Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:21 Holy cow, first things first. The UFO, you saw UFO, what was that tweet? We were sitting in a hot tub in Colorado and it was my brother-in-law, well now two brother-in-laws. My sister recently

0:35 got married to a

0:38 Frenchman, so we call him the Frenchy. We're sitting out in Colorado in the hot tub after a nice day of skiing over the December break and we look up and it looks like Rudolph and the reindeer in a

0:52 perfect line, but they were spread, they were these dots and they were too high to be airplanes. They were perfectly quiet. They were flying across in a perfectly straight line, but they were

1:03 spread out on a weird pattern, like dot, dot, dot, and then a space and then three more dots. And we saw eight, yeah, you kind of look like that. And we saw, you know, about eight of them

1:13 fly across going pretty fast. There was a plane going the other direction They were going faster than playing, but. It looked like the intensity of a plane light. I mean, very clear, solid,

1:24 light, smooth, flying across the sky from one end all the way to the other. And we're looking at each other. We couldn't put two and two together. Or we're going, are you all seeing this? And I

1:34 can't do a French accent, but it was pretty funny how he was like, oh my God. And so then they pass. We talk to each other about what's going on. And then about, I don't know, 15 more fly

1:46 across. And we tried a videotape on the phone, but then the iPhone doesn't pick it up. And my wife, Kat, was sitting there with us as well. So we can - We can sound? Or you can - Perfectly

1:56 quiet. Perfectly quiet. No sound. So that is like, okay, it's what's going on there. It's too quiet. And we just didn't connect the dots of potential Starlink. So then I posted it on X. It's

2:08 like, I couldn't get a video, but someone's gonna give us an answer here. And of course right away, it's like, duh. Someone goes, it's probably Starlink. But then I kind of got frustrated out

2:16 in a peaceful after-ski thing. and talk about not in my backyard and the nimby crowd. And now all of a sudden I look up and I'm like, okay, we're in the early phases of Starlink. How many

2:27 thousands of these are they're gonna be? Are we gonna have to look up and see these all the time? But it's fortunate enough to fast forward to Janie Wary. I had a dinner with one of the directors

2:38 of Starlink, random connection in Miami. And I told him about this and said, Ex said it was Starlink He goes, Yes, it was, were you in this part of the country? And he said, That was just a

2:54 deployment phase. It takes about two to three days. They spread themselves out and you won't see them again after that. So that makes sense. I mean, you kind of go up and then you get into orbit.

3:06 They're getting in their flywheel or whatever they're doing. So yeah. Oh, man, I thought you had a UFO. I know, I was hoping it was really a UFO, but no, just Starlink 'Cause I was always a

3:15 UFO guy growing up. My grandmother used to rut - read this magazine called Fate Magazine. And it would talk about - Fate, F-A-T-E. And they actually coined the phrase unidentified flying object,

3:28 UFO. And so it was UFOs, it was Bigfoot, it was Loch Ness Monster, it was the Bermuda Triangle, all these sorts of things.

3:43 And so there's something going on there. I mean, even the US government pilots are coming out and saying, yeah, I saw this, I've got no explanation. Seeing the orbs, I don't know if you follow

3:52 or if seeing people follow Ashton Forbes. So he's on this MH360 flight, the Malaysian flight and it's about the orbs that they have a D-class, or I guess it's still classified, but somebody sent

4:09 him anonymously a satellite video This was 2014 before, um, before You know, we knew that these satellites were capable of doing this and it has time stamps moving quickly on the bottom and it was

4:26 before any government agency had released anything. So he said, there's no way to duplicate, you know, the, the lat longs that are screaming across the bottom, bottom and real speed, because it

4:37 came out like a week after this airplane disappeared and no one would have known a where the airplane was and they just had no ability So he's been trying to track down for years, uh, where this

4:50 came from, who the, who the true leaker was. Um, he has some theories, um, but, but, uh, it's called zero point energy and it's about, um, these orbs that transfer around. So I don't know

5:01 if there's any truth or validity to that, but it's made me go down some rabbit holes on, on zero point energy and, you know, just harnessing energy all around it. So, uh, kind of interesting,

5:12 fascinating. If you have a rabbit hole, you want to go down. Yeah, and Tucker Carlson goes down the rabbit hole of the, I forget what he calls a mystical force, supernatural forces, but I mean,

5:25 a lot of really smart, thoughtful, seemingly intelligent, rational pilots are reporting all sorts of stuff. Yeah. You know, I mean, it would make sense. I mean, what, 999 of the oceans

5:40 aren't explored. Yeah. I mean, 'cause they're being - That's crazy There's a lot we don't understand. No, it's not. So we'll go from oceans to oil and gas. Speaking of things we don't

5:51 understand. How did you get to parsley? I don't think I ever heard that story. 'Cause you're a mind, we were just talking about it. You're a Colorado school and mines guy. Yeah, yeah. So kind

6:00 of a fun arc when I look back on it, but grew up in Indiana. So Southern Indiana, the city of Evansville, and worked out in the oil patch in Illinois basin So I'd wake up and. drive an hour west

6:16 every morning and scrub rusty tanks and repaint them for a couple of years and finally got to work on the pulling units. We had singles, so we'd break out rods and pull a pump, replace a pump. And

6:30 my dad was in the industry, my grandfather was a petroleum engineer. And so I'm going way back on you when you're asking me to go to Parsi, but we'll get there. So I wanted to be a petroleum

6:40 engineer. But I also was a big Notre Dame fan So I looked up Notre Dame in high school. And at that time, internet was obviously around late '90s. But it wasn't super interactive on the website.

6:56 So I'm just flipping through counseling files and all of that. And they do have engineering, and they had architecture. So I said, OK, I'll hide a Notre Dame and go for that. And I was telling

7:06 my dad, I want to be a petroleum engineer. How do you do this? just whatever you do, don't be a petroleum engineer. So you could be an architect, you could be mechanical, fine, go at it,

7:17 don't be a petroleum engineer. And then we

7:22 got our ass kicked in our last high school football game by Jay Cutler. So we got beat, I think, 56 to six. It's the worst I had ever been beaten in football. We were no powerhouse. So we won

7:35 maybe four games our senior year, but we really got our butts kicked What position did you play? Played quarterback in high school, but again, this was, this is not Texas football. This is

7:47 Evansville, Indiana football, but we had a good time. Played quarterback, go out to shake his hand at

7:55 captain's meeting. He didn't shake hands. Nice. He's a complete jerk. I can say that. Yeah. And he played middle linebacker and quarterback, and he was the only guy to make me fumble in a game

8:06 too. So our guy snaps the ball. his nickname was Moo Moo. And I look down, I'm looking at Moo Moo's eyes and I'm going, this isn't good. And I look to the right, it's a block side. I'm just

8:18 like, I'm gonna run and get some yards. And this was maybe the first series, second series of the game at the most. And I jump over Moo Moo and boom, he puts a middle linebacker, he put the hat

8:29 on the ball perfectly, fumble, they recover. And then we just never, we just never came back. So didn't wanna go out that way. Couldn't go, started finding that you could, you know, all the

8:40 Texas schools had petroleum engineering, but I had no chance of playing football at any of the Texas schools. You could've come to Rice. Yeah, it could've been a chance. Yeah. But I kept

8:49 flipping through and randomly found Colorado School of Mines, went out there,

8:55 did the whole School of Mines thing, got transferred to a tight end, when I played football out there for a couple of years and then hurt my neck, I was able to finish school on time. And then,

9:08 but pioneer natural resources recruited out there. So went, was able to be selected as an intern at Pioneer in 2004 and fast forward 2010, they asked me and my wife to move out to Midland to have

9:23 an engineering presence. So this was pre-shale. We were doing higher rate Wolfberry vertical fracks. There's a fun story there, but they wanted to draw their engineering presence back in the field

9:35 and they hadn't had it for a while in the Permian Basin, pioneer. So I hadn't spent much time. So how much shorter after that did you get divorced? Exactly, it shouldn't have taken long. So my

9:49 wife started her career at Chevron and she got to go, she was a metallurgical engineer by background, got her masters eventually in petroleum. But when we got married, she came up and actually

10:02 worked for Pioneer. But at Chevron, she had the coolest job in the world. around - literally flew around the world one time for her job. I think she started in Normandy, went over to Singapore,

10:15 and then Gorgon worked at Perth, Australia for the Gorgon. Anyway, so went around the world.

10:20 They have a problem. They call this group on the metallurgical side. They buy them out, first class, and then she comes to Pioneer, and she got assigned to the West Panhandle Field. And the boss

10:31 at the time said, absolutely no alcohol at company dinner So she's flying Southwest Airlines out to

10:39 not love it, but Amarillo then driving north and no alcohol. So quite a bit, I'm surprised, didn't drive a divorce, but she stuck with it, and we moved out to Midland and absolutely loved it.

10:52 And we were there about four months with Pioneer. And the only guy I knew was Scott Sheffield's son, Brian. And I got his number from Scott. did a couple dinners together, I'm asking him what's

11:08 going on, what are you doing out here? His wife's Spanish descent, my wife's Venezuelan. So we were able to hit it off at dinners, and he's talking about drilling these wells, and I said, Well,

11:20 who's your engineer? And he didn't have one. He did everything turnkey through Jackie Matthews, Matlock drilling, he drilled thousands of wells, but turnkey, they got to charge about 30 more to

11:30 make cover their losses. And as the dinners went on, I'm like, Man, I grew up in a small business. Everything's great at Pioneer, but what he's doing sounds pretty awesome. And there's 30 left

11:43 on the table. So we started talking more about if there was an opportunity there, and his first response was, Hell no, my dad would kill me. But then we just kept talking through it and came to

11:55 an agreement. And I was sitting out on a lease road when we finally came to an agreement. Of course, before that, I had known Paul Treadwell through my pioneer days. So we worked together at

12:10 Pioneer, but then he had already gone over to Parsley. So I knew there was a great talent there and had met, re-met, reconnected with Paul through this dinnertime. But it was only about a four

12:23 month time and moving out there and then accepting the job with Brian, I think it was five offices. In Pioneer, pay your moving costs? They did, but I had to pay every time. Dime to that back

12:34 and I had the balls to call and ask my boss at the time and said, You know, you moved my wife out here too. She's still working. Do you think we could pay half of it back? And they said, Do you

12:44 think you want to askthat question again? And I said, No, you're right. I'll pay it all back. So we paid it all back. It all was a moving cost back. That's a good question. No one's asked me

12:53 about the moving costs. That's pretty funny. You know what I'll do Yeah,

12:57 so when I was with Stephen's. My joke was always, I want to do well, but not well enough to get promoted a little rock to the headquarters. And they were shut in the Houston office. And it's one

13:09 of the wildest things. I mean, I was barely a vice president, I think, but I was the senior officer in the Houston office. So I had to sign literally everything. 'Cause when you shut down a bank,

13:22 you have to destroy files, you have to ship files to the home office. So I was having to, having to do all that. That was a wild experience But it was crazy. 'Cause they just opened a Dallas

13:34 office and they're like, and they'd hired some bankers. And it actually worked out perfect chuck where you go to Dallas. We wanna have a Stevens guy there to help kind of these new hires navigate

13:46 stuff. And I was like, you know, I don't have to go to Little Rock. Okay, great. Let's do it. Oh, yeah. This is gonna, this is gonna work out well. But it was the craziest thing on the

13:55 planet 'cause Kim and I, had sold our house and gotten a really good deal on it. We'd made a lot of money on it. And we were just gonna move into an apartment for a year in Dallas and figure it out.

14:08 Stephen's paid all the closing costs from selling my house, even though I made a fortune. Oh man, yeah. That's a win. Yeah, it was a huge win, huge win. You said, you know, gonna overshare

14:17 here, but you said anything

14:21 I could do to not go to Little Rock. And early on in my career, my goal was to not go to Houston. Well, why would I have that goal? Okay, growing up in Evansville, Indiana, here's the

14:34 overshare part, but I don't think anybody in my family - Only my mom's listening. I don't think my mom's gonna be listening, but there was a, after the divorce, there

14:54 was a, my dad dated a woman when I was pretty young and that was maybe the rebound woman she was in the oil and gas industry. And I knew about that and growing up from Texas and growing up, you

15:04 associate Houston with the oil and gas industry. And I thought I connected some dots and I thought that she was from Houston. So I thought coming out of school, man, if I get a job out of Houston,

15:14 my mom's gonna have to see that every single day. So I'm gonna look anywhere but Houston. So I did Dallas, that was a big contributor, not, it was a big contributor. I mean, maybe 10, 15. But

15:25 it was in the back of my mind And then he fast forward and we get married and this story comes out with my mom. And I say that,

15:35 you know, this kind of, I've never had to go to Houston, at least that's nice, right mom? And kind of elbowed her and she's like, well, what are you talking about? And I was like, well, you

15:42 know, the rebound and all that. And she goes, oh, she lived in Dallas. And I was like, oh my God. This whole time I went straight to the place where I was trying to avoid. So yeah, never know.

15:54 Yeah, it's so well. Yeah, they were gathered at the college drive, so. So, give me a crazy story from early days parsley. So, when you join, how many employees are there? So, we had, I

16:07 think, five in the office. Myself,

16:11 Stephanie Reed, Brian, Paul Treadwell, Mike Henson, those five, and then Christy Dailing was there as well. And then, you have David Askew, Cam Shock, out in the field, and Teddy Smith So

16:26 that was it, eight across the board. Oh, wow. And then it was, it was, if you remember it, so that was 2010, you had three years of100 plus oil. So all the mistakes we were making, we didn't

16:41 even know we were making them. We didn't take one mistake we didn't make was we didn't take debt early on. So until we, and we promoted our wells, and we had almost no interest in the wells, and

16:52 we'd receive about 12 and 12 promoted interest. we'd use that cash flow and then sell down less. We sold 100 of the projects down, then we'd sell 75 of the projects down, whatever our cash flow

17:04 could handle. And then we finally started doing debt. And the first time we did debt, we had PhD win, we didn't have Aries and we sent it over to Robert Winkler at WMB and we were like, we don't

17:18 really know what we're doing here. Let's just send half of it over. 'Cause we know, if we send everything and they told us some number that we could take, we would take it all. So for the first

17:28 couple of years, we were sending them half of our database. So like if there was gonna be a pullback, then we could show the rest of the wells and we could be okay. So that was a little sign of

17:39 prudence in the early days. So that was fun.

17:43 But aside from that, it was peddled to the metal. There was not a whole lot of prudence. I do remember, our first leases were500, 800 an acre in Acre. And the sprayberry was pretty much taken.

17:58 So we had to make a bet on the deep only working wolf camp in below, but we were still getting anywhere from six to eight frack stages off in the wolf camp sitting below. And at the time we were the

18:10 only company, Henry of course, blazed the trail in the wolf berry. But even them, they would come in and go with some sprayberry, they had all right. So we were one of the first at scale,

18:21 hanging the whole shingle on just the deep And Riverbend, Scott Rice, and their group took a large percentage in those early wells and we're actually had owned some leases in the shallow and we had

18:34 to come up with a contribution agreement of, okay, we're gonna come in and go all this out of the gate and flow it. But you on the shallow, we on the deep and how much is coming from which

18:44 reservoir? So that was big early, you know, not arguments, baby. I love Randy Newcomer. I really do. I think he's one of the best guys on the planet but I swear my life is. two years shorter

18:56 for having to negotiate with them. That's a grinder, I could only imagine that. And I say that with love. I really do like that. We would give him a hard time, control your legal, control your

19:06 land group. We got to move on and drill this well. And they got it done, they got it done. But yeah, they were instrumental in the early, early parsley days. Scott and Randy actually stayed in

19:17 a, rented out a, it was a back garage in Midland. Used to have a ping pong table and there were some old, old Midland parties that we used to have back there, but we refurbished it and it's

19:27 supposed to be an in-law suite, but Riverbend and Randy and Scott kind of took it over and they'd stay there when they came to Midland. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, that's really cool. The, you know,

19:38 Randy and Scott have, what, 27 different buckets of stuff. I mean, every time you talk to them, they're doing something else that you're shocked about. But I think at one point, we had three

19:49 buckets with them at Caine Oh, wow. We were doing some stuff with him

19:54 everywhere. Yeah, not only just different buckets of verticals, but different partners, too. You know, they've got Kane, they've got

20:03 in Capa, well, I don't know who they have, but you know, a lot of difference. Yeah, yeah, all of them. Yeah, the, hey, we're here at Napeweek, it reminded me of another story. We were on

20:14 a quest to get a deal done at NAEP, at Parsley. You know, it's where deals happened, and they've been two or three years, made four years into it. Never got a deal done at NAEP So we come to

20:24 NAEP, and one of the engineers comes running back, and goes, I found a little 160 over in the city of Stanton. They're willing to trade. So we run back, and we sign, you know, kind of sign the

20:38 intent, and we probably put some due diligence cash down. And we're so proud that we finally got our first deal at NAEP, and we come back, and Stephanie Reed grew up in Stanton She started working

20:53 with the mayor of Stanton. 'cause it was pretty challenging surface locations. And we built a, so we started. Where is Stan? Stan is east of Midland, about 10, 15 miles. Okay, gotcha. Yeah,

21:04 so on I-20. So we start, and this horizontal was gonna cross I-20 and there was gonna be some flow line issues and it was right there in the city and there. So we, and city drilling was kind of

21:18 new to the Permian guys at the time. I mean, Barnett had been doing it, but it was, it was new to us. So we talked to the mayor and he said, I think we've been in a new kids park and I think the

21:32 city permits could go pretty quickly if we get that worked out. So Parsley builds a great playground. All the while we're doing due diligence on this lease that we knew was just gonna make in the

21:41 background. It's no, we weren't even worried about it. So we, we build a surface location. We build this park. We're doing all these negotiations and there was a fork entitled 20 years ago these

21:52 guys never even owned it. So the deal that we try to do at NAIP has never been done. So it's elusive, it's elusive. The kids got their park, they got their park. Yeah, there's a lot of still

22:04 there. You know, I think that's actually underappreciated in our business because it feels like we built every little league field and every small town and every basin and stuff. And I don't think

22:17 we get credit for doing that stuff as an industry No, the involvement in the communities is greatly overlooked. I mean, even back in Little Evansville, our batting cages were made by field pipe at

22:34 the high school. So there's all sorts of interactions that the industry doesn't get credit for. So I had Russell Gold, I recorded a podcast with him two or three days ago And you know, he just

22:46 wrote that article on Scott in the FTC

22:52 But the interesting thing we talked about in there that I wanna hear, 'cause you were at the front row of this, is, you know, and I'll give you our perspective at Caine, 'cause we had the

23:02 adventure guys, right? Paul Lucas

23:05 and Pete Sheer. And we owned however many acres, and we were doing wolfberry verticals in the middle and basin. And we were a little scared to go horizontal. We knew we, so we kind of went with

23:21 the, let's try a horizontal and if they work then great, we'll drill more and we'll get paid for it. But then just due to a whole bunch of stuff, like I wanted to raise fund six. And I'm like, I

23:32 need a liquidation out of fund five, we're in fund five. So I told Pete and Paul, I'm like, we all just run a process and y'all can decide whether we sell or not, but just run a process and let's

23:43 see. Just do that for me, yeah. And God bless the guys that are. they gave us36, 000 an acre and that was more money than I think I'd ever seen in my life. Oh my God. At that point, but Steve

23:56 Gray, I mean, he was certain the, the horizontals were going to work and to his credit, they worked and that acreage probably worth 150, 000 or whatever it was later on, but you know, we were

24:07 happy. We made seven times our money, but where I'm going with this is, that was a nice seven X drop in there. I like that. Yeah Exactly. There's a whole story there, but we'll leave it at that.

24:23 What's a non-disclosure agreement section two says

24:28 no diss tracks on the podcast. But no, walk me through thinking through drilling those first horizontals, because what 2013? 2013, first but yes, and we were still obviously a very small shop.

24:43 We're working on our S1 in the background And it was kind of like. very similar to the world you're talking about. You either have to make the bet that you're comfortable doing this and you're going

24:53 to go play in the public world. You're going from one to2 million a well to10 million a well. And your mafia, your friends of investors, you quickly outpace that. And you get to take advantage of,

25:08 I think the EBITL multiples were 10x at the time and the historic averages for majors were six to eight. So it was kind of going, okay, there's something, something here, can we play it or not?

25:19 And we were too young and dumb to know the difference and the risk that was really there. But we just wouldn't accept failure either. So we had a great engineer, Isaac Hayes, that was helping us

25:34 with that project at the time. And we've spud it. Of course, it was, Landon Martin, who's with

25:42 us at Green Lake now, I was ahead of drilling at the time. So we had Spudet ask you and team and Paul and Drew, building the facilities, getting ready to go. We have drilled, we've gotten to the

25:56 curve, which the curve was new for us. This is 2013, you know, we're trying to drill straight. So just this, just landing this curve and I get a call and it's Isaac and we've never lost anyone

26:11 in the history of parsley. And he calls me and he said, Hey, I got another opportunityI think I'm gonna jump ship. And I was like, Oh, we're doing this over a phone call. Okay, right in the

26:22 middle of our curve, right before the IPO, right? Our first, well, and by the way, it was a two mile lateral. So we kind of, again, young and naive is the math. If it works at one mile, the

26:36 hardest part is behind you. It's gonna be great at two miles. Nobody was doing it, it was our first one in Midland County and Upton County at the time And we drill it. Or are we planning to drill

26:48 it? And everybody's calling us crazy and the risk right before an IPO. I mean, if it didn't work and we're trying to hit the road, maybe in March, April, May, would have been a big black eye.

26:59 But he jumpship on us. I asked him to stick around, I understand I want the best for you, but can you get this thing on production? And he just kind of stays to the no, we're doing the two week

27:11 thing. He's gone on and done great and we've stayed in touch There, but the, so we just all have to pitch in and we have to finish this thing out. And everybody steps up to the plate and knocks it

27:25 out of the park, drilled the well, extremely well as the Dussek 45-1 HB and came on over a thousand barrels. I remember looking at the flow back per hour and seeing the oil rate kind of climb up

27:39 and then finally go over 40 and we were just, Sheffield has his own dance, the Sheffield shuffle So I think he was doing that. down the hallways and we were all pretty excited. And the rest kind

27:50 of that we were off to the races and we're kind of taking that mentality. Green Lake, we just finished our first U-turn. Oxbow, well, our team's calling it. And we've got two more right now.

28:02 We're chilling back to back, but. So what we, 'cause I hear matadors doing this. What's the deal you're? You just, instead of building your curve this way, you're turning on the sideways and

28:14 you're looping around But again, you're on back to the first principles and the math and the radius of your landing curve is a lot sharper than what people are building out around the bends there.

28:26 So if you're worried about that push and pull, you need to be worried about it, just landing your horizontal. It's really not that much of a tight bend going around the corner. So for us, we play

28:40 around in scraps. So we gotta find GreenLake

28:46 we've got to find a stranded one-mile section, find a zone that other people. So this is your two mile lateral one mile section. Of course, if you could drill two miles, you would do that or

28:54 three miles. You'd do that all day long. It's just cheaper. So there is added complexity and risk, but good to have one under the belt. And we drilled it in 18 days. Our first Delaware wells at

29:08 Parsley were 45 days for just the two mile horizontal section It was 14, 15, 16, sorry, that was 16, 17 for the Delaware Horizontals.

29:21 So, I mean, this industry is just amazing. That's been what I've missed because for the most of my career, I could sit there and say, Tell me what the rig count isand I can tell you what

29:32 production's gonna do. I can be close enough and at least directionally right. And we just keep dropping rigs and production keeps going up. That's amazing. And if you look at stimulated footage,

29:44 We haven't dropped. stimulated footage too much. So we're still putting on a lot of new rock every year, but yeah, the rig count as a proxy has just been, it's been amazing what we've been able

29:57 to do on rig efficiency. So you're because, so when I was all at,

30:05 it felt like this. So it felt like I'll make these numbered up. 2010 to 2016,

30:12 IPs were up 30 each year, 30, 40 every year. And then I wanna say in like 17 and 18, it was up 22 and then 16. But if you took away the Exxon and the Chevron wells, 'cause they were late to

30:27 drilling in the Permian Basin, took away their wells and quote unquote new rock, it was like the wells were up one percent and two percent. You know, in effect flat. And so it sounds like what

30:42 you're telling me, what I've missed is we're just going long. or we're exposing more rock for well. Yeah, I think so. Or so, right? We're not, we're, you know, we're definitely not drilling

30:51 better rock. We have not that I can, I'm aware of any good, or any modified completion chemicals or techniques.

31:03 Now we're modifying our stage spacing and our perf entry,

31:08 but no breakthrough chemicals. I saw the earnings announcement with the Coke products, essentially the

31:19 Exxon, saying that the new prop and 30 more recovery.

31:25 I don't know, that could be the actual flow back of the melted the product coming back. Who knows what is going to be. But

31:35 yeah, so I think productivity per wells going down and like-to-like basins you've had or like-to-like

31:43 You've had a few upstarts finally break through in an area that might have had surface restrictions and now you can reach it, so now productivity kind of goes back up. The resurgence of southern New

31:55 Mexico, so that kind of masked some of the productivity for a while because that's a super productive area. I think we got a challenge ahead of us on maintaining this production growth big time in

32:08 the US Well, because you sat there in 2010, and this is Monday, Monday, and quarter back, I will definitely admit, but you kind of sat there and you said, Man, if we can just figure out what

32:22 we're doing in natural gas, horizontal drilling, fracking, if we can figure that out for oil, we could hit a home run. And usually, if you can see something like that, an engineer can figure it

32:33 out because engineers are pretty smart and stuff. Is there a technology kind of sitting out there that five years from now, we're doing this podcast and you're like, oh yeah, in hindsight, we

32:44 should have seen. I'm,

32:49 I don't have anything off the tip of my tongue. I just read an article about geothermal and they're saying with this big bore, you know, placement that they put down, they're moving their largest

33:01 pump rates that they've been able to move. So it just kind of triggered and I thought one of the, you know, are we, we're going monoboard and smaller, smaller bore to control the cost of our

33:12 casing and cost, cost, cost.

33:15 But if we're still only recovering eight to 12 of what's in place, there's got to be a different way to crack this code in the, in the shales. You go larger board, you go and just really move the

33:29 water off of it. Who knows? You know, opposite of what we had been thinking It happens through kind of empirical accidents, the Barnett and the Mitchell Steinsberger, Nick Steinsberger ran out of

33:44 guar, you know? Yeah. He's like, I'm gonna get home for the weekend and we're gonna pump this job and we're gonna see how much we can get out there. I mean, which engineer sat there and said,

33:53 no, fine mesh sand will work a lot better. I mean, that guy got fired, right? Yeah, exactly. He made a big old chunk of sand to cut a hole in the rock, yeah. And then the horizontal guys, it

34:03 took necessity, EOG, Inerian County,

34:08 yeah, Laredo, also an approach, you know, all down there in Crockett. And it's like, hey, it's new, it's not economically working on the verticals. What can we do differently? So it's almost

34:21 not born out of front end engineering from what I've seen. Sometimes that limits us. That, I do think that's truly helpful on, on, you know, whittling costs out of programs at scale

34:36 thinking pragmatically and supply chain management and all of that. But you have these breakthroughs, you just gotta be open-minded, keep the eyes open and ear to the ground. You know, the

34:43 craziest thing about the Bakken is Lyco with Bobby Lyle really kind of kicked off the Bakken.

34:51 And two funny stories that. One about, the only reason Bobby Lyle had his acreage in the Bakken was 'cause no one would buy it

34:60 from him. That's right And then he somehow talked Halliburton in to give him some experimental money. And they started drilling these long horizontals in it. And at the end of the day, it wasn't

35:13 even a frack. It was a glorified acid job, let's be real about this. And it just worked amazingly well. But literally that 50, 000 acres of a sleeping giant field is the only place the glorified

35:26 acid job would work 'Cause we actually went over into, you know, call it. five miles away and tried to drill a well and it didn't work. We claimed it was a mechanical failure. We sold Lyco to

35:40 Interplus, made a lot of money, so we were all happy. But that's the stuff that Bud Brigham and Gene Shepherd kept at it and figured out. But yeah, I mean, the amount of capital we have to

35:51 deploy to then have those empirical breakthroughs. I mean, this industry is, it blows your mind and there's a lot to be learned We do have a good collaborative technical industry, I think, but I

36:06 think we do more. Be interesting how AI, how collide, I mean, what you guys are doing, it's got to start yielding some fruit. Yeah, and I think where we are today is, you know, we kind of

36:18 take the premise that an engineer spends about 30 or 40 of their time just looking for stuff. You know, you're digging through the well file, trying to find this and that And so what AI actually

36:29 does today is a lot of data you can search really quickly. And you can put some simple rules on it too, like, hey, search my NGL contracts for the dedications and let's figure out where I got to

36:41 dedicate stuff or not. So it does that stuff pretty well. And you know, like I say this all the time on the podcast, if you look through history, every technology, the big ones that come out way

36:54 overestimated in the short term, but in the long term, way underestimate what it actually does I mean, it's not going to be shocking when AI in this in today, it's not tomorrow, probably not

37:08 within a year, but soon where AI is sitting there telling you exactly how to drill a well and doing it itself. Yeah. So you wake up in the morning, you get your report, oh, we did great last

37:21 night, you know, it's going to be crazy. It is. It is a tip of the tip of the spear and I mean, it's moving so fast It's getting yield benefits, cost controls and efficiencies. So do this,

37:34 we're doing this podcast again in five years. What are we talking about in five years that we're not talking about today? All right. What's Crystal Ball stuff? We're on Green Lake Three. Green

37:46 Lake Three. Green Lake Three. We're doing this from you, Jack. Yeah, Starlink will be beaming down from the jet. Yeah, that would be kind of no brainer. We'll have a first landing on Mars.

38:00 Okay Behind us. Okay, okay. Not one of ours. Right. Not me or you, but I love landing on Mars.

38:10 I think that's a futile project, but I think it's pushing the boundaries and, you know, what we're, our ideas and our technology, so anyways, so that's happened.

38:25 Mm, you're going to have, okay, where's the next Guyana? going to have one more big discovery.

38:35 And

38:38 US oil production is lower than it is today. So we're under 13 million. Yes. Okay. But

38:50 I think we've identified the answer to, you know, to get back. But these things take three or five years to kind of get in flight, then get unlocked, and me poking around. Enough people aren't

39:05 looking at enough things of scale

39:09 in the US, enough of us and the private guys and the public guys were all shut down, you know, on their capital discipline quest, on their exploration dollars. You had the Guyana remnant. But,

39:25 so I think we're at the end. So I think people are starting to redeploy that capital now. Right. under 13, I don't know, it's controversial. Let's just take the fun side of it. No, I think

39:37 you're probably right, although I will tell you, I've been wrong for a long time. Okay, all right. Oh yeah, we've peaked, we've peaked. No, this time it's really true, we've really peaked.

39:46 I'm gonna say that five years from now, New York's actually gone red and lifted the frack band. There you go, there could be a good answer. During the Trump, Chris Wright, Bergham administration,

40:01 we've actually green led a bunch of LNG export, so there's actually the demand for it. I've always been surprised there hasn't been LNG on one of the lakes

40:13 and then just shoot a shorter pipe up that way, through Ohio or through the Pennsylvania nub and wake up the Appalachia again, so

40:25 I wonder, does the LNG tanker or are the lakes deep enough? Um, but you'd have to have a modified version and I don't know if you can do, I don't know enough about it to know if you can do

40:36 lightering and, uh, and, and regassing out at sea is probably a, um, or at another port around, you get outside of St. Lawrence and do it around the port, but yeah, probably the, what you

40:47 need to make it economic, they probably can't get in there. There's a guy I know that's building an export thing on the, the northern part of Canada. Okay, so, so you're, you're right on that.

40:59 Okay But, yeah, and I mean, there's no reason not to be drilling in New York. No one, guys. No. You guys in the city don't even like going out to that part of the part of the state. Give me a

41:09 break. It's been done well in Pennsylvania, so it should work right across the line there. Yeah, and that worked, it worked really well. All right, so I always like to close the podcast with

41:20 five questions. All right, we got five questions Five questions. It's like, we got five questions. Like Jim Kramer's, what does he do at the end, the lighting round? Yeah, the lightning round.

41:31 So we'll

41:34 go lightning round. Some serious questions, some joke questions. Good. It was called parsley. Yep. And everybody thinks that was an homage to Brian's grandfather, right? Yep. Or was it really

41:46 because he just lost a bet to a whole foods cashier? Who told you that joke? That was it, he lost a bet. No, that's a great one. Okay, that was funny All right, was there actually decent food

41:60 out in Midland?

42:04 There were great people.

42:08 Midland has a great personality. Yeah. Food is not at strong point from my point of view. There's a good go to places, but

42:19 no, I don't think so. Nah, nah, nah, nah. Were you Midland Country Club or were you Greenleaf? Okay, I was a Midland country club. Okay, Paul Lucas was midland and Pete was, is it green

42:33 leaf or green tree? No, green tree. Green tree, green tree, yeah, yeah. Exactly, there you go. All right, CEO under fire. All right, well, crashes, investors get restless. Suddenly

42:45 everyone's an expert, be real, what's tougher? Explaining CapEx, disciplined to Wall Street, or explaining NFTs to Scott Sheffield. Oh, all good But back on the things crash, the first one to

42:59 shut things down and then react is, that was the best thing that ever happened to Harsley was being proactive after the death November of 2014. So we shut down all Riggs, our first public company

43:14 to announce it, but I'd like to have an NFT talk with Scott. It took me about two weeks to figure out how to buy one back in the day I think I bought one for 50 bucks, it's worth about. five cents

43:27 now and how to get it into a wallet. So that'd be a fun conversation. Yeah. So do you know the Yates family story on Bitcoin is oldest child, Charlie, on the home computer, unbeknownst to me and

43:44 mom, call it circa 2012, is mining Bitcoin? Oh my God. She mines nine Bitcoin. No way! And she comes to me and she's like, Daddy, I really need a pair of Yeezys. And I'm like, Well, how

43:55 much does that cost? And she goes, 600 dollars. I go, No, you don't get six hundred dollars. But Bob's, yeah. You don't get six hundred dollars, she's. So she buys a fake pair of Yeezys from

44:07 China for those nine Bitcoin. Oh. They show up, she's so proud. She stepped in a puddle and they just disintegrated. So about every six months I text Charlie, I'm like, Hey, how much of that

44:20 nine Bitcoin worth? Shut up, dad! Yep. Oh my God. A million dollars Yeezys knockoffs.

44:26 Exactly. So, all right, I've heard you quoted from speaking, when it comes to the energy transition that you're a believer in all of the above energy, have you ever been caught sneaking out of an

44:39 oil conference to high five a wind turbine?

44:44 No, I don't think I've ever actively done that. No. All right, tell me. I'm oil first, oil always, but we just need all the energy we can get. That was the background. Yeah, no, I think

44:55 that - I did finally buy an EV. So I didn't like must for a long time. I didn't want to be, because he's talking about mining 10, 000 surface acres in Nevada and taking out the surface, getting

45:09 his lithium, just putting it back, and everybody's cheering him. Meanwhile, we're over here providing domestic energy, oil and natural gas, and we can't get thanked for anything. So I got a

45:20 Ford Mustang Machi, and it was fine. It was good. while there has one of those Yeah right vehicle so Yeah Yeah I I love it so question five the final question matt will you be the man of the hour

45:37 at this year's roast OH man that would be the most boring rose on the planet will be the greatest race on the planet and that is a serious question I would I would always be honored I would say hell

45:49 yes to that would be honored to that I just fear for a boring roast no it will not be a boring russ you breaking news right here holy cow breaking news right here and just so you know hit play Oh my

46:03 God play about a week ago I got a call from a random seven one three number and there's this guy on the other line saying that he was friends with you he introduces himself as chocolates and I

46:12 remember thinking Manner I recognize the same from somewhere and he tells me that he's a person who hosts the annual lighting Cyrus and I immediately knew what the phone call was about he assured me

46:22 that in his family there's no secrets only surprises so surprise the kids and I think that you should do it it's for a great cause and I'm excited to see how the nicest guy in industry gets roasted I

46:34 love you good luck so that's right you did hell yes that's a huge honor yes and great cause great causes the best reason we'll do the offer there we go

46:46 we are awesome that's so cool that's a huge honor you you do we are talking on the way down here what you've done not only for industry but for the community and it's funny how you let off with the

46:58 under under appreciation but probably under most underappreciated man sitting across me right now for everything you've done for those kids and you're kind to say that the I figure I have a lot to a

47:10 tone for it I didn't negotiate with St. Peter when I get there I got to do something but didn't see that coming it's cool so we we get dates are you get dates out of BMC, we get dates out of Jeff

47:27 Ross, and then the really the only thing you have to figure out is who are going to be your roasters, because that's the way we keep it. Making glazer. She's coming this time. Perfect. I love

47:38 that. You know, Chef, he had Tyson. Yeah. Yeah. Big shoes to fill. That's right. That's right. All right. I got a short list ready of who can throw some, throw some roast out. That would

47:52 be awesome. Yeah Matt, thanks. Shocked to really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.