Mm-hmm

... and then actually start the process to loading.

Um, obviously, in that process, they might be able to identify and label and, and diagnose specifically what's going on.

But even with that, like, you go into testing and imaging and all of those sort of things, like, um, is, is the specific diagnosis that important? Um, is it, is it going to make or break the, uh, the rehab process, the decision-making, the, the application, the loading side of things? Like, I think a lot of that is a bit more blurry than people want to sort of give it credit to.

So I kind of operate in that world where I'm trying not to diagnose anything, um, because I don't want to.

It's not my job.

But also I don't think it's that helpful in the long run for people.

Yeah

So why did Trump strike this deal with Caracas?

I think really behind the scenes, President Trump talked about lowering energy prices for Americans.

He talked about how this was, you know, gaining access to Venezuelan oil reserves.

But really what this deal is about is that the Trump administration is really disappointed that few oil groups have agreed to come in and commit the capital that's needed to really develop Venezuelan assets, which are very dilapidated.

And since this deal was announced on Friday, there's been an ominous silence from the major US companies that invested in Venezuela previously.

They have not commented on whether they're now interested in going back into Venezuela.

What other challenges exist?

I think really, you know, there's political risks inherent in this type of an arrangement, saying that the US is gonna control 65 billion barrels of proven Venezuelan reserves is likely to raise heckles in Venezuela.

What was the key to success batting on that pitch in the way that you did?

Uh, riding your luck a little bit at times definitely.

Um, I think it's not the sort of surface where you sort of feel you're always in and you can go and, and play shots and sort of bowl one.

You have to sort of ride, ride it out a little bit at times.

And you know you're gonna play a miss and they're gonna bowl some good balls.

But when you sort of get that opportunity to score, you sort of have to s- make it count, and I guess take a little bit of a risk at times to, to either drive a ball that might not be there or try and find some whip somewhere to score off.

Um, as I said, credit to Pakistan, they bowled really nicely and kept it quite tight throughout the day.

Have you felt over the recent innings that, you know, you want to be getting some more big scores under your belt?

Right.

Um, you know, I, I will say the, you know, the getting the coach and whatnot, again, I'm on the girls side.

Um, so, at least here, you know, we're, we're pretty experienced [laughs] right now.

I, I, I let my coaches do a lot.

Um, and to be honest, it's helped me out a lot from a emotional, mental standpoint.

And I have good coaches.

Like, one of our assistants, he was actually...

Mm-hmm.

can

damage it as a secondary consequence.

So it's not just oxygen.

There's also the microbial thing.

So, you know, and I think that's what we... we learned with when we were doing the glass bottles argon doesn't save the world it's a it's a good preservative and it helps but the wine is already damaged or i say damaged if the wine's already had that contact with the air or the yeast or the bacteria that argon it's not penicillin it just creates a blanket so we have obviously we've put everything into a clean room So that brings, you know, by a magnitude down any level of atmospheric yeast or bacteria or any contaminants.

But we then have a secondary process if you're looking for long shelf life, which is a pressure process on these pouches, which will basically inactivate anything that could have possibly got in there.

And because it's a pressure process, You can't do it on a glass bottle, on a can, on a PET bottle, because it will pop.

exactly

still for a moment

myself.

The idea of two different people receiving the same quote-unquote program, the same method, the same protocol, whatever you want to call it.

The same protocol, two different people, two different outcomes.

Because I think this is a misconception or at least a misunderstanding within, I don't think you have this, but definitely younger coaches, even younger allied health professionals, because I do mentor a lot of allied health professionals.

is that the specific protocol, the specific technique, the specific exercise, the specific volume and intensity is actually not what changes people.

All of that would be viewed as like a technical term would be external load.

Right.

I

am, yeah.

And we have a huge crop going on this year.

A lot of the things that Vincent talked about really resonated with me, but it has been a relatively good crop and very quick.

And so...

I think we will harvest probably between the hives on the farm and my hives something like 500 or 600 pounds.

And they'll do that all in one day, and we have volunteers come in.

I

And what sort of scale are you at now? Where would you say the business is at?

So we're at the stage that we've...

I say perfected our craft.

We've done over 2 million of these single serve samples now.

And there was, I think during lockdown, every man and their dog wanted to do sampling.

And we saw wine in all kinds of vessels, whether it was a plastic pouch bought off Amazon, a hotel room shampoo bottle, a glass bottle with a screw cap on.

any you know kids food pouches and i think there was a lot of people who did that and went all in saying we're doing this and there's not very many people left doing the sampling so i think really where we are at scale is we've built a product and we've got to the stage that we are happy that it works um and as a sommelier If the samples didn't taste the same coming out of the pouch as a real bottle, there's no point doing it.

Tell us about your background then before starting this up in lockdown.

... let's come out with a parasite test?

Yeah.

So in my opinion, uh, and actually when I say my opinion, also I have two PhDs that I'm co-founders with, so it's mostly their op- their opinions here, let's be honest here.

But, um, when you're looking at a best in class gut health experience, there's really three things that you need to be looking at.

Um, the biomarkers that we look at, so those are what we call, like, our functional biomarkers, right? So how the gut is functioning, if there's things like inflammation, immunity issues, leaky gut.

That's, that's a big bucket of things to look at.

The other thing is microbiome.

Honey Gucci is Jamie's baby, baby girl.

What are you expecting to hear in Houston?

So we're gonna see the ADNOC boss, Sultan Al Jaber.

We've got the Saudi Aramco boss, Amin Nasser, and I think they'll really want to persuade the US officials that are present at this conference to try and deescalate this crisis, prevent more attacks on their oil and gas infrastructure.

I think we'll see the US officials, Chris Wright, the US Energy Secretary, Doug Burgum, the Interior Secretary, they'll come to CERAWeek, and they'll probably be urging US producers to drill more to boost supply in a market which is really constrained at the minute.

Their goal is to drive down oil prices and the price of petrol in the US before the midterm elections in November.

And then finally, maybe the US oil and LNG companies, which don't have operations in the Middle East, well, they'll be presenting themselves to customers here as the safe, reliable partners, and I'd expect a lot of Japanese and Asian buyers to flock to this conference to see what type of spare capacity is available in the United States and snap that up.

But actually, the conflict you've written has given China a bit of an advantage.

So it's fascinating because Trump's big thing was energy dominance, and then we've got this huge crisis in the Middle East, which to a certain extent has shown that the US can be insulated a bit from a fossil fuel crisis because it is the largest producer of oil and gas in the world, but it is still affected quite significantly by this crisis.

Now, the DFC is the international investment arm of the US government.

That's right.

We've got several hundred tankers waiting to try and get through the Strait of Hormuz.

If you add up the potential liability for all these tankers, you know, you could get a huge figure, somewhere in the region of three hundred and fifty billion dollars.

That's because you've got to cover, you know, the potential loss of the tanker, but also extremely expensive oil spills, third party liability, loss of life.

It's a hugely expensive situation.

And actually, the maximum contingent liability under law for the Development Finance Corporation is only two hundred and five billion dollars.

But Jamie, if passage through the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively cut off, what does that mean for crucial energy supplies that are destined for some of the world's biggest manufacturing economies?

So, tell us about these private investors who are chomping at the bit to get into Venezuelan oil.

Yes, it didn't take very long at all.

One of the most prominent is a former Chevron executive, Ali Moshir, who had previously worked in Venezuela, and his fund has actually been seeking to raise two billion dollars to try and invest in different assets there.

He told me that he thinks he can possibly buy and acquire between 20,000 to 50,000 barrels of oil per day production from the state oil company.

Harold Hamm, the US shale tycoon, a close associate of Donald Trump, he told me that he is considering looking at Venezuela.

He sees it as a potential opportunity.

So there are two potentials, and there are lots of other players that are, maybe have had previous experience in Venezuela or are just eyeing up this opportunity, so I'd expect to see a lot more people come out of the woodwork over the following days and weeks.

Just out of curiosity, Jamie, why aren't we seeing that type of enthusiasm from oil majors?

So, how has this surge in natural gas prices affecting everyday Americans?

Yeah, what we've really seen in the last couple of weeks is this huge increase in the wholesale gas prices across the USA.

They're up over 50% on this time last year, and they breached the $5 mark, which is for the first time since 2022.

So, we're getting this big increase in the wholesale rate and that is putting pressure on retail rates, particularly for electric power utilities, which generate electricity by burning natural gas.

And then they will pass on some of that onto residential customers.

They will be protected to some extent because they get their gas from regulated utilities generally, and so the increases there will be a lot less in terms of the gas price.

But even there, when we look at the statistics in the 12 months to the end of September, there was an 11.7% increase in piped gas into people's homes.

And why is this happening? Does it have anything to do with the fact that I'm wearing a jacket over my sweater right now?

So, why did Trump decide now is the time to take such a substantial step, especially given that his predecessor, Joe Biden, decided to avoid it altogether?

Yeah, I think that's a very interesting point.

What we see now is a completely different oil market than we had during President Biden's term.

So, right now, we've got an oversupplied global oil market.

The price of crude has really tumbled, and this has given Trump the ability to intervene in this way and impose sanctions without, you know, the fear that it's gonna be politically damaging by pushing up domestic petrol prices here in the US.

Because when you- you do impose sanctions like this, it shocks the market, and as you've seen, the oil price has spiked up 6% since the sanctions were announced.

How big of a deal would that be?

It would be really significant.

Just out of curiosity, Jamie, why did OPEC suddenly do a 180 on all this?

Well, Saudi Arabia is really driving this policy.

So, Saudi Arabia has borne most of the output cuts over the last couple of years, and it really wants to reclaim market share from the US and other non-OPEC producers, but also from OPEC producers within the cartel itself.

And there's a second reason, and that's geopolitics.

You know, Trump was pushing very hard in and around the April timeframe for lower energy prices, and some analysts think that Saudi Arabia responded to that by pushing ahead with these production increases.

So, by putting this extra supply in the market, that kept prices at a reasonable level.

He's been saying since the campaign trail that he wants US oil to "drill, baby, drill." Now, what does this mean for US oil long-term?

Yes.

What would a revival in the nuclear sector do to the larger main energy sector?

Well, at the minute in the US, nuclear provides about 18 to 20% of the electricity into the energy mix.

What we're seeing is that the electricity demand in the US is really surging at the minute, in particular because of the rollout of internet data centers to power this artificial intelligence boom.

So SMRs are seen as a key way to plug that gap.

You know, one of the big drivers for the increased funding into SMRs is that last October, Google signed a power supply deal with Kairos Power, and Amazon signed a big power supply deal with X-energy.

These two deals really demonstrated, I think, that the big tech companies really see nuclear as a viable way to supply them with power to fuel this artificial intelligence boom.

Jamie, this sounds all well and good, but I have to assume that there might be some risks to this kind of investment.

Exactly.

What are executives saying?

Well, I think executives are generally happy that Donald Trump and a Republican administration is now in place, but they are not suggesting that they're going to do their bidding in terms of the drill baby drill slogan that Trump has been espousing.

There's really several reasons why they don't think they're gonna be able to produce a lot more in the short term.

I mean, one reason is the US is actually already producing at record levels, and for the last six years has been the biggest producer of crude oil in the world.

But we're getting to a period where it's difficult and expensive for these producers to push ahead and boost production.

So big producers like Chevron and Conoco, they've said they will cut spending this year, and in the Permian, the heartland of US oil production, more than half of producers have signaled they will cut spending in 2025.

All right, so cheaper oil might be, you know, good news for green energy advocates right now, but do you think we'll see renewed investment in shale eventually?

I think one thing about these repeal of environmental laws, Trump is saying he's gonna make a big push on permitting.