen crude, condensate, and fuel products across the state, the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) has announced the creation of a new statewide panel — the State Taskforce on Petroleum Theft (STOPTHEFT) — to tackle what officials describe as an “organized and escalating threat” […]

Kinder Morgan’s Mississippi Crossing Project is more than 200 miles of steel in the ground — it’s a test of how energy infrastructure and community dialogue can coexist in a polarized era of energy politics. The company’s Vice President of Public Affairs, Allen Fore, says that while the pipeline’s economics […]

Water is the lifeblood of New Mexico. From our farms and ranches to our families and businesses,every drop matters. As our state faces ongoing drought and rising demand, we must look at every available tool to protect and stretch our water resources. One innovative solution is already taking rootin the […]

Recent activities by Ukraine against Russian refineries, and the incident at the Chevron Refinery in California, are exposing the vulnerability of major Goliath infrastructures being stationary targets for slaying by the David’s in the world. The misunderstanding of “green” delusionists is treating electricity as interchangeable with materials, as it is […]

A recent Scientific Reports article from Nature dives deep into a topic most Americans rarely think about but every oil and gas worker lives by: pigging. These odd-named tools—pipeline inspection gauges, or “pigs”—move through thousands of miles of buried pipe, cleaning, inspecting, and recording the unseen pulse of the energy […]

If the first season of Landman left you with grit under your fingernails and a thirst for more West Texas oilfield grit, hold onto your ten‑gallon hat—season 2 is revving up to blow the roof off. Enter Sam Elliott: The Man, the Myth, the Sheri-dan Sam Elliott, that gravel-voiced legend of the screen, […]