The Crude Truth Ep. 123 Molly Turko Live at the NAPE Expo 2025

Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Rey Treviño [00:00:00] Faulty Fridays and what’s that Wednesdays, Molly Turko stops by the Crude Truth booth at the Nape Expo 2025.

Narrator [00:00:08] In 1901, at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, the future of Texas changed dramatically as, like a fountain of fortune, thousands of barrels of oil burst from the earth towards the sky. Soon, Detroit would be cranking out Model TS by the millions, and America was on the move thanks to the black gold being produced in Texas. Now, more than a century later, the vehicles are different, but nothing else has truly changed. Sure, there may be many other alternative energy sources like wind and solar and electric, but let’s be honest, America depends on oil and entrepreneurs. And if the USA is truly going to be independent, it has to know the crude truth.

Narrator [00:00:51] This episode is brought to you by LFS Chemistry, We are committed to being good stewards of the environment. We are providing the tools so you can be to. Nape Expo, Where deals happen. Air Compressor Solutions, When everything is on the line. Air Compressor Solutions is the dependable choice to keep commercial business powered up. Sandstone Group. Exec Crue, Elevate your network. Elevate your knowledge. Texas Star Alliance. Pecos Country Operating, Fueling our future.

Rey Treviño [00:01:25] Well, hello again as we just continue another year at the successful Nape Expo where deals happen. What an amazing event it has just been. Thousands of people have been through this building this week and just deals have been made, connections have been made and what a great way to network. And one person that I got to see yesterday and I said you got to come back on is the infamous geologist Doctor Turko. Doctor, how are you?

Molly Turko [00:01:51] I’m great. Thank you. This is my first Nape Expo. So I had all the anticipation and all my expectations have been exceeded. I’ve really enjoyed the energy and all the geology and the prospects and of course, seeing you guys.

Rey Treviño [00:02:05] Well, because I didn’t know this was your first one. I mean it. So it just hit all it. It did everything you talked about.

Molly Turko [00:02:12] Yes, yes, I knew just, you know, from social media posts in the years past like NAPE is the place to be. It’s very exciting. It’s high energy. You get to see geology from all over the world. It’s kind of quick hit geology, selling prospects. But yeah, I’ve. I’ve enjoyed it. I want to come back. I, I want to invest in so many things I’ve seen and I don’t even know that’s possible. But there’s a really cool geology out there and it’s kind of just it’s good to see it all.

Rey Treviño [00:02:38] You know, when you talk about you, you’ve been here for a couple days because they asked you to come this year. Is that correct?

Molly Turko [00:02:44] Yes. I was on a panel on Monday and we talked about kind of new technology and new tools to visualize and image kind of fractures, faults and fluids in the subsurface and how that can help to increase reservoir productivity.

Rey Treviño [00:02:58] Oh, really?

Molly Turko [00:02:59] Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:03:00] I mean, I missed that one on Monday. I was traveling here on Monday, but really was a pretty good little panel and discussion. What was something that you really took away from that panel?

Molly Turko [00:03:08] Well, each of us on the panel kind of had a different background. We had some brilliant kind of geology advisors, and they had backgrounds in modeling. And then we had Galen with New Tech. He’s a brilliant. He provided some of the visualizations, but it really kind of came down to it takes a team. It takes a team like I’m a structural geologist. That’s my expertise. I love it, but if I want to answer the question, what is the impact of faults and fluids and fractures in my reservoir? There are new diagnostic tools and new technology, things like fiber optic data and sealed wellbore pressure monitoring and CPG and ways to kind of measure interference between your wells. And when I work with my engineers and my data analytic people who can interpret that data, and then they can tell me kind of what that means, and I can use my brain to think about, okay, that could tell us this about the fractures, that could say that that’s moving oil or oh, no, we don’t like it because that’s moving water. So fractures aren’t really good or bad. It just depends. And like those tools are helping us answer like how it depends.

Rey Treviño [00:04:14] Wow. I know, you know, again as an operator, if you could tell what’s moving like whether it’s oil or water that’s huge with that kind of technology.

Molly Turko [00:04:24] It is, it is and it’s I’ve been with Devon for a few years now, and the people there are like, we have the most brilliant engineers. So for me, I’m learning all about these. I’m not an expert in the tools, but I’m an expert in the rocks. So if they tell me what the tools are telling them and then I tell them what that means for the rocks, like we just have really good synergies.

Rey Treviño [00:04:43] Well, you know, Molly, if I may, I think you’re beyond an expert at the rocks. I mean, everything you’re doing and for my, my my teaser today I use your because you’re every Monday, Wednesday and Friday you’ve got a what’s that Wednesday faulty Fridays and Monday. I use that one in the teaser. But what’s the Monday?

Molly Turko [00:04:59] Faulty Mondays, fractured Fridays and occasionally what is that Wednesday?

Rey Treviño [00:05:04] And like we’ve talked about before, you literally will pull over on the side of the road and check things out. And but that’s what geologists do, you know. And and that just shows your passion for what you do. And, you know, I remember last time when we had you on the show, we briefly discussed the fact that your dissertation was on that southern Oklahoma, North Texas whole. Well, I call it the Fort Worth Basin, but you’ve got another fancy word for it, is that correct?

Molly Turko [00:05:30] Yeah. So like we think about we have the Anadarko, the Ardmore Basin, the Marietta Basin, which sits on top of the Wichita Uplift. And then once you go down there, you kind of get into the Fort Worth and the Permian and the eastern shelf and northern shell. We have names for all of it.

Rey Treviño [00:05:46] Right? And you know, when you go back and look at that. Oklahoma Fort Worth border. I mean, tons of shallow wells have produced millions of barrels. And what is it about that whole area that really just made it what it was and and still doing great today.

Molly Turko [00:06:03] So Texas and Oklahoma together have like a beautiful geologic history that goes back really 500 million years ago. And then even to, like we call it, the Pennsylvanian period. So there was a big mountain building events, and we had great source rocks throughout the geologic ages, and those became buried. That gave an opportunity for those source rocks that had, like, organic content to turn into the oil and the gas. So Oklahoma and Texas is like the place to be for the oil and gas industry, because we have great tectonic history where we had the opportunity to generate like so much oil and gas.

Rey Treviño [00:06:39] So, okay, granted, we’re talking millions of years ago, but, you know, I’ve done a lot of backpacking and camping in the Wichita mountains, right? So you tell at one time those things were actually even taught. Like, I mean, they’re not very tall, right? But. At one time, there was a mountain range, this whole area or that whole area of North Texas.

Molly Turko [00:06:55] So back like 500 years ago, the continents were breaking up and there was a tear that kind of tore in. And so that tear actually broke that down to where, like the magma that’s inside the Earth came up and then crystallized and that’s granite, but pretty much in a nutshell, turned into granite. But it was heavy and dense, so it sank. But then, like in the Pennsylvanian period, back in, like the 300 million years ago, the continents came back together. Shove those things back up and pretty much exposed them, like to what we see today. So they were exposed. They were eventually buried again by like other sediments that came on the top. But then those were eroded. And it’s cool because the landscape that you see in the Wichita mountains today was likely what that would have looked like back in the Permian period, like 200 million years ago.

Rey Treviño [00:07:47] Really? Yeah. And then, like, you know, people out there that don’t know the North Texas or I-35 there, you know, you’ve got hills that the highways been cut into. An you even see the different layers of rock there as well. And, you know, is that kind of then also a sneak peek at what it might look like back then?

Molly Turko [00:08:03] Yes, absolutely. So that’s where what we call the Arbuckle Mountains crop out. Those things were shoved up during that big Pennsylvanian mountain building event. And it’s great because we put I-35 through there. So I choose not to drive because I want to be looking at the rocks. Of course, I have to drive occasionally, but that’s a spot if you see, like school busses or big white vans on the side of the road, or even just a random person, I guarantee you there’s a good chance that’s a geologist.

Rey Treviño [00:08:31] And they’re just doing it. And you guys, if I may, you know, in our pre-production little meeting, you know, I was like, hey, how’s Oklahoma doing? You Oklahoma is Oklahoma. And I love it. And you’re like, what? You know, you said I love Utah in the. Nevada, and I was like, spoken like a true geologist where all those different layers are. Oh my gosh. Well, you know, as as we continue in 2025 or, you know, we’re already a month into 2025, you know, we got President Trump in office. Drill baby drill. You know from a high level there at Devin which is a multi multi multi multi million dollar. You know what’s the feeling in the office. Are y’all pretty pep in the step and excited about everything going on with with the Trump and everything moving forward.

Molly Turko [00:09:11] Yeah I definitely get the feeling that it’s very positive. I, I think we’re all kind of looking forward to exploring more. I also keep hearing this phase, like the shale boom is dying. I don’t know if I agree with that 100%, but I like the fact that that phrase is kind of pushing people and encouraging people to explore and more like go back to our root, our roots and look at like conventional systems. Can we go deeper? What can we do to even, like, develop our field even better? But I think there’s a lot of excitement for the next couple of years.

Rey Treviño [00:09:49] You know, when you when you talk about developing fields and conventional wells, you know, that’s something that we really do over at Pecos. We’re just good old fashioned vertical. Well, see what’s going on and all in that Fort Worth basin area. You know, what are some things that you’re seeing that can possibly, you know, help re stimulate or just kind of extract the oil from new wells that’s been there for millions of years.

Molly Turko [00:10:11] So for a really long time, we had the knowledge of like the conventional system in the petroleum system. And then we had the shale boom, which really kind of revolutionized like the United States. And then I feel like we kind of went through a technology phase, like the shale boom. We thought that was going to be easy. Right? Drill a horizontal well, fracking oil comes. But we figured that there are these like now there’s these hybrid plays where it’s not quite shale. Maybe it’s like a a clay rich carbonate or a dirty sand. And it’s not as easy as we thought it was going to be. So we had this building of technology to help us get the oil out better, and I feel like we’re going into the next phase of like we’re exploring. But now we have all of this knowledge, we have our kind of conventional knowledge or unconventional knowledge, and now we have this technology to back us. And I think we’re going to be able to find things and develop things more economically than we would have thought in our basic conventional period. But it’s going to go back to the conventional. We need our petroleum system and our five elements. We need those to work for us. But now we can we can use the technology to help us work it.

Rey Treviño [00:11:20] My God, Doctor Turko, that’s awesome. I mean, that gets me excited about everything going on. And I just cannot, cannot believe that, you know, as we wrap up here today and, you know, with Nape, I know you said you did some good looking around and that you even saw a couple projects that, you like, you know, what are some of the things that that that like when you are looking at a project, just things that pique your interest in something that’s, oh, man, this is going to make, you know, potentially a good money maker. You know, just when you’re looking at projects.

Molly Turko [00:11:50] Sometimes it’s kind of like a personal drive because as a structural geologist, I see somebody’s map. I see that they’ve mapped out a structure there, and I want to learn more about that. And that’s kind of like a personal thing because I love structural geology. And then I have seen a few prospects that are maybe a little bit larger of a footprint. I saw a great one on the east side of the Williston Basin, where maybe they could look at deeper formations, but it was a larger footprint, so something like that might benefit, like Devon Energy. That’s something that I could take to my manager and be like, hey, did you see this one? I mean, you could get a pretty good footprint in here. This could keep us going for a while. So as I’m looking at these prospects, I, you know, some of it’s personal gain like that looks cool. And then other is like, oh, can I take this to my manager and, you know, make my time here worth it for them because I want to come back. You know, I want to come back and do this again and hopefully next year. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:12:46] Well, I mean, just I mean, you doing a panel again. I’m, I’m really upset that I miss it because just hearing you talk again about, hey, we went from conventional to the petroleum to the shale to this mix, and now we’re going to go back. There’s a reason why your doctor, this doctor Turko. So I cannot thank you enough. You know, for those out there that are ever, you know, got any questions or anything like that, you know, how are people getting a hold of you?

Molly Turko [00:13:11] I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, so definitely Molly Turko T U R K O. Oh, I don’t think there’s too many tacos. You can find me pretty easily on there, but I’m super active. I’m pretty responsive to messages and just connect with me on there. That’s probably the best place.

Rey Treviño [00:13:26] Well, I cannot thank you enough. And I saw yes, I was like, can I get ten minutes with you? And so thank you so much And and that’s that’s another great episode here at the Nape Expo 2025. Doctor Turko, thank you so much.

Molly Turko [00:13:40] Thank you. Always a pleasure.

Narrator [00:13:41] The Crude Truth would like to thank today’s sponsors LFS Chemistry, Nape Expo, Air Compressor Solutions, Sandstone Group, Exec Crue, Texas Star Alliance, Pecos Country Operating, and Real News Communication Network.

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