Chris Wright: I mean – look at that, the demand is gigantic, right? Think about that – seven years running, we’ve been the top ranked from customer’s frac company in the quality of the services we deliver and now we have the lowest emission, highest efficiency, all natural gas burning fleets with actually longer lifetimes, likely higher uptime higher performance. So yes, look, there’s no cap on the interest in that. Right? So the question for us is, it’s always a partnership decision. It’s not a top, we had 50 a month a lot. Yes, we could put them to work tomorrow, we wouldn’t do that. And we never do that. Like they’re going to be built individually for specific customers under specific conditions that have been partners and will remain partners for.
Saurabh Pant: Right, right. No, that makes sense, because we do hear that there is a lot of demand, right. And again, you don’t want to satisfy all demand points. That’s not the right way to work. So I get that. Just a quick follow-up. I think Arun asked the question on the RFP season. How is that going? Yes a follow-up question on that. In terms of how you think about contracting the duration of the contract, how quickly pricing resets within that contract? Are you are you thinking about that differently when you think about 2024 versus what you have in your portfolio right now for 2023?
Chris Wright: No, again new-builds they have long-terms and they have different sort of structures a little bit. But no, in general. No, no different this year than last year, and we just continued in that sort of partnership mindset, existing customer base. Not a lot of change in the Liberty customer makeup.
Saurabh Pant: Okay, okay. Awesome. And then just one last quick one. Just a clarification. I think Marc asked that question. I think Mike, you said that you expect next year to be slightly better than this year. So 2023 was that an EBITDA comment, I just want to be sure of that?
Michael Stock: That will be a general expectation.
Saurabh Pant: Okay. Okay. Okay, perfect. Okay. Thank you. I’ll turn it back.
Chris Wright: Thanks, Saurabh.
Operator: The next question is from John Daniel with Daniel Energy. Please go ahead.
John Daniel: Hi guys, thanks for keeping – let me get on the call. I guess the first one is just any supply chain or labor concerns as we head into ’24?
Chris Wright: No, the challenge is that we’re being a year ago, 18 months ago, don’t look to be challenges today.
John Daniel: Got it. And then Chris, how does the borings mature market influence your acquisition strategy? Because you should have a lot of free cash flow next year?
Chris Wright: I mean, yes, our outlook is for a lot of free cash flow and it’s just competing usage. So yes – acquisitions are certainly a possibility. You’re seeing we’re not highly acquisitive. But if something’s compelling, sure, sure.
John Daniel: Okay. And I guess the last one from me, I’m assuming the initial rollouts of all the digi technology you’re going to larger and higher quality customers, if you will. At this point, are any of the smaller E&P operators inquiring about the technology? Or when do you see those folks wishing to learn more and possibly moving forward?
Chris Wright: Oh, absolutely. No, they’re fired up about it, you know, they’re fired up about it. It really just gets down to that long runway right to do a deal for something like that. You’ve got to have a pretty clear plan of what your next two or three years are going to unfold? And for some of the bigger privates, they’ve got that. So it’s, yes, that’s not years away. But yes, the interest is, is quite large there as well. But you’re right, the original deployment is not going to be in that sector.
John Daniel: Okay, that’s all I had. Thank you for including me.
Chris Wright: Tremendous. Barbecue John.
Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Chris Wright for any closing remarks.
Chris Wright: Thanks, everyone for joining today. Sadly, another global conflict has burst on the scene with heartbreaking scenes of death and destruction. War is as old as time, but that does nothing to lessen the horror of its ravages. War is a destroyer of security, personal security, food security, property security, economic security and our vision for a secure future that we all crave. I often speak of energy as the enabler of all human progress. It is, but it is also essential to satisfy our base needs, like security in all forms. Now that the spotlight is again on the United States, the most promising source of security for the world, how are we doing? We properly sprung to action on the military, diplomatic and humanitarian fronts.
But what about the energy front? It’s underpinned everything. I would pause it, that we are not shining in this area, the area critical to our long-term future. Two quarters ago, I spoke about government policies that are raising up our electricity prices, whilst also destabilizing our electricity grids. Hence, we are not doing well in the power grid area. While electricity grids are arguably the most important networks in the world, in total they deliver only 20% of global energy. What about the total energy pie? Oil and gas today represent a record high of just below 70% of total U.S. primary energy consumption. Fortunately, we are today the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. Are we maximizing these resources to uplift Americans and provide security to our citizens and our allies.
We have blocked the completion of large pipelines already under construction. We have dramatically reduced the granting of leases and permits on federal lands. We drained half our strategic petroleum reserves, not in a crisis but simply to short-term lower gasoline prices. We have used a myriad of regulatory bodies to impede the funding and development of our oil and gas resources, having the obvious and presumably intended impact of reducing U.S. oil and gas production at the margin, and therefore raising prices to consumers and businesses. But there is no stopping the rise and demand for oil and natural gas as everyone, not just Americans wants to raise their standard of living and expand the opportunities available to their children. So what is filling the gap created by suppressing American oil and gas production?
Iran, predominantly, we have effectively stopped enforcing the oil export sanctions on Iran, resulting in a roughly 700,000 barrels of oil per day increase in Iranian oil exports over the last 12 months, nearly all flowing to China. The same is coming true for Venezuela. Is having more oil coming from Iran as opposed to the United States beneficial to the security of the United States and our allies? Is it economically better for our citizens and allies that this incremental oil production and related economic activity and tax revenues flow to Iran instead of the United States? Is it better for air quality and greenhouse gas emissions that these incremental barrels are producing Iran versus the world’s cleanest production practices in the United States?
The answer to all is obvious. Liberty’s mission is to better human lives by improving the energy system in North America and the world. We do this primarily by driving improvement and innovation in hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells, the dominant source of energy in the U.S. and Canada. We took an ownership stake in Fervo Energy last year to partner in bringing next generation geothermal into our energy system. Things are going quite well there. We took a smaller stake in nature on energy to help bring sodium ion-batteries to market, as they offer distinct advantages to our energy system. After years of watching and investigating we have recently invested $10 million in Oklo, which we view as the most promising of the small modular reactor companies.
Why invest in Nuclear? Because it has the energy density, reliability and scalability required to economically meet the world’s growing demands for energy. The world needs more energy, better energy. Thanks for joining us today.
Operator: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.
