Efrain Garcia with Allstream Energy Partners

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Power Gen, industrial revolution, data centers, AI demand, natural gas, energy transfer, SMRs, computational fluid dynamics, collaboration, digital magazine, midstream calendar, renewable energy, cybersecurity, innovation, education.

00:00

Scott, welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott. MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots and let's go all right

00:21

once again. Welcome to industrial talk, the number one industrial related podcast in universe that celebrates industry professionals all around the world. You are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you solve problems, you do it each and every day. And you just are making the world a better place. We just celebrate you. You are the heroes in this story and on this platform we are broadcasting on site. Power Gen is the event which is pretty cool. It is in Dallas, Texas, which is a traffic nightmare, but don't I digress. That was just something that's been rubbing me the wrong way. But power gen's fantastic, quite frankly. And you get to meet great people, like, keep them. Hey, how you doing?

01:03

Man, I'm happy to be here. Yeah, such a treat. Yeah, we,

01:09

we were friends online first, which sounds sort

01:12

of creep. Yeah, we met. We met online. Yeah, it's as creepy as it can get. Yeah, it just slipped into the DMS, and now we're here, yeah? So we met for the first time. We've been connected on social media, LinkedIn, Facebook. We talked on the phone, talked on the phone dozens of times, yeah, and in person yesterday, I'm like, Hey, this is amazing. Like, I love the energy. You're part of the inspiration of where we're at now, man, it's been great. I'm so happy to be here. Have you liked a show? It's been great. You know, I'm traditionally oil and gas guy, yeah, upstream, midstream, downstream. And so seeing this, this emerging market of the energy that's going to be touching the data centers and the AI demand, it's ridiculous. It's huge. It's huge. So just also, just happy to come here and learn and see this new market for us.

02:02

It's an exciting time. I'm I always advocate if you're looking for a profession, this is sort of to inspire the young people if you're looking for a profession, my goodness, energy is where it's at. Man, there's just so much going on. It changes. The conversations that I had last year are completely different than the conversations I'm having this year.

02:21

This is I was talking to some folks. This is the next industrial revolution. It is. It's if I was like guys, if you guys aren't positioned for this, you're going to be very, very surprised in the next six months to a year. It's just so we've been reporting. So we started a magazine, a digital magazine, called all stream insiders and all these news articles that are popping up and distribution, our distribution outlet is, is power data centers. Power data centers, yeah. Uh, cloud computing, mega, mega projects, yeah. And now that I'm seeing these, these traditional oil and gas companies like the chevrons, just made a an announcement for up to four gigawatts of power with this new joint venture with GE Renova and engine number one, I believe this is the name of the company. And I was like, I'm an oil and gas guy. I had to google it. What does four gigawatts get you? Yeah, 3 million homes. Yeah,

03:15

power. It's huge. It's It's massive. You know what the biggest challenges are? One of the biggest challenges within the power generation. The technology exists. That's great. It's good stuff and and it just constantly evolves, and it's a fantastic thing. It's the infrastructure. So if I'm, if I'm slapping a gig, you know, a massive generating asset, how do I get it to point B,

03:39

right, right. It's the manufacturing is going to need to catch up. Yeah, the engineers are crossing over into new markets, which is great. I mean, it's a really, really exciting time. It is. You

03:53

need see we're just chirping without like

03:59

old friends, yeah, that's right. Let's level set give us a little background on who you are. So my name is Ephraim Garcia. I'm the founder of all stream insiders, which is a digital magazine that really focuses on the positive side of the industry and only the positive. We do not allow anything negative on our platform. It's

04:19

plenty of outlets that sort of, sort of chirp on, yeah,

04:23

yeah. We're not giving any ammunition to somebody, to somebody that will protest us. Yeah. The origin story is COVID hit, second baby on the way. Yeah. And I said, Wow, how do I stay relevant? How do I create something and, you know, feed my family? Yeah. And, funny enough, I knew of you, and I saw some of the podcasts, but the one that really resonated the most was it was, it was like, the title was like, post pandemic success. How to be successful in post pandemic marketing, selling, right? And I was like, I'm gonna listen to this. Yeah. And the two key takeaways was, I. Uh, education while being entertained, yeah? And collaboration.

05:04

So if you can't do it, yeah, you got, you got to collaborate.

05:08

And I'm like, Yes, we are stronger together. And when I worked at this engineering company, I created this platform where we were destroying scrap material and talking fracture mechanics and what happened, how it behaved. And so we started this educational, fun video series that ended up turning into a media production company. So now I own a video videography. We'll go on site. I don't want to do the interviews. I love to enhance the amplify the voice, yeah, and then the second one, the collaboration. I was in charge of the midstream division of our company. And so I said, Okay, collaboration. You know what? I'm gonna be the guy everybody talked about a unified events calendar that nobody showed the initiative for. And I have an already friend like, Hey, man, I need a, I need a I need a website. Tomorrow morning. He goes, You're crazy. I was like, subscribe now. Coming soon, something I'm recording all night, and we're gonna launch, yeah, and this is the middle of COVID. And I was like, guys who has the energy to keep track of all these different events? Yeah, you don't have to anymore, because midstream calendar.com will be that source for Yeah. So fast forward, we just rolled 15,000 followers on LinkedIn yesterday on midstream, good deal. So it's been a blessing. Just the early inspiration, again, COVID did a lot to people, and I'm like, Man, I got a family to feed, and how do I create a platform that's easy for everyone to use, that helps the industry communicate and get better, stronger together? And so again, I can't thank you enough for the like, don't get sappy. I'm a sensitive dude, just straight up. But no, I I got pointed north at the right time. We launched. Great. It's been great, man. It's been made so many friends from all over the country.

06:58

So so tell us what's sort of in the works right now. You did, you just mentioned it briefly. Tell us, tell us a little bit of what's going on. So

07:07

the calendars are the calendars, right? We wanted each market to have its own identity. You know, each of our children has its own personality, right? And so we have dedicated feeds through each industry, sector, up, mid, down, renewables. And then I thought that there was a, really a gap that could be filled by creating an all stream look ahead, a dashboard of what's happening and what crosses over. So we caught created all stream insiders to be that platform. And so we bring the best of each stream of energy, and we put it on a dashboard of what's happening, what's emerging, where people can plan ahead, where people can cross it to new markets, because a lot of times you want to, but you know which way to go. So we just want to create a open playing field for everybody to benefit themselves.

07:57

So so what do you see emerging, if you've got that future view ahead all the time, and you're trying to provide a relevant platform that allows me to be strong, you know, stronger, faster, smarter and more insightful, and be able to plan a little bit, what do you see That's just really

08:18

possible. So So I keep seeing there's data, data, data center, demand for power, power demand, power demand, power demand, yeah. And the quickest resource to get to that demand is natural gas, yeah. And so I noticed that there was a an announcement of metas, Shreveport data center. It's about 10 billion announcement for AI, and that's close to the Haynesville. So natural gas, dry gas, that's easy to access for their data demand, data center, demand, so I see that there's a lot more collaboration. I'm seeing more of the traditional midstream companies making announcements that they're making. I just made one announcement yesterday, a couple days ago, for energy transfer has, there's a San Marcos data center that they're going to be supplying long term agreements of natural gas for that steady, consistent power because, you know, with sometimes solar has that the intermittent intermittency is

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that we all know.

09:22

So having that, that that direct source that you can just turn on is is going to be what I feel is going to be the fastest growing market, natural gas, power Gen to data centers. Until the nuclear industry can catch up. I think the next 510, years, we'll start seeing some, rapid adoption innovative solutions. Yeah, I joined a committee at the another conference for the engineering and construction and they they started a merging technology working group for for trying to get people to speak there. And then another one is dedicated to SMRs, I think the small modular. Actor industry is going to be also a fast growing market. See,

10:04

again, I was here last year, seeing the conversation has already changed dramatically to what it is today. It will be interesting to be able to at one point in time seeing those SMRs on the flat, just like, yeah, we're doing it, yeah. But you're doing it, yeah, that's right here. See kick the tire. See how it works. It's happening right now. Let me ask you this. This is sort of an interesting challenge we do. We talk about the demand that the data centers are making. I mean, it's just huge, and, and, and it's just going to continue to grow and evolve, and will the technology of these data centers get to a point where they're more efficient? Because the way it's going everybody, I'm going to have a data center in my house. Just every piece of property, every every land available, is going to be a data center. Yeah,

10:55

it's, it's, seems like it feels that way. Yeah, yeah. The it's, I don't know, the the data center world, I I still haven't been on one, but I'm reading it every day. Yeah,

11:10

we're gonna be doing a show in in Reston, Virginia. And if you've never been to rest in Virginia, they're, they're, they're buildings, and they look like just regular office buildings. No, they're data centers, they're just, they're they're data centers, and they look like regular buildings. They're sky, you know, they're Multi Floor data centers and and when you go in, it's just a handful of people, the

11:33

the I know, it's limited to manage it, yeah, in one, one unique thing through this whole journey, we recently made a partnership with the engineering group bringing high value engineering to the US to help with people's peaks and valleys. Yeah. One of the unique offerings that they did is, you know, again, you have a data center that's this, right? I was a photographer, and when you zoom in your 200 millimeter zoom lens, it amplifies, right? So you have a little bit of camera shake. And so as these data centers, they scale up super large. Yeah, we were contracted to do computational fluid dynamics to make sure the HVAC system had proper cooling in all the different areas, to make sure that they don't overheat. So having industry oil and gas ability is actually crossing over into the data center world. That's pretty awesome. So we're we're positioning for that as well as they're scaling up, there's going to have hot spots. If you don't properly do the the analysis of the

12:29

right, I You're absolutely right, because these centers are definitely heat sinks, yes, and and you don't want to have a hot spot, you've got to properly, you know, cool them down.

12:45

So this conference center, I was comfortable over there yesterday. As I walked to this side, I had to take my jacket off. The flow was very inconsistent, a very large building like this, right? So imagine that for really, really precise machinery, yeah, and how that could the other thing I thought was, was very, very interesting about this whole, this whole data center, yeah. Uptick was, you know, everybody was trying to, what do we call it? What do we call it? Everybody's trying to figure out how to, how do we label Yeah, and then I saw a doe announcement. They called it CET. Doe CET, new to new department, critical and emerging technology, okay? Quantum Computing, oh, yeah, data centers, yeah, semiconductors, yeah, and AI, yeah. So that's the department I said, You know what? I'm gonna call it, what they call it, cet and so as we're trying to figure out this new market of what you call it, you know, at some point we have to figure out, can't, can't chase it. If you don't know what it's

13:51

called, are you getting people chirping on, oops, jeez, chirping on, on, AI. They are like, you know, when we were there was a number of conversations around that industry, four.of and we're going to be collecting data, we're going to be doing this and pulling it off this asset, and we're going to be able to sort of mine it, and, you know, flip over some gold. It's sort of hasn't delivered as much. I think there's, you know, this, I'm wondering if AI is going to be sort of going down the same road, because it's but

14:22

I think what's happening with also involved. So a little bit about me. I'm passionate about the industry, anything that helps power homes and make people's lives more comfortable and better. I'm all for it. So I joined some boards in supply chain engineering, pipeline gas processing, and on the supply chain side, they had the topic about AI, but there were, they were the ones doing the contracts, yeah. And they're the risk folks, and they're wondering, like, wait, are these models getting trained on us? How is our data protected? Yeah. And so those are some of the conversations that are actually now happening. Is, like, smart contracts. And AI for contracts, yeah, but they're actually going and digging deep. They're like, we need to make sure that whatever this machine learning is doing is actually protecting us and keeping it within our bubble from a cyber security and and so they're going

15:14

to be talking about on prem, and they're going to have that air gap, and they're going to say, this is where it resides. It resides over here. I, you know, there's, there's a lot of talk and a lot of debate about whether, you know, on prem is gonna but, you know, you got these data centers. Yes, the only thing that I can see that that eventually everybody will be in the cloud in some way, shape or form, is the latency. So if I have, if I have the need to collect data at the edge, okay, I got it. It's speed. But for the most part, many of the calculations and the the computing power will reside in the cloud. I just might not, you don't need it instantaneously.

16:03

In previous life, I had a little bit of AI application to the industry. We manufactured hazardous area cameras, yeah, but they had aI chips in them. And so when I that opened up a new understanding of how things work. Yeah, we went to, we were actually in this building last year for Global Security Exchange, yeah. And the amount of technology we saw in movies that we were like, wow, this is crazy. 15 years ago, it's here and it's now. You can go in the meta minority report it. Yes, absolutely. It's wild. It is. They're like, Oh yeah, this guy with a black hat and a pink shirt with a backpack on, we're going to go in the metadata, and they actually in the in the data, they can go back and see the category. The machine learning is so advanced. Oh yeah, it's scary. It's where they're there. It's a wild world. It's exciting. This is just the beginning.

16:57

No, it is. I mean, we're still at just the tip of the iceberg, in a sense. And again, I refer back to the fact that conversations that I've had, in fact, I was in Barcelona, and it was IoT solutions, World Congress, and back then they were, the conversations were complete, completely different than they are today. And and it's just, it's a it's a recognition of the evolution what's taking place in industry, and I and, boy, I wish I was younger. I really do, because it's an exciting time. And just in the world of manufacturing, in the world of energy, it's, it's, it's massive. Yeah,

17:38

I'm excited, little intimidated, but you know, I try to read every day. Yeah, of what's happening? Yeah, the only way to keep up is to just educate. Look at trends, look at market analysis, just what are people doing? And that's been if you sleep on it for three months, you got to learn all over again.

17:59

Yeah, I always say, and then you're right. It's always about education, collaboration and innovation, and it's happening all the times. Those are the three legs to this stool that I that I definitely advocate for. All right. Great conversation. How do people get involved with you?

18:17

Reach out on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn. Efrain, Garcia or visit us at allstream insiders.com inside the industry, from the industry, allstream insiders.com,

18:29

very good. Hey, it's great. I'm so glad we were able to

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connect. Likewise, I love it. All right. We're going

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to have all the contact information for you for now. Air on industrial talk. Fear not get involved. It's about education, collaboration and innovation. Make it happen. We are broadcasting power Gen in Dallas, Texas. It's a great event. Put this on your calendar. All right. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned. We will be right back.

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You're listening to the industrial talk, podcast network that

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was another great conversation. Power gym was the event, as you can tell you gotta, you gotta connect with this industry. Industrial talk is all about that whole network and connecting and being able to connect with industry leaders. Efferent is definitely at the top. I'm at a stat card as I look to my side of my other terminal here, and he's quite busy. He's got a lot going on. He's somebody that you need to definitely network with. Yeah? Oh, good. Anyway, that was a great conference. If you're in the world of power, that's a must 10 if you want to try to get into a business or market that's just growing like crazy. Yeah? Power, yeah, it is. It's right there. All right, hang out with him, because you got to be bold, brave and you dare greatly each and every day. Don't forget to hang out with Efren. All right, we're gonna have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned. You.