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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.
00;00;00;10 - 00;00;14;10
Unknown
I can't believe that it's finally me and you and you and me. Just us and your friendly.
00;00;14;12 - 00;00;38;21
Unknown
Oh, yeah. I was going to give it to you. Oh. All right. Yeah. It's a little dirty from riding around on my dashboard. Well, good. It's been put to youth already, but it's yours. Awesome. Don't take it. Yeah. Come on. I've had people reaching out, trying to get a welcome to conventionally uncouth, with Reed Goodman. And our guest today is Clay parish.
00;00;38;24 - 00;00;55;12
Unknown
I've had a lot of people text me or email me and asked for one, and I say, you know what? What's it going to take to get a hat? You got to show up here to do that. You know, just for close friends, we'll give them out. But the the answer for most people has been, well, maybe you buy a couple percent award turkey.
00;00;55;15 - 00;01;28;01
Unknown
Hey. And you'll get a hat. That's right. I think for that kind of money, then I'll just go have some made. But I don't know if you've seen the price of Hats. If you've ever had a dozen caps made. Probably not good ones. I was astonished when I had those made. So, you know, like for ten years working for a service company, it's like I would always tell the marketing lady, hey, I need a dozen of these, or can we get some leather patch caps or, you know, get them in that color or whatever, and they just send me a couple dozen caps, and I started adding it all up, and I bet I've worn
00;01;28;01 - 00;01;46;13
Unknown
over $10,000 worth of caps, you know, in my career. And, you probably threw away half of them. You know, how many does. How many dollars worth of caps did you just toss? That's right. A lot. That's right. I wasn't thinking about these little service companies that are trying to give those out for something. And so I've started wearing my caps longer.
00;01;46;15 - 00;02;05;05
Unknown
You know, I'd wear it for 2 or 3 weeks. They get dirty, I'd throw them away. A little more appreciation for all those caps. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So good point. You've probably gotten plenty of caps. Lots of caps? Yeah, lots of cats. And I'm a little bit picky. Oh. You are. And so if if I don't love the cap, then I don't wear it.
00;02;05;05 - 00;02;25;13
Unknown
And I've got stacks of them in my closet and I've got them all. Yeah, but don't do anything with them. My wife was purging my cap collection for a while. Yeah. And I'm due a purge. I'm due a person of doubt. Yeah. Yeah. No, I try to keep one from, like, at least one from every company I've worked at or worked for.
00;02;25;15 - 00;02;43;19
Unknown
Yeah. So, like, if I did a job from shell, I keep one shell hat. When I was working for superior, I've got like 3 or 4 different styles of superior hats, you know, but like, I try to everybody that I if I can. A lot of the operators are a little more stingy with their hats, and it's hard to get one.
00;02;43;20 - 00;03;01;16
Unknown
Yeah. That's true. You've got to get you got to get a relationship built up. They're not trying to earn a business so. Well that's not they're not saying, hey, put put my cap on your head so it looks like you use us. Yeah, I'll probably aren't quite as concerned that way, but that's true. That's true. Good advertising. Well, so you live here in Houston?
00;03;01;17 - 00;03;26;09
Unknown
I do not. Too far away. Yeah, just up in Jersey village. Right up the road here. Cool. A nice, easy trek in. Easy. Very easy. It's this time of day anyway. I was late this morning. Yeah. I was supposed to be here at nine. I didn't get here till ten. And part of that was I had a well go down last night at, like, 1 a.m., and I woke up and I rolled over and looked at my phone, and I was like, all.
00;03;26;09 - 00;03;37;27
Unknown
I have to do that for Houston. You know, go ahead and put it back online. Seven. It's the same way it keeps giving me hill and there's always giving me hill. It,
00;03;37;29 - 00;04;01;28
Unknown
When I first kick it off, it likes to flow up the backside and it swamps out its fuel separator. And I've been dealing with this for two years, and every now and then I'll get upset enough to go make some changes and like some actual real changes. And so maybe a year ago, not quite a year ago, I had put a, there was just a ball valve dump on this fuel separator.
00;04;02;00 - 00;04;29;02
Unknown
I put a, a welded a two inch flange on the side and put a float switch in there and a little one inch Kim Ray opens up when it floats. And it was working really well for like 6 or 8 months. And, if I can baby it through, if it goes down for whatever reason and it's down for more than a day or two, it kind of has some flush production, right?
00;04;29;04 - 00;04;43;06
Unknown
So then when I turn it back on, I have to baby it really hard for like two or 3 or 4 days to get past that, that flush production. Then it lines out and it'll run great for a month or two, right? Because it starts trying to flow up the backside those first couple of days with that flush.
00;04;43;13 - 00;05;05;17
Unknown
And but in that, that fuel separator is doing pretty well. That float was doing pretty well for a while lately. It gets hung up like you can tell that the float is floating, but it's not floating with enough force. It's a snap troll controller, and it's actually physically got a arm in there, a little lever that has the click.
00;05;05;20 - 00;05;34;28
Unknown
And it's not floating with enough force to click that lever over. And so you walk up to it and you can literally just set your finger on that lever and it just. Yep. And it dumps. And you restart your motor and you go about your day and 855 I'm still not quite an hour from here. It went down again on my way in, I was like, so I was late and it only ran for, you know, four hours worth your time to get over there and fix it.
00;05;34;28 - 00;05;57;24
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. Because it likes to end up flowing up the backside and it's it's frustrating. And, what a terrible problem. So I yeah, it is a it is, it's, it's is, but it's not. Right. And I haven't taken the time to pull that float out and see like maybe that floats got in waterlogged or it's really high gravity, you know, it's 4748.
00;05;57;25 - 00;06;16;28
Unknown
Right. And so just doesn't have enough buoyancy, I guess, to really click it over. And, and it's weird because it doesn't do it all the time. Right. It's like it almost gets hung. Like maybe if the fluid rises to slowly, it doesn't get a slug. If it just like trickles in along with a gas stream, then it, you know, it doesn't make the click.
00;06;16;29 - 00;06;40;07
Unknown
Yeah, I haven't figured it out yet. But it's certainly frustrating. Something to tinker with right up your alley. Oh, yeah. Production. That's really what I've spent most of my career do. Gotcha. Yeah. When did the. When did you start? Yeah. So I graduated from Texas Tech in 2015. From engineering. Okay. Got hired by Statoil. Okay. After they.
00;06;40;08 - 00;07;05;20
Unknown
Shortly after they purchased Brigham exploration, which is a backing player. Yeah. Big P, but back bunch up there and at least pretty sure that's the way that worked. But that came in after all that. So I was just a regular old production engineer, had some wells in North Dakota that were my responsibility. Yeah. Worked with him for a bit.
00;07;05;22 - 00;07;25;04
Unknown
Then they said, hey, Clay, you want to go to the field? I said, if you're going to do it, do it now. I have no kids. I'm free. Do it now. And so, they sent me to South Texas, worked out of the Three Rivers office for a bit. They changed their name to Ecuador. So make sure everybody knew they weren't an oil company.
00;07;25;07 - 00;07;46;24
Unknown
Right? Right. And then, they brought me back to, Austin, sold us to Grayson Mill. Okay. And came over to Houston. I've been here since. So when you were in Austin, you were working the North Dakota asset, the Williston Basin asset? Correct. I did, for a period of time when they after they sent me to South Texas.
00;07;46;24 - 00;08;11;15
Unknown
I worked the Eagle Ford for a while. But that was on the sales block, too. And so they kind of saved me from that. Say, who did they? They sold that to Repsol. Yeah. So yeah, they bought them and talisman. So talisman was pretty stable. Apparently there was a JV of some sort. Okay. Talisman is no more.
00;08;11;18 - 00;08;37;00
Unknown
Okay. I believe Statoil took over operator ship. There was some sort of gotcha who's in charge sort of thing going on, and somebody thought that would be better in charge. And so I think it it rotated around. And then there was some horse trading between Repsol and Espanola or about offshore stuff and the Eagle Ford stuff. So, when that was brewing, they said, hey, Clay, come back to the bucket.
00;08;37;04 - 00;08;56;23
Unknown
Yeah. So, yeah, they saved me from that sale and cool. So ended up back over here. Yeah. When you were down there in the Eagle Ford, they were running. They were running side pocket manuals for all their gas lift. They were kind of like one of the very few people and South Texas that wanted to run side pocket manuals, if I recall correctly.
00;08;56;25 - 00;09;18;12
Unknown
You know, I was fortunate that my jurisdiction down there did not have many of them. Okay. I do remember that discussion. Yeah. And, and and we were not running them when we had the opportunity. Gotcha. Two. I see. Yeah, but lots of big centralized gas. Lift, plunder lift plunder assisted gas lift, stuff like that. Two rod pumps.
00;09;18;15 - 00;09;33;24
Unknown
Two. All right. And due to my barking experience, I was the only engineer down there that could run a rod design at the time. And so they said, well, Clay, I guess you got the rod pumps. Yeah. So I love it. Yeah. So why why did y'all have so many more rod pumps in the back in in the eagle.
00;09;33;27 - 00;10;01;05
Unknown
It's all about gas. It's all about gas. Gas lift wells down there or the wells in South Texas have a whole lot more gas, a lot less liquids. And, Bakken has in general, in some places you're going to get a lot of gas. Which challenges the rod pumps. But the other thing was the central facilities made gas lift, centralized gas lift, a much easier solution.
00;10;01;08 - 00;10;24;00
Unknown
So we were pulling all the gas. The central facilities had giant compressors there already. Shove it back to the field. Gotcha. And that just made it really easy. Was that you think that was a, was that something that was designed for, like, pre-development, or did it just kind of work out that way because there acreage is more contiguous in South Texas or like.
00;10;24;01 - 00;10;52;21
Unknown
That's a good question. I don't I don't think I know the answer, but, if I were to hypothesize, I think they planned it because one, they were just outside the oil window. And this is a this was a big. I heard some some stories from, between the Brigham, the Brigham, some of the Brigham people that stayed on with saddle for a period of time had some influence.
00;10;52;28 - 00;11;17;17
Unknown
And, the story I heard was one of the top Brigham people that had knowledge of the assets had said, hey, you're outside the oil window. So your commitments on your liquids, you're not going to make it with your drilling program. You're outside the window, so you're not going to make the oil you think you are. And he was right.
00;11;17;20 - 00;11;45;09
Unknown
He ended up being right about that. The commitments that they had committed to. Yeah. Couldn't meet him. Yeah. Couldn't meet him. And so but I do think it was planned for those, gas lines were laid with every new pad. Gotcha. So. But it was super convenient operations because we would have wellhead separator, measure all three phases, shove it back together and one pipe.
00;11;45;12 - 00;12;11;04
Unknown
To the facility measure it and put it back together and yeah huge allocation setups. Yeah. Which spent a whole lot of time ended up doing more production allocation work than I ever thought I would. Yeah. But, just just big math problem. Big math problem. Right. So, but created a lot of challenges and just questions about is my production number correct?
00;12;11;06 - 00;12;32;00
Unknown
Correct. Yeah. So, yeah. What you're sending out. What's your pulling out of the wheel head, which you're sending out of the pipeline. And what you're receiving at your tanks can often be three numbers, three separate numbers. It always is three separate. Yeah. And you have to figure out where it went in the middle and how much of its poor measurement, how much of it is shrink.
00;12;32;00 - 00;12;43;15
Unknown
And maybe there's a leak somewhere. And it's just like all this. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I, I made a mistake.
00;12;43;18 - 00;13;14;06
Unknown
Early in my career asking too many questions about production allocations. I see. And, there was a time when Statoil was, I guess, at the time was re-arranging, knowing that they were going to start piecing off these things and kind of get out of US operations onshore. And, as a result, some some people were let go. And one of them was, a gal that was in charge of, the production accounting team.
00;13;14;08 - 00;13;32;27
Unknown
Okay. And, this was this was after they pulled me back to the bucket and they said, Clay, you've expressed some interest in how our production allocations work. We need someone to lead this team. You're like, oh, goodness, there you go. And then I was I was in it from then on. But, turns out I kind of like it, so.
00;13;32;29 - 00;13;55;09
Unknown
Yeah, it's just it's just a big puzzle. Just a big puzzle. Yeah. And puzzles are kind of fun. Yeah, I remember, I remember being in a meeting that had nothing to do with water, but the topic came up about water. And this is when I was in house for Anadarko for gas lift. Was superior, and, her quasi in house.
00;13;55;09 - 00;14;11;06
Unknown
I don't know if I don't know if anybody's ever technically legally like in-house, but anyways, I was there three days a week or I'd had an office and, and so, the conversation came about water. About water. And one of their engineers is like, man, I'm missing like 50,000 barrels a day. I don't know where it is.
00;14;11;07 - 00;14;36;20
Unknown
I don't know where it's going. Yeah, but, like, we've got 50,000 barrels a day supposedly coming out of the ground. Yep. And I don't know where we're sending it. And, you know, one of the interesting, like, at the time, I was like, well, that's crazy. You know, and it's it's cost, right? Like you. Well, one, you need to know where your fluids going so you can be responsible to like, you need to be able to, allocate that disposal cost to those wells.
00;14;36;21 - 00;15;01;15
Unknown
Correct. Right. Properly. But then one of the like more recent things, right, is like if there's lithium in that water. Yeah. Now that water has a value. And we haven't really been tracking the water and what wells it comes from. And you know there's been no value on that commodity previously. And that adds this like whole layer that we're coming into with everybody wanting to get you know.
00;15;01;16 - 00;15;24;21
Unknown
Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Regulatory wise also it wasn't ever pressured. Yeah. If you get your water wrong. Yeah. You get it. That's what it is. But if you get the other stuff wrong because it has value, it's a big problem. But yeah, that's a good point. We had sent, this was back in Ecuador days. We had sent some barrels, barrels, 55 gallon barrels, big drums to California somewhere.
00;15;24;24 - 00;15;49;01
Unknown
Okay. From it was backing water and we thought, hey, is there enough lithium here to make a commercial stream out of this? Yeah, this is ten years ago. It would have been eight, eight or so years ago. Yeah. And, the answer at the time, I think, was no. Or at least not enough for Ecuador. But yeah, perhaps I wonder if the technology just wasn't quite there yet.
00;15;49;04 - 00;16;10;08
Unknown
That's possible. Or maybe the lithium price wasn't quite there yet or some, you know, variation of the I mean, takes all of it. Yeah. In order to make it commercial. Wow. Yeah. No, I remember we had, like, a a box track full of full of barrels of water. That's cool. So, yeah. Real barrels getting shipped. Actual barrels. Yeah.
00;16;10;10 - 00;16;30;29
Unknown
Barrels. Their drums, I guess. But. Yeah. Yeah. Drums. They're 55 gallons or drop gallon drums. Yeah. For folks that don't know a barrel, it's 42 gallons. And so the the abbreviation for barrels is BB l s. Right. Blue barrels. Right is where that started because they were always marked blue when they put them on the rail cars.
00;16;31;00 - 00;16;53;08
Unknown
Okay. Crude oil. They would paint the barrels blue. So bbls was blue barrels. It's 42 gallons. And, so, of course, me being me, I'm always thinking of, like, I don't have a custom license plate, but I'm always thinking, like, custom license plate idea. Did I did. Right. I'm like, what would it be? What would the.
00;16;53;09 - 00;17;14;18
Unknown
You know. For a while, I wanted a js LILIF like for gas lift. My wife is like, no, that'll say gas life. People are gonna think that like you've got gastrointestinal issues, right? And, but, Ken Maldonado actually ended up getting that license plate. Gas lift. And, when I saw him, I had to congratulate him on it.
00;17;14;18 - 00;17;37;19
Unknown
But anyway, so I'm, like, always looking up these different license plates and, the one that I've settled on that, you know, like, when we make it and I have a big fancy truck again, it's going to be m o space BLS mo barrels. And so I had, I had, like, put it in to see if it was available on the website for Texas.
00;17;37;20 - 00;17;57;12
Unknown
Yep. And it was available. So I screenshotted it. I sent it to my wife. I said, hey, my license plates available. And and she laughed. And then I got her response from my little boy. You know, took a little video. He said, dad, what? Why would you want bubbles? I was like, oh my goodness. Yeah. Like so.
00;17;57;16 - 00;18;12;22
Unknown
Didn't, didn't didn't see it that way. That killed that one. But I think I'm gonna stick with it now. More bubbles. Yeah. Which also kind of works for the gas lift. So however you I mean, however you want to treat that one, I'm good with it. Yeah. You got to get the one with the Derrick on it, though.
00;18;12;25 - 00;18;33;04
Unknown
Oh, absolutely. I mean, Texas oil and gas. Yeah, I was gonna mine was going to be be 810 TKL bait and tackle. Okay. I wanted to yeah. You get the ones with the bass on it. Yeah, I like that. Come on. But you do a lot of fishing. Love fish. Love fish. I'm a North Texas kid, though, so.
00;18;33;05 - 00;18;56;04
Unknown
Okay. There's a long way to the beach, so I didn't do a whole lot of saltwater fishing. Yeah, fishing still don't. But, I'll. I'll do anything. Yeah, but, I have a little bass boat, and I'll go some of the lakes around here. Yeah. And fish a tournament every once in a while. But, it's, when you live an hour, 15 minutes from any sizable body of water.
00;18;56;08 - 00;19;18;00
Unknown
Yeah, that's a whole day. And so it's hard to dedicate a whole day to that sometimes. Yeah, it is, but. Yeah. Where in North Texas? Mineral Wells, Texas. That's where I grew up. That's right up, up through third grade. We were in Crowley, Texas. So I had a full worth. And then, back in the 70s and 80s, my granddad had started buying property.
00;19;18;02 - 00;19;39;00
Unknown
Yeah. And he ended up with a sizable chunk out in Mineral Wells. Okay. My dad decided in early 2000. I think it was a one when finally moved out there. I was going into fourth grade. Yeah. And it was awesome. I mean, it was freedom to roam as much as you wanted. Yeah, and that's where I really.
00;19;39;03 - 00;19;57;22
Unknown
I say, I really loved to fish there because we had ponds all over the place. I didn't say y'all have some water up in that country. We did far enough north or west where you get out of the water. Right. Yeah. We weren't in the desert yet. Yeah, it's interesting because like Mineral Wells is a lot of people call like Dallas, North Texas, or like over in Paris.
00;19;57;22 - 00;20;21;20
Unknown
And so that's why I wanted to, like, understand exactly where. Right. Because like. Yeah, but Mineral Wells, you're almost you're almost West Texas. Some people would almost start to call you West Texas. I've even heard people say it's kind of hill country, and it's not. I wouldn't call it that either. Yeah, but, yeah, I always, I always say it's, there's a lot of mesquite.
00;20;21;24 - 00;20;41;14
Unknown
Yeah. Which I sprayed a lot of mesquite. When I was a kid, dad would have me spray them to kill them. And, And then we've got cedars. Okay. So I say, well we're blessed because we have both these invasive species trees. There's you get some areas it's just mesquite. So you get some areas just cedar.
00;20;41;16 - 00;21;03;26
Unknown
But we've got them both. So we're very blessed. Great. I love it. Yeah. There's you know, fishing for bass and a pond is hard to beat. Yeah. Like, and and we grew up. We've got a, a tank right in front of my grandma's house that, my grandpa built that one. I think he dug that 1 in 19 82 or 83.
00;21;04;00 - 00;21;24;25
Unknown
Yeah. And, you know, there's several other tanks on the property that, like, they just don't hold fish as well. Yep. We don't do anything to that tank in particular, and it just always has fish. And actually, I noticed when we moved back to our place in 2020, all the fish were small, all the bass were small.
00;21;24;25 - 00;21;40;15
Unknown
We used to catch three, 4 or 5 pounders out of there. One time my brother caught an 8 pound bass out of there, and, all the fish were small and I couldn't figure out why. And, so, I started doing a little research, and the only thing I could come up with is that it's overstocked to me.
00;21;40;15 - 00;22;00;12
Unknown
Fish. But you could go 20 for 20 cats in a row and catch a bass every single time. Yeah. And if you had a half a half a lizard, you know, that had been tore up on there, or you had a top water plug or, you know, like a chartreuse spinner, like everything got hit. Yeah. And, I've caught fish.
00;22;00;13 - 00;22;14;16
Unknown
I've torn leaves off. Yeah. Put it on a hook and throwing them out and just kind of laid it out there. Yeah, well, and then you get ruined like that. You get ruined in a tank like that, and you don't want to hardly fish anywhere else. I grew up fishing these tanks, and it was it was like this.
00;22;14;16 - 00;22;27;29
Unknown
Yeah. And I knew, you know, okay, this tank over here, if I want to go catch a three, four pounder. Every every fish I catch going to be that big. I'm not going to catch as many. I can go to that one. I want to catch a fish. Every cast. I can go over to this one. Okay. But I grew up fishing all these tanks.
00;22;27;29 - 00;22;51;04
Unknown
And then in high school, I had a buddy whose dad was a serious fisherman. Okay. And he fish tournaments routinely. And so he would invite me to go to the lake. And I remember getting to the lake and just feeling lost. You catch? Yeah. You catch five fish in a day. It's not a bad day. And like, if I catch five fish in an hour, I'm probably mad, right?
00;22;51;06 - 00;23;12;07
Unknown
Because I didn't catch biting it. Yeah. So at the lake, I just felt lost. And, I've tried to hone the craft a little bit, but I still feel lost on Lake sometimes. Yeah, but no, there's a lot more, like, technical sense to it. Yeah. You know, fishing drop offs in the water column and temperatures and all this stuff.
00;23;12;12 - 00;23;40;24
Unknown
Another puzzle. And I like that one. So maybe that's right. Sensing a pattern. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Back to your main puzzle production allocation. So but but right now you've, you've done some, some ops stuff. Been in the field of good bit. You are a petroleum engineer. Engineer. Petroleum. Petroleum engineer. Okay. And so now you're doing a lot of consulting.
00;23;40;27 - 00;24;00;23
Unknown
I wouldn't say a lot of, but I'm doing consulting. Okay. Gotcha. So we're a I'm working on it. Yeah. It's. I am by no means a important figure in the ol and gas world. You know, I wouldn't consider myself that one bit, but, I had a theory, you know, coming out of the Grayson mill.
00;24;00;23 - 00;24;19;25
Unknown
Sold us to Devon, and I've tried to do a couple of different things, and, yeah, my dad became Ecuador, got bought by Grayson Mills. The North Dakota asset got bought by Grace and mill. Yeah. And, and got sold to Devon, to Devon. And then you part away during the sale? Correct. You didn't ride it over to Devon?
00;24;19;26 - 00;24;43;12
Unknown
Devin gave us an ultimatum. Said get to Oklahoma City or else. And I opted for. Or else. For better or for worse. Yeah. So, decided to give something a shot. Yeah, exactly. Sure. What? Something was going to be. Yeah. But, yeah. My theory was. Okay. You look at the number of operators. Maybe it's a production.
00;24;43;12 - 00;25;05;28
Unknown
I don't know what the right number is. This is. This is a theory. This is not a base based working based on data, necessarily. But there's a handful of big effective operators. And then you get the middle the middle range which is maybe a few. It's a it's a higher number of operators but they have less positions available.
00;25;05;28 - 00;25;28;03
Unknown
And then down here you've got probably a ton of little bitty operators. And my theory was these little bitty operators, they don't want a full time guy. Right. They can't afford a full time guy. Right? But they might need give me five hours a week. Give me ten hours a week. Give me. Help me on this project.
00;25;28;06 - 00;25;52;15
Unknown
You know how to do right of science. Come help me do a rod design. You know how to get plunger lift going here, get that installed. Whatever. Come help me with that. So my theory was, these little bitty guys, they just need a little help, right? And I wasn't too keen on going and sitting in an office again for eight, ten hours a day and driving 30 minutes to an hour to go do that.
00;25;52;16 - 00;26;17;27
Unknown
Yeah. So that's where I was attempting to work my way in and starting to get a little traction. So I think, I think I think it can work. I'm a terrible marketer of myself, so, I have no one to blame but myself. And for the pace that it's going at, it's a lot of relationships more than anything else.
00;26;17;29 - 00;26;39;26
Unknown
And, and I, I have found myself needing a guy for this or needing a guy that knows that. And I've just I've stared at my contact book and I'm like, I know I've stared at my phone and I'm like, I know that. I know a guy. I just can't remember who it was or who I talked to or who would be capable of handling this right.
00;26;39;27 - 00;26;57;19
Unknown
I find myself sometimes in that position and, and I think that's why, like sales and marketing work and just the idea that, like we were talking about with the hats. Like, it just keeps that person on the top of your mind. Yep. So then when you need them, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I should call that game.
00;26;57;21 - 00;27;21;27
Unknown
I just talked to Clay about this. Yeah, he he either knows or he might know a guy. I can see that being a lot of work establishing those relationships. Yeah. And then staying on top of mind without annoying them, you know, or whatever. That's got to be kind of like a fine line. There definitely is. And I air way too far on the on the room range.
00;27;21;29 - 00;27;41;24
Unknown
Then I, I should. Yeah. And, so yeah, that's, that's one of the reasons it's slower than, than you expect. But we're getting somewhere. We're getting somewhere so cool. It's been fun. It's fun to track. Yeah. And, I ended up with too much time on my hands. So I tell people now I'm in crude and refined products.
00;27;41;25 - 00;27;58;26
Unknown
Okay, so we're fine. Refined products. I have a little world change business. Oh, we come to you. Hey, we come to you. Come on. Yeah, I just I was getting my old change at a at a place one time and thought. There's got to be a better way. Yeah, there's got to be a better way. This is annoying.
00;27;58;28 - 00;28;23;03
Unknown
This is just frustrating to show up here. So I thought, hey, I got all the tools. I can do it myself. Yeah, I think other people might want to do that too. So I thought I'd give it a shot, but I. I was going to mention that I just think that all and gas is unique in that you actually can do multiple things at the same time.
00;28;23;09 - 00;28;50;03
Unknown
Yeah. There's not a lot of maybe maybe there are. But no, it gives you flexibility. Yes. Flexibility of time. You flexibility of roles. It's interesting within like well and gas hell. You don't necessarily like there's some things you need a subject matter expert. But like the idea of, like, how liquids interact, how fluids move, how.
00;28;50;06 - 00;29;31;05
Unknown
You know, just like the, the basic principles of, like, physics stay the same across like, completions, production, you know, drilling like those things kind of transfer. And a lot of times you need a guy that has like the basic understanding of the physics and then is a good, has some management skills. Right. Has good planning skills, has good note taking skills like that guy is very valuable because he gets you and has some amount of, so what I'm looking for, like comprehension, but, has some amount of, like, I know when something's not right.
00;29;31;06 - 00;29;46;07
Unknown
Yep. We need to ask a question. Right. He doesn't need to have the answer but he needs to like be out there and be like yeah this just doesn't this doesn't add up. This doesn't feel right. Yep. You know and then he calls the big dog or then he calls the the expert. Right. And we get the thing.
00;29;46;10 - 00;30;09;18
Unknown
But, you know that, like, skill set is a skill set that transfers to, like, all the different operations inside of oil and gas. Yeah, absolutely. Whether it's putting a pipeline together or, you know, we're working over well or drilling well or remediating or whatever, like a guy that can just have some critical thinking skills is what I was thinking of.
00;30;09;21 - 00;30;42;04
Unknown
Just some critical thinking skills. You're correct. Is absolutely invaluable. Definitely. Yeah. And with without the critical things, kills can be the liability. In fact, you know. Yeah. Not being able to pick out when something doesn't smell right. Right. So yeah. Yeah I always got frustrated with that when we, in the gaslit business, we, we wanted or or the packer business even, like, we wanted hands that had good critical thinking skills but also weren't too ambitious.
00;30;42;07 - 00;31;00;08
Unknown
Right. In between. Somewhere in between. It's like I want them to care about what they're doing and be good at it and, like, be able to, you know, think their way out of a wet paper sack. But I also don't want them to be like so ambitious or so smart that like, I only have so many management roles inside of this company.
00;31;00;09 - 00;31;18;12
Unknown
Yeah. Only have so many sales roles inside of this company. So I don't want to spend all this time investing in training for a year, and then they leave. Now, if we get there with somebody and they have the potential. I'm not going to force them to stay there. I want them to go somewhere, right. And do what they're good at.
00;31;18;14 - 00;31;38;18
Unknown
Yeah, right. But I think very often in and guess there's like that, that middle ground for us, like finding those guys in between is super hard. It's like you either have these very high achievers or you have guys that like are just doing well to show up. And and finding the guys in the middle is invaluable.
00;31;38;20 - 00;32;13;02
Unknown
I've pondered this. I had my third boss. Third boss. Great. Dude. I really liked him. And he was one rung above me in a company with many rungs. Right? And he was very near retirement, and I just thought, you know, does he aspire for more? Does he is he concerned that at this point in his career he's just one rung above where I am.
00;32;13;04 - 00;32;34;07
Unknown
Yeah. And, and I don't think that's the I don't think he was I think he was right where he wanted to be. Gotcha. And like he was enough responsibility. It was enough. Yep. Payroll. Yep. You know, to, like, keep him happy. He found the balance of work for him. Yeah. I think we very often chase this career.
00;32;34;10 - 00;32;56;15
Unknown
That if at the end of a career, we don't have a an O at the end of our title or a VP or whatever. Then we didn't do well enough. Yeah. But, I thought about him a lot. Yeah. In that same vein as he was right where he wanted to be. Yeah. And so there's people out there that they're right where they want to be.
00;32;56;16 - 00;33;17;09
Unknown
Yeah. So I think more than anything, what we want and what we miss is like, we're doing all of that so that we can have the time and the means to do the things we really want to do. Right. But then we end up either giving up the time and we have the means. We don't have the means, and we have all the time.
00;33;17;12 - 00;33;43;08
Unknown
We trade one for the other and finding a place where we can just. I'm also going to get on a soapbox. I know it's coming. I can't, I can't not. We've developed this culture in America. I've never lived anywhere else. Right. We've developed this culture where if I can't have the best, I can't do it. I have to own Sitka gear.
00;33;43;11 - 00;34;03;06
Unknown
Yeah. To go hunt an elk. But my poor Paul did it in blue jeans and a plaid shirt. Yep. I have to own a wake setter to go wakeboard. But you know my uncle did it in a 1973 glass tron. That's right. Get out and go do it. Yeah. Go enjoy it. Go do it with what you have.
00;34;03;07 - 00;34;22;14
Unknown
You don't. You don't have to have the best of everything to go do things in life. Right. And it's like, if I don't have a raptor, I can't go to the mall. Or or go mudding, you know, or go off road in Utah or Moab or whatever. It's like, man, go buy you an old 90 YJ Jeep and go tear it up.
00;34;22;15 - 00;34;44;19
Unknown
You know, it's like, yeah, we forget that culturally we forget that. And we always want to have the best. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we we get into that too. Like to tie that back to all and gas. I see that with a lot of operators to like some of those pads. You were on million dollars in automation on a well.
00;34;44;21 - 00;34;49;11
Unknown
Yeah. And.
00;34;49;13 - 00;35;08;28
Unknown
It's nice. Some of it's nice. Some of it's just a pain in the butt. Yeah. That's right. Right. Yeah. Because you're always trying to figure out what's broken with it. But like we can do simple automation. We can do little things. Like I was talking about with that flow valve. Yeah. We can do little things to try to make our life easier without always having to buy the nicest thing.
00;35;09;00 - 00;35;31;26
Unknown
It doesn't have to be an Alan Bradley you know PLC out there. Yep. Well that's how you put amplified on. Yeah. Your your wells. And I think that's a that's a good option out there. Yeah. And I mean is it perfect. Maybe not. Is it useful? Absolutely. Yeah. Well, things like that or. Yeah, they're out there. Helps me get to my goals.
00;35;31;27 - 00;35;49;27
Unknown
Yeah. Right. Makes my life a little bit easier so I can come up here and do this. Well, I say that Wells back down again. That was all. That one's on me, I guess. You can't win them all. Now I need to get a remote control dump valve. Well, I still want to restart the motor. And I was talking to my dad about this.
00;35;49;29 - 00;36;12;22
Unknown
In automating that system. He was like, well. Well, can you. Because we just added a clutch. Okay. Because that, well will pump off. Okay. And I can't slow the motor down anymore. Okay. And I can't, you know, I can't change. I can't put any smaller ships on there. I'm at six strokes per minute, and that's the slowest I can get that unit to run the year ratio, I said.
00;36;12;24 - 00;36;43;17
Unknown
Anyways. Dad was like, well, could you have a remote start for the motor where you could cut the motor on and off? It's like, well, I don't want that, because if it goes down on one of these things, I want to be out there to put my hands on it. I don't want to just be like trying to hit start from 200 miles away, not knowing, and be running fluid through my cylinder and, you know, cutting out, you know, valves or or or blowing piston rings or whatever, you know, so like there's a danger to automating too much of it sometimes.
00;36;43;20 - 00;37;11;22
Unknown
Yeah. You know, one of the in production accounting, one of the things that drove me nuts was, and I don't think by nature, I don't think that this is the case, but operators would get lazy. Because we automated so much that they didn't care what the production numbers were scattered. Brings it in. So I'm not even going to look at it.
00;37;11;25 - 00;37;28;10
Unknown
They don't know what's going on because they're not verifying it every day and it's not on their head. I mean it's not on the top of their, their mind. And so our best operators were always the ones that would call us when skater made a mistake because we knew they were paying attention and we knew they cared about what their well was making.
00;37;28;11 - 00;37;50;04
Unknown
We knew they cared that the data was right and so they would call us. I was like, hey. Yeah. Oh, okay. We know we see that's wrong. Thank you for fixing it. We'll make sure it gets cleared out in the system or whatever. And it was the ones that never called that. Never. You know, for us, it came in green when skater provided it.
00;37;50;04 - 00;38;18;15
Unknown
It was green in the system. But when it was touched by an operator turned white. So you always knew whoever's whoever's touching their data? Yeah. Those are the active ones. Yeah. And we did so much that we made lazy operators. Right. And I'm sure there is the proper balance there somewhere. Yeah. To automate but retain the effectiveness of your operator.
00;38;18;17 - 00;38;39;00
Unknown
It's hard though. We we tend like as humans we tend towards laziness. No. Yeah. Like it's kind of our wired default somehow for some reason. But it's not good for us. Like spiritually, it's not healthy for us to be lazy. Like we need to go, particularly as men. Right. Like we were built to. We were built to tame the wilderness.
00;38;39;02 - 00;38;59;04
Unknown
Right. And like to build the Garden of Eden. Like we were built to go see what's over the next ridge and, like, explore. And so if you get into this, like, just because something can be done for you. Yeah. Doesn't mean that it's good that it's done for you. Yep. And so you don't know your numbers. You don't know when there's a problem.
00;38;59;04 - 00;39;21;02
Unknown
You don't know how to fix it. You don't know how to deal with it. And also, I ran into a lot on these, like, very over complicated pads. I ran into a lawn fatigue where, like, I call it a lawn fatigue. There's always a stone. Yeah, yeah, I leveled here, you know, low level there, high pressure here, high pressure there.
00;39;21;02 - 00;39;41;18
Unknown
And it's just like, clear clear. All clear, all clear all. Especially if you have a bad sensor somewhere. Yep. And you're always just clearing it. And then if there really is ever a high high on that separator, you've been clearing it for two weeks. It's like then there goes a pop off valve. That's right. You know, and it's like that's right.
00;39;41;25 - 00;40;07;16
Unknown
Yeah. It makes me think of a, invoice approvals. You know, you get you know, it's a, it's a engineer in any, you know, discipline. You end up with hundreds of thousands of invoices. And if it's not a good system, it's not properly managed, then mass approvals. What's slipping through? Yeah. What are we not paying attention to?
00;40;07;19 - 00;40;32;06
Unknown
Yeah. So I know that happens all the time. There's so many invoices it's hard. It's hard. Yeah. That's that means the same thing. So much data that comes in every day and through skater, through invoicing through whatever. Yeah. Actually having someone to pay attention right is important. And someone that cares. Yes. You know, we've lost this idea of, like, writing for the brand.
00;40;32;08 - 00;40;59;00
Unknown
And I shouldn't say we've lost the idea. I think the industry is largely killed. A lot of the pride that you have for being part of some of these larger companies and really wanting them to see, success and be part of doing well at that company. Right? Yeah. Because we've been treated as disposables and they're just this large corporations that doesn't really matter that much.
00;40;59;01 - 00;41;21;22
Unknown
I come in, I punch my time clock, I do what they kind of tell me to do, but, like, yeah, we've lost this idea of, like, if I do my job well, the company does well, and we all thrive together. That doesn't exist. It is much. I, I, I agree with that. Certainly it it's certain size companies or and maybe it's more than just size.
00;41;21;23 - 00;41;45;09
Unknown
I don't, I don't know, but I'll say my time at Grayson Mill was we rode for the brand. And it was fun because we were all in it together. We all we all felt that. Yeah. Connection to I win, you win. We all win. Yeah. And and in the end we did. So it was, it was a lot of fun.
00;41;45;10 - 00;42;10;15
Unknown
Yeah. When you find that niche, when the culture is there. Yeah. You're building something together. I've talked to the guys since I, you know, since Grace mill ended, and. And it was. I tell them we're going to be chasing this thing the rest of our lives and will probably never find it again. Never find that. Probably never find it again.
00;42;10;16 - 00;42;31;16
Unknown
Yeah. And it's sad to think about. I mean, maybe it's out there and and I'm sure there's plenty of companies that say, hey, we got that. And, you know. Awesome. Good. Good for you guys. But, I think it's so rare to find is good of a meshing bunch of people. Yeah. As we had. How how big was that group when it started?
00;42;31;18 - 00;43;00;24
Unknown
When they bought that asset. As in headcount or. Yeah, headcount. And that's a good question. I think we were near the 200 mark total. And it was that's office employees and, field employees. Okay. But down here, golly, you're going to catch me, lion. But maybe it was 1100 down here. But but I mean, when at Grayson Mills, the folks that were employed by Grayson Mills when they bought that, that's that asset.
00;43;00;27 - 00;43;25;17
Unknown
Oh, they were under 20, I think. Okay. Total. That the original guys? Yeah. That that started that, and got the deal. But, and they took nearly everyone. And it was there were only a few that it was like, hey, you just know fit here. Yeah. Or, just didn't want to come.
00;43;25;19 - 00;43;51;01
Unknown
But a lot of that gets attributed to the leadership. They built that culture. They brought people up with them and aligned everybody's heart and incentives and like had a real conversations and communication with you and know they did a they did a great job and yeah. I know them are perfect. But I'd say that you know they they did take the time to come into everybody's office.
00;43;51;02 - 00;44;14;10
Unknown
Gotcha. They talked to everybody. Yeah. And that's hard to come by. Yeah. Yeah. So, And it's not physically possible. It's. Schill. Right. So. Right. Trying to trying to say you're going to get that out of a right. A company that size. It's just not. It's just it's. But it's in our DNA. We want to be part of a team.
00;44;14;13 - 00;44;40;26
Unknown
We want to be fighting, like with our brothers and sisters beside us. Like moving forward as a team towards something. For something. Right. My dad references a study done out of Rice University here. Okay. And I've heard it so many times since I was a kid that I don't even know. I don't know who it was or when it was or whatever, but, he used to he used to talk about it all the time.
00;44;40;26 - 00;45;01;19
Unknown
And he was in manufacturing. He's a some kind of manufacturing engineer for Baker Hughes for about 37 years. And so he read all these books, right, about team building and who stole my cheese and whatever else, and, or who moved my cheese or whatever that, you know, you know, the books I'm talking about. John Maxwell kind of stuff.
00;45;01;21 - 00;45;22;11
Unknown
So, he used to talk about this study where they took, like, 40 students from the college, and they went out and had him dig a ditch in the rice field, and they paid him $2 that day, and they dug it. They said, all right, come back tomorrow. We'll pay you double. We'll pay you for dollars. They came back the next day.
00;45;22;13 - 00;45;43;10
Unknown
Everybody came back filled in that did. They said, all right, tomorrow we'll pay you double. Come back. Couple of you know, most of them came back the next day. They had them dig the exact same ditch. And they continued this for like 20 days. And at the end of 20 days there was like two people left. Right.
00;45;43;10 - 00;46;05;19
Unknown
Because there was no point to what they were doing. But now here they are making $100 an hour. Right. But there's no like substance to what they're doing. And and it just, you know, it was a social science experiment of like interesting. Do we have to have purpose or when we say that we're really just coming in and getting a paycheck, that doesn't work?
00;46;05;21 - 00;46;30;08
Unknown
Yeah. And, so that's really cool. I like to hear that they built that culture and like, it's a, It's possible. Yeah, right. Because we talk about building culture. And a lot of times and like, J.P. talks about it all the time. J.P. warden, talks about it all the time with with exec crew and those guys and like, what does that look like inside of your business?
00;46;30;08 - 00;46;53;11
Unknown
And, I think for most people and even for me, like I think about time that I've had at larger companies, it almost feels impossible. It does. You know, with that and outside of, like, the maybe 3 or 4 people that you're in contact with every day, you don't feel like you're having any impact. Right. And so, like, you can make a little team with those guys.
00;46;53;14 - 00;47;17;22
Unknown
But like, building that culture and the fact that you've seen it happen. You're right. You might not ever see that again. I never see it happen, but it's it's, inspiring. It's maybe two grand of a word, but it's encouraging. Yeah. To know that, you know, it's it's possible. And it still happens, right? Because, like, as we build war, Turkey, like, I want, I want that, I want everybody there.
00;47;17;24 - 00;47;39;17
Unknown
Like, I make the joke about buying into war Turkey and, you know, getting a hat, but like, we don't offer. You know, there's four of us in the company. Yeah. You know, and it's like we don't offer it to everybody, and we don't want everybody. You know, we want people that are going to have the right mindset and work together, you know, to to push this forward in, in mesh in that culture.
00;47;39;24 - 00;48;04;08
Unknown
And so yeah, that's really encouraging. Yeah. So what I'm trying to say, but, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. I'll do it again in a heartbeat. Probably. Yeah, yeah. So production allocation. You were in the office quite a bit, but you probably have a good bit of knowledge on, the technical side, measurement, what those different styles look like and everything.
00;48;04;11 - 00;48;33;06
Unknown
Yeah, I have some. We'll see. We'll see if it's technical or not. Well, yeah. No, I just I'm just curious because there's like you would think that it's like easy to measure. Yeah. And it's not. Yeah. I her on it. It'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. And like the, the kind of production you have in the amount of production you have, like they all change what kind of meter you want to use and where you want to measure it at.
00;48;33;07 - 00;48;56;01
Unknown
Yep. Right. And, I got I kind of fell down a rabbit hole, on one of my wells before I got the amplified systems where I just measure everything at the tank right now. Yep. Right. I kind of found that fell down this rabbit hole where I was trying to measure production at the whale head. I don't really know why I was trying to do that, because it's one well, per tank battery.
00;48;56;01 - 00;49;18;03
Unknown
Like, I'm not going to, like, I didn't need any of it, but, you know, and so I started looking at all these different kind of like turbine meters and Coriolis meters and like all this different stuff. And and also because I'm curious and some of that's fascinating. Yep. The way some of that stuff measures three phases at once.
00;49;18;04 - 00;49;46;20
Unknown
Yeah. Like it can separate your and your gas and your water in one flowing stream. Like how in-depth can you talk about when and why we pick one meter over another? Oh, we'll see what I can do here. You know, if if gas is involved, things get swirly. Okay. Certainly. So generally, you would want to knock the gas out and measure your liquids if you can.
00;49;46;20 - 00;50;05;11
Unknown
Do you know a turbine meter can measure liquids just fine. Okay. It doesn't matter what the liquids are necessarily, but as soon as you throw gas in there, you have a slug of gas or go through, it's just going to spin. And so the turbine meter certainly with with the introduction of gas you're going to spin a turbine meter.
00;50;05;14 - 00;50;24;02
Unknown
And I mean this was super common. Happened all the time. We'd see a really high value come through. Oh that's turbine meter. Must have got hit with some gas. Operator didn't catch it. We need to we'll have to adjust that one. And we'd have to swag it a little bit because I mean the data is the data at that point.
00;50;24;05 - 00;50;51;20
Unknown
Yeah. And so you can, you can see that kind of stuff happen. Yeah. With turbine meters we ran a lot of Coriolis meters in North Dakota. Not necessarily for three phase measurement. We didn't do three phase measurement. Okay. Generally, it was a novelty at the time. Okay. Now, if if it's accurate and it's effective, it could be.
00;50;51;22 - 00;51;18;27
Unknown
Yeah, it could be wild. Yeah. This is what I. What I'm thinking is. So, everywhere with a major facility, you run into a big separator cost. You're running it through multiple measurement streams. Cost? You're putting it back together through some manifold costs. You're putting it in tanks. Or maybe you're not putting it back together. But we were doing that in Eagle Ford.
00;51;18;28 - 00;51;50;16
Unknown
But and then you've got it separated into tanks or you're sending gas down the line. What if what if you have a wellhead in a three phase measurement. That's it. And you run it down to a central facility somewhere. And you do all of that one time. Yeah. Is that possible. And I think we had tested one and it was this radioactive core or something like that.
00;51;50;17 - 00;51;58;11
Unknown
And I don't know enough about it to speak intelligently on it. Yeah, but I know that.
00;51;58;13 - 00;52;19;11
Unknown
They had said, well, it doesn't work in -30 degrees. And do you know what state we're in? Right. And, I'm like, oh, yeah, well, maybe it'll be all right. Yeah. Right now. And so it, you know, they're not out there. So, that didn't go as planned, but, three phase measurement would cut your facilities costs more than anything else.
00;52;19;12 - 00;52;45;03
Unknown
Yeah. If you could effectively do that and have only central facilities. I mean you're in a lot of cases you're shoving it in the pipeline anyway. It's any central facility if you're not selling it from the pad. But so in some cases huge win in some cases huge win. In other cases you got to separate it at the pad anyway and sell it from the pad individually anyway.
00;52;45;06 - 00;53;19;12
Unknown
So doesn't save you a whole lot. You'll probably have like least obligations like written into your leases about like how it's measured. Yes. When it's measured before it leaves, they have the right to. Yep. To audit that and things like that. And if it's a fed lease they have rules. And so they have you have to have a particular type of measurement, okay, that is maintained on a particular type of schedule that must be submitted to the state, you know, on or the, the federal agencies or whoever.
00;53;19;15 - 00;53;44;08
Unknown
Yeah. On time. That says you do it this way. Okay. You have to have your records auditable. All of all of that has to be there. So, I think most of the time we were running mag meters for water, caudillos meters for oil, and then just your standard differential pressure meters for gas. Okay. And that's pretty much what we did.
00;53;44;09 - 00;54;06;15
Unknown
Gotcha, gotcha. We were not trying to do multiphase measurement. Yeah. I mean, we tried it here. There. Right, right, right. Never really settled on any of that. Yeah. So, I'm familiar with with differential. Yep. Right. So we have, like an office. Call it a half inch Orpheus a hole. Yep. And we measure the pressure on one side.
00;54;06;15 - 00;54;25;25
Unknown
We measure the pressure on the other side. Right. And depending on that pressure drop across it. We can calculate the flow of that gas through there. Correct. Right. And the plate is shaped like a cone. So it comes in one side higher pressure. And then the other side is a lower pressure. Okay. It allows the expansion. So it's higher.
00;54;25;28 - 00;54;53;13
Unknown
Lower. And then that's the difference between hence the name. Yeah. Differential. Yeah. Pressure meter calculation tells you what your flow rate is. Okay. And then a mag beta. Yeah. So there's a magnetic pickup inside a mag meter. And you're going to catch me line on this one too. The inner workings of it. It's it doesn't have a turbine.
00;54;53;16 - 00;55;17;14
Unknown
So a standard turbine meter, when it spins, it does have a pickup that, if I'm stating this correctly, has the veins are picked up by, the magnet, and it measures how fast it spins. Right. Well, but the the type of magnetars we were using did not have a vein. Okay. Side of no turbine. And so,
00;55;17;16 - 00;55;39;29
Unknown
And that's about all I know about that. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It measures some sort of current through there, some sort of charge or something. But they did not like. Well. Okay. And so I think that had to do with molecular structure of produced water versus. All right. So we, we only use them in water. Only use them in water.
00;55;40;00 - 00;56;06;24
Unknown
Yeah. Well, and that's interesting to think too, that like, you've probably got to take water samples and what not to, like, keep those calibrated two year produced water. Yeah. All of them technically need that. Yeah. In order to operate properly. Yeah. That's correct. Interesting. And the backing water was very salty. Yeah. It's like 200,180 constantly having to clear things out all the time.
00;56;06;26 - 00;56;28;23
Unknown
It's really nice for, well, work, though. Like, you don't have to order brine. You've got it all. You've just got, like, 9.8 pounds salt water right there. Yeah. That's right. You want to kill the well, you've got heavy brine. That's true, that's true. Yeah. Yep. It was definitely a multi-purpose. Yeah. And had lithium in it. So yeah.
00;56;28;27 - 00;56;54;23
Unknown
Supposedly supposedly commercial quantities. Not sure. But now when I was in Bismarck in May, I think so when they had the oil show up there. Okay. And North Dakota Petroleum Council meeting. They have every two years or whatnot. And, anyways, I talked to a guy who had shipped two truckloads. As of that date, he had already shipped out two truckloads worth of lithium from a location that they did.
00;56;54;25 - 00;57;10;26
Unknown
And he had a vial of it, and it was a white. It's just a white powder. Yeah. And the way they do it on location, is that it? Well, I don't know the way they do it, only they do something on location and it comes out as, like a dry white powder, and they're able to put it on a truck.
00;57;10;29 - 00;57;34;00
Unknown
Interesting. And send it out. So is it is it a little modular type unit that they drop and that's it. That's their hope is like that. They only have to have a certain amount of like I think some of the big lithium stuff is you had to have so much fluid to get a commercial quantity. Yep. But, if I remember what he was saying, I mean, this is like 2 a.m. on a rooftop terrace.
00;57;34;01 - 00;58;06;21
Unknown
We were talking about this, right? So somebody's going to obviously tell me I'm wrong. But I think a lot of that brine was like 60 or 70 parts per million lithium, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're running 10,000 barrels of water a day, that really turns into. Yep, to something. And, yeah, they had this, this unit that they haul out and sit there and, I don't know if it if it evaporated the water or if it had some sort of, you know, membrane diaphragm, something that it does.
00;58;06;21 - 00;58;24;09
Unknown
I'm not really sure. But yeah, he had this. He was he was showing it around, and, and I talked to another guy that was there, and I was like, hey, are you sure that's lithium? He's like, yeah, it's lithium. I invested in that project. Okay. And I was like, all right, cool, man. You know. So, but yeah, it was very it was very interesting to know that there.
00;58;24;13 - 00;58;49;15
Unknown
Yeah, they've got it going and they're shipping some out of. And produced water. I mean, plop one of those down at every SD in North Dakota and voila. That'd be cool. Yeah. Would. But then that goes into, like, all this ownership. That's a good cause. That's a value. Yep. You know, in in when you're pulling out water, it wasn't expense, but now it's an asset.
00;58;49;21 - 00;59;18;05
Unknown
Right. And so who owns that mineral? And there was a big case in Texas. I don't know if you followed that. They say, just finished. There was a big lawsuit out of West Texas, about who owns the produced water. Okay. Right. And, so it's like, the operator, it's like. All right. Surface water.
00;59;18;07 - 00;59;38;06
Unknown
Groundwater is owned by the surface owner, not the mineral owner. Okay. Yeah. And a lot of surface minerals. I don't know if there's an actual footage in Texas, but like if you were to mine gold or silver off of your place, it doesn't go to the mineral owner. Okay. It goes to the surface owner. Okay. Right.
00;59;38;08 - 00;59;59;22
Unknown
Because it's within, you know, if you're mine. Gravel, you don't pay mineral rights on gravel. Yep. Right. So there was this big question about produced water, which we've, like, treated as just this waste product, and we pay people to take. And now there's value. Now it's like, who owns it does. Yeah. Does the production company own that produce water?
00;59;59;24 - 01;00;21;20
Unknown
And are they required to pay if they have to get rid of it anyways to produce your own. Do they have to pay royalties now on that water if they derive some value out of it somehow. And I'll have to go back and read it. But there's a case that just came out of West Texas that's setting precedent, and I believe that it's said that that that produced water.
01;00;21;22 - 01;00;44;06
Unknown
If it has value, it's with the oil company. And I want to say that they did not have to pay royalties, whatever value they derive out of that. But I need to go back and check. Nobody quote me. Nobody build a business case off that. Oh, the the gas on federal properties. They require you to pay royalties even on which.
01;00;44;08 - 01;01;05;12
Unknown
And so if you take that thinking and apply it to produce water that might have value, but even you don't derive the value, even if you're not deriving it, you might still have to pay. You might. I've thought about this with the like the smack over what can of worms. Yeah, well, how how to rule. T's work on this at this makeover.
01;01;05;13 - 01;01;33;08
Unknown
Yeah. What are they doing? Yeah, because it's. I mean, they're not they're not pulling traditional hydrocarbon products or they're paying per ton of produced lithium. You know, like sulfur. You pay per ton. They written it. I don't know anybody that produces sulfur. Right. Like as a company. But written into all these old and gas leases, it specifically mentions sulfur.
01;01;33;11 - 01;01;52;16
Unknown
Really? And I think a bunch of my leases say sulfur must be paid for at $1 per ton. It's like hold over from a producers 88, you know, or whatever, but it's in there. Is that what's market value today? I have no idea. I need to start checking my I know there's sulfur mine. Yeah. They're sulfur in this stuff I was working on this morning.
01;01;52;19 - 01;02;21;04
Unknown
You know, Yeah. Since I'm sure that that language is changing and and, you know, speaking of, like, we had some contracts drawn up for, Bitcoin. Yep. Well, we like, on these new leases that we were doing. We just went ahead and inserted a paragraph. Yep. About if the gas is unmarketable or we decide to use it on location to generate electricity for yada yada.
01;02;21;06 - 01;02;37;20
Unknown
We will pay you at this established rate or at this index on a trailing 30 days. We went ahead and put it in there, even though we're not mining any bitcoin, because if we decide to do it, we don't want it to be a gray area. We don't want to get our but sued, rather be ahead of it five years from now.
01;02;37;21 - 01;02;57;08
Unknown
Yeah for sure. Yeah. Yeah. We did some bitcoin mining in North Dakota. Great climate for it. It's a great it's a great spot to be. Bitcoin mining. Yeah. And it I mean there was a lot of stranded gas at the time. And because it wasn't that long ago that North Dakota had no flaring rules at all.
01;02;57;11 - 01;03;28;13
Unknown
Right. This was like it was at 99% capture. Well, 91 was where it ended up. Okay. It was 92. I'm trying to think it was it was low 90s where the the final number landed. They had they had built regulations out to 90, 91 or 92% capture. And they just said we'll think about better later. Yeah. But when they when they first instituted it, it was like, okay, you got to be at 82 okay.
01;03;28;14 - 01;03;50;24
Unknown
Be at 85 by this date. And then you got to be at 90 by this date. And is that like on a daily or is that on a yearly production. So because like if you have a pipeline outage, could you use up all your allocation for the years. So there are exemptions. Okay. And so along with I spent tons of time arguing with the stuff I'm sure this was this was a huge this part.
01;03;50;28 - 01;04;10;09
Unknown
Part of my career I've forgotten about. But I spent lots of time talking about flaring with the state. Okay. You know, when you end up being in charge of the allocations. Well, you're the numbers guy. Tell us what our capture was. Right. And so, yeah. I would track it monthly and you would report it monthly.
01;04;10;10 - 01;04;34;07
Unknown
Okay. And then there were rules about, you could bank credits. And so if you were over the target for the last for a month, then you earned credits in those credits were banked for 12 months, and you could apply them to as needed a month that you missed. And then there's I think there were ten exemptions.
01;04;34;10 - 01;05;01;18
Unknown
Force majeure outages from your third party. The first 60 days, I believe it was production. You can flare as much as you want. Yeah. And then there was an additional 30 days, I think. And I think they ended up reducing that, a little bit. But there were a number of exemptions we used diligently because they got us there, because we were very often behind the eight ball on gas capture.
01;05;01;19 - 01;05;21;14
Unknown
I was on one of your GM iPads. For Devin last year. Did I tell you about this? I think I'd know which one. You're right there in Watford City. Right in Watford City. Yeah. I have nine wells on it. Yeah. Right in Watford City. And, they'd put all that gas lift and they put all this annular gas lift in and a couple of pro packs and, and compressors there.
01;05;21;14 - 01;05;47;03
Unknown
And I went up for Devin to, not for Devin. I went up for a contractor hired by Devin. Yeah. To kick off all that gas lift. And they wanted somebody with some good gas lift experience and some compressor experience. So anyways is up there for I was I was almost a month on that pad and when they started turning those wells on, this guy was like, yeah, I want you to walk it up two points per hour.
01;05;47;06 - 01;06;06;00
Unknown
And I was like, okay, we'll open this well up, you know, 264 of an inch per hour on the choke. Like we'll start ripping them. And, it's got a four tip burner up there, which, you know, most of the most flares, like, every, every burner is good for about 5 million MCF. So, you know, 2025 MCF, probably our top.
01;06;06;06 - 01;06;27;26
Unknown
You know, we shouldn't push more than that. And, anyway, so, man, we were ripping them. We were going after it. Yeah. And, you know, like some of the theory for flow back, right is like, Max out your will, Max out your facility. Yeah. So, like, we want any sand that's going to come back. We don't want it laying in the well.
01;06;27;28 - 01;06;44;22
Unknown
We want to get it up to surface and deal with it at surface. Right. And so, and we want to we want to close some of the theory for a lot of folks is like, we want to close whatever fractures we can close. We want to draw it down because we think if we draw it down faster, that prop and we'll stay in place, right.
01;06;44;23 - 01;07;02;23
Unknown
And we get like trapped there. Right. So the idea to clean up your will work open. Yeah, yeah. And, So, man, we're going after it. We got one. Well, two. Well, three wells. We got like, five wells online, and we're cracking them open, dude. And we're just ripping that flare. I think we had like 17 million going to that flare.
01;07;02;24 - 01;07;22;05
Unknown
Yeah. And, and Sheriff comes out and he's like, dude, it's like 4 a.m.. Yep. And he comes he drives out to the pad. He's like, hey, I need you to turn that way back. He's like, I've got people in town that are awake. Yeah, cuz you're rattling their windows right now. And I'm like, bro. He's the instructions I got.
01;07;22;06 - 01;07;41;20
Unknown
He's like, well, you know, if I need to call your boss, like give me a number of like who to speak to. So I gave him I was like, these are the instructions. Like, I'll, I went ahead and started like turning them back immediately. And I was like, you know, let's get some better marching orders. And then we had from there on, we had a strict cap of like 6 million in CF at a time.
01;07;41;23 - 01;08;05;06
Unknown
Yeah, we had, local officials. Got involved on that one. And, there's were you still there? And at that time, I think Devin is like, just coming in. It might have been Devin just coming in, or maybe even just before that. I remember, but we called it the Watford City Candle. Yeah. And, Yeah, it. There's a story.
01;08;05;09 - 01;08;27;03
Unknown
One of our guys out there, he got a call from a lady, and, and he said that, she said, hey, can you come come to my my house, and I want to show you what I'm experiencing, essentially. Oh, and, I think it was both noise and light related. Gotcha. I'm your problem. I'm sorry you had to deal with that.
01;08;27;05 - 01;08;50;16
Unknown
So, yeah, he went to this lady's house, and it is a it's a young, single, attractive lady. And she says, hey, I want I need you to come inside. He's like, well, I okay. And he's just a good, good old guy. Yeah, okay. She said, come in my bedroom. He's like, okay.
01;08;50;18 - 01;09;07;29
Unknown
And he's so he he just went in and and of course he was like, yeah, I was real bad. It was real bad inside her house. Yeah. And, but anyway, he tells the story. And what are you doing? You cannot be doing it. Yeah, you can't do that. Yeah. That's the last thing we need in the news.
01;09;08;01 - 01;09;29;24
Unknown
Yeah. Talk about liability these days. But anyway. Of course it was. Okay. Well, we we need to make an adjustment here and make an adjustment. It's funny. We had. I guess we had met at that point. Have we already met when I was up there? Oh, this was a January of 25. January or March when it was of 25.
01;09;29;24 - 01;09;47;21
Unknown
I don't know if we had or not. It's going so fast. I think actually when we met, I, I don't think I was with him anymore because. Yeah, that's right. I sent you a message on LinkedIn asking about having a baby with no insurance. That's right. And that's how we got to. That's right. So you weren't with them anymore?
01;09;47;22 - 01;10;07;16
Unknown
Yep. Yeah. And, I was a small world. Oh, so I was the dude flowing back. Those wells that you got called on. That's right. Like, what is going on out here? Well, and there was some measurement issues on that location, and the more I was like, hey, we need to figure this out. The more, like, convoluted it got.
01;10;07;16 - 01;10;30;19
Unknown
And then I was like, oh, so this is my problem. This isn't my problem. We got, you know, situations where, without naming company names, a company who was supposed to have a pipeline built and commissioned to our facility did not get it done in time. Yeah. And this happened frequently. So we could only sell, like, 6 million.
01;10;30;19 - 01;10;38;12
Unknown
So we were limited on selling. Correct. And then we were limited on flaring. Correct. Yeah. And so I.
01;10;38;15 - 01;11;01;20
Unknown
This is a soapbox for me. I think, you know, the rules penalize operators for not capturing the gas. But who is responsible for building the pipeline to get the gas captured. Yeah. Who is responsible for getting it done on time. Yeah. It's not the operator. Operator puts in the requests. They put in the they they got the schedule.
01;11;01;24 - 01;11;22;24
Unknown
If they stick to the schedule I can understand if like there's a huge change and that prevents a pipeline from getting there in time. But if, if it's only the operators getting penalized. Yeah. Then what about the midstream group? Right. They don't build a big enough. They don't build a fast enough. They're not on time. They don't commission on time.
01;11;22;26 - 01;11;45;29
Unknown
What are we to do? Yeah. We just we get penalized for delays and and you can't pass that through. Can't pass it through. I guess you could start writing gas contracts that might pass through. This is this is actually a good, good segue. So we, we did this. Okay. We set up a contract with, major midstream company.
01;11;46;01 - 01;12;10;21
Unknown
They did not like us for it, but we did it. That penalized them for not meeting the gas capture requirements that we were held to. And so by me it was really, really difficult to manage. But we would send a report to them every month that said, this meter right here achieves 89% capture. We needed 91.
01;12;10;23 - 01;12;34;07
Unknown
And the way we did it was we monitored pipeline pressure. And if if the pipeline pressure was below X number, which was the contracted number and we flared, well that's on us because the pipeline pressure had it had room shows that it had room. So if we flared that's our fault. But if it's above that and we flared that's on you guys.
01;12;34;09 - 01;12;52;27
Unknown
And so we would, we would flag interesting every MCF. And I bet AI helps so much with that kind of stuff too. Like where you can set up some of these automated flags. Yeah. Y'all probably were manually going through at the time. Yeah I was spilled clay at the time for that, that little project. It would have been nice.
01;12;53;04 - 01;13;16;23
Unknown
It would have been nice to have something to write, like an agent that flags that. And then you can go in and verify it. Yeah. Yeah. But I had a ginormous spot fire project that I would go through and I would flag everything, pull reports out, flag it, report it to. Yeah, the unnamed company. And, and they would give us a discount because they didn't meet the cash catcher.
01;13;16;28 - 01;13;35;20
Unknown
Yeah. Which, I think operators should be doing that left and right because they're the ones left. Holding the bag midstream doesn't show up on time. Right. Yeah. That's one of the things about being an operator is like, there's so little that you really have control over in, like, your ability to make money. You don't set the market.
01;13;35;23 - 01;14;01;17
Unknown
You don't set the take away, you know, like you don't set the rules on federal land. You're you're obligated to a lease that somebody else probably signed. You know you've got the regulatory saying what you can or cannot do in that particular wellbore or in that particular formation like your hamstrings in so many different ways, and you're just expected to make money in the middle to figure out how to make money in the middle.
01;14;01;18 - 01;14;20;03
Unknown
That's a puzzle. All these things that are out of your control. Yeah. And, And that's frustrating. It's terribly frustrating. Yeah. That's what a small world, Yeah. You know, one of the things I loved about that pad, having been in North Dakota, they've got pizza pie on the fly there in Watford. They would come right up to the lease guy.
01;14;20;03 - 01;14;34;26
Unknown
I told him, I said, don't drive on the pad. I'll meet you at the gate. They would come right up to the, you know, where we would have a cattle guard. And, I drive my truck down there and I meet him. I could order pizza. Pizza and and have it delivered out there. I never have to leave location.
01;14;34;29 - 01;14;55;17
Unknown
Yeah, I definitely put 10 pounds on that one. North Dakota was the only place that I had heard of breakfast pizza. Okay. Yeah. I had never had it anywhere else. Yeah, but every time we go up there for, well, we're or something like that, we would have breakfast pizzas, which is an omelet on top of a pizza, essentially.
01;14;55;23 - 01;15;10;07
Unknown
Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage. Yep. Pepper stuff. Good stuff. There was a place in Midland that was making breakfast pizza. Really? When I was there in,
01;15;10;09 - 01;15;28;24
Unknown
There's a plain white box. I can't remember who it was because they didn't have any names on them, but, Yeah, there's one place in Midland you could order it, like 2016, 2017, when I was out there. But I ate a lot of it in North Dakota. Yeah. No doubt. Yeah. What a small world. Yeah. No, that was me out there.
01;15;28;26 - 01;15;48;13
Unknown
Yeah. And, man, I fought and fought and fought with that. With some of that measurement. You know, like the what it said was coming into the separators versus what we were selling. Yeah. Versus what it said we were flaring was, is some of sometimes it was off by 30 or 40%. Yeah. And I was like you know for a couple percent off like that's fine.
01;15;48;13 - 01;16;07;05
Unknown
But like this is a big deal. And the reason I caught it was because I was trying to verify how much I was flaring. Yeah. Because I wanted to stay, you know, where we weren't keeping people awake or upsetting people. Right. And so I was trying to stay under kind of that threshold. We had set of, you know, for ourselves.
01;16;07;10 - 01;16;33;10
Unknown
Well, I mean, that's important too, because, there's the title five, restrictions on tonnage, certain amount of tonnage. And then if you go over SDE, you just shut down. Let's see. Man I don't know what the acronym is, but there's a certain tonnage of, omissions related to flaring. For us it was related to flaring because that was the primary contributor for the pad.
01;16;33;10 - 01;16;53;00
Unknown
But, yeah, you'd have to keep up with that. And if you go, you can apply for a title five permit. But, if you hit your SDE number, which is about, I want to say it was 102 ten or something. Tonnage.
01;16;53;02 - 01;17;13;06
Unknown
Tonnage of something. Yeah. Yeah. But the flare was a major contributor. And so we had several situations where there were pipeline delays and but we didn't want to delay our production. So it was right. Okay. Because you've allocated to hit all these like you've decided you're going to hit all these production markers every quarter. That's right. For your investor slide deck.
01;17;13;08 - 01;17;32;23
Unknown
Everything's run by the investors these days. You know you got to return capital to the investors. Well that's right. And yeah we were always balancing how much can we flare. Yeah. With how much do we need this production. And so sometimes it was take her tail, sometimes it was a which you don't really want to curtail.
01;17;32;26 - 01;17;49;17
Unknown
Like you mentioned, when you're flowing back, you want to flow back? Yeah. You don't want to ease into it all the time sometimes. And there are many, many theories on that. Right. Then it depends on what part of the world you're in. Yeah. Where are you going? To school. What are you working for? Which direction?
01;17;49;17 - 01;18;14;09
Unknown
The wind's blowing. Probably. Right. And, Yeah, Ecuador was much more conservative. Grayson Mill was the opposite of conservative. Yeah. On that and so. Yeah. See it. Do see it done a bunch of different ways. Yeah. Because they were not conservative. We got into some. It's interesting to on like backings go into all these three and four mile laterals as we're trying to make like tier two.
01;18;14;12 - 01;18;37;06
Unknown
I say we I don't know anybody in acreage as people are trying to make their tier two and tier three acreage more economic. Right. One of the things on the drilling side is you always say the next foot you drill, it's the cheapest foot you will drill. Right. Because you've already got your rig moved in, you've already got all of your vertical hole, your pad in place and everything like that.
01;18;37;06 - 01;19;14;14
Unknown
So the next foot you drill is always the cheapest. Right. So as we're trying to extend these three and four mile laterals, you've got more reservoir contact theoretically. You know, you should have larger e Rs for your wells. Total recoverable. But I wonder how, like, some of those, numbers play in and how they change and how the, the regulations are written that, you know, if you can flare this much per well, or it's this much perception, you know, or like how all of that kind of.
01;19;14;17 - 01;19;39;21
Unknown
And then the other question that you really don't with those three and four mile laterals, do you just assume that the whole lateral is contributing evenly when you're allocating production. Right. Because like you might not be all on one land, you're probably not all on one landowner. So how do you. That's a good question. Do you allocate as just a general percentage of the unit?
01;19;39;22 - 01;20;00;03
Unknown
I guess that's why everything's unitized. Yeah. Yeah. I've never considered the fact that portion of the lateral needs to be allocated differently than the other portion of a lateral. Yeah, I don't think that's. I hadn't seen that situation. Maybe that's out there somewhere, but yeah, I mean, the rock that's the rock changes over four miles, guaranteed. Yeah. Like there's no way it doesn't.
01;20;00;04 - 01;20;23;27
Unknown
Right. The rock changes over four miles. Probably not in zone. The whole four miles. And probably not soon. I guarantee you're not in zone the whole form. And then, like, early, the heel is going to contribute more than the toe. It's probably an unknowable. Yeah, equation. But it it opens up a lot of questions on how you're paying people out.
01;20;24;00 - 01;20;40;24
Unknown
And if they're really now there's got to be, you know, I don't know the technical lingo on it, but there's got to be an agreement that says, hey, yeah, whatever comes out at the surface, we're going to allocate in this fashion. Yeah. And I'm sure that's done on the land side somewhere, and it's probably just ignorance on me.
01;20;40;24 - 01;21;01;08
Unknown
And I'm sure that's what units are for drilling units, 1920 acres or or, you know, 1280 acres. Yeah. So that everybody feels like they're getting a fair shake, and it's, it's a discussed and and hammered out ahead of time. Right. So nobody can come back and yell about it. Yeah. Yeah. I've never I've never been asked to allocate that way.
01;21;01;09 - 01;21;27;14
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Did y'all have any, did y'all have any, like, lease line? Yes. Wells. Like, production, sharing agreement, wells and that kind of stuff. We did. We had a lot of lease line wells. And, those often had more hair on them. You know, the, the state would require or the feds would require the state was generally pretty easy.
01;21;27;16 - 01;21;35;07
Unknown
The feds would often require, individual measurement on that.
01;21;35;07 - 01;22;09;12
Unknown
Well, only. Okay. Versus being able to co-mingled it with the remainder of the pad. And you know, for us, we were always trying to camino as much as possible because it's a simplified footprint. And, you know, it's actually. Oh, that's a thought. Right. So you don't have to measure every. Well, if it's a for, for easy numbers, if we've got one mile laterals across this section and there's one mineral owner that owns very theoretical, there's one mineral owner that owns all 640 acres in that section.
01;22;09;13 - 01;22;36;11
Unknown
And you have four wells through that section. You can just measure all four of those wells together, because they're all getting paid on the same division order. Exactly. Yep. Yeah. And so you don't necessarily have to measure every single well for production allocation or a payout standpoint. Yeah. You want it for obviously you want it because you want to be a good operator and you want to monitor those wells and make sure that everything's performing.
01;22;36;13 - 01;23;05;16
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. So, the state has rules and the feds have rules on what can be co-mingled together. And, the state's more lenient than the feds. Always. And, Well, maybe. Maybe North Dakota is. Yeah, they're pretty friendly. But, we would we had book and test setups on everything. And the goal, of course, with ball contests is to reduce your facilities costs.
01;23;05;17 - 01;23;26;09
Unknown
That's the whole point, right? And so the the more wells you can put in a bowl contests train, we'll call it, the better the cheaper your facility. Right. So we were always trying to add more state of North Dakota has a rule. Oh and the rule is you. Well it's not a, it's not a written rule.
01;23;26;11 - 01;23;55;11
Unknown
It is that a well must be tested on a bulk in test if it's in bulk and test must be tested. One have 172. Well, let me back up, because I need to answer your first question first. Okay. Which is the ownership question. If they're all individual ownership, nobody cares if it's the same, ownership across whatever the unit, multiple wells, and then nobody cares.
01;23;55;12 - 01;24;14;12
Unknown
Okay. It's because it's all going to be split the same anyway. So they don't care if. Well A and well be they don't care if you get the numbers wrong because you're going to allocate the final product the same way for all of those. Anyway, the questions come when you start co-mingling wells of different of differing ownership.
01;24;14;14 - 01;24;36;29
Unknown
And so this is where the lease lines come in. Because that's that's this guy over here and this guy over here most of the time. The ownership gets different. And so when the ownership gets different, it really matters what gets allocated to this well versus that well. And so very often we'd have wells going like this and we would want to co-mingled them together.
01;24;37;02 - 01;24;59;20
Unknown
And so this guy's well down here. And this guy well up here. It matters how that gets allocated. So it's very important that you measure it properly. Yeah. And the state had a unwritten rule that and it's unwritten because if you submitted a co-mingling approval for anything that didn't say this, then they would reject it. Oh. And so it's not a rule.
01;24;59;20 - 01;25;24;07
Unknown
It's just they're just going to tell, you know, you got to put the right words in there. It would say your well must be tested for 72 continuous hours per month. Each well must. And so starts it once a month. Well, we'll start doing some math. All right. Seven wells. Okay. Well, yeah. Okay. Seven wells. You don't have enough seven.
01;25;24;14 - 01;25;46;22
Unknown
Three days per. Well, that's just the testing period. So you got 21 days in just the testing period. What about if you have 10% downtime? Which is pretty good. Pretty good downtime. Well, that's going to cut out three days on your 30.4 days of a month. So now you only have 27 days to get them done. Okay.
01;25;46;22 - 01;26;10;03
Unknown
Well what about the extra day it actually takes your operator to get out there and start the next test. If you not fully automated. Okay, well, let's say it's four days per. Well okay. Now you're 20, 28 days. We already took three away because of our 10% downtime. You can't get seven wells done. Not possible. I just even think of it from, like, an optimization standpoint.
01;26;10;04 - 01;26;27;20
Unknown
How much does a well, change in a especially new wells? Yeah. These huge decline curves like. Yeah sure. Something's 3 or 4 years old. Yep. We're kind of at like a base, you know, production. We want to see what's going on with the well because we want to monitor for anomalies. But like, generally it's kind of going to produce what it's going to produce.
01;26;27;20 - 01;26;53;24
Unknown
But the first 6 or 12 months that, well, is changing its production rate every single day. Yep. This was a huge argument that we got in with state. We finally got something through. Was that the the frequency of testing was much more important than the duration of the testing. Yeah. And so, if you think about it, individual measurement on a well, that's 124 hour test a day.
01;26;53;26 - 01;27;19;18
Unknown
Yeah. That's what you're getting. And so what we debated with the state was we would rather take less total hours and do it more often. Yeah. Because what would happen was you have a well go down partway through a 72 hour test toss the test not valid anymore, or your lack shuts in or anything or. Yeah, anything that would pick a pipeline in it.
01;27;19;20 - 01;27;40;17
Unknown
Yeah. Anything that that trips up a test. And the state had been kind of lax on it for a while. Yeah. But they circled. This was back in Ecuador days. They circled back to us and said, okay, you guys don't have your tests in order. It's time. And so we spent a lot of time focusing on getting our testing done properly.
01;27;40;19 - 01;28;00;20
Unknown
Yeah. So that we would have going forward good tests. State approved test is really the right answer. Right. But what we were, what we ended up being able to do was reduce the total amount of testing. And they said, you can take as many, as many tests as it takes to get it done. Okay. Per. Well, per month.
01;28;00;24 - 01;28;27;08
Unknown
That's good enough for us. But they did have a low limit. Nothing under four hours. And so we got. Okay. Gotcha. We'll take we'll take 48 hours worth of tests and we'll do them in six hour increments or something like that. I would much rather have that. Absolutely. So much more accurate. We would rather what we what we strive for at Grayson Mill was every day an operator visits the pad and they take one well out, put one well in.
01;28;27;10 - 01;28;46;15
Unknown
So you're essentially getting a 12 hour test every single day for every single. Well, and in seven days you've rotated through every single well. Yeah. And you do that four times and you've got, Well, see, for if we're at the 48 hour number, 48 hour required testing. Yeah. You just do that four times and you're done. Right.
01;28;46;17 - 01;29;09;20
Unknown
But, yeah. So the limiting factor for how many wells you could put in a bowl, contests train up there was the state was it wasn't. It was a regulation. It wasn't even what was most efficient or what. What gave you the best production data? It was just a regulation. Yeah. So. Yeah. Did y'all ever downsize facilities after Wells had been online for a while?
01;29;09;23 - 01;29;30;27
Unknown
No, we hadn't gotten to that point at doing any of that. We did. Let me think. We did have, you know, early flow back separation equipment. Gotcha. And that stuff got pulled off just like some modular stuff set out there to help. We started with that, Idea of getting most of the sand out before it hit our facilities.
01;29;30;28 - 01;29;56;12
Unknown
Right. We have less trash. Somebody else's separator than ours. Yeah. Yeah, that was a that was kind of the idea there. Sand everywhere. All the time. Lots of sand. Can't get rid of it. Yeah. We cleaned out plenty of vessels. Yeah. That. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember we went to on that particular pad one night. It was like, -35.
01;29;56;13 - 01;30;21;16
Unknown
It's January in North Dakota. And we were emptying separator bottoms, like once an hour, and the lines were still freezing up. So we got to where every 30 minutes, whether there was sand or not, we were putting hot fluid. Yep. Through those lines. That way stuff wouldn't freeze up. Yeah. Because once it's frozen, it's a son of a gun.
01;30;21;17 - 01;30;44;06
Unknown
You know, like you're not coming back from that one. Yeah. Yeah. Know when your produce water starts freezing in North Dakota? You're getting cold when your tailpipe starts getting an ice rink. Closing that tailpipe up. Yeah. It's when it's cold. I'll bet I have not seen the truck. Outside at night in North Dakota in the winter. Ever.
01;30;44;07 - 01;31;03;17
Unknown
I hope I never do. I told that truck for a lot of hours. I was so mad at that truck because it didn't last. It's the first time I've ever bought a brand new truck. And, I don't think I ever made it more than six months without a major failure. I had that truck three years and I finally got rid of it.
01;31;03;19 - 01;31;27;11
Unknown
And I was upset because I felt like that truck, I bought a 2022 F-350, brand new. And I felt like that truck didn't last. But then I started adding it up in three years, at 6000 idle hours and 195,000 miles. And one night I was sitting on the porch thinking about trucks and what I'm going to do, what I'm going to.
01;31;27;12 - 01;31;53;02
Unknown
I'm buying it. I'm driving an oh for Tahoe right now because it's the most reliable thing I get find. And I was tired of a truck payment and a repair bill. Yeah. And, I got to thinking, I was like, well, shoot, in three years, 6000 idle hours and 195,000 miles said, I basically got 10 or 12 years worth for like a normal person.
01;31;53;04 - 01;32;17;22
Unknown
That's at least 10 or 12 years worth of work out of that truck. I just compressed it into three years. You know what I mean? That's a lot of work. Like I was upset. Yeah, but, like, that's 2000 hours a year idling. Most people working a 40 hour job. It's 2000 hours a year. Yeah. You know, So then once I started, like, adding up the numbers like that, I was like, I guess I'm not too mad at it anymore.
01;32;17;25 - 01;32;24;21
Unknown
At least make yourself feel better about it. Yeah, yeah, I got my money's worth. Maybe. I don't know.
01;32;24;23 - 01;32;45;16
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. That's your office out there. You live in it. You know that's true. And. And when it's -35, it's your shelter. You know, it's your lifeline. Yeah. Like that's true. It's I think the the the.
01;32;45;18 - 01;32;51;01
Unknown
The weather app or whatever said,
01;32;51;03 - 01;33;14;25
Unknown
What, what do you call it? Frostbite in under five minutes. Oh, that's what they were predicting. Yeah. You know, exposed skin, frostbite in under five minutes. Yep. So. Well, it was a it was just a couple of years back where they set some new records with the cold up there, up in, like, the -60s. Jeez. Which is.
01;33;14;27 - 01;33;19;27
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. So I lived there.
01;33;20;00 - 01;33;44;00
Unknown
15. 16. 17. Okay. I think the coldest I ever saw was negative. Like 42 actual. Okay. And that was like, two nights in a row. Like, most of the time. Like, -25 was, like, deep as it got. Yeah. But we had one day where it was native ten and actually, so we, we got it really well with this church called Watford City Assembly.
01;33;44;01 - 01;34;12;24
Unknown
God. And I really enjoyed it up there. And, they did they did stuff together six days a week. Yeah. You know, it wasn't just church on Sundays. So they did. Those guys all hung out throughout the week and and had, you know, studies and had people over to the house and worked cattle together and everything. So, you know, as we were helping to work cattle at, the place and all of the women were together in the house talking, and my wife was up that weekend.
01;34;12;26 - 01;34;36;05
Unknown
Okay. And, Miss Steinberg, you know, Mr. Berg goes, well, you know, my favorite day in North Dakota. So when it's negative ten and sunny and no wind and my wife is like, read, you got to get out of here. Like, these people are nuts. Like, they're gonna ruin you, you know? And, Shoot, I don't know, about six months later.
01;34;36;08 - 01;34;56;09
Unknown
We had one of those days. Yeah. And you only got 2 or 3 year, and it was negative ten, and it was sunny, and it was no wind. And you could walk outside in shorts and it just feel brisk. Like it was beautiful. Yeah, it was one of the most beautiful days. Yeah. But then you throw that wind in there, dude.
01;34;56;10 - 01;35;21;11
Unknown
It's miserable. It's terrible. Yeah. That's definitely the case. I love North Dakota, though. That was a lot of a lot of fun. I'd go back up there. Yeah. I, I will be back up there soon. I'll go as well. But. Yeah. So, All right, so now what? We've talked a lot of production allocation. That's that's not most of what you're doing now.
01;35;21;12 - 01;35;43;09
Unknown
Most of what you're doing now is like, production, engineering work over. Yes and no. I'll say I'll I'll do whatever they ask. You know, everybody's kind of at a different spot. Some people say, hey, we have these wells, and we just want you to be the production engineer for them. Tell us if we need to do something.
01;35;43;10 - 01;36;03;17
Unknown
Gotcha. Some people have regulatory issues they want to work on. Sometimes it's, you know, hey, put this together in a package that looks sellable. It could be anything. Which am I, a pro and all that stuff? I don't, I don't know if I'm pro in any of that stuff, but I can figure it out. Yeah.
01;36;03;22 - 01;36;31;26
Unknown
So, I I'll do whatever. It's kind of where I'm at right now. Yeah. My. One of the things that I was really hoping to do was find, some guys who had operations wanted to remote automate a lot of it. Things like plunger lift, things like the amplified stuff. But maybe just wanted somebody to manage it.
01;36;31;29 - 01;36;51;08
Unknown
Gotcha. Because I love plunger lifts. Yeah. It's the I had a friend tell me that it's the tinkerers favorite artificial. Right. Right. Oh, I could drop that 10s that arrival 10s. And it'll see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Absolutely. And that's what it takes. Yeah. If a guy's not gonna do it. Yeah. Put it on there.
01;36;51;09 - 01;37;10;26
Unknown
It's. It's fun. It's fun. And so I was hoping that I could aggregate enough of that kind of stuff. Okay. You could just tinker full time. That's right. I'd be a full time tinker. Piddle is the word my wife use piddle. Yeah. Why are you always piddling with your whales? Yeah. It's fun. They never gonna get any better if somebody's not hurt their piddling with it.
01;37;10;27 - 01;37;33;23
Unknown
That's true. I'd rather be at fault for paying too much attention than too little attention. Yeah. So. Yeah. But, Yeah, the the big centralized gas lift stuff with gas is plunders in South Texas. Eagle Ford was was my favorite. Gotcha. Done. I love to do that. Yeah. Yeah. I would do it again. I'll do it again.
01;37;33;25 - 01;37;57;20
Unknown
Yeah. So you're looking for some plunger lift work to work on? Yeah. That's what you want. Yeah. I love plunger lift. It's just fun to do. Right. It's a little puzzle. Yeah, it's just a little puzzle. Yeah. The the. Interesting. The amplified stuff I've really enjoyed. Because it's easy. It's like I'm not an iron tech.
01;37;57;22 - 01;38;15;24
Unknown
Shoot. I'm going to call in there going to sponsor this podcast. You talking you got a hat. We need to put it out. That's right. Yeah I, I'm not an iron tech. So, like, hooking all that stuff up and doing stuff on a 4 to 20 millivolts, whatever. And, like, I don't know and understand that.
01;38;15;26 - 01;38;27;21
Unknown
And so I call those guys for my stuff, and I'm like, hey, I wanted to do this. And I'm like, all right, we'll have you a unit in a week. Yep. And they, like, put it together in a box and they send it to me and I'm able to put it on. Yep. And it does what I needed to do.
01;38;27;21 - 01;38;43;26
Unknown
And I don't have to figure out like the electrical engineering side. You know and like that lets me do what I'm good at. Yep. And they handle the thing that they're good at. Yep. And and then somehow I put my phone and it all talks and it connects and I'm like great. Yeah. You know. Yeah. That's what I needed.
01;38;43;26 - 01;39;07;05
Unknown
That's what I want. It was very easy. The times I've seen it employed. Yeah. And I liked it a lot. I did want to. I think maybe we talked about this at one point, trying to compare it with traditional, Yeah. Cards. Just to see. And I'm sure they've done it thousands of times. Yeah. To see what it looks like alongside, like an echo meter.
01;39;07;12 - 01;39;31;01
Unknown
Yeah. Or something like that. But, like, possibly there's something we could learn about. Hey, it has a tendency to skew this way or something like that, I don't know. Yeah. Because it's it's measuring the tension on that bridle cable. Yeah. And that's what it uses to. Right. Do this whole thing. Right. So we'll see. Here's what I've been thinking about that.
01;39;31;03 - 01;39;53;02
Unknown
It's like I had somebody ask me about it. Like, how accurate is that Donald cart? And in my mind, it's it's accurate because it's a, it's a relative reference point. Rather, I don't need to know exactly what the load on that rod is. I'm not looking at. I'm not like slingshots my rods and hoping I'm not going to part something.
01;39;53;08 - 01;40;14;02
Unknown
Yep. I'm looking for a downhole card, which, like. So it's giving me the full travel. And so if it's off 10% one way or another, it's off 10% the whole way through that stroke. Right. So it's still giving me like the all the data is skewed in the same direction. So it still gives me the reference I'm looking for.
01;40;14;04 - 01;40;35;23
Unknown
Yeah, I think I had one one time that I was looking at that it was showing like negative value on. Wait. Oh, and but it didn't matter. It drew me a good card. Yeah. And because it was, it was off by whatever factor the whole way through. So exactly what you're talking about. And that could have been like a setup thing too, right?
01;40;35;24 - 01;40;59;24
Unknown
You know, it's like, what are we calibrating it to? But what do we need it calibrated to? Right. Like, what is our tolerance? Yeah. For this, I'm sure there are situations where, if it's not done correctly, that it may affect the reading, but by and large, if you can see a good card versus a bad card, regardless of the scale, you know, like where's your where's your axis at?
01;40;59;27 - 01;41;21;09
Unknown
Right. If your axis doesn't line up with the card where it should be, but it's still drawing a decent card, you're probably getting good information for it. You can probably figure out how to adjust the axis. Yeah, you're getting the information you need for the job you're doing, but like somebody like, Thane Berkeley. Do you know Thane at, at a wildfire?
01;41;21;11 - 01;41;41;03
Unknown
They he was telling me that, you know, a lot of their rod pump stuff over here in, like, College Station. They they run a bunch of fiberglass rods, and they slingshot that. And they're doing all this over travel and everything. That probably makes a big difference. Yeah. Right. Because they're pushing those systems to the limit. I'm running six strokes for a minute.
01;41;41;03 - 01;42;02;16
Unknown
I just want to know when it pumps off. You know like yeah. Yeah. That's right. These three quarter inch rods are like rated to three times the stress I'm putting them on. Yeah. You know, which you know, till they're to amplify at least the way they described it. To me the goal is to cater to that kind of operation much more than the.
01;42;02;18 - 01;42;29;23
Unknown
Wildfire out there. Yeah. You know, it would be the I quoted. I had a couple. Lufkin sand controllers quoted I, I could buy ten of the amplified systems for the same money and it's. And then in order to get that stuff remote, I also have to have a system that I've purchased and bolted on on top of that in order to get the information from afar.
01;42;29;28 - 01;42;58;21
Unknown
Okay. So when I was at Lufkin, Lufkin had bought ILS International Lift Systems in maybe 2011, 2012. Yeah, maybe somewhere in 2013. Anyways, Lufkin bought ILS. We had Lufkin ILS that had plunger lift, had gas lift, had downhill tools. They also still had their power transmissions and their big, pumping units and downhole pumps. Right. But so Lufkin had this this plunge lift division for a while.
01;42;58;24 - 01;43;19;01
Unknown
We still called it ILS and International lift Systems. And they had developed. So a lot of our plunger systems, we just ran on like a txt. It's like a little time keeper box. Okay. Yep. You know, it's super easy. Set your times just like some amount of Auto-Tune to it. Like, it'll sense a, you know, a differential.
01;43;19;02 - 01;43;39;21
Unknown
Like if casing pressure is so far above tubing pressure, it'll open. Yeah. There's a minimum fall time. If it doesn't, then it goes into recovery mode. You know, like, there's a couple of things, but it's not fancy. Yeah. Lufkin had built this box, this plunger lift box, and nobody in the company knew how to use it at the time.
01;43;39;23 - 01;43;57;02
Unknown
Maybe they're probably different. This is ten years ago. Right. But basically, we had all these parts, and we're like, yes, this can do all these things. And we would hand it to an operator and be like, but you have to figure out how to get it to do that. You know, like it's possible for it to auto tune, but we don't know how to do it.
01;43;57;03 - 01;44;13;20
Unknown
Yeah. We don't really know how to make it. Talk to your skater system. There's no comms internally in it. You got to hook it in. Yep. You know. So you just gave them all these parts? It's like very the opposite of, like, what I'm getting right now. It's like, I don't want parts that I have to figure out.
01;44;13;22 - 01;44;35;01
Unknown
Yeah. I want it to work. Yeah. And that's more important to me because something that people can't use, they're not going to use. Right. It's it's no value if you can't use it. Yeah. And So. Yeah. Yeah. When you go find some plunger lift wells, I stayed away from gas. I don't want to. I don't like operating gas.
01;44;35;03 - 01;44;59;14
Unknown
Well, I've had this. I've had this thought about it. It's real hard for gas to just walk away. Yeah. It's, facilities. Pretty basic. I mean, it can be scary at times. I think the pressure. And, you know, I grew up on compressors. Yeah. So, like, I think maybe that gives me more of a fear because I've seen some stuff go sideways.
01;44;59;19 - 01;45;21;24
Unknown
That's true. Yeah. Pressure. No doubt. Terrifying. I don't like pressure. I don't like gas. Like, if there's if it's fully fluid, there's fluid pressure. There's no expansion. It's not going to go anywhere. You know, we're we're hydro testing something. Yeah. Since scare me one bit. We're fracking. Like, sure water is going to shoot, you know, and it's under pressure.
01;45;21;24 - 01;45;42;10
Unknown
And it might cut somebody in half right next to them. But like, there's not like I blew down a well the other day on the casing. It only had 60 psi on it. Yeah. But like it took like 20 minutes to bleed 60 psi down because there's so much stored energy in that annulus. And I think that's just what scares me about gas.
01;45;42;13 - 01;45;59;15
Unknown
Yeah. And then there's all the there's a lot of other stuff too. Like there's a lot more contracts. There's a lot more measurement. It's not nearly as simple. Like I put it in a tank. I measure it when I get out there to measure it. It makes my life simple. Yeah. That's true. And simple is not everything.
01;45;59;16 - 01;46;18;27
Unknown
It's just where I'm in, where I am right now. But I mean simples in the eye of the beholder. Yeah. That's true. You know, I mean, somebody think that some. Some think the gas is simple, some think the all is simple. And that's true for different reasons. Yeah. Yeah. No. I wouldn't mind a couple of gas wells.
01;46;18;29 - 01;46;42;18
Unknown
I mean, if you find some gas. Well, that we need to operate, maybe we go and have these on these things. We figure that out, sort it out, but, and throw some plungers in. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. We ran a lot of plunger lift for, Sanchez. Yep. And we had some.
01;46;42;20 - 01;47;09;01
Unknown
Talisman stuff. Trying to think of that other operator was we had one other operator we did a bunch of stuff for down around. Okay. And and for the first six months, maybe a year of my career, I was riding with a guy just doing just doing plunger lift and, Yeah, I sort of enjoyed it. Like you say, it's like it's a tinkerers dream.
01;47;09;02 - 01;47;27;29
Unknown
That's right. Trying to figure out what's going on, why this hasn't come up, why this has, slowing down, sitting there next to the. I remember we did a lot of sitting next to the well with the window cracked, listening. Listening for that slug to come. Yeah. As soon as you hear that slug, you start counting. You see how big that slug is, you know?
01;47;28;00 - 01;47;53;29
Unknown
Yeah. And, we did a lot of that stuff. And I'm sure even in ten years, it's come so far, right? It's changed. Because now all these controllers have load calculations. Yeah. And, you know, and and. Yeah, I had a demo. Not too long ago is champion X, which was Ferguson, but they're now.
01;47;54;02 - 01;48;18;06
Unknown
SLB. Not even slumber J s I'll be that. So be. So, But, Yeah, their controller, gets you one second data. Is that right? And I can't tell you how it does it, but that's pretty awesome. Yeah. That's cool. I mean, most of systems, you can ask it to do it for a period of time, but eventually you got to quit.
01;48;18;07 - 01;48;42;10
Unknown
Yeah. But there's would give you they advertise it as. We'll give you one second data. Interesting. And so a lot of data, a sample rate like that. The question is is it useful enough to need that I don't know. I mean, we did it with 15 minute data way back in the day. And so I say way back in the day, it's right relative to me.
01;48;42;11 - 01;49;15;02
Unknown
Way back when. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Back when I was growing up. But, yeah. So I would like to see it applied somewhere. Right. But, I hadn't got to do it myself. Yeah. I was I was interested. I was interested. Yeah. So it's cool. I found, I had tried to pitch a company. DJR out of the San Juan Basin, their base in Denver.
01;49;15;05 - 01;49;41;10
Unknown
I tried to pitch them on some plunger lift stuff, like in, like, 2016, 2017. Actually went up there and did a school for them in farming to New Mexico. Okay. And I was the one that ended up getting schooled. And those guys were on top of the plunger lift stuff. But but the most interesting thing that I walked away with from that that's like always boggled my mind and something that I've wanted to validate.
01;49;41;12 - 01;50;04;21
Unknown
Those guys felt they have such low bottom hole pressure in the San Juan, basically. Right. Very low bottom hole pressure. I'm talking like 20, 30 psi driving a plunger. Wow. Okay. And so I argued with some of their hands, some of their field hands, that downsizing tubing going to two and 3/8 is going to help drive their plungers.
01;50;04;24 - 01;50;24;23
Unknown
Right. Because, you know, we think about gas expansion. And every time we have the TV we double the size of a of of a, a gas bubble. Right. And so I was like, you know, gas expansion, you're going to need less gas to drive this plunger. Yep.
01;50;24;25 - 01;50;49;28
Unknown
They argued at the time that either a two and 3/8 or a three and a half plunger at extremely low bottom hole pressures was more efficient because it had more cross-sectional area and it had more force across the plunger. Right. We're using our plungers, a mechanical seal to lift that fluid so we're not blowing through. Yeah. So we're not blowing through our yeah.
01;50;49;29 - 01;51;09;21
Unknown
Our liquid slug. Right. And so if we look at it, it's like there's more cross-sectional area for that little bit of pressure they have to act on. You can actually lift more weight. And so they felt like they're two and 7/8 or they're three and a half. Plungers were more efficient at extremely low bottom hole pressures. Were they running three and a half plungers up there?
01;51;09;24 - 01;51;28;07
Unknown
Yeah, really. They had both of them. Interesting. And I I've never had like a set of wells that I can go tested on. Right. But it's stuck with me. Yeah. I've thought about it a bunch of times. Like, I would really love to. Maybe I should just sit down and run the calculations. See some math done on that.
01;51;28;09 - 01;51;50;02
Unknown
Get some math done. But they feel like the larger cross-sectional area at extremely low bottom hole pressures. Give them more lift force. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have to scratch my head on that one for a little bit. I know, didn't that, like, as a conventional plunger guy? Yeah. Or artificial lift in general. Gas in general.
01;51;50;04 - 01;52;13;12
Unknown
We always think smaller tubing, it's going to give us better velocity. Yep. It's going to give us better lift ratios. Like it's just going to it's going to clean it up and keep it flowing. Yeah. And they argued otherwise. That's interesting. Yeah. So I mean, when you're bored. Yeah. Yeah. I'm expecting a full spreadsheet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
01;52;13;14 - 01;52;30;29
Unknown
Yeah. Shoot. Yeah, I am thousand percent down to find some plunger lift. What? You just let me know. Yeah. Yeah. No, that would be fun. Yeah. None of the stuff. Like I said, none of the stuff I have right now is gassing. Yeah. But,
01;52;31;02 - 01;52;59;18
Unknown
It's been intentional. On purpose. Might pull a different way. Yeah. So, Man. So you're doing work over some. Yeah. You've done a couple. Yep. You enjoyed that? Oh, yeah. I do feel like that's a that's a gap in my career is that I didn't spend enough time sitting on work over. Yeah. Moreover, or any operation in the field.
01;52;59;20 - 01;53;20;28
Unknown
Yeah. Now, I've done the proverbial rides with, pumpers plenty of times, but, not enough time sitting supervisor and work over or something like that. Yeah. So the times I get to do it, I, I appreciate it. Yeah. Maybe.
01;53;21;01 - 01;53;45;01
Unknown
Being ten years down the road and in a career and and missing that, I feel like it's hurting me. But, I, I appreciate it now. Gotcha. So. Well, and maybe you needed to see enough to appreciate it. Yeah. And just soak it up. Yeah. I haven't been in the field other than my stuff. I haven't been in the field nearly as much since February, since we started war Turkey.
01;53;45;03 - 01;54;08;18
Unknown
Yeah. It's been so much office time. And, But I'm still. I still shoot fluid levels for some folks. Yeah. And, yesterday I went and shot, a fluid level. I shot three fluid levels on the same. Well, you know, morning, afternoon and then evening. Okay. For this guy and and they, they were speeding it up from three and a quarter strokes per minute to five strokes per minute.
01;54;08;18 - 01;54;35;04
Unknown
And they wanted to see how that fluid level is going to look. And we ran down of cards at each. You know, and, and just kind of monitored that well through that transition. And so the operator, he's 45, but, the guy that has the main stake in the well, it's an old geologist. And by, you know, convention of owning working interests and being a geologist, he's 80.
01;54;35;09 - 01;54;54;12
Unknown
He's been doing this for 50 years. Yeah, he's kind of an engineer, too, at this point. Yep. And, one of the things I really enjoy about shooting fluid levels for folks is that when I go out and do these things, like I have my sometimes people expect you to be the expert. Right. And they want your yeah, your opinion, your input.
01;54;54;13 - 01;55;14;17
Unknown
And I'll, I'll give them my opinion. Right. In my input. And I don't know if you'd call it imposter syndrome, but often I'm like, this is what I would do, since you're asking me. Yeah. I'm not sure if it's right. This is what makes sense to me. Yeah. One of the things I love about shooting fluid levels, particularly what I can do with small operators that have old men there.
01;55;14;19 - 01;55;41;28
Unknown
Yeah, or old women. I get I get to listen and learn so much. Those little conversations like what seems like a simple dynamometer and fluid level. Turned into a 30 minute conversation about some of the reservoir dynamics out there. Why they switched from this size pump to this size pump? Yeah. Why they haven't, you know, that they set that tubing anchor 2000ft above purse.
01;55;42;03 - 01;56;01;10
Unknown
Okay. I was like, if y'all want more drawdown, like, y'all need to drop your tubing. Yep. It's a big water drive reservoir. And, but there it flowed when they first shot it. But it makes a lot of gas. So they initially set that tubing up high because they felt like it helped with gas interference. So much.
01;56;01;10 - 01;56;21;23
Unknown
To have 2000ft of fluid column on that reservoir helped give that gas time to separate out. And I've always had this idea in my head that you would set your tubing anchor or the bottom of your tubing very close to the purse, but leave more fluid column above your tubing anchor. Still leave your thousand foot of fluid. Yeah, right.
01;56;21;24 - 01;56;39;17
Unknown
But be sucking from down at the purse. And, and this guy was like, no, we really like to. Before we even get to the intake, we like to leave a couple thousand feet. That way we're not drawing like it gives that all time to let that gas come out of solution, instead of coming out of solution in our pump.
01;56;39;18 - 01;57;04;21
Unknown
So interesting. Anyways, you know, it's just a it was their theory and right or wrong, it's like another thing to chew on and it's more than one way to skin a cat. So I really enjoy like kind of what you're doing where you get to go work. Different fields, different operators, different theories. Yeah. Right. Because then eventually you get enough of hearing this and seeing that, that you can put together like some better theories of your own.
01;57;04;23 - 01;57;23;26
Unknown
Yeah. I think it'll be really awesome when I get to the point that I said, hey, I had a client doing this over here, I think it might work over here. Yeah. And I feel like I've. I've made it whenever I'm starting to do things like that. But you started doing that. That'd be fun. It'd be fun to see that.
01;57;23;27 - 01;57;43;29
Unknown
Be able to apply something like that. Yeah. Which I guess, I mean, we do that our whole careers. We did something way back when, and we're going to try it over here. Yeah. But, doing it within a consulting mindset. Yeah. Would be fun. Yeah, it gives you access to a lot of different things. Yes. And,
01;57;44;01 - 01;58;11;27
Unknown
And I feel like a lot of people don't get that opportunity, right. They end up, you know, just being a not just being, but they end up being a drilling engineer for ConocoPhillips for 20 years. Yeah. And, and does that give some stability as much as you can get in the field? Like that's nice. Yeah, I was thinking about that as there's in kind of like my old boss that he was right where he wanted to be.
01;58;12;00 - 01;58;17;25
Unknown
Yeah, that's what he wanted. Yeah, and that's just fine.
01;58;17;27 - 01;58;43;04
Unknown
I don't know if that's what I want to do. Right, right, right. And so, it and it's one of those things you never know unless you try. Yeah. So you gotta give it a shot. Yeah. And this is one industry that can afford you an opportunity to do that. Yeah. Which is cool, but, yeah, I just, there is nothing wrong with being it Phillips or Shell.
01;58;43;05 - 01;59;03;09
Unknown
Right. BP for 30 years. You'll retire very well. Yeah. Miss great benefits at those companies. There's a lot of things you can learn there for a lot of things you can learn. And I think they have a lot of data, and they have a lot of training. And you can get really good mentors at those places. And that's one thing I've missed in my career.
01;59;03;09 - 01;59;23;18
Unknown
I've never been at a major operator to get to see some of those things. Yeah. But I do enjoy what I'm doing because you get to see a bunch of different things, right? Yeah. And, Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't jump at a chance to go to a big one. Yeah. I've always thought smaller is better.
01;59;23;21 - 01;59;49;10
Unknown
It's just I interned for a company. Well, intern for a few companies in college. One was me. Okay. And and they said, come work for us in Hobbs, New Mexico. And at the time, I was thinking, no, no. Houston. What what can I do besides that? And Hobbs. Were you already married? Not yet. Okay. So I graduated in 2015.
01;59;49;12 - 02;00;07;25
Unknown
May of 2015. Got married in June and started working July. But, you know, job offers were coming out at the end of the summer of 2014. And so after you finish up your internship, if they're going to offer you a job, they're going to do it then. And to lock you down. And so I had two offers.
02;00;07;25 - 02;00;27;14
Unknown
One was Hobbs, New Mexico, from which he was an excellent operator out there. Yeah. The other one was for Statoil in Austin. And I told my wife, I said, I, I know she's from Lubbock and I was a tech. And so I said, I know that Hobbs is close, and you're going to tell me you want to go to Hobbs, New Mexico.
02;00;27;14 - 02;00;49;17
Unknown
But, I don't think you want to go to Hobbs, New Mexico. Yeah. No shade. Anybody from Hobbs to Mexico? But, Yeah, it was not going to be her cup of tea, I can tell you. Tell you that. So, we ended up in Austin. Cool. But, Yeah. But anyway, in my interning, I'd spent with all small companies.
02;00;49;20 - 02;01;16;09
Unknown
All little bitty companies. Tiny ones, mid-size ones. Was kind of mid or maybe in a major private, but, just I came out with the expectation someday I'm going to look for the little guys. That's where I want to be. And I don't want to be with the big guys. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing against them, but just not where I wanted to be.
02;01;16;10 - 02;01;19;27
Unknown
Well, the all fields, like a,
02;01;19;29 - 02;01;44;01
Unknown
It's a game of outlast, right? It's like you're waiting for the next big boom. You're waiting until your, well comes in. You're waiting until you get a contract on something. You know, it's like it's. It really can, like, where you're at right now. You know, you've got to stay in the market long enough that people start calling you for the services that you put out, certain that that you want to do.
02;01;44;01 - 02;02;10;02
Unknown
Right. And you can't just say you can't expect that to happen after one month, right? Yes. Right. This takes 12 months, 24 months, 36 months to build the reputation for people to know what you're doing, right? To start trusting you and calling you back multiple times and and and building that. And so it often ends up as like a I think the old field is genuinely like whoever can last the longest is successful.
02;02;10;03 - 02;02;35;17
Unknown
Yeah. And and we see that with operators to in their acreage, it's like they'll be eking by for years. And then we learn how to do this thing. Yeah. And they're billionaires. Yep. You know, or like they've drilled seven wells. Yeah. And they've all been dry or bleeders. Yeah. You're familiar with bleeders? Based on your description of it being a little bit better than a dry hole.
02;02;35;18 - 02;02;58;07
Unknown
I think I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's dry holes, there's bar murders. And there's bleeders. Seven bleeders. And then the eighth one. Yeah. Is a is a barn burner? Yeah. You know, and so it's it's it's just a it's a game of outlast. Yeah. You gotta outlast the other guys. Yeah. I mean, that's it's probably true with most businesses.
02;02;58;09 - 02;03;26;03
Unknown
Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I'm a little old. Changed business. I don't know if I'm. I don't know if it's long term gig or not. I'd love to have my kids involved, but. Yeah, just. Can I keep it? Can I actually do it? Yeah. That's a that's the thing that I, and I think there's, there's mentalities out there that I don't even want to try and there's well I'm might in this situation.
02;03;26;03 - 02;03;34;22
Unknown
And then there's the I want to prove it to myself that I can actually do that. Yeah. And.
02;03;34;24 - 02;03;56;03
Unknown
If you can get yourself in that mindset. I think you can be successful. Or at least give it a fair shake. Yeah. Just to prove it to yourself. Prove it to yourself for sure. Well, if people need you need your services. Yeah. Need your brain or your physical body on a location somewhere? Yeah. Yeah. You're on LinkedIn.
02;03;56;06 - 02;04;16;23
Unknown
I'm there. I didn't mean for this to be a, No. A marketing pitch for. I don't know. Absolutely. Clay Parrish consulting, but, yeah, I guess I'll take it. You're on LinkedIn. You're on collide. I am not on collide. You're not on collide, I. Okay. All right. That's how we met. I thought that's where it. No, it was it was LinkedIn where I thought that's where we.
02;04;16;24 - 02;04;36;08
Unknown
Yeah, but I, I, I have to admit something I have tried. All right, I did all right. And I probably shouldn't leave here until I get this resolved. All right. Shame on me. Tell me. But, I, I got on collide. I downloaded it and got on with on my phone to try and make my account. Right. Yeah.
02;04;36;09 - 02;04;58;29
Unknown
And one of the buttons didn't work. Okay. I couldn't do it. How long ago was that? I don't know, 60 release an update every, like, two weeks now. So it's just gonna look much different. I tried once. Okay, so I got this. Is. This is not evidence of me. Sticking with it. Yeah. So. Well, maybe I was thinking that because when we finally met in person, I was here.
02;04;59;00 - 02;05;27;26
Unknown
Yes, correct. That's right. And then we met at whatever restaurant is two blocks up the street. Right. Okay. That's right. I got you. So I was thinking we met vehicle. I was all for you. LinkedIn. That's right. It was LinkedIn. I think you and, another guy had had a conversation about having children with no insurance. Oh, and that was where I jumped in and asked you some questions about it, because, yeah, we were in that exact scenario.
02;05;27;29 - 02;05;52;21
Unknown
Are you running insurance again? You know, we're hadn't started yet. I, I'm not saying I would recommend doing that. Yeah. But, you know, I think there are what I've learned is there's there's people who are. Absolutely. You must have insurance at all times. You can't afford it. You can't afford not to have it. And then there are people that are on the totally other end of the spectrum that is.
02;05;52;22 - 02;06;22;23
Unknown
Yeah, insurance is 100% scam. You shouldn't get it. You should find something else or or just self-insured. I'm not I'm not either of those. Yeah, I'm somewhere in the middle. But, so I've got an update for you. Okay. So I've run a bunch of spreadsheets, cost balance equations. So for my family, for my kids and my wife, they're on I want you want to call it Christian Christian health ministry.
02;06;22;25 - 02;06;44;19
Unknown
It's like a share plan. Yep. Right. That seemed very reasonable. Okay. And some amount of coverage. And they actually cover a lot more things than we expected. Okay. Okay. That's great for them. I'm type one diabetic. Okay. So without any insurance for me to buy, everything over the counter is $1,200 a month. Oh, wow. For just my,
02;06;44;21 - 02;07;10;28
Unknown
I wear a monitor. Yeah. A glucose monitor. I wear a insulin pump. Okay. I have insulin. So all of those costs add up for me. That's about $1,200 a month. Wow. So I found an insurance plan. It cost me $750 a month. Okay. And then to buy all of my prescriptions is about $100 a month. So I end up saving $350 a month to have them.
02;07;11;01 - 02;07;29;27
Unknown
And then I'm the most likely in my family to go into the hospital because of preexisting. So you're on you're on a separate plan, and I am on a plan that is just me. Okay. And then I put my wife and my two kids, who are all three, extremely healthy. Knock on wood, on this share plan. Yeah. I never thought about splitting up like that.
02;07;30;03 - 02;07;49;22
Unknown
And it's worked really well. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're going to get something sometime. Yeah. Just hadn't got to that point, you know, but it. Well, it was interesting because to put me on a plan with $750 a month plus, you know, my prescriptions and maybe seven, 83 or something like that, but, then spent my whole family on the plan.
02;07;49;26 - 02;08;18;13
Unknown
It's like 2600 bucks a month. I was like, there's just no way. Like, that's just absolutely ridiculous. When. When I left Devin, this is just the question we were faced with was, what are you going to what do you do about insurance? Because they offer Cobra. And I'm sure there's there's people out there smarter than me on the insurance front, but, for nine months of coverage, I think it was going to be, $22,000.
02;08;18;15 - 02;08;38;11
Unknown
I was like, what are the chances over nine months, I'm going to accrue less than $22,000 of expenses. Yeah, pretty dang good. Yeah. And so that was the whole start of the no insurance thing for us was we're going to skip Cobra and we're going to see what we do. Yeah. It was it was just our ages.
02;08;38;13 - 02;09;00;24
Unknown
So we couldn't we were going to do it. Yeah. But no, I yeah, it's the whole thing is I'm not going to jump on that soapbox, but the whole thing is a racket. I, I'm, I'm leaning further that direction the more I learn about it. Yeah. So yeah, we go to a a doctor that doesn't care whether you have insurance.
02;09;00;26 - 02;09;23;22
Unknown
Yeah. We try to keep things that direction. Yeah. With our lifestyle. But, but it's one of the big questions when you're self-employed or when you're a consultant. Right. And so that's, that's one of the nice things about. So I've got, you know, I, I do some consulting through SR royalty. Okay. But I've started where I bill everything through triangle engineering.
02;09;24;00 - 02;09;51;28
Unknown
Right. And there's a bunch of em out there. There's bedrock, and there's SDS consultants, and there's all these different companies. And triangle offered me some cost share plans. Okay. But, you know, they cover my insurance. They cover the $20 million umbrella for me to be on location and my vehicle insurance and everything like that. And, but when you're, when you're doing these odd jobs, when you're consulting insurance, health insurance, liability insurance, you know, auto insurance, all those things.
02;09;52;00 - 02;10;15;29
Unknown
That's one of the biggest cost factors, one of the biggest drivers. And so finding a good, for anybody that might want to, you know, go out and be a consultant, like, don't be scared. There's a bunch of groups out there that like, have that down. Okay. Right. And they take a little a little bit. Right. I pay a percentage of every one of my tickets that I submit to them.
02;10;16;00 - 02;10;35;00
Unknown
Okay. They take a small percentage off the top. So if I bill $1,000, you know, they might take $70 off the top. Okay. I get paid 1030. I get paid that week. So I have instant cash flow when I'm working. Okay. Which helps for consultants. Right. When you don't know what every week is going to bring. Right.
02;10;35;02 - 02;10;55;27
Unknown
You don't have to wait 60 days for a bill to get paid. Yeah. But then they cover all that insurance for you. And then often everyone that I've talked to write bedrock, which is now NES fire. Croft. SDS petroleum consultants, triangle engineering. Like all these guys, they have options for their guys to have healthcare as well.
02;10;56;02 - 02;11;14;00
Unknown
And so interesting. Anybody that's like on the fence, it's like a really good way to get out there. For a while I carried my own. Yeah. You know, $10 million policy. Wow. And I carried my own auto policy. Talk about expensive. Like you've got to be doing a lot of work at a very high rate to make that work.
02;11;14;03 - 02;11;35;22
Unknown
Like, I would have to charge if I was going to carry everything on my own, I would have to charge $1,500 a day. To make the same money as if I charged $1,000 a day and let triangle carry my insurance for me. Interesting. Right. Like the incremental cost. So much more. Okay. So I don't know. It's a thought.
02;11;35;28 - 02;11;51;01
Unknown
Things to think about. Yeah. Yeah. For a lot of folks. Yeah. No. And some of these things, I mean, I didn't think about it when I started trying and, Yeah. Yeah. And so I none of that was on my mind. Right. Oh, I'm going to have to figure out how to do that. I'm going to figure out how to do that.
02;11;51;02 - 02;12;23;17
Unknown
Oh, and self-employment taxes double not self-employment taxes. Yeah. So, there were a lot of things that kind of shocked me jumping into it. Yeah. Oh, Texas. Another soapbox. Another one. Another. Another. Ragged taxation is theft. Let me go on record. Say taxation is theft, people. I'm okay with that. Yeah. Well, if we track a barrel of oil out of the ground, I get taxed on a lease that I have.
02;12;23;20 - 02;12;39;17
Unknown
So if I have ground leased and I have an all well on it, I get taxed on what the state or the county proposes. The value of that in the ground is. Okay.
02;12;39;19 - 02;13;22;00
Unknown
I produced that barrel. I pay ad valorem and production tax. Yeah. I then pay income tax in the company. On that barrel. Yep. As income. Yep. Then when I pay it out to myself. Yep. I pay income tax to me. Then when I spend that money I pay sales tax. And then anything that I own inside the company office equipment, trucks, extra inventory, pipe sitting on the rack I pay inventory tax on or I forget what it's called, but there's a corporate tax.
02;13;22;02 - 02;13;51;13
Unknown
And then on any property that we own, we pay property tax and and of course sales tax on everything. And it's, it's so that barrel of oil between it existing in the ground. That's right. In me getting able to buy a toy for the, you know, my kids. Yeah. 6 or 7 times the tax man gets his cut.
02;13;51;16 - 02;14;14;11
Unknown
And yeah I don't mind going on record and saying that's just too much. You know, I don't disagree. I don't. A lot of people want to say, like, they're subsidies. Yeah. For all and. Yes. If I'm not drilling a new will, I don't get any subsidies. I get taxed. Yep. Everywhere I go on it. Yep.
02;14;14;13 - 02;14;37;17
Unknown
I get a 15% depreciation tax on my reserves, so I get a little 15% break on that one piece of text that I pay, but I'm taxed everywhere else. And it just it I don't know. It frustrates me because people have this idea that we're over here. You know, people that have owned oil wells. Yep.
02;14;37;20 - 02;14;58;14
Unknown
Or gas wells. If you say I own oil and gas wells, people are like, wow, I know exactly what they're thinking. Where's the private plane? You know, if somebody owned a well and you say, I own a wheel and gas wells, they go, man, I'm sorry. Yeah, like that's terrible. There's there's a better, better chance you went broke because of that decision.
02;14;58;16 - 02;15;16;18
Unknown
Yeah. Became a bajillion there. Yeah. So a lot of people don't don't understand, like inside the industry. And then all the costs and the the liabilities and the cleanup and everything like that. And I'm, I'm not saying all that to say like, poor pitiful me. Like it's a business that I love. Yeah, it's a business I've chosen to be in.
02;15;16;21 - 02;15;38;19
Unknown
And I make a living at it. Yeah. But it's not, you know, it's it's not the, you know, glamorous thing that a lot of folks think that it is. Is this definitely not, you know, maybe in the 50s, 6070s, when we were doing a lot of wildcats and people were hitting these huge wells. It was a little bit different back then.
02;15;38;21 - 02;16;03;21
Unknown
But for today's small operator, it's nothing like those, quote, glory days where we're building hotels off of our profits. Little operators are getting by on wells that are not that far from orphan. Orphan status. Yeah. I've taken several out of orbit sets. Yeah. Okay. I do have to jump on this soapbox. I have a will.
02;16;03;24 - 02;16;32;10
Unknown
It's. Well, the Savannah ranch, number one. Okay. Okay. Do it. County, Texas. If anybody wants to look it up. It is currently severed. Okay. And, it's got a $750 severance fee on it that needs to be paid. Yep. Okay. This well was drilled in 2008. Came on making 35 barrels a day. Good. Operator that drilled it right.
02;16;32;12 - 02;16;55;16
Unknown
They sold it to a very shady operator. He quit producing it in 2015 when the gearbox broke. Okay. Okay. All right. So this Will was not shut in properly. It was just flow into the tanks half a barrel a day or so until the tanks overflowed. Yep. And then spilled across the ranchers property. Operator is Mia.
02;16;55;18 - 02;17;23;08
Unknown
Nobody can find him. Yep. The spill happens in 2019, 2020 somewhere. Right in there. Right. Okay. The operator that used to own it, that has not filed any reports on it. Yep. For five years now. Comes out and tries to steal all the oil out of the tanks. Gets in a lawsuit, is found guilty, has to pay the landowner his money.
02;17;23;09 - 02;17;51;09
Unknown
Yep. Okay. And then the well goes into orphan status. The oil spill is cleaned up while the well is orphaned under the state of Texas. And I take the well out of orphan whale status. Yep. There's a severance on it for the spill. It's five years old now. Yep. Okay. Been cleaned up? It's been cleaned up. Yep. So I say, why is this severance on their list if there's an old spill?
02;17;51;10 - 02;18;15;20
Unknown
We need to do a site inspection. I say great, everything's clean. Come look at my site. Yep. I've spent 14 months going through the orphan whale process. Taking this well. Yeah, I take the well. They come out and they look at it. They take soil samples. Everything looks good. Everything's clean. Will clear it. You still have to pay the $750 fine from when we owned it.
02;18;15;20 - 02;18;39;25
Unknown
And it spilled on our dime. Yeah, and it's been a year now that I have not paid that severance off of just sheared principal. And now. Now I need to pay the severance so I can sell all off of it. But it's just it frustrates me to no end. I took a 30 or $40,000 liability from the taxpayers, made it profitable.
02;18;39;28 - 02;19;05;15
Unknown
Did all of my due diligence, followed everything? Have cleaned it up? Have everything looks good? It is to a tee what you would want to happen with an orphan, will? Yep. Right. Yep. And yet I'm penalized $750, which is a nominal fee. Yeah, I need to get over it, but. Yeah, but also, on top of all the taxes I pay, I've not.
02;19;05;17 - 02;19;35;16
Unknown
I know I got to pay the $750 fee for these guys. Yeah. I don't know why I got on that train. I anyways, I, I have a question about orphan wells. Maybe you know the answer to this question since you've taken that, I called one time about Wells status. And my question was, hey state, will you allow me to do any testing of oil?
02;19;35;18 - 02;19;56;27
Unknown
And if it tests good I'll take it. If it doesn't test good. And we'll have to define what test is. Right. It can. Can you perf a zone okay. I mean can you frag it. What can you do to test. But if it tests, well, I'll take it. It's no longer on the state's books as an orphan.
02;19;56;27 - 02;20;26;16
Unknown
Well, or if it doesn't, it just stays right where it is. And they said no we can't allow you to do that. So is there any way anyway to, you know probably and you can tell it's probably a backstory to how you figured out that this well that you took it was a good one. Yeah. But if, if, if the state would allow guys like you and me to go check out some wells.
02;20;26;21 - 02;20;44;28
Unknown
Yeah. Do a little testing, go high grade, some stuff. How many orphan wells would get taken off and put in portfolios? Oh, a lot. Well, and if they would streamline the process, too. Yeah, because there's now two other wells that I want to take that are orphaned. I think each well will make about two barrels a day. Okay.
02;20;45;03 - 02;21;10;07
Unknown
I already had the lease under them because I'm operating another well on that. Yeah. Ranch. Yeah. I don't want to go through all the bullshit. Yeah, sorry for my language, but, like, that's what it is. There's a lot of paperwork. Yeah. And when I'm. When I'm out of compliance, I've got 30 days to get all my stuff together, or they sever the pipeline and send me a fine.
02;21;10;08 - 02;21;30;17
Unknown
Yep. But when I'm trying to take an orphan. Well, sometimes it might be 90 days between me hearing from them. Yeah. I don't get receipt that I mailed it. You can't mail them anything. They send me certified mail to make sure that I get it. Yep. I can't send them certified mail to get a receipt that they got it.
02;21;30;19 - 02;21;53;08
Unknown
I can't send them a Fedex. Yeah. Envelope to verify that they've got it. And so it might be 90 days. In a lot of times I have to call them and say hey I'm just checking on where this is. Yeah. It's so one way and one sided. But with all that said yeah, there's tons there are tons of wells out there just that are good wells.
02;21;53;10 - 02;22;16;19
Unknown
And the the state doesn't seem keen on actually getting rid of them. If, if they were truly concerned with preserving natural resources. Yeah. And truly concerned with reducing the number of orphan wells out there. You'd think that they would focus on getting them in the hands of responsible operators. I think, as with anything. It's a it's a case of bureaucracy.
02;22;16;21 - 02;22;40;04
Unknown
There's laws, there's red tape. There's too much there's too much government involved to like ever dream of this being efficient. Yeah. But one of the things I've been thinking about lately is so we went to a, we went to a, murder mystery dinner last weekend. Okay. And it was for the DeWit County. Friends of DeWit County.
02;22;40;04 - 02;23;02;23
Unknown
Children, something like that. It's basically a nonprofit that helps, kids. Yeah. Particularly kids in the foster system or undergoing abuse or trauma or something like that. So we went to that in the table we sat at was with a, Saint Jude Children's ranch, had sponsored the table that we ended up sitting at. Okay. For this event.
02;23;02;23 - 02;23;30;15
Unknown
And I was talking to them and they've got this program I remember I want to remember it. It's called I think it's called bridge. But anyways, what I come to find out is they are a charter by the state that does what CPS does, but it's a privatized entity. So instead of CPS doing the research and taking the kids out of a home and placing it in a foster system, they now do that as a private entity under Saint Jude's for the state.
02;23;30;16 - 02;23;59;21
Unknown
They've got a charter. Same thing where my wife used to work at region three, right where she did early childhood intervention for physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, that kind of stuff. It's a private charter under the state of Texas that does these services for Texas. Okay. It got me to wondering, could we create a private charter because of all the red tape and all the bureaucracy and bullcrap that has to happen at the state level?
02;23;59;23 - 02;24;03;28
Unknown
It's like like I was saying earlier,
02;24;04;00 - 02;24;17;11
Unknown
Good communication with my landowners, with, with the, the railroad commission, like, goes so far. Right. So.
02;24;17;13 - 02;24;36;14
Unknown
But there's, there's things they can't do that their hands are just tied. I've called and talked to my local engineer at the railroad commission. He's like, I can't allow you to do that. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Or he'll say, I can't tell you what you're allowed to do. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so their hands are tied in so many ways.
02;24;36;14 - 02;24;55;09
Unknown
If we could create a a private charter to come in and take over some of this responsibility, maybe we would we would resume some efficiency. For the state in a way they could get some of these things handle because the, the orphan well number is a little over 15,000 wells right now across the state of Texas.
02;24;55;11 - 02;25;18;16
Unknown
Those are the identified ones on the list that emit that criteria. And with the sheer number of holes we have poked the last 20 years in the show, revolution and numbers are about to explode. Then we're just gonna go through the roof. And there's always going to be bad actors. Yeah. And I think that's why I think that's why we have the regulations in place.
02;25;18;17 - 02;25;37;00
Unknown
Yeah. Right. Not to get on a, like, a really long range soliloquy here, but, that's why we have the regulations to try to protect the people and the resources from the bad actors. Certainly. But often it ends up keeping the good guys from being able to do what they need to do as well. Punching the whole class instead of the kid that keeps acting up.
02;25;37;01 - 02;26;02;18
Unknown
That's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. I'm starting to believe that the answer would be to to. The answer is almost always less government. Right? Almost always. No no, no, it's a it's an idea. Yeah. If anybody wants to talk about it. Yeah. Like holler at me. Who's got the capability of private charter to to take this stuff and really streamline, putting it in the hands?
02;26;02;18 - 02;26;16;17
Unknown
I think there's a lot of wells. I think there's a lot of wells. Yeah. That have the opportunity. Yeah, I've heard a lot of the, doing the plugging for the carbon credits and.
02;26;16;20 - 02;26;38;08
Unknown
That's kind of playing with funny money in my mind. And so I don't necessarily would, I wouldn't want to make a business depend on that. Yeah. But there's probably some way to do both. Yeah. Test them. Go for carbon credits for the ones that don't. They can't make it profitable. Well. Correct. Go that route. Get it plugged.
02;26;38;09 - 02;27;00;02
Unknown
And maybe there are businesses out there doing this. I'm not sure. Yeah. Even. Even that one. I guess because of the mandate that it's under. Yeah. Is some skewed numbers of, like, they want it to be actively making leaking methane and so on. Yes that's true. It's like it really limits the number of wells because of the criteria that they're using.
02;27;00;07 - 02;27;21;23
Unknown
Yeah. And I think they're trying to target a certain thing. Yeah. Right. But it doesn't help as many operators as you would think, because all the responsible operators aren't leaking methane right now anyways. They're taking care of things. We're taking care of things. Right. We're plugging them out as necessary. We're going and putting new valves on them, even if we're never going to recoup that cost.
02;27;21;25 - 02;27;45;18
Unknown
Yep. Like that's part of being responsible. Right. And and just like you said, punishing the whole class, we don't get any of that fund for having been responsible. My mom used to say, no good deed goes unpunished. Right. And, the older I get, the smarter my parents get. That's true. But. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of wells.
02;27;45;18 - 02;28;14;07
Unknown
And what I've done is, I think you can tell so much from the production history of the. Well, you can look at and and not just one single. Well, so if you look at production history of a lease or of the operator that had that lease, and in my case, like these two extra wells that I want to take and two of the wells have already taken across the street, one operator had all of them.
02;28;14;09 - 02;28;36;16
Unknown
They all quit producing the same month of the same year. Okay. So it's as as a whole. You know, I was like, that's not a wellbore issue. Yep. Maybe one of the well bores had an issue. Yep. And he couldn't afford. And that's what put him under. Yep. But the nine wells he was operating in this field didn't all go down the same the same year.
02;28;36;17 - 02;28;52;07
Unknown
Yes. Right. So you can use some of those context clues, I think, to, I think there's a lot of ways to look at that stuff. And in a number of those wells were drilled in the early 2000, and I targeted those first because I felt like they had better casing than the ones drilled in the 80s, in 1939.
02;28;52;08 - 02;29;18;03
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, but there's there's tons of opportunity out there. Yeah. If you're willing to take the time. Yep. To build the picture, to do your due diligence as much as you can. To go talk with the ranch owner. Yeah, that's a good point. Like one of them I talked to and he's like, yeah, we were making well, we were making oil in the belts burned off and they never put a new belt on.
02;29;18;06 - 02;29;38;27
Unknown
And I'm like, okay, I can put belts on. Maybe that's the maybe he didn't have the $300 to go buy another, you know, see 96 belt like, I don't know, I don't know. There was the straw that broke the camel's back, but, it's. Yeah. So I think I think there's a lot of opportunity there. Short, short question.
02;29;38;27 - 02;29;58;08
Unknown
And, if anybody, you know, I've had a lot of conversation with a lot of folks that have called me, said, hey, I want to get into operating. Yeah. The way you're doing and I almost always will take 20, 30 minutes to talk it through with them. Yeah. And make sure they kind of understand the complexity of what they're asking for.
02;29;58;12 - 02;30;15;11
Unknown
Yeah. But also the potential of what they're asking for. And, of the, I don't know, two dozen people that have called me, I think two of them have actually started operating companies. Most of them like start getting down it and they're like, okay, this isn't for me. Yeah. But I think two of them are operating right now.
02;30;15;14 - 02;30;36;21
Unknown
Awesome. And that that gets me excited. Yeah. I think we need more small operators taking this kind of stuff. And in doing so, it's a great. Yeah. If if you have the mindset for it. Yes. If you're that kind of person. It's awesome. I agree. Yeah. I think that this is a it's a gap in schooling.
02;30;36;27 - 02;31;03;11
Unknown
Yeah. When when I was in school. And I'm sure this is common. It's. You're going to go to school, you're going to learn a discipline, and we're going to have a career fair, and we're going to have all the biggest companies there, and they're going to be hiring, and you're going to get your internship with them, and they're going to hire you, and it's going to be a shell.
02;31;03;14 - 02;31;33;00
Unknown
And Statoil and Nexon mobile and Phillips and and you know, it's going to be all the big dogs and that's where you want to be. Yeah. And there's very little. Did you know you can do this on your own? Right. There's very little here's what it takes to own your own company. There's there's almost no entrepreneurial.
02;31;33;03 - 02;31;55;10
Unknown
Emphasis. Yeah. Advocacy. Advocacy. And I never got any, certainly in my, the dean of petroleum engineering out there who runs his own company. Yeah. His own operating company. So I wished I'd gotten more of that. Yeah. I immediately, like, ran through my head. What would be the benefit for me? Right. That's always the business thought. Yeah.
02;31;55;12 - 02;32;14;03
Unknown
What would be the benefit for me to go sit at one of those career fairs? And. And I was like, there's probably no benefit. And then you start thinking, that's probably why nobody does it. So there's no benefit to them as the as far as small operators, me as an operator, it's not going to benefit my operator. You're not looking to hire energy at all full time.
02;32;14;05 - 02;32;32;23
Unknown
Yeah. But then you start thinking about being a mentor. Yeah. You start thinking about being a Christian. I mean, you start thinking about, like, be doing what's good for other people. There's a lot of value. Yep. To maybe go into some of those career fairs and set them a booth and saying, you can do this. Oh, I don't know if they would.
02;32;32;26 - 02;33;00;09
Unknown
Right. I don't know if school would even let you if you're not offering their kids internships. But yeah, I think there's. Yeah probably probably with anything. Yeah. Focus on entrepreneurship is lacking in a lot of industries. And just somebody, somebody that can say you can do it. Yeah. This is how you would do it if you wanted to do it.
02;33;00;10 - 02;33;40;29
Unknown
And everybody that goes and does it. Yeah. Good. Good on you guys. There's a, I've recently along this this very vein. There's a geologist in corpus named Jay McGovern. And, I laugh at some of his videos, and I've admittedly made comments about some of his prospects. But over the last six months to a year, as I put together some of my own drilling prospects, I've come to really appreciate what Jay has done for other young people.
02;33;41;02 - 02;33;58;13
Unknown
You know, for all of us have our faults, right? And for all of his faults, like he has very much invested in like, hey, y'all come learn how to do this business. Yeah. And then go out on your own. And there's a number of people out on their own that were like his prodigies for, you know, lack of better words.
02;33;58;15 - 02;34;15;21
Unknown
And and yeah, very much appreciate him taking the time to do that with those people down there and showing them the business and even put out a little book like, hey, if you want to, you know, build your own prospects and sell your own prospects, here's like kind of a high level guide on how to do it.
02;34;15;23 - 02;34;42;20
Unknown
And I had forgotten that I had read that, that book, pamphlet, 3 or 4 years ago, and somebody forwarded it to me here a couple of months ago. Somebody sent it to me again, and I was like, I forgot totally about this. Yeah. And, so there's one guy out there. Yeah. You know, proselytizing to the the young, you know, trying to get him in it, but that's cool.
02;34;42;22 - 02;34;56;01
Unknown
We could all definitely do more. Yeah. Of that. No, I, I wish that there was a more emphasis on that with schools, but yeah, I'm sure Slumber Jay gives much more money.
02;34;56;04 - 02;35;18;09
Unknown
SLB gives much more money to schools than your right, your mom and pop operators to. So there's something about that probably holding it up. Well you know Jay, J.P. Warren goes and gives these talks to a lot of the space and whatnot. You know, the student groups, on different campuses. And, I wonder if we couldn't go get it.
02;35;18;11 - 02;35;41;12
Unknown
It probably doesn't need to be a full course semester. Course. Yeah, but you could put together a full semester course on entrepreneurial. Absolutely. But definitely would be worth going and giving a 2 or 3 hour talk. Yeah. Like, really introduce the idea to the kids and say this is possible. Yeah. You are capable. You know what it looks like.
02;35;41;13 - 02;36;00;26
Unknown
You are confident. Here's what it would look like. Yeah. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with going and working at the big companies for five, ten years and then getting started. Yeah. There's a lot of value in doing that to, of course, you know, have to do that. But, I didn't think about possibly being on my own.
02;36;01;00 - 02;36;19;03
Unknown
Yeah. Until I was kind of pushed off the ledge, so to speak. Do you think you if if y'all would have had a course on it in college or if you would have had it's harder to say on if you would have had like a luncheon or something. But I mean, if that was presented to you, do you think you would have been drawn to it earlier?
02;36;19;04 - 02;36;39;28
Unknown
Absolutely. You would have. Absolutely. So my granddad, was he was in the military and he. Well, this is my dad's dad. He was in the military. I don't know a ton about what he did, but what they talk about him doing was he lived on a runway in a generator house and his job being electrician. Make sure that thing runs.
02;36;39;29 - 02;37;08;03
Unknown
Make sure the lights are on. Okay. This job then. And I'm sure he did plenty of other things, but that's what I remember them talking about. And he got home and he said, well, I'll learn some skills, I guess I'll put him to use. And he started a business and it's Parrish Electric in Fort Worth area, and there's a pretty darn high percentage of 7-Eleven in Fort Worth area that were wired by my granddad and his business.
02;37;08;03 - 02;37;31;11
Unknown
And so, I, I see that and think, golly, yeah, I could I could do that. Yeah, I mean, I, I don't have aspirations of being the richest guy on the block or anything like that, but, if I can, if I can do something on my own that provides me flexibility to be with my family. Yeah, I'm all about it.
02;37;31;12 - 02;37;58;05
Unknown
Yeah, I'm all about it. And so I'll segue into this to, but, there is a, my wife and I were talking about this recently. I've had a couple of offers to go to Oklahoma City or to Denver. We pick up the family move, and they would be great jobs. I'm sure they are. I'm sure they're great, great companies.
02;37;58;08 - 02;38;30;17
Unknown
But what we found here with our church and our community is something we're not willing to leave. Yeah. And it got me thinking about career choices. And, you know, if I tell my parents, I said, well, there's an opportunity in Denver. We'll go, but we're not going. Why not? And I think that we've been trained to build a life around the career, careers, the focal point.
02;38;30;20 - 02;38;53;14
Unknown
Nothing else. Nothing else supersedes the career. Build your life around that. Can you do it another way. Yeah. Can you do it another way. And our thought here is now that we're here and now that we've got the community we've got, can we build the career abound around the life. Can we, can we flip that.
02;38;53;17 - 02;39;13;29
Unknown
And that's really the whole that's the impetus for me trying to do the things that I'm doing now is we've got this, this life with this community and these people. We want our children to be raised with these, these friends and, their kids alongside ours. Right. We trust them. We want to see them for the next 20 years.
02;39;14;01 - 02;39;39;00
Unknown
We want our kids to be with them. Can we just build a career around that? Right. And if it's enough, then awesome. That's all it needs to be is enough. Instead of is instead of. There's a bigger, better job in this next state. Over. Yeah. Let's just uproot and go. I'm trying to do it the opposite way.
02;39;39;02 - 02;40;05;12
Unknown
Right. Trying to do it the opposite way. Right. So, yeah, you're changing your job from. We talk about being a provider a lot, right? But there's a lot of different ways to provide. You need to provide financially, but you need to provide emotionally. Yeah. You provide, you know, physically be there, you know, provide time with them. You know, you need to provide an opportunity for your kids to learn or to see you walking in your faith, you know?
02;40;05;12 - 02;40;27;20
Unknown
And so, there's a lot of different ways to think about, what it is that we're providing our family. Definitely, definitely. And the famous for breaking up families. Yeah. Famous for it. Absolutely. You know those. And, I mean, there's sometimes you you you love it, and you do it anyway, and I'm sure you can make it work.
02;40;27;21 - 02;40;45;14
Unknown
I've not had to be in that situation, so I can't speak to it. But yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of people that make it work. Being gone 28 and being back 28 and yeah, I'd, I don't think I would love that. Right. Right. But, I've had to do it a couple of times. It's tough. I feel for you.
02;40;45;17 - 02;40;54;25
Unknown
I mean, that's it's tough. That's a tough gig. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the things we've tried to.
02;40;54;27 - 02;41;10;19
Unknown
My wife has often told me the last couple of months, you need to go work more, right? And like, I'm waiting on lawyers on a bunch of stuff right now, so I'm like, I can't make that lawyer go any faster. Yeah, yeah. But, like, we went elk hunting two weeks ago. And, and I took the whole family with me.
02;41;10;21 - 02;41;42;06
Unknown
Like, if we shoot an elk, great. But like, well we prayed for is that we would have the means in the time and the opportunity to come spend time in the woods with our kids to come bring them along with us. And I think for many years, for, for decades, for centuries, millennia. Right. There came a time when, like the the child was old enough to go to work with his dad.
02;41;42;09 - 02;42;01;27
Unknown
You know, if that was seven years old, ten years old. But the kids saw what we do. They saw how we treated people. They spent time with us and we raised our kids by being around them and showing what it means, like as a, as a man. Right. Show them what it means to be a man.
02;42;01;29 - 02;42;24;05
Unknown
To have honor and integrity, even when it hurts me to show them what it means to work really hard and really late, because I need to get something done that's going to benefit my family. Yep. But also to like, say, you're important enough for me to be here with you. Yep. And we have, like. Like we were talking earlier about everybody thinks that all.
02;42;24;05 - 02;42;45;25
Unknown
And gas should make all the money in the world. Yeah. Right. I think the last year finances can be really tight for us, but we've been provided with this time to spend with our family. Yeah. Around my house. And my wife and I talk about it all the time, like how great it is. Yep. That we get to have them beside us for these things, that they get to see it.
02;42;45;28 - 02;43;09;18
Unknown
Yeah. That's worth more than anything for me right now, because, you know, I'll be. I am 33. My oldest is seven, my youngest is five, so I'll be 45, 46. And they'll be out of the house. Yep. There's a lot of people that don't, like really start their entrepreneurial journey. That's true. Like their real career until 45 or 46, you know?
02;43;09;19 - 02;43;29;03
Unknown
And, I've got time to make my millions. I don't have time. You can't get those back, you know, to raise the kids like that's going. That's where I want it to. Or not. Yeah. And. And so if I can survive, if I get out last. Yep. Long enough. Yep. You know, Am I hungry? And do I want to do all these big things a certain time?
02;43;29;04 - 02;43;51;22
Unknown
Certainly. Absolutely. But am I going to sacrifice? Yep. What's the most important? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That. I mean, we've been in the same, same position. Over the past year and a half where I've. I've been at home, and that's been wonderful. But that doesn't always translate to, you know, provide putting food on the table, you know. Yeah.
02;43;51;22 - 02;43;58;15
Unknown
So we've had to get creative. And I think that.
02;43;58;18 - 02;44;20;17
Unknown
Doing that, forcing, forcing yourself into that one can be, you know, necessity is the mother invention, right? Sort of thing. But also you're you're spending the time with family and, you know, people ask me, I've had bosses ask me, where do you want to be in five years? Where do you want to be in ten?
02;44;20;18 - 02;44;45;09
Unknown
You know, this is a question that bosses love to ask, I guess. But. And they want you to say, well, I want to be the VP of this or the CEO of that. And right now, you know, it's the expected. Here's here's how I'm going to get there. I tell them the same thing every time I want to provide for my family, and I want to be at every baseball practice, every softball practice, every game.
02;44;45;11 - 02;45;08;10
Unknown
I don't want to miss a thing. That's my goal. It's not. Yeah. It's not having the money sitting on a pile of it and all the way to the bank. Yeah. That is not the goal. The goal is ride and spend time because you only get so much. Yeah. So that's that's where my focus has been.
02;45;08;14 - 02;45;31;12
Unknown
And that's that's what we remember about our childhood. Yep. I remember us going fishing every spring break. Right? Yeah. We took a week to go fishing every spring break. I remember going to, my dad had a hunting supply in Chucky sensory shop, and we go to all the Texas trophy hunter shows all over Texas and set up a booth and sell barbecue pits and hunt and supplies and stuff.
02;45;31;12 - 02;45;57;06
Unknown
And, I don't ever remember being poor or out of money. And when I talked to dad now, and we talk about money and what I make and where I'm spending my money, because I look to my parents a lot because I feel like they've done well. Yeah, what they have. And we talk about what he made back then and, and, and I don't remember us not having money to fix the boat before we went on that spring break trip.
02;45;57;09 - 02;46;13;29
Unknown
I remember going on that spring break trip and that year we took the John boat instead of the bay boat. I don't really remember why. And now that he and I talk about it and I'm like oh shoot. That makes sense. Yep. It was not any less fun for me as a kid because I got to go do the things with my family.
02;46;14;02 - 02;46;43;12
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it behooves, the health of families to try and refocus. Yeah, refocus on the family, the careers. Not that baby. Yeah. It's just not as big a deal as we like to be. I will not I will not be standing in front of God someday saying BP. That's right. He. That's not what's going to make him say, well done, good and faithful servant.
02;46;43;13 - 02;47;05;24
Unknown
Yeah. So there are other things that are more important. Yeah. And there's just got to be a way to build a career around that instead of dragging the family along. Yeah. Because the career is the most important thing. There's just got to be another way. That's right. It's got to be a better way. That's right. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to end it.
02;47;05;26 - 02;47;13;07
Unknown
Works for me. Appreciate you coming in. That's fun. Yeah. Let's go grab some lunch. Thanks for joining us. See you on the next.