Energy 101: We Ask The Dumb Questions So You Don't Have To

Maps quietly run the entire oil and gas world, you just never noticed. This one breaks down GIS without the jargon, from Google Earth doodles to the software that decides exactly where to drill. Richard Webb and Zach Harlan of Exprodat explain how mapping tech places wells, dodges the neighbor's boundary, and powers everything from Zillow to the military. Plus drilling on Mars, conspiracy toll roads, and why there are no dumb questions when the whole planet is your dataset.

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00:00 What URTeC is and why mapping matters
03:40 Life as a map and rock guy
06:42 What GIS means and the old guesswork days
08:40 The pro software behind the maps
10:29 Who uses these tools and how they learn
14:40 Placing wells and the horizontal revolution
19:11 Customizing every answer for the customer
24:19 Data overload and the days before GIS
29:45 Famous drilling mistakes and how basins differ
34:20 Finding things in an ocean of blue
38:26 AI, Collide, and toll road conspiracies
42:44 GIS everywhere, from the military to Starbucks
44:53 Mapping the sky and outer space
48:21 Breaking into GIS and drilling on Mars

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Those giant pyramids of sand at every frac site exist for one reason, and it turns out the industry might be quietly running short on the good stuff. Curtis Wilie and Josh Johnson of Superior Energy Services break down how a coal byproduct called fly ash is shaking up the proppant game, why something three times finer than sand outperforms it, and how pulling forgotten barrels from legacy wells could matter more than drilling new ones. Plenty of analogies, zero shame about the dumb questions.

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00:00  Why there's sand everywhere on a frac site
01:00  How hydraulic fracturing actually works
04:00  River frac in the 1930s and the search for the right proppant
06:00  The sand economy and a looming supply squeeze
09:00  Where sand comes from and the Permian conveyor belt
16:00  Meet EcoReach: fly ash instead of sand
19:00  Lighter, stronger, finer, and how it travels farther
21:00  Unlocking micro fractures and trillions of trapped barrels
25:00  Sourcing ash from coal plants worldwide
29:00  Walnut shells, steel balls, and other proppant experiments
30:00  Skipping the blender and pumping at six barrels a minute
33:00  Flowing like water and getting 90 percent of fluid back
35:00  The floor jack analogy for frac initiation
37:00  The godfather story and balancing the proppant triangle
43:00  Who's adopting it and the case for refracs

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Methane is invisible, odorless, and far more potent than CO2 in the short term, so how do you actually catch it leaking? Brendan Smith, CEO of SeekOps Inc., explains how technology built for the Mars Curiosity rover ended up flying on drones over oil and gas sites here on Earth. We get into spectrometers versus satellites, why offshore detection is so tricky, what EU methane rules mean for US operators in 2027, and how SeekOps turns an invisible gas into something you can finally see.

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00:00   Setup and the Power Hour combo
02:24   Crossing paths back in 2019
04:14   From PhD dropout to CEO
05:24   JPL, the first patent, and Mars rover tech
12:34   How a drone measures a methane plume
13:49   Ground, drones, planes, and satellites
19:00   Spinning out of JPL and the Equinor bet
24:55   What methane is and why it matters
29:01   Net zero and EU methane regulation
32:00   LNG, coal, and offshore detection
42:10   Lidar, photogrammetry, and 3D models
45:36   What's overhyped and the road ahead
49:24   Why Austin, and the Houston debate
53:16   Wrap up

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Getting laid off twice taught Yogashri Pradhan, founder of IronLady Energy Advisors, that staying visible matters as much as staying technical. She traces a career running from UT petroleum engineering to Devon, Endeavor, Coterra and Chevron, the downturns that reshaped it, and why she got married in front of a pump jack. There is also honest talk on the Diamondback merger, the wildcatters she looks up to, where AI fits in the field, life in Midland, and her new book Fueling Impact.

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0:00 Intro from Midland
0:46 The full career timeline
6:42 Studying petroleum at UT
8:00 University Lands explained
11:30 Devon and the Ivory Tower
14:38 What a downturn really means
20:00 Raising money in oil and gas
22:30 The Endeavor and Diamondback merger
24:35 Meeting Autry Stevens
26:12 Wildcatters worth knowing
27:33 Devon and Coterra coming together
30:41 Inside Chevron
34:24 Advice for picking the right company
36:11 Going back for a master's and MBA
39:00 Starting IronLady Energy Advisors
43:16 Her connection to Wyoming
45:52 Why she stays in Midland
50:01 Working with OpsAI
51:06 Where AI fits in energy
54:34 Collide and the energy community
56:19 The book Fueling Impact
1:01:50 Sushi night with Chuck

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Micro turbines hitting 83% efficiency could replace flares and turn stranded wells into tiny neighborhood power plants. Mark Ronkin of Grid Energy Solutions came down from Edmonton to talk with Jacob and guest host Britt Breaux about jumping from five years in the Canadian Army to wireline to running his own MWD shop, then stumbling into the tech at a gas show in Milan. Plus getting sick next to a flare, the oilfield marketing problem in eastern Canada, and why a 9 to 5 and entrepreneurship can coexist.

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0:00 Intro and the FDE model at Collide
5:46 Mark's path through the Canadian Army
9:25 Oil and gas as a polarizing industry across Canada
13:19 Louisiana refineries, Cancer Alley, and Alberta boomtowns
19:08 Living downstream of a flare
21:18 Military to wireline to MWD
25:09 Going independent and the entrepreneurship bug
28:14 Peak oil and modern directional drilling
32:44 Turning your day job into your business
36:54 Career advice and finding the Collide community
43:14 Imposter syndrome and the entrepreneur grind
45:59 Stumbling into micro turbines at Gastech Milan
52:46 Commercializing the tech in Canada
1:00:02 Replacing flares with neighborhood power plants
1:01:29 What the next 5 to 10 years look like
1:06:18 Grid Energy Solutions and what's next

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Building software inside a frac and wireline giant is a different beast than doing it at a startup. Ben Dickinson and Raleigh Bumpers from NexTier Completion Solutions get into life under the Patterson UTI umbrella, the EOS platform, the Vertex automated pump control system, the shift from diesel to natural gas powered fleets, agentic AI in the field, and why the world genuinely stops if oil and gas stops. Plus Pittsburgh shale stories and a Colorado School of Mines reality check.

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0:00 The NexTier 60-second pitch
2:00 Why integrating every service on location wins
4:30 Ben's path from Pittsburgh to wireline to digital
11:15 Raleigh's jump from computer science to the Eagle Ford
17:00 If oil and gas stops, the world stops
19:30 Pittsburgh, the shale boom, and incoming data centers
21:30 Completions 101
23:30 The EOS platform and Vertex automated pump control
27:00 Earning trust from veteran hands on new software
32:00 Generative AI versus agentic AI in the field
34:00 Diesel, natural gas, and electric frac fleets
41:30 Colorado School of Mines and the next generation
44:00 The road to a fully autonomous well site
46:30 The 80 percent AI failure rule debate

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Dan Grech, Founder and CEO of Global OTEC, swung by from London to break down ocean thermal energy conversion, a technology that turns the ocean's heat into 24/7 baseload power. Jacob asks the dumb questions about warm surface water meeting cold deep water, why Jimmy Carter is the unsung hero of ocean energy, how OTEC stacks up against offshore wind and Peter Thiel's new wave bet, and why Hawaii and the Caribbean might lead the way.

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00:00 Welcome Dan, tacos, and OTC week in Houston
01:20 From luxury fashion to ocean energy
08:45 What OTEC actually is
12:15 Coastal versus offshore deployments
16:00 From Jules Verne to Jimmy Carter
19:20 Why ocean energy isn't sexy yet
21:00 Peter Thiel's wave energy bet
26:15 Offshore wind, solar, and dumb questions
33:00 DeepStar and working with the majors
35:54 Reinvented submarines and crossover tech
37:00 Energy mix futures and Hawaii pilots
40:25 Collaborators, no enemies
42:20 Five-year ocean prediction

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Three decades of front-row energy seats and takes you genuinely can't argue with. Mark Meyer gets into the Strait of Hormuz mess, Heathrow's jet fuel shortage, countries sitting on hydrocarbons while importing them, the IEA's net zero detour, BP's expensive U-turn, and why 2 billion people still cooking over dung deserves more airtime than another COP summit. Astros predictions and a Joe Rogan tangent included.

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0:00 Intro
3:21 Strait of Hormuz and energy attention spans
6:23 Heathrow's jet fuel crisis
8:06 Land Man tour through a barrel of oil
9:55 New England's oil-fired electricity paradox
14:07 Countries sitting on hydrocarbons while importing them
21:39 Gas prices and the political blame game
25:12 California, the Jones Act, and US shipbuilding decline
28:46 ASU hackathon and hope for the next generation
35:22 Chris Wright as energy secretary
37:49 Advice to 2016 Jacob about the climate narrative
46:28 OPEC, IEA, and the agencies shaping the conversation
51:34 The IEA's Net Zero by 2050 detour and BP's pivot
1:00:38 EPA rescinds the 2009 endangerment finding
1:03:33 Wood pellet accounting and the China India reality
1:08:20 The global South and the moral case for hydrocarbons
1:14:38 Mark's daily media diet
1:17:23 Price gouging vs Big Tech margins
1:21:39 Joe Rogan, cable news fatigue, and Peggy Noonan
1:29:01 Astros baseball predictions
1:36:22 Wrap up

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Andrew Richard, CEO and Co-Founder of Automated Rig Technologies, flies in from Calgary to break down why the oilfield spent 70 years optimizing brute force instead of rethinking the process. He gets into the jointed pipe injector that strips 97% of operator input out, what rig hands call the "barbecue basket," why everyone in oil and gas wants to be first to be second, and the IKEA chatbot that accidentally solved the automation jobs debate.

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00:00 - Calgary, metaverse throwbacks, and meet Andrew
02:20 - What Automated Rig Technologies actually does
05:50 - Starting in the basement in 2009
07:44 - The jointed pipe injector breakdown
09:13 - Red zone risk and the barbecue basket
17:05 - From Energy Tech Night pitch to the Bakken trial
20:22 - How 15 people get in front of major operators
24:14 - Marketing, trust, and selling the sizzle
30:30 - The automation jobs debate, ATMs and IKEA
36:03 - The dangerous jobs that shouldn't exist
38:11 - Change management and first to be second
42:15 - Bad data is a platform problem
44:59 - What's next with AI and data

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Chlorine is in your pipes, your microchips, your drinking water and somehow nobody talks about it. Roxanna Delima, Co-founder and CBO at Rushnu, breaks down why this overlooked chemical is critical to US manufacturing and how her team is flipping the script on a 100 year old industry by using heat instead of electricity and turning waste carbon into actual product. No government subsidy dependence, no gigaton fantasies, just hard tech with a real business model.

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0:00 Intro and background on Roxanna
2:05 What is Rushnu and the chlorine industry
4:22 The product and why chlorine matters
6:36 How traditional chlor alkali works and its problems
8:01 Rushnu's thermochemical approach
9:30 How costs are cut by 60%
11:32 Pilot site at Silicon Valley Clean Water
14:06 Texas connections and TotalEnergies partnership
15:58 Carbon capture without the gigaton hype
19:26 Why VC funding models are broken for hard tech
21:09 Carbon capture as a polarizing topic
24:50 Building a profitable business from the start
27:17 Startup advantages over big industry
29:01 Inside the Chlorine Institute conference
31:08 Chlorine safety and the Ohio train derailment
32:10 Energy transition and realism
34:31 The 60 second chlorine elevator pitch
36:13 AI in the chlorine industry
36:45 What the future looks like for Rushnu

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