#003: The Eagle Ford Shale and the Energy Digital Revolution with R.T. Dukes

When I worked at Drillinginfo, anything we published about the Eagle Ford Shale was gold, Jerry! Gold!

If that trend holds, this should be the most listened to episode in the history of The Oil & Gas Digital Marketing Podcast!

If you can suspend your judgement and pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, that’s a pretty monumental accomplishment.

Seeing the Future of the Eagle Ford

OK, so this is only our 3rd episode. But that is inconsequential when your guest is the one and only R.T. Dukes of EagleFordShale.com.

R.T. had enough foresight as an analyst to see the developments in the Eagle Ford Shale, buy the domain, and start what turned into a healthy oilfield niche site business long before anyone was really talking about the play.

Plus, if you search his name in Google images, several pictures of the General Lee show up – this renders all of your arguments invalid.

On top of all this, he’s a crazy smart cat with a great Texas accent. He’s so smart, he even makes me sound kind of smart! Sadly, he does fail in making me sound anymore Texan. However, I’m certain I can eat at least 3 more pounds of brisket than him, so that’s got to be worth something.

Regardless, I love this episode for all kinds of reasons and I hope you do too.

Enjoy!

Listen Now

Click to listen if you can’t see the player in your web browser.

Transcript

James Hahn II: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to The Oil & Gas Digital Marketing Podcast! I am your host, James Hahn II and this is the podcast for marketers in oil and gas, and B2B marketers across the globe.

And here we are, number 3. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. We got 3 leaf clovers. I don’t know how else, other kinds of 3’s I can throw in. But, I do think that, hopefully, you’ve been enjoying the podcast so far. And today, Mr. R.T. Dukes is going to deliver.

And I actually forgot to ask Mr. R.T. Dukes for a bio. So why don’t we just start off … I’m going to copy my man Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation, and I’ll say, R.T. Dukes — who are you, and what do you do?

R.T. Dukes: Hey, good morning, James. Hello to everybody. Thanks for having me.

I manage EagleFordShale.com. So, basically an oilfield industry magazine-style news site covering regional development in the Eagle Ford. Got into it a few years ago before we even realized how big the Eagle Ford was really going to be.

We’ve kind of risen with the tide, expanded and grown to about 4 to 5,000 readers per day over the last few years. I handle our research efforts and manage the content we publish on the site. As well as working with our advertisers to make sure they’re getting the biggest bang for their buck.

James Hahn II: 4 or 5,000 a day?

R.T. Dukes: That’s right. It works out to be about 50,000 unique visitors per month on the Eagle Ford site.

James Hahn II: Alright, well I gotta catch up to you still on that front. Let me ask you my traditional first question, since we had to start with Mitch Joel-style question. But I appreciate that intro. How did you get into the oil business … or I should say oil bidness?

R.T. Dukes: I grew up in a small town in East Texas. Carthage, Texas. It’s historically a natural gas producing area. It’s probably been a top five natural gas producing county in the State of Teas for 60 years. So, there’s been natural gas production for around 80 or 90 years, I believe in the county. Grew up around the oil business, or what was really the natural gas business.