Before I kick this off I want to say Happy Memorial Day to all the military families that are serving and have served.
I grew up an Army brat and can still remember as a kid in Fort Hood Texas hugging my father goodbye as he was being deployed to the 1st Gulf War.
It’s a scary thing to see your parent leave and not really know if they will come back.
And I can still remember the morning I woke up and he had returned. Gives me chills.
Our veterans and their families give up so much for this country but get back so little in return.
Thoughts and prayers to those that have given all, those that have served and those still serving. Much Love.
It was the fall of 2020 and like many of you, my family and I were hunkered down in our house with little to do than go mad.
The small business that we had been running was quickly going down the tubes as we were shut down.
I needed something to take my mind off of the fact that our savings were dwindling fast.
I watched on TV as oil went into negative territory and thought to myself, what if I just start updating some of the old data on these oil & gas companies I have lying around and start putting it out there in the ether?
“This feels like the bottom of the cycle and if I am wrong no one will care.”
So I sat down, updated some Exxon and Chevron files that I hadn’t touched for years, and right there began my journey to what eventually became - The Crude Chronicles.
But prior to Covid and that decision, I met the great Seth Godin. If you don’t know of Seth, I consider him the Warren Buffet of marketing (HERE).
It was during Q&A that I had the chance to ask him, “What do you think is the most important tool to use in marketing?”
I thought he would say something to the effect of Facebook, email marketing, Instagram, etc.
And without skipping a beat he replied, “The publish button! Publish consistently and your audience will find you.”
In a follow-up question, Seth would go on to explain that too many marketers out there start off with a product/service and then attempt to find an audience to sell their widgets to.
When in reality you need to find an audience first, show up consistently for that audience, figure out their wants, needs, and desires, and only later do you get the privilege to market to them.
With those two priceless pieces of advice, 85 posts, over 200 Excel sheets of company historical data, and 16 months later bring me to where we are today.
As the Crude Chronicles evolved I knew right away what I wanted this blog to be.
It has to continue to be fun. I will quit the day this starts to feel like my old job.
I am going to focus on the long-term cycles of this industry at a high level with some crazy data.
I don’t want to write the way I had to when I worked at an institution. I want this to be more like a blog as if you the reader and I are two friends a couple of beers deep talking about this stuff face to face.
But more than all of that I wanted to build a structure brick by brick.
There is an analogy I use with the wonderful people I have met over the last year and a half when the question comes up, “What are you gonna do with the Crude Chronicles?”
Reading about oil and gas whether it be through blogs, institutional research, or video content is a lot like choosing where to get a pizza.
You have a lot of choices and if you are like me you have your 2-3 go-to spots. p.s. Dominos thin crust is my #1!
This pizza shop is devoted to being a fun blog that focuses on the long-term, big-picture history of the industry as told through some of the best charts in the game.
And the way I am building that pizza shop is brick by brick with each brick being a company history and the data behind it.
The first brick I ever put some mortar on and slapped on the foundation was that of Chevron.
Next came BP or as I still like to call her, British Petroleum.
And then Exxon.
Brick by brick this pizza shop is being built with all this data.
Data that allows me to create some very cool stuff for my audience.
Stuff that I have always wanted to do - like showing returns for the industry since the days of Standard Oil.
Or comparing capex cycles vs. all the previous ones.
Or this one that is made up over ~160 “bricks” going back to the break up of Standard Oil to show you guys and gals that in 2020 energy stocks got to levels not seen since the opening salvos of World War 1.
As described in detail on the subscription page (HERE), I am opening subscriptions up
Full Access - ($500/year or $50/month). With that comes
Full access to Saturday’s post which will continue to be thematic pieces as well as company histories and various updates.
A downloadable pdf of the charts in the weekly Saturday post will begin to be provided for you to use at your discretion (provided proper sourcing is used). This is so you don’t have to go searching for a chart in a post that you saw weeks ago - just download and save.
Full access to Wednesday’s Chart of the Week (COTW) - a quick snapshot/musing of either something I am working on or general musings I have about the energy space.
Full access to the archive of posts.
Community participation in threads and comments and yes I pride myself in answering all direct emails from subscribers ASAP. I don’t know all the answers but in the comments and questions is where I find some of my best content ideas.
Many of you have requested some more “actionable” ideas. I can’t recommend individual stocks, plus it would take my time away from doing all these crazy charts you have come to love and for which differentiates me. Trust me - I am much better at gathering data than picking stocks. That said, I have some thematic pieces in mind that will provide you with some high level idea generation. One of which will debut next week.
A group subscription option (15% off per seat) is available as well but if you need one rate for your large organization please reach out via email.
For those that choose to remain on the email list but choose not to subscribe you will still see previews of the pieces that I publish in your inbox and you can also follow me on Twitter (@crudechronicle) and in Substack Notes.
As I close this chapter of the journey I’ve got a few people I need to thank.
First off is my long-time mentor who took me under his wing many moons ago and fostered in me a passion for history and always told me to “read your history!” From the early days was instilled a desire to understand cycles and the macro before being sent off on a wild goose chase to find data that no one else had.
I have to thank my man Rory Johnston
. Ladies and gentlemen, there isn’t a better person out there. Thanks for the encouragement, positivity and taking the time to answer my questions and be a guide along the way.Thanks to Paul at Sankey Research who was one of the first to find me on Twitter and has taught me so much about this stuff and also told me to start a Substack. Brooklyn’s finest! Thanks to his partner Greg for answering all my dumb questions about E&Ps like “What does PUD stand for?”
Thank you to Arjun Murti
. A great person that has helped me along the way with his words of encouragement, guidance and believing in me. Prepare for a huge “dap” when we eventually meet in person.Thank you to Warren over at 3Fourteen (HERE) as well as my man
for both taking the time to help give me pointers about the journey.Thanks to the folks at
for being a model in which to follow. Watching their rise has inspired me to keep on going.Special shout out to all the institutional peeps out there that I have met either via Zoom, email, Twitter, DMs, etc. Your sharing of my charts has helped tremendously. Names can’t be named but you know who you are. Some of my best content ideas have come through asking you more of my dumb questions.
Shouts out to my Twitter peeps (#EFT), the Canadian Oil Mafia (#COM), and everyone that I have DM’ed along the way. You know who you are. Side note - there should be an #OOM on Twitter - Offshore Oil Mafia.
Special thanks to Linda at Substack for taking the time to help me launch. There really isn’t a nicer and more gracious person out there.
And a special thanks to my family and really my wife who believes in me enough to give me the chance to give this “oil blog thing” a go.
Here goes nothing…..
-CC
Congratulations on your journey CC and best of luck!!
You thanked many people who helped you get where you are now and that shows a lot of class on your part.
Congratulations CC! Onward and upward!🚀🚀🚀