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The Crude Truth Ep. 124 Trey Cortez and Wesley Hanna

Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Rey Treviño [00:00:00] On this episode, I’m so excited, 2025, and now I feel like the year’s really started with my good friend Trey Cortez is coming back on. Of course we’re gonna talk whiskey, but he is putting together a great conference with the AAPG Conference Southwest Section here in the great state of Fort Worth. And also we’re going to be talking about the strong formation a little bit. I’m gonna dig some info, because I do plan on doing something out there on my own. But all that being said, we talk about that and much more On this episode of. The Crude Truth.

Narrator [00:00:32] In 1901, at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, the future of Texas changed dramatically as, like a fountain of fortune, thousands of barrels of oil burst from the earth towards the sky. Soon Detroit would be cranking out Model Ts by the millions and America was on the move thanks to the black gold being produced in Texas. Now more than a century later, the vehicles are different but nothing else has truly changed. sure there may be many other alternative energy sources like wind and solar and electric. But let’s be honest, America depends on oil and entrepreneurs, and if the USA is truly going to be independent. It has to know The Crude Truth.

Narrator [00:01:15] This episode is brought to you by LFS Chemistry. We are committed to being good stewards of the environment. We are providing the tools so you can be too. Nape Expo, where deals happen. Air Compressor Solutions. When everything is on the line, Air Compressed Solutions is the dependable choice to keep commercial business powered up. Sandstone Group. Exec Crue. Elevate your network, Elevate your knowledge. Texas Star Alliance. Pecos Country Operating, Fueling our future.

Rey Treviño [00:01:50] Well, hello again, and thank you as always. Man, I tell you what, these chairs, they just get me. Thank you again, as always, for tuning in for another episode of The Crude Truth. We are back here at our newly refurbished Fort Worth studios, and I’m just not quite used to them yet, I’m, I just want to kind of slouch and just kind of not be professional looking. I don’t know, I don’ know what’s in my hands right now. But as I mentioned in the teaser, no, no hands or butts. Trey Cortez is here again. Trey, how are you, sir?

Trey Cortez [00:02:22] I’m very good. Thanks for having me, sir.

Rey Treviño [00:02:23] Oh, no, no. Thank you as always. Cause God knows you are always so busy. And right now you have been on it with this AAPG conference Southwest section. I mean, I was telling you earlier, you know, I don’t know if I’ve even mentioned it yet, but the amount of people, the amount of sponsorships you’re rivaling some of these quarterly AADE events right now with just the amount of sponsors and all the greatness that you’re doing for the nonprofits that you’re working for as well. How are you what’s going on?

Trey Cortez [00:02:55] I’m good, man. Yeah, I’m busy. It’s funny, I moved from a really fast pace private equity company to Burnett. And one of the benefits of that is that we’re cash flow and so we usually don’t move super fast. So I was able to sign up for some things like this to serve and help. But as soon as I get this big position and role as the conference chair, we get busy at Burnett, so it’s been busy and I’ve been doing a lot of work over lunches. But yeah, it’s really coming together well and people seem to be enjoying and excited about what it’s going to be.

Rey Treviño [00:03:33] Wow. Well, you know, uh, the other reason, um, I wanted to have you back on cause I haven’t tasted any good whiskeys. And in fact, I just now finished the bottle that McAllen 15, I think that you recommended. I mean, that was something you just literally get it and you just enjoy and you sip. And that was amazing. Yeah. And, uh. The lineup you got for today is just ridiculous. look at you. I’ll be excited. But which one do you want to start with while we talk about what you’ve been up to?

Trey Cortez [00:04:02] Well, yeah, I’ll do a little precursor. And so I have two bottles here from TX whiskey because we’re going to be hosting the social event for this conference. We’ll talk about it later at TX Whiskey at the whiskey ranch here. This isn’t our first time to do an event there. It’s been really successful. So a good starter for the day would be this. This is TX whiskeys blended bourbon or blended whiskey, sorry. It’s a really easy drinker, lower proof. It’s only 41% alcohol and it’s sweetened. You want for wine too. Oh yeah, there we go. Sweetened? They basically, you know, distilleries have a major choice to make whenever they’re setting up because bourbon takes a while to age and so you don’t get cash flow very quickly. So what TX did was they sourced this whiskey from Kentucky and they added some things to it, made it a little sweeter, made easier to drink. And it turns out to be essentially how I describe this as a better Crown Royal. It’s sweet, really easy to drink, good in cocktails. But it’s really low injury proof.

Rey Treviño [00:05:10] Simple, lovely, crazy. Oh, that after tone, right?

Trey Cortez [00:05:12] A little vanilla, yeah, really nice, easy drinker. Some people think it’s too sweet. If you’re a hardcore bourbon drinker, it’s a little too sweet, but for people that aren’t used to and don’t like that really high alcohol bite, it’s nice and easy to drink. It’s a good starter.

Rey Treviño [00:05:28] It is a good start wine, by the way, good to see you. I have not been with you in a while. You’ve been over in Dallas for the last, I don’t know, six to 12 months.

Guest Speaker [00:05:37] It’s been a second, yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:05:38] And you’ve been rocking it over there. I mean, don’t get me wrong, but glad to have you back, sir.

Guest Speaker [00:05:43] Absolutely. Glad to be back.

Rey Treviño [00:05:44] So cheers. What do you think of this one?

Guest Speaker [00:05:46] Oh, this one’s great. The sweetness is good. Like you were saying, it’s sharp, but not like a bitter sharp. It’s like a nice edge to it. So it’s really clean. It goes down really nicely.

Trey Cortez [00:05:56] The great thing that happened with TX is that this took off. Like it’s so good for what it is. You know, they knew it wasn’t what they wanted to put out, which is their bourbon, but it was just so good that before their bourb and even hit the market, they already had product recognition. Their logo was out there everywhere because people liked this because it’s a good price point too. It was like what? Like $14 or 20 bucks a bottle or something like that. Did I get shafted? Should be 20 to 23, I think.

Rey Treviño [00:06:24] Okay. They got me. It was no, the reason why I looked is because the price on specs was one thing. And I got it. Well, wait, the price of the other place was like $2 more, but then this one was on sale for $5 less than the other price. So

Trey Cortez [00:06:40] evened out. This one should be a lot cheaper in the low 20s. This one should maybe be in the mid 30s.

Rey Treviño [00:06:46] Okay, yeah, no, no. That was not the low 20.

Trey Cortez [00:06:48] Oh, maybe maybe I’m mistaken. It’s been a long time of inflation.

Rey Treviño [00:06:52] You’re like, it’s been a long time since I’ve been bumming. Cause you’ve been still making your own. Can we.

Trey Cortez [00:06:58] Well, there possibly has been some whiskey made. Yeah. So you probably not having to, you’re not having to, uh, allegedly, right? No, we know. Allegedly. Actually made. Yeah. No, we actually, uh me and some buddies wrenched out a distillery about four years ago and made some whiskey. And, uh we just bottled the last of it a couple of weeks ago.

Rey Treviño [00:07:17] reduction either.

Trey Cortez [00:07:18] No, that’s all personal consumption now.

Rey Treviño [00:07:20] Oh my gosh. I love it. Well, no one, he doesn’t know what the price of the TX anymore. So, okay. You’ve also been, um, you’ve got that big event and I definitely want to dive into that. There’s only this, but, but you’ve been on it lately, doing a lot of talking. You, you been promoting it. Let me ask you this. Do you like work for the oil library or you over it? Cause you do, You bring a lot of recognition to the oil library here in full work.

Trey Cortez [00:07:46] I’m on the board. I’m the secretary of the board, so yeah. When I started at Burnett, we had three spots on the Board already, so they just asked me if I wanted to be one of those spots, and so I did. So yeah, we’ve been just trying to revitalize the oil library over the last six or seven years. It’s been tough as a nonprofit that relies on membership whenever oil is in a downturn, and most of the big companies that were all left. Uh, it’s been, it’d been challenging. So I kind of provided a fresh look, you know, I’ve got a long, uh, sales background and marketing background before I was in the nerd world of, of geology, uh and a little overlap. So that it’s, I been able to help with things like that at the oil library.

Rey Treviño [00:08:33] Gotcha. And then you’ve also been on this whole tour talking about the strong. Right. And I want to be selfish for a minute because I like that area. You know, what is it about that area? Cause you’ve been almost doing an unofficial talking tour about it.

Trey Cortez [00:08:48] Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:08:48] And, you know, what is it about that area and what what’s because I told you in our pre meet, you know, I have not been able to make it to any of them.

Trey Cortez [00:08:57] There’s gonna be more it’s good

Rey Treviño [00:08:58] Right, so what is it about it and what’s going on with the Strong?

Trey Cortez [00:09:02] Yeah. So first, you know, I’ve been working at Burnett when I got hired. Part of the reason I was hired is because I had this, uh, cross, um, training in geophysics and geology, luckily as my last two jobs have helped me have, but you know we, we were shooting a huge seismic survey over the four sixes ranch and 266 square miles, high effort, 55 foot bend spacing, long offset, three component, like beautiful data. And so we’ve been working that for seven, eight years that I’ve been there. At the same time, the whole strong play has kicked off to the south of us, more of the strong sands than the carbonates that we’re looking at, but it all just kind of hit at the same. And so it was kind of serendipity that we had this huge, beautiful data set. We’ve been workin’ it for so long. And then the ownership change happened at Burnett whenever Ms. Marion passed away and handed it off to her daughter. And we kind of shifted our focus from. these conventional like we’ve been for wildcatting for many decades.

Rey Treviño [00:10:03] Many decades

Trey Cortez [00:10:04] uh, to, to looking at more unconventional stuff in other areas. So, uh, we had a couple of meetings and we decided, uh let’s just let everybody look at our data and if they want to look, take, take a license for free and prospect on it, we’ll, you know, we look at them and if they want a drill something, we let them. So part of that was I’d already, when they gave me the, the rights to show everything to anybody, I was like, well, I’m just going to show everybody, put together this talk. And then they said, well let’s let other people. And so I put together this talk just to brag about all the cool work we’ve been doing. And then management told me that we were gonna actually let people take leases. So I was like, all right, I’ve already got the promo package put out there. So I’ve been going around to everywhere and all the different societies and letting them look at our data and showing some of the fun prospects we’ve put together. And then so people have come in and some have drilled some prospects on the four sixes, you know, I’m just taking a lease. But to your original question, we have this parallel movement of us opening up the status set, but the strong play, the sands to the Southeast is just going nuts because people are figuring them out.

Rey Treviño [00:11:17] You know, you mentioned two things there. One, people are figuring them out, but then the fact that companies like Burnett has been drilling there for generations, are decades. What are they figuring out that’s making it so exciting? Are they conventional? Are they non-conventional? You know? Are they the horizontals? You know what are they doing out there? And what do you see, you know, for what you can. Cause I do know, it’s like you, and this, I’m saying something I even tell you We have lunch like. If you can’t share something, right? I mean, I always tell you that. Well, yeah.

Trey Cortez [00:11:49] We all, yeah, we all know that we always walk a tight line, right?

Rey Treviño [00:11:53] Yes sir, y’all.

Trey Cortez [00:11:54] Yeah. So what I’ve seen, I haven’t worked the strong sands as much as I probably should have, but they don’t come up onto the ranch. There’s a tiny little portion in the Southeast corner that maybe we have some, some sands. So I haven’ t looked at them too much, but we, we have a lot of people that pitched them to us. And what I see is, you know, some old school mapping of channel sands and distributary bar sands, and these amazing geologists have mapped very accurately where sands are. And as you get away from the truly conventional high porosity, you obviously have these lenses that are lower porosity but they’re still just chock full of oil. So you have, it’s moved and that’s what the boom is now is folks finding that the areas on the flanks of these sands that have lower porosity that you can just drill a horizontal and slick water fracket and you have some great, great wells.

Rey Treviño [00:12:55] Wow. So with these wells, you know, Grant, I know you said to John, what would you all be anticipating these wells to come in at?

Trey Cortez [00:13:03] You know, I don’t know. I think some of them, some of the early ones have been some really nice, you know, 400 barrel a day plus IPs. I don’ know what the declines look like, but, um, I would imagine they’re moderate declines, you know, everything now has a pretty steep decline. But whenever you have a lot of times when you have these sands, it’s similar to like the Parkman sands and, um and why Wyoming, uh, you, it’s this low porosity. So. you can put a major frack on them and it’ll give you a lot of the oil up front, but then it falls off fast and then has a pretty flat decline after it falls up the initial production.

Rey Treviño [00:13:43] Well, that’s not bad. I mean, you know, to kind of just have something that’s got a good flat even after it falls off is because that’s consistency.

Trey Cortez [00:13:51] Yeah. And it depends on who you’re working. You and you’re different than the private equity guys. Just they want the huge IPs.

Rey Treviño [00:13:57] Right.

Trey Cortez [00:13:57] And they don’t care about late life, right? The smaller companies like consistency and we want cash flow whenever you’ve got your LOE down, your infrastructure built. And so I think that might be what drives us strong play is that it’s a lot of smaller operators that are looking for long term and it kind of hits that.

Rey Treviño [00:14:17] Well, I mean, yeah, I do agree it hits it. And when you look at it, the infrastructure is not going to be inexpensive, but I think if you can get past that part of it, just that play in general, there’s still years of production there. Definitely. What is one thing about that strong formation that you’ve always liked, just in general? Like something that’s always got your eyes on geology.

Trey Cortez [00:14:41] Yeah, I like, so it’s an interesting, I think the BEG does a good job of the Bureau of Economic Geology. They gave a talk at the oil library and, you know, geologists have been taught a way of depositional systems where you have limestones and you have sandstones and they don’t work well together. So if there’s sand, all the carbonate producers die, you So but what the BG is shown is that in the strong specifically? You have this interesting intermingling of sandstones and carbonates, uh, that are mutually beneficial, that you don’t have this, this yes or no, it’s either sandstone or it’s limestone. You have, this kind of interwoven, uh depositional system, which is to me, as, as a scientist that likes difficult problems is intriguing. Um, but what we’re at the four sixes ranch is pretty much all limestone, so we don’t to deal with that. But as you transition down into the more kind of traditional where the straw and sands are kicking off, it’s more complicated than that.

Rey Treviño [00:15:49] You know, when you say that I kind of get a little excited cause we’ve got a plan this year and to really kind of getting that area. You and I briefly talked about it many, many years ago and just on a random note, right? You know like, oh wow, here’s what we’re thinking. But we know that this year that’s an area because we do like those legacy areas, the legacy assets that do have a lot more consistency. Cause again, cashflow is king. at least for this, for the independence. And if you can just keep that cashflow and work within your cashflow, that is something that’s huge. And that helps out so much down the road. I think so. I do have to save a few pennies, but it just is what it is. And that longevity though, I want to just highlight that you look at Burnett. Burnett’s been around for 50 plus years and I’ll leave it there. I don’t want to dive into even further back in. But it goes further back than that. And these are plays that have that true longevity to where you can do some great things for 40 to 50 years easy.

Trey Cortez [00:16:56] Yeah, especially in the carbonates, you know, the sands are really good, especially the higher porosity sands. You find them, they’re well-defined. You’re able to produce some primary, secondary, even tertiary. The Antandy field is in tertiary recovery right now and it’s still just kicking out tons of oil and gas. The carbonates are interesting because they’re usually stacked. That’s kind of the nature of… carbonate mounds is that they build on bumps. So if you have one build, then you have another one build on top of it. You tend to build them on top, top of each other. So you just kind of work them from base to top or co-mingle them if the pressures work. And so a lot of these fields are so prolific is because they just kind of gone in systematically and moved up the hole as they find more pay and more pay. So it’s pretty exciting.

Rey Treviño [00:17:48] Wow. I love it. Nowadays, especially on West Texas, it’s how deep can you go? But in our case, it is going up the other way.

Trey Cortez [00:17:57] Totally different and it’s so much cheaper.

Rey Treviño [00:17:59] I was about to say, the traditional way nine times out of 10 always is, always is. Um, you know, with, uh, I want to ask you this with, with president Trump in office, have you seen kind of like all of a sudden a boom in oil and gas companies popping up out of nowhere lately? No, no. I’ve seen one, I’m like, who are you guys?

Trey Cortez [00:18:16] No, no.

Rey Treviño [00:18:17] I was just kidding.

Trey Cortez [00:18:18] No, we haven’t seen anything different.

Rey Treviño [00:18:20] No, no, nothing different yet. You don’t want to talk about the economics.

Trey Cortez [00:18:23] the economics of.

Rey Treviño [00:18:24] of President Trump.

Trey Cortez [00:18:27] But probably not. You probably don’t want to talk to me about those economics.

Rey Treviño [00:18:31] Well, I do want to talk to you though about what you’re up to. Thank you for that. I’ll butcher it again because we know how many times it took me, but it’s the AAPG Southwest section. Southwest section? Yes, sir. What is that? And let’s crack open up another bottle and dive into that.

Trey Cortez [00:18:47] Awesome. Yeah. I can, I can explain in poor at the same time. So the AAPG is a American association of petroleum geologists. It’s a national, it’s a National group. Um, and they have separate areas. So we are, we fall under the Southwest section. Um. It’s, it’s pretty large area. It covers New Mexico and Oklahoma and, um, some of the mid con Texas, not quite South Texas, but, um. So what we do as a smaller as a smaller group is just we get all the local operators of the area and come together once a year for a convention. And we have a convention that just kind of focuses on the city. So I didn’t even talk about what I poured. So this is the next step. So last time we had the TX whiskey blended whiskey. Now this is their bourbon. So this was what they were making while they were selling this and promoting this. Sitting back and letting this age for at least three years. I actually know some people over here and was a buddy of mine, Jason, and I were able to sample barrel number three The week before this went public straight from the barrel. And it’s, it’s a really good Texas whiskey. It’s pretty, pretty sharp. It’s a lot of oak, kind of what you expect out of Texas whiskey, but it’s really good now they have this huge distillery with the largest, uh, column still west of the Mississippi is enormous. If you haven’t been to the whiskey ranch, you gotta go. Uh, so we’ll be doing a social event there and the VIP tickets get tours of the entire distillery and a tasting. as well as a bottle, some barbecue rub, and a glass that has the logo on it.

Rey Treviño [00:20:35] Oh, whoa.

Trey Cortez [00:20:35] But yeah, it’s a.

Rey Treviño [00:20:36] Why come try this? Let’s see here. Oh yeah. That was got more to it for sure. There you go.

Trey Cortez [00:20:44] Yeah, it’s a lower proof than the 114. I think these are usually, yeah, 90 proofs still. It’s still only nine, nine proof points bigger higher than this, but it’s a completely doesn’t have any of the added, this is a true bourbon, didn’t have to be added flavors or anything like that. So you get more just classic oak. Caramel

Rey Treviño [00:21:05] Yeah, but that’s good. Yeah. That is after a good hard, like a hard day.

Trey Cortez [00:21:14] Hard day. It’s a hard whiskey for a hard day. Oh my gosh. They’re really good. You know, they it’s a whiskey making is a tough business. And there’s a there’s a balance between how long you age it. And if it’s good enough to put out, but you need cash flow. And so there they become really consistent early on they had some really good batches and some not so good batches. And now I mean, they’ve become really consistent, what I’m most. excited about TXs that they have really, really interesting experimental releases. So distillery only, they’ll do some high rye bourbons and some cask finishes. They have a sherry cask finish that’s really, really good, but they’re clever about how they combine their whiskey into other ways.

Rey Treviño [00:22:01] Okay. So you’re, you’re net you’re not your networking event, but you’re one of your events is going to be after distillery. correct?

Trey Cortez [00:22:10] Yeah. So the convention goes from April 26th through 30th. Okay. Um, on Tuesday is the social event. So as starts, it’s five 30 to eight 30 will be at the, at the TX whiskey ranch. Um, we’ll have a bunch of games. So the, the idea at this time is that we’ll have some custom cocktails. We have catering. We have really good bricks. Barbecue is going to cater it. Okay. Um, and then we’ll have a bunch of game. So our sponsors that signed up as like actual social event sponsors, they’re gonna have the opportunity to create like a little game for their company. Okay. All of the attendees will get a card that has basically a passport. If you go and play that game, you have opportunity to get more tickets to go into the raffle and you get to meet the vendors and talk to them and just compete in these fun games. We have like a chipping game, like a close to the pen, we have a putting game. Yeah, there’s a handful of little fun games that are gonna be played. And then we’ll give away something like a shotgun or I’m not sure. We haven’t picked the, picked a gift yet, but we’ll, we’ll give away some big.

Rey Treviño [00:23:13] You guys are just doing everything you all can to make this a great event.

Trey Cortez [00:23:18] Well, you know, like you mentioned that our sponsors have really stepped up and I didn’t know what to expect. You know, we, and as, as the convention chair, they give me all the papers from the past conventions and so we set our budget and expectations on those. And then, you change them for the city. I know I’m good at raising money, I’m a good salesman, and Amy Patterson is my sponsorship chair and she’s so well-connected and really good at this too. So I was like, you know what, and I went aggressive and I put our budget really high for sponsorships and we blew past that in like two and a half months.

Rey Treviño [00:23:51] Wow.

Trey Cortez [00:23:52] And so sponsors have been so excited about this because not only is it Fort Worth, who we have a reputation of being good, having camaraderie, like people show up to events, but it’s also the hundred year celebration of the Fort Worth Geological Society. So our local geology society has been around for a hundred years. They’ve seen such amazing things. And so we’re focusing on that and the great history that oil has been in Fort Thank you for watching. See you next time.

Rey Treviño [00:24:22] Wow, did not know that. Yeah, crazy, right? Why, what do you think of this one?

Guest Speaker [00:24:26] Oh, this one was great. It not only tastes good, but it smells good as well. Yeah. And then it just stays, it has a good lasting flavor. Yeah.

Trey Cortez [00:24:34] Long finish. Yeah. It’s oily. That’s I’m really surprised. So I’ll be honest, like for a while, for a long time, TX made all their whiskey out of these pot stills. And then they moved to this big distillery and sold out to, uh, Pino Ricard for a bunch of money, but, uh they changed to this huge column still, and I was really nervous that they’re changing their, their still style, their, everything’s going to change, but I am incredibly impressed with how consistent they’ve. made their product through that huge change because these, it still tastes very, very similar. And it’s actually, in my opinion, I agree. I think it’s more oily and it has a longer finished now than it did early on.

Rey Treviño [00:25:15] Well, I think it’s got a good resonating or a long. Yeah. Like I said, it stays with you, but it’s good. It’s like, Oh, you can enjoy that. And, um, I mean, this just hits, this hits the spot.

Trey Cortez [00:25:24] On a hot day with a piece of ice, this is pretty fantastic.

Rey Treviño [00:25:29] Oh, yeah, right. Yeah. I’m enjoying it. So what made you want to do like, what made want to like just jump on this one this year for yourself just because you were the chair or what?

Trey Cortez [00:25:40] No, that’s a good question. So, uh, I was the Fort Worth GS president. I went through that, those ranks and I took a few years off and, um, I participate kind of in the background for events similar to this a few ago. And I just saw the whole thing play out. I was on all the calls and, and I thought, you know, I could, I can probably do that and enjoy it. And, uh So Renee Wicksveen and I are both kind of in the same. area. We participate in a lot of these things. We could have done this. We decided that we were going to both run for president of the AAPG Southwest section and whoever lost would be the general chair. Okay. So she won. She’s the president of this section, but I’m the general chair. So I would have been okay either way, because honestly, she’s planning this with me. Right. But yeah, I like giving back to these things, I didn’t have a lot help getting into industry. Early on, I was very lucky that a colleague of mine was a fantastic geologist, got a really good internship. And since she was so good, the company started looking at our school until I got an internship just because she was so smart.

Rey Treviño [00:26:55] Right.

Trey Cortez [00:26:55] And then, you know, I did okay after that, but I didn’t really get a lot of help outside of that. And so I’ve really wanted to give back to our community from a community building perspective and helping students get jobs.

Rey Treviño [00:27:11] man, that’s so awesome. And again, you are, you know, somebody you talk about other things you’ve done. I think it was that geological society that you would do those things at the Flying Saucer here in Fort Worth, right? They were a little bit bigger when you were doing them. But I know, cause we even were able to sponsor one of those. And then we went to a couple and everybody there just having a good time to actually connecting. And then again, in the past I know our mutual friend, JP Warren has had you do things. In fact, I was talking about you. I’m tempted to try to do something there and Doug, we’ll see. Oh yeah. And I was like, you know what, to get you there to just to highlight certain whiskies, I think would be huge.

Trey Cortez [00:27:51] And that’s my first whiskey tasting ever to do with JP. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:27:54] Yes. Yes. And it went excellent. It was a good time. It was a very good time, uh, you know, you mentioned that you’ve got all these different events going on. Um, it’s a week long deal. We’ll partner a week. Uh, but you do have a, uh a Monday event, correct?

Trey Cortez [00:28:09] Yeah,.

Rey Treviño [00:28:10] That’s your icebreaker.

Trey Cortez [00:28:10] Icebreaker on Monday. So we started, we have a free short course style, the registrants, um, all day Monday. And then we have, uh, a great icebreaker that evening. That is, uh basically a memoriam of two legends of the oil field that passed away this past year, uh Bob gun, Greg Norman. Wow. So, yeah, so we, we put that together. Uh, I booked some good talent.

Rey Treviño [00:28:32] Yeah, I just. You know, do a lot of people know that he sings?

Trey Cortez [00:28:37] No, very few people know that. Burnett Oil has a vice president of engineering. He was actually a very good and, and well-known country music singer.

Rey Treviño [00:28:45] Well, first of all, I can’t believe he’s letting it out. Because when you mentioned Burnett oil, just in general, people are like. You know who Bernetta was? I’m like, kind of like, all of a sudden I’m like, no, wait, what’d you hear? But you know, when people think of Burnett, they think of you guys. Y’all are an echelon, y’all, you know. Last time I checked, you had the Burnett TCU hospital, I think.

Trey Cortez [00:29:11] There’s a lot of buildings name with the name Burnett. People ask me, so where do you work? I work downtown Fort Worth. Like which building? Burnett building, Burnett street. At Burnett Plaza. At Burnet Plaza.

Rey Treviño [00:29:27] but that’s what I can’t believe is that, well, we’ll get him on here, but I can believe he’s gonna, when people talk about something like, oh man, these guys are almost not human. And in a good way, you know, cause again, you guys have been around for so long. So who are we bringing on?

Trey Cortez [00:29:43] Waes Hanna.

Rey Treviño [00:29:44] All right, Wes, come on in here real quick. Now you mentioned the icebreaker and you got Wes Hanna doing that. And I can’t believe it. You were able to actually get that guy out of the office. But we might’ve dangled the whiskey word in front of them a little bit. I don’t know. Wes, how are you?

Wesley Hanna [00:30:01] Doing great, man. Thanks for having me on.

Rey Treviño [00:30:03] I’m excited when Trey goes, Hey, I might be able to get Wes. I was like. Like, no, you’re not going to get Wes.

Wesley Hanna [00:30:09] Well, you told me about the whiskey twist.

Rey Treviño [00:30:13] But man, it’s great to, like I said, I know you and I have crossed paths once or twice, but to actually have you here, because you guys, y’all are always doing more every time I talk to Trey. And it blows my mind because from a business standpoint, how strategic you guys are always are there at y’alls office. And there’s a reason why I’ve been, I’ve told you that once or two times, there’s always a reason why y’a’ll been around for as long as y’al have. But that’s not why we’re here. We’re talking about the icebreakers and the huge event that you. and your team have been just again, just seriously creating, it’s awesome. I’m excited, but you’re doing the icebreaker. Can we talk about that a little bit and what’s going on? And while we do that, can you pour us another round?

Trey Cortez [00:30:56] Love it.

Rey Treviño [00:30:56] Which one are we gonna do?

Trey Cortez [00:30:57] All right. We’re going with the old granddad 114. This is an old, old, really great bottle. Uh, the reason I brought this on is I always like to bring in a bottle that is, uh, it’s good for the money. So this is like a $26 bottle is one of the best you’ll taste. It’s got a high proof. So it can hold, holds up to old fashions and things like that. So I’ll pour this. Um, I’ll give a quick interview. Obviously it’s good. So Wes is an engineer at Burnett, but he’s also a country music singer. And so, uh, oh yeah, I guess I’m going to give you two, but, uh yeah, when we were putting on this new, we’re going to put on an icebreaker and it was going to be a tribute to Bob Gunn and Greg Norman, who passed away this past year. And so I wanted to have some, a country, music style singer, cause the theme is Western as we’ve talked about. And, uh and Wes is a engineer, a couple of doors down in my office. And I asked him if he was available. He checked his schedule and he was.

Wesley Hanna [00:31:53] Well, it’s on a Monday night. So, you know, we don’t have a whole lot of life opportunities on a Monday night, you

Rey Treviño [00:32:01] Well, all right, let’s take this one. Cheers. Cheers guys. Cheers guys, cheers.

Trey Cortez [00:32:04] I poured yours real big, right?

Rey Treviño [00:32:08] Well, I’m going to drink it properly this time.

Trey Cortez [00:32:13] So you want to just tell a little bit about yourself and your music career.

Wesley Hanna [00:32:18] Yeah, sure. Uh, so I started playing music back in my college days at Texas A&M and, uh, really got into it there, but after I graduated, it was, you know, either try, try my luck as a musician, which we all know is a pretty tough way of making, making money. And, uh I was tired being broke. So I had a petroleum engineering degree in hand. I said, Hey, what am I going to do? So, um, went to work, moved out to West Texas, worked out in the me in for about nine years out there. And then ended up coming on with Burnett about, well, it’s almost been eight years now. And that’s about the same, right after Trey started, it’s Trey and I started around the same time. So I came over to Burnett, got over here. And, you know, again, I’d done some music stuff off and on through like church and different opportunities like that, but really hadn’t done a whole lot of. writing, playing, doing all those kinds of things. Just mainly just like, I think I played a couple of gigs, you know, a couple barbecue joints and stuff, restaurants in the middle of the Odessa area. There’s not a huge music scene there, but moved here to Fort Worth. And obviously there’s a budding music scene here. It’s kind of like a, I would say what Nashville was before it became Nashville. So recognize that and then coming out of COVID. Actually, that’s how I got back into it was, you know, everybody was at home stuck by themselves. And I was like, man, uh, and oil prices were where they were. I was, like, I might need a backup option here for a career. Right. So, uh. But no, it wasn’t just that. I, I loved, I just realized how much I missed doing it and, um, and started writing music again. I’m like, Man, I gotta, I gotta get it, get this going. And, um. So put a record out back in 2022 and I’m working on a new one coming out in August this year.

Rey Treviño [00:33:59] Are you really going to do a, I’m not even going to give that song. That’s out right now. Any critics that I listened to it for the first time the other day. You know, you know, which one I’m talking about. Probably. Can we bleep it out? If I say it, why, um, oil money. Oh God. Okay. All right. Seriously, can we bleap it out, right? It is a tick tock or something. I don’t know. I don’

Trey Cortez [00:34:26] It’s funny because Wes and I drive out to the ranch a lot, and we have some long drives, talk about music, talk about everything, talk about whiskey. And so I got to know him a lot better. And a lot of his songs are oil field related because I mean, he was, he was a logging engineer. He spent some time. He was a rough neck, you know, he knows, he knows all the sides of the business. It’s really cool to be able to work with him in a lot of his song. They talk about that.

Rey Treviño [00:34:52] I tell you what, for you though, to have that experience being out there in the field changes the game. I was talking to somebody last week about that. And it’s like, when you’re actually out there in the oil field, working those night shifts doing that work, right? I just saw, y’all can’t see, but like, you know Wes almost had some flashbacks there for a second to those night shift. I feel like that really changes the level especially when you come into the office, like, no, no because you can relate, you understand, and you can see things that other people, geologists can’t see.

Wesley Hanna [00:35:26] Yeah, definitely makes it easier to visualize, you know, when somebody’s telling you what’s going on on location, you can kind of pick it up and then also just experience and different things you’ve witnessed like, oh, what do we do now boss? This is what I’ve done in the past, it’s worked.

Trey Cortez [00:35:41] Yeah, guys working on the rig, they can get a sense for if you know, the book smarts of what’s going on or what if you’ve been there. Right. And, you know, I’m, I’ve booked smarts all the way. I’ve never worked on the RIG. You know, um, uh, I I’m the one that comes in and people laugh at, you know, with a clean, clean hard hat and, and, uh clean boots. But Wes is completely different out there. It’s fun watching him, uh interact with everybody cause he’s, he’s done all those jobs. And so it’s a, and now he’s VP of engineering, Texas for Burnett oil. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome and you can sing pretty good too.

Rey Treviño [00:36:13] Well, I’m excited that again, we’ve already highlighted that things get bigger and bigger every day. It is. Your sponsors are getting, they’re getting that. What is that one that they do for the ADE? I mean, your rivalry, that thing for sponsors. You know, I don’t know for sure, but I mean there’s a lot that you’ve got now. What kind of music can we expect Wes?

Wesley Hanna [00:36:37] Well, like you said, country music, we are in Fort Worth, uh, you know, and I’ll, I’ll be the first to tell you, man, when I first started out, I thought I wanted to be Kurt Cobain or something. I realized I can’t sing like all my music. You know, you listen to, uh my early stuff and it’s funny cause it’s, it’s pretty rock heavy. And then you hear my voice and you’re like, who is this hillbilly? You know? And so I’ve come to terms with that. Not that, you know, it’s a good thing. I love country music and I’ve really kind of just settled into my sound. So you’re going to, you now, it it’s going to be, I would say kind of true. What I call more like traditional, um, You know, there’s a little bit of that Texas country in there, but it’s, it’ really just kind of the, the old school, like straight up country, honky tonk is a good, good way to describe a lot of it. Um, so yeah, it, it that’s what it is. it’s.

Trey Cortez [00:37:28] Plus he can do a couple of really nice covers of some old, uh, rap songs. Maybe if we, we have enough tips coming through,

Wesley Hanna [00:37:39] Maybe so.I have dabbled in the rap world.

Rey Treviño [00:37:41] What do you think of this $26 whiskey?

Wesley Hanna [00:37:43] I think that for 26 bucks to shut up and take my money. This is, this is great. I love a good deal on whiskey and good whiskey.

Rey Treviño [00:37:51] And this is good stuff. I’m really enjoying it. Yeah. Did you have some more?

Guest Speaker [00:37:56] Oh, I had some. Yeah. Yeah, this was delicious. My goodness. I might get some on the way home.

Trey Cortez [00:38:03] Don’t let it go up your nose, because it’s hot. Oh, man. Alright, I’ll leave that one to you, Rockstar.

Trey Cortez [00:38:16] Well, you know, I like, this is an old brand. They’ve been around a long time. They’re one of the only brands that made it through prohibition. They were actually producing through prohibitions as medicine. Um, and they have different releases. This is similar to like their higher end. Jim beam makes it similar to their higher-end stuff like, um, bookers or, or bakers, but they have three offerings. It’s like a 80 proof, a hundred proof, and this is the one 14. I like on these cheaper whiskeys, I like going higher, higher proof because they can hold up to cocktails better.

Wesley Hanna [00:38:49] I usually enjoy mine over ice, so higher proof is nice.

Rey Treviño [00:38:52] Yes. And you know, it’s funny, ever since we started doing these, I get to tell sound like I know more about like, well, actually, you know the rock geology and the aquifers of Texas are so much better, but also very similar to the ones in Tennessee and all the people at the liquor stores that are buying this. I’m like, Oh really? Yes, of course. You know, but no, this is very good. And this would definitely be nice over, over a big rock, you know, especially after a long day, probably with a good cigar. Perfect. Game changer. Now where’s the icebreaker event at again?

Trey Cortez [00:39:26] It’s at the Fort Worth club with the rest of the convention. It’ll be the kind of the kickoff. We have a short course on Monday. And then the icebreaker starts right after the short course finishes. It’ll five to eight, I believe that’s what it is. And so we’re gonna honor two legends of oil, Bob Gunn, Greg Norman. We’re gonna have some photos of them and some history and some of their personal friends. They’re gonna share some really cool stories and just have good music, good time, good cocktails. And there’s actually gonna be a student mentorship event also happening at that time, because we really, Choya Petroleum is our, one of our, Cholla Inc is our title sponsor. And they, when they, I didn’t even like pursue them for that. They came to me and said, we wanna be your title sponsor, but we just wanna make sure that the students get taken care of. So they really wanted their sponsorship to go towards students and student events. And so we have this really cool mentorship networking event for students where we’re pairing them up with industry professionals. And so that can walk them through the whole conference and meet people with them and show them how do you compose yourself in one of these industry settings.

Rey Treviño [00:40:41] Very cool. Wow.

Wesley Hanna [00:40:43] I don’t even tell me all that. Yeah. I really like those guys over there. They’re, they’re good. Good partners.

Trey Cortez [00:40:50] Yeah, at Burnett, we have a couple of long time, really good partners. Choya is one of them, uh, Mac energy is another. We have a lot of those private companies, uh you know, are Goals are aligned. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:41:04] Yes. And I always like to call them, not in a bad way. Um, and it comes from the old TV show, Dallas, uh, cartel, um, you know, uh that’s what Jr called it because it was, well, that’s, what Jr called the fan because it was a group of five, you know, on the show and it never was just the Ewing’s doing it, even though it may be Ewing oil on the show, but there was two or three other families involved at all times. And, you know, Jr always have found a way to, you but a But that’s what I remember and that’s what a lot of people don’t know is like, there’s so many families that do this work together. And because everybody’s aligned, they know what’s going on.

Trey Cortez [00:41:44] You kind of have to. It’s completely different operating from cash flow versus somebody that’s operating private equity. Yep. Your pace of development has to be different. And so we just, we just don’t, we can’t do that. So we have a lot of partners that are kind of in the same boat as us. We’re aligned. And the good thing about it is that you can move fast whenever, you know, you have a rolodex of people, they’re just like, hey, this asset, we can take it down ourselves. but we know X, Y, and Z can, and you don’t really have to do a lot of convincing. No. You know, once you’ve built some trust and some longevity.

Rey Treviño [00:42:16] And you talk about that and I’ll really say this, there’s about a half dozen families right now that are exiting that private equity. So you get back to the, hey, here’s what we can do. And that’s about it, it’s all I know.

Wesley Hanna [00:42:28] That’s great.

Rey Treviño [00:42:28] But, but no, that’s what makes it a lot neater is I tell you, you can do that, but also, um, it’s not overnight by any means. And it takes time and you’re looking at assets. You got to study them. And, uh, but again, when you have a group, a collective that you already work with, that you do things with, it makes it just so much quicker. Um, so it’s going to be the Friday night or the Friday night, the Monday night, you know, bias rakers going to be there, how many guys you got in the band?

Wesley Hanna [00:42:54] Oh, right now our, our band is, it’s a three piece. So it’s myself, uh, my wife, Stacy plays the upright bass. And then we have a, a friend of ours, Michael Durkin, he plays the fiddle. And occasionally we’ll pick up different players here and there. And if we, if we need a fuller sound of drummer and, or like a pedal steel guitarist, but, uh you know, primarily we try to play as a trio. Just, it, it it’s just easier to, you know book gigs and get, get to and schedule three people versus five. You know, um, it’s, it just a little bit more flexible and it, it fits in with our, uh, all of our, our, where we’re at in life right now. You know? It’s coming. You’re about to get a full time job here. Um, we have two boys, you know, and like I said, my wife’s in the band. So it’s not like, Hey honey, I’m going to leave and go, go on the road. Wait, you’re the bass player. So what are we going to do? We’re going to deal with these kids now.

Trey Cortez [00:43:48] Well, we, we only booked just Wesley Hanna. Yeah. So, you know, we’re getting, we wanted a little bit more, a little quieter setting, it’s kind of intimate setting. Yeah. We, we hope that he could do some more of his, uh, he didn’t want to pay my babysitter,.

Rey Treviño [00:44:02] Oh my God.

Wesley Hanna [00:44:04] Hey, we’re a nonprofit here. We’re a non-profit. You know, we can’t pay Wesley Hanna band money. Well, my, yeah, my wife, she, she works for non-profits. She can sit with us.

Rey Treviño [00:44:14] Well, you know, sophomore albums have always been the biggest albums for a lot of people.

Wesley Hanna [00:44:17] Yes, sir.

Rey Treviño [00:44:18] And I’m just saying, I’m just saying.

Wesley Hanna [00:44:19] Yeah, technically this is my, I guess, junior album. I did put one out in college, but a very different sound. And of course, so many, so maybe not that, but, uh, you know, I thought I was going to be, you Know, Cody Canada, cross Canadian ragweed Rogers or somebody like that. They were blowing up back then. Um, and they’re obviously they’re still blowing up. the just that I’m so far removed from that, that time, you know, time wise and sound wise. So it really is, feels more like a sophomore.

Rey Treviño [00:44:51] Well, I tell you what, everything that you and your team over there and you know, every now and then I get a chance to finally catch up with this guy. And I mean, y’all are always just just doing such a great job and you run a pretty tight ship over there is what what is what these guys.

Wesley Hanna [00:45:07] I tried to.

Rey Treviño [00:45:08] And again, I think it has to deal with the experience that you bring to the table.

Wesley Hanna [00:45:16] leverage as much as I can.

Rey Treviño [00:45:18] I’m trying, Wes.

Wesley Hanna [00:45:18] That’s all I got.

Rey Treviño [00:45:19] Yes. And then I think, you know, uh, next time around, I mean, you’re an integral part of that place. That’s, that’s what they told me. They can’t work without you live without you. There you go.

Wesley Hanna [00:45:30] That’s nice. Nice to hear.

Rey Treviño [00:45:35] But no, I’m excited again, Wes. And I cannot thank you enough for, for doing this. And, and, and really for the formal introduction, uh, Trey, cause I know I’ve, I know, I’ve met him once or twice, but to kind of be here in the green room with them and, um, you know, and, uh have some good old granddad, what, right? Oh, granddad one 44 and 14. And that means this one 14 proof. And, um. So I cannot, thank you. Enough. I really appreciate it.

Wesley Hanna [00:46:01] Yes, sir. Thanks for having me on.

Rey Treviño [00:46:03] I still can’t believe he’s gonna be singing. That’s gonna to be so exciting.

Trey Cortez [00:46:07] Yeah, it’s fun. I’ve, uh, I’ve got to know him, like I said, uh over the years. And so we’ve had long, long, uh truck rides and he has, he’s very opinionated in his country music. And so you’re, you’re going to, you going to hear a really good set of music that, uh he, there’s a lot about the oil field. Uh, it, it really is fun.

Rey Treviño [00:46:26] So no Dabouji or whatever that guy’s name, no long time road or whatever, anything like that. I’m butchering those names by the way. I’m Butchering the names of those songs. You give me some George Strait and I’m happy. Okay, so for people that have not already signed up or haven’t even seen one of your many, many marketing deals, how can they get ahold of you guys?

Trey Cortez [00:46:46] Yeah, so the best way is to connect with me with me on LinkedIn. So that’s where I do most of the promotion of this Trey Cortez on LinkedIn, but we have a website. It’s AAPGSWS2025.org. We’ve got all the information there and you can register now. Registration is open. We’re about to close probably April 1st. We’ll be closing down sponsorships and everything. We have to start printing everything. so. Um, I don’t know when this is going to run, but, um, uh, yeah. So reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’ll, I’ll connect you into the way we need volunteers, uh. We just need people to show up. It’s a lot of, a lot work. Um, and so, yeah,

Rey Treviño [00:47:29] Wow, man, you know, with everything that you are doing, you know you mentioned the, the Choya that y’all are doing the mentorship program there. And you, you highlighted that even before Wes came on. What is something that you’re really excited about getting out of this for this mentorship program?

Trey Cortez [00:47:47] Man, that’s a great question. I really appreciate students, and we’re in a difficult time with students right now. A lot of students don’t know exactly what oil and gas does, or they have a perception that is incorrect about the role of oil and the gas in the world. But we still have students that want to get into oil and cast, which is great. So I like. the fact that we’ll have industry professionals that are one-on-one with students that are gonna show them how to connect and network with people, what to look at, what to not waste their time on. And then they just start connecting and who knows when they may need something from an intern or something like that. So I’m really excited with just seeing personal connection from students. A lot of the students, the geology students in the area are international students and which adds a whole another level of complexity to how they connect. They don’t know the culture, they don’t the language as well, but they’re brilliant scientists. So we need brilliant scientists in this field. I don’t care where you’re from. I want you to be in oil and gas, making good decisions.

Rey Treviño [00:49:07] You know, we still are at a point too, where we do not have a lot of people coming into the industry. You know the numbers are up, but they’re not as good as they could be, right? And you can always say that, but it’s true. It’s like, you know, we still have the shortage and we, you know, I think, you know, geology is so important to what we’re doing. You know what you guys are doing, you know, it is a science, you know, people forget that we’re not just looking at rocks all day or you get your black light, right? You know, I know that’s what my guy does and we make him get there. Why we, I don’t make them. I mean, he makes the drilling crew, uh, you know, start getting samples and then you get into his, all right. Let’s slow down the rig, add this much more mud, you know, or less mud, I dunno, to, to really get a good grasp of what the samples are, am I saying any of that?

Trey Cortez [00:49:53] No, you’re, you know, you, you you’re on the money. Am I on the money? Okay. I think, I think the perception of what we do, maybe to the outside world is, is different. I, my, my collection and that’s definitely I have a rock. I know you, my daughter has a good summer. I think her perspective on it at whenever she was like six or seven years old, my oldest daughter, she said, she asked me why the clouds looked that way and you know I’m an earth scientist, I know I’ve learned all these things, right? And I told her. And she’s like, how did you know that? I was like, well, I’m a scientist. And she was like yeah, of rock. So I think that’s kind of a perspective that a lot of people share is like, yeah, these guys, they lick rocks and they use black lights and that’s about it. But, you know, obviously there’s a lot more.

Rey Treviño [00:50:39] a lot more to it. And, uh, you know, plus the clouds got to be in a certain spot to really pick the good. All right, So what are we drinking here?

Trey Cortez [00:50:45] Yeah, so we’re going to finish off with, in my opinion, this, this may, this is arguably the best whiskey in, uh, that’s made in Texas, right? So still Austin has done a great job. So maybe I need a caveat to that statement.

Trey Cortez [00:51:02] Yeah, they’ve won lots of awards at this. People are going to come at me for this that are whiskey people. So still Austin is the best Kentucky style bourbon whiskey out of Texas. It’s really approachable. Um, it tastes more like a, a true, like Kentucky style bourbon from any else, anything else in Texas. And that’s hard to do in Texas because our temperature is so fierce that it creates these really powerful flavors, uh, through all the interaction of, of, uh of the whiskey to the would because it’s happening faster because of our temperature fluctuations. So they’ve done and Nancy Fraley is a legend of whiskey who has helped out with Steel Austin. And she has some really clever techniques that she uses to tone down that Texas like punch. So this is, in my opinion of Steel Austin, this is their best whiskey release. And it’s cast really, so it’s high proof, but it is really complex, but it’s a proof 58%. So 116. So it’s similar to the- The old granddad. But what you’ll get compared to the old grandad, this is gonna be much more complex. It’ll have multiple flavors that come across your palate and then something else even after you drink it down.

Rey Treviño [00:52:12] Smells good.

Trey Cortez [00:52:18] Yeah, you get a lot of cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, like these spices that are, are, are just, it’s like Christmas. It’s it is. It is like a Christmas. It’s, and this holds up to, if you drop some water in it, we don’t have water. Gosh, we didn’t, why didn’t we bring water?

Rey Treviño [00:52:34] Oh, why wouldn’t you?

Trey Cortez [00:52:36] If you drop some water in this, one of the cool things I like to do with whiskies, especially that are cask string is drop a little water in them and look at them. And you’ll see the oils that are swirling around. And that tells you a lot about, you know, how they filter it or don’t filter it. And the oils, the oils are what sticks to your mouth and gives it that long lingering finish.

Rey Treviño [00:52:56] Um, wine was over there just shaking his head on this. Yeah, it’s good.

Guest Speaker [00:53:01] On his way out, Wes said that he was taking that one with him and I understand why. Yeah, that’s great.

Trey Cortez [00:53:09] I made the mistake of telling him this was my favorite.

Rey Treviño [00:53:10] And I probably should have, I probably should have asked you first, but I felt like he was more of a guest today. And, uh, in fact, you know, this is your third time on the show. I am going to do something for the five timers. And I don’t think you’ve heard that one. I don’ know, but a JP has been on four times. Okay. Keith Stelter. I don”t know if you ever officially met him out of West. He’s been on for times, Jim Holmes, I think has been three. And then my friend, good friend, Brianna Johnson, I was been on three or four times, and this is now your third. Time should have been your fourth. Because you’re going to be on with Dr. Turko

Trey Cortez [00:53:41] I had to back out on that.

Rey Treviño [00:53:42] Yes, but um, I didn’t know that y’all really had like again the strong in her whole Doctorial was on I caught the Fort Worth Basin, but that she’s called it the southwest Oklahoma We don’t talk about that. Um But uh, but yeah, so this is your third time on so anyway, I do want to apologize I was like I kind of offered that to Wes now without even asking because cuz you know And I love though you’re like, oh, yeah, that’s right. He gives me I was I can’t everybody’s getting about I’m not

Trey Cortez [00:54:09] Well, I’ll be like, so it’s kind of a funny, I told him this too. Uh, you know, I have a very large whiskey collection and I, I like giving Texas whiskeys away to people because people have a, a misconception about Texas whiskey. This is my go-to gift bottle always. I have never owned a bottle of this, but I’ve bought probably 20 bottles of it because I’ve just gifted them all away. Okay. It’s, it’s the, I think this is the best, like to change a die hard, like. Bourbon’s only made in Kentucky guy. Yeah. This is, this is the one that changes their mind.

Rey Treviño [00:54:44] Now what is, I think I’m going to butcher it, but you said cast iron or? Cast strength. Cast strength, what is that?

Trey Cortez [00:54:49] So that means the proof that it comes out of the barrel has the same proof that is in the bottle. They don’t add any water.

Rey Treviño [00:54:56] Don’t add any. Oh, wow.

Trey Cortez [00:54:58] So it’s high, that’s why it’s, it’s a hundred and you know, this is actually low for a cast strength, but that’s part of it’s 116 as a cast string, but Nancy, one of her strategies and one of her tools is that she adds this. I love this. She’s such a chemist too. She adds water throughout the aging period of these barrels, which a lot of old time distillers and blenders are anti that. But what it does is, and she said this first, I asked her this question on Instagram Live one time. And she was just like, oh. So what it is, is it changes the concentrations of water, which is the universal solvent, right? Right. And it makes new, after it’s been aging for a while, it makes a new reactions take place, pulling more sugars out of the wood and things. And those sugars will. turn into things that kind of mild the flavor that most Texas whiskey is going to punch you in the face with.

Rey Treviño [00:56:04] Now, let me ask you this. Okay, so for those out there that this is their first time watching you and I, because I do tell people all the times, like, well, I mean, I even have a great geologist and we talk about whiskey.

Trey Cortez [00:56:15] and go back to the first one.

Rey Treviño [00:56:18] And I go, so for those out there, what makes Texas again, you know, just in a quick nutshell, cause I know we definitely highlighted that on that. So go back and check out the first episode. We really highlighted it. But you know what makes sex is such a great place cause this isn’t the only award winning. Whiskey in Texas.

Trey Cortez [00:56:34] Yeah, and kind of interesting on and interestingly enough. I have another small plug then We were a garrison brothers is another Texas distillery that allowed us to go on to their ranch and actually sample Their water we looked at cuttings from their water wells and things like that And what we found was that a lot of the so most of the aquifers in Texas are limestone aquifors which is always heralded as the best aquifer for whiskey for a handful of reasons. It’s a good particulate filter. You don’t have a lot of stuff coming in. It holds in a lot iron and sulfur, but what it also does is it acts as a pH buffer. So if you have a water with a lot calcium carbonate in it, the water tends, it won’t change pH a lot. The calcium carbonates has two different chemical cycles that it’ll switch either this way or that way. to normalize to a very small range of pH, which the reason why that’s important is that yeast likes a very constant pH whenever it’s creating the alcohol. So Kentucky, one of the reasons why Kentucky is what it is is that it has the same thing. It’s got limestone water that has high calcium carbonate content, low iron, low sulfur. So Texas aquifers are very similar. And in some cases, the exact same time stratigraphic. as Kentucky. So that’s led to a lot of whiskey being very good in Texas, similarly to Kentucky.

Rey Treviño [00:58:07] Okay, very nice, man. In a nutshell. Yeah. Yeah, in a nutshell,

Trey Cortez [00:58:12] Yeah, that’s the smallest nutshell I can make.

Rey Treviño [00:58:15] Golly, well, you know, everything that you’re doing right now, again, when is, when is the event?

Trey Cortez [00:58:20] April 26 to 30. So 26 is a Saturday. We have two field trips, one on Saturday, one Sunday. Okay, we have a K through 12 teacher, STEM teachers workshop on Sunday. That total and BKV are providing a bunch of help to teach a bunch of K through 12. So teachers about earth and environmental science and energy and providing them with they’re going to take them on a site visit. There’s going some operations here in the Burnett.

Rey Treviño [00:58:50] Hotel. Yeah. Oh, Nicky Morris and all them doing. Yeah

Trey Cortez [00:58:53] Yeah. Well, Nicky Morris is at TCU now, but yeah, speaking of Nicky Morris, that’s the other really big, uh, big get for us. I asked a handful of people to be our keynote speaker and they all say, said yes. And so we have a keynote panel. Uh, Nickie Morris is the moderator. Okay. It was formerly a TEP or total total, uh Burnett. Uh, Larry Brogdon, a four sevens oil is going to be on the, on, on it. Uh, Andre Griffin from, uh, XTO and now at TCU on the board, uh Rebecca Harrington and, um, Gideon Powell from Choya are all going to be. So this is, so Rebecca Harrington works at BKV who now operates most of the, the Burnett, um and so Andre, um Griffin, she saw kind of the handover from, you know, George Mitchell, Larry Brogdon, four sevens over to the bigger companies. And so we have this whole history of the Burnett on a panel. What is that? It’s on the Monday.

Rey Treviño [00:59:56] Okay.

Trey Cortez [00:59:57] Monday I believe.

Rey Treviño [00:59:58] Yes, I’m going to sink into that one.

Trey Cortez [01:00:01] I remember it was Tuesday, I’m sorry.

Rey Treviño [01:00:02] Tuesday

Trey Cortez [01:00:03] It’s the kickoff. Yeah. So Monday is the short course and the ice breaker. The Tuesday morning, we kick off with, uh, my opening remarks and then that, that keynote panel.

Rey Treviño [01:00:13] Okay, I’m sneaking into the open remarks now.

Trey Cortez [01:00:15] It’s gonna be really really good

Rey Treviño [01:00:17] I’m going to pull your name. I want to say, no, I know.

Trey Cortez [01:00:19] I can probably get you in.

Rey Treviño [01:00:21] Okay. All right. That’s awesome. I did not know that. No, Nicky.

Trey Cortez [01:00:24] I haven’t announced it to everybody yet. Oh.

Rey Treviño [01:00:25] Oh, okay. Well, hopefully by the time I promise we’re going to get this out soon.

Trey Cortez [01:00:29] No, I’m glad I mentioned it with Troy a few, few weeks ago on, uh, on the PBE podcast, but I have them all locked in. We have content.

Rey Treviño [01:00:37] Yeah, by the way, I never met him before. I never saw, that was awesome. I did watch that. That was good. That was really good.

Trey Cortez [01:00:44] He’s fine, we have fun.

Rey Treviño [01:00:46] Yes. Yes, y’all did. Yes. I’ll did. And I always think about the Goonies. Yeah. We know Troy and I think it’s cool how Troy is doing so much. I will say that Gideon and that family, they’re, they are phenomenal. And they’d be doing, uh, they’ve been doing great things for a long time. The Burnett family has only continued to give a Brogdon the four sevens group. What, what, what a team and a Nikki coming over to the, as you know, you know I’m working on my MBA. Nikki being over there, every single person that has taken over that position, I feel like has raised the bar every time. From Davis to Ireland to Dr. Bluntzer to now, and if I miss somebody, I apologize. But now to Nikki, I mean, you can’t, the experience she has, the knowledge she has. And I think she really demonstrates that the Fort Worth connection is so strong. Agreed. That people don’t know about it. And she is the epitome of how strong a true Fort Worth connection can be, even if you do come from Baylor Bear. But again, so one more time, how can people register for the event?

Trey Cortez [01:01:56] Yeah, please look me up on LinkedIn, Trey Cortez, or go to aapgsws2025.org. We’re on there. And yeah, all the registration details. We have block a room at Kempton. Like it’s gonna be a good event.

Rey Treviño [01:02:15] Trey, as always, I know you’re busy. We definitely went over time today for everybody out there. Also, if you have any questions about whiskey, he is a guy. Instagram, is that still?

Trey Cortez [01:02:26] But we’re taking a break.

Rey Treviño [01:02:27] From this,.

Trey Cortez [01:02:28] It’s too much, I got too much going on.

Rey Treviño [01:02:31] I just got on that a little while ago. I, but okay. But if you do got whiskey questions, he’s the guy that can get it done. And he also does hosting parties for a fee. And if you want him to wear an actual suit jacket, it’s going to cost extra. But no, Trey, I cannot. Thank you so, so much for coming in. Wyom is great to see you, sir. And thank you as always. And to all our listeners out there, thank you. And we’ll see you again on another episode of The Crude Truth.

Narrator [01:03:00] Again, The Crude Truth would like to thank today’s sponsors, LFS Chemistry, Nape Expo, Air Compressor Solutions, Sandstone Group, Exec Crue, Texas Star Alliance, Pecos Country Operating, and Real News Communication Network.

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