Ep50: Fuel Your Retirement through Oil and Gas Investments with RJ Burr

Dive into the dynamic world of oil and gas with RJ Burr. Learn valuable insights about the fundamentals of oil and gas investing for beginner investors. Plus, we’ll also explore the vast potential and lucrative opportunities that await domestic oil production for your retirement. So tune in!

Key takeaways to listen for

• A beginner’s guide to oil and gas investing
• How RJ got into the oil and gas industry
• Why nuclear energy and natural gas are nonviable investment options
• The role of politics in the American oil industry
• What is the estimated value of an oil production company?

Resources mentioned in this episode 

• The Usual Suspects
• Apollo 13
• ExxonMobil
• Shell Global
• Marathon Oil
• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill | Kindle and Paperback
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand | Kindle, Paperback and Hardcover
• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki | Kindle, Paperback, and Mass Market Paperback

About RJ Burr
RJ is the President and CEO of Panex (Panther Exploration) Oil and Gas. He is a third-generation producer of American oil. Born into the industry, RJ was in his first location before he could walk and has been fascinated by the production of oil his entire life. Within three months of graduating high school, RJ funded his first partnership and never looked back. 

With a main focus on the Gulf Coast, RJ’s companies have raised and deployed over 300 million US dollars in upstream development and have partnered with some of the largest oil and gas companies, namely Shell, BP, and Marathon, to develop several million barrels in reserves.

Connect with RJ

• Website: Invest in American Oil
• Facebook: Panex
• LinkedIn: Panex Corp
• Email: rjburr@panex.us

Connect with Us
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Transcript

[00:00:00] RJ Burr
Most people have no idea how ingrained oil is in their day to day lives. You could go to any industrialized city in the world, randomly grab one person, and they're going to have two or three products of oil on them. And for the most part, probably won't even know it. Whether it's plastic, medicine, whether it's cosmetics.

[00:00:17] Podcast Intro
You are working professional but struggling to balance the workload of your career, family obligations, and preparing for your financial future. If so, this podcast is for you. You've spent years learning your craft, and now it's time to focus on your financial future. This podcast will teach you what you need to Retire Wealthy and Happy. Let's dive in. 

[00:00:41] Roger Jacobsen
Welcome everybody to the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast. I'm your host, Roger Jacobsen. I've got Anthony Esparza. Today, we're interviewing Jay Burr that is the president and CEO of Panex. Welcome to the show, Jay. Hey gentlemen, how are y'all doing today? 

[00:00:54] Anthony Esparza
Pretty good. It's nice to have you on Jay.

[00:00:57] RJ Burr
Oh, absolutely. As somebody outside my office must've locked their keys in the car. Cause it's been honking at me for the last couple of minutes. I, I thought she saw me stand up in front of my window and thought I was looking good, but now I realized she locked her keys in her car. 

[00:01:10] Roger Jacobsen
You got a good microphone with some dynamic features because we're not hearing any of the other noise or anything. 

[00:01:17] RJ Burr
You know, I've been on the phone since I was 18 years old and I was 1 of those guys back before headsets that would have the 50 yard long cord where I could just paste the office. And I've probably spent more money on headsets over the years than anything else. And these little things right here, these little apples, and yes, I'm an Apple guy, but those are the best headphones I've ever used. And the ones now, cause I get those big headsets with the cords and I try to be wireless and it had nothing but a pain in the butt. And then my kids finally said, well, dad, try these. And oh, my God, it's about like using the cell phone for the first time. I was one of those that like, I've been on the phone since I was a kid. And so when I would leave the office, look, no, I don't want you to reach me. If you want to call me, call me at the house or call me at the office. Time I'm in my car is my time. Well, then we had our first kid. Well, what happens if something happens and I have to reach him? And so I broke down and I got the cell phone. Well, now it's like my third arm. I don't think I could function without it. I mean, as long as I have my phone, I'm in business. My office is wherever I'm at. I mean.

[00:02:21] Roger Jacobsen
I've had a, an interesting couple of days and my phone's phone jack is about to die and my internet blew up yesterday and this morning at about eight o'clock, about an hour before we started this recording, my whole entire house just had a power surge and millisecond long power outage, so everything blanked. And I've been a little worried about recording this podcast over the last 48 hours, let's just say that.

[00:02:45] RJ Burr
Well, everything seems to be looking good. We had this monsoon come through the other night and took some shingles off the roof of the house, took some shingles off the roof of the apartment where my daughter lives, and all of a sudden I get that call. It was about one o'clock. Dad, what do I do? What do you mean, what do you do? He said, there's water running down my walls. And I go in there and, oh, it was about a 10 foot section, and, yeah, that's, uh, you don't like the weather in Kentucky, just wait 10 minutes, it'll change for you. Now, I will say though, the bonus of that is it's now 60 degrees here today. It's gone from freezing to now it's kind of hot when you walk outside. And so, man, this past 12 months, seasons have been nuts. We went straight from summer. We said, we don't need a fall and just went straight to winter. And I'm hoping they do the same thing with spring and go straight from winter to summer because I need some warm weather. 

[00:03:36] Anthony Esparza
Yeah. Seasons are, last couple of years, they've been really weird. I don't know. I'm ready for summer though. 

[00:03:41] RJ Burr
It's too cold. There's something about getting outside. I get outside with my dogs and it's funny because I had three pointers, three German Shorthairs, and then I have a Cane Corso. And so I'll get out there and I'll play catch with all of them. And the Corso never gets the ball for things just too slowly. He can't keep up with the pointers. Well, he got the ball the other day for the first time. And when he got it, he wouldn't bring it back to me. I got a pretty big backyard. He took it in the middle of the yard. Set it down in his bowl and then sat down next to it and wouldn't let any of the other dogs get near it. He said, no, no, this is mine. I'm taking my ball and going home. He let me get it for the first time. And so now it's mine. Yeah. I turned, maybe walk out in the middle of the field and grab the ball and get it back to the partners where they can play catch again. And so I love outdoors. I mean, the woods, I live on about 140 acres and it's. I'd say 120 of it is truth. We jokingly call it Burr Mountain, but Burr Mountain. I always laugh and my son goes to LSU, and they're in class the other day, and it's his English class, and the teacher divides them up into groups, and says, Okay, I'm going to give you all a creative writing assignment, and when you all get done, you're going to elect somebody in your group to come present it to the class.

[00:04:54]
And then at the end of the class, we're going to vote on what group had the best idea. And she said, So, your subject. Is what would you do if the zombie apocalypse happened right now while you were in this class? I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. My son pauses. He starts laughing. He looks at his group. He said These guys are effed. This is all my family talks about So And so they get done doing their whole thing and they're presenting it to the class and one group goes Uh, we secure this building and we'd secure this building one group said I would go to the quad secure the quad And so Maddox, my son, he got elected by his group to be the one to present it. And so he walks up and he says, look, he said, the zombie apocalypse happened right now. I know y'all would probably fortify this place, but I'd have to say y'all are gone. He said, we would be taken off. He said, the first place we'd go is we'd go get Mike. Mike is the tiger at LSU. He said, first thing we do is we go get Mike.

[00:05:48]
Mike's now with us. He said, then what we'd do, he said, we wouldn't go to this Walmart. That Walmart doesn't have an auto zone. We go to this Walmart with the autoplex. And he said, we go take over the Walmart. He said, we'd fortify it. We'd put snipers on the roof. She goes, snipers. How would you get snipers? So, man, it's Walmart. You can get everything at Walmart, but he had his whole plan out. He said, then once everything settled down, we'd open up negotiations with the people that took over Sam's club. With the people that took over target and we've grown our own little trade pack. The kid had the whole thing lined up anyway, so they get done voting and he won. His group won. The best plan afterwards, as he was walking out of his class, his professor looks at him and says, Maddox, now you do know if the zombie apocalypse happens, you're in charge. Okay, that'll work. At least he knows your duties. Anytime there's a borderline, if he knows you're going to get the deposit.

[00:06:35] Roger Jacobsen
Jay, I've got a question for you. Most of the people aren't going to see this because they're going to be listening, but here in the video, it looks like you've got a couple of guitars or a guitar and a banjo in the background. Are you a big time player musician? 

[00:06:48] RJ Burr
I played, I used to play a bunch. Now my brother can really. My brother can eat it up. And I played quite a bit when I was younger. And when I had kids that got mobile and they could grab the guitars, I put them up and I put them up for 20 some odd years. And then about five years ago, my wife got me a guitar for Christmas. And she said, you know, you hadn't played in years. I think it's time you start playing again. All the kids are off the ground. And so I started playing again and I'm hooked. I love it. I love music because it's all math. I mean, it all makes sense to me. I mean, yeah, you have to have time and yeah, you have to hear it. There's certain things internally you have to have to be good at. However, to figure it out, the fact that they wrote the certain, the guy that wrote the circle of this wrote it several hundred years ago, and it's still as perfect today as it was back then. I mean, it's just a symmetrical. I mean, it's just Matt. I love the guitar. It's fun to play. I love music. Now my youngest daughter, she plays the piano and me and her sit down and we jam together. She she's pretty good. She's one of those jack of all trades can kind of play. She played the piano. She's the artsy does all that. I mean, that girl's got a double handful of it, but I love playing guitar. Now the black one. On the back, that's my Les Paul classic. My brother bought me that guitar when he was 16 years old, he had worked all summer mowing yards and he bought him a guitar.

[00:08:06]
He bought him a Fender Stratocaster and he bought me a Les Paul. Now he got in the recording business. And so I gave it to him for several years and I said, no, man, take it, go, you're recording with it, go get it. And so he had it for several years, but I got it back. Oh, when I started playing again, I had it. I mean, I had it in storage. I had it set aside. And once I started playing again, I went and got it. And now it's back. Yeah. I've had that guitar for 30 some odd years and it's just as sweet today as it was 30 years ago. That's awesome. And then you got a Paul Reed Smith here. Another Paul Reed Smith here. Then I have my toys at the house. I'm a guitar junkie. Why do you want that guitar? Because, you know, I love them and now, well, I love that. Yes, they're much better than I am, but I love hear somebody play and knowing what they're doing. Now, can I do it sometimes, but knowing that they're doing something that is extremely difficult, I love excellence. I don't care whether it's ping pong, badminton, it doesn't matter. I love watching the best do what they're the best at doing. I can't explain why I can sit down. My wife walked in one night. I literally was watching people playing badminton. I mean, it was something stupid. I'd never watched it as I was watching, like on the Ocho and it's like the dodgeball tournament, but they were the best in the world and I'm sitting there watching it and yeah, they were, I mean, you watch it.

[00:09:20]
Oh my God. And it was two girls. Oh my God. They're ridiculous. How did you hit that little thing like that? I mean, I just love watching people when they're the best man. I don't know why I just, I like excellence. I mean, I always loved the Yankees. People say, why do you love the Yankees? I said, because Steinbrenner. If we don't win the World Series, our season was a failure. That was his goal and he was willing to pay to get to it. Well, I have no problem with that at all. I'm a Cowboy fan. Grew up in Dallas. And I mean, I kind of thought Jerry was cut along the same cloth as George, but George could pick talent. Jerry, he seems to run all the football talent off. The guys that actually know you need to draft Troy Aikman, you draft Michael Irvin. Hey, Emmitt Smith. That's a good pick. You know, hey, let's trade Herschel Walker for three Super Bowls. 

[00:10:03] Anthony Esparza
I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan also.

[00:10:06] RJ Burr
Yeah, no it's when I see things coming, I don't get too excited because I've lived by the motto, the best part of the Cowboys season is the offseason because we're going to be so good. We're going to be so good next year. So good. And then the first game is played and it's just like, you know what? Dak still throws it to the other team. He's not supposed to. And that's what kills me. And don't get me wrong. This is nothing personal against Dak. Everybody loves him. The dude evidently is an outstanding guy. And so I have no problem with, I mean, I love playing for outstanding people. The problem I have is nobody pays attention. When you look at his stats, they go, Oh, he's putting up ridiculous stats. You realize I would be willing to bet that 40 percent of his stats are in games where the game's out of hand. And we could be doing nothing but throwing it at that point. And so, okay, set that one aside. Why else do you not like him, Jay? Well, because he costs his receivers yards. When you have a dude running, when you have CD lamb running a 12 yard skinny post and you throw it behind his back left knee, and he goes down and makes the catch and we get the first down, but he gained 12 yards.

[00:11:10]
Whereas if you had hit him in a position where he could catch it and run, it's a touchdown. Or you have somebody who's 25 yards open down the sideline and you air him out. But then you'll come out the next throw and make a throw that maybe 1 percent of the people that have ever walked on the face of the earth could make. And you're just like, oh my God, hang on. You can make that throw, yet you missed. He was eight yards from you, dude. How did you miss that? It's so frustrating because I don't think we'll ever win with him. Maybe I'm wrong, but just look at the playoffs this year. He played great all year. He didn't have one of those brain farts all year. We get pressure moment. I mean, kicks out. It was boom, game over, huh? Have fun. See you all next year. 

[00:11:51] Anthony Esparza
Pressure's tricky with that guy. 

[00:11:52] RJ Burr
Hopefully. This is one of the darndest sports. Runs I've ever been on because what, three months ago, my long horns had a chance at a national championship. My Cowboys were looking good. They had a chance at the super bowl. And then my Kentucky Wildcats were playing awesome in basketball. And then all of a sudden, December and January has just wrecked my entire 20, 23 sports season. I was so optimistic. And now I'm just like, oh, damn. Okay. Maybe Kentucky can figure it out and get it going again, man.

[00:12:25] Roger Jacobsen
You kind of need to get Anthony up to speed a little bit about what you've done, the exploration, oil and gas, salt domes and stuff like that.

[00:12:33] RJ Burr
Okay. Basically, how familiar are you with oil? I want to make sure we're speaking the same language. 

[00:12:39] Anthony Esparza
Not too familiar, to be honest. 

[00:12:41] RJ Burr
Well, basically, oil that is sitting under the ground, you need to drill to it to get out. There are different formations that hold the oil, there are different structures, there are different traps, there's different sands, there's different rocks. It is a really just a wide open when you think about what these rocks, there's various things that can produce oil. We like salt domes, and the reason we like salt domes is one, it was the original oil fields, early oil field discoveries were salt domes because that was the formation. The geologists at that time could identify. And so your older companies were essentially like school kids and a school of kids, favorite toys, their next door. And so what they would do is they would go out, they'd drill a well around one of these salt domes. They'd hit a big well, they're cutting back lips or making a little left and right over the next couple of years, they drill five, 10, 15 wells around it.

[00:13:27]
They're successful. They're happy. They're making a lot of wool. Well, all of a sudden, they hit a well three or four miles away. Well, hey, at that point in time, they think they produced well, we got 15 wells out here. We produced all this oil. So they just pick up their entire operation and move over to the new area. Well, over the next 80 years, how much oil did they really have in that spot? You might have a company come in and lease up some land right here and drill a few wells. You might have some here and in some cases they might have completely developed it. However, salt domes, there's over 600 of them across the Gold Coast. And while some of them have been fully developed, a lot of them haven't. And just to give you a basic image of what a salt dome is. Imagine years and years and years ago, you have layer of pay sands. Think of a layer cake, layer of chocolate, layer of cake, layer of fudge, layer of cake, a layer cake. So you have these layer cakes underneath the ground.

[00:14:17]
Well, one of these layers, or multiple of these layers, have oil and water in it. And that oil and water has nothing holding it in place, so it's moving left and right wherever it wants to go. Okay, it migrates through that rock and it stays in its layer. Well, all of a sudden, a salt dome comes. And a salt dome Not to be gross, but for a lack of a better term, it's essentially first pimple. It comes from way down deep and it's just a big body of salt that moves up like a column towards the surface. As those layers are encountered, it lifts those layers as it works its way through. Now that lift right there is what causes the trap. That's what locks the oil in place. Reason being, with that salt dome coming up, the oil now can't go through. The second side of the trap, imagine when you're at the gas station, there's a puddle of water on the ground. If you look down at, you see that rainbow setting on top of it, that's oil, that's your hydrocarbons. They will set on top of water. Now, if you take them and shake them up, yeah, they'll blend together.

[00:15:12]
But when you set it back down, the oil and water will separate and the oil will set on top. Well, it's the same thing under the ground. So, when this salt dome comes up and lifts those layers and it creates the incline, now, the oil and water in that column will separate. The oil will come to the top, there's your second track. The oil will not go back through that water. So now the salt dome comes up and it's created these traps where now there's oil. Well, eventually that salt dome will hit a caprock. And when it hits that caprock, it'll mushroom. Well, that right there, the overhang right underneath the mushroom cap, that is your low hanging fruit on a salt dome. That's what we call the ring of fire. That's the area that you want to develop first, because that area tells you where all the oil is going away from the salt dome. The reason I tell you that full story is when you now take it from a horizontal view and now look over it, this salt dome is sitting here where all of this oil around it, it's 360 degrees. And so when you come in and develop it like the salt dome we're on right now. They started drilling in this salt dome in 1926 is when they first discovered it. They drilled over 250 wells on it and produced right at 30 million barrels. Well, when we came in and acquired all the property, we thought they'd left probably 10 15 million barrels behind.

[00:16:24]
And based on that, we bought it. We said, heck, 10 15 million barrels, that's a lot of oil. Well, once we went through the 250 wells they drilled, that is all public data. That's all data that if you are willing to do the legwork and go to the courthouses and pull out all the papers, you can get all the data on those wells that were drilled there. So we purchased it and then we went out and gathered 40, 000 different data sets. From all of the wells, we digitized them and put them in one spot and laid it over top of our geology. All of a sudden, we're like, holy, there might be 40, 50 million barrels sitting out here. Well, the final piece of the puzzle, our salt dome, when you hear them talk about their strategic petroleum reserve, that's our salt dome. It's the Bayou Choctaw Salt Dome in Baton Rouge. We own all the mineral rights to the roughly 3, 000 acres surrounding. Well, they shot 3d seismic over it. The reason they shot 3d seismic, They needed to see where the salt ended so they could dig their caverns We got in touch with said hey Can we see that seismic because we need to know where the salt ends also so we don't drill into it And so once we got that 3d seismic and laid it over top of all of the geology we had at that point Then we're cutting backflips because all of a sudden that 40 50 million It goes up to about 100 million barrels.

[00:17:32]
We think we have in place and the reason being When that mushroom cat forms that overhang, the ring of fire, when we purchased it, we assumed they had already developed the entire overhang, which is the low hanging fruit on the salt belt. Once we looked at that 3d seismic, roughly 70 percent of the overhang has not even been touched. So that's what we're doing. We're going into bed and developing this field. I'd love to say it was sexier than that. I'd love to say we came out, we invented this little gamma thing. No, we essentially stand on the shoulders of giants and get what they left behind. The beauty is, like on this particular field, when you produce this oil, you're gonna produce sand. It's sandy formations. Well, while the sand is a headache, we know how to deal with it. Now, you go through and you start looking at all these logs, well The information you get when you finish drilling a well, you have an open hole, you run a tool down there, and that tool takes a log of the well, and your log is essentially your Bible for the well. It tells you what zones you have, if it's oil, it gives you these readings. Now, I can't read it. However, when you can read it, all those squiggly lines. Tell you exactly what you look for him to go apart. Well, the data you get from running a log today is essentially the exact same data you got 60 years ago.

[00:18:41]
Now our pictures might be prettier, but it's the same data. And so all of a sudden you start going through these 250 wells in the field. And looking at all the logs on the wells and you see a well that the logs show six or seven different pay sands, six or seven of those different layers in the layer cake that have oil in them. You can see it on the logs, yet this well only produced for a couple of months and produce, say, 50, 100, 000 barrels and you look like, oh, damn, that well had six or seven pay stands. Each one of those pay stands should produce three to five years on average, and you produce for three months. I wonder what happened with that well. Well, then all of a sudden you see another one on the other side of the same thing, multiple pay stands, but just a little production. Well, in total, there were 50 of these. That we saw that beautiful looking sand package like, man, that's half a million to a half barrels of oil right there. Why would they not produce it? Well, once you do the research, you find out it's the sand. See what these guys were. Think of it like this. If you had a big old coconut or a big gulp in front of you and you have crushed up ice in that big gulp and you want to drink that coke without getting the ice in your mouth. You have to put your straw on and just suck gently.

[00:19:47]
You have to get the straw positioned right and just suck gently and hope you don't suck that ice up. Well, these guys took that straw, stuck it down in there and just went and sucked as hard as they could. They wanted to produce as much oil as they could as fast as they could. Well, when you produce that much oil and it's producing sand, what's it going to do? It's going to bring more sand. And so they essentially cemented their wells. Nothing they could do. They picked up and walked away. Well, the beauty of it, now, they didn't know how to deal with the sand. We do. Now, you run a gravel pack, you put a screen in it. Yes, it is a pain in the butt sometimes. However, we know how to deal with it. And so, I'm sitting there looking at this, all this data, and I'm talking to my geologist, I said, This is Bruce. Man, I got to come up with an analogy that I can explain everything I just explained to y'all in one sentence. I said, how about this? We essentially have a treasure map here with multiple treasures buried. And the reason we know they're buried, we know they're there, is because we have an arrow pointing to every one of them. And he said, yeah, that's basically it. I mean, to prime example, we just finished a well here about a month and a half ago. This well was drilled because we had the logs from a well right here that was drilled in 1943.

[00:20:53]
This well had multiple pay sands, but it had one huge pay sand, about a hundred foot thick pay sand that we could see on the logs. Well, then there was another well drilled right here in 1955 that showed that exact same pay sand. I said, well, let's just go in between them and drill another one. Well, lo and behold, what did we hit? We hit the single largest pay sand I've ever hit. I think it measures over 112 feet in thickness. It's massive. And it's loaded with oil. Well, those wells showed us it was there. Now, the difference between that well and the one we're drilling next. This well was close enough to the salt dome. We had to stop at about 3000 feet. The next well, we're moving further away from the salt dome. We should encounter that same big sand. Why? We're drilling the 20th. If it was there in the 50s, it should be there today. All we're doing is drilling another one. However, we'll take it deeper. Because the well in 1955 showed another four or five pay sand below that big old thick sand. With us moving away from the salt dome now, we're not worried about getting in the salts. We'll be able to take it deeper and get to those sands. And so is that oil going to be there in the bottom sands? I don't know. We still got to drill it. All I know is their logs showed that it was there. We've drilled 11 wells in this field in the last two and a half years. And every log we've offset from wells drilled at that time has been dead on accurate. Is that going to continue to happen? I would hope so. Is it a guarantee? No, I mean, because the first wells we drill in New Horizons, we're drilling off of somebody else's information. Now, what does that do for us? Well, you look at the Blackstone lease we have.

[00:22:19]
Very first well we drilled out there, the Blackstone number 4. Nine pay sands, 260 feet of pay at that time was the biggest well I'd ever hit until I drilled the Blackstone number five. That one had 11 pay sands over 360 feet of pay. Those two wells right there will produce for the next 20 to 40 years, maybe more. I have partners that will receive revenue from those wells for the next four years. Now from those two wells. We've drilled the Blackstone 6, the Blackstone 7. Now we're drilling the Blackstone 8. We're developing the field. We're going in and getting all that we know is there. Now, does it eliminate all the speculation? No. This is drilling. If anybody ever tells you that there's no risk at all, you're taking something on surface and you're drilling several thousand feet down to see what's there. So, does that eliminate all the risk? No. However, when you know the oil's there, it eliminates a lot of it. Now, the final reason we love salt domes Is because of that reason right there. It's difficult drilling. You have to have a certain level of expertise to drill these wells. Well, knowing that it runs away a lot of the competition. There's a lot of companies that just don't have the technical proficiency to do it. Now, the exciting part of it is it's kind of getting in the weeds a little bit, but there is an exciting part.

[00:23:27]
We reinvented how you drill these wells. When you look at historically how companies drill these wells, they get big double Derek rigs, big power rigs. And when they're drilling down and they encounter any trouble, their idea was just power. Hey, let's put more power to it and just push on through. So we started looking at it and we said, well, those big old double derrick rigs, they're huge. And we started looking at them, but damn, that's hard to get those in tight location. And then we said, well, okay. What's the success rate when you got to use that big old power rig when you start seeing trouble and you finally go? Okay. Now we got to do something. Normally don't do how many times does that work? And it kind of turns out about a 50 50 shot. And so we said, well, hey, surely there's something we can do to Increase our odds of doing this. Once again, this is why your team is so vital There's a reason that Yankees are the Yankees and the A's are the A's. It's the quality of player you put on your team And our guys are the best in the business. We didn't hire guys, local guys from Baton Rouge. We brought our crew that's been drilling with us for years. Because why? This is our team. And when we put our team to it, they came back and they said, you know what? What do we know about every salt dome well we drill? We know as soon as we start drilling, that drill bit is going to drift away from the salt dome.

[00:24:37]
Well, if we know it, If you're drilling on the northeast side, you know, it's going to drift to the northeast. Let it drift. Why fight it? We can measure exactly how far we are. And once we get out over the edge of that salt dome, we'll put a directional bit on and we'll turn it and we'll go right back under. Once we get it turned, then we'll pull that directional bit out and then just let gravity take us all the way down. And so instead of powering through it, we decided let's see if we can finesse them down. And I don't know about you, but if you've seen the old Dumbo cartoon, you remember the old Dumbo, Roger, you remember the old Dumbo cartoon when he was first starting to fly and all those crows were on the power line laughing at him? Sure. That's what it felt like when we brought that little rig out there. All the other oil companies thought we were crazy. There's no way these guys would be able to drill these wells with that. We came out and did it. Now we're 8 of 11. In those 8 wells, we've identified 38 different pay sands, almost 1300 feet of total pay.

[00:25:29]
That's several million barrels that we've already found doing away. Nobody else has done it. And so every well we drill out here, we're getting better and better at dialing in our drilling program. And while every well will vary a little bit, it's going to present something a little different. For the most part, when you know what's coming, you can prepare for it. Now, once again, does that eliminate all earth? No, we had a well hang up on us two wells ago, down about 5, 000 feet, the casing just seized up, the drill pipe seized up, we put about 190, 000 pounds of pressure on it, trying to break it free. In fact, put 100, 000 pounds more than the drill casing was supposed to be able to hold. We ended up stretching our drill casing about a foot and a half in the hole before we finally just, yeah, that's a dry hole. Now, that well showed us a big pay sand. It was just broken up. We were high on structure. It was kind of shaley. Well, we knew by going and drilling down structure with the next well, that pay sand should be fully formed with our second well.

[00:26:23]
Lo and behold, that's exactly what we got. We got a 67 foot pay sand and got another potential hundred something feet of pay below it once we finished producing that 67 feet. And so you learn from every well you drill. But we're sitting in a position worldwide where most people don't understand what the American oil industry is. And when it comes to the context of what we're trying to do as a company and who Panex is competing with. If we're the bad news bears and we're playing the New York Yankees, you have a pretty good idea what's going to happen in that game before you even start playing. And that's what most people when they think of the American oil industry, they think that's what you're up against. For your oil company to be successful, you're going to have to be better than Exxon. You're going to have to be better than Shell. You're going to have to be better than all these massive companies. When in truth, 83 percent of the oil, 90 percent of the natural gas, and more than 90 percent of the wells that are drilled are drilled by roughly 9, 000 independent companies that average 12 employees or less.

[00:27:18]
That's the American oil industry. And so that's who our competition is. The American oil and gas industry has made more millionaires than pretty much any other industry I can think of. And so it's not that you can't make a tremendous living out here and make your partners a lot of money. However, the ability to build a massive company has really been difficult because, oh, to acquire the amount of reserves that you need to acquire to reach that major mark, the a hundred million market cap, it was next to All your spindle tops have been found. All your build your company overnight wells domestically have been found. And so, the only way to get it is to either drill it yourself or buy it from somebody else. And before the market crashed a couple years ago, man, drill it yourself, like I said, it was difficult. You had to string together a bunch of small fields and It's only happened one time in the last 40 years, an American company off American production, become a major oil and gas company. And that was when two companies merged. And so now this is getting a little long winded. I don't know if you wanted me to go into what we saw and why we started making acquisitions, because the key to everything we're doing here was the crash. Here in 2020, when the oil market crashed, it cleared the playing field, like has never happened in my 30 years in the business.

[00:28:28]
Because when that happened, it wasn't the majors that were hurt. It was those 9, 000 independent producers. And the first wave of companies that went out of business were the companies that were either younger or on shaky financial ground, April 20, 2020 oil prices go to negative 40. Boom. Those companies are out of business out of his size, their front window. The next wave came a couple of months later. When they sent everybody home for COVID. The companies that could pay their employees more than the government and get them back to the field. They're the ones that make it. The companies that couldn't get their employees out back, a lot of those companies didn't make it. And all of a sudden had a business go in their window. And so you had an acquisition opportunity open up that I've never seen in my life. Now, fortunately, we do study and we do pay attention to history and what's going on. And every time there's been a market crash like that. There's been a group of people or one person that come out of the other side looking like geniuses. And when you string their stories together, there's really only two common factors that they share. The first is when the crash happened, they were liquid. They had cash on hand and the ability to move. The second, when their opportunity presented itself, they had the courage to push their chips on the table and make the move.

[00:29:34]
And so April 20th, 2020, we basically saw it coming. We didn't see COVID coming. We saw a different trigger. But the result was essentially the same. And so we had our powder dry. We had a pocket full of cash. We were ready to make acquisitions. So when that market crashed, we just kind of looked at each other and the hell, this is what we expected to happen anyway, guys. And so when everybody else kind of tucked their sales and batten down the hatches, getting ready to ride out the storm, we opened ours wide open and started buying. And 23 acquisitions later, we're sitting on what we think about a hundred million barrels in reserve. And now we're essentially just developing it. There's another eight salt domes. We're looking at purchasing. We're not done acquiring. Our end goal is to build a major oil and gas company on domestic oil. Somebody's going to come out and consolidate this oil. Somebody's going to do it. Well, we've already done what we think is a hundred million barrels worth. If somebody is going to do it, why not people who actually care about what happens to it? So that's really what we're trying to do. We're trying to consolidate as much of this oil as we can, because sadly Corona taught me a couple of things. Big one is that if a country doesn't control its food, medicine, or energy.

[00:30:36]
I don't know enough about food to have a say in that. I don't know enough about medicine to have a say in that. But energy? I do know enough about that one. And right now, when you look at it, America, we don't control any of those. And so we gotta figure out a way to do it because, I mean, just security wise, you wanna go back to the third world? Take somebody's energy. And so that's kind of where we're sitting. We just kind of very rarely do what I consider patriotism and business walk on the same side of the street. Most of the time, if you're doing something that you think is good for your country, very next sentence is most likely to be, yeah, but it's going to cost you just, it costs a lot of money. And so to realize that we're now sitting in a position where doing this is actually good for all of us. You meet six days a week and twice on Sunday. How'd you get started in oil? My dad got in the business in 1973. My grandpa. It was one of the old original oil field men. He's one of the company men in the oil field. My mom's brothers, my uncles, my mom was one of those unique children. She was a baby boomer, but her youngest older brother was 21 years older than her. Her oldest brother was 26 years older than her. And so she essentially had three dads. And so my grandpa, my mom's brothers, their uncles were in the business.

[00:31:41]
Their kids have been in the business. My dad's in the business. I mean, this is all we do. My dad had me on my first location, but at seven years old, made my first sale three months after high school graduation and hadn't looked back. That's all I've ever wanted to do. Some kids grow up watching the dads practice law. So I'm watching practice medicine. I got to watch my dad in one gas. I love it. I think we were made for what's going on right now. There's chaos everywhere and nothing happens by accident. And I just kind of look at everything that we've done as a family has just kind of rolled out the way you would want it to. Like I said earlier, I'd love to say we're rocket scientists and we created something out of nothing that nobody thought could ever be done. And no, we just were diligent in what we did. We knew our industry. We paid attention and we followed history. That's really the point of our success because history does repeat itself. All you gotta do is keep your eyes open and watch it. They can call it something different. They name it something different, but it's the same thing. You just got to pay attention to it. And so we did now when it comes to oil. The big question I get from the younger generation is replacing. I'm a big movie buff.

[00:32:48]
And one of my favorites is the usual suspects. And favorite quote from that is the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. Well, I kind of look at the modern environmental movement and I modify that quote a little bit. The greatest trick environmentalist ever pulled was convincing the world that oil was bad because the world was built on it in 1859. That was the day that modern world began. That was the day we drilled our first commercial oil well. Once we had energy, once we had mobility, the entire human condition changed. And now, most people have no idea how ingrained oil is in their day to day lives. I truly believe you could go to any industrialized city in the world, randomly grab one person, and they're going to have two or three products of oil on. And for the most part, probably won't even know it. Whether it's plastic, whether it's medicine, whether it's cosmetics. Whether it's asphalt, there's 6, 000 products from one barrel. We try to educate people in the sense that look, oil is probably the most precious commodity we have. Cause it's what makes the world go. People can say oxygen, people can say water, people can say whatever they want, but to live the lifestyle that we live, it's energy. Watch Apollo 13. What was the one thing they had to have for that shuttle to get back to the US energy period. And so energy fuels everything. Ask the Germans. Just go randomly ask the Germans, would they rather buy gas from mean old Vlad, or continue to cut down their forest and burn for firewood?

[00:34:13]
And so it's something that people don't realize the value of it until it's gone. Well, now you look at, is there anything to replace oil? Well, no, they found the first solar panel 150 years ago. They hadn't figured it out by now. They're like, water power, same thing. You look at everything they're trying, they're just reinventing old things. Yeah, can they do it? Yeah, sometimes, but look at the, I was watching, I was reading a report yesterday and they were talking about domestically. They're shutting down gas driven power stations and replacing them with solar and wind farms that work 5 to 7 hours a day. They're projecting U. S. energy should grow the amount of energy we produce on our grid. It should grow between two and 3 percent every year. That's how we keep up with the modernization of the country. Well, by doing what they're doing and replacing those gas fired power plants with solar and wind, all of a sudden our growth, it ain't going to be two, 3 percent a year. It's going to be 0. 2 to 0. 4 percent a year. So they're taking what should grow 20 to 30 percent over a 10 year period, and they're shrinking it down to 4%, and they don't think that's going to affect everybody's day to day lives. Well, that's not even taking into account all the electric cars they want to produce. That's not even taking into account the eyesores of all the wind turbines across the lands.

[00:35:33]
I mean, get on the internet and type in oil field and hit images, and then get on the same page and type in lithium mine and hit images. And you tell me which one's destroying the earth. And so you kind of look at all this stuff. I'm like, well, no, there's really nothing that can replace oil. Well, why are they doing it? Well, that's really irrelevant because it's not going to work when the bubble bust and people come out from under the ether and they realize that the utopia that we've been promised of a clean energy, no, because honestly, I believe it's a false argument. And here's how I look at it. If your goal is to save the world yet, in order to save the world, you have to destroy it first. You're not a serious person. And that's what they're asking us to do, to do everything we're doing. We would have to rape the earth for raw minerals like we never have before. And so if that's their goal, then they're not serious because if they were serious, they'd go natural gas or nuclear. We already have the infrastructure built. You could put converters on every car, pipe the gas straight to their garage. People don't have to go to the gas station anymore. Boom. They're mobile. Everything works. It burns cleaner, burns hotter. Well, there's one solution. Well, they're not even looking at that solution. That's the cleanest burning energy we have, other than nuclear.

[00:36:40]
You mean we can run the most advanced subs on the planet on a nuclear power plant, but we can't do it here? No bull. They're letting a movie from 40 years ago, still scare them. They're riding that propaganda today. And so when you have the two most useful products that would fix what they're wanting to fix. Are they truly wanting to fix it? No, they've set up a false argument. It's hard to argue against Santa Claus. Sorry to cut you off. 

[00:37:02] Anthony Esparza
Why do you think they're, um, those two kind of the clean burning energy? I forgot what you said. One of them was nuclear energy and then the other one. Natural gas and then whatever you said with the car exhaust. So why do you think they don't move that direction? Why do you think it's?

[00:37:18] RJ Burr
It's all speculation. I mean, why? Cause it doesn't make sense. It really doesn't. I love old sayings because there's a reason they're old sayings. Chances are there's truth to them. Follow the money. That's all I'd say right there. There has to be an ulterior motive and one of them would have to be financially. However, the tenfold hat in me, well, if I got a gas tank and I got a gallon of gas, you can't tell me where I can or can't go. However, if I'm dependent on electricity and electric car, and they don't want me to go somewhere, I just turn the lights off. Absolutely. I'm not going to say that that's, but that's a possibility because like I said, it doesn't make sense. When you look at the environmental waste created by an electric vehicle, when the battery's done, when digging that battery out, mining all the material for that battery. When you look at the environmental impact of that versus a mom's SUV, it's BS. I mean, it just doesn't make sense. Their math doesn't add up. The temperature on Earth is rising and humans are causing it. Okay, well then why is the temperature on Mars rising? We're not there. It's solar cycles. And then, well, let's get to the root of it. Mother Nature is going to take care of Earth.

[00:38:22]
Earth is going to be here long after we're gone. They're talking about changing the environment for them. Their area might be too hot. Or their area might be too cold. Or they're just watching TV all the time and they're freaked out over everything. But the fact of the matter is, well, CO2. That's causing global warming, right? That's the, the theory it's causing. Well, what lives on CO2? Isn't it plants? Isn't it trees? Isn't it algae in the ocean? Isn't that what lives on CO2? Well, if everything got warmer, I believe there are some places that grow crops right now that have short growing seasons because it gets colder quicker. Well, if those places warmed up, hmm, all of a sudden they have longer growing seasons. That'd be more areas that could grow because those colder areas are now warm. What about the areas that are getting warmer that are perfect right now? Well, if we had technology, we could bring irrigation systems. And still water those hotter areas now. And so wouldn't more CO2 mean more growing seasons, more areas that weren't able to be inhabited can now be in hat, doesn't it seem that that would help a little bit? No, but they're not willing to debate that. And so that's why I say it's a false argument. They want to set up a straw man because. I want to save the world. I don't agree with you. What? You want us all to die? I mean, that's the dichotomy they've set up. When in truth, I believe everybody has a little environmentalist in them. I believe all of us would hate to live in trash. I love nothing more than waking up in the morning, walking out on the front porch and looking at my front yard.

[00:39:42]
I mean, that's one of my great pleasures of the day. Why would I mess that up? That gives me chart. I love the beauty. I love it. Manicure. I love it. Dialed in perfect. Well, that's not environmentalist. I don't know what is. And so to own the morality on something in your way is the only way is, man, that's awfully egotistical. Especially when history shows that it's all in cycles. There have been ice ages before. The ice has receded. The ice came back. The ice receded again. It's cyclical. Now, can we screw it up? Yeah, we could drop bombs. We could do stuff. Yeah, we could screw it up, but we wouldn't screw it up for Earth. We'd screwed up for us. Do you think earth would care if the oxygen turned to something else and there were no humans here? No, she'd still be the earth and keep on going. And so what's their real goal there? You look at all that stuff. Cause like I said, I have no problem debating somebody who's an honest person. I have no problem debating about who's a serious person and has serious ideas and really wants to get to the bottom of the problem, but somebody who doesn't and brings. Ridiculous proposals. I mean, the lunacy. So Gavin Newsom in California announces we will get rid of all combustion engines in California by 2035 and literally the next day had to make an announcement to the state not to charge your cars because we're running short on energy. I mean, you can't make that stuff up.

[00:40:57]
Don't set me in stone on the number, but I think it's 15%. I read a report once. If the average town in America, if 15 percent of their automobiles went electric. Okay. It crashed the power grid. We don't have the infrastructure. And the problem is they're shutting all the power plants down before we have anything in place to replace it. I mean, there's a train wreck coming that there's no getting around unless we make major changes. That's the beauty of math. Math doesn't lie. One plus one will always equal two. And when you have a projected course and the math has confirmed, Here's where we're going to be if we stay on this path. Yet everybody be miserable. Why are we still on that path? I don't know, you know, I don't want to get in the tenfold hat world, but there has to be a reason 

[00:41:42] Anthony Esparza
And do you think this is kind of a I don't really know if we should jump into this But it's almost like a kind of a control thing, right?

[00:41:49] RJ Burr
Not to put too fine a point on it. Like I was saying earlier, they don't want you to go somewhere and we're on electric cars. They just pop the switch. All of a sudden we're back in the stone age where as long as I got a tank of gas and as long as I got my combustion engine, you can't tell me where to go, but it wasn't like this when it comes to the younger generation. I think that y'all need to understand, look, the world's not like this. America's not like this. What we're facing now is stuff we've never faced before in our lifetimes. Here's what I mean. Cause I was one of them back before COVID. I would have 100 percent one of those got, surely our government wouldn't do that. You know, surely that whatever scenario, surely they wouldn't do that. Surely they wouldn't lie to us. Surely they wouldn't bear shit. You mean they would, they would hide stuff on the Kennedy assassination? No, surely they wouldn't do it. You take it at face value because it's your government. No, they won't do it. But then all of a sudden we go through COVID and the mass was my big. Are you serious? Because if Jay Burr in Bowling Green, Kentucky can get on the internet and I can find not just common sense reasons, but scientific and mathematical reasons why these masks do not work. Yeah. Every doctor I talked to requires you to wear the mask.

[00:42:58]
Hang on. I know it doesn't work. How come I know it and you don't they lost so much credibility and then yeah The ivermectin I remember watching this lady Simone gold. I'm not saying I support her or not I know she's a pretty intelligent person anybody that has a medical degree and a law degree from Harvard and Stanford They're not dumb. And so for this woman to get on and Say, look, the minute I knew they were foolish is the minute they said ivermectin was dangerous. They could have said anything they wanted to say. They could say it's ineffective. They could say it's this. They could say it's that. But they said it was dangerous. She said, that's a lot. We've given that drug about as much as we've ever given any drug. And we have the track record to prove it. And so when I saw that, all of a sudden, you start looking at things a lot different. You start saying, Hmm. Okay, hang on. If they're willing to straight out lie to me about something that's easily provable, what else have they lied to me about? And that's what I think you have a lot of people are tapping into now. Like I said, I don't want to be a conspirator. I don't want to be a kook. But at the same time, there are some things that want you on second look. There's some things you go, hmm, okay. Well, if it didn't happen this way, you explain it to me.

[00:44:08]
Because it makes no sense. You look at 9 11 and I'm not a 9 11 conspiracy guy. You look at all of the stuff that doesn't make sense. How a 747, whose nose can be caved in by a goose or a 737. These big planes, have you seen what happens to the front of the plane when they hit a goose? Well, how did that plane go through steel beams and stay intact on the other side when it came out? How did that video happen? It might have happened, but okay, you explain it to me. You have that fire chief that walked out of the building 7, the secondary building that fell. This wasn't days later, this wasn't months later, this is as he's walking out of the building. This dude's been a fire chief for years, he's been a fireman for 25, 30 years. And he looks and he says, The beams were melted. They were molten. Fire doesn't do that. Okay, I don't know why it happened. That's above my pay grade. You explain it to me. You tell me how that happened. You look at the manner in which the towers fell. I watched a video on a kid that he made models of this tower, several hundred of them, and tried multiple ways to get it to fall just like those two towers fell. You know the only way that worked? When he set off demolition on each level and did it like he would demolish a building. Exactly how the towers went down. Okay, I'm not saying that they were demolished, but You explain that to me. How did that building come down perfectly when every scenario, every model that's been run says it's going to fall one way or the other yet, both of them came down.

[00:45:29]
There's stuff that they never answered. Now, once you accept that they'll lie to you now, it's okay. What all have you lied about? And I don't know, I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying, Hey, it's kind of peculiar. Would you explain it to me? Everybody seems to have ratholed Donald Rumsfeld coming out and talking about the 2 trillion that disappeared from the Defense Department the day before 9 11. And then the 747 pilot that saw the descent of that plane that hit the Pentagon, and he said, Man, I've been flying these planes for 25 years. You realize I would have trouble doing a perfect descent like that and it hit the one building in the Pentagon or one office in the Pentagon that was investigating that 2 trillion. Hmm. Is there a follow up story on that? I mean, I'd like to know what happened to it. Once again, I'm not saying anybody did anything, but could you explain it to me? And so it's just There's so many things out there that just don't make sense. And that's what we're living. Cause we're living in a different time. I mean, I truly believe I was listening to somebody the other day and they were talking about president Trump and the make America great and what he wants. In truth, I really do believe he just wants to go back to 1980. Let's just get America back to where it's an America we can recognize. Cause what we're doing right now isn't recognized.

[00:46:33]
And is that intentional? I don't know, but I know we're more divided than I've ever seen us. And the sad thing is, I don't think it's left or right. I really don't. I think there's probably 67, maybe 80 percent of us that all have the same basic core beliefs. Leave me alone. I'll leave you alone. I know what's best for my family. If I need help, I'll ask. If you need help, ask me just traditional American values. I would say that's by far the largest voting block. It just happens that a lot of those reside in the Republican Party, but when the loony left took over, if you're part of that conglomerate, and you own all of the media, and you live in a vacuum where all you hear are you and your friends talking about how great you are and how many people support your causes, you assume the rest of the country does, because you don't hear any varying opinions. When in truth, I actually think that we represent probably 60, 70, maybe 80 percent of the country. That small percent's what's running it right now. Because the left understood one thing a lot quicker than the right did. They understood that if you control the media, you control the information. If you control Hollywood, you control the culture. You control education, you control the future. So we have been under assault from the left for over 60 years now. They understood that before we did. And now I was talking to my daughter about it last night. I'm, I was blown away. Cause I think COVID for some reason was a pivot point in America where it went from before COVID, Hey, they're indoctrinating our kids.

[00:48:00]
Hey, golly, we got to change this. Hey, this is, this is going on to now. Those kids are the ones in front of the camera. Dude, now they're the ones throwing paint on the constitution. Now the fruit of what they sowed for the last 70 years. Is now starting to play out in front of us. And so, I don't know how you get back from it. I do know this, I think there's a generation coming behind them, that is completely the opposite. And that's my kid's generation. My oldest is 23. My youngest is 14. And so, I think there's another generation coming behind them. I was at CPAC last year, and this kid from PBS, we're talking about wokeness. And he said, what would you tell the parents? Raising woke kids. I said, keep raising them. He said, huh? I said, yeah. I said, they're doing nothing but making the world easier for my kids. When they become adults, as you raise a bunch of woke kids, when they face my kids, they're not know what to do with them. My kids are competitive. They want to win. And that's how they set their life together. They're not going to be sustained. They're going to be aggressive. They're going to go after it. And if you're not willing to. Raise somebody that has some testicular fortitude. Well, you're going to be a lay down. Does it keep doing it? You're just making the world easier for my kids. 

[00:49:01] Anthony Esparza
It's almost a time of awakening for a lot of people. It seems like, 

[00:49:03] RJ Burr
Yeah, no, it really is. Oh, I got a question for you, Jay. All right. What's the, uh, over under, 

[00:49:10] Roger Jacobsen
As far as getting a barrel out of the ground and where's the cost of a barrel of oil right now? The over under and what sense, how much it costs you to get it out of the ground. Yeah. What does it cost you to get a barrel out of the ground and what does it need to be for you to make money? And where is it right now? 

[00:49:26] RJ Burr
Oh, right now our lifting cost, it is 78 a barrel right now. 78 26. We run our numbers where we would break even at 30. And so anything over 30, we're going to make a little money. That's really why we sat in a little different position than most companies. Cause a lot of the oil companies that are out there right now were formed in the last 20 years, the guys in this office, we cut our teeth. During the most ruthless stage of the oil and gas industry, the end of the JRU era, and so I look at some of the companies that we're competing with, man, they have no idea how to deal with us. We're very aggressive. I mean, when I say I'm not saying rude, we know what we want. We're not going to stop until we get to it. So we run our numbers. Heck, I remember selling deals when oil was 7 a barrel. And so typically we'll set our price about 2025 and now don't get me wrong. We wouldn't be happy if it was 2025, but it wouldn't kill us. But 30 is about the sweet spot on where, okay, we might need to check back a little bit on drilling that well, if we're below 30. Now the cost on getting it out varies last year, I'd say we're eight to 12 a barrel to get it out. However, we plan on shrinking that number as a year, as the years go by because once you get a lot of the work done, then the cost to get it done. Then the cost of maintaining it isn't near as much. However, right now we're still putting in infrastructure with every well.

[00:50:41]
And so your cost is a little higher, but I'd be okay if it was 15, 20 a barrel, but right off the bat in Louisiana, 12 and a half percent is going out for taxes. That's coming right off the top of everybody's check, but we're about 30. I think that answered the question. Yep. And that's a pretty good answer. What would Exxon or Shell have to do to buy your company? I don't know if they could right now. But then again, you hate to say that I got a lot of partners and if they came in and well, I'll put it to you this way. Our first life in oil ended when Marathon Oil bought us out. Now how that happened, that was actually the best and worst experience I've ever had in oil all wrapped up into one in our first life. And so I'm probably 25 at this point, maybe 26. And. We had just raised 4 million to drill the biggest well we've ever drilled. 6, 000 feet horizontal or vertical and 6, 000 feet horizontal. You know, the biggest horizontal is 12, 000 feet measured depth. And our part of it was 4 million. So we raised the money. We go out, we drill the well, completely dry, no oil, no gas, nothing. And so, we have to call every partner and tell them Spot died. Other than their tax benefits, we've lost every dime. And so, we don't beat around the bush. It is what it is. If it's white, it's white. If it's black, it's black. There is no gray.

[00:51:51]
And so, we ride up front with our guys. We call them back. They're not. We missed the well, which, man, that's hard. For a 25 year old kid to have to call somebody and say, I lost 100, 000 of your money other than your tax benefits. That's not a fun call to make. So, we get done. We've called every partner. About a week later, Mr. Bridges, who was our partner on that, he owned the other 50 percent of it, he calls us and said, Hey, just wanted to let you know, Marathon Oil just bought my position out in this well, and they'll be calling you next. And we started thinking about it, and I said, Hey, well, hang on. If we just drilled a dry hole, and they just bought our partner out, they know something we don't know. And so when they called to buy ours out, we wouldn't sell it. What we'll do is we'll go 50 50 with you. We'll put up our piece of the money. We'll be a good little soldier and you go be marathon. You go drill a well, we'll put up our money and just ride along. Well, we came out and drilled our horizontal leg to the Southeast. Marathon came out and drilled it to the Northwest. They went exactly opposite of where we had gone. Well, before we drilled that well, we had to call all of those partners that we had just lost 4 million for, and we had to offer it to them that look, we just drilled a dry hole. Here's what happened.

[00:52:58]
Marathon. We told the whole story to them. Now we have to offer it to you first. Thank goodness every partner except for one, bought their position again. So we raised another $4 million marathon goes out when we hit that, well, it paid the first 4 million off in like eight or nine months. Paid the second 4 million off by 18 months and produced at those levels for the next six or seven years. We drilled another, I think, five wells with Marathon offsetting those, made our partners a killing. Well, all of a sudden, Marathon comes in, and they want to take these wells that were measured 6, 000 feet, and they want to take them down to about 18, 000 feet. And we were partners with Marathon, so they had to offer it to us. Um, when we sat down and started looking at the numbers, we're like, whoa, hang on. If we invest in these 18,000 foot wells and get what Marathon's thinking they'll do, it'll take us 20 years to get our partners money back to them. They'd kill us. There's no way we can do this. What Marathon was doing, they were aiming for the reserves. They wanted bookable reserves. They didn't really care about producing the oil. They wanted to drill it, be able to book it and put it on their balance sheet, and so we couldn't do it, so we turned 'em down. And we turned them down. They came back and we've come to call it. They Godfathered us. They came in and made us an offer.

[00:54:11]
We couldn't refuse and they bought the entire company. And that was when we entered into early retirement. And so sitting where I am today to say never is an awful long time. I have a lot of partners that own a good percentage of this company that if a major came in and offer us a ridiculous amount of money, I'd have to call all those partners and talk to them, see what they wanted to do, because without my partners, I don't have a business. So every decision I make is going to be what's best for them. And something like that, I would have to get their input. I would have to find out what the partners thought about it before I made a decision. So I couldn't really say I would or wouldn't do anything unless I talked to the partners first. There's active partners, probably about 350 active partners that invest with us. And so it'd be a process because we got a lot of wells, we got a lot of partners. It'd be a in depth process. It's 3, 000 acres. We think it's probably going to cost us 200 300 million to develop all of it. And if we're right, it's 70 rolls, that's 7 billion. In reserves, and so how do you quantify that if somebody wanted to come in and buy the company? I can guarantee you that would be a part of it. I don't know, man, but if we're right, if we're wrong five times over, we've still made 50 million on top of the cost. Now, I think we're gonna be closer to being 100 percent.

[00:55:14]
I know this, my geologist, Bruce, salt domes in this area is all he's ever done. He's been doing it for 40 years and oil and gas is extremely a Janet Jackson industry in the means of what have you done for me lately? And so it'd be one thing if I was basing my opinion on Bruce strictly off what he's done historically. I can wipe all that. Who cares what he's done historically? I look at what he's done for us and he has been dead on in every projection he's laid out today. This is going on four years now. Once again, I'd love to be the guy who came up with all the plan. I'd love to be the guy that says, Hey, we need to drill here, but Like I was saying earlier, I learned a long time ago when I read Think and Grow Rich, while it's important to know what you know, it's more important to know what you don't know and hire somebody who does. And that's what we did. And that's kind of how our company is set because I run the fundraising, the management side and run the operations of the company. Well, my brother's the field guy. He's the one that handles the geology. He's the one that handles the drilling, the well. We split the company up into two sides and then we've spent the last, oh, him 25 years, me over 30 years fine tuning our craft. And so that's a big problem with a Here's your field guys. If you don't have somebody who worries about the money as much as you do, they'll spend a hundred thousand on a job that should have cost twenty thousand. Well, me and my brother have been pulling on the same rope in the same direction for a long time and he's tight as a bark on a tree and I love it.

[00:56:32]
Be as tight as the bark on a tree, man. That's this all partner's money. There's no reason to frivolously spend it when you don't have to. And so that's a big comfort, the fact that our crew is as good as they can be, our management is as good as they can be, and we're all pulling on the rope in the same direction, and we have a goal that's attainable. We're not reaching, uh, preaching some pie in the sky. I mean, all we got to do is keep doing what we're doing. Now, do we want people involved? Absolutely, man, the more the merrier. There's enough of this pie for everybody to get a piece of it. And so, that's kind of how we look at it. We do a good job, and we're trying to reach out to as many people as we can, because we know what we have. And we know that right now, a lot of people are hurt. Right now, a lot of people are, I mean, they're getting hit left and right. Well, if we're the one Avenue in oil, because everybody pays, we're all in the whole business, whether you want to be or not, we all pay for it. Well, if we're all going to pay for it anyway, it only makes sense to try to figure out a way to make some money on it at the same time. And so that's what we do. We provide our partners, tremendous tax benefits, uncle Sam, roughly going to pay for a third of everything you put in a direct participation program, above line deduction is your active income. Then if we can provide tremendous revenue for you, man, you're done, gone to heaven. And we do, I'd say the last seven programs we've offered will average anywhere from three to one at the end of it to maybe eight to one.

[00:57:42]
nd that just depends on prices and that's work we've already done. We've already got the old, all we got to do is produce it. Now, how long is it going to take? We'll have some wells of Bruce for 10, 15 years. I have several of the produce for 35, 40, maybe more. And as long as we're producing, as long as we're selling it, the partners get the revenue, you own it. We just facilitate the transfer of funds to you. And so it's about that simple. Like I said, I wish I could brag. I was much more intelligent. We had a lot more moving parts, but now it's pretty cut and dry. We make t shirts and we know how much money we can make per shirt. So we just decided how much money do you want to make? Well, how many shirts do we want to make? That's what we're doing. 

[00:58:16] Roger Jacobsen
Jay, we have, uh, four questions we like to ask everybody just to get an overview of stuff about them. Why don't you lead us off on the final four? 

[00:58:26] Anthony Esparza
Okay, final four, Jay. Uh, question number one, what is your favorite book? 

[00:58:31] RJ Burr
Business book or literature?

[00:58:33] Anthony Esparza
Yeah, we'll do business. We'll go business. 

[00:58:36] RJ Burr
Think and Grow Rich. Thank you, Grow Rich. Yeah. Yeah, that and Atlas Shrugged. I think Atlas Shrugged should be required reading for every senior. 

[00:58:44] Roger Jacobsen
Atlas Shrugged, the first movie, is incredible and one of my favorites and it's so old. Like Ayn Rand wrote that so long ago and yet it's still super true. And you still, you still see it in the politics and stuff. And it's like, if I'm going to go out there and do something, I want to get paid. There's no reason that I should be raising like a thousand different welfare recipients off the work that I do. It's just stupid.

[00:59:11] RJ Burr
It was from her that I learned self interest. No, it's not selfish. It's self interest. You're going to make a decision that is beneficial to yourself. And that's okay. I have no problem with that. It's actually a way to read people. If everybody made decisions on what was best for them. It'd be an easy world to read, but some people don't do that. But those would be the two. Think and Grow Rich was just that, the mastermind group. And then, like I said, knowing what you know is more important to know what you don't know. 

[00:59:34] Anthony Esparza
Awesome. Question number two. What brings you happiness? 

[00:59:37] RJ Burr
You know, there's a lot. There are two people in my life, two living people that have shaped my life more than anybody. And that was my dad and Rush Limbaugh. And I was a Rush baby. Since he passed, there's been a hole in the middle of my day. I mean, from 11 to two, I'd listened to him for 30 years. And I mean, that's kind of rounding, but I listened to him for a long time. And one of the things I learned from him is that it's easy to be negative. It's easy. You can wake up every day and find something to bitch about. You can find something that takes you off. It's hard to be positive. It's hard to find something every day to be positive about. And so I try to make as many things, bring me happiness as I can. Now, ultimately what brings me happiness winning for my partners that brings me as much joy as anything and watching my kids and my wife's smile, watching them enjoy things, right? Cause. I don't know. I'm kind of a solitary guy, but it brings me joy to see them enjoying something. And so that's kind of where I sit. Good answer.

[01:00:29] Anthony Esparza
Brings us to question number three. What is your favorite way to give back? 

[01:00:35] RJ Burr
More lessons, more helping people understand things. You have a lot of kids. I think every high school should have a class called life. Look, here's what you need to expect. Here's what credit cards are. Here's what interest rates are. Here's your checkbook. Here's how you pay your bills. To get your electric turned on, you need to go here. And so there are a lot, and we don't really prepare kids. Well, as my kids. And there are friends come by, you try to help these kids out. Like for Christmas this year, I gave a bunch of the kids down there. Think and Grow Rich and Rich Dad Poor Dad. And my whole point in talking to them is, and these are all football players is guys understand in a couple of years, what you're doing on that field and what you do in the gym and how you look physically and the girls you can pick up. All of that is irrelevant. They said, I hope you hear that. Do you want to know what muscles the most important muscle for this point moving forward in your life? Right there. You better make that muscle as strong as you can because that's the only one that counts. Not how big your bicep is, not how fast you can run the 40, not the kind of girls you can pick up. That right there, this is how you strengthen those muscles is by reading books and feeding. We are all computers. We run how we're programmed to run. And if you program yourself with good stuff, you'll perform in a proper manner. You program your stuff with bad stuff. Guess what? You're going to perform just how you programmed yourself to perform. That's how I try to help. It's just life experience and helping you see what's coming. 

[01:01:57] Anthony Esparza
Yeah. That was a good one. Last and final question. What does your future retirement look like? And do you have a future retirement?

[01:02:04] RJ Burr
No, I don't see it. I just really don't. I love doing what I do. And when you love doing what you do, it's really not work. Now, might I slow down? Yeah. I mean, as I get older, I can see myself slowing down. I mean, sometimes it's, well, you say you love the business, but coming in at 7. 30 in the morning, being on the phone until 7 o'clock at night, those are long days. And as much as I love it, eventually one day I'll slow down and I won't be on the phone here as much as I am now. But right now, no, I mean, my dad, he quote unquote retired a year and a half ago and I see him just as much now as I did before he retired. His office is still here. He still comes in several times a week. I mean, we have a question. He's typically the first person I'll call. Hey, what do you think of this? So I just don't ever see it retiring. I don't see any reason to. 

[01:02:46] Anthony Esparza
Awesome. All right. That wraps up the final four. Jay, I loved your answers and I'll kick it back to Roger. 

[01:02:53] Roger Jacobsen
Where can people find you as far as social and websites?

[01:02:55] RJ Burr
Easiest place to find our company is Panex. us slash learn. That page was designed specifically for individuals who've never invested in oil, never looked at oil. Have oil 101 just kind of give you the foundation of oil knowledge. Oil 102 shows you the tax benefits and how they work. We have a little video in there, a morning without oil, just kind of show you what your life is without oil. But that page is really set up to show you who we are and Make sure that we're the kind of people you want to talk to. And then we'll show you what, what we can do financially. But that's probably panex dot U S slash learn my email address. Shoot me an email or RJ Burr at panex dot U S I love for people to reach out to me, but all we're on panics is on Facebook. Panex we're on LinkedIn, Twitter. We're all over. It's either RJ Burr panex is where we're at. 

[01:03:39] Roger Jacobsen
That's awesome. Thanks so much for joining us today on the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast. We really appreciate it all your stories and information, and we'll see everybody else on the next show. Have a good one.

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