Everybody in oil and gas has been sitting on mountains of completions data and barely using it. Ben Dickinson and Bryan Frantz of NexTier Completion Solutions built the fix from the inside out, an end to end frac data platform made by the people running the pumps. John and Bobby get into why the closer you are to the equipment the closer you are to the truth, where frac data standards are headed, and whether efficiency has hit its ceiling. Plus AI coding and the hunt for a good Pittsburgh wing. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 0:00:00 - Back from summer break 0:00:41 - Trying to keep pace with AI 0:10:16 - Who NexTier is and where it came from 0:12:22 - Building an end to end frac data platform 0:15:17 - The industry's siloed data problem 0:20:39 - Agnostic architecture and one tool for everyone 0:26:44 - Borrowing solved problems from other industries 0:31:41 - The tech stack and starting greenfield 0:35:17 - Control systems and the job data schema 0:44:11 - Why frac data has no standard 0:47:08 - Fleet Stream and getting data to customers 0:53:23 - Has operational efficiency hit its ceiling 0:59:58 - How opinionated should the software be 1:03:08 - Physics vs data driven modeling 1:08:41 - The AI coding tools they use 1:10:35 - Western PA wings and pierogi https://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

Paul Brown, Founder and Principal Engineer at BDE Data, joins John and Bobby all the way from Scotland for a conversation that covers a lot of ground. From his days as an international drilling engineer dodging pirates off the coast of West Africa to building WellSchematic.com and tackling the nightmare of digitizing 50-year-old multilingual well files, Paul is the rare person who speaks both languages fluently. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 00:00 - Oil prices, energy costs, and life in Scotland vs Texas 01:50 - Paul's background and path from drilling to data 08:19 - WellSchematic.com and legacy well data as a service 10:52 - Drilling war stories: West Africa and the Falklands 15:00 - UK oil industry and energy policy 34:41 - Legacy well file digitization 38:06 - The PDF table extraction problem 42:22 - Open source models vs foundational models 44:31 - AI stack, data privacy, and cloud infrastructure 51:54 - AI's role in the upstream industry 56:04 - Getting tech adopted in the drilling world 59:06 - Coding journey: from PHP and Laravel to Python 1:02:22 - Advice for engineers getting into coding 1:09:38 - Programming languages and AI-assisted development 1:11:56 - Cursor and Claude Code 1:13:55 - Speed round: Scotland, whiskey, and cloud platforms https://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

When you have 80 patents and a lifetime achievement award in hydraulic fracturing, you have seen some things. John William Ely, Founder of Ely and Associates Corp, and Jon Harper, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, talk frac history, pre-job diagnostics, the slick water revolution, geothermal, and why the industry keeps pumping the same thing and expecting different results. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 0:00 - Intro and guest backgrounds 3:25 - John William Ely's origin story 7:45 - Offshore blowout and well control in the Middle East 11:25 - How fracturing has evolved over 50 years 19:30 - The slick water revolution and where we went wrong 27:40 - Pre-job diagnostics and what operators overlook 36:55 - Geothermal applications and completions challenges 43:50 - Parent-child well interaction and offset communication 47:00 - Refracing and diversion 54:15 - Increasing recovery factor 1:06:35 - Longer laterals, U-turn wells, and land-driven decisions 1:12:35 - Knowledge gaps in the next generation of engineers 1:25:20 - The untapped tight conventional opportunity 1:30:02 - Advice for young engineers entering the industry https://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

Owner relations in oil and gas has been shoved in a corner forever, basically a "here's your check, don't call me" situation, and Deren Boyd, Dagen Boyd, and Josh Wright, co-founders of Firm App, are building the platform to fix that. These three started in oilfield safety software with iScout, got acquired by KPA, and now they're tackling the massive gap between operators and their surface and mineral owners with AI-powered multichannel communication. We're talking voice agents with adjustable accents, auto-responding emails, chat widgets that actually work, and an owner-facing app that puts payment info and well data in people's pockets. Plus the OKC crew gives their take on Devon and Expand relocating and what that means for the city. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 0:00 Devon and Expand leaving OKC, what it means on the ground 4:42 What is owner relations and why has it been ignored 7:18 Timing and the generational shift driving tech adoption 10:10 How operators have been duct-taping owner relations together 12:05 The owner-facing app and multichannel approach 14:38 AI voice agents, email auto-response, and chatbot workflows 18:15 Building and rebuilding AI architecture every six months 21:29 Under the hood on voice AI, latency, and conversation nuance 26:37 School districts, 10,000 page websites, and unexpected use cases 34:58 The iScout origin story and oilfield safety software 42:17 Getting thrown in the penalty box and winning work back with data 46:13 Revenue statements, vendor portals, and what owners actually ask about 52:24 NAPE plans and the land community 54:48 Business model and implementation timeline 55:58 NIL, college athletics, and the dumpster fire 1:04:36 Dev tools, Claude Code, and the future of SaaS https://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

Bobby Neelon and John Kalfayan sit down with Kayla Ball to break down why the methane compliance space is stuck in the trough of disillusionment, how she ended up cleaning up Petra's flat file nightmare at IHS, and why vibe coding with Claude feels like training your own replacement. They dig into sensor data chaos across ops teams, why public data companies should be worried, the wild difference between building lovable prototypes versus commercial deployments with SOC2 governance, and how AI is forcing everyone to confront the fact that humans shouldn't be entering data into anything anymore. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 0:00 - Devon and Chesapeake leaving Oklahoma City 4:50 - What SensorUp actually does beyond sensors 11:40 - Methane space challenges and compliance markets 18:30 - Why standardizing sensor data is so hard 26:40 - Getting into product management from geology 32:45 - AI automating regulatory workflows and field inspections 38:50 - Vibe coding prototypes versus productizing for enterprises 45:15 - Public data moat questions for IHS and Enverus 52:30 - Duck Lake and licensing components over custom dev 58:15 - Product management changing with Claude Code 1:04:40 - Data problems holding back AI adoption 1:11:20 - Speed round on youth sports complexes and baseball 1:22:40 - Hot takes and wrapping up https://twitter.com/collide_iohttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/digitalwildcatters.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collide-digital-wildcatters