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Welcome to Conventionally Uncouth with Reed Goodman. The show that gives the mic to the men and women who’ve been drilling, pumping, producing, and wildcatting for decades, long before shale. This show catalogs knowledge, shares stories, and reminds us: there was a life before shale. And there will be one after. Stories straight from the oilfield, real insights, lessons learned, and (probably) a healthy pour of whiskey.
0:00 I can't believe that it's finally me I need justice and your friends Steve
0:11 did you alright your deal Chad thanks for joining me today and
0:17 man lot going on in the Middle East Yes oil prices doing doing weird things going up are the weekend coming down today pretty hard I just kind of crazy so you know as far as as far as oil prices not
0:36 just shooting through the roof you were telling me a little while ago you had some ideas on what
0:42 you know why that is why they don't tie directly like they used to conventionally do with any kind of risk premium and whatnot so you know what are your thoughts this morning Yeah I guess that's kind
0:54 of the the popery category of the conversation is not mostly tied to to the subject at hand but Yeah current events I think the industry is a lot more agile than it has been in the past in terms of
1:05 what of of being able to bring more barrels online and in a shorter time frame You know the I Time from from you know rig mobilization used to be able to see a relationship kind of a delayed
1:19 relationship between rig count increase in oil production increase and I think as long as you have now you have a third dowry of another nother detail there which is FRAC fleet increase so if you have
1:31 your rigs have refracts leap and then you have you know essentially how that's going to affect oil production we also have a tremendous amount of base level production cause we have so many more wells
1:41 online I feel like and you know even if there is a disruption in the straits of hormuz however that's going to happen and it's still going to affect globally the oil landscape a little bit less than
1:57 it would have if this was conversations happening twenty years ago even ten years ago Yeah Yeah so in a ten twenty years ago without and without all this unconventional In in well I'll have you kind
2:13 of give us a little bit of your background first before we really get too far into this you're a geologist you do some consulting most of your work and your time is spent on what you would consider
2:26 conventional reservoirs said correct I would say that it definitely has transition when I started I was and I graduated from Wu if My Undergrad in December two thousand and ten and immediately started
2:37 working because that was when read counts are crazy especially up here in the northeast in the Marcellus and I was born into Shale I am that generation but I had done a good job of of putting myself
2:51 into a better position to be more and more versatile more well practiced across all different forms of geologic sources and I I would say that today I Y y was one hundred per cent unconventional
3:06 mainly doing Geo steering now today I'm about fifty fifty in terms of my dollar Revenue of where I derive revenue for my business is about fifty percent from Geo steering shale and now the other fifty
3:18 percent is exploration development a little bit of Geo steering and conventional reservoirs and it's been helpful because it's helped me maintain a stream of income across different price landscapes
3:35 and that's really been a big thing is that you know you've got marcellus is dry gas wet gas you've got but then you've got your conventional reservoirs you've got just black oil and so different
3:47 pricing schemes mean different things and there is of course you know now disconnect between the value of natural gas invaluable oil and condensate and liquids and everything like that so as the
3:59 landscape changes I do intend on trying to just keep myself as Versatile as possible and this has been how I've been helpful to Yeah Yeah so anybody that's ever worked for weatherford will tell you
4:15 that they're like a recovering weatherford hand and it sounds like you're kind of a recovering shell lineal right have fun finding your way and you know into a little bit more stable conventional
4:29 reservoirs and some of this older school of thought and picking up and and working through those and so what I'm
4:39 from some of our conversation it sounds like you have a little bit more of a unique perspective on what a conventional well as versus an unconventional well and that you know for on our last episode
4:49 for me it was just to have is a really easy explanation I just said you know we've got we've got one versus the other you know are we doing a plugin flour of plug and perf and a horizontal lateral and
5:01 like that's unconventional but I think you've got a little bit more nuanced take on that would you kind of share with these guys how you think about those reservoirs differently as a geologist I think
5:12 it's all a matter of permeability that's the one really real variable there that's going to dictate what it is and of course is not one or the other because you have true conventional reservoirs and
5:22 one hand that's like what the wells that you operate and that you own whether you have like the freeway sands Miocene Age sands and South Texas that they just flow water drive reservoir and then you
5:34 have all the way over here you have wells like the Marcellus a wolf camp they before that you cannot nothing will happen nothing little to nothing will produce unless you actually put a high volume
5:44 hydraulic FRAC on it so you've got one in the spectrum and then the other end of the spectrum and then you have everything in between and what's in between isn't is is is where you really really
5:55 really have to dig deep and understand that it's not like it's not us versus them You know it's not like the Old World vs the shale anyones is just a term that I do not personally use but that's fine
6:07 call me What You Want I there's there's a lot of of intricacies there and mainly I guess said it's built on permeability there are roads you know reservoirs that have no they're they're not source
6:19 rocks and that's the thing but unconventional reservoirs generally their source rocks not always sometimes they are siltstone sometimes they're classics it just depends again on how on on what the
6:32 natural permeability is and how you can exploit the natural fracture network in the modern day stress field to your advantage so that's why horizontal drilling and multi -stage fracking works so well
6:47 in these these aforementioned shale plays Marcellus Wolf camp so on and then you know Conventional Reservoirs You're chasing structure and You're chasing the specific mechanism of delivering the
6:60 resource The well bore do you have water drives you have depletion drives you have gas drive do you have a combination of those so essentially boiling it down is is their permeability or not and if
7:12 there isn't what can you do to enhance the permeability
7:16 Gotcha well but you know so we enhance week we induce at permeability with hydraulic fracturing and placing profit right breaking up that rock and giving it a a pathway for the hydrocarbons to flow
7:29 through but that's also not new right we've been doing that for forty and fifty while not even forty or fifty years since the forties and the fifties right the the whole idea of of fracturing him and
7:41 placing profit is an old idea and in a say how does that tie into where we just it was not economic to chase the same kind of reservoirs back in the day and now we find in and and an economic way to
7:56 do that Yeah I think it's it's You Know i Guess You're going back to the early days the Barnett with those guys who were able to to figure out you know there's a current there's a certain type of of
8:10 secret sauce that you have to mix together in order to keep that sand in suspension and deliver to the fractures I'm not going to purport to be a completions engineer so I won't discuss that but Yeah
8:21 it's definitely where you know necessity meets invention and we had a declining domestic hydrocarbon the supply and you know where our production was declining domestically and if things were
8:36 expensive and you had people have said to themselves well you know I I remember hearing stories from a bunch of Guys in the Appalachian basin who said you know every time we drove down to the risky
8:45 sandstone we go through the Marcellus we'd see these unbelievable gas kicks and they and everyone always say I should shell gas is fine Ignore it you know I mean they knew it was the source rock for
8:55 the risk any underneath but they didn't know how to get it now we do and in the eighties and nineties they were drawn Marcellus falls vertically and getting pretty decent wells and then someone said
9:04 was drilled horizontally and see what happens and then you have to understand what what's your asthma how do you how do you access the most amount of fractures that whenever you are that you're going
9:12 to complete and there's there there's conventional wisdom and then the people that challenge the conventional wisdom enough and and correctly are the ones that have these massive breakthroughs i E
9:25 Mitchell Energy
9:28 Yeah Yeah answer a lot of that changed here recently and I think people have and you know part part of what got you and I talking about all this is that people have forgotten they can't the
9:40 conventional still exist and still out there right and and so they think that this is all we do and so I appreciate you explaining like how we're kind of on our on a spectrum there is not one or the
9:52 other it's somewhere in the middle and we're using this technology in all different kind of reservoirs
9:59 you know with with that said and in you doing a lot of independent stuff what what is the stuff that interests you like where you what kind of prospects are the most interesting to you and I think
10:14 over time you and mike and I are probably going to get into at some point you know taking a prospect from thought process and in generation geologically all the way through what it takes to drill and
10:28 produce it and like we'll do a couple of episodes there and that'll be a Lotta fun for everybody to follow along with US on that but would you give us kind of like a high level overview of you know on
10:40 the conventional side what what gets you taken I honestly a lot of the stuff that you're doing today I mean you're you're getting out there and literally and figuratively getting your hands dirty and
10:51 you are taking these older fields in these older wells and you're saying I don't need to you know drill a twelve and a half million dollar Fifteen Million dollar Project I just need to get these walls
11:01 back online and I think that a lot of what people are overlooking is a lot of the simpler stuff there's a lot of stuff that that is out there that is a couple of hundred a couple thousand feet deep
11:12 that'll make a couple of barrels a day and if you're willing to understand it better oh there is if you're willing to try to understand it better then you're going to have success developing those
11:24 fields just like you do so the stuff that gets me excited is is the types of projects that are stuff that's falling through the cracks stuff that has otherwise been forgotten about off the beaten path
11:37 and there's there's potential there that no one's really paying attention to I have no interest in trying to compete in the Permian Basin I have no interest in trying to compete you know in the
11:48 Marcellus or the Bach and I have been on looking off the beaten Path and I think that's where mike and I both kind of really came together in the beginning is that Mike Said When he and I first
11:58 started on this jury I he said there's a whole Lotta oil around for example of among many other places around Abilene and that people just don't really pay much attention there and every time there's
12:09 a boom and a bust after the bust there's a lot of stuff people forget about there's a lot of people that get out of the industry a lot of knowledge that gets lost and I think that there's still plenty
12:22 of opportunity out there and conventional side if you're willing to look for it and you're willing to develop a method to try to find it and try to exploit it Yeah I think that's interesting it's not
12:36 just I mean it's about recovery factor but it's not just recovery factor it's often it's often as the geologists or the prospect and producer you Gotta tell the story right like they might have
12:47 drilled nineteen eighty one they drilled a well nineteen eighty three they drilled a well nineteen eighty five they drilled well and then oil but you know bus and Everybody forgets about this and they
12:58 put it on a shelf and there's still four or five or ten wells to drill in that field and so who
13:07 somebody says you find oil where you where they've already found oil you know who that is you know a lot of people say that trying to think a yeah there's a guy there's a famous guy in south as I call
13:19 him famous there's a geologist in South Texas that says that all the time and but you know it's true we know that it's there we've got to get it out and and get it out economically right and I might
13:30 get to see ya glad you're here I apologize technical issues oh no you're good we'll UH we'll sort it out and you know this is our first drone doing this with you and in doing the remote stuff so
13:47 everybody bears with US we'll get we'll get through it
13:51 but he also so looking at that right there is a whole different Aura why
13:57 When You're looking at you know Conventional Vs unconventional and and so you know the cost the drill and complete a conventional well as typically a whole lot lower
14:12 but the return are you going to tell me that the return is higher and maybe maybe not well I think you know with any conventional reservoir joiner of a vertical and unconventional reservoir that is
14:26 going to be you know upwards of a million dollars depending on depth casing runs different Geo hazards you encounter an accessibility to services and material and what have you have you know that that
14:42 vertical well can be you know anywhere from you know quarter million dollars half a million up to a million dollars but the fact is is that he either the multiples on your money that you can make with
14:52 a oh well that you know is going to be a big producer is is much much higher than just you know a two extra three weeks and there's there's plenty of of of reasonable possibilities out there where
15:04 you're going to have just a two extra three x on a vertical well but Mike knows of plenty of projects out there that he's worked on in his area where you do get a tenax you do get like a thirty x on
15:17 your investment and he would be able to really detail those much better than I could but there's plenty of them out there but they you're looking at like nine out of ten and dry holes and then you hit
15:27 that one it's like the lottery and that and it pays for the nine dry and then some
15:34 mike as that is is that your experience that thought process has really changed to where maybe one out of ten pays for the other nine out of ten maybe a little less seven out of eight you know
15:48 I watched most of your episode one today Pretty fascinating die you had on there but you know talking about the dolomite and and that's one of my areas of expertise in the Hardeman Basin and I you
16:07 know like I Dunno if it was you Raid that said that or your guests that you know six thousand feet made a million barrels of oil and you're not going to get their return and shale and of course there
16:23 so a lot more risk you know that's involved and you know you're you're Gonna Drill Your You Know Your share of dry holes and you know when we first started talking read you he mentioned the fact that
16:39 you've got a whole generation of geologists and and engineers that they've never done that they've never draw the dry hole and they don't have rails and so I you Know I Guy was in Shale Pretty heavy
16:59 for ten years maybe twelve I'll run and cruise down on the Permian in New Mexico Oklahoma and you know and it got to be pretty boring actually oH sorry about that it was lucrative but boring and I met
17:18 chad and we got to talking about other ideas particularly on the eastern shelf do you know Abilene or South East West I live in Berlin which is fifty miles west of Wichita Falls so I'm way in the
17:35 northern part of Texas and you know mostly you can test everything but by the time you get to six seven eight thousand feet and there are multiple pace ones and I've seen so many times where folks
17:50 have okay we're targeting this zone and then you're lucky into something else that he didn't even know was there and you end up missing your target but you make a nice well so there's always the luck
18:04 factor if you don't mind real quick let's let's break that down for for the folks that don't know cause I know a lot of our audience is not going to have a bunch of technical knowledge we have so I'm
18:15 going to I'm going to stop your points and kind of ask them questions here when you say test everything down to seven or eight thousand feet your say in seven or eight thousand feet is probably where
18:25 the lasts and the strata is that could possibly produce oil and gas ellenberger okay the ellenberger would be at seven or eight thousand feet and counting your basement depends on where you're at if
18:39 writing in your area Helena you know it's more about forty five hundred up by where I live is it's deep know okay and so you've poked through everything Correct and now that you have a hole you can
18:54 see everything you can as much as we can see downhole ride the caviar there but we can log we can do drill stem test to to physically test the oil there but at that point you've exposed all your
19:07 formations down to that that absolutely oh Okay Okay there's been some people that have gone down below the ellenberger
19:17 is a big play over west or east of Abilene they thought there was an overthrow Saddam they got down into the granite but I don't think they were successful so you'd get avail on berger and make it one
19:29 hundred feet and you've tested the spot entire you know section okay and I just depends on where you're at like I said Abilene it's Forty five hundred up here it's eight thousand just depends
19:46 but
19:49 I dunno yet and so not every well and not every well goes all the way through sometimes we've got a target that might be halfway there tre might only be if we we may be able to drill down to eight
20:01 thousand feet to test everything but for monetary reasons this guy only wants to go to four thousand and test this particular sander or reef that may be there and look at it right absolutely
20:14 absolutely okay yang they may just decide you know you're throwing good money after bad if you continue drilling which I've seen that happen too but at the same time it at the same time you have to
20:25 remember the next foot you drill is always your cheapest because the the the bulk of of what you have financially in a project is going to be mobilization rig up the first couple of strings of casing
20:39 and then when you get down past your freshwater zone and you get the first string intermediate in there and then everything after that is just a little bit of rig time more casing more cement and that
20:52 on top of what you've already spent is a small percentage so if there's nothing deeper and there's never been anything deeper historically probably don't go chasing it but if there has been a record
21:03 of something deeper why not try to go down there and see what there is if your goal is the strawn sand at twenty three hundred then you know and but there's also historically been wells that have made
21:16 oil from the ellenberger then you know maybe build into your a F e the fact that you want to drill down there and touch it but being totally aware that you might not even case that deep so I just go
21:28 down there and see what happens what the samples look like maybe run a D S T which is Michael say nobody runs those any more BTC but he still kind of sees them every once in a while so you know that
21:39 kind of goes back to that Old World technology
21:42 it's kind of hard even and nowadays the last time I tried to walk or run a DST We couldn't we couldn't find a gesture It had the answers but the DST is we're in an open hole and we run it down on
21:58 drill pipe and we don't have to where we haven't set casing yet we don't know necessarily if the formation is good or bad and we want to spend the money to put pipe in the whale and make it a
22:08 permanent whale right correct so we're going to run it's just a packer or is it a it's a like a chamber tool it's got a chamber and it kind of soaks up whatever is around it is at its it's two packers
22:21 on the top which you know you're in open holes you don't you don't want your packers to fail or you know it's not have a conclusive test but Yeah it's a tool and cup of packers on top recording
22:36 devices down below perforations down below so you're getting not only pressure bad about your getting fluid that is able to come in to the tool Because you've sealed off all the Hydra stripe
22:51 hydrostatic pressure above snugger basically opening the formation to atmosphere okay so it's a great tool it's just not very many people do it anymore and and why don't folks do that anymore when
23:09 they know where they're going what I've been told here lately as his dad gum expensive okay I won't say who but it's around here but they were telling me that it would cost upwards of fifty thousand
23:25 by the time you Buy Tammy adding your Randalls Your rig time the tool cost and all of that it can be fifty thousand
23:36 sometimes is My Dad Got My I can run pipe for one hundred thousand you know oK why would I You Know
23:46 it's really kind of up to the operator and how they think about things I ran into a lot that have just said you know Heck I was going to run pied and I don't blame him for that if he was Gonna cost
23:57 that much money
24:00 but now it's it's a great tool but it's just like I said it's hard to find
24:07 guys that have the tools I had one well I recently and we had ran into deviation I know wasn't that bad I mean like five six degrees and the owner of a tool said I'm not going to put my
24:27 I if at least two of Us the last one I'm back okay and Daily I Don't I Dunno if they're making a mini anymore but
24:37 it's a very I like running the estes but you know some people think differently and that's fine Yeah Yeah so the other ways we have the tests would be just to log it do wireline logs in an open hole
24:52 and then we can we can take some sidewall cores as well and physically look at the rock or you know like you got your gear in South Texas and nobody runs D s two's down there they run out what are RF
25:04 T repeat Formation Tester
25:08 You'd get a little you get a little sample of the fluid the little pressure data the I don't think it's nearest conclusive but also the risk of running a DST down there where you're at is is greater
25:25 than I appear in hardware Country and you know Everything's very soft down there on the Gulf Coast So I guess that's why they'd do it Yeah Yeah that person that you were talking about earlier he he
25:37 you know he's big on the R F T's No D S T's
25:43 okay by the name of it Yeah and I RFC is a great tool
25:49 I know that we do a lot of sidewall cores down here pretty much every well I pick up it's got sidewall cores and analysis and that's I use that quite a bit when I'm looking at a recompilation or a you
25:60 know and apoel zone to shoot I use that in correlation long as it is Sidewalk boards are Great I mean you get you know You'd get yo you you know exactly where that sample came from number one is not
26:13 mixed in with all the other stuff this coming up while you're grilling and a mud loggers looking at it and it's you know I've done it a few times the question is he like half of it's just Filter cakes
26:26 so you have a real careful though when you're looking at it that now it's a great tool of those are just clues you know a DSD or have tea just a clue just like you know run an electric logs
26:46 what he said he and I I think that the Ultimate test is how much it produces on that IP test and then like I mentioned to read before you joined in that you know reservoirs exist on a spectrum and
26:59 sometimes you can can you can produce a reservoir just naturally and see what it does then you can go ahead and put frack on it maybe an acid treatment maybe Hydro FRAC differing sizes and then that
27:11 may uplift your production but there they are good indicators as to what may happen but really the true test is his production and I think that there's probably been so many wells that have I have
27:24 tested great and then just fizzled and didn't really produce much and the interesting thing is that using using offset data and experiences are very important and if you were to look at a map of all
27:39 the wells ever drilled even in a single county you know exclude you know the modern day factory drilling and you look at a map of just the vertical penetrations up to you know the for the oil boom oil
27:52 bust Dimension nineteen eighty five mike lived through it knows all about it every single dot on that map and there are tens of thousands of them every single one of them has a story every single one
28:04 of them has a story about the hours spent researching thinking cogitated on on the best way to to to go about it whether they should do it or not and the decision to actually drill a well for some
28:20 companies is not that hard but for many people is a very very big decision and so and that that right there is is you know it's it's a very in that map is almost a work of art to know that you know
28:32 how much toil has gone into that and every dot is is a is a a fascinating tale that is not fiction that builds that entire cluster that you see whether it's county or state or nation it's it's it all
28:49 tells a story yet certainly does and it's
28:53 a lot of that is not noted anywhere you know we might be able to pool some mud logs we might be able to pool some core if we're really lucky but getting out there and asking the guy that drilled it in
29:06 nineteen sixty five getting out there and asking the guy that drilled at Nineteen eighty two eighty three and a lot of that stuff is gone and you is it as an exploration geologist you've got to go in
29:18 and put those pieces back together and then mike when we get out here and we're drill in the well and when we're log in the whale you you're looking at you know what was seen in the past what was
29:28 missed in the past while we might be able to put together Ryan and there's a funny story recently where mike and I have been a screening through these lists of wells and I was going through the
29:38 scanned Microfiche documents on the railroad Commission and in one of the batch documents there was a news article about a gentleman who had gone to prison for seventeen years for a Ponzi scheme and
29:51 I'm looking at all these wells and there may be two thousand feet deep in their IP tests say they made like five or ten barrels oil a day but I'm going through all these production records to see what
30:00 these wells were doing and I noticed that they had these big spikes and I'm thinking to myself that they re complete them did they do this do they do that will no I read the article and the boost in
30:12 production that that so I used a filter in geographics to to find all these wells that have produced a certain amount over a certain period of time in the past it's more as recent so that I could
30:24 determine which will still have life in them and these wells popped up on my list and the reason they popped up on my list is because the records that he reported to the railroad commission were
30:34 falsified because he was trying to prove that he was making production when he wasn't because that was part of his Ponzi scheme now I dunno if that was true or not maybe the railroad commission went
30:43 back in there and just wiped the records clean or corrected him or whatever but it was a Pretty Pretty Funny story and I and needless to say when that LLC pops up on My My Queries my Wellbore Queries
30:56 I I very quickly Ignore them because they're probably all it's like a bushel of apples you know even if even if there's one going in there it's not worth digging through racks I think I made the
31:08 comment needless to say we're not Gonna go corner shoot that no no
31:15 Yeah Yeah we had a on the on the Tool Sai we had an operator I run a packer and a string of gas le valves and in the whale and a set the packer and it didn't flow the way you wanted to and so he asked
31:29 us to leave the packer and set and the in in in our notes right that the Packer was set and I'd only been a packer had maybe three or four years of the time I'll let you know this really that Mata is
31:43 truly didn't make sense why would he want me to lie on my report right and so of course me just not having the right feeling I called one of the old timers that I'm friends with and said hey what's
31:55 going on here and he just starts laughing and and he said yep he's going to he's going to pump all down the backside and try to make this big IP for all his investors everybody's happy and we'll put
32:06 all the money in the hat for the next whale and and so I you know we refused to do it and gotten a limited TIFF and never got paid for that packer job actually because we refused to to do that but you
32:19 know it's it's a it's one of those scary things right in the in oil and gas that there
32:26 it's hard cause there's been a lot of shysters out there that have done their best and in been greedy to done their best to get whatever money they can and it makes it hard for the folks that are
32:37 legitimately trying to make a business and produce energy you know at hydrocarbons for the U S and and are proud of what they do and there's a lotta guys out there that are really kind of ruined that
32:50 name and that feel slow Fortunately Reid Yeah it was much more prevalent like in the early eighties when we had forty five hundred rich running man offered story after story about exactly what you're
33:05 talking about loading the backside with oil and I'd be hurt him you know bringing out investors and buses and open bar a stripper or two or you know bring your checkbook and the In but I don't think
33:21 that's I know there's folks out there nowadays I don't think it's near as prevalent thankful enough for the rest of US
33:31 it's a lot harder to do that these days one and and I think those guys don't stick around right if you have one thing in your in the Oilfield at your name yes and absolutely and that's something you
33:44 have to protect at all costs absolutely reputations everything very small and it's done me well I'll say that Yeah and I know about I'm not Gonna Lie I've had you know operators like well could you
33:59 maybe make that show look a little bit better and you know put some more dots and some colors on there my dude I think he should plug this well
34:13 but Yeah it is like you said reputations everything Yeah certainly So you Guys together are looking for PDP assets Yeller Yeller picking up production currently is at Forty All's are Y'all just out
34:30 drill a new whales are kind of what what are you guys up to and you know in the field these days I think what whatever it is that may jump up at US I think we're open to it right now we are scanning a
34:44 couple of assets out there and there's a lot of them and just determining out what's out there that like I said before in the opener what's been overlooked what could still have some life in it and
34:59 you know what could what could very worst case scenario pay for it's own plugging and I we don't want to end up trying to to put don't take on and have an asset that is going to turn into a money pit
35:14 but at the same time you know we understand that you have to you have to roll the dice and sometimes it comes up seven but you know we we are looking we look at the really all different factors you
35:25 know we were on the service side primarily but we also are trying to look at the opportunity to just completely drill new wells are your likes and pick up PDP or or anything like that so that really
35:41 anything and everything but the main goal what we're doing is looking off the beaten path like I said where you know it might be a little bit harder to get material and contractors out there but at
35:52 the same time you're not competing you don't have exorbitantly spices and you are you're you're not in as big of a risk for people trying to to elbow in on your deal and try to get inside on stuff so
36:09 we know what we're really kind of like I said we're we're being more more rough and tumble than just a shell company
36:20 Yeah take a little more risk that sums it up good I mean that's what chad said you know that there there's a lot of it out there and you know as well as we do about the orphan while situation and but
36:33 you've got to be extraordinarily careful because you're taking on the responsibility of plugging that sang and you know it can be a real money pit or it could be you know really good deal I mean you
36:46 just have to really do a lot of investigating and can wade through the bullshit and and hope you get Lucky I mean let's let's all be serious about that let let it out place of a factor does the harder
37:03 you work the Luckier you get and Yeah there's there's quite a bit of meat on the bone out there and I know I'm not I'm not I'm not one to use a bunch of business phrases or whatever but it's very true
37:14 there's still a lot of meat on the bone and again you know like I said in the opening There are so many people that are have literally never been exposed to anything but Shale I was I was absolutely
37:27 started out with one of them because that's that was the game in town but you know you can you can make a prey in incredible and and lucrative form of residual income by finding conventional
37:43 reservoirs that have very low decline curves and understandable understandable everything has Eloi everything has lease operating expense but you know in the world as conventional reservoirs like we
37:54 very well know read you know you're you're looking at the water disposal the Big One trucking costs is a big one but everything else is not so much and if you're if you've got a shale well you've got
38:05 a whole lot more moving parts you've got high pressure when you start and whenever you whenever a bleeds off you know you've got you've got a treat that well because you injected millions of of gowns
38:17 millions of gallons of water into that Thing so now you have to constantly be treating it with detergent and fomer to get the water out so you can optimize production and that becomes a headache so
38:28 you know you're You're You're you get these big huge giant numbers in the beginning but then what happens towards the end of life the shell well as you're essentially just Jill you're just turn into a
38:39 water management company that happens to make a little bit of gas on the side so you're the the like I said their meat on the bone is out there and the Conventional World your Goal is a lot more
38:52 forgiving when they get older you know you mentioned something radar with want to ask you about that this morning on your Euros the sphere episode one that I think the question was how much oil
39:05 production from the United States comes from Conventional Vs unconventional and use you said about fifty percent did you go back and look I think Iraq we went and looked at up The E I says it says
39:20 it's about sixty five percent original sixty five percent is tight oil and about thirty five percent right now is conventional oil which is still unconventional is about eight point three million
39:34 barrels a day and that leaves us with you know five and a half to six million barrels a day of conventional oil production which is is quite a bit and a totally and when you look at that decline over
39:48 that's you know six million is where we were when we kind of started all of the the unconventional place right in the early two thousands we were making six million so we've done pretty well one
39:58 managing that declined but to backfilling anything that may have gone offline and that's a big you know that's a big credit mostly to the mom and pops I don't know a lot of majors that are still
40:11 drilling conventional reservoirs now there are a few you know and I know he'll court You know is doing some of their stuff on the on the coast in an oxy you know manages a couple of like big C O two
40:24 flood reservoirs and things like that in the majors still have their part there but the majority of that goes out to the mom and pops that are making hundred barrels a day three hundred barrels a day
40:35 you know there are these small family owned companies and they may or may not have an office their office may just be their truck and perhaps you know and in in their kind of holding the backbone that
40:48 the American introduce that makes Sense Raid because you use said on your the episode this morning you know about fifty fifty but now you're saying thirty five sixty five but you know all of the money
41:02 that's invested or has been invested an oil and gas oH for the last ten twelve years is going to shale it's not being you know diverted over to In Benchmark you know straight homes even conventional
41:22 by laterals and conventional rock which is something that really chat and I've talked about it a lot and you mentioned it this morning and thought that was good about you know going into that what did
41:37 you say the name of that was the Greater Greta Greta Rata and you get your check problem going on that but that's a perfect example of yang you know drill a horizontal well in that thing and and try
41:52 to stay on the top of it and I think that's something that's going to come come back around and yeah and that's that's what the hill corp does there in south Texas they they have a couple of fields
42:04 that are Greta fields and they are these graves and a half robin structures with very shallow depth they're pretty you know they're they're about they're down to the coast faults and parallel to the
42:16 coast they're about maybe upwards of maybe a mile wide but there are a couple miles in a long have you want to say well long and wide wide long but parallel to the coast there are a couple miles
42:27 perpendicular the coasts are about a mile and there's no necessary
42:33 alignment for your laterals because you're not you're it's all water drive and there's a thin layer of oil to top and some of these horizontal wells that I felt to work on for smaller operator in
42:43 south Texas and they are seeing IPS of eight nine hundred barrels a day from a lateral that's maybe three thousand feet long and the sum of these fields are just that they've been drilled since the
42:57 twenties or thirties all vertical and now they're playing slalom not literally but they're shooting these laterals in between these existing vertical wells and they're having these incredible results
43:08 getting the last bit oil out and and that's just you know what I see there's meat on the bone which I hate phrases but That's that's one of them and there's different types and there's different
43:17 quantities and you know again it's a spectrum so you have tight sand reservoirs that are accessible with with oil and I I even built a prospect here in the Appalachian basin where you've got
43:29 mississippian aged siltstone that are charged with oil that have notoriously been bad in vertical wells to the point where they're hardly ever fracked even though you get oil out of them when you're
43:41 drilling through and the oil is coming up coming out of the blue like jerome on air and I build a prospect to draw those horizontally and I think if you were to access that natural fracture network
43:53 and Hydra FRAC those wells then you're going to see you know a huge potential there just you have to get someone that has the has the balls to do it and always cause it's not that's why I say no shale
44:06 is of a one of my clients who is as a bit of a mentor to me told me says in the In the shale in the in the Conventional World Your Geologist is your quarterback in the Unconventional world your
44:20 geologist is your tight end but in both cases you're going to know if he's good or bad so but but but Yeah so that that's why cause you know the quarterback in in shale is Your Accountant while I
44:32 liked What you said the other day Chat about you know Conventional Vs unconventional and you know what's conventional you know the geologist God making the decisions and unconventional it's an
44:45 accountant and I mean it's a valid point and everybody knows you grow a shell it's not a risk the only risk is how much it's gonna cost to get you there and if you run into problems on awhile or have
45:03 side crack or many things can happen in in the shale world we've seen an incredible rise in the use of the term Mechanical or or for financial dry hole is not actually a dry hole but you know it costs
45:19 so darn much to get it drilled that it's like really what are we going to do spend a month trying to fish this tool out of the hole and then they just plug it sidetrack it or just skid and draw the
45:30 neck Swell Yeah well then you've probably seen the transition mic where you know when when you were starting they had whole geology departments you know that was there was a large portion of the
45:42 company where the geologist out there mapping and looking and and trying to find the best part of the reservoir and how we infill it and and what spacing is too tight and and you know what's not going
45:55 to drain it enough and whatnot and I think you know in in a lot of the same conventional I mean we've got huge
46:04 departments of you know FRAC engineers completion engineers production engineers a lot of well monitoring right but as far as geology goes the number of geologist one is is way down a lot of guys
46:18 looking for work and they just don't need em in the in those kind of in those kind of resource plays they don't need them as much right you're probably seeing the drawn out where you're at where
46:30 everybody thought we could just poke a couple of laterals and make some really big whales and now they're learning that a geologist as is worth his weight in gold why that's what I was going to say
46:39 that you know they think they dominate geologists but they really do because it's not just oH just go drill a well it'll be fine there are no nuances up or down left right you want to stay in this
46:56 particular section or rock or you want to you know move the move the lateral direction but it is a shame because of I know a lot of geologists rotten our you know they're really hurting and there's no
47:10 new blood coming in you can look at the university's Geology departments even Petroleum engineering their way down and it's kind of scary I'm at the age where it's not Gonna affect me but in My Five
47:26 grandkids you know Yeah Yeah and then that goes back to the the the intellectual loss that we have there's a huge intellectual attrition that occurs in the industry after there's a there's a bust
47:39 there's a wealth of knowledge that goes and moves to a condo in Florida and they never Yeah share that with the younger generation and it's been a learning everything the hard way through trial and
47:54 error whereas you know just have a few find yourself a an older mentor who has already been there and done that you can avoid having to incur those losses yourself in the future and Yeah absolutely
48:07 it's not always what you know it's who you know and now I rarely get into an issue where I don't know an answer but I know that as I don't know the answer up I got three people I can call now given
48:19 the answer that those guys were all those guys are older than me no one when call as well instead of just kind of in the wolfville there's a lot of fake it till you make it or I know enough that let's
48:31 just go ahead and try this but some of that experience comes down to man this is a is this one's pretty important I probably ought to call on it right and down and maybe before fides Yeah because as
48:45 you know Yeah
48:50 Yeah and
48:53 so
48:55 you got me kind of thinking and this will be what will do this maybe in the next episode when I get you Guys on and we should start at the beginning cause I understand at some level I understand some
49:08 reservoir dynamics I understand an inflow performance relationship you know for production wise and how to lift the fluid I understand so well bore integrity but at the very beginning other than just
49:22 close ology other than just being close to where somebody else drilled a well where do we even start to put some of these ideas together you know and and I would love to really with you guys kind of
49:34 explore now we have all this well control right like you said we've got hundreds of thousands of wells that have been drilled they show us you know where the highs are similar where the lows are and
49:46 we've got some three D seismic to look at some of this if we're lucky and but just at the very beginning maybe twenty thirty years ago the Guy said oh let's drill over there because there's a creek
49:58 and we find a wellness next to a creek but today where do these ideas start you know and where does somebody like you chad just kind of you wake up in the middle that I you say man how Come Nobody's
50:10 drilled over the Edo there's this big open spot on the back how Come Nobody's drilled over there AH it's almost like you're like there and you're in my head when I wake up in the middle of the night
50:21 they you know every every tool everyone's got a different set of tools and every problem looks like a nail when your only tools hammer and I would I like to do is a handful of things to identify
50:39 trends because like you said there is a lot of data out there a whole lot of data and I like to make maps zoom out and just look at the big picture and understand what the underlying geology is say
50:55 now the geology has done in shale the majority of that is operational geology drilling the well known structures doing I'm a structural geologist at heart and and you know being able to place that
51:08 lateral in the right strata on out but understanding underlying geology especially in conventional reservoirs is it fluvial as a deltaic is it and
51:21 is it is it you know big cataclysmic events is it a tighter zone that has more clay in it understanding what the physical mechanisms delivery is what the provenance of the minerals are where they came
51:33 from what the sources and what the shape of the basin was what the analogs are there's a lot of details in their unconventional reservoirs where if you were to take all the data and then that's where
51:46 this that's where this ends with the technology if you were to take all the data that you mentioned on on these maps and you were to pull it all together and say I'm going to map the strawn at twenty
51:56 three hundred feet in this county and I'm going to pick all these points that only gets you so far and I know I'M going to ask mike to fill in the gaps here because you had a client that talks about
52:07 maps are okay to do in order to just paint a picture but the real the real importance on finding oil is as is being able to look at it and know where the oil is in your head you know where can where
52:19 is it by looking at and visualizing it in your mind and you're at a client mikey or one of your friends that was telling you that and you can say it better than I can so I should just let you say it
52:28 now he said he deserves particular person he's a computer geologist where and there's nothing wrong with the software I mean it's really good stuff but
52:41 it kind of takes away the brain power of a geologist and their ideas in their mind and quite frankly there's been some pretty big oldfield said I found this by an idea in your mind
52:56 but nowadays with in Chad those way more about this than I do with all going to differ software Petra and Geo logics or or whatever where you know it'll just do it for you whether it's right or not
53:12 you know I dunno it's it's drawing the contours for you and up you know on it ten or twenty foot you know basis it's all grey it looks pretty you know it's conveniently taking that contour right
53:29 around that dry hole and then continuous you know it and there's no question that looks pretty and it's all colored and it looks great to investors of all of that but isn't a good idea you know
53:44 I dunno I mean i please I like pencil and paper and color Pencils like Chad does Yeah there were others there's something to it and I know that the big part of this podcast will make a story time I
53:55 had a client who is Joanna Wolf camp well and I was helping them out while the like in house and I I drilled this well and oak over the holidays one year and saw as living in a hotel room and they all
54:11 went in with their families but there was good money so but we were landing and I had an interpretation and I was steering alongside of the directional company they're steers and they said well thrown
54:24 in for free it's never for free just something they say but I was I was essentially you know they they were attempting to compete with me and so were were coming in for a landing those guys are saying
54:35 we're late we're going to hit our target and I'm over here saying we're not going to hit our target and I'm trying to explain this to the client and I said well here's what I'm going to do and I
54:43 literally had they say back of the envelope literally I had piece of scrap paper was an envelope I put it on my computer screen and I traced the different control points we had I put the subsea
54:54 elevations of of each of the Tops there where we were and then I just drew some lines and everything and I said based on where we are now in the curve at thirty forty degrees and basin with a
55:06 thickness of these zones are on a map in an ISO pack map on this envelope I said we should expect to land here not here and it was an eighty foot it was eighty feet off so they they ended up landing
55:19 eighty feet high and of course twelve camps they didn't care they drilled at the same anyway because it's thousand feet at bay but that's the thing is is those guys bless her heart were using a
55:31 computer to tell them what it was and I was using logic to tell me what it was and and the computers do an important thing they alleviate a lot of the heavy lifting but don't ever think that the
55:45 computer is going to do the work for you there's there's there's no one there's no intelligence like intuition Yeah absolutely I had
55:53 Yeah I Dunno if I can share this it's been ten years since I saw as well bohr diagram cycle probably shirt and we went to Lana Packer we were trying to pick optimal point where it was deviation wise
56:06 where they wanted to put it and and you know cause if we go too far down a lateral it's hard to get it unsaid and if we leave it too high we're going to leave some TBD out of there and we're not going
56:16 to get as much uplift from our system as we want so you are trying to pick this this point and
56:23 the strata that will winch straight through it about one hundred and fifty feet and when they corrected the corrected all the way back up then they came back out out of the top of the formation and it
56:34 took them about fifteen hundred feet maybe almost two thousand feet of the first half of that lateral was not in the four eight crossed the formation of it crossed it back and they overcorrected and
56:47 they had to they ended up in there and of course you know that well is drilled in maybe two thousand and twelve two thousand and thirteen so he might have been a young directional driller you know it
56:56 just fell asleep at the controls there but the little warm it well well well I'll tell you what a likely was given it's the era it was probably joe with a mud motor and they probably had to make a
57:09 correction and mud motors alike you know and throwing spaghetti against the wall sometimes you know that's just what your war's going to look like with your teeth your dog leg severity it just that
57:20 motor just kind of walks wherever it wants to get the the to a large degree the the Vat and I I can speak for you know the Appalachian region specifically but in terms of the share of wells that are
57:32 dirtied doors on a wells drilled the vast majority of them are drilled with Your Auto track rotary steerable who's a lot since whenever you call him very very few wells are drilled up here anymore
57:45 with my motors and they are young plenty of air work is done with mud motors are somewhat horizontal wells winter with my mothers but the majority of wells up here now with these auto track deals and
57:56 that's not the case everywhere but there's there and they're still used but you know a directional driller that knows how to work a I you know drill with a mud motor and everything like that it's it's
58:08 definitely the difference between an art and a science with with you know the auto track rotary steerable you are just inputting information to tell that to what to do and they are great keeps it nice
58:19 and smooth keeps it nice and level but with a mud motor there is much more of a feel to it and read I know you're a horseman right so and and as AM I and I'm a Neo there's a difference in riding a
58:31 dirt bike and ride a thoroughbred or quarter horse and whatever and I so you know a dirt bike you're going to hit the throttle you're going to you're going to lean you're going to steer you hit a rock
58:41 and just give a gas can be good with a horse you know a chipmunk may run in front of you and it's going to spook so you know there's an art to it there's a feel there's a finesse and there's a certain
58:52 thing about using a mud motor where you know if if you if you have faith in your directional driller and there are very good competent directional driller you're going to have a good result and having
59:03 drilled a lot of shale wells of mud motors I can tell you that it's it's more of a of a of a of of having a good confident relationship than your directional driller as opposed to just saying hey do
59:14 this do that cause it's communication is key you can't just tell him what to do and it'll do it you get a lotta lot of wacky build slot of wacky turns Yeah Yeah I've always wondered when when you know
59:26 when they have that that two degree bent sub out there and of course I'm not a drilling guy but you know they've got that little bent serve out there I've always wondered and and being on the
59:35 production side we hate it when there's a squirrelly hole right so we you know we want our rods to pull straight and not wear extra and whatnot and it's hard to manipulate tools down a bunch of those
59:45 squarely holes and so it's always made me wonders after they drill the curve do they always trip that out or do they just kind of corkscrew their way a real slow corkscrew all the way to the well it
59:56 depends on what you're doing there's plenty of plays where they they run casing right at the heal the land the well run casing there's there's conventional horizontals like the Greta wells where we do
1:00:07 that I know a lot of the wolf camps that I drove they did back in the Marcellus in the Eagle Ford you Don't do that you just go from kick off point all the way out to TD and then you run your your
1:00:17 four and a half and the or or whatever your production casing as your production string the the the the bent sub In a mud motor now with an auto track tool it's different you've got push you've got
1:00:30 turn and everything that's you know again very robotic but with a mud motor you know you would land it maybe with a two degree band or one point a three degree band if you get down and not getting
1:00:43 your build rates in a trip out readout a two point five degree banning just land the well and then trip and redial usually usually it was a one point eight three is what we do kick off from kick off
1:00:53 the TD on these wells but you can you can tighten it up even more assuming you didn't need to get your build rates or you didn't have a huge turn or anything you have plenty of room to work with with
1:01:02 a one point five degree bend and that keeps it nice and smooth but it'll never be as smooth as one of those baker or schlumberger tools but you know again then again you know the price difference you
1:01:13 know which isn't very big anymore because it's just so common but but Yeah on on the drilling side you know You're you want to drill you want to go efficiently but you also need to deliver a well bore
1:01:26 that is going to make the production guys not hate you and that's that's a big thing in your purse guns through those those doglegs it is tough getting your equipment to those doglegs is tough so Yep
1:01:38 I got a joke for you Guys
1:01:41 so
1:01:43 Little Johnny his dad worked in Oldfield and he was begun and begun to go to the Oilfield with his dad and so one day his dad took him to the rig and he just thought it was the coolest thing you know
1:01:55 how big that rig was and and all the stuff they were working on and all the machines out there and so when they got home on on days off he talked his dad in a building him a little rig in the backyard
1:02:07 and as soon as dad goes out in the backyard and builds him a rig and little Johnny starts inviting all of his friends over and they are all playing oil man on the rig you know and and thinking that
1:02:16 they're going to drill this whale and after about two weeks and you know his his his days off right before he leaves I read for Little Johnny's dead leaves to go back on hitch and little Johnny's mom
1:02:30 says Hey yea some me and some of the wives got together and we need you to take that all rig down and he's so wise and the Kids are just having a blast you know they're having a great time out there
1:02:42 and she said well you know we've noticed that they've started cussing they've started drinking they started smoking and fighting and so little Johnny's dad says well alright I'll I'll go tell him so
1:02:54 he walks in the backyard and all the boys are playing and he says little Johnny come over here and he says hey we're going to have to you know we're going to yell yells behaviors just gotten out of
1:03:04 hand we're going to have to take this UH this rig down and little Johnny turns around his friend he goes well boys shuddered and we've been run the fuck off Yeah Thats Funny
1:03:19 Man
1:03:23 I Guess it's just the yep just in your blood the Trailer Guys have some good editing tools because this hasn't been ideal but I guess it's a good start
1:03:38 we've covered some good topics Oh Yeah I can certainly believe so so everybody knows do you know when we started first started talking about this thing about this this podcast in general and you know
1:03:54 Chad and Mike were were approached about putting together kind of a Mini series with digital wildcatters and and looking at you know what does it take to drill a conventional well in today's world
1:04:06 from prospect to you know raising the money what does it look like on location actually get it done and get it tied in and get oil to sales right and and then at some point my name got thrown in I
1:04:21 Guess to be on one of the episodes or or maybe cause I'm fairly local for them to come out and film something not one of my whales and I'm not exactly sure How I got tied in and I think it was Julie I
1:04:33 talked to her when I first started with started on that collide and mention that it's you know it's a great deal it's AI though and not really something in that I'm interested in maybe there could be
1:04:47 just a section on you know putting deals together drilling wells conventional wells not shale Wells and I think I taught Julie's your offer about almost an hour and I think that's when your name came
1:05:04 up reading and that's kind of where this whole thing may be started but I think it's a good one yeah so I took it and I ran away with it and and boat but Nino with That you know the the idea here with
1:05:22 with Mike and Chad is that they're going to be on pretty regular and we're going to go through kind of a series and we're going to follow our way through what it takes to put a prospect together and
1:05:32 you know maybe every other week or every two or three weeks we'll we'll drop something here but y'all are going to get to know mike and Chad pretty well as they come on and kind of are going to flesh
1:05:41 these ideas out and follow our way through that process you know and and kind of
1:05:49 see all the different sides and learn what it takes and in here's some good stories hopefully along the way and maybe we'll make some stories along the way absolutely I might come up there mike and
1:06:00 and help you get set up with a permanent camera or
1:06:04 I promise I'll be I'll be more technology advanced year before the next one is Mafalda is to just couldn't get things going today but well you know we've got to we've got a calendar we send out if
1:06:18 we're going to book anybody for this Crystal set me up with a calendar invite and she said we use email this to anybody and megan you know put in what time and what date they want to be there to
1:06:27 record with you and there I was like well king well as in the office I said crystal can you help me bookmark this so that I always have it available to send to people and as she looked at me and she
1:06:40 said read how old are you on thirty one said why you act like a real boomer that
1:06:50 well enough or better at all feel that we are on technology others Yep yep which technologies great you know when it's working and and we get it oregon it's helped us do a whole lot of things right
1:07:04 and heaven facetime on location when you're away for two or three weeks from your family you know that she's changed to to me that's changed a whole lot right being able to see my kids every night and
1:07:16 talked to him on the phone You Know Y'All Y'all didn't have that when you're breaking out mike and you know it's it's one of the first things I did when when I got to the rig was okay where's the
1:07:29 nearest payphone Yeah you know and not only that to call home and all that but to you know call in the geologist and oh hey you know we've got to show what do you want to do and yeah the days of just
1:07:44 picking your phone up you know I mean they hadn't come along at that Yeah Yup and sat at some point where I thought well this is just too much and of course now they've got you know pace on live where
1:07:59 folks can just sit in their office and look on pace on live and you've got thirty people looking over your shoulder and call and you and Mike oh what's this gasquet mean and I and I
1:08:13 think you were talking about that earlier to an episode was about you know back in the day it was company man that worked for the company and you know they made their own decisions in certain
1:08:25 situations and now it's consultants and you know they're not going to make a decision until they pick that phone up and call in to the ancient it's very prevalent Yeah Yeah absolutely well and you
1:08:39 mentioned you know collide is is a AI heavy and technology heavy and Yeah and so we usually want to do or yeah that's right and and that's a different world right when you have like in the ego for
1:08:55 there's what forty thousand well bores forty thousand horizontals in the eagle for like that is a large dataset the dataset and we've recorded so much data on each one of those well boards let's use
1:09:07 the AI You know let's go ahead and use the machine learning to get better and to do the things but the kind of stuff that we're putting together here the kind of stuff that you know Chad is dreaming
1:09:18 up your data set might be six offsets you know if you're Lucky You've got some three D seismic you might have some two D seismic you know that this is just not it's not the same world and so all that
1:09:33 denote the kind of frame for the guys where we're Gonna go and the three of US and in how Y'all will be regulars on that and I appreciate you guys coming on and wanting to kind of give some insight
1:09:44 into how that works and how that differs so that the people can understand you know what really is conventional oil and gas what is in today's sense wildcatting right you know who there's very few
1:09:59 places where we drill a well where there's nothing in ten or fifteen miles most of the U S has been poked and picked over generally and a wildcat well as kind of different than what a wild cat whale
1:10:13 was fifty sixty seventy years ago
1:10:17 but for all intents and purposes you know when we're drill and some of these conventional were looking for a one off structure at top or you know trying to get in the attic from some other production
1:10:27 we've seen in that that is a wildcat we don't know that it's economically Gonna pay out and a lot of a lot of
1:10:37 stuff has changed in People's mind in their heart and how much risk tolerance they have and you know they just hard for hard for people to imagine that they could lose it all it's definitely different
1:10:53 Yeah no I I think What You're trying to do here rate is good because you mentioned that you know at the very beginning that there's just and any you Guys I'm over on the old that here but you know
1:11:05 there's a lot of knowledge I have and I'll try to pass it along and help folks but it's amazing how many people don't want to listen to the others say Yeah Ok thanks for the advice and then and I'd do
1:11:17 the opposite that's fine too you learn as you go anyhow and I'm always looking at it as when I'm working for a client as a money standpoint or can I offer up something which is you know it's kind of
1:11:34 contrary to what I do cause I work by the day Yeah Gosh if they make a bad decision and it takes five more days you know I make a little extra cash but as far as the project goes it's not exactly you
1:11:48 know being a team player and and all of that
1:11:53 but
1:11:55 I don't know
1:11:58 Yeah that's kind of that old school daughter riding for the brand right what's good for you is good for all of Us you know what's good for my Boss is good for all of Us cause we're going to keep
1:12:07 working we're going to make something out of this and a lot of that's been lost you know that old saying you know you can drill yourself have a job and it's happened many times you know Yeah kind of
1:12:21 think we're doing it right now but with all the AI and That's a whole nother discussion with the AI and Shale Drilling and performance and I think I saw something on Linkedin today Unit Boss four O
1:12:36 six just drilled a one mile one mile so fifty to eighty and twenty four hours that's an average of two hundred and twenty feet per hour and everything connections downtime incredible performance but I
1:12:55 mean my time is money you know Yeah I get it there there's there's wells up in the Appalachian basin that have never make it over ten thousand feet in twenty four hours and and and that's just you
1:13:08 know just just flying because it's factory drilling and Yeah there are that that's the thing about a eyes is as I hope people understand you know like like not necessarily the the Andrew Yang's of the
1:13:19 world that think AI is going to be the harbingers of unemployment the world but a it's the the the the the progress the the progression of non of capabilities that our technology has through AI in our
1:13:35 art or in our industry specifically we are going to see a few percentage points of increased efficiency we're not going to see like one widget get developed and suddenly we're going to jail three
1:13:45 times as fast it's going to help us shave minutes off that at the end of a well is going to result in the saving of maybe a couple hours but then across that entire rig line throughout the entire year
1:13:57 you're going to save however many dollars well that's great if you pay a subscription for that thing or you you you you buy the widget or whatever it is that's good but mere people need to to
1:14:07 understand that there's a limitation to this in AI right now is very much a buzz word kind of thing not to say I'm not downplaying and I'm not impugning it succeed it's significance but it it it it
1:14:18 definitely has it's place now and again you know shale is his factory mode it's run by the it's it's run by an accountant not a geologist and there's no I end to end and I would be willing to put
1:14:32 money on ions on the on the over in terms of an over under that AI probably can't find oil in a conventional reservoir conventional field like the human mind can and and again I'm not downplaying the
1:14:48 importance of artificial intelligence and what it can do to improve efficiencies and drilling and completions and production but that there that there should give solace to the people that are out of
1:14:58 work that FAI have found themselves to be in a position to where they they feel like they can't find a job again there's never going to be anything that's going to be able to replace the human mind
1:15:09 from the geologic mind the engineering mind so that that's that's in essence where we you still have an opportunity and and what I would tell people right now cause read you talked about how there's a
1:15:20 lot of geologists out of work lot engineers out of work the best thing you can do for yourself is to diversify your skillset put yourself in a position to be uncomfortable everyone remembers how
1:15:31 uncomfortable they were when they first got in the industry they didn't know anything and they they they didn't know anybody they didn't know what they're doing they're just going out there and doing
1:15:40 the best that they could well when was the last time any of US really felt like that you know you have to put yourself in that position every once in a while to appreciate where you're at right now
1:15:49 and to grow because if you don't feel uncomfortable in your professional work as a as an effect of you trying something you've never done before then you're really just stagnant and you're moving
1:16:02 backwards so You Know I help book a local company here in the Appalachian Basin I essentially help run their production you know I'm not a production guy but I'm a local guy and I was recommended and
1:16:15 I just started doing it started helping out I you know other than you know a little bit of gas production I own personally here in West Virginia I had never really messed with anything no dehydrators
1:16:26 no gas compressors no pipelines nothing to know all these kind of things and I'm not saying I'm an expert by any means but I was definitely uncomfortable and I didn't know what I was doing and that
1:16:37 was the moment where you learn the most so people out of work and everything like that do what you can and it is another thing you know you want to be a wild cat or you want to go look for oil you
1:16:47 want to just go be an exploration of and find stuff on your own there are so much free data out there there's so much free information out there if you're willing to go through the effort and get your
1:16:57 hands dirty and accept the fact that it's going to be frustrating and confusing and I'll Tell you with the railroad Commission specifically you know they have the G I S interface they had the
1:17:08 Microfilm repository they have well log repositories and there's a lot of information out there that you can look at production histories on Microfilm Digital production histories i P tests swell
1:17:22 locations you know practice being a geologist again and trying to figure things out pencil and paper style Yeah it is still easier though you know it's easier than it was forty years ago because of
1:17:36 what you just search ad with all the information that is relatively are readily available for free basically railroad commission's one of them and I'm sure every state has that you know
1:17:53 kind of you know commission or or corporation Commission row commission whatever but The records are there you just you know and it's free to go look you just gotta know what you're looking for right
1:18:08 and all those all those big box data providers they're not going to give you anything you can't get on your own they're going to do it a lot a lot easier all in one place all organized you know it's
1:18:19 going to be a lot more expensive but you can go find it on your own you don't have to spend a lot of money to do it you don't have to sit at the kitchen table at two a M and and just thumb through it
1:18:30 all but you know when I can't sleep that's one of my favorite things to do as I get on there and I just start scrolling around that GIF viewer for the Texas Railroad Commission when I get on there and
1:18:39 I Scroll around and I and my wife thinks I'm nuts
1:18:45 but I found some great I found some great wells doing that you know that nobody else is looking at right exactly and and she tells me often she says don't share your secret sauce I said but love
1:18:57 nobody else is going to put in the work then I'm putting in Nobody else is wanting to put this time in to go look at it met in in my generation in particular right folks My age twenty five to thirty
1:19:10 five they don't want to pick up the phone and call somebody I'm like Oh You Know Jim Bob Hatley ones that you know what's his phone number Lemme call Jim Bob and Say Hey you know would you sell that
1:19:20 well would you get rid of that well I know it's not near anything else and I'll go ahead and call him and you know that there's just not folks doing that kind of stuff anymore there's a lot of
1:19:29 opportunity out there just in the last week have picked the phone up and called men that are older than I AM and ASk questions about something that Chad Meyer looking at and they were incredibly
1:19:41 helpful and he you know I mean he better be prepared for about an hour long conversation prisoner and lie and you know they like to talk about that if you just sit there and listen you will absorb
1:19:58 that absolutely Yeah absolutely I mean that they're out there if they're still out there I mean that talk the you know there's a clock ticking and you know like you said read when we first started
1:20:10 talking about this you know all this knowledge is it's not going to be there forever and nobody's writing books that I know of but
1:20:20 maybe we can help some folks I dunno on the way and
1:20:26 you use the term grabbing earlier i can't get it off my brain what is it explain to me what a graben structure is I Can't I can't place it I keep thinking about grabbing his role on a lot of geology
1:20:40 terms are La kind of like Western and Northern European in origin so grob is French meaning trench at least I think that's what it is I and and it essentially is where you have an extension
1:20:53 environment geologically where you have everything's just kind of like Stretching out and you have a good fault block in the center so you have a one block that is being is destroyed is shifting
1:21:10 downward or down thrown on on on the inside and up thrown on the outside not to say that the outside is up thrown but you have a settling in the center so whenever this this extension occurs you have
1:21:25 the scrub that forms in generally since it's happening very slowly over geologic time when it falls it falls in a dome shaped like that and so you have two normal faults on either side it slumps
1:21:37 downward and you have this dome shape and generally that's located so you and a lot of your Gulf coast conventional reservoirs you have your your depositional environment during that time yet a higher
1:21:52 sea level so you had all of this sediment coming into the basin and you had the SYN depositional fault so you're having if you're having tectonic activity extensional environment grabens forming and
1:22:05 while they're forming you're having the sand deposited at the same time these this classic material that makes a reservoir so you have a sediment entering these structures and then it's getting buried
1:22:17 and you are having these you know these these continuously developing faults and you know everything's getting buried that's why you can drill a well in south Texas and you can hit thirty forty feet
1:22:28 of sand right here and right next door you're hitting ten feet of dirty siltstone in the same zone and that's why you're in your fault as in between the two of them and that goes back to the point I
1:22:40 made earlier where you have to know the underlying geology and how stuff got the way that it got because if you take one of these fields in South Texas I'm referring to and you plug all that data and
1:22:51 you go a mile in each direction you flow all that data into a software program if you have a dense enough dataset it will kind of paint the picture but if you don't know exactly what's going on You'd
1:23:03 be led Astray because a mapping algorithm isn't going to know the concept of you know during this period of time there's extension during deposition and that's how this formed and that was buried in
1:23:13 that created your sione of resource rock down here and this is how this is working there's a lot more details to it so then you have the instance where you have half robin the half robbins where you
1:23:22 have a series of of subsequent I I guess you know normal fault normal fault normal fault and they all kind of slumped together all at once and you have what OH a call overturned so you have the sand
1:23:36 formation and it's slumps like this all to one side and that's how you make your dome feature right there the opposite of a robin as as a horse does that right I was going to say horse horse H o R S T
1:23:51 Horst Yes you have horst and graben and you have several in a row well you have the one side is known as horst the down throw inside the horse yes thank you Yeah so like on on the Texas coast in
1:24:04 particular right the Gulf of America is like tectonically dropping and pulling away and then in between we've got all these faults that step down yup as it's pulling away and that's what's created
1:24:20 that area for it to fill into yes yes so in that correctly Yeah and that's that's not the case with every single Field I you know Gulf Texas Gulf Coast Field but a lot of the big ones you know that I
1:24:32 that you know it's worth mentioning are like that a lot of those and if you again you know it's funny cause you you Say You're sitting at the Kitchen Table two Am When I'm looking at that Map I Think
1:24:41 I call it digging in the dirt cause there's a scene and there will be blood where Union oil approaches Daniel Plainview and Isis he says well why don't you go find it yourself once you scratch around
1:24:52 the dirt and find it like the rest of Us and that's why I adjusted a little bit called digging in the dirt which you know is is how is this my pastime but anyway when I'm digging in the dirt and I'm
1:25:02 looking at that kind of stuff and you look at that map and you zoom out you can see how a lot of these fields are long ovals that are parallel to the to the coast because that's the that's the how
1:25:12 everything is falling downward so you have an extension we're talking about structural geology chad the find more oil and gas production in Robbins or on horse or is it just that I can I can say that
1:25:26 the Frio Miocene Age sands you because of the depositional history there with everything your accommodation Space I E you know what you have where the sediment is going to dump into the sink is
1:25:42 generally into these down thrown sides of these faults so that's where all the sediment has settled so I would say I would say with those formations in particular yes you do see those inside housed
1:25:55 inside of those grabens and half robbins as opposed to the horse which you know not to say that you don't have fields there you don't have oil and gas production there but in the generally when you
1:26:06 see you see that in those depressed areas
1:26:11 do you ever see a robin that has become a robin and then turns central horst you can have I mean yeah if you have reactivated if if your extension is reactivated in certain areas you could you could
1:26:28 also have fault inversion where you have a fault that started as a normal fault and then you had a compressional environment where that normal fault then reverses and turns into a reverse fault to
1:26:41 where I guess it could kind of look like a horst I suppose but that that right there is is all dependent probably on a case by case basis you'd have to look at some three D seismic to really dig into
1:26:52 that one would think it'd be pretty rare but just curious Yeah and so these big these big robbins are not and there are these these reservoirs rather they're not self sourcing of the oil the oil isn't
1:27:05 actually coming from inside the sand that's just where it ends up Ryan a kind of if flows into any traps and that's what we can suck it out of very easily right but it's not necessarily like the
1:27:17 unconventional reservoirs where we're going at where there a self sourcing reservoir correct okay so there has not only does the Sayin have to be there as a as a a trap or reservoir for to collect
1:27:31 into but we also have to have somewhere that the oil is coming from you know that it's generated and then it's flowing into that basically and and that's where it's being stored until we suck it out
1:27:43 That's correct Yeah and and that's where like you know shifting gears and going back into Mike's Neck of the woods where you have essentially the Barnett which is which is a drilling target in a lot
1:27:54 of places in northeast Texas the Barnett's a source rock for a lot of formations in northern Texas and the eastern shelf and even you know in the Permian the the Barnett equivalent there it's most
1:28:07 deeper formations are not Erie I know especially lot about in that regard but you know you've got your various fob reservoir rocks that are sourced from the Barnett even appear in the Appalachian
1:28:20 basin the Marcella started out as the source rock for at least the way it was they started out it was considered to be just the source rock as I said before you know they drill through it sees huge
1:28:28 Gasp I can think well shale gas well the Marcellus sourced and really all these Devonian age shales up here sourced all these different sand reservoirs the most notable one you know we're one of the
1:28:40 most notable ones being the Oriskany which is lies right underneath of the Marcellus so you have the Marcellus in this particular case and is a veritable source and seal because you have the Marcellus
1:28:56 then the Onondaga then the hunters vil and then the risking in Huntersville Security line that can all metals has porosity in some areas and it will be a good reservoir rock in some cases but you have
1:29:09 your Oriskany in your hunters fill either or which is being kept by the Onondaga Limestone and the Marcellus and so over time that resource can you have your source rock the above you can source rock
1:29:21 be below but yes you have to have source migration pathway reservoir porosity permeability is great to have and also a seal them which I think I said seal twice I Dunno maybe detected on those grabens
1:29:36 where you've got these faults and you've got this coming down all of that is some of that fault said well not necessarily from a source rock or exactly something that reed and his guess was talking
1:29:50 about earlier about you know oil and gas coming from the mantle or down you know down below in the igneous formations view you subscribe to that theory or well I don't know I'd have to you'd probably
1:30:05 have to look at doing a mass SPEC on that gas and I would assume if you're getting if you're getting hydrocarbons out of the mantle what else you getting he didn't Helium I mean maybe you are right
1:30:15 maybe maybe that's the true prize right there considering value helium right now that can be another con gas and we're going to have a guy on credit that's good I really am but Yeah generally going
1:30:28 back to the Gulf coast the the actual fault escarpment which is you know basically where that fault is scurrying the the break the Fault escarpment is the is the migration pathway for a lot of these
1:30:41 and you'll see a lot of you know there there I've seen plenty of the step outs where people have tried to offset corner shoot where have you some of these gras these fields that are struck robin
1:30:52 structures and do you know the trapping mechanism is important and if you have an incomplete trapping mechanism and you have an escape for your hydrocarbons they're just going to go on up section to
1:31:06 the next trap or just be gone and the others plenty of of of fields out there that have that people have attempted to drill they get down there and they realize that the only thing in that reservoir
1:31:19 is a little bit of gas and mostly dead oil because oil pass through there millions of years ago on it's way somewhere else so I just as conclusion is it's probably a combination of both as far as
1:31:33 being false fed or source rock or
1:31:37 either or or together i guess Yeah Yeah and I think a large portion of of of Troy's point is that often we have the carriage in in place but we need the brines to come up and convert the carriage in
1:31:53 and without the brine coming into convert that carriage and it's Gonna stay coal you know like a coal mine right you know something like that like we might have a lot of rock that is heavy has never
1:32:04 had that conversion is what I understood of course and that due to smart like he's some kind of smart and my brain hurt after that conversation I can imagine that last May I was like this guy's
1:32:19 incredibly intelligent man he got into the waves and I was like OH My Gosh he would love Hardeman County and the Hardeman Basin because everything he was talking about has happened there he's probably
1:32:31 never even heard of the Ottoman base well I'll have to ask him some time for Yeah so it's interesting Yeah Yeah well thank you for explaining that gen and it helps me can understand those fields and
1:32:43 those are right in my backyard you know those are twenty thirty minutes from me and I grew up here and those names and and watching them produce and a lot of them are either very high water drives
1:32:52 right so a number of those and I've been looking at the last couple of weeks or half a percent oil cut at this point right if you can move twenty thousand barrels a day you know you can make two
1:33:03 hundred barrels a day of water and wow it I mean know of oil and it's just a lot of water it you start to hito we talk about Shelby in an economic game you get far enough down a water drive you start
1:33:16 really trying to play with those economics and figure and you know how far do we take this before we just say we're you know we're out well if you have you have somewhere to put the water and it's
1:33:26 convenient then you can just flow that thing all day long but Yeah that that's your ear a dull tide and your Eloi and a yeah that that that's Awesome and you know depending on where you're at in
1:33:37 structure you know they're like you said the they'll use the word attic and and you know where where could you find it could you locate the attic could use seismic could you just hand map it you know
1:33:48 could you is it worth throwing a well how much oil column is left I think a lot of a lot of instances you know like with those you know you protect a new technology to an old field he draw horizontal
1:33:58 well and some of these conventional fields you're you know you're enhancing your possibility of finding that remaining oil much much much better and you're going to sweep oil to that Wellborn so if
1:34:10 you have a twenty five hundred foot lateral at the tippy top of this of those sandstones and you're you're cutting across the crass to where you've mapped the crust then you're you're enhancing your
1:34:20 odds now you are enhancing the expense goes some of those wells you know cost a couple million it's not like a shale well because you don't put a giant Hydro frack on it but they are excellent
1:34:30 permeability they flow their water drive so you know you don't really have to put it on pump or at least you don't have to put all of them on pump all the time and they will you know you'll have your
1:34:41 fluid you're in down the reservoir it might be an emulsion or it might just be just bound grain bound oil that you're getting pushed with your water around but you're you're helping yourself you're
1:34:55 helping your odds whenever you do stuff like that so again it can be a symbiotic relationship your conventional reservoirs can benefit from the development of these unconventional tools and techniques
1:35:09 and technology
1:35:11 yet do you see more oil and conventionally being recovered from old fields benefiting from the new technology or do you see US continuing to find new pockets of oil like where's the i say where's the
1:35:27 future as if that's like a one or the other I will continue to find new pockets other places but do you see US reinvesting into exploration again and going out and trying to find new fields or is a
1:35:41 lot of this focus in the next fifteen twenty thirty years can be trying to just be more efficient because you feel like most of it's been found Yeah that's a good question I I you know I I talked to a
1:35:50 guy who in the Midwest had worked for a pretty you know a pretty major shale driller and they were drilling point pleasant wells in Ohio and they were drilling the top hole down a couple thousand feet
1:36:03 and they ended up drilling into a brand new unknown field and and this is a couple of thousand feet in an area it's an area where you know that was common I think it was the maybe then the Gordon
1:36:16 Formation I probably got it didn't get the name right but and there there were plenty of oil wells in the area that may be made a barrel or two a day on average but he they drilled the the the top
1:36:29 hole down and the well was flowing fifty barrels of oil a day and you know you find it by accident that way and there's a lot of new technologies that can D risk this process one of them in particular
1:36:40 which I haven't had the opportunity to utilize yet but I would really like to utilize it a lot is HM P a mike she nodded his head because he knows exactly I'm talking about it's a very interesting
1:36:50 technology that I you know I I don't know enough about it to really try to explain it other than that utilizes electric signal they induce an electric signal it's like a resistivity log except you're
1:37:03 measuring it from the surface so you say I want to investigate you know roughly this depth under the surface and you will see these positive responses where you have existing oil column and a lot of
1:37:16 lot of very interesting results coming from that where you can really dial in your and you know You're You're You're well locations where you want to drill where you want to penetrate your reservoir
1:37:28 rock and when you line them up against seismic data the you do see a positive correlation and you also see some dissonance you see some disagreement where the existing oil is and where the seismic is
1:37:41 and I think what that really is done at least to mike and me and a few other people has helped us come to the conclusion where in some of these formations especially the north Texas stuff you if you
1:37:52 have a structure and you hit high structure and the top of the structure sometimes at rock is tight and it doesn't want to flow and really on some of these structures not all of them some of them you
1:38:03 hit the flank and they flow better so you have a better preservation of porosity on the flanks of the structure as opposed to the top of the structure and that that is if your allergies Yeah it's very
1:38:16 interesting it's very interesting to when he goes out and runs the survey and he doesn't know anything about the section but then he does his thing and runs the survey and then the customer texts it
1:38:30 and line stood up against their mapping or their seismic or what have you it's very coincidental or weird how it matches up okay and his hope his whole thing is I might not find all for you but I'll
1:38:48 tell you where not to drill because you definitely won't find it here what is it called H PH HMV Hydrocarbon modulating Pulse analysis I Hope I didn't get that wrong but I'm pretty sure that's what
1:39:00 it's called Yeah and and Lat if not exactly black box but you know it's been an interesting one more belt I mean one more tool in our belt now I'd be a Hell you'd probably have gary on your podcast
1:39:16 that'd be a great guy to have on your podcast Yeah Yeah We'll have to get in touch with him yeah he would be good Yup Cool Huh I'll check that out Yeah there's there's there's so much left behind
1:39:33 we've got to get get out right like what I call the shallow wells you've been drilling lately mike you know just going in and in doing all the infill and poking a couple more holes and you know when
1:39:47 when oil prices right and it makes a lot of sense either this guy I talked to a movie drew and mike no user names or anything and you know why are you doing this and he's well i started this on my
1:40:03 kitchen table mach and you know these I saw this field I was approached with I wanted to buy it and he said I felt like you know I could I could make it produce better and and so he did and he went in
1:40:18 there he bought it and then he warped over the wells and there eight hundred feet deep You work them over and he got his production up a little bit so now he's starting to make a little bit of cash
1:40:29 flow ne he showed it to a geologist and and she said Yeah now there's a lot left behind here why don't you go drill a new well right here he's drilled like AIG successful wellness in a room love it
1:40:48 Yeah it's just unbelievable and it's so fun as oil on the pits you know we drill it in one day
1:40:57 you know you can smell it and it's just it gets it gets your heart pumping you know it's all it's all water based and in your hand makes your cake and everything like that like it's pretty basic
1:41:10 caroline mean these wells although they'll come on fifteen and they'll well off about eight hundred feet what a dream Yeah Yeah Yeah we're looking at A We're looking at a shallow gas prospect a couple
1:41:25 miles from my house and and you know all in we can it's sixteen hundred feet all in we can drill and test this this three D seismic anomaly for less than one hundred thousand dollars alright really
1:41:42 but it's a gas prospect and the key comes down to if we can get a tie in to a gas sales line which i've been here lately from some friends that could be three hundred or three hundred fifty thousand
1:41:53 dollars and mo so my geologist says that it's half a BCF right so at half a BCF you know we spend one hundred thousand and make a million that's a great return but if we have to spend three hundred
1:42:06 and fifty thousand for a Seismic I mean for at Italian on on a gas line there it it it makes it it throws it out but I just you know with these little oil deals like this and that's the hard part with
1:42:17 gas right is always infrastructure these little oil deals like you can truck it to the nearest takeaway and and they're just they're easy and it's it's waiting for you this guy he spends forty
1:42:30 thousand dollars to drill and complete one and and he says you know I said we're going to do another one is like well when I get my money back for this one and then I make another forty thousand
1:42:41 dollars then I'll draw another well and I'm like Mister Sullen So I'd have this rig out here every week I'm just more aggressive Yeah it's a great it's a great lease is I'm I'm jealous of it but Yeah
1:42:60 absolutely it's just fun
1:43:04 Yeah good deal alright guys