Mike Rentfrow, president, Blue Boat Subsea shares his story of how he is transitioning into wind energy after working in the oil and gas industry for 29 years. He spent the majority of his time underwater installing pipelines and parts of offshore wells.
Rentfrow explains how his path became directed by the emerging social engineered renewable market, government intervention into the marketplace and foreign influences with global energy policies.
Prior to 2020, Rentfrow worked primarily in oil and gas. Over the past two years he has seen his business contracts and bids shift to 80% wind and only 20% oil and gas. Rentfrow adds that most of his oil and gas work is decommissioning off shore wells and pipelines.
Rentfrow emphasizes his respect and passion for oil and gas, however the reality of the marketplace has directed his livelihood towards the transition into renewable energy, specifically wind.
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Below is the raw, unedited transcript from our artificial intelligence translator.
Jason Spiess
All right, go ahead. State your name and company and 321 for Mike level check.
Mike Rentfrow
Sure. My name is Mike Renfro. I'm with a company called blue boat sub seed and uh, blue boat subsidy is a renewables service provider. I also own three other companies that are primarily traditional energy companies. Deep blue sub sea, deep blue marine and deep blue offshore International. ...
Jason Spiess
Now you reached out to me on social media about your company and if my memory serves me correctly, you mentioned you had 29 years of oil and gas experience. Is that right?
Mike Rentfrow
Yeah. I moved to Houston from Minnesota in 93. ...
Jason Spiess
Okay. And where'd you move to? In texas?
Mike Rentfrow
I've lived predominantly in the Houston area. Um, I lived in Houston for ... five years and when my wife and I got married in 99 we moved out to spring, which is on the north side of Harris County, which encompasses Houston. When kids came along post Katrina, we uh, decided we wanted to be a little further away from all of the modern uh, childhood temptations.
Jason Spiess
Right? Yeah. My morning show partner, He grew up in Saudi Arabia on an oil base it's called, which is actually like a city, but it's a, it's really an oil base because all the employees there from the teachers to the grocery store workers, they're actually employees of Saudi Aramco and
Mike Rentfrow
back. ...
Jason Spiess
Okay, so you're, you're familiar with that then. Um, So anyway, he jokes that, you know, when he was 16 he was 16, they send you away to boarding school because of the temptations that that come with a foreign market and uh being in Saudi Arabia, it was in the best interest to send the boys away to Saudi to boarding boarding school. So anyway, that's what made me think of it when you said the temptations of that, but I was actually thinking you might want to move away from the coast just
because the hurricanes uh just by share just safety and just, you know, different lifestyle. And up here in the midwest, we've got flooding issues and people get tired of the cold and you know what I mean by that,
Mike Rentfrow
You know, I spent 25 years in Minnesota, northern Minnesota on the Canadian border and I would much rather deal with hurricanes to be honest. They're really not that bad. I mean, depending on where you're at um
Jason Spiess
and where you, yeah, what your structures like to
Mike Rentfrow
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, we had during Hurricane ike in oh nine, we had 100 and 17 mile an hour winds over the top of my house. We lost power. We were without power for 13 days, but we have generators and stuff like that. It's kinda like snow plows up north, right, and we never had, I mean, we had power, it was just generator power. The only inconvenience was having to go get, you know, so many gallons of gas a day to keep generators going.
Jason Spiess
I find it interesting. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. You
Mike Rentfrow
know, I mean, I've I don't even know how many hurricanes, I've been through Eight or 10 probably and I mean we've never suffered any substantial damage. We've had inconveniences, Hurricane Harvey. We were surrounded by water, but we were above it. Um, of course we just have the winter storm down here, which I'm sure everyone up north jokes about because I've never missed a day of work had, I still lived in Minnesota, but we just don't have the infrastructure to remove ice and snow.
We don't have plows. Uh, most of us lost power. Um, it's just a slight, it's a trade off. Right, hurricanes replace blizzards in my, in my mind, haven't been here as long as I have ...
Jason Spiess
one of the things that the texas freeze or the power outage and you know, that, that just happened last month. The thing that reminded me of up here in Minnesota and north Dakota, we get people that go without power for weeks all the time, but they're, they're rural people, they're used to it and they're self sufficient because when, when the rain comes in and then it freezes it coats those power lines and out in the rural part man, those power lines, if they snap, sometimes it takes
two weeks before the power company can get out there and repair them and you know, those people living out there, there's like four of them, four homes out there and it's, it's funny because when I was at the radio station we used to check in with them for daily updates and they were doing better than a lot of people around town.
Mike Rentfrow
My mother grew up in Lakota, just west of northwest of you um just between Grand Forks and uh devil's leg and uh we still have the family farm there and you're you're right, they're very self sufficient. I mean it would take a pretty catastrophic probably an apocalyptic type of event for them to uh have too many concerns.
Jason Spiess
So let's transition a little bit to what you're doing now now you spent you know you grew up in Minnesota war road actually Canadian border. And and then you you move down to Texas where you spent 29 years in the oil and gas industry. My guess is you didn't spend any time in the oil and gas industry up in more road. I did not know there's nothing up there, there's nothing up there, is there? No,
Mike Rentfrow
no. I mean I worked in a typical rural farming community. I worked at the elevator, the lumber yard. Uh there used to be a chain of lumber stores, you know Robertson lumber out of Grand Forks. I worked for them for several years. I did construction,
Jason Spiess
maybe a hockey stick company in there. I don't know just
Mike Rentfrow
christian brothers. Yeah. Yeah I worked at more even windows for a little while I don't like working in factories. I mean I'm an outdoors kind of a person And when during desert storm I was actually introduced to scuba diving and on an M. W. R. By rain. And I got my first initial certification in uh Saudi Arabia actually at one of the aramco complexes And I just decided that I wanted to do something different with my life.
And so I spent I got back in December of 91 and I spent most of 92 getting my affairs in order in March of 93 I moved to Houston, I went to commercial diving school. I went to work in the oil field. I didn't really plan on going to work in the oil field but I wanted to be a commercial diver and the oil field is where all the work was at. And I spent most of my career. Can
Jason Spiess
I pause for a second, Let's pause for a second here. I'm not familiar with the commercial diving aspect of oil and gas outside of like some some deep sea welding or something like that. Is there you know. Is there exploratory diving jobs I guess. Talk to me a little bit about how that that diving job became a gateway into oil and gas and I'm I apologize for my naivete on that.
Mike Rentfrow
No not at all. You know and and it's real easy and you touched on part of it diving and welding is part of it. Although welding underwater has become almost a bygone thing because those welding the weld that you perform underwater quenched very quickly compared to welding a pipeline on the surface across you know Western North Dakota. So they're very brittle.
So the majority of the work I did, I actually laid by um we installed platforms, we removed platforms. I worked on big Derek barges, pipelines, barges as well as dedicated dive support vessels. And then in 99 when when I convinced my my girlfriend of five years it wasn't really five years if you asked her because I was home about 20 or 30 days out of every year and two or three at a time usually um she thought she wanted me home every night.
She didn't realize what she was asking for but I took a job in operations and then ultimately sales. Working for a company called superior diving. Who I had been diving for previously. I was there for in the working in the office about four years and I started getting some other job offers that were a whole lot better than the the place I was working.
It opened doors with companies like Shell Exxon Chevron V. P. And uh I continued working for that company. Epic divers for about two years. Then I went back offshore for about a year working as a oil company representative so I was the guy in charge of the boat offshore and then I got pulled back into sales in 2005. Working for a company it was actually one of Forbes's top, top 10 fastest growing companies in America for two years.
Post Katrina. That the name of that company was deep marine technology. I stayed there until they started failing in 2009 is when I started my own company and I've been with, I've been self employed ever since. ...
Jason Spiess
So how did you transition then? I don't know, are you completely out of oil and gas and into wind energy? 100% or talk to me a little bit about that whole deal.
Mike Rentfrow
I said about about 80% wind and about 20% energy. Oil and gas. Most of what we're doing with oil and gas is Decommissioning. I believe there's 27 structures off the California coast right now that are slated for removal and one of our boats is um, we have tendered several of those projects, both for the state of California as well as the individual operators that originally installed them.
I'm under nondisclosure on that. I can't say who owns them, but it's not rocket science, there's only three companies of their own structures off the California coast. ... You know, the trend has been, especially since the downturn in 2012 is that the large oil companies are removing these these minimal producing structures and reinvesting that money in other areas like Exxon is in Guyana. But the majority of the work that we're seeing in oil and gas, which is about probably 20% of
our business is almost all removal interesting taking those structures out. We do have one bit in, in Saudi Arabia for a very large international, um, I guess you'd call them a multinational um contractor. They're installing the margin project for Aramco. We've got live bids out for that that we may or may not end up securing that work. ...
Jason Spiess
So the wind energy part, what's um, how'd you get into that from oil and gas then? I mean, was it, was it, you know, bid obviously bid work, but how did that initially happen?
Mike Rentfrow
So in early 2020, when the COVID crisis was beginning, um, I had several meetings with a gentleman named Gary Wilmore Gary and I have done a lot of joint work together over the last 10, 15, 20 years. Gary was actually the state inspector for the state of Rhode Island and installed the block island structure. The five structures at Block Island in 2015 and 16.
And we just sat down talking one day and we said, you know, oil and gas is, is really kind of a fading trend if you will. And Gary says, you know, what we ought to do is we ought to start a company between, I'm, I'm a bit younger than he is Gary 68. I'm 54. He says you've got a lot of, a lot of spunk left in. You, you know, what would you think? We started a company that did primarily when I was familiar with his, his previous offshore wind um, installation experience, I said, let's do it.
Gary. I didn't even have to think about it. I looked at my wife, it was actually Memorial Weekend. Gary had a barbecue at his house. I looked at my wife, she winked and I said, Gary, let's do it. And it really, it just didn't take any thought process because it is the future.
There are somewhere between six and 15,000 structures that will be installed off the Atlantic seaboard in the next 10 years. ... And when I started in the Gulf of Mexico, there were approximately 7000 structures. So in 50 years we put in 7000
Jason Spiess
structures. When you say structures, you talk about the wind turbines.
Mike Rentfrow
That's correct. That's correct. There are, I want to say 11-14, various fields under consideration and the 2018 Department of Energy Report, which is the newest one I've been able to find for business development purposes. States that there are 6000 sanctioned sanctioned structures that will go in. You know, there's a T in this field, there's 100 and 40 in this field, 100 and 50 in that field.
You know, you've got your various operators, your horse stays, your vineyards, aven graves. Each one of them has contracts with each state to produce x number of megawatts and gigawatts of electrical power. So off of each coastline. There are you know corresponding numbers of you know 800 MW I think it is off New York. Although I may have my numbers crossed But you know they range anywhere from a couple 100 megawatt off of Rhode island too. I want to say 1300 off of Massachusetts.
... Each one of those each one of those individual facilities um produces about 10.5 megawatts of power with what's currently available. G. E. Didn't just come out with a larger one that produces 13.5 but there um there's some time prior to delivery. So most of the ones that are planned now about 10.5 megawatt generators for the individual structures. And then the fields, you know there's 80 to 100 150 of them depending on which field it is.
Jason Spiess
Who's the who's the customer when it comes to wind or I guess who's the operator when you know the wind, you know who's who's in charge there, you know when it comes to the oil and gas, you know you mentioned the you know the Exxons and the B. P. S. And up in Alaska, what is their shell and BP up there? No Exxon and BP. ... Yeah. You know what I mean? But in wind energy are is it these global oil and gas companies or is it you know wind companies ... now when you say renewable, are you talking wind
Mike Rentfrow
primarily wind.
Jason Spiess
Yeah although
Mike Rentfrow
there's other stuff, you know, there's solar, there's wave power. There's, there's all this stuff under consideration. Nuclear. Um, Shell and BP are very active in the US East Coast wind market. But what's interesting is there's only one US company involved in the atlantic offshore wind industry that being Dominion energy, they're based out of new Orleans.
Jason Spiess
Sure. And that's really the only one that you've seen. Huh?
Mike Rentfrow
It is. Now there are a lot of operators out of Norway, Holland, the UK you've got or stead, which is a dutch company. You have, uh, Ecuador, which is a Norwegian company formerly stout oil
Jason Spiess
Boy, This is interesting.
Mike Rentfrow
You have, gosh, there's E. D. F. Out of spain, of course, of course Shell is royal Dutch Shell. I mean they're, they're out of Holland and then you've got josh, there's a bunch more you've got, which is a partnership and I can never keep these straight partnership ones, You
Jason Spiess
know, um these companies, you mentioned, you know, statoil is the one that jumped out to me and you know, they do a lot in drilling, you know, in oil, I think they do. Um, so, ... right, right. So those other companies you named um, are they also in the oil and gas markets these european companies you named
Mike Rentfrow
um the only one that I know for certain is BP Shell and statoil slash Ecuador, which I don't know why they changed their name, I think it had to do with their play in in renewables?
Jason Spiess
It flat out had to do with the word oil in there? Absolutely, it did totally. That's the same reason why B. B. P. Went to went from british petroleum to BP so that people can think beyond petroleum is, you know, the new acronym and whatever the heck is. But no, I just wanted to make sure because I statoil was the only one that jumped out is kind of a hybrid oil and
gas slash wind energy. So the rest are basically wind energy companies that are coming in and building uh offshore. Are these are these are offshore you're talking about,
Mike Rentfrow
Right, that's correct. And I mean right now there are five producing windmills off of the U. S. Coast and those are on Rhode island and Rhode island off a block island. Now there are some exploratory ones. I think there's some off of Virginia. There's some floaters off the California coast. But those are used primarily for research and development for what the, what the true wind potential is.
We don't, the very first utility grade installation will be vineyard, which is off of Martha's vineyard. They have five blocks Each one of those is gonna have, you know, 80-150 individual windmills. All right,
Jason Spiess
you're gonna you're gonna probably get upset. But what, what's vineyard is that? Is that a geographical colloquial term? Is that the name of project? Is that the name of an energy company? What's vineyard?
Mike Rentfrow
No, so vineyard is another operator and they will actually be the first ones to install a utility grade facility offshore on the U. S. Coast.
Jason Spiess
Okay. So they're a U. S. Company.
Mike Rentfrow
No, they're actually a partnership between two companies and I don't remember which two off the top of my head.
Jason Spiess
Okay. My apologies. No, that's okay. That's okay. It's pop quiz. So it's okay. Um, they're okay, but they're, they're, they're not US companies. So
Mike Rentfrow
they have a US subsidiary, okay. Out of here. But they are owned by some of the others that I mentioned or steady Ecuador. Sure. Um, I don't remember exactly. Okay.
Jason Spiess
No, I'm just curious if it's, you know, ...
Mike Rentfrow
no,
Jason Spiess
that's okay because I know I'm just, I'll tell you where my mind is and I, you know, I don't want to editorialize and I don't get upset or I don't want to, you know, cause any issues or anything like that. But it just seems like, you know, over the last few years there's been a lot of dollars and a lot of uh, energy directional to go towards, you know, the wind and, and etcetera.
And then, so hearing that, you know, all these companies are foreign companies and yet our government sending people to go there and it's just, it's different. It almost seems like Europe got a real big head start
Mike Rentfrow
By 20 years? You know, they've been putting these things up in in uh, off of uh The United Kingdom, all the way around Ireland there. There's, I mean they've they've been doing this for 20 years and there's been discussion about this in the United States since the mid-90s. But the problem we've had is really the way the country is set up. We have um the State's control a certain portion of the waters off of their coast.
You have the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, B. O. E. M. And Bessie, which are federal institutions control all of the international waters, if you will. They're also tasked with, you know, so the whole permitting process with having all of these competing interests has really slowed down the United States entry into the offshore wind industry.
Jason Spiess
Is there is there any discussion about just doing a, you know, maritime law? I mean, they do it with banking, why why why can't they do it with energy like that?
Mike Rentfrow
Well, because the states on the waters for three miles out. Okay,
Jason Spiess
so it's three miles Okay,
Mike Rentfrow
Louisiana is 12 and that goes back to whoever planted a flag in the ground was from a country that had a 12 mile limit. I want to say France. Actually originally got uh the Louisiana coast. So the Louisiana coast is a 12 mile limit. It's very, very difficult to understand.
Jason Spiess
I'm curious what happened to France because they were part of the Alamo too, but they don't seem to have anything left in texas is a little bit left in Louisiana. But just anyway, um, I know that's about it, you know, just kind of their, their, you know, the, the creole slash beninese and everything that they left a little bit of a french twist behind. But outside of that there's certainly not much else, right?
Mike Rentfrow
There's a, there's a heavy french Cajun culture if you will. But it's almost more french Canadian that it is France France because most of the settlers came from uh, from Canada.
Jason Spiess
I was gonna say, you know, up in our neck of the woods, you know, Montreal, which is a little bit far away. But Canada, the language stuck around, you know, just a little bit more than the food. Uh, so, okay, this is really, this is really interesting to me. So what you basically, uh, transition because of the, you know, just the different workflow and the contracts and, and, and just basically the way the market shook out. Huh? I mean, am I hearing that? Right? You're
Mike Rentfrow
absolutely right. You know, I mean, it was real obvious that the amount of money in the amount of daily utilization days on a offshore vessel each year were diminishing and on the east coast they're appreciating its, you know, that that industry is in its infancy. So we provide two different services if you will we as a result of Gary's prior involvement in block island and the requisite use of the union labor and there's and there's also all kinds of local content criteria.
It's almost like working in a foreign country in that regard. You know, we go to Nigeria, we gotta have 40 or 50% local labor, sometimes more than 50% Guyana is the same way everywhere in the world I've ever worked except for the U. S. Now when you work in new york, for instance, you've got to have a certain percentage of local content. Those people have to be union labor.
So the first big milestone that we overcame with entering into the offshore wind market was the issuance of the one and only blanket union collective bargaining agreement that has been issued today with all of the applicable labor unions. There's actually seven of them, Two of them are in process, but we have a five party collective bargaining agreement that encompasses the carpenters union, which is also the the pile drivers, the dock builders and the commercial divers.
We've got the commercial engineers, the laborers union, uh international brotherhood of electrical workers and the brotherhood of engineers. Or it might not be brotherhood. It's you the the engineers union if you will. So that was our first step since then, the seafarers union has come to us because we provide vessels. We hopefully to 47 vessels that we offer to the offshore wind industry.
Um We have, we also provide a lot of ancillary support the commercial diving, uh subsidy robotics, um all the sensors, uh all kinds of tools for underwater and The big construction vessels. So one of the things that has been a real key issue with the actual installation and construction beyond the labor is you have to use what are called Jones Act compliant vessels.
The Jones Act, which was enacted in 1920 is basically been around. The philosophy has been around since the Phoenician Times. And what it does is it protects your domestic marine industry, shipbuilding, coastal trading. The coast wise trade aspect of moving products or people from one domestic ports to another. That actually applies to the offshore wind industry.
So you have to have a boat that was one built in the United States to is owned and operated by a U. S. Company and three is staffed by U. S. Personnel to work in the offshore wind industry. By law. That doesn't mean they won't issue waivers because as you mentioned previously, the Europeans are 20 years ahead of us. They've got a lot more of these vessels.
Dominion Energy is building one weeks. Marine is building one and then we also have a third. That is kind of quasi jones Act compliant. And what I mean by that is it's owned and operated or will be owned and operated. We're in the we're in the process of an acquisition on the boat. It's a 2014 built 460 ft vessel with bumps for 399 people and it has 1000 ton derrick crane on the back deck, we can never be fully jones act because it was actually built in the Marco Polo shipyard in baton.
But we can operate within the jones act because we're not going to transport anyone or any cargo from one US sport to another. All of that will be brought out by barges, tugboats, uh, supply boats, crew boats, helicopters and then we will strictly work in the field during the installation. ...
Jason Spiess
You mentioned the labor kind of the one stop shop if you will, I kind of joked one article. I did the first year in the box and that in North Dakota, you know, if you're a plumber, a pipefitter electrician, you've got to be certified by the, by the state. So these people were call, I called them uh, uh, deities and demigods of the oil patch because boy, these people were so sought after and there was a company out of Fargo, they had to stop sending people to the west because there's an
electric company electrician. The guy would go to dinner at night and he get hired by somebody out at dinner for double his salary. And the kicker is that the electrician, the, the energy or the electric company back in Fargo had to hire the guy back because there was such a shortage of these people. So, um, that's interesting about what you guys have been able to put together.
So um basically what you're saying is that as companies are starting to realize that the transition is happening um for people to find work that you guys are putting together this kind of system that's going to be able to make it a little bit more user friendly for people to get work. Does that make sense? As far as disseminating jobs and etcetera? It
Mike Rentfrow
is between the five unions that we have under our umbrella currently and I'm not saying that there won't be another contract like ours issued. It just, it took four years for this one to transpire to get all of the unions in agreement with a contract that Gary would actually execute. Um, it's to get all of these people on the same page is very difficult.
Jason Spiess
No, it's just is this just for new york or is there other states to like, I don't know, it know.
Mike Rentfrow
It includes all of the eastern seaboard. That's why it's so difficult and why it took four years to, to, to, to, to get this contract done is because each state has their own criteria also. So if you're working in new york, you have to pay a welder for instance, or an electrician, one rate. If you go to New Jersey, that rate changes. So every time you change, go across the state line, you're actually running into all kinds of paperwork mate Mares to, to try to figure out.
Okay, so this guy worked from midnight to six o'clock in the morning in new york waters. We, we crossed over into New Jersey while we were installing this cable at six in the morning and he worked until noon, You know, that kind of thing. And when you, when you multiply that by maybe 300 people working on the back deck of a vessel, you know, it becomes a fairly onerous project just to track the paperwork to pay these people properly.
Because all every state has got a different, um, great for these people. If you will, they make a different amount of money if they're in new york versus New Jersey Rhode island massachusetts Virginia, whatever. ...
Jason Spiess
Yeah, I can imagine just between the certifications and the fees and the different paperwork that could take all kinds of time and then throw Covid in there. Boy, that's,
Mike Rentfrow
yeah. You know, I mean, you've got, we haven't seen a lot of covid criteria yet on in the offshore wind. It'll happen. It's inevitable.
Jason Spiess
No, I was just talking about from, from the bureaucrats blaming, you know, everything on Covid for not getting things done in a timely manner. That's all, that's all I'm talking about.
Mike Rentfrow
Yeah. But that transposes into, you know, like when we work internationally and, and even to some extent, last year we were having to quarantine these people for seven days in a hotel by themselves prior to being able to go on a job. Um, then they had to quarantine for seven days before they could go home and they demonstrated any symptoms, you know, it's, it's, it's become a very, very difficult issue to deal with.
And it's a costly one because we have to charge for those people. I mean they expect to get paid if they're not at home and rightfully so, so we have to pass that cost onto our client and they don't want to really eat at all. So you've got to negotiate with them individually on a case by case basis. You know, hey, I'll take half of it. You take half of that kind of thing.
Jason Spiess
This might be over your head and I apologize. But just because of the complexity of international waters and state waters and international companies and local companies and state unions. And I don't know if, you know, the old traditional movies are correct with unions or not, but you got some other entities that are in the shadow behind the scenes may be too, so I don't know.
But when it comes to, ... so, okay. Exactly. But at the end of the day, what brings everybody together together is who's getting paid? So are you guys using, you know, digital dollars is the import export bank involved, is it funneled through the government and they pay you through subsidies? How is everybody getting paid on this?
Mike Rentfrow
I can answer that. Okay. Some of it is well beyond my my, my area
Jason Spiess
of knowledge. No, that's okay because it's a very complicated question. I don't think people realize how complicated it is.
Mike Rentfrow
So the state of new york and I'll just use that as one instance is because I just read the contract here within the last matter a few days because we got a tender in. So unlike a traditional oil and gas tender, most of these people send out their contract with the state of New Jersey, new york Rhode island or whatever when they send out a contract or a contract tender request and you're expected to be in full compliance.
So what happens is the state of new york contracts with an or stated a Dominion vineyard and they are the or says the vineyards, whatever are expected to provide a kilowatt hour of electricity for a given price for a given period of time. So they're, they're under long term contract for the production of power for like a state utility commission.
... So on on the inverse side of that, you have all of these federal tax subsidies that are being paid and, and it's actually impacted the installation schedules substantially. You have companies, I'll use atlantic shore's, which is one of the developments off of massachusetts, northern massachusetts as an example that company is not going to start their actual installation and construction until they receive all of their appropriate documentation on their federal tax
subsidies. So instead of them starting construction this year, that particular project will actually be pushed back till next year. So, I mean, there's a tremendous amount of moving pieces. You know, you've got your state utility commission contracting with the developer, the or said the vineyard, the atlantic shore's to produce the energy. Then you've got the federal government is paying subsidies and then you've got all of these other things moving at the state and at
the federal level as far as the permitting and uh, You know, it's, it's a very, very complex and that's one of the reasons why instead of having wind energy off of our coast 20 years ago. It's taken until 2021 or 2015 before the first offshore installations were done in 2021-23. Before we have an actual functioning utility grade offshore wind component that that's utility grade that can actually, you know, support a state grid.
Jason Spiess
So you're, you're doing 20% oil and gas work, but it's primarily Decommissioning offshore wells. Is that correct? Or pipelines or pipelines? ... Pipelines? Okay. Okay. And um, and you said about 80%. And this is the last couple of years that this shift has happened. We're after, how many years were you in oil and gas? 29.
Mike Rentfrow
Yeah, right around the
Jason Spiess
corner. So third after 30 years of oil and gas, I mean, was this, was this shift from, you know, 100% of oil and gas to 80 20 was that within a two year span
Mike Rentfrow
there was actually a decline that started post deepwater horizon the Macondo incident from BP um things got a lot more difficult. They became a lot more onerous and the regulatory bodies started looking a lot harder prior to the issuance of permits. And then we had the downturn in the industry that started in 2012 and to some extent is still ongoing. So it's it's since 2012 we've seen the industry just continually diminish. Its
Jason Spiess
funny you called 2012 the downturn. That's when it hit $100 oil.
Mike Rentfrow
Yeah but that was the peak from there. It went downhill. I
Jason Spiess
Know I know I've just never heard of it referred to that because I've always, you know, 2015 is what they call the downturn and um you know right around that time end of 14 and into 16. But I I remember, oh I did an article for one of the publications, I can't remember if it was a bismarck tribune or the Dickinson press maybe both. But I went to a conference and this was in 2013 at the end of 2013 and the article was about how well the C. E. O. S are done come into the bacon. Yeah it's like a rare
albino elk citing now because you know it was over, you know for a variety of reasons that the $100 oil was done. But the bacon is a little bit different because, um, for their, you know, they need to prove that the oils there, they already knew it was there because the science, but they needed that $100 oil to go drill a quick cap, you know, well and cap it and, and prove it and then they got 2025 years to drill. So now it's just a commodities price game for, for out there, you
Mike Rentfrow
know, when, when they, ...
Jason Spiess
Yeah. And, and because you know, the library they have in the box and the Laird Library and every oil companies had to do a core sample since the 50s. Um, you know, that sort of shared knowledge just allowed all these companies to know what was down there, but you still have to prove it. Yeah, you still had to physically prove it. Um, and, and you know, when it hit $100 oil, they were able to do that, you know, out in, you know, Fortuna areas where you gotta get to the, you know, $90 range.
I think it's Fortuna. I apologize for for not knowing my micro specifics of the dollar ranges, their, in the baking at this point because there's a pop quiz for me here too. So hey, look at that. We both have pop quiz fails today. So that's okay. Uh, well, I was more curious about just how your transition went from the oil and gas to wind. It doesn't sound like it was political. It was more marketplace and the marketplace was kind of driven by by regulations and subsidies.
Mike Rentfrow
It will really, it has been. And you know, the the Behind the scenes planning and permitting its stuff is now just coming to a head. They've been working on this since the 90s trying to figure out how do we put offshore wind off of the United States coast? You know, they got real serious about it in about 2005 and started doing some some planning and stuff.
And I mean that was long before I ever considered it as a business opportunity. I was still working for other people at the time and As Gary and I worked on various projects in 2017, 18, 19, we talked a little bit about it. It just became more apparent the more homework that I did on it. But this is truly the future of energy. And if you look at some of the books that were written by Michael economy needs, who was a, a uh, University of Houston um, what was he?
He was an economist. He passed away on an airplane coming out of Javier or a Bush airport in Houston plan to D. C. In 2013, but he wrote some extremely good books about the global expansion of energy consumption and how much more we're gonna need every year. As, as some of these third world countries get into having electricity and running water and flush toilets and microwaves and motorcycles versus pedal bicycles.
You know, there's a lot of parts of the world. We americans are spoiled at the end of the day, right? We, we've got things that they don't have in other parts of the world. But as these other parts of the world start to experience what it's like to have a toaster, what it's like to have not cook your dinner. Like they do in, in, uh, in Haiti on charcoal.
Um, they get greedy for more. It's just human nature. You know, I mean, that's pretty cool. I didn't have to go buy charcoal today to cook dinner. You know, I've got, I've got gas, I've got electricity and I want more of it. You know, I want lights on instead of having to go to bed when it gets dark. And there's a lot of third world countries that just don't have that.
And, and as they get just a little taste of it then what more And Michael, it was just a phenomenal. Um, a lot of his books were just phenomenal. His talks were even better how he delved into that and, and how the exponential growth of the energy industry is going to outpace, even what oil and gas is available, how much oil and gas is available to produce this energy.
He predicted his way back in, you know, 09010, I listened to several of his talks and It really started making sense in 1718 talking with Gary about the block island project as as I learned more about offshore wind, it just became the no brainer. It was to me it was just, you know, this is the next big thing.
Jason Spiess
I remember when I saw the Super Bowl ad for, I wanna say it was Exxon, I believe it was Exxon that was doing doing the plankton like biofuel. Yeah. And when I saw it, I think there was like 10 years ago now that I'm thinking about it, when when I saw that, that's when I I knew that oil and gas companies were going to be forced to just be an energy company, it was no longer you can no longer be sustainable, just do an oil and gas.
They they were gonna force you to just either do all the above because that was the term back then. All the above. Yeah. And um now now I think that terms kind of passe um there's some other terms they're using and I forget the one that uh oh, when the Energy Secretary, who's the new energy secretary, um Grisham, is that her name? When she did that when she did that interview with the Washington post and they put the transcript up and and she just flat out said, hey, get on board or go away.
And all of a sudden, you know, the A. P. I came out shortly after and said, let's start having a public discussion about the climate tax and climate pricing and yeah, all the signs are there, you know, all the signs are, are there, you know, and it's, it's, you know, I called this year the year that's going to be defined by defection. And, and the marketplace was part of the part of it.
And what you're telling me is exactly what I thought, which is the very sterile reality of just the way the manipulation of a marketplace can happen. And, and manipulation is not meant to be a negative word, Just an actual, just the way that it's being controlled. Now, the other side of it, of the defined by defection. It doesn't sound like this is you, but maybe, I don't know, um, is the kind of the, the, you know, big oil is the new big tobacco if you will kind of the modern day leper.
And you know, it's, it's, it's okay to socially shame oil and gas now this, you know, and, and that sort of thing. Um, I think that's part of it too. You know, and people are, are getting shamed at parties and they're not making the six figures anymore. And john Kerry saying, you know, go, go, go build solar panels and that kind of stuff. I mean, that's, that's tough to stay loyal to an industry. So, um, I don't know, I don't know if you're following me at all, but
Mike Rentfrow
I am and you know, my real, ... I knew I was doing the right thing. My, my kids, I have a daughter that turned 18 last week and she'll be going to college next year. She's got a free ride um, locally and when she started taking an interest in the renewable energy business, she's got a little bit of, uh, ... I'm not gonna say leftist, but maybe a little bit of a liberal, little bit left of center liberal outlook on things.
And when she started looking at the things that we were doing and applauding it, there was no question in my mind that this was truly the future. And I mean all the signs were there, but the social acceptance of it, it really came from my kids. ...
Jason Spiess
Let me ask you a question. Um, well because you've got, you know, 29 years in the industry, you gotta have some respect for the industry. I would imagine
Mike Rentfrow
a tremendous amount. I've done very well. It's, it's been better to me than forming in the north part of the, of the country could have ever been to
Jason Spiess
Me and you know, you're, you're doing 80% wind basically. Um, 20% oil and gas and a lot of that was directed by the marketplace in the last couple of years. But you're also not blind to, you know, the trends that are out there and etc how can, how can the industry and this is by the way, no right or wrong answer to this because the industry has spent billions of dollars in the last 10 years and we've gone from plastic bags and, and plastic straws, whether we should ban them or as paper
plastic better to the freaking president is issuing a war on oil and gas. So I mean things are not going the direction that the money was spent for public relations in the industry. Right? So how, how can we convince or connect and engage with people like your daughter? And I'm not saying your daughter has a disdain or a despise against oil and gas, but so much of the, you know, wind turbines and so much of the solar
panels and so much of what we do on a daily basis is, is fossil fuel related and petroleum. I mean a lot of the wind turbine is made out of petroleum and Tesla's are to, how do we
Mike Rentfrow
get absolutely the copper and the transmission, what is that mind with diesel operated caterpillar equipment.
Jason Spiess
Right. So how do we connect and get them to understand that, you know, we, we need, uh, you know, we are energy united front more of a kumbaya than, you know, it's all the only this kind or only that kind and, and that sort of thing, you know, is, I don't even know the answer, but is there a way to connect with these kids anymore. It's just just the horse too far out of the barn at this point.
Mike Rentfrow
You know, I honestly don't know the answer to that. But what I personally believe, if you look at the United States, you know, we're the, the administration in Washington has got this big push for renewables and that's great because Oil and gas can't produce all of the energy that's going to be needed in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, right.
But on the inverse side of the coin, does it really do the globe any good for us to quit trying to use hydrocarbons when You have places like China that are going to install 5000 new coal fired electrical plants in the next 10 years. You know, what's the, to me, it doesn't make any sense. Well
Jason Spiess
that's what I'm wondering, is that, is that where we're gonna go is are we going to wage war on china because they are using cold to stay warm. I mean, I mean, I know it's
Mike Rentfrow
ridiculous.
Jason Spiess
Well, it's a ridiculous question. But I mean if they're forcing a country, you know that they can only use their toaster on Tuesday because it's bad for the environment and climate change and another country is just firing up coal plants. I mean pretty soon somebody's gonna say, well, I want to use my toaster three times a week Now, by the way that America is the
one that can only use the toaster a few times a week? Well, I'm just curious about the climate czar and the climate envoy and what direction they're going, you know, you know, ...
Mike Rentfrow
I don't think personally that ... we have the influences in other parts of the world so we can truly make a difference when you have every country acting as its own sovereign if you will. Mhm. As much as I don't like the idea of one global government, I think that's what it would take.
Jason Spiess
Well that's the that's the that's been the conspiracy theory and ever since, you know, Earth Day first came around and you know as that eventually the you know the United Nations is gonna take over the military and force everybody through the act of well back then I think it was global warming is what it started as something like. Yeah, but because the environment is the one thing that we all share, you know, we all share that because and it's very easy to connect with the
environment. I mean you walk outside and you can connect and you've got great memories and you know even from the you know I I grew up catholic and I was an altar boy, a sunday school teacher, I went to catholic school and so I was spoon Yeah, so so so you know me, I was spoon fed fear and guilt my whole life, right? Just kidding, that's my catholic joke and um but when I look at you know, just even original sin from the whole, you know we we've destroyed the planet.
So we got to feel guilty about it. Just this whole movement. It's it's all there. It's it's interesting, you know, I mean people can call it a conspiracy or they can call it real or they can call it just, you know, evolution but it's just it's there. I mean it's happening.
Mike Rentfrow
Oh yeah. ...
Jason Spiess
Well like I said in the last 10 years, when you take a look at, when I grew up and you when when you got into the industries in the nineties right? That's when I was graduating high school. The only thing oil and gas ever came up with was the Exxon Valdez oil spill and gas prices And that's it.
Never any problems. And then the 2000s you started with plastic bags because of the litter. It was more about the litter than it was about the plastic bags and the same thing with the straws. It was more about the litter than it was about the plastic straws. But either way.
Mike Rentfrow
Well yeah but yeah but
Jason Spiess
totally but then they found out paper was was worse than plastic because of the logging and the amount of diesel it takes and blah blah blah and and but either way and you know in the in the nineties or I'm sorry in the two thousands it was basically that well then in the last 10 years we've gone from Elizabeth warren and Bernie Sanders aoc to the Green new deal where like I said, biden is
issuing executive orders. That's amazing. In 20 years of just of gas prices was the only issue too. Now there's this, I'm just, I'm blown away by such a thing. And you know,
Mike Rentfrow
when I had to pay for heating oil in Minnesota as a young adult and gasoline and oil and oil changes and tires and all this other stuff that comes from hydrocarbon. It used to trouble me and, and you might find this hilarious, but when my parents complain about that, they still live in Roseau, my dad retired from Marvin's, He worked at Marvin's employers most of his adult life.
I tell them, hey, ain't it? Great gas is four bucks a gallon, We're making money again, you know, and I'm dead serious and they're dead serious. You know, we're, we're our thought processes on, on two different sides
Jason Spiess
of the right. Absolutely.
Mike Rentfrow
They're trying to live on a, on a fixed income in retirement and I'm just trying to feed my family and keep them in catholic school long enough to get them into college, you know,
Jason Spiess
right? You know, natural gas. That's interesting too because you know, up up in your parents, part of the imagine Excel Energy is who they have.
Mike Rentfrow
Um, ...
Jason Spiess
Oh sure. Okay. No, actually I had one for a while too when I was rural outside of Fargo Morehead. Um, we were as a Halstead cooperative. So that, but at any rate, there was, you know, all those tax credits and the government basically forced everybody in one step or another to do a gas furnace up here. And, and so it's funny, you know, and when gas prices go from, you know, buck to two bucks to all of a sudden eight bucks, holy smokes somebody on a fixed income.
That's tough. Right? Absolutely. And of course the oil and gas companies like finally some money, we're making a natural gas after losing our tail for 10 years because it's
Mike Rentfrow
absolutely, and you know, it takes an Exxon or Chevron or shell, somebody like that. It takes them at least 60 $65 a barrel to actually break even between the time you figured the exploration of the building of the production infrastructure and, and everything that goes with that. And you know, when we were in the 2005, right up until the BP Spill, we were actually, they were making money, we were making money, it wasn't perfect.
But if you take a smaller company that buys these divestitures, when, when shell and Chevron gets done with these properties and they start becoming what they call a marginal property, they can make money, you know, somebody like maybe a walter oil and gas or, or somebody like that. They can make money at substantially less, maybe 40 or $50 a barrel. And, and it's, it's really interesting from my perspective to look at that, you know, a smaller company, they got a smaller
overhead, they've got less personnel, they've got less money tied up in exploration. They take these dead vestige of packages from DPS and the shells of the world and they do a little work over on the well and spend a couple million dollars and all of a sudden this thing is producing real well again. And, but it's always been interesting to me where the oil had to be at for each of these companies to actually be be profitable.
Jason Spiess
Yeah. Hm. And, and that just imagine change in the last couple of years to, with new change dramatically new regulations and everything. Yeah. Well,
Mike Rentfrow
and they beat the contractors up last year, several of them marine energy being one of them came back to the contractors because most of them ended up in bankruptcy. Yeah. With Covid and They were asking their contractors to take a 20-30% cut and there was no money to cut because they were already operating at rock
Jason Spiess
bottom. ... Yeah. I've heard a lot of stories about the operators asking their supply chain and then turn around and file bankruptcy or get sold out or get bought out and then they, you know, grandfather in those new cut contracts and all these other things. And so it's, it's been tough over there for the past couple of years for a lot of, a lot of the supply chain been very tough, very tough now.
So, okay. Um, kind of looking at the time you're wrapping up, you know, make sure you give your company a plug again. But just kind of, you know, most of our audience is oil and gas. So you know, what, what message, you know, you want people to walk away from and, and, and how can people utilize your business?
Mike Rentfrow
Well, we blue boat sub c, one of the companies that have ownership in is a primarily a renewable energy service provider. Um, we provide both vessels for the offshore construction, maintenance and operation of offshore wind carbon facilities, but we do about 20% of our business in the global oil and gas segment also. Um, we're here, we're, we're always available most people in various parts of the world.
I know myself or my business partner, Gary Wilmore and you know, we have in the last year really embraced the renewables because we see it as the future i with what I know of the overall energy sector, The use of oil and gas is um, been on an increase ever since. We first drove our first oil well in offshore in south Louisiana, south Louisiana swamps in the early 19 hundreds.
You know, as everybody that uses oil and gas continually uses more oil and gas. And at some point, there's just not enough of it. So that's one of the reasons that we embrace the renewable. We we see the global exponential growth of consumption not being able to be satisfied by just oil and gas. And that's why we embraced the renewables and the offshore wind as we have.
It's, um, to us, it's helping to supply a large part of the future energy segment and the consumption of the United States, especially in the larger metropolitan areas that don't have oil wells in their backyard. The only thing that is available are wind turbines or other forms of renewable energy yet to be developed.
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The Crude Life Podcast: Mike Rentfrow, president, Blue Boat Subsea