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

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;22;20
Unknown
Welcome. This is energy 101. And today we're doing GIS aka mapping, which I'm excited for. I'm a big geography nerd. How much that's related to how detailed this industry gets is what we'll find out. But on a surface level, no pun intended. I'm very excited to talk about this stuff. So first off, we got, Richard and Zach in and y'all are here for Earth tech.

00;00;22;21 - 00;00;39;01
Unknown
Now, I kind of like to just capitalize on these conferences and get like a baseline definition of what they are and what kind of people are drawn to it. What are they? You know, we all know nape and we just had ATC and we had people kind of describe that on our earlier podcast. But what's up with Earth tech?

00;00;39;01 - 00;01;00;24
Unknown
Why is there a little E and what do you all benefit going to a trade show like this? That's a good question. That's see, unconventional resources technology conference y. There's a little li. I actually don't know, because why would you capitalize the C afterwards? But a static tech? Yeah, a static technology conference is, is what that is.

00;01;00;24 - 00;01;26;27
Unknown
So we, we wanted to go there and speak to geoscientists, reservoir engineers, you know, those kind of guys, with the idea of maps and wells and how they combine those two, and hopefully they don't do it very well and they want to come and talk to us. So we'll do it. It will help them do it better.

00;01;27;00 - 00;01;49;24
Unknown
Yeah. If someone wants to build like a map of what they're working with, whether it's on the surface or below it, we'll get into that too. Like, technically it is. It's a skill someone can acquire themselves and attempt, you know? So what exactly? What are the levels of skill you see from someone trying before they come to someone like you to help accomplish the genius model?

00;01;50;01 - 00;02;13;15
Unknown
I mean, all of you guys a GIS mappers, really, because the, the, the initial layer of skill like you use is like Google Maps, Google Earth, that kind of stuff is a it's a GIS system. It's a map system. And you use it every day for directions, or I use it to find where the best restaurants are around, where I'm staying for that particular, week.

00;02;13;15 - 00;02;35;23
Unknown
So that's kind of your baseline level moving up. Then I guess the, the ladder is that you can go to, a Google Earth or something like that, and you start drawing some shapes on there that represent whatever they represent. Or maybe you're looking at at a house and you want to draw the corners of the, of your view plot to, to decide, you know.

00;02;35;23 - 00;02;59;02
Unknown
Oh yeah, this one's bigger than this one, actually. I've got more garden or something like that. And you measure that kind of stuff, and then up to the kind of professional level of mapping and things like that, I see you add in not just where things are, but how far away they are from other things and not like travel time, but distance.

00;02;59;02 - 00;03;40;25
Unknown
And that's to infrastructure and things like that. And then analyzing those distances together with other metrics is kind of that top level. When I did a lot of, spatial analytics in, in another thing that's, a nice buzz word. But that's just math around distances and other, attributes and in our case, that's oil and gas infrastructure, oil and gas, wells and, and finding those resources and being able to extract them, I guess, in the cheapest way, possible.

00;03;40;25 - 00;03;59;03
Unknown
So you get the most profit. So first off, you're the map guy is how people in your life describe you. You know, you have to. It's like your partner. It's like, oh, yeah, you know, he does this. What do they say? Yeah, I guess I'm the math and rock guy. In fact, a lot of. Yeah, a lot of it is, you're the rock doctor.

00;03;59;06 - 00;04;20;18
Unknown
And I'm like, well, I don't even have a PhD, so, yeah, I'm not a rock doctor. But, you know, people like my friends, kids will find something on the beach like a rock and be like, what's this that they think neuro geology. You usually know the word. I am a geologist. Okay, okay. By background, you usually know what it is I do.

00;04;20;24 - 00;04;38;29
Unknown
I tend to test it right now. You gotta rock you down a bit. Yeah. Especially if they come and go like I found a dinosaur bone, and I'm like, nah, it's just a stick. But. Yeah, but yeah, you know, you bring a bring you a rock. And some people are genuine. Some people are taking the mic.

00;04;39;02 - 00;05;01;24
Unknown
Yeah. That's, Is that an the maps? Yeah. Map guy. Rock guy. Yeah. And you guy, white bear in my house. Guy. And of course, you have a rock collection, right? I do, I do, I have a you wouldn't be a geologist without it. Yeah, but one of our many guys and, and the, the kids pick them up off the windowsill and I'm like, put it down.

00;05;01;27 - 00;05;26;25
Unknown
That's a 20 year old boy. Yeah. Come on, don't break my seashell. Get your own stain on the introduction. You know, we got Zach from Houston. You're in England? Yep. And I even looking at some of your, background, like you, you did time in Africa. Is that true? I worked with African data. I have visited parts of North Africa.

00;05;26;28 - 00;05;50;02
Unknown
Okay. Libya was, it was probably the most interesting. Okay. That was that was pre, there's a lot going on right now with the gas plays over there. Right. Or something. Yeah. It's starting to open up again. Okay. It was a it was always really exciting. Geology in Africa. Exciting geology. Lots of potential. Not so much kind of data as such.

00;05;50;04 - 00;06;23;22
Unknown
Okay. But it gives you room to be creative. And that's kind of, you know, I'm a geologist, one, because I'm not actually that good at math. Two because I like to tell stories and read a landscape and, and, you know, lack of data and lack of understanding gives creative room for, you know, describing a story of what happened, predicting something to be there and then testing that hypothesis and that story.

00;06;23;24 - 00;06;42;21
Unknown
That's really interesting. It's fun. Yeah. It's fun. And if you're wrong, you just go, you know, I just guessed you just took an educated guess. I don't think this is the industry to do that, but we'll we'll get into that. Why don't we just kind of, lay out the groundwork, like. Wait, do you mean that's literally how this industry started?

00;06;42;24 - 00;07;05;05
Unknown
It was like, I'm just going to guess that there's oil in the ground. Okay. But then let's say ConocoPhillips hires, and it's like, all right, we're going to drill. Are you sure? And like, okay, let's, let's let's spend. It's all about my dollars, all about vibes. You're going to pay. You say I'm 40% sure. And that's that's a really high confidence level when you talk about drilling one.

00;07;05;05 - 00;07;25;15
Unknown
Well all right, the idea is not to not depend on your hopes on one. So you have the Y-shaped stick that you walk. And then when it starts to point down oh that's your thing. That was the beginnings. Yeah. You said find a leaky bit of oil crochet sticks and well, we've come a long way. So we have this.

00;07;25;18 - 00;08;04;02
Unknown
We don't do that anymore. Let's just the acronym GS. What does it, stand for and just 60s. What is the industry? Glad you asked for sure. Yeah, well, guess is geographic information systems. So if someone tells you that they work in GIS systems, that's, you know, you can't double the system. So GIS geographic information systems. And I think in the entire system, you know, this is essentially a map or a piece of technology that stores the location or something.

00;08;04;02 - 00;08;40;03
Unknown
So it's where something is, how far something is away. And you can go for your Google Maps up to your Google Earth, up to your professional level, things like ArcGIS or QGis or something like that. So yeah, questions about the software. So if if we're thinking we're going to compare like, like iMovie on my phone to tweak a video that's like the same level as a Google map, like a consumer base, whatever, to what I do like using Adobe Premiere Pro and all this editing that you could technically do at a Hollywood level.

00;08;40;05 - 00;09;02;14
Unknown
What is your, like, Mapping Hollywood software like you just named a few, and what do they look like compared to a Google Maps or anything? So I would say the were the the the leader for the, the GIS kind of sphere, is the ESRI technology suite. So that's ArcGIS Pro and what does that look like?

00;09;02;14 - 00;09;28;15
Unknown
That's an interesting question. I'm sure you're all familiar with Google Earth in that it's its own program opens in your on your desktop. And it's got some basic tools. You know, you can measure a line, you can draw a polygon and find out the area, you know, draw shape. Arches Pro has all that. And more complex tools that do, more like a specialist calculations.

00;09;28;15 - 00;10;03;09
Unknown
But you can think of stringing together like measuring something length or distance from somewhere, measuring something's area, taking even more data, and then combining those all together to understand, you know, the value of something based on a set of input parameters. And the more professional tool suites have those, so the more professional software products have those tools available to the specialist to kind of drive and get to that answer.

00;10;03;11 - 00;10;29;29
Unknown
So, you know, like you said, the filming, software, I'm sure, you know, I've clipped up something on my mobile phone very hamfisted late like this, you know, but your desktop professional suite will allow you to move clips around and fade, sound in and out and that kind of stuff. So I feel like. So geography is my, like, least I'm going to call it like I suck at geography maps.

00;10;29;29 - 00;11;01;25
Unknown
I'm like, no idea. So it's like completely new to me, but as you're talking so we in our product have built a mapping, capability. And so I'm kind of following, like what you're saying and, yeah, I'm curious, like, do people have to get trained in how to use these tools? And do most companies, like, have people in their company that use it, or do they hire people like third parties to come and like do their mapping for them?

00;11;02;02 - 00;11;30;20
Unknown
And I don't even know if that's a dumb question. Like, I don't. Is I even a question that makes sense? I have no idea. I have that right now. Okay, okay, it's a question, and I guess it depends on the size of, the company. You see, you know, you certainly from annoying size, you can go from ConocoPhillips super majors down to, you know, what we call mom and pop shops, you know, small independent companies with 1 or 2 employees.

00;11;30;20 - 00;11;59;15
Unknown
And so, the bigger people, the bigger companies have dedicated departments that work with gears of maps and spans multiple, you know, departments and sets of people. The smaller the company, the less people you have and the less specialists you have. So there's more opportunity for third party individuals or they will they'll, contract out that kind of specialist, work to other folks.

00;11;59;15 - 00;12;20;28
Unknown
Yeah. I can't remember the first part of your question, but that was good as well. No. Yeah. Your product. Right. Is is it it's own thing compared to these other softwares that you said tend to be more like a legacy software or you like a plug in like. Yeah. So all products are, plug ins to the aren't pro okay.

00;12;21;00 - 00;12;54;18
Unknown
Systems. So the ESRI the the the market leader. So what we make is specialist tools that sit within the GIS. So geographic information system software has nice tools that do all the spatial analytics and it's kind of a general workflows oil and gas industry. Workflows are slightly different to those. Well, it can be quite different to those more general ones.

00;12;54;18 - 00;13;24;21
Unknown
And so we build, add ins for GIS that tackle those more industry specific problems. So, you know, where you place an oil well, for example, has a different set of input parameters to where you place you know, a drainage system to, a bit of wetland in like it environment or capacity. So that that kind of environment, one is, is pretty more generic GIS.

00;13;24;24 - 00;13;56;08
Unknown
Yeah. It's just where and how far on the surface oil and gas workflows and tools have to have the subsurface in mind as well. So we build tools that, integrate not just the subsurface data and the surface data, but also geological parameters. I guess as well. So things to do with the rock. Let's, let's dive into some of those workflows, plugins like really specifically what they do and how they're used.

00;13;56;15 - 00;14;18;19
Unknown
And is ESRI ArcGIS. Is that the same company? Yes. Same thing. Yeah. I mean I just pro is the product, ESRI is the company. Got it. And they aren't oil and gas specific. They're just GIS. Yeah okay. Okay. So y'all and other companies I'm sure are making oil and gas specific, plugins or tools there. Yeah, whatever. I had some other questions.

00;14;18;21 - 00;14;40;28
Unknown
I'll try to find my way back there. Yeah, but what can you walk us through some of the, plugins that y'all have, like, maybe the most popular ones, and what they do and, like, we can. Yeah, ask questions off of that. So the most popular one is why we were here this week. Unconventional resources, technology, small conference.

00;14;41;00 - 00;15;13;03
Unknown
Is a product called Unconventional Analyst. And what that does is it helps geoscientists or GIS professionals understand the value of, you know, a particular area of land with the idea of placing, you know, as many oil and gas wells as they can based around their boundary conditions. So that's the most popular one. And that's a real light and off of their data.

00;15;13;11 - 00;15;36;02
Unknown
Or like what is it based on? It's based off of their data. Yeah. And like calculations that y'all have like yeah. Like I don't know if it'd be algorithms but like something on the back end that like calculates all of it. Yeah. So it's it's the whoever's using it, it's their own data. All these companies have a GIS system of sorts and a bunch of data that's, you know, where things are.

00;15;36;04 - 00;15;59;18
Unknown
So it's all their data. What we provide is. Yeah, the algorithms, the calculations that are specifically built to answer that valuation question. Yeah. How many wells can you fit? What is that? What does that mean in terms of how much where like you get on the ground? Like how many wells can you put in this little area to get the most bang for your buck?

00;15;59;19 - 00;16;19;27
Unknown
Exactly. Exactly that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Before horizontal drilling, you basically have, like, pins on a map. So I was just saving a bunch of parks, restaurants and schools on Google. Just be a bunch of pins. And it's essentially the same thing with a bunch of oil wells. You want to go find them. You can physically drive to them as if it was anything but.

00;16;20;00 - 00;16;37;09
Unknown
With the horizontals in place, I understand this is a whole new thing where not only are you trying to map pen on a map, where the well is, where you want to see which 360 direction the horizontals are and being mapped. And that's when you get into the whole subsurface of all that. And is that stuff y'all are tackling?

00;16;37;11 - 00;17;27;11
Unknown
Yeah. So you're absolutely right. And on the surface there's one entry point hopefully. Hopefully no exit point either for this. But yeah you know you go into the earth at a point on the surface and prior to the unconventional revolution, there were directional wells. They weren't quite as, long or as bendy as they are now. But now what we have for the unconventional kind of resources stuff is that you have a point where you're basically sticking large and not large amount of wells, more than one sometimes up to, you know, ten and 20 wells of a single location on the surface.

00;17;27;14 - 00;17;50;08
Unknown
They go down, you know, a couple of kilometers for example, and then they sort of dogleg off. And you could think of it as, you know, a straw. Right? And the, the, the bendy bit at the top, if you turn that kind of on the side, and that's the bit that goes up to the surface and the longer bit of the straw then comes along in the, in the area of rock you're looking to drain.

00;17;50;11 - 00;18;14;12
Unknown
And you have ten of those straws coming off one surface location. And how many you can get where accurately without overstepping your neighbor's boundary is is a is a tough workflow to go through. It's helpful if there is a map that you can look at or to planet, and for feature wells. Right. And that's kind of like what you're solving, you know.

00;18;14;14 - 00;18;36;00
Unknown
Yeah. I mean if you don't have a map then you're essentially guessing, which I know we said we did before, but you anymore, you try not to do that without the map. You don't have the context for where you can start the well, you don't have the context for where you want it to go. Keep you in this thing.

00;18;36;03 - 00;19;11;26
Unknown
You don't have the context of where you want it to end and what you want to stay around. So you open yourself up to regulatory violation type things or environmental violations or, you know, annoying your neighbor and stealing their oil. And I think that's frowned upon. So if you were to like to get someone's data to help map out their, their horizontal wells and all that, and they were to go to a competitor doing something similar, what are the odds like yours maps or like 100% the same.

00;19;12;03 - 00;19;29;12
Unknown
Like how how do you interpret it? And like what are other companies doing that might be worse or better than what you do? I would say that there's a lot of different tools and they may come up with similar responses. I think ours we try to work with customers to customize what they're looking for, how they're looking for it.

00;19;29;14 - 00;19;58;15
Unknown
And it's not just a cookie cutter answer, hey, these X number of wells fit. It's using the the math and algorithms to create the exact scenario that best best fits for them to maximize their output. Maximize the length of the wells, minimize that footprint, that pad footprint. But not just give some cookie cutter answer. Hey, you can get six wells now go do that.

00;19;58;17 - 00;20;19;20
Unknown
It's you can get six wells. Do you need to tighten the spacing? Okay, we'll tighten it. Now you can get seven wells and, and however your engineers feel like that's most appropriate, then we can help them get that answer and be able to customize it and iterate it so that if they they give an answer, they say, hey, we'd like to tweak that answer a little bit.

00;20;19;27 - 00;20;41;06
Unknown
They can very quickly go back re input, get a new answer, send it back. And without having to redraw maps again and again and again. Are they working directly with y'all or are they like is it software? And they're just kind of like playing with the software. So I would say it's a little of both. They, you know, we try to give the tool so that they can just go off and do their work.

00;20;41;06 - 00;21;04;15
Unknown
And I think they prefer to do that. Yes. But we work very closely with our users. So if they hit a snag, you know, they're not getting the output that they expect or, they come across a solution that they need, you know, just maybe some best practices to overcome, to, to, to come to, they reach out to us and we, we do what we can.

00;21;04;15 - 00;21;33;05
Unknown
And there's times and we've said this a lot at our tech, in our conversations. There's times that our users say, hey, this is a great tool and it gets me almost there. So then we start asking the question, okay, well, what do you need it to do to get you there? And we work with that. Rich and his team put together some great, new algorithms, new math, and they come up with some new plans, and we are able to kind of come up with solutions that our users are essentially asking us for.

00;21;33;05 - 00;21;54;26
Unknown
It's pretty great. Yeah. Hey, so your users are pretty much trusting y'all 100%. Like, if I'm going to drive to the Grand Canyon right now, I'm going to type in Grand Canyon, hit start and just go. I'm not going to be like, wait a minute, what about highway 90? Like, is it is it foolproof like that? And you might end up on the wrong side, the Grand Canyon versus two.

00;21;54;27 - 00;22;11;19
Unknown
Yeah. It's tricky. It's tricky. And like, see how when it comes like customers, I'm sure a lot of people are just kind of like that. And then also they maybe have pushback or revisions, like what does that look like when they're like, hey, I noticed this, and what do you have to physically do to like adjust or correct something?

00;22;11;19 - 00;22;35;20
Unknown
Yeah. So I mean, everyone has before they even start utilizing these tools, they have an idea of what they're going to create because they're well trained professionals. They know what they want. It's just getting there and getting that material then on the screen. So yeah, there's there's something they have an idea. They do their work in a tool set, they get the answer and it's not quite right.

00;22;35;23 - 00;23;02;11
Unknown
Like Zach said before, there's an iteration process. You can tweak some things, but if it's still not working, reach out to to me or Zach or any of the team and say, hey, Rich, I really need this to work on this specific funny shaped corner or something like that. Then I'm off to speak to the, developers and say, hey, guys, you know, we got this scenario here.

00;23;02;13 - 00;23;32;02
Unknown
This is kind of the end answer they want. How do we kind of get there whilst respecting, you know, the non edge case. So it's it's kind of a continuous innovation process whilst what's the right word. Keeping what used to happen still happening almost because you we've we trusted in all scenarios that we've gone to so far.

00;23;32;05 - 00;23;55;13
Unknown
But the scenarios we haven't encountered. So like those unknown unknowns, are the bit we need guidance to change something but keep the same answer. It's what happened before that made sense. I don't know, I think I'm just rambling on that bit. Are getting in the way. Staying. You stay true to the 1% while not alienating the 99%, right?

00;23;55;17 - 00;24;19;16
Unknown
The big answer is what we're possibly coming to. But if someone needs that small piece, we want to make sure that we take the time to help them define that answer, because that's that's what they need to turn into their bosses. And you know, that that helps them to feel like, hey, I'm doing my job, right. So you you see Nick on our team, who is kind of our gear guy, right?

00;24;19;18 - 00;24;44;04
Unknown
We have some customers who actually use a current product as well for us. What have you, like learned through him? And like, you know, whether it's him presenting or, you speaking on his behalf, like, what have you actually known? I don't know what I've learned, but I've looked at some maps with like, showing where the wells are drilled or like some crazy, like just lines everywhere.

00;24;44;04 - 00;25;09;27
Unknown
And I'm like, Like, how do people read this? It's very overwhelming. Like, I think the first time I got on World Database, where it's just like maps of, like, all the wells in Texas. I'm like, why do you even. That's a lot. What do you even do? It's so much data like that's I think that's the biggest thing is like you, you don't think of maps as a user who is like not trained in any of that.

00;25;09;27 - 00;25;35;22
Unknown
Like like my phone, like I don't think about every single address. Like that's all data. And there's just so much there that I could see how it'd be very overwhelming to build tools in that space, like just for us building our product like there's so much you want to do and so much like so many layers you want to put on there and so many different things that we want to pinpoint.

00;25;35;22 - 00;26;01;06
Unknown
And it's a lot. Yeah, but you have to have the right data. Yeah I know and it also question the you probably know already the question that you want answered by the map. Yeah. So asking the question or being you know asking the question you can get a set of tools or something to answer the question in intuitive way.

00;26;01;09 - 00;26;32;22
Unknown
So if you're looking for restaurants, for example, and there's that little restaurant button on your Google map, you just press that rather than saying, hey, I want to find the restaurants, but, you know, you want to answer, you want to ask where are the restaurants? And being able to ask that question something produce the answer for you is, I think we had a discussion before about liberating or lowering the the entry level for specialist maps.

00;26;32;22 - 00;26;50;25
Unknown
So, you know, now we've been talking Google Maps and, you know, your specialist map, you're like, okay, I need to find I need to find the, companies with the best production because I want to go and take them over or something like that. I'm going to get my 20 bucks at my wallet and go buy them or something.

00;26;50;27 - 00;27;15;11
Unknown
But you're asking the question. And then the the the software, the algorithms, the tools. Keep it going. Go ahead and collect that data for you so you don't have to interrogate every layer. Yeah. Where technology is at now and having all of these things can be easily accessible are building things that make it easier for, probably people who are untrained in mapping to understand and get the answers they need.

00;27;15;13 - 00;27;36;29
Unknown
Do you ever sit back and like, think, man, they don't know how lucky they are? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like just like I think about that all the time with AI and like things my kids can get so easily. I'm like, man, like, you don't understand how cool that is. Like, that's so cool. And you don't appreciate it because you don't understand what it was like before.

00;27;37;01 - 00;27;59;26
Unknown
Do you ever, like, have that kind of realization, just like all the time, all the time in personal life and professional life? I mean, I, I am old enough to remember printing off directions to somewhere and then having a sheet of paper, my car seat next to me and flipping over those those things that moved to early satnav.

00;27;59;26 - 00;28;24;25
Unknown
And now Google Maps is the same in the professional kind of realm. And that I remember drawing maps as a student and coloring them all in, and now I can just click something and it's going to schools like where I feel like. And, did you geology school. Yeah, I actually I actually go be a geologist. There's nothing that's relaxing.

00;28;24;27 - 00;28;43;06
Unknown
That's the colorings for. Yeah. That begs the question, like, what the hell did we do in the oil industry before GIS technology? Like a paper map. Like, how do you just how do you forget the subsurface? How do you even refine the well in the middle of nowhere? Like how like how do they even do any of that?

00;28;43;09 - 00;29;04;05
Unknown
Wow. I mean, my law was a bit is a is a term that most people don't know really what it is anymore. It's a big sheet of see-through paper, basically, but before I mean, this is before even I worked in the industry, people had tables like we've got here double the size of that with an enormous sheet and coloring in hand, drawing cotton.

00;29;04;05 - 00;29;20;01
Unknown
So I remember my, I mean, my my dad worked at Halliburton, but I remember like whenever I'd go to the office, I would just be like these long, like tables with long pieces of paper, which is like to me a like gibberish, like it was just like lines and stuff. I don't even know what it was, but yeah.

00;29;20;01 - 00;29;45;29
Unknown
Yeah. Wow. Or refining something on the surface of the Earth is easy if you're on land, but if you're in the sea, you're looking for something left there. For example, you have to have the right description of where that is. So in like a map, it's stored as a pin, like you said before. But previous to that it was stored as a set of coordinates from a known location.

00;29;45;29 - 00;30;24;21
Unknown
For example, say like, okay, I've got to travel 20km that way and ten kilometers that way. And I'm here I think got yeah, that's funny. I would not survive previous, in the past of of folks in the oil and gas industry having the wrong coordinate system and, there's a couple of famous examples in, the US and, in the North Sea as well, of people missing things by kilometers, like drilling a well in the wrong spot, draining a lake, for example, by hitting a salt cavern.

00;30;24;23 - 00;30;59;22
Unknown
That's a good one. And, and, over in the, in the UK North Sea, I think they, they drilled a well across the border. So over in Norway. So, yeah, the, the the location is key. Yeah. I even think about that in terms of, like out in West Texas trying to find the location. I think still there's like the the directions are like, turn left at this random tree that is maybe in Johnson's house, take a left till you get to the old Stump Road.

00;30;59;24 - 00;31;27;21
Unknown
Yeah, a little further. Turn right when you hear the train. You. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's an interesting problem of how you know. And I will solve that type of description that's so contextual. Well, the tree might not exist anymore. Right. And like, how do you know the, the files updated that it says a tree died actually in the in the person receiving that information is key as well.

00;31;27;21 - 00;31;54;16
Unknown
Like if I've been there before, then I might have a better idea if I had never been there before going in blind you know, missing people with different, you know, expertise in certain areas, they're going to find themselves maybe lost even though at. Yeah, some think about, especially if you don't go out on these roads and all of that, like I, I remember I had to go find a location one time and it's like this, these directions suck and I have no service.

00;31;54;16 - 00;32;19;03
Unknown
How many times you heard somebody say, I'm just not good with directions, right? I just and that means as we as men, we rarely say that. Oh, yeah, we never need we don't even need those directions. We don't need maps. We're going the right. I know here. Oh, man. Johnson. Lewis. That's right. So when it comes to either subsurface or on surface, like is there a big difference when it comes to different basins, at least in the US?

00;32;19;05 - 00;32;51;21
Unknown
Like does the geography above ground make a big difference underground? Like what's something harder, easier? How's all that? Oh yeah. I mean every, every geological basin is, is different in a multitude of ways. I mean, the surface depends on where it is in present day. So your Permian Basin surface is, very different to your Williston Basin surface in that, you know, it's a prairie desert rather than a, you know, a bit more of a tundra esque.

00;32;51;21 - 00;33;27;14
Unknown
Probably not tundra that's, probably a bit far. And the subsurface differs in what used to happen there. So your Permian Basin, that used to be, you know, an inland sea at that time. So it had a different set of modern, modern day equivalent environments, so shallow seas, you know, different, different temperature profiles. And so you get a different rock type there than you would in, you know, a basin that was used to be up in the pole or something like that.

00;33;27;14 - 00;33;57;08
Unknown
So, yeah. And like compared to like mapping, is there difference? Is there. Yeah. I guess, like structural history of a geological basin. You know, you could, take a different style of mapping that subsurface. You'll see a different set of wiggles from seismic. You have a different set of wiggles. Yeah. Wiggles. Yeah. Different set of of lines that you're interpreting.

00;33;57;10 - 00;34;20;06
Unknown
So you kind of take a different mapping technique to understand that, that history. But and then I'm assuming when it comes to offshore, it's like a whole different game. I don't know about the subsurface, but on surface. So I mean, imagine looking at the state of Texas on like a satellite image now. Okay, zoom into Houston manually. You know, zoom into one of the big gray concrete blotches and you'll find it eventually.

00;34;20;08 - 00;34;38;12
Unknown
But let's say you're in the shell of the Gulf of Mexico and you're like, hey, go find Deepwater Horizon. You're just looking at a wall of blue. Yeah. Like how? Like, how do y'all how did this industry even, like, look at a map of blue water and, like, find things and use it like, I'm assuming this is where the tech is super useful, right?

00;34;38;13 - 00;35;04;26
Unknown
Yeah. I mean, you would have where you do have like overlays basically. You're right. You can't look at an ocean of blue and identify a location. So you need more context to guide you in that location. Finding stuff be that a set of points to represent your oil rigs or wells and your your subsurface data is still data that can be overlaid on top of that.

00;35;04;26 - 00;35;26;05
Unknown
So in a location it's just at a different depth and underneath some stuff. So it's just more context rather than a bare image. For example, it reminds me like I learned recently, you ever like, got in the middle of like the Pacific Ocean. I'm a nerd who, like, plays on Google Earth when I'm bored, so I'm hoping at least you're like that.

00;35;26;05 - 00;35;46;28
Unknown
Yeah, I am, and if you go, like, so far away from islands, everything, and you start zooming in, you'll notice that data basically isn't there. It's like super blurry and blotchy. And it's because we like the satellite images just like no one wants the data, so no one buys it or wants it or wants to like zoom in and get details of like just nothing.

00;35;47;00 - 00;36;06;28
Unknown
And I just find that so interesting and, like you mentioned, like back in up in Libya, like there's kind of like a lack of information, like no one cares about looking in the middle of the desert or the ocean, like, is it our goal to eventually map all this? Are we going to go like, 100 years, just like still avoiding these patches on our planet?

00;36;07;00 - 00;36;31;07
Unknown
I mean, I hope it does get all mapped. That is a huge task. But I mean, I do the same issues. I go scrolling about the Pacific as well. And have a look at the little islands and whatnot. And there are areas that have like little or no data. But then you also you can identify the ship tracks on like Google Earth within the sea because you see these little thin strips of extra data.

00;36;31;09 - 00;37;08;12
Unknown
And that's like seafloor mapping and things like that. And so you can see all sorts of stuff. So there are different levels of data that you can access today that gives you extra context in areas of lower resolution. So offshore, for example, or in the middle of a desert in Libya, you might not have seismic data or, you know, well mapped contextual data, but you can have different types of satellite data.

00;37;08;12 - 00;37;44;25
Unknown
So not just imagery. There's gravity. Data set measures the gravity of the the field of the Earth. GS magnetic data measures the the magnetic field of the Earth. And there's stuff that the people are doing with navigation around the magnetic field of the Earth. But all those things can be read. With a geological brain or set of algorithms or whatnot, there's specialist people that process gravity data or magnetic data to get an idea of large structures.

00;37;44;27 - 00;38;06;02
Unknown
So then you start to get an idea of where a basin might be. And that kind of guides you to that area to map it further. So it's different different styles, different types of data to guide you certain places to then do more mapping. But hopefully I, I would love to see the whole of the ocean floor mat.

00;38;06;02 - 00;38;26;27
Unknown
Maybe we'll find MH 370 eventually. I'm so interested in that story. Anytime something new comes out for you, which is, I find it the Malaysian Airlines. Plane that went missing. Yeah. Danny. Oh, my gosh, it's such a mystery. There's so many good, YouTube videos on that. And so. Yeah, I guess you all should definitely look that up.

00;38;26;27 - 00;38;47;21
Unknown
I love those brand. Well, I just want them to map that area to the map. I mean, it's a huge area. It's to map the southern Indian Ocean, use, map it and find it, please. Crazy. Yeah. Are y'all using AI at all? I mean, I do in like, I hate doing repetitive, annoying tasks, so I make it create things for me.

00;38;47;22 - 00;39;14;11
Unknown
Yeah. So PowerPoints, you know, word docs, things like that. I'm like, oh please. Just nothing in mapping. Oh we do starting to do some bits in mapping okay. So mostly it's data bringing data into maps. And oil and gas has a lot of very specific types of data. And so we're trying to aim AI at that and say, okay, this is this type of data.

00;39;14;11 - 00;39;33;17
Unknown
So you need to process it like this. Or it can come into the map. And I don't want to have to do all that. So yeah something else to do it. Yeah that'd be helpful. But Nick, show me some cool stuff with with your guys maps. Earlier with and I had to describe it. I just asked it and it did.

00;39;33;17 - 00;39;52;20
Unknown
It was like, yeah, yeah. All right, well, I don't have to press all the buttons. That's the widget wizardry we're doing here at, at collide. Yeah. Speaking of AI, it's like when I open up Google Maps. Like, they haven't really changed anything. They don't seem to really be tapping into. I like I don't know what's like what.

00;39;52;20 - 00;40;13;15
Unknown
We can look forward to it. Maybe it was kind of ahead of itself and already like a super advanced thing, but like it makes you think of that and like weather and weather patterns and I don't know if you deal with that, like if that's tied into this JS stuff, because I feel like weather is super important and oil and gas when it comes to maps, weather, anything related in AI, like what can we actually look forward to?

00;40;13;15 - 00;41;01;11
Unknown
What will be solved besides our magic? Nick smart powers here at collide? Yeah, I mean, weather's a tough one. I did hear something that I'm. I'm interested to share, and maybe it's not what will be solved, but like, something in Google Maps or directional intelligence or maybe a pathway. We we don't want to travel in that there is a a thought process and I, kind of a direction of travel that when you, you know, you, you type in somewhere to go, for example, like, okay, I want to go to someone's house and you just it gives you some options and you pick the shortest one because you want to get there quickly.

00;41;01;13 - 00;41;32;01
Unknown
But what how do you know that that's the shortest direction? And how do you know that that direction hasn't been manipulated to take you past a particular shot, that the data you've been you've had collected on you? It's identified that, that say, oh, that's so interesting. And now that you know, that you've been routed past something that an AI has identified, you're more susceptible to, you know, for may it be a train, a sale or something like that.

00;41;32;04 - 00;41;58;24
Unknown
Yeah, a good pub, but yeah. No, that's already happening. Whether it's AI or an algorithm, like it when I go to practice for my kids. Practice like, every Monday, Thursday at 5 p.m., you know, I'm just doing it. I'm navigating whatever. And then let's say they have a day off at 5 p.m.. Google Maps will be like, you're ready to navigate to, Houston Park.

00;41;58;24 - 00;42;22;27
Unknown
Yeah. Am I 20 minutes to. So you know, so that's already happening. Yeah. And then what you're saying or like it can get into like ad space, commercial space, like stop by this, Walmart or whatever. It's actually a genius story. Ice cream shop. Yeah, but that's that's 100% true. Yeah. I get very frustrated because I'm convinced that it it's forcing me onto toll roads.

00;42;23;00 - 00;42;44;10
Unknown
Like, I've multiple times I've just told the directions and chosen a different one, like nine minutes shorter. No tolls like, why wouldn't you have given me this one first? It should have been the first option for me. But they want me on that toll road so bad they want your dollar. $2.37 conspiracy. Somebody. Somebody's got to go. So I've.

00;42;44;10 - 00;43;05;21
Unknown
I've routed us over into conspiracy. MH three seven in directions publishers sales. I got a few more ones I guess you should have hit which is you kind of mentioned something like who is using GIS outside of oil and gas? Everyone. Everyone. So like some examples I think of as the military. Yeah. Like yeah, that's got to be huge.

00;43;05;21 - 00;43;26;05
Unknown
It's like a weapon, essentially a map, a mapping system can be so strategic where it's like it is start wars, wind wars. Like it's kind of crazy to think about if you don't know where the enemy is, how do you attack them? Oh, there's a good rabbit hole to go down. Is digital twins okay. We've heard that word a great deal for GIS.

00;43;26;08 - 00;44;08;27
Unknown
And facilities managers will get a full digital twin of a factory or something to that effect, and they can literally go in and inspect parts of their factory without ever setting foot in it, because it's a they they film it with drones. They, they capture it and it creates a digital twin of their factory. So you can look behind a pipe and see a, some silly, some even I've heard over heard someone say at the earliest conference that somebody like found like a mouse hole in their facility because they were digital twinning in that twinned like a space.

00;44;08;27 - 00;44;33;03
Unknown
And they figured out it was a it was very wow, that's crazy. That mouse mice lived. Yeah. That's cool, scary and cool. Another thing, like, I always hear what I always find so fascinating. I don't know, like GIS is directly, but, like, the way, like retail, and real estate uses JS like, down to, like, Starbucks and chick fil A is knowing where to use their put their new locations because of foot traffic that's monitored.

00;44;33;03 - 00;44;53;08
Unknown
That's all using tools and gizmos. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. So that's a spatial analytics. Yeah. But like Zillow let's see a GIS. That's your map. That's. Yeah. Wow. That's in what, school districts. Yeah. What costs Wharton? So it's actually one of those industries that's like everything that you touch touches that somehow you just don't think about one of those mundane things.

00;44;53;08 - 00;45;15;16
Unknown
Yeah. It's scary. Here's. All right, first dumb question. If I haven't said any yet, have we mapped the sky? Yeah. How do how, like I'm mapping stuff in the stuff. What's the difference? Yeah. Like what's like give you map the. Are you talking about like the universe. Like the atmosphere's just what's ten feet above us, 100ft above us, 200ft.

00;45;15;16 - 00;45;36;06
Unknown
And what is that, different height boundaries isn't. It's like, as stratosphere as a certain height. Yeah. Something is a certain height. And these zones, and they behave differently to issues. Why, you're. When you last time you took a flight somewhere, you flew at a 30,000ft instead of 20,000ft because the the atmosphere behaves differently. It here's a new procrastination task.

00;45;36;06 - 00;46;00;19
Unknown
If you get bored of looking at the sea that you can flip Google Earth to like Moon or Mars and then start looking around that that's not that fun. Really? Yeah. See? Yeah. Explore less Instagram, more Google Maps. I want to go look at Mars. I don't care what Earth. Yeah. And, I use I have experience with Google Earth Studio, which is where you're able to animate your movements on Google Earth.

00;46;00;22 - 00;46;18;28
Unknown
So this is something that's been out since like Covid or pre-COVID. And, you know, let's say you're at the Statue of Liberty and you just like, manually go to like the Empire State Building. You can like keyframe, which is editing time, where you can like, okay, start here and then end here and it'll animate through with a flying 3D camera.

00;46;19;01 - 00;46;37;24
Unknown
And so you may have seen this in like the last decade, like in documentaries or just like YouTube videos where people kind of have like what looks like a really smooth person using Google Earth. And, I feel like that's kind of like the biggest upgrade I've gone to, like GIS, outside of Google Earth. But the tools out there are amazing.

00;46;37;24 - 00;46;55;22
Unknown
And, at a consumer level, like, I think really fun. Yeah, I just like that stuff. Yeah. It's cool. Sometimes I feel like I ask questions on this show that I'm like, I honestly don't even know if that makes sense, because I don't know enough about the topic to know if, like. And then I feel like sometimes it confuses the guests and they're like, I don't know, I'm into that.

00;46;55;22 - 00;47;17;27
Unknown
And like, that's the dumb question. Then know that's why. Like, I have to research to ask the dumb questions. So I don't get that dumb because I just look at you like they're like blinking. They're just like like you're like, there's a difference between dumb questions and then like, not even understanding what their response is. Like people answer our questions all the time, and it's like, I don't even know what that means.

00;47;17;27 - 00;47;32;02
Unknown
So I can't even I guess you answered it, but you answered it for someone else. You understand? It's like, can't even like reflect. And we have to just be like, anyway, can you map the sky anyway?

00;47;32;04 - 00;47;57;07
Unknown
No correlation. But yeah, wrapping it up. Excited. That was awesome. Talking about the maps and how they're big and energy, hence the title of this podcast. But, I always like to think about what I'd be doing if I didn't have, call and hire me and do what I do today. And I learned so much about this industry, and I see a lot of, like, Second Life or what I do whenever y'all fire me, what I can do after this.

00;47;57;09 - 00;48;21;26
Unknown
And, how come he hired you and y'all fire me? How come you can't? They don't think too hard about that. That's a dumb question, but, one of my first things is like going to maps or geography or geology. All like the just mapping or whatever. It's like, it's so fascinating to me. And I think GIS is like, probably like the most realistic way depends on the pay.

00;48;21;26 - 00;48;45;18
Unknown
We'll talk later about this. Yeah, but, how do you know I'm not paid enough? So, okay, so pay me more. All right. Well, don't don't fire me. Y'all. So what is like, how do you get into the GIS? I guess is my question. I don't really I this is like, very good question. I should ask more often, but, like at a high school in college, like, how do you get into this also, are you would you geophysicists.

00;48;45;21 - 00;49;25;23
Unknown
No. I'm, Well, I call myself a geoscientist, so I can do both geophysics and geology. I'm more of a geologist, but I fell into GIS. University or college? It was part of the petroleum geology course to then do some image analysis, like satellite imagery. And they did that on GIS. And so having done one course in GIS at college, of course, then that got added to my CV as experience and then the company I work for now, expert at, I asked a bunch of companies over the summer.

00;49;25;23 - 00;49;46;05
Unknown
I said, hey, I need some intern work. And because I'd written GIS on my after my one class, on my resume, on my CV, they're like, hey, you can do GIS. Come and come and make some maps of us. And I was like, okay, nice. Did that, when often worked for oil companies and came back to the GIS about a year ago.

00;49;46;08 - 00;50;17;08
Unknown
So like, let's say you're that intern and you go into the office, you know, picture a basic office and they say you on a computer, what's like the first thing, a beginner level thing. They'd have you do the GIS or anything. The training course. Yeah. I train on Arc Pro training. I mean, I would just start like if I was giving advice to some interns going into a company just open, just open the software product and see what it does and then ask the dumb questions.

00;50;17;11 - 00;50;39;10
Unknown
But like I said that it there's no dumb questions. Just ask the questions of the people that are sitting near you. Hey, what does this do? Or this physical map? What happens if I do this and I can come into that? And then you start asking AI things rather than your colleagues next to you. You sort of amalgamate the two, but just open the program and play around.

00;50;39;11 - 00;51;04;03
Unknown
That's right. That's how I started. Yeah, that's just like any software really experience as simple as coding. Yeah. Learning that is the software itself. What's the the big one as rigs just pro so do they, they have like a commercial student license where it's like $50 a month or is it like crazy thousands. I think they give out, to all colleges and universities, free, free licenses.

00;51;04;03 - 00;51;20;10
Unknown
So I think if you're a college, university, you can just go ahead and access that. There's also like there's free online, like art, just like a browser based. Yeah, exactly. A browser based. Okay. So you can totally be self-taught. Like hobby. Do this on a side. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Which is the same way I got into what I do, video editing and stuff.

00;51;20;10 - 00;51;39;08
Unknown
So it's very similar, I assume starting Google Maps, Google Earth as well. Yeah, they're not too dissimilar. I'm gonna start my side hustle today. There you go. Mars, Google. Mars. I'm gonna drill the first. Well on Mars. I'm going to be behind it. Awesome. Is that controversial? Okay. Occupy Mars, is there any hydrocarbons in there? Robot, or does it want to dust?

00;51;39;09 - 00;52;02;10
Unknown
Yeah, well, we haven't found it. There's life there. Yeah. So probably no carbon. If there's no life, we can drill for water instead. Drill like diamonds are there? Yeah. We. Yeah. Use it. There we go. All right. See, I'm already ahead. Well, any other questions or dumb questions, Joy? No questions for me. Thank you all for coming. Is there anything else you'd like to leave us with?

00;52;02;13 - 00;52;27;23
Unknown
I'll say that I think you do a fine job in GIS. Yeah, we've talked off camera, and, the people in GIS are amazing people. They're great behind the scenes, hard working, just salt of the earth, wonderful folks. And having had a conversation before this, I think if you did find yourself in GIS, you would fit right in because it's good, folks, and y'all are good folks as well.

00;52;27;23 - 00;52;46;09
Unknown
You want us to follow you so you can go, oh my God. Yeah. I'm so privileged. Yeah, well, I'll come straight to all. That's right. Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having us.