Why Drilling Rigs Will Never Hit 1,000 Count Again (But Production Keeps Rising)

Peter Brecht00:01

All right, welcome to the Local Energy Podcast. My name is Peter Brecht. I'm flying solo today. Wade Spear is traveling around the world for the holidays, but I'm joined by our guest today, Brandon Vidrine. Brandon, how are you doing?

Brandon00:14

I'm doing well, how you doing today Peter?

Peter Brecht00:16

I'm doing great, man. Thank you so much for showing up and making this happen. I was introduced through, or we were introduced through Juan Macy, a friend of the show. I guess you know Juan in some way. Maybe, are you guys work together or?

Brandon00:28

Good buddy of mine.

Yeah, we've worked together in the past a couple different stops and just you've met him or you've spoken with him obviously an impressionable young guy. It's hard not to, kind of appreciate a guy like that, especially when you get to work with them and, spend time in the field, as we do, you sometimes you spend more time with those guys than you do with your family. Yeah.

Peter Brecht00:36

Yeah. Yes.

Absolutely, no, he's a he hustles for sure Right before I jumped on the show. I was kind of going through you know what I want to talk about and focus on and so obviously naturally go to your LinkedIn page and I think the cool thing that stood out to me the most was that you started out in the Navy Is that right? Okay

Brandon01:11

Yeah, that's correct.

I joined in the year 2000 and obviously there was a global incident in 2001 that we all know about that changed the experience dramatically. I was in just doing the training thing. Everything is, hunky-dory. Everybody's having a good time. And then all of a sudden it was like go time. Then, so the first couple of years, pre-9-11, no big deal. Then after 9-11, it was out at sea.

Peter Brecht01:20

Yep, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Brandon01:41

Real-time operations. Was, yeah, it definitely, like I said, the experience changed dramatically after that event.

Peter Brecht01:49

Absolutely.

And I can't imagine, well, so I have both my brothers are pilots. They love flying and doing all this stuff. And, military was always a potential direction for them. But, it was like they didn't end up going that route. But from a, an introduction to, OK, I'm going to go be in the Navy. Then all of sudden, one year later, I'm sure the stress increased dramatically in terms of like, oh, my gosh, I'm actually in the military. Right. It's kind of a different feeling.

Brandon02:16

Yeah.

Peter Brecht02:18

I would be curious, so you're going through that experience, and then all of sudden it's like, okay, I'm back home. I have an opportunity to go do something different. What brought you into the oil and gas industry?

Brandon02:33

So I got out the Navy, was an interior communications electrician. I had cool job in the Navy. And when I got out, I was seeking tech jobs, electromechanical stuff, stuff that I had already been trained on. And I just wasn't landing those gigs. I was like selling cell phones, just trying to navigate my early 20s, figure out what I'm going to do post-military. And I kind of took stock of the friends that I was hanging out with. And I was like, this guy's got a nice car. This guy.

Peter Brecht02:43

Okay. Yeah.

Right.

Brandon03:01

He's got a nice rental home. He's kind of got it going on. I'm you know, so asking me, what do you do? What are you doing? And I got two answers in South Louisiana. It was either they worked in the plants, huge petro refining, petrochemical industry down there, or they worked offshore. And I was like, okay, well, I got to get one of those jobs. I got to go offshore. I got to get in the plants, whatever it may be. I'm trying to make a living here. And just so happened, I got my, through a friend, got my first opportunity in wireline working offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

Peter Brecht03:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Brandon03:31

Yeah, did that for several years.

Peter Brecht03:34

So you went, I mean your first job was wireline offshore. Like that's, that's like, that was like your introduction to oil and gas. That's impressive. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon03:41

Yeah, yeah, I started out as a junior operator. So I'm the grunt on the team, it's a labor intensive position. And this is pre plug and per from the fracking boom. Is offshore, you're doing conventional completions. And so it's a grind, you're dealing with explosives, radioactive source materials. And when you go offshore, at that time, there's no relief when that rig turns over and they're ready for you to do your job and your operation.

You're gonna do your job until it's complete and sometimes that's two or three days and you're not sleeping. You're working through those two or three days until you get all your work done that they've called you out for. That's my grind.

Peter Brecht04:19

Yeah.

I, the,

The offshore stuff, it's so, I think you're doing mostly onshore now. Is that right? Is that you've kind of moved? Okay. But I mean, the, I was talking with a friend of mine, he works offshore and he's 30 days on 30 days off, all over the world, right? He'll, I think he's in Australia. This last stint he's been on is all been Australia and

Brandon04:33

Correct, yeah.

That's nice.

Peter Brecht04:49

His he likes it. He likes to travel and he's got kids and all that needs but he's like when I'm home, I'm home. I got 30 days at home. I don't have to worry about, I can throw my phone in the turn it off. It doesn't matter. No one's going to, but, his whole thing about offshore compared to onshore his, his, I guess his idea around it is that you're on this tiny rig. You're, not tiny, but you know, in terms of like where you can go, there's not much to do besides work. So it sort of feels, you kind of become

Brandon05:14

Yeah.

Peter Brecht05:19

I don't want to say indoctrinated, but it's almost like you're kind of all become very much like institutionalized almost, right? And I don't know if that's a fair representation or not, but like, I don't know what is that. Would you agree or disagree with that?

Brandon05:30

Yeah,

That's kind of a fair way of putting it. Your living quarters are usually pretty small, even on the bigger operations. And the way I like to explain it to guys and I'm working in there, always go, I want to go offshore. I want to go offshore. I'm like, you say that, but you don't really know. Here's the example I like to give guys is, you you have a kind of a rough day offshore, say maybe you and your coworkers are getting under each other's skin or something like that. And you work your 12 hours or however long and then you get off.

Peter Brecht05:44

Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon06:00

You got nowhere to go. So you're going either to the galley or you're going to the TV room or the rec room. And those same guys that pissed you off all day, they're still there. Whereas on a land rig, you have a rough shift. You can jump in your truck. You can go roll with the windows down, blast some music. You can kind of get away from the operation and decompress, whereas that's not available to you offshore.

Peter Brecht06:08

Yeah, yeah.

Right. Yeah, absolutely. Totally.

And also I think the level of I don't know, it's there's an intensity when it comes to offshore, too. I mean, you're spending, let's say, half a million dollars a day, right. To keep or I think there's something some crazy numbers, right. They get thrown out there. So I think the stress level of the operations and the planning and the involvement of everything that kind of goes into it is just a different, it's different structurally.

Brandon06:41

Yeah.

Peter Brecht06:51

I mean, you don't have small operators going offshore. It's generally the big guys that are spending the money on it.

Brandon06:57

And yeah, those numbers kind of vary greatly, whether if you're inland waters or just off the shelf or obviously you get on a deep water operation, it's probably upwards of over a million a day. But yeah, there is an intensity because first of all, the equipment's bigger. Everybody that works offshore, you're a rigger because everything revolves around the crane. So it doesn't matter what your job is, you're dealing with a crane operator. That's how you move equipment around.

Peter Brecht07:06

Yeah, yeah. Right?

Yeah.

Brandon07:25

That you're dealing with bigger equipment, heavier equipment, bigger pressures, yeah, like as far as wellbore pressures and things like that. Yeah, it's just a, it's a different scene altogether from US land.

Peter Brecht07:37

I mean the blowout preventers alone are so different. You look at a blowout preventer, right, yeah, huge. Right, you don't. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Brandon07:41

You're talking 15K stacks that are three stories tall. Yeah, yeah. You don't have that on land. You your typical stack on land is still pretty big. It's 20 foot, but it's also

Not made for 20 inch conductor casing or something like that, that they're using all show, you know.

Peter Brecht07:54

Right, exactly,

100%. So now your day job, what are you doing now on a day-to-day basis? Your remote automated directional drilling, something along those lines?

Brandon08:09

I was remote and doing automation for several years and I just had to the industry is very cyclical and you there's, you got to move around. It's a, to be a journeyman in this industry, takes, you've got to, you got to go where the work is. So I recently got out of remote operations and automated directional drilling. So I'm back in the field here in the Northeast. I'm just working for the major operators here in the Marcellus and the Unica Shale area.

Peter Brecht08:35

Okay, what's activity been like up your way?

Brandon08:38

It's actually been pretty busy up here. Think Texas has kind of seen a decline, whereas the natural gas prices have been pretty steady and on the rise for a while now. So it's actually not a bad time to be in the Northeast. Yeah.

Peter Brecht08:40

Okay, yeah.

Yeah.

That's reflective of everybody I've talked to up there. It's like, we're

Busy. Was, got to FaceTime someone a couple of days ago that was on a frack job in North Dakota. And he's like, we're busy, man. Like we're just, I'm just one place after another. Right.

Brandon09:03

Yeah,

Well, I've been as busy as I want to be, if not more busy, since transitioning back to the field. Yeah.

Peter Brecht09:06

Yeah. Good.

I'm

Curious with holidays coming up, what's your, does your schedule slow down a little bit or is it like, man, we're just, we just, it's just full throttle all the way through and it is what it is. Yeah.

Brandon09:19

No, there's no, you occasionally

Will find an operator that might do what they call a hot stack and they'll like come to a stopping point and give some guys days off during the holidays, but that's pretty uncommon. I basically conceded Thanksgiving, I'm taking a vacation next week and with the knowledge that when I come back, I'm probably gonna be working for Christmas, you know? Yeah.

Peter Brecht09:36

Yeah, yeah.

I gotcha. Yeah.

I've always been, like family business, self-employed along those lines. And I, know, not anything in the, on the oil field where I've been involved in that, but it's like, maybe you take maybe Thanksgiving dinner, right. And Thanksgiving dinner, you're even then you're talking about work and like, what's gotta be done, the next day. And it's, just, it always goes, right. It's always going. Well, so kind of, we talked a little bit before we jumped on this call.

Brandon10:00

In the back of your mom and dad.

Peter Brecht10:11

Talk about automation, right? So you mentioned automation is something that you're interested in or sort of maybe becoming more prevalent in your industry, your side of what you're doing. Can we talk about that a little bit more?

Brandon10:21

Yeah.

Yeah, so all of your major operators, they're looking for ways always to go faster, improve processes, improve workflow. And the hardest thing to combat on a drilling rig is the human element. Because you have usually four drillers assigned to that rig that rotate out, and they all might do things a little bit differently, whether that's making connections, whether that's back to bottom, getting back to bottom drilling, or whatever that may be. And through automation, you're

Able to eliminate some of that human factor by automating certain processes on the rig. And I was working for neighbors for several years and neighbors is kind of a global leader in that respect. They're known for drilling global, global drilling contractor major, but what they've really become in over the last several years is I like to say they're not even a drilling company, they're a software company now, because that's what they've really focused on as far as their development and stuff. So

Getting to see that up close and personal as a guy coming from the field, very, I was very skeptic, I was like, I don't know about these robots taking over and doing our jobs, but the proof is in the results. You start looking at the KPIs and how they can automate certain processes and eliminate that human factor. Whereas one guy's taken two minutes to do this process. One guy's taken a minute, 30 seconds to do this process, but we can automate it. And every, all of the drillers are now.

Peter Brecht11:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brandon11:46

Taking the same amount of time to complete a process and that improves efficiency over the whole operation.

Peter Brecht11:53

One of the first man this was like a couple years ago But I was talking with my offshore buddy and you know he's like, know We went from manual pipe tongs now and we're now, you know You got the iron roughnecks now and all these like different like little things that are becoming Like we at first they sounded kind of like far-fetched or maybe oh, no one's gonna always use this but obviously increases safety increases efficiency but I mean

When it comes to what you're doing, what, when you say automation, like what are these systems doing to automate? It like learning the pattern of the other three drillers and then helping you sort of follow the same thing or how would you say that works in real time?

Brandon12:36

So there's a few different things, just to say like making a connection. You've drilled down a standard drill pipe, you're ready to make that connection. And so from the process of picking up off bottom, setting the slips, breaking off the top drive or whatever it may be, flashing onto the new stand, connecting that, they've been able to automate these processes of making a connection and getting back the bottom. And so it's not just making the connection, it's actually picking up off bottom,

Peter Brecht12:59

Okay. Yeah.

Brandon13:05

Ramping down the pumps, bleeding off the pressure, making the connection and getting it back to bottom. One of the terms in the industry that we use is called weight to weight. So it's having the weight on the bit to when you pick up and get weight back on the bit after making the connection. That's what all the drilling engineers are looking after. They're looking at weight to weight time like that. How can we prove upon that? With automation, huge strides, because again, eliminating the human element.

Peter Brecht13:31

Interesting. So how many, how many are you do drilling at once? I mean, is it possible for a guy like you to drill 10 wells at the time? Or what, what's the limit?

Brandon13:41

No, So

At my busiest, we were overseeing six rigs at a time, but I was also responsible for the directional drilling steering decisions. So I'm not just overseeing the automation and making sure that's running as it's intended. I'm also making decisions in real time to steer the well and guide that drill bit where it needs to be to remain on target.

Peter Brecht13:45

Yeah. Okay, okay.

Brandon14:06

So that adds a different wrinkle to the scenario, but there's other people that might oversee a dozen rigs, but they're not responsible for that decision making. They're just making sure the automation is in tune.

Peter Brecht14:18

Okay, gotcha. More like an IT sort of guy that's making sure that everything's kind of going together. They're drilling, okay, they're drilling, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Brandon14:22

No, these are drillers. No, these are guys that they have to know what the operation

Is. They're monitoring so many variables and all the instrumentation on the rig. They're constantly looking at their screens with all the lines on it and all the numbers. They have to know what that stuff means. Can't just be a, they have to know what it means as it relates to the operation and not just understand that it's a squiggly line on the screen.

Peter Brecht14:37

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah, that deep domain expertise has to be there, right? It's like, and if they do know more about the tech side, great, that's obviously helpful in other facets, but if you don't know the drilling side, we're not even gonna be speaking the right language, right? So.

Brandon14:52

Correct.

Exactly. There's a whole vocabulary

Out there that, if you don't understand the vocabulary and understand what that translates to in the real world, you're not going to be able to optimize, you know.

Peter Brecht15:05

Yeah. Yeah.

So bigger, bigger companies are probably implementing this quicker. They probably have this, maybe more data or I don't know, just more capital, right? We could just call it capital too, even that they're able to deploy on this stuff, but can smaller drillers do the same thing or not yet.

Brandon15:24

Yeah.

Smaller operators can do it, it's just they're a little bit more apprehensive to it because they're, maybe they don't have the investor push, the private equity, not private equity, but publicly traded companies are, always pushing for shareholder returns. Yes. Your smaller companies, they're very afraid on a smaller scale and be more apprehensive to implement those because there's a cost factor and then there's also a learning curve.

Peter Brecht15:40

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, shareholder return. Yep, yep, always.

Brandon16:00

You've been drilling these wells this way for however many years and somebody comes in and tells you, no, no, no, this is what we think is best. You're like, maybe a little bit more hesitant. They're not as data driven with your smaller operators, it seems, more good old boy type stuff.

Peter Brecht16:08

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And you hit on something there too, that I've been reflecting on this a bit for the past two weeks. We've been building this tool on Vertex, so Google Vertex, like it's a rag system and it's like basically taking all of our domain knowledge in oil and gas. And I'm just a small piece of this whole equation, right? I have people behind me that know a lot more than I do. Wade is one of those people, right? But we're building out this system.

And what I've kind of noticed is, or what I've been thinking about is that these jobs that used to take, let's say two years for somebody to get really good at are now, I think the learning curve could be shortened even to something as like you go from 24 months down to maybe eight to 10 months where someone's just as proficient because of the data or the ability to intake and learn from all these points.

Do you think that's a possibility in your job or is it like, look, it's just time in the seat and that's what it's, that's what it is. And so it's going to be that.

Brandon17:17

I mean, I hate to push back on your comment, but for something like what I do, yeah, there's just so many scenarios that you have to see play out that take time, because, yeah, you can, I could probably train somebody to be a directional driller in six months to a year, but they're not going to be like a stud directional driller because they haven't encountered, they haven't taken their licks and, some stuff you might, some scenarios you might only see once a year, sometimes, might only see a scenario over a couple of years.

Peter Brecht17:21

Yes. Yes.

Yep. Okay.

Right.

Brandon17:46

But in my role, you're expected to know how to proceed and how to keep moving even in uncommon scenarios. So that's how I'd answer that. I there's other jobs, say like MWD. I'm sure you're familiar with that. Those guys are.

Peter Brecht18:03

Gotcha.

Brandon18:10

Can kind of get over that learning curve a little quicker. But once you start getting into the more specialized roles, like well-site consultants and directional drilling consultants, you really, it just, it's time to see, yeah.

Peter Brecht18:16

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's kind of what I was looking for is like, is that even possible with what you're doing? And I think, I, it's kind of that, that makes your job fun to me. I don't know. It sounds interesting, right? It's like, okay, there's different things. I don't know. I could, this, might come across something, entirely different that I've never come across before. And I'm sure that happens even after a decade of doing this, right? You could still very easily come into a situation where like, I got to take all of my seat time, all my knowledge.

And I gotta just make a decision based on what I think is gonna work. Is that line up more, maybe? Okay.

Brandon18:55

Yeah, no, and I took my

Licks early on in my career when I first became a DD, because I mean, you don't know what you don't know until you live through it. At this point, I've kind of, you I've become a subject matter expert and I'm pretty confident. There's not much you're going to throw at me or that I'm going to encounter that I haven't seen. So I'm able to proceed with confidence, but it wasn't always that way. There was, I had some bad days before for sure.

Peter Brecht18:58

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

100%.

Right. Yeah.

If you don't mind me asking like what are some of those like those common early days? Situations that that you've come across or that you would see others come across like is there is there like a trend where it's like man like they always miss this particular thing or is it is it just depend on the basin like what's is there anything there?

Brandon19:46

A lot of times it just comes down to confidence as far as like say the company men or the well-site leaders, if they know that you're kind of green or inexperienced, sometimes they don't want you on their location. And so they will look for any kind of slip up or any kind of hole in your game. Sometimes they'll ask to have you replaced just because you don't know. Like say you're doing a sidetrack, which is a...

Something it's a dirty word in our industry because something went terribly wrong if you're doing a sidetrack, but it's not something that you do every day. And so once you until you have a couple under your belt, if that well site leader doesn't have confidence in you, like they'll let it used to be a lot rougher. It's a kind of a gentler oil field today. And with the time that I have in it, I'm able to represent and present well and have the experience but it wasn't always that way. So

Peter Brecht20:18

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

No, I've talked to like some of my favorite conversations have been with guys that are like 80 years old and, they're retired, but they've got some war stories and you can still tell like talking to a guy. My gosh, he was in Kansas. But anyway, see like 15 minutes on the phone and like he just kept going and I wasn't going to stop him because I wanted to hear more. Right. But he had some just the colorful language he was using on some of these things. I was just like, man,

Brandon20:53

All right.

Peter Brecht21:09

Like you'd have HR over there in a second, think these days, on some of these companies at least, right? So.

Brandon21:12

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny how

You kind of mentioned that because over my career, I've navigated from the field to the office back to the field back to the office. And I remember my first real like managerial job, going into that corporate world. Yeah, I had to learn a whole new vocabulary all over again. And, you thought you had good soft skills until you get into that world. And it's like, no, you got to tone it down.

Peter Brecht21:29

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, right. Yep. Yeah, it's a little different.

Yeah, I hear you 100 % there. So looking at kind of the future of everything where it's going, I'm curious your thoughts on like, what do you think we'll be talking about 10 years from today? Do you think we're still, and I know this is kind of a futuristic question, but you've kind of tapped into something here where it's like, what do you think we'll be talking about in 10 years and

Do you think it'll be any different really than what we're talking about now? Because it seems like again the cyclicality of this industry and just the resilience of the people in it and what we're doing. I mean, it's not like from a process structure. I don't think it's going to change too much, but I, what do you think?

Brandon22:23

So what, with your common unconventional horizontal well that is completed with the multi-stage tracking, plug and perf, it's not even really like an exploratory operation. It's become more akin to a manufacturing operation. And I see it going further down that line. We've been demanning the oil field for years as far as like, the rig count was 2000 or something back in 2012. Now it's around 500, but they're drilling more wells and more footage than ever before.

And that trend is going to continue. They're also going to continue with implementing automation and remote operations. And the amount of men in boots on the ground is going to continue to decline with the demanding. Like said, it's pretty much become a manufacturing operation, in my opinion.

Peter Brecht23:11

Huh.

No, that's an interesting way to put it. I hadn't thought about it that way. But that, I guess that makes sense where it's sort of like they're able to get more out of the resources that are already in place, right? So why not? Why not keep going? Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon23:24

We drill faster and farther with less equipment

And also with less men. We drill more than we've ever drilled before, but the rig count is never going to be beyond 1,000 again even.

Peter Brecht23:38

Yeah.

Have you ever been involved in like a, like a new prospect, a new wildcat, something like that, where it's like, we don't know what we're going to get, but we're, just fingers crossed. Or is it been more, more of a, okay, we know the area pretty well.

Brandon23:52

Early in my career, when I was still doing the conventional offshore stuff, yeah, there was a lot more uncertainty. But since the horizontal shale boom that popped off late 2000s, 2009, 2010, they know where they're going. And they've drilled so many. I like to make the joke on site, yeah, this is a wildcat, and there's 12 other wells right there next to it. Because geology, yeah.

Peter Brecht24:19

Right, yeah.

Brandon24:20

We like to pick on the geologists and they're like weathermen, they're paid to be wrong. They're trying to steer us where to go, then it's like, we got 10 offset wells right here and we're still like, where are we going?

Peter Brecht24:25

Right, yeah, yeah.

Sure. Yeah, that's funny.

The geologist, I don't know. There's some guys that I've talked to that started out in geology and then got into drilling, and I think there's some fun nuances to both sides of it. I don't know, but your weatherman comment is spot on for sure. I think that's a common thread. Right, right, right. Yeah.

Brandon24:48

Yeah, no, Yeah, they were paid to be wrong. It's all in jest, you You got to have a good relationship with those guys. When

You're a drilling team and your geologists are meshed and gelled, it definitely helps. Because they'll listen to our feedback as well, too, because we're drilling it. We're seeing how the torques or the ROP or whatever the variables are. And they're seeing one thing.

Peter Brecht25:10

Yeah.

Brandon25:16

Based on a single data point of a gamma ray sensor or something, but it's like, well, I think this is where we're supposed to be because of how it drills.

Peter Brecht25:23

Yeah, right. Feels a little different

Than maybe what they're thinking, right? What, so who are some of the, besides geologists, who are some of the other people that you're talking to or interacting with, as you're doing your job here?

Brandon25:27

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

In my role, it's a, mostly the well site leaders, the company men. I have to deal with the actual drillers and their tool pushers or the rig managers. And then all the way up to the drilling engineers and geologists in the office. So those are the main folks that I deal with. I'm always giving instructions to the drillers. I'm making sure the tool pushers got the tools that the rig needs for whatever tools we may be running that day.

Keeping the company man informed, making sure he feels good, just making sure he's comfortable. As much as you can take any kind of stress or worry off of his shoulders, then it makes all of our lives a lot better. On a really good day of drilling, I don't even have to have to talk to him. I see him in a safety meeting, tell him what we're gonna do, what we got going on, and I do my thing, and that's a good day, you know.

Peter Brecht26:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Is the company man the most stressed out person on the job site most days?

Brandon26:35

Nah, that's probably the driller. The actual driller. He's the one that's actually running the rig. He's got a bunch of hands to look after. Some of them are green, brand new to the industry. His number one job is to not hurt anybody. And I would say that's the most stressful. The company men can be busy because they're, they got their biggest headache is truckers Truck drivers coming in and out all day that they don't know what's going on. They're just here to make a delivery and then they...

Peter Brecht26:37

Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brandon27:03

They want to bug them at the wrong time or whatever, get a ticket signed. It's a lot of busy work and they have to keep records for everything. So they're busy, but I wouldn't say they're the most stressed.

Peter Brecht27:07

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. That's a total fair comparison. So

Great. Well, we're coming up here on the 30 minute mark. I've enjoyed our conversation. I want to be respectful of everyone's time and your time. But, is is where can people connect with you or give us a handoff? And I don't know if you're on socials at all or active, but

Brandon27:26

Bye.

Peter Brecht27:34

If people want to learn more about you and what you do, yeah.

Brandon27:34

Not really active, but

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm easy to find there. I don't really do much socials or anything like that. I'm not promoting anything. Just a working guy. Just a guy that can give you some industry insight. But yeah, as far as if you've got directional drilling questions or MWD stuff or just, yeah, I'm always willing to have a conversation and be forthcoming and, frank.

Peter Brecht27:42

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Well, I am so thankful for you coming on Brandon. This has been a fun conversation for me. I think I've smiled more on this episode than I have any before. Just kept it so engaging and interesting. So thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. Yeah, so we'll see. Yeah, no, there's always. No, that's how we keep it that way on purpose because.

Brandon28:11

That's great.

Well, I hope it able to provide something useful for you. I'm not sure. It was kind of a freestyle format, so I didn't really know what you were trying to get out of it.

Peter Brecht28:30

Man, I there's too many podcasts that people listen to and maybe I'm wrong on this. We'll see how if this keeps going or not. Right. But it's like it's so structured. It's like, today we're to talk about the news. And then we got it's like, no, I just want to hear from people that are doing the work. Right. That's who we want to talk to and get the most out of. Think our very first conversation was we were talking about frac plugs, out of just the most random subjects. And it was just so much fun to learn about everyone's opinion and thoughts and.

You how they're dealing with it and the real work, right? Cause that's where it really happens, with the tools.

Brandon29:04

It's funny you mentioned that I have a little miniature frac plug right here on my desk. Yeah, it's a miniature frac plug. No, no, this was just for a, just swag, just a conversation piece for the desk.

Peter Brecht29:09

Do you really? Yeah, that's awesome. That's not good for much. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

OK, so let me ask you then, just while we're

Still here, what is your opinion on Fragplugs? Do you like them or do you not like them?

Brandon29:27

Well, one of my office stints for over three years, I was a district manager of our company here in the Northeast that that was their main business was providing for that plugs to the major operators up here. So learned a whole lot about them. I think dissolvables are probably not quite ready for full time. They're still they still have a high failure rate. But obviously, with that plug, it's all about composite material that drills out

Peter Brecht29:37

Okay. Okay.

Brandon29:57

Really easily and you don't want to have any metal in them as far as the slips. The thing, especially here in the Northeast, they'll have a hundred, 150 stages in some of these wells and these extended reach laterals. It's, to have a hundred percent success rate, it's tough to come by. Especially think about the pressures you're dealing with when you're fracking, pumping down, whatever, a thousand gallons a minute or whatever at 8,000 PSI.

Things are gonna fail. But yeah, they're essential to unconventional completions. It's called plug and per for a reason. Every stage has to be plugged and perf. So there's a frac plug for every stage. And yeah.

Peter Brecht30:35

Right. Right.

Yeah, dissolvables

Don't for some reason I don't think many we got more people that dislike them than like them. But that's just nature of it,

Brandon30:47

They have

Their purpose. I don't think you'd want to plan an entire completions program around dissolvables, but maybe a handful of stages at the toe, at the bottom of the well. Because by the time you get to go drill those out, they've had time to fill it in. If you start trying to run them way up high and then you got your mill rig come in to drill them out, they're probably going to fail.

Peter Brecht30:57

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, gotcha. Well, Brandon, thank you so much for coming on today. I really enjoyed our conversation. I've learned, just your approach of everything is just so clean cut and professional. Like, it's just a different take on the oil field and how it's done. So I really appreciate it. I hope you have a great day. And for everybody else listening, thank you for listening to our conversation with Brandon Badrine, and we'll see you again next week.

Brandon31:24

Thank you.

See you Peter.