How One Mapping Tool Powers Oil Rigs, Armies, and Starbucks
Maps quietly run the entire oil and gas world, you just never noticed. This one breaks down GIS without the jargon, from Google Earth doodles to the software that decides exactly where to drill. Richard Webb and Zach Harlan of Exprodat explain how mapping tech places wells, dodges the neighbor's boundary, and powers everything from Zillow to the military. Plus drilling on Mars, conspiracy toll roads, and why there are no dumb questions when the whole planet is your dataset.
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Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.
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00:00 What URTeC is and why mapping matters
03:40 Life as a map and rock guy
06:42 What GIS means and the old guesswork days
08:40 The pro software behind the maps
10:29 Who uses these tools and how they learn
14:40 Placing wells and the horizontal revolution
19:11 Customizing every answer for the customer
24:19 Data overload and the days before GIS
29:45 Famous drilling mistakes and how basins differ
34:20 Finding things in an ocean of blue
38:26 AI, Collide, and toll road conspiracies
42:44 GIS everywhere, from the military to Starbucks
44:53 Mapping the sky and outer space
48:21 Breaking into GIS and drilling on Mars
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15 Jun 2026
The Tiny Material That Could Replace Sand In Fracking
Those giant pyramids of sand at every frac site exist for one reason, and it turns out the industry might be quietly running short on the good stuff. Curtis Wilie and Josh Johnson of Superior Energy Services break down how a coal byproduct called fly ash is shaking up the proppant game, why something three times finer than sand outperforms it, and how pulling forgotten barrels from legacy wells could matter more than drilling new ones. Plenty of analogies, zero shame about the dumb questions.
Click here to watch a video of this episode.
(https://app.collide.io/content/4o6hUML)
Join the conversation shaping the future of energy.
Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.
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Click here to view the episode transcript. (https://share.transistor.fm/s/08b5f694/transcript)
00:00 Why there's sand everywhere on a frac site
01:00 How hydraulic fracturing actually works
04:00 River frac in the 1930s and the search for the right proppant
06:00 The sand economy and a looming supply squeeze
09:00 Where sand comes from and the Permian conveyor belt
16:00 Meet EcoReach: fly ash instead of sand
19:00 Lighter, stronger, finer, and how it travels farther
21:00 Unlocking micro fractures and trillions of trapped barrels
25:00 Sourcing ash from coal plants worldwide
29:00 Walnut shells, steel balls, and other proppant experiments
30:00 Skipping the blender and pumping at six barrels a minute
33:00 Flowing like water and getting 90 percent of fluid back
35:00 The floor jack analogy for frac initiation
37:00 The godfather story and balancing the proppant triangle
43:00 Who's adopting it and the case for refracs
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5 Jun 2026
The NASA Technology Now Tracking Oilfield Methane
Methane is invisible, odorless, and far more potent than CO2 in the short term, so how do you actually catch it leaking? Brendan Smith, CEO of SeekOps Inc., explains how technology built for the Mars Curiosity rover ended up flying on drones over oil and gas sites here on Earth. We get into spectrometers versus satellites, why offshore detection is so tricky, what EU methane rules mean for US operators in 2027, and how SeekOps turns an invisible gas into something you can finally see.
Click here to watch a video of this episode. (https://app.collide.io/content/aBoGQYm)
Join the conversation shaping the future of energy.
Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.
Apply today at collide.io (http://collide.io/)
Click here to view the episode transcript. (https://share.transistor.fm/s/401cfb14/transcript)
00:00 Setup and the Power Hour combo
02:24 Crossing paths back in 2019
04:14 From PhD dropout to CEO
05:24 JPL, the first patent, and Mars rover tech
12:34 How a drone measures a methane plume
13:49 Ground, drones, planes, and satellites
19:00 Spinning out of JPL and the Equinor bet
24:55 What methane is and why it matters
29:01 Net zero and EU methane regulation
32:00 LNG, coal, and offshore detection
42:10 Lidar, photogrammetry, and 3D models
45:36 What's overhyped and the road ahead
49:24 Why Austin, and the Houston debate
53:16 Wrap up
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