This Is Why We Need to Make Oil Irrelevant

Dear Reader,

“He’s going to turn this place into North Korea,” Yuri said to me as we walked past a pack of stray dogs fighting over some unidentifiable piece of rubbish.

“A few years from now, you won’t be hearing from us anymore, and we certainly won’t be hearing from you.”

The conversation took place a stone’s throw from the banks of the Volga River, in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod in December 2019.

My wife had warned me about her father. Warned me not to bring up Putin with him — ever — because it’s a topic that he already manages to circle back to no matter where the course of a given conversation is naturally flowing.

Her point was proven on the first day I ever met him, when I asked him if he knew anything about Elon Musk’s then-recent launch of his Tesla Roadster toward Mars on the tip of a Falcon Heavy launch vehicle.

“If he wants to do some real good, he should put Vladimir Vladimirovich on the next rocket,” was what I got in response.

That’s what he called the Russian president. Vladimir Vladimirovich, the proper, formal, respectful way to address any adult — first name followed by patronymic.

When Yuri said it, however, it dripped with sarcasm, the same way it did when he referred to Putin as “Czar” or “King” and my personal favorite, “Senyor Pomidor” — after a tomato-headed tyrant from a Russian children’s book who makes his subjects pay for the air they breathe… a book that is now banned.

Don’t Call It a War, or Else

My wife’s recommendation, to “just ignore” her father, was difficult to follow. He was an interesting, educated, worldly engineer who spoke English and German fluently and had lived abroad for many years of his life — something few Russians get to do.

He always wore a wry smile when discussing his favorite topic, but I could see the anger bubbling under the surface.

I didn’t ignore him. But I also didn’t take him completely seriously.

He was, like many Russians, given to flights of emotion after long periods of silence. It was just him releasing tension, I figured. Russia had never been ruled by anything other than a tyrant, and yet it had managed to make it into the 21st century at least somewhat resembling a modern nation.

How, and more importantly why, was Putin going to turn his country into a prison?

It only took 26 months for me to get the answer to that question.

Last week, Putin signed into law a restriction on the dissemination of “fake news.”

Specifically targeted will be any “inaccurate” statements made about the military or the government. The penalty for breaking this law will be up to 15 years in prison — a stiff punishment for such transgressions as referring to this invasion as an invasion or a war, or referring to Putin as a dictator.

Zero to North Korea in Eight Days

Russian news media have been prohibited from using any such terms. Any Russia-based news outlets that insisted on sincerity, what few there were, have closed their doors and left town.

This should all paint a pretty vivid picture as to what sort of speech will be weeded when it comes to the general public.

And Senyor Pomidor wasted no time in enforcing this law. Arrests are already being made by the hundreds across the country. Our friends and relatives stuck behind this descending iron curtain now fear using certain words on the phone.

Let me remind you that we’re only two weeks into this thing. The law was signed just eight days after the first shots were fired.

My point here isn’t to go off on Putin but to use him as an example of yet another small-minded tyrant who now holds the world hostage, if not with threats of nuclear holocaust then with threats of export bans on Russia’s substantial fossil fuel resources.

Which leads me to the big question:

Why is it that every natural resource we need in abundance is always located in dirt ruled by the world’s most dangerous men?

Iran, Venezuela, and Russia have oil and natural gas. China has lithium and rare earth metals.

Between those four broad classes of energy-bearing resources, the rest of the world is left exposed not just to higher gasoline and heating costs, but also to an uncertain future with regard to electrical vehicles, renewable energy, and distributed power storage.

The Next World War Has Selected Its Participants

Four oppressive regimes, two of which we’re all but helpless in managing.

There is, however, a light at the end of the tunnel.

While the thought of direct military entanglement with either China or Russia is simply unrealistic if we want to continue living as a species, the possibility of removing ourselves from their food chain is now potentially within reach.

I’m not talking about a policy or behind-the-scenes political chess play, but rather a technology that today gives us the potential to step away from dependence on foreign oil and foreign-supplied rechargeable batteries.

There is a new generation of battery, currently in development in Australia, that uses no raw materials with complicated supply chain issues.

No lithium. No rare earth metals. Just aluminum and a space-age new material that earned its developers the Nobel Prize in 2010.

This new material, once thought impossible to produce en masse, is now being manufactured using highly abundant natural gas as the fundamental building block.

The resulting batteries not only free us from malignant foreign dependence, but are also a quantum leap in performance.

I’m talking about a 70x increase in charge time and a 2–3x increase in service life.

One-Minute Charging for the Next Generation of Teslas?

Improvements of that caliber will allow for EVs to fully charge faster than a traditional ICE vehicle can be fueled at the pump — nothing short of a Holy Grail-caliber milestone for the industry.

The company developing this battery has been working quietly for years on this technology, but just recently opened a pilot plant to actually produce these cells.

Now, thanks to Senyor Pomidor, the markets have been hit by a tsunami over the last week or so.

This company, which now trades publicly in the U.S. and Canada, lost almost 25% of its market capitalization — despite no news to speak of coming from the company itself.

That makes this already underbought stock a massive bargain at the moment.

If you want a glance at the detailed report I recently published on the topic, you can get the full story right here.

And bear in mind that this isn’t just an investment in technology. It’s an investment in a future where our dollars no longer feed foreign tyrants and tyrannical regimes.

Again, if you want to see the details on this company, check here to peruse the report.

Fortune favors the bold,

Alex Koyfman

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His flagship service, Microcap Insider, provides market-beating insights into some of the fastest moving, highest profit-potential companies available for public trading on the U.S. and Canadian exchanges. With more than 5 years of track record to back it up, Microcap Insider is the choice for the growth-minded investor. Alex contributes his thoughts and insights regularly to Energy and Capital. To learn more about Alex, click here.