The Real Reason We'll NEVER Run Out of Oil

Chad Koury (00:00) You guys just want to wing it? How do you want to do it?

Peter Brecht (00:02) Yeah, talk and shop more or less. We'll ask you some questions and man, all your technical things that you're writing on Collide are so far over my head. You put a lot on there, which is really cool to see.

Chad Koury (00:11) Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, it's kind of wide open right now with everything, with the vast different levels of expertise and information that people, different sects of the industry that they're in on there. There's just people from, not just from upstream, just drilling, which on LinkedIn, you kind of see a lot of people that are in their little narrow focus, I'm going to say narrow, but within their focus. But then on Collide, there's a lot more emphasis on tech side, a lot more emphasis on other aspects that are not just strictly hydrocarbon based, which is an interesting environment to be in.

Peter Brecht (00:50) Thanks for joining Local Energy. This is episode 40. My name's Peter. I'm here with Wade, and we have Chad Koury on with us. Chad, how are you doing today?

Chad Koury (00:59) How are you guys doing? Thanks for having me.

Peter Brecht (01:01) Yeah, thanks for being with us. So Chad, I met you on Collide, which is a forum for oil and gas professionals and just noticed a lot of things that you were posting there. Eventually had a couple of back and forth DMs and here we are. So thanks for taking the time, but tell us real quick an overview of yourself and what you do.

Chad Koury (01:21) Yeah, so I'm a petroleum geologist. I have been about 15 years in the oil and gas industry and have mainly worked, I'd say the majority of it in an unconventional space. I have a bachelor's and a master's from West Virginia University. Whenever COVID caused everything to shut down, a lot of people take on different hobbies. Some people crochet, other people make banana bread. I decided to teach myself conventional reservoirs since the primary money earner that I had in my business was geosteering. I knew a lot about shale and I had also geosteered some conventional reservoirs, but I didn't really know a lot about the nuances and the intricacies of it. So learning more about that has really expanded my focus. And I've also done my best to do as much as I can to educate myself in all facets of upstream, which is production and land title research and everything else, even a little bit of completions and some production aspects, actually having hands-on experience in the field. So I'm a geologist by education, but I would like to think that I'm a burgeoning oil man, well-rounded kind of guy.

Peter Brecht (02:30) Yeah, awesome. I love that. So yeah, go ahead, Wade.

Wade (02:31) So whenever you started geosteering and everything, I mean, kind of what's your history with that? How did you get started in it? I mean, are you still, is that still something that you focus on? Where are you currently with that?

Chad Koury (02:44) Yeah, it's still a big money maker and geosteering is something where if you get in with a couple companies and they will drill a few wells a year at least, then you can have a good steady stream of revenue from it. It's on the drilling side, so it's big and expensive and complicated and you're drilling, the mobilize the rig and all the ancillary equipment, it's expensive, so you do it on your birthday, on Christmas, on everyone. I got into a little bit of exploration of unconventionals in 2018. It's been, like I said, the unconventional geosteering space has been where I got my start and some wild-site geology as well, but it's a very in-need and all hands on deck moment to where you're 24-7, 365, or 24-7 for about three or four days, and then you get a day or two to rest and you're right back on it.

Wade (04:08) So where are the basins that are keeping you busiest right now in terms of steering?

Chad Koury (04:11) In terms of steering, mainly Appalachian Basin, that's where I have my existing clientele. There's some things here or there I pick up every once in a while, but I have existing experience all over the map in New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia. There's probably a few others I'm missing in there.

Wade (04:36) Do you have a preferred software package you'd like to use?

Chad Koury (04:38) You know, I'll say this and this might be the first hot take of the episode. I use Stoner, Stoner Engineering Software. I've owned my license for Stoner since before Rogie was established. And so as a small business owner, I can't really justify purchasing another license for a program that does the same thing. I understand that people enjoy one software over the other, but I will say that Mike Stoner is a very, very, very good person and he's done very well to me with his generosity and his guidance on everything and being available for anything I ever need. So I'm very partial to SES because of not just the software aspect but also the personability of the people that run that company. They've been very good, not to say that Star Steer isn't a good program. I just, I'm a Stoner guy.

Wade (05:33) Throughout the years I've tried a little bit of everything. Stoner was in there as well. All the way back to like BHL, Latinav, SES, Starsteer and all that stuff.

Peter Brecht (05:43) So a newbie question here, but between these programs, are there a ton of differences between them? Programmatically, are they very similar in how they function?

Chad Koury (05:50) Under the hood, they do the same thing. As I say, if someone gets hung up as to what software they like to use, they're using it as a crutch. If I have an EDR, Pason or Totco or whatever, I can steer well just based on the EDR. I know the data curves that are coming across. I can tell a sundry of different details of the formation and where we're drilling and how we're drilling it based on those data curves. Having software makes it a lot easier, a lot easier to determine and calculate your position and your position in section and make nice pretty cross sections. Again, under the hood it's the same. Some programs will do a point by point calculation for your survey data. Other programs use minimum curvature for the surveys. And then beyond all that, it's just the minutiae of how you like your illustrations set up. But by and large, they're all pretty comparable in their functionality, how they work.

Peter Brecht (06:43) Okay, good to know. As a small business owner yourself, there was a post that you wrote recently about selling, right? And I think it was specifically about cold calling and kind of business development. And I really appreciated that post because I'm in the sales side and a lot of times we get sort of narrow focused on like, man, the industry that I'm in is just the hardest when it comes to business development. The reality is it's like, no, it's every small business, medium businesses out there trying to get business into the door so that they can keep going and do what they enjoy doing. My question there, just this is more hopefully to inspire all the other business owners out there, but is there something that, is there one thing that maybe no one could prepare you for as you're going into that self-employment mode?

Chad Koury (07:25) Well, rejection, I think, is a big one. You go out and you work as hard as you can and some people already have a person that they prefer to use and that makes it difficult to try to break into that company or to that potential client. Really just the discomfort of just being out there without a safety net. Really you just have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And in terms of self-employment, I think there's a lot of people that are going to really, really agree with that. If you don't have the ability to put yourself in a position to where you're going to be confused and need to figure stuff out, that solution is not readily available. Yeah, that's what the environment's like. And in terms of cold calling, again, as I humorously pointed out in my post, it borders on masochism because you have this fear that you're just calling this person you don't know out of the blue and you're hoping to just say, you don't know me, but I wanted to work for you and you pay me money, which really is what it boils down to. If, like I mentioned, if you just reduce your fear and just say, you know what, I'm just going to hit them hard and fast, if the answer's no, I'm going to go to the next person. That's the best way to do it. So you have to just play the numbers game.

Peter Brecht (08:26) It's interesting, like even building this podcast and Wade and I have been doing this for a couple of weeks and we're just starting to get into where we're like, listen, we like talking to each other, but we want to start interviewing more people. And there's been interest, but it's funny because I'm even calling people and saying, Hey, I love what you're doing. You've got great topics, great conversations. Would you like to come and chat with us? And I've maybe made five or six of those phone calls, which is not the volume that's required to keep a steady stream. But it's funny. People are like, ah, like I'm just not going to get back to you or I'm not interested or no. Like you're not big enough. Like I get it. Like we only have, you know, maybe four thousand views on a weekly basis. But it's like, I feel like we're getting there. Right. I mean, from where we were, Wade and I were like, we're just we're going to hang this up like two weeks in because it wasn't. And then all of a sudden something hit and I was like, that's kind of fun. That was cool. But rejection is a huge part of it. So I guess running a full podcast could be a full time thing just like anything else. So I'm still going to keep my day job, but that's, it's good to know. And Wade, I mean, just kind of comparing like your background to what Chad's doing now. I mean, Chad, are you still doing geosteering? Is that like, I guess if you were going to put a label on it or are you doing more than just geosteering?

Chad Koury (09:29) It's really all things geology. Geosteering, like I said, still a big cash cow for me. And like I said, it's 24 seven and you're on it the whole time, which again, commands a higher price. But there's other aspects where I'm prospecting and building leads for places to drill and doing stuff like that, working with a number of different people on those projects and just doing some geology background, combining subsurface mapping with production, historical events in terms of what happened, why were these wells permitted when they were, why were these wells not drilled, why were these wells dry holes, these wells produced this much, production changed. There's always a story and I think that most of the time a person in my position more than not is a storyteller as opposed to kind of an analyst to where you have to understand that things got to where they are because of how they unfolded and a geologist is just a storyteller with a much, much, much longer story, much older story.

Wade (10:55) A lot of the best kind of geology pre-spuds and all that that I've ever seen really laid down the foundation for like how this was created. Talking about depositional environment or why it's lenticular or all these different things. One of the challenges, I don't have tons of steering experience up in Appalachia and the Marcellus. We drilled a number of wells up there, but one of the things that stood out to me, number one, it drilled super fast. So whenever you're talking about two or three days of being on, I can definitely relate to that. But number two, it seemed really, in terms of subsurface, very challenging just from a bed dip and faulting perspective. Is that pretty widespread up there or was that maybe, did I just draw an unlucky straw with a steering frame where they were or what?

Chad Koury (11:43) Well it all depends on where you're at in the basin and the history of how the basin developed and how you had different orogenic events where you had mountain building episodes and just the way that the plate tectonics put the North American plate into a position to have collisions and extensions and everything like that. Again, it's a long story that has resulted in this huge basin having so many different, not only do you have the stratigraphic differences from point to point in the basin, but roughly you go south or east you get into more complex structure. The complex structure in the Marcellus will have certain type of folds that will follow a certain type of geometric pattern and formation dips get to be incredibly steep. It's just how it happened to where the fairway and the pipeline and everything at the surface happens to be right above some very complicated geology sometimes. You have plenty of places where the geology is perfectly flat and easy, but again, that's further to the west. And if you're in northern Pennsylvania, it's going to be somewhat complicated. And as you go south, it gets more complicated. If you're in western Pennsylvania, as you go to the southeast, it gets complicated. In West Virginia, as you go to the southeast, it gets complicated. Structurally, everything in Ohio is not difficult. It's very flat, very easy, in a relative sense.

Wade (13:10) Do they have multiple targets? I mean, North Dakota, you got Bakken three forks, Oklahoma, some of these wells or some of these sections have half a dozen targets in them. Marcellus is really the main that I've ever heard from kind of out there in Appalachia. Are there other targets that people are going after now?

Chad Koury (13:28) Yeah, for a while now there's another zone that is above the Marcellus called, depends on who you ask, but it's called the Burkett. I call it the Burkett, people call it the Geneseo, it just depends. It's very similar in its profile, its mineralogy, just basically everything. Age, mineralogy, composition, fracture matrix, everything. It's essentially the Marcellus' little brother. And you see a lot of companies that are successfully developing it around the basin. And then you also see some companies that are able to in the thinner area where the Marcellus is thinner but very dense and rich, I should say its richness is dense, they are drilling a Marcellus well and they're fracking up into the Burkett as well. Their economics, or I say their returns on these wells are so good that there's no way they aren't fracking and producing the Burkett along with the Marcellus. So it's kind of a two-for-one deal on that. But yeah, the Marcellus obviously is the big one and the Point Pleasant in western Ohio, western Pennsylvania into eastern Ohio, the Point Pleasant is very big. And then there's the Burkett, then there's a handful of other zones. A lot of people have dabbled in the lower Huron and then outside of the basin itself, outside of the core of the basin, there's a lot of other zones that exist. If you get down into Kentucky, you get down into Virginia, there's other horizontally drillable zones down there. In terms of the area where you already have a great deal of widespread development, there might be a few shallower Pennsylvanian and Mississippian aged unconventional, conventional sands that you could drill that have been drilled horizontally with some success. But it all gets overshadowed by the Marcellus.

Wade (15:16) How big of a vertical separation are you talking about between the Marcellus and what was the name of that, I don't want to call it secondary, Burkett?

Chad Koury (15:23) The Burkett. It depends again where you're at. If you're further west in the basin, it may be a hundred feet. If you're further east in the basin, it may be a thousand feet.

Wade (15:32) Okay.

Chad Koury (15:36) Yeah, so if you look up an illustration of the Acadian clastic wedge, A-C-A-D-I-A-N, clastic wedge, you can see that the basin, it's a great illustration that shows how you have the basin as it's formed from the initial collision of the two proto-continents whose names escape me. I don't want to say, I think one was Rhodesia anyway. You have the development of the basin. So you have this big open area that all the sediment starts to flow into. So it all starts to deposit into the basin and then it continues to deposit after the Appalachian Mountains are formed. You have this sink with an intercontinental seaway. And so the wedge itself is a physical wedge where it's thinner in Ohio and then it deepens as you go east. And you have something called the Cincinnati arch, which is where it's kind of that hinge point. If you continue to go west, you get into the Illinois basin, the Michigan basin, to where those are similar but different. So they're kind of like the cousins of the Appalachian basin.

Wade (16:37) You kind of hit on a question that I've always had. So why can't we get geologists to all use the same nomenclature for these zones? Like one of the very first things when I was at Baker and we're working with different operators, the number one thing we had to do before we started working with anybody was get on the same page as far as, what do you call this zone? What do you call this? What do you call this? Everybody calls it something different. In Oklahoma, we've got the MISS, the Meramec, the Sycamore, like those are all talking about essentially the same zones, maybe in a little different part of the state, but they're all the same zones.

Chad Koury (17:09) Yeah. You're right. That's been, I feel like what could be like my work of passion could be finding a way to standardize everything. And then we can have one big vote and be done with it. It's like, okay, everybody, what do you call the formation that is between this and this? And they just put a picture of a log on there and then everyone's going to throw in their idea. And it's like, all in favor of this. I feel like that's got to be what happens. You're right, it's hilarious. And the one thing I could think of is the larger multinational corporations that I've seen operating the basin will usually use academic terminology, nomenclatures. They're always from like academic papers. For example, like what we call the Lower Marcellus, which is the hottest of the hot Marcellus right above the Onondaga Limestone. I call it the Lower Marcellus. A lot of people academically call it the Union Springs. And I assume that there's a town in New York State called Union Springs, but that's what that is. And so there's all sorts of different little pieces of the Marcellus that they've broken down into different names in that regard. And but then you get I think the vast majority of people are just going to call it Marcellus but you still see some that still do. So but you're right. One, if you look in the 1980s, one geologist's fourth sand is another geologist's fifth sand and you really can, you really know.

Wade (18:26) Well, it's always crazy. I worked at Linn Energy back, 2010 through 2018 and like heaven help you if you actually open up like Petra and you're looking at like everybody's top picks and it's like five different people picking essentially the same top and there's three different names between those five picks. And it's just, man, it is a challenge, but all right. If you ever get started on your passion project, let me know. I'll help you try and come to a consensus.

Chad Koury (19:01) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Brecht (19:02) We'll spread the word for you if nothing else. I'm surprised the internet hasn't helped standardize things just by people looking things up and even going now into the next phase of the internet with AI, it'd be interesting to see as all these documents and reports get consolidated. I wonder if these LLMs are going to get confused on what they're looking at or if they're eventually going to just draw conclusions and say it's this area, I don't know.

Chad Koury (19:27) Yeah. Well, what's interesting about that is there is a website you can go to. It's the USGS Geolexicon. And you can, if you want to know more about a specific zone, you can type it in and it'll tell you, okay, this zone is present here, here, and here. And it's a good way to have a better understanding of just a very general sense of what it is. So if I'm looking at a completion report and I see a name of a zone I haven't seen before, I look it up. And maybe somewhere at some point in time, someone referenced that zone in regards to another zone. And then I can reference it stratigraphically and try to pinpoint what it actually is. But then you get into the point where people will just spell it differently or they will misspell it. And then you get into that. So I wonder if with artificial intelligence going through the Internet and gathering all of this information, if that's going to get 97 percent of it just to throw it out there. And then that last three percent is going to be someone who knows the area with domain knowledge of, say whatever basin you're in and to say like okay well I understand that this actually is this and now I'm going to put all these in this bucket. So it could be one of those things where it does help streamline but to ultimately get 100 percent of it you cannot, there's no substitute for the human mind on that one.

Wade (20:48) And they're never going to solve for our stubbornness either. So just, I've been calling it this way for 20 years. Like who's going to tell me that I've got to change it now, you know?

Chad Koury (20:57) Right, right. I remember a funny anecdote that I always cite is that when I was a little kid, I asked my dad, Abraham Lincoln, what number president was he? And I think he like made a mistake. He said he was the 15th president. He's the 16th president. But even to this day, I'm still like, no, dad said he was number 15. He's number 15. So I still have a hard time because I think that, you know, that can be the same thing. You know, there could be some person out there says, I love drilling Union Springs. And everyone says, what's that?

Peter Brecht (21:24) Yeah, yeah. Have you always been interested in drilling and oil and gas and all this stuff or was this something you found maybe in college or something later?

Chad Koury (21:34) You know, I graduated in December of 2010 and obviously oil and gas drilling was very big then. It was very easy to get a job that utilized my degree. It's funny because I had another post on Collide where I was talking about the advice I give people during the quarter life crisis. And if you can't find a job that you want, find something relevant. But I was very lucky that I had a degree in geology and I found a job that required a degree in geology. And I think that's how it started. And from there, you know, I loved it. I love the fact that oil and gas is a true meritocracy. Everyone relies on, but it's performance based, it's performance driven. You either deliver or you don't. And there's a lot of benefit. There's huge sums of money to be made. It's a very, it's an easy industry that you can romanticize about because huge fortunes can be made. It's very hard work and if you're willing to do the work that other people aren't willing to do, you're going to get further. But it also is one of those things where it's enjoyable to romanticize about the destination while you're on the journey, but it's a heck of a lot more fun to romanticize about the journey when you're there at the destination.

Wade (22:56) It's funny you talk about romanticizing it. Have you guys seen the new Jerry Jones Dallas Cowboys documentary on Netflix?

Chad Koury (23:03) I haven't seen it.

Peter Brecht (23:03) I haven't seen it. I just canceled my Netflix subscription, but that's another conversation.

Wade (23:04) Okay. If you go and just watch the trailer, the preview for it, and really all it is is about two minutes of Jerry Jones talking about him putting all his money in on this one well. He talks about it just spewing oil and screaming at you and all this different stuff. I think he said he made something like $100 million off of that one well. He used that money. He knew exactly what he was going to do with it. He used that money to go buy the Dallas Cowboys. And the moment that I saw that, I was just hooked. I was like, all right, I've got to watch this. Plus I hated the Dallas Cowboys in the 90s. I was a 49ers fan with Joe Montana and Jerry Rice and Steve Young. But at the same time, like you said, you think about oil and gas. The books that have been written or the movies that have been made, everything from There Will Be Blood to this new Jerry Jones documentary. It's just the kind of lore of wildcatting and doing all that stuff. It's really exciting.

Chad Koury (24:02) It is, it definitely hooks you. And one thing I strongly urge young people to do that want to get into the industry is another little tidbit I give quarter life crisis kids is listen to old people tell stories because old people have lived and learned and failed and recovered and they are going to have this information that you don't have so you can learn from their mistakes without having to go through it. Listening to an old oil man tell stories about wells he's drilled is the, whatever you love it, it's the most fascinating thing. It's the most fascinating thing talking about, a good friend of mine was drilling shale wells in the late 90s mid 90s and these are some major huge mondo wells like one well makes over a million barrels. And he was telling me how he had a, he was there in his, he was a well-sited geologist mud logger and he was in his mobile shack and he said, you know what, we're in the formation. We haven't seen a show yet. I guarantee you I go lay down in my bed. We're going to see something. He said he laid down for two minutes and then boom it came. And so it's just like little anecdotes like that that if you take it all together and you piece them all together you could have an incredible story and sell the movie rights, make some money.

Peter Brecht (25:25) Totally, yeah, I like that. Chad, I did have a question for you that I was kind of thinking about and I couldn't really figure out how to ask it, so I'm just going to sort of bang around it, but if you un-invent one thing in the oil and gas industry and take it away, what would that be?

Chad Koury (25:42) That is a very, very good question. I don't think anyone's, I like that.

Peter Brecht (25:48) And if there's nothing for it, then it's like, then you guys are in the right industry. Cause there's plenty of things in my world that—

Chad Koury (25:55) Are you talking about now is this constrained to a physical item that has been invented there's a patent for or like a method of thinking or something like that?

Peter Brecht (26:00) It could be anything. It could be anything.

Wade (26:05) I like this.

Peter Brecht (26:06) Yeah, I mean anything about the oil and gas industry that you would un-invent or just delete entirely and move on from if you could?

Chad Koury (26:15) I would like, this is more of kind of like an attitude thing, but I would like to try to see the, you know, the idea that we have to always follow the trend, that we have to chase the latest fashions. But that's a great man, that's a great question. That's a great question.

Peter Brecht (26:51) Yeah, I think about that often for what I do and it's just kind of, because to me it's a way of like rethinking how to actually move forward towards the direction we need to go, right? So I don't know, I just wasn't sure about oil and gas, but you've written such deep philosophical things. I'm like, I bet you he has an idea.

Wade (27:10) I think day to day can definitely change on our part. There's headaches that you run across every day, but I think going back to what Chad said a little bit earlier, oil and gas is a sink or swim kind of a deal. I think if a technology or something hits and it doesn't help, it doesn't make more efficient or more economic, a lot of times over time it's found out and disappears.

Chad Koury (27:36) Yeah.

Peter Brecht (27:36) It goes quickly, yeah.

Wade (27:36) And we have, I mean, we've seen a lot of things come and go throughout, I mean, mine's a shorter career, I've been doing this for 20 years now, but there are tons and tons of technologies that have hit the market, but have just disappeared. And it's because it was either proven false or it was snake oil or it just didn't provide what it said it would.

Chad Koury (28:01) Well, I appreciate the pointing out the fact that a lot I post is very deep and philosophical because I do try to go that route. And in that regard, going back to fashion, I would say that philosophies themselves have been weeded out to where I can recall that different fashions existed where it was, in 2013, 2012, people were like, we have to hit a mile a day. We have to hit a mile a day. And then in 2014-15-16 when that first crash of oil came everyone said we have to steer in the tightest zone. We have to be if we're not in this zone, we're one foot above it, everything's shot. And it was like no, not really because you're going to pump thousands of sacks of sand under thousands of pounds of pressure with thousands of barrels of water. It's not going to make a difference. And then you get into the conversation of prop and loading, what's ideal? Well, that depends, it depends on where you're at. Then you get into spacing. Well, what's the best spacing? It depends where you're at. So a lot of these issues, a lot of these questions that are, you'll never have a singular answer to them because they're all constrained by the underlying geology and that changes from place to place. So I think that taking everything on a case-by-case basis is probably the best course of action there, but good question, good question. And I think it's something that I think as you move forward I think maybe it's going to be a thing where it's like we're in the middle of it now, I wish we could not invent this thing right now. Moving forward, moving forward.

Peter Brecht (29:27) Yeah, yeah, exactly. There was one other, I have a couple others and obviously, let us know on your time, we can edit anything out that you, I should have mentioned that at beginning too, we can cut things out if you don't like what you said. We haven't had to do too much of that though, Wade, which is cool.

Chad Koury (29:37) Yeah. Yeah, it's not organic. You should put this end of the episode. That explanation. No need to cut it out.

Peter Brecht (29:44) Yeah, no, we will. Do you think that we'll ever completely run out of oil or is it just being regenerated below the surface all the time?

Chad Koury (29:53) Sorry to be cliche, but when I hear this argument, I think to myself, we didn't exit the Stone Age because we ran out of stones. Eventually something better is going to come along and it will uplift us to the Bronze Age or whatever it was. So we are right now in the era of hydrocarbon fuels and there's technology that's coming out that is proving to be, at least better than it was before. We'll just say that. Eventually, maybe we will. We still need lubricants. We still need hydrocarbon-based lubricants. So even if we are all completely and totally like renewable energy, we still need something to reduce friction in all these devices. Which, of course you can farm crops that could let you do that. You can have any sort of other plant-based stuff, oils or what have you. And so are we ever going to run out of it? I would say no, I think we're going to transition to something else before we do, but when is that going to happen? I couldn't tell you. So we will need oil, we will need gas for a very, very long time. And we're going to need oil for a very long time and gas for a very, very, very long time. It's so cheap, it's so easy to get, it's so readily available, the infrastructure is in place, it's very modern, and it's just easy. It's the way it's going to be.

Peter Brecht (31:13) Yeah, and I love that answer and teaching my own kids. So I have young kids and teaching them about energy, where energy comes from, how we get it, not taking it for granted, like understanding really like the work that's involved to produce it. Cause I think we're, I think we're going into a more, I mean, we're in an energy dependent world already, but our futures are even, we're tying more and more to it also, I think as we continue going. So what are some ways that you might, I think educate even younger kids about energy, anything creative or in your own life that you might consider?

Chad Koury (31:47) You know, I have this, I ended up at one point in time having a conversation with the U.S. Senator from my state about this, and he asked me, he said what could we tell people that's going to bring them over to our side to let them know that oil and gas is not evil and everything like that and why we absolutely need it? And I said, I said if people aren't going to want to be convinced, they're not going to be convinced. So I don't think we need to convince people to believe in the good of hydrocarbon fuels. What I think we need people to do is understand that not everything is as they would assume it to be at face value whenever they see it on social media or whatever. I mean, we really are like in this, the people that are so vehemently against things know very little about it. And I would give credit to people that are against it if they were to actually know the fine grained minute details of how it's done. Cause at least then I could say, I appreciate the fact that you've taken the time to learn about this, what it is, how it is, and you still disagree with it. I would have immense respect for that person for going through that process. So I would just say to anyone and everyone, don't get caught up in the hype of being a serial against it kind of person and do your homework and do your research. And then you can go on to say like, everything you're wearing is made out of hydrocarbons, and if it's not, it got to market through hydrocarbons, so deal with it. Have an open mind, that's all.

Peter Brecht (33:20) Yep, exactly. And that's very good points. Yep, I like that. Wade, any questions that you're stewing on?

Wade (33:31) In terms of like right now in terms of your workload and everything, how much would you say is geosteering versus maybe like contract geology work and over the years, I know you said post-COVID, have you seen that kind of change since then? Has it kind of ebbed and flowed or?

Chad Koury (33:47) Yeah, I would say over the past maybe seven or eight years that, seven or eight years ago, I was 100 percent geosteering and then it slowly started to progress and shift to the point where it's about 50-50 now. So it's where if a rig is turning to the right, I'm not making money. Well now I'm able to do a few other projects here and there to keep revenue flowing. So it was definitely done so in order to maintain cash flow because like I said, when rig counts drop, then you're kind of in a hard spot there because if your clients aren't drilling, you're not making money.

Wade (04:23) Right. Yeah, I feel that one. That one hit very close though.

Chad Koury (34:26) Yep. Yep.

Wade (34:29) As far as who you're working for also, what does that look like? Not necessarily specific operators, I mean, you've got public co's, private co's, maybe investment groups, some things like that. Where is that kind of trending to right now for you?

Chad Koury (34:44) I fit in mainly at the, the old term, the old terminology would be mom and pops, but really it's really not even mom and pops. It's smaller independents, smaller companies that are PE backed that will drill a pad or two a year, but not keep a rig running continually. That has been my bread and butter since the beginning. Actually since it's, word of mouth to trying to get myself out there and colleagues have been satisfied. But they're not big enough to where they have someone in house for it. So it's a small lens of companies that exist there. And of course, with current commodity prices, they're not drilling quite as much, but I did finish a seven well Marcellus project a couple of weeks ago and it was a very intense month and a half of drilling where that was my life. So you do what you do. You do what you do.

Wade (35:40) Yeah. So as far as activity and things like that, in Oklahoma right now, I think we've seen a transition from, we still got the big publics and all that, but it seems like there's a lot more companies coming in here with like you're saying, private equity money and not wanting to spend up entire teams. It felt like in the early 2012 to 2014, that was all it was, was like, you've got a team and then they look for an asset instead of looking for an asset, I'm sorry, instead of finding, putting together a team after they've kind of got the asset. So are you seeing that up there kind of in the Northeast as well?

Chad Koury (36:16) As I stated earlier, the Northeast has really been delineated pretty well. Everything's been cut up and divided. You have the big companies that come in, gobble something up for a specific piece, and then they take everything else and they just kind of sell it. Well, the money is made in those margins. And yes, you have companies like EQT that are massive, but they are, there's plenty of stuff that is in their inventory that they're never going to drill, but could be drilled economically. And with the different companies you see up here in the northeast, the one that comes to mind that is the big guy, I give big kudos to them, is Infinity. They're local Morgantown, West Virginia company, where I live, and they identified certain things, a certain acreage where they had sharp people who were scrappy, and they saw that there was an asset out there that had huge potential and huge promise that other companies just kind of cast aside, and they jumped on it. And they're having huge success. So there, like I said, there is absolutely room to make money in the margins, but the problem is trying to get yourself into this area, which again, dry gas, you need a pipeline. It's difficult in that regard. Your ability to try to muscle yourself in here is difficult. And again, the conventional reservoir space in this area in terms of drilling, I mean, it's a very big gas area, so you're not going to find a conventional gas prospect that's going to be economical because Marcellus has suppressed prices so hard. And there are some oil prospects in the basin as well, but again, it's just so difficult to get equipment and material because the prices have been jacked up by the Marcellus that really it's a pure play basin almost to this degree.

Wade (38:00) I love to hear that there's still operators out there. Not necessarily working the fringes, but finding stuff that a lot of other people aren't seeing and making it work. That's awesome.

Chad Koury (38:09) Yeah, again, being in the mix physically and educationally and professionally, there's plenty of acreage in the Marcellus that is very good, that has infrastructure in place, that is out there to be taken over. But again, if it's not in the dead center of the fairway, a lot of these PE firms don't really want to throw money at it. You're trying to explain, you're trying to be a geologist and tell a story to somebody that doesn't quite understand geology. It's hard to convey that sense.

Peter Brecht (38:46) When you're pulling these long projects, I'm sure you're staying, working some pretty long hours, but are you a coffee guy or?

Chad Koury (38:54) You know, I've gone through phases. I would say right now I have this like small espresso maker. And so I take the little thing and I pack it full of espresso and tamp it down, drizzle a little more on there and tamp it down. I make myself a triple shot at a time and I'll have like three or four of those a day. But I just feel like, after a while, just like the thought of it, like energy drinks, they're just so high in sugar. But it's just kind of like you drink them, you feel like you slow down almost, but yeah, I would say it's the bean for me. Coffee and all of its derivatives.

Peter Brecht (39:23) Yeah. Okay, good to know, good to know. I had to ask because I'm like, man, if you're working late long hours like that, and Wade, I've actually never asked you, I know you have to do some late night stuff too, but sometimes it's hard to snap out of it, so. Chad, we'll cut it off here, we're 45 minutes in, man, I feel like I could talk to you forever, but tell our listeners where they can find you and I know we can connect with you on Collide.

Chad Koury (39:45) Yeah, well have me back on.

Peter Brecht (39:47) Yeah, we will.

Chad Koury (39:52) I'm on LinkedIn also. I do enjoy engaging with people on there and on Collide it's much more people that are all in the same relative market. On LinkedIn there's a lot more wide open conversations that happen and they're two different environments that are both good individually. And if anyone is interested in talking to me they can go to my website or just hit me up on LinkedIn really is the easiest thing. And I'm willing to talk to anybody about anything. I've got ideas. People have ideas and the modern oil field is this right here because as I've said I've met in person maybe 1 percent of all the individuals I've ever encountered in my professional career. Now that's everything from an MWD that I worked on one well with all the way to clients I've had for 10 years. I've maybe in person face to face shook their hand 1 percent. And so this right here we're doing, this is kind of the way of the future and I feel like there's a lot of opportunity for people that want to reach out and engage and have conversations. LinkedIn's been huge for that and just general modern technology. So hit me up and let's talk.

Peter Brecht (41:06) Thanks, Chad. Appreciate you coming on with us and talking. Wade, have a great rest of your week and we'll see you next week. Thanks.

Wade (41:13) Thanks guys.

Chad Koury (41:13) Thank you guys very much. Have a great one.