Energy Bytes

Utilities are drowning in paperwork long before a repair crew ever leaves the yard. Aarya Borele, co-founder and CTO of Evardi Energy, walks John and Bobby through outage requests getting rejected a day out, FERC 881 pushing line ratings from seasonal to hourly, and why 95 percent accuracy is a failing grade when the lights are on the line. Also in here: the grid as cloud infrastructure, Griddy's flameout, and a 49ers conspiracy theory involving a substation.Click here to watch a video of this episode.Join the conversation shaping the future of energy.Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.Apply today at collide.ioClick here to view the episode transcript. 0:00 Agents, VMs and running everything at once3:26 Back in the studio4:34 What Evardi does5:45 Uri and the incentive problem10:28 When the ISO rejects your outage12:35 How the grid actually works15:02 FERC 881 and hourly line ratings17:46 Where Evardi fits in21:37 Blackouts in India and Kenya25:28 The grid as cloud infrastructure30:17 Griddy and the wholesale gamble33:45 The stack, compliance and weather models37:40 Accuracy in critical infrastructure40:22 Jargon, bad data and context45:56 Models, local hosting and token costs55:29 The 49ers substation theory57:13 Speed round1:05:38 Physical AI and robot ducks1:11:25 Paying attention in a granola world1:14:09 The askhttps://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

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

Paul Brown, Founder and Principal Engineer at BDE Data, joins John and Bobby all the way from Scotland for a conversation that covers a lot of ground. From his days as an international drilling engineer dodging pirates off the coast of West Africa to building WellSchematic.com and tackling the nightmare of digitizing 50-year-old multilingual well files, Paul is the rare person who speaks both languages fluently.Click here to watch a video of this episode.Join the conversation shaping the future of energy.Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.Apply today at collide.ioClick here to view the episode transcript. 00:00 - Oil prices, energy costs, and life in Scotland vs Texas01:50 - Paul's background and path from drilling to data08:19 - WellSchematic.com and legacy well data as a service10:52 - Drilling war stories: West Africa and the Falklands15:00 - UK oil industry and energy policy34:41 - Legacy well file digitization38:06 - The PDF table extraction problem42:22 - Open source models vs foundational models44:31 - AI stack, data privacy, and cloud infrastructure51:54 - AI's role in the upstream industry56:04 - Getting tech adopted in the drilling world59:06 - Coding journey: from PHP and Laravel to Python1:02:22 - Advice for engineers getting into coding1:09:38 - Programming languages and AI-assisted development1:11:56 - Cursor and Claude Code1:13:55 - Speed round: Scotland, whiskey, and cloud platformshttps://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

When you have 80 patents and a lifetime achievement award in hydraulic fracturing, you have seen some things. John William Ely, Founder of Ely and Associates Corp, and Jon Harper, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, talk frac history, pre-job diagnostics, the slick water revolution, geothermal, and why the industry keeps pumping the same thing and expecting different results.Click here to watch a video of this episode.Join the conversation shaping the future of energy.Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.Apply today at collide.ioClick here to view the episode transcript. 0:00 - Intro and guest backgrounds3:25 - John William Ely's origin story7:45 - Offshore blowout and well control in the Middle East11:25 - How fracturing has evolved over 50 years19:30 - The slick water revolution and where we went wrong27:40 - Pre-job diagnostics and what operators overlook36:55 - Geothermal applications and completions challenges43:50 - Parent-child well interaction and offset communication47:00 - Refracing and diversion54:15 - Increasing recovery factor1:06:35 - Longer laterals, U-turn wells, and land-driven decisions1:12:35 - Knowledge gaps in the next generation of engineers1:25:20 - The untapped tight conventional opportunity1:30:02 - Advice for young engineers entering the industryhttps://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

Owner relations in oil and gas has been shoved in a corner forever, basically a "here's your check, don't call me" situation, and Deren Boyd, Dagen Boyd, and Josh Wright, co-founders of Firm App, are building the platform to fix that. These three started in oilfield safety software with iScout, got acquired by KPA, and now they're tackling the massive gap between operators and their surface and mineral owners with AI-powered multichannel communication. We're talking voice agents with adjustable accents, auto-responding emails, chat widgets that actually work, and an owner-facing app that puts payment info and well data in people's pockets. Plus the OKC crew gives their take on Devon and Expand relocating and what that means for the city.Click here to watch a video of this episode.Join the conversation shaping the future of energy.Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.Apply today at collide.ioClick here to view the episode transcript. 0:00 Devon and Expand leaving OKC, what it means on the ground4:42 What is owner relations and why has it been ignored7:18 Timing and the generational shift driving tech adoption10:10 How operators have been duct-taping owner relations together12:05 The owner-facing app and multichannel approach14:38 AI voice agents, email auto-response, and chatbot workflows18:15 Building and rebuilding AI architecture every six months21:29 Under the hood on voice AI, latency, and conversation nuance26:37 School districts, 10,000 page websites, and unexpected use cases34:58 The iScout origin story and oilfield safety software42:17 Getting thrown in the penalty box and winning work back with data46:13 Revenue statements, vendor portals, and what owners actually ask about52:24 NAPE plans and the land community54:48 Business model and implementation timeline55:58 NIL, college athletics, and the dumpster fire1:04:36 Dev tools, Claude Code, and the future of SaaShttps://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai