Jeff Krimmel on Oil and Gas Industry Leaders | Ep 194

Speaker A: Many times you are going to have to take action with no guarantee of a positive outcome. If you are capable of doing that and uh, you do it frequently enough, I then am very confident that great outcomes will materialize. But it's really, really tough for some folks to get over that hurdle.

Speaker B: The oil and gas industry, the driving engine of the world economy. Delinquency, delivering prosperity, innovation and abundance across the globe. Here are the stories of its key players directly from the leaders themselves. This is Oil and Gas Industry Leaders podcast where real experiences are passed on from the leaders of today to the leaders of tomorrow. Here is your host, Paige Wilson.

Speaker C: Welcome back to another episode of Oil and Gas Industry Leaders Podcast sponsored by ifs. Every era of oil and gas has its turning point and right now that shift is industrial AI. IFS focuses on applying AI to complex asset heavy operations, helping operators reduce downtime, improve productivity and make more informed decisions across their portfolios. Discover what's next@ifs.com. all right, well, I'm sitting here today with Jeff Kremel, founder of Kremlin Strategy Group. How are you Jeff?

Speaker A: I'm doing great, thanks to be here.

Speaker C: Paige, thank you so much for being on. So let's just jump into it and discuss how you began in the oil and gas industry.

Speaker A: Yes, I started in the oil and gas industry back in 2010. So my educational background, I have a bachelor's, a master's, a Ph.D. all in mechanical engineering. And I defended my Ph.D. thesis in March of 2010 and then joined Baker Hughes in June of 2010 in a research and development role. And I was in that role for about a year, uh, until there was a new leadership development program that was set up internally. And so me and five other early career PhD scientists, engineers, participated in that leadership development program. And uh, we did another year of technical work and then the second year of the program they kicked us off into the business so that we could better learn the uh, product and service offering and the customer base and how Baker Hughes made money. And uh, so I did some data driven pricing and profitability work and, and then that carried me into some strategic market intelligence work. And then I left Baker Hughes to go to key energy services in the, well, servicing space and did mostly a pricing role over there, a little bit of profitability, uh, work, a little bit of market research with that one. And then I, uh, got laid off in the pandemic and then landed at an industrial reliability solutions company called Pinnacle that uh, predominantly works with petroleum refiners to help them gather their data and build Optimized inspection and maintenance plans. They also work with some midstream operators and miners and water wastewater treatment facilities. That was an interesting expansion of my, uh, exposure beyond just the upstream services domain. And I became the chief strategy officer there and resigned that role in January of 2024 so I could launch Criminal Strategy Group. And that's what I've been doing since then.

Speaker C: All right, well tell me what Criminal Strategy Group does.

Speaker A: Yes, I work with both. There's primarily two offerings. One is a consulting offering where I'm working with executive teams from oil and G companies upstream, midstream, downstream oil field services. Uh, I work with chemicals, uh, manufacturers, I work with some miners and utilities. And what I do is help them use market data to strengthen their planning processes. So whether it's business planning or if it's M and A due diligence or there's new market entry studies, anything that requires a more robust, more thorough read on the market that can help strengthen those efforts, I'll help those teams with that. I also have a learning and development offering and this is where I work with mid career professionals and rising executives in uh, energy broadly, oil and gas specifically. And I help them build executive level fluency in things like reading markets and understanding finance and commercial acumen and strategic acumen. And having those two lines of business together has been really nice because the consulting projects help keep me sharp because I'm immersed in uh, the challenges of the day that these executive teams are facing. And then the learning and development offering is nice because I get a sense of what these aspiring leaders want to, where they feel like their opportunities are and what they want to learn, how they want to grow and develop. And uh, so there's a neat synergy uh, between the two that I hadn't really anticipated that has worked out nicely.

Speaker C: Well, it sounds like in a 16 year period you kind of, you kind of got thrown all over the place.

Speaker A: That's right. It's. My background is bizarre. Like everyone's background is. We all have these, these weird paths that we've followed and I don't think any of us really had designed all these paths the way they worked out. Mine started with this, um, engineering pedigree that carried me in through research and development. But then I quickly found myself, uh, in roles that put me at the intersection of sales, operations and finance. And I continued to live in those roles for like you said, the better part of 16 years. And that was really helpful for me because I took this engineering approach where I, uh, use a lot of first principles Thinking I ground a lot of what I do in data. I form hypotheses and test those, uh, so that we can develop confidence in, uh, the recommended path going forward. And then I can use that approach and then make progress inside of sales or finance or operations or the other functional areas, hr, uh, and IT and, and beyond. And so I learned early on the importance of developing some element of literacy and fluency that allowed me to communicate more broadly across the organization. And that's something I carry with me today, that our industry, we have an abundance of people that are incredibly smart, curious, hardworking, that have meaningful, uh, domains of expertise. And then the next frontier is how can you carry that expertise into other parts of your own organization or more effectively inside of a customer organization or with a partner? And that requires something that's new for a lot of people beyond just continuing to hone this expertise that we've all developed in our domain of choice. But to reach out across these various interfaces, that's a really fun area for me to play in.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And I want to say, being that you're an engineer, how did you figure out how to communicate all of that knowledge to someone maybe that isn't an engineer?

Speaker A: That is one of the many reasons I feel so fortunate to have participated in the leadership development program at Baker Hughes, because they grabbed us early career PhD scientists and engineers. The first year of the project, uh, was still largely technical, but the technical project that we were working on was focused at reducing the lifting costs associated with SAGD in Canada, the heavy oil production. And uh, so with the project being that we needed to reduce those lifting costs, step one was to understand what the lifting costs even were at the time, and then to set some sort of target around what a, what a sufficient reduction in those costs would look like. We were all technical folks, and so we didn't have any meaningful background in the world of corporate finance. And this was always the area that I was interested in when I was at Caltech doing my PhD, me and a friend of mine, we started the Caltech Quantitative Finance Club. So I was all into options valuation and quantitative finance. And so this idea here, with this project of diving into the corporate finance side of oil and gas seemed to speak to what I had done a little bit as a grad student. So I leaned into it and what I realized was, for, uh, I feel like I'm a smart person, I can learn quickly. And yet picking up that corporate finance was harder than I imagined. The words seemed more opaque. When I thought I was asking uh, properly formed questions to experts, I would get blank stares in return, which made me think that the questions I'm asking are not nearly as properly posed as I had imagined them to be. And so, uh, just through trial and error, learned how to bridge this gap and take this acumen that I had and be able to share it with others, be able to then in return capture the acumen that other folks have to offer. But there is this real fluency barrier, this vocabulary barrier, and it's not that anyone's not smart enough to cross that chasm. It's just when, when you become so deeply steeped in your own domain of expertise, it's really tough to appreciate what it's like when you live outside of that domain. And so I've made it a career for myself of trying to build bridges across these various functions. And so far it's worked out nicely.

Speaker C: And crossing those barriers. Is that what compelled you to start your own company?

Speaker A: Yes, it, that's a great question. And it was a, uh, confluence of factors that if I were to still it down, it would be that when I was working in house and, and I had my one client would be the employer that I was working with at the time. And I always felt like a square peg and a round hole type circumstance where there were elements of the job that I could do really well. And it was natural. Uh, I had natural ways that I can contribute. But there were plenty of other areas of the day to day business where it wasn't clear how I should plug in. And if I tried to plug myself in, I'd meet some considerable resistance internally. And I learned over enough time of doing that that the best path forward for me would be to package this expertise that I've developed and make it available to the whole market rather than working for a single employer and beating my head against the wall trying to find ways to be valuable and productive in house. And so far through my journey at ksg, that's been validated. This, this acumen and expertise and value that I can create, I believe is much more relevant when I can pick and choose my spots across the whole industry rather than forcing it in house.

Speaker C: Yeah, that makes complete sense.

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Speaker C: So let's just jump into the leadership portion. Jeff, what is leadership to you?

Speaker A: Leadership to me is largely modeled. When I think of an effective leader. I think of someone with wisdom, with perspective, with clarity. I think of someone with empathy. I think of a really good listener. Uh, it's. I've been around people that have an enormous amount of charisma and an enormous amount of expertise, but aren't able to capably listen and understand the concerns or the ideas of people around them. And that seems to be a foundational flaw when it comes to trying to be an effective leader. So those elements of. There's the kind of stereotypical bits with the wisdom and all that, but there's also these human, uh, to human elements of the empathy and the listening that it's just really tough to find people that have all of these skills. I also firmly believe though, that any of us can learn to become good leaders. While some people are born with gifts that are more naturally applicable to being a good leader, all of this stuff is learnable. And so it's an element that I've dedicated myself to. This idea of being a continuous Learner, getting the PhD, that was a big motivation to get the PhD was to honor this element of myself, of always wanting to learn and to see if I could achieve at the highest levels in this academic universe. And it's something I continue to aspire to today, that this continuous learning element, I do steer, uh, some portion of that effort toward becoming a better leader generally. But having these skills that I associate with good leaders to continue to develop those over time.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Because the moment you stop learning, the moment everything gets away from you, it's exactly right.

Speaker A: It's, it's.

Speaker C: You get left behind.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's. There's a continuous learning bit and there's also a, A continuous action bit. It's, it's. As my career has gone on, I've played the role of mentor more and more often. And, uh, that comes with age. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: These folks find me. And so I feel I've been kind of put on the spot to participate in that way, which is a lot of fun. And um, it's one of the things I lean to is that, uh, we can also get too much into our heads and too consumed with the idea of learning for the sake of learning as opposed to learning so that we can create, uh, and contribute more value back. So I think there's an element of leadership that goes into balancing. We want to accumulate more wisdom, we want to become better listeners and developers.

Speaker C: Yeah, but you don't want to do it with tunnel vision, right?

Speaker A: That's right. That's right.

Speaker C: Yeah, I get it. So what is an example that you've had as a leader that was difficult for you?

Speaker A: Oh, that's a really good question. I have been fortunate to have been surrounded by. I hesitate to call out any one person only because when I think of individual human beings, I think of people that I associate specific traits with them that are traits of effective leaders. And there's executives that I've worked around like, I think the charisma and the conviction and the confidence piece matters. I think it can absolutely be overplayed. People can over index on that and it's not healthy. But I've been around leaders that have an appropriate amount of courage and conviction and the charisma to marshal an organization around that. I've also been around, uh, different leaders that have modeled this idea of continuous learning, that all of us have mental models of markets, of our own organizations, of our relationships with customers. And these mental models are never fully refined. We need to continue to iterate on those and improve on those over time. And I've been around leaders that modeled that, that we always. There's going to be some gap. There's some element of ignorance that we're trying to overcome. And it doesn't matter how old we are and how much experience we've accrued and how many books we've read or how many projects we've executed that, that there's a continued refinement. So I can think of individuals that have strengths in that area. I can also think of individual leaders that I've been around that are incredible listeners. Like when you sit across the table from someone and you know that you're not within the organizational hierarchy, you're not of the same stature, you've not accumulated the experience they have, and yet you still feel hurt. Uh, and these people are fully present, which is harder to do in this, in this digital world with all the devices, everything else. And that was maybe of all the leadership superpowers, the one that I gravitated to the most. Martin Craighead was the former CEO at Baker Hughes. And I was fortunate enough to spend some time, one on one with him over the years. And the thing that, that is, that was most remarkable to me where again I'm being clear, I didn't report to Martin. Sorry. So I didn't have that experience of what he was like with that kind of relationship. I can't speak to any of that. What I can speak to is someone that was trying to build a career inside of oil and gas and was able to develop some measure of affinity with him when, when we had those one on one engagements. The extent to which he made me feel hurt and the way that he would respond and react to what I was saying, that gave me confidence that he was, it wasn't like he was sitting around waiting for his turn to participate and then jump right in. He was, he was dancing with and engaging with whatever I happened to be sharing at the time and still offering really helpful uh, feedback in return. That was maybe on an emotional level the strongest reaction I've had to being near uh, a leader of that quality.

Speaker C: That's awesome. I did not have the exact same experience you had, but I'm probably a little older. Um, but okay, so let's look at the other side of that and what has been so rewarding for you as a leader?

Speaker A: Yes, the reward. And I know this is cliche, so I'll try to take it into a little more depth or a little more context to take it out cliche land. The, the um, cliched answer is the reward is the interaction with other human beings. And that is true. But to offer a little more to uh, try to strip that out of the cliche land. Part of the reason that matters for me is I am an introvert by nature. It is very easy for me to put my head down and to read and to listen and to study and to write and to introspect. And uh, so it takes a little bit of effort. Uh, there's an activation energy that's required for me to go uh, engage with the outside world. And the part of leadership that has been most rewarding is that when I do overcome that activation energy and I'm interacting with someone who is building their own career and again, they are smart, they're curious, they're hardworking, they're thoughtful, they themselves are introspective. They have a good sense. Self awareness matters a lot to me. It's something that I work very hard on myself and it's something I'm very sensitive to in others to. When people are self aware I gravitate to them very strongly and being able to offer perspective Advice, feedback, or just simply ask questions of someone who is trying to build that career for themselves and is clearly deeply invested in it and is going through the hard work, being able to play some small role in their journey, particularly as someone that I've thought so much about my own development, to be able to feel a little less selfish like I'm offering, I'm making some contribution to someone else's development that was rewarding in a way that I probably didn't anticipate.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's kind of surprising, isn't?

Speaker A: Uh, is. And it's. Yeah. And it's also being selfish about it. It's good for me too, because when I see someone else interact with me and I hear what they're going through and what questions they're asking themselves and what experiments they've performed, and then at the end of the talk, uh, each time, whether I'm in a formal coaching session or we're doing an informal mentoring type session, I try to close every conversation with, what part of this engagement was most valuable to you?

Speaker C: Oh, that's a great question.

Speaker A: Yeah, I do it for a whole bunch of different reasons. It's a technique that I learned a while back and I lean hard into it because there's not a single time that I've ever asked that question and regretted the portion of the conversation that followed on from that question. But I ask it for a million different reasons. One is it helps that person in the moment live, reflect on what we just did together. And uh, so, so whatever it is they did find valuable for them to acknowledge it and be explicit about it in that moment helps them carry that with them going forward. Otherwise, it can be easier to get lost in the haze of having just, you know, covered a lot of ground in a one hour conversation if we were chatting for, for that long. But also I get to hear that feedback in return. And I've always been surprised in a pleasant way. And it's a, it's a good learning experience for me. This is a selfish bit where I will ask that question. And I guess there's a part of my ego that's rooting for, oh, there was some insight that I offered or there was some reaction that I had, and it made a huge difference that the number of times that I hear the most valuable part of whatever conversation we just had was, hey, it's when you asked me this or when I told you this story and you, uh, kind of reframed it in this way that that stuff encourages me to. While I intellectually understand the value of listening and having someone else be heard and not lecturing, not going into consulting mode, not going into problem solving mode. Just let them speak, let them share, uh, their ideas and then just ask them a question that helps them reflect on what they just shared with you. The number of times people tell me that was the most impactful part of the conversation is good for me to hear because it encourages me to be an even better listener, to be even more present. Uh, and that's useful for me.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And I think what gets you is probably the fact that they thought you were thoughtful to begin with. Right. Because I don't think we see a lot of that here. And again, you know. So do you have a book that has influenced you?

Speaker A: The author that immediately comes to mind when you ask that is Nassim Taleb. He wrote the Black Swan and Antifragile are the two. I've read three or four of his books. Those are the two that immediately come to my mind. And they aren't business books proper. They aren't necessarily self help books.

Speaker C: Isn't the Black Swan a movie as well?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's, um, it is an interesting. He has a very interesting way of, of thinking about how events unfold in the world and how predictable these events are or aren't, and how we should position ourselves to make decisions in a world of enormous uncertainty, where events that seemingly are highly unlikely and that are very high magnitude happen with meaningful frequency. And that means that we need to incorporate that in our decision making. It's really easy to anchor on sort of the standard, the base case, the what we should normally expect to happen. But it's these, uh, outlying elements that can end up remaking markets as we know it, businesses lives as we know it. And so his argument is that we should think much more deeply about these very infrequent but very extreme events that can have an outsized impact on all of us. Those books help reform and challenge my thinking unlike any other books that I've read.

Speaker C: Yeah, And I saw the movie and that was pretty wild in itself. I was like, hang on, we're going to have to watch this again. So what would you say your, uh, most used business tool is, Jeff?

Speaker A: You know, today I hate to also give a cliched answer. I think I'm actually going to go with Claude on this one.

Speaker C: Oh, that's what we use too.

Speaker A: Yeah, most used not necessarily in the sense of the most keystrokes are deployed in that direction, but most used in the sense that I use it. To help challenge my thinking. I, uh, use it to help generate new ideas. I use it to help organize my existing thoughts, to find hidden trends or patterns or subtleties, nuance in some of my thinking that maybe I'm not actively recognizing. And I'm still at a phase with this where I probably lean more in the direction of running more things by it. I actually don't use, I use it very, very little for actual writing. When I've tried to get it to help with writing, it just, it doesn't have my voice. It doesn't have anything close to my voice, right. And I tried coaching it a handful of times and it just did not get anywhere near my voice. And so over time, I've actually probably used it less and less as any kind of aid around writing, but an aid around I'm approaching a new domain or hey, I have this theory of the case that I want to proceed with, but I don't know exactly how much confidence I should have around this. And so I can have it red team it for me and give me a sense of, you know, if I was trying to build a counter argument to my own hypothesis here, what would that counter argument look like? And then just simple, more bookkeeping. Like, am I, am I not thinking about anything here? As I put this together, I can create a, some sales or marketing collateral and then run it through there and be like, hey, is there any of this verbiage that's not clear or that seemingly conflicts with, with messaging that I'm sharing elsewhere? And uh, to have it participate in that way in real time, it's been really valuable, very helpful.

Speaker C: Now, I don't know if this is necessarily applicable, but, uh, who would you say is your most respected competitor?

Speaker A: Great question as well it. So I'll give you a cliched answer, but again, I want to take this out of the land of the cliche pretty quickly. The cliche to answer is I really don't think through the lens of competition. And I'll explain a little more, hopefully take this out of cliche land to make it a little more.

Speaker C: It's actually not very cliche at all.

Speaker A: Okay. It's the reason that I say that and I have a lot of confidence, but this is something I do challenge myself on because it is easy for me to let myself off the hook by saying, oh, I don't really have competitors so I don't have to think about it. Well, in a sense, everyone's, we're all special snowflakes, so we don't have to Compete, so who cares, right? So no, no, I need to challenge myself there. But this is why I still have confidence in that conviction, even though I understand it's a very convenient conviction for me to hold. The reason I have confidence in it is that, uh, the way that I compete, such as I do compete, I'm really competing against either people using me and my services or just doing them, doing the same thing themselves or not doing it at all. It has been incredibly rare that I've had conversations with clients and they're like, hey, we're thinking about using you or using services A, B or C, or hey, this is something that we're farming out to a bunch of people and I'd love to. It's kind of like an rfp. I just love to get your read on what you might charge to do something like this. And I'll collect notes from everybody and then compare. Almost all the work that I do at KSG is with people that I have developed some meaningful relationship with. Not that we're best friends or family friends or anything like that, but, but we do have some meaningful connection. There's a no like and trust factor that goes in both directions. Uh, and I'm helping them. It's not like they come to me necessarily with a fully formed idea of how they want me to help, but they come with some sense of, hey, I think you can help generally in this way and I can help them better define, hey, this is an area that I think I can contribute and this is what I think it could look like. And then we'll iterate back and forth and come up with some agreement and then I'll do work with them. And likewise, when I think of the learning development stuff, I have an online cohort based program that I run called Oil and Gas Market Mastery. And the people that enroll in that program, I've yet to come across anyone that's like, hey, I was shopping programs and yours just seemed like the most compelling or the right one. It was more, hey, I've been following you on LinkedIn for a handful of years. Uh, I'm really taking my professional development seriously. I know that building market acumen is something that will make a, uh, meaningful improvement for me that will allow me to contribute in the ways that I would like to contribute more. And I see that you're doing this course and I want to be a part of it. And so this framing around competition really doesn't exist in the ways I just described. So I lean in hard on rather than using a, uh, lens of competition. My lens is more how do I build the kinds of relationships with the folks that are working on really interesting problems with the confidence that over time I'll be able to find ways to contribute, uh, and to help them out and that will be enough to get the business to move.

Speaker C: It's almost like you're in competition with yourself.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's an effective way to say it because there are real questions around business model with ksg, like how I want to think through a particular engagement and what that looks like and whether it's a, a discrete project based engagement or whether there's some ongoing element. What I tell all my clients, what I've done when I was the chief strategy officer and uh, had these internal roles is I want to make people self sufficient as quickly as they can. Right. It's not that I am a crutch for them, like hey, I don't know this thing, Jeff knows this thing. And so I'm just going to, on an ongoing basis, outsource this thing over to Jeff. And that could be fine as an interim solution. In a lot of cases, if anything like this is important enough to be done at all, it's important enough for people to build the acumen to either do it themselves or to have teams of people internally or if they are going to use me, to use me in a way where I'm uh, supportive of the, of a function that they're working toward, they're building momentum around in uh, some other way. I'm not the complete outsourced offering. And so in that sense I think I am competing against myself because I'm trying to, as quickly and effectively as I can, help people build the acumen, the insight, the awareness, the clarity that they need to proceed with confidence. And so that does get into. I'm not necessarily competing with other providers, but there's more of an internal competing against myself element to that.

Speaker C: Awesome. Yeah, that's great. So what would you say is probably your most important lesson learned throughout all of this?

Speaker A: I hesitate because there was an answer that comes to mind so quickly. But I guess uh, that's probably a sign that I should run with it. The answer that immediately comes to mind is possible. If I reflected on this deeply, I'd come up with something else. But the answer that immediately comes to mind is the importance of action. There are so many folks, me earlier in my career included, that feel like what I need is clarity. I need certainty. I need if you can just tell me that if I take steps A, B or C, I'm guaranteed outcomes X, Y or Z. And I know those outcomes are attractive to me. So now that I've been guaranteed that I will achieve those outcomes, then sure, I'll put in the effort to do A, B or C. The vast majority of people, if they received that proposition, it would be a no brainer. They would of course do A, B and C so that they could guarantee outcomes X, Y or Z. The challenge with life generally, business specifically, but life generally is effectively no outcome is ever guaranteed. There's always uncertainty. There is always a chance that we're going to deploy some number of resources, whether they're financial or our time or our emotional energy or whatever, that we're going to deploy some measure of resources toward trying to achieve an outcome and we will not achieve that outcome. And the older I get, the more wisdom that I accumulate, the more perspective I gain. Uh, I think that's a fundamental segmentation that exists in people. There are some people that are willing to take actions A, B or C knowing there is no positive outcome that's guaranteed on the other side. And then there's another segment of people that either insist on having that guarantee before they act in the first place or never get as far as identifying these are the actions even I could conceivably could take to try to achieve better outcomes on the other end. I think it's a relatively rare quality for people to uh, be goal setting in a way where they know what kind of outcomes they're trying to achieve, to then have the diligence they can define some actions to be sufficiently strategic and tactical, uh, in a combined way where it's like, okay, here's an action plan that could plausibly drive me toward these outcomes and to layer on an appetite to understand that even if I do this work that there's no guarantee I get these outcomes. And how do you overcome that? Do you overcome that? Uh, in a bunch of different ways. But one important one is if you play that game enough and you are mindful enough about what the connection is between these actions and these outcomes, while there's not a guarantee, meaning there's not 100% correlation that I do these actions to get these outcomes, if there is a 60% or 70% or 80% correlation, if you play that game long enough, you will get a host of positive outcomes on the back end, but none of them are guaranteed and none of them would you necessarily be able to tie back to actions you take immediately. So my most important lesson is that many times you are going to have to take action with no guarantee of a positive outcome. If you are capable of doing that and uh, you do it frequently enough, I, I then am very confident that great outcomes will materialize. But it's really, really tough for some folks to get over that hurdle.

Speaker C: That's, that's quite a perspective. I haven't heard that one before. That was really good. So Jeff, how could your role now be important to the future of oil and gas?

Speaker A: I would say that what I do, what I'm focused on is this understanding that oil and gas as a part of the broader energy ecosystem is becoming more and more immersed in this ecosystem by the day. And conversely the rest of the energy ecosystem is becoming more and more interconnected with oil and gas by the day. Mhm. And this interconnectivity creates an enormous amount of opportunity. Uh, and it's one of the reasons I'm so excited about living in the space. I'm so enthusiastic about what the future holds, is that this increased interconnectivity means there are more interesting problems to work on, There are more challenges available, there are more gaps to close. And so if you have enough energy and enthusiasm and perspective and confidence and uh, willingness to push past the uncertainty, then it seems like there is more any of us can make a larger contribution today than we would have ever been able to make before in history. And so my contribution, the way that I think I am going to, that uh, I am continuing to strengthen oil and gas and allowing it to thrive in the future, is I am helping again mid career executives, rising executives, people that sit in C suite today. I'm helping all of these folks better understand the ways that oil and gas are interconnected into the broader energy ecosystem and the other way around so that they can make better informed decisions with more confidence that will allow their organizations to thrive going forward.

Speaker C: So what are your thoughts around telling someone about this industry that doesn't quite understand it?

Speaker A: Yes, and I'm not saying that I have the magic answer to this, but I do have one answer.

Speaker C: I'm sure you have a better answer than people that are less educated about it.

Speaker A: Well, one way that I lean hard and again, this, I can imagine this, this might be a controversial statement that I'm about to make, but it's, it is consistent with how I'm wired and I've seen good results off of it, which is I tackle the, the provocation around oil and gas head on. Right. I don't do the thing where there are folks in oil and gas that think of themselves as oil and gas evangelists that think, okay, the industry is under, uh, PR pressure here. And so I need to combat that. And what I need to do is talk about all the good things that the industry does. And it makes affordable, environmentally friendly energy available for the world. Uh, it contributes to community causes, it creates high paying jobs in a lot of places and just generally makes the world a better place. They lean hard to those stories and those are obviously not unreasonable stories to tell at all. And I completely understand why people go there. What I lean into with oil and gas is to acknowledge right out of the gate how deeply politicized oil and gas is specifically and energy is more broadly. And what I do is rather than engaging with any of the politicization or the uh, tribalism or any of that, what I tell people is, is that I feel passionate about oil and gas and I don't engage with any of the politics or any of the tribal stuff, any of the, I don't carry the industry's water, I obviously don't attack the industry. It's just there, there is this energy ecosystem is so fundamental to life as we know it. And again, the energy system is becoming more interconnected, is becoming more complex there, the demand profile that exists globally is itself becoming more complex. It's growing in more places, it's growing at different rates. Now that we have access to renewables in a way this we didn't have historically, we have all these different resources that exist all around the world. There's hotspots for oil production, for gas production, for uranium mining, for a solar resource, for a wind resource. There's hotspots where supply is incredibly economically attractive. And then you have this demand picture and the demand picture never overlaps super cleanly with supply. So part of the most interesting energy challenges we have is how do you get energy out of these places of abundant supply and connect it to these sources of, uh, intense and growing demand? And so I lean really hard into this idea that this energy question that we're all trying to answer and this energy research program, and I'm using research in quotes in a real broad sense, that there are ways to engage productively around that, that have nothing to do with rooting for or against Team Red or Team Blue, that have nothing about going onto social media and ranting about the energy technology that I like the least and who's uh, supporting it and all that you can, and not only can, but should help the world answer this really important, really challenging energy question. And you can do it without wasting any Time engaging with all the stuff that exists on the periphery that I think distracts from a lot of this and frankly turns a lot of people off. And so once folks feel like they have some, not that I'm offering them permission, but more broadly, when they feel like, okay, there's this path that's available to participate in the space and I don't have to align with a particular political party or I don't have to engage in fist to fist combat over the merit of one energy, technology, whatever. Like, I can just do great work and know that I'm doing good by the world by helping bring energy to people who need it. That seems to be the most constructive pathway where I'm not carrying the energies, I'm not doing all of that. I'm trying to cut through this more objective approach into the world of energy.

Speaker C: Perfect. Yeah, that's great. So, final question. Do you have a favorite podcast?

Speaker A: I do. There's a Conversation. It's a weird podcast. I say weird and I like weird. Yeah, Affection, charm to it. It's a podcast called Conversations with Tyler, and it's hosted by a gentleman named Tyler Cowan. He's an economist, uh, that's associated with the Mercatus, uh, center at George Mason University. And while he's an economist by training, he is a polymath. So he, he is interested in everything. He's one of the most brilliant people that I've ever heard speak publicly. Incredibly well read. And so he has all kinds of people on his podcast. It's occasionally other economists, but often it's authors or journalists or there was a classical music composer that was on, you name it. I mean, there's just the widest spectrum of smart people doing really interesting work. And you have Tyler Cowen, who is an expert in effectively none of it, but is incredibly well read and very thoughtful and is notorious for the, uh, preparation that he does for these interviews where if there's an author, he'll read three, four, five, six of their books to prepare for a, uh, single interview. He's talking about his research. He has his preparation program. Yeah. And he's way, way, way into AI. And so he'll often have people on where they're going deep into, uh, the notion of AI and what it is and what it could become and how to use it. And so it's an incredibly eclectic podcast. I listen to every single episode. And it's the one that I listen to. Of all the podcasts I listen to, it's the one, I think that challenges me to think Most differently because it's. He almost never has an energy person. He had John Arnold on one time, I believe, and that was a really fun, interesting one that.

Speaker C: Oh good.

Speaker A: I'll have to look into that first Talked energy. So, uh, I think he was on in the summer of 2025 if I remember correctly. So if someone's going back to the archives, you can look for that. But it's very rare for him to get into any energy conversation even though he's well enough first in it that he can participate. But that's when I go back to very regularly.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's great. Well, thank you so much for uh, joining me again today, Jeff. If people want to reach out to you and, or get to know more about Criminal Strategy Group, how might they go about doing so?

Speaker A: Two ways. The easiest is probably just to grab a hold of me on LinkedIn. I'm @Jeff Krimelmel K R I M M E L. My DMs are all open and I'm super active there, so I should be.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'll make sure to put uh, the link in the show notes for people to just go and click on

Speaker A: it and find probably the easiest way. The other way is my website is Krimmel sg. That's where I have the KSG stuff proper and there's a contact form and all about my courses and the research that I do and all that. So if you want to dive more deeply into KSG, the criminal sg.com is probably the best place for that.

Speaker C: Awesome. Um, all right, well that concludes this episode, so just remember it's up to you to open the next door.

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