Game Changing Technology in Oil and Gas Drilling 2025 Tim Paton and Allison Kelley

In this episode of The Crude Truth, host Rey Treviño sits down with Tim Paton and Allison Kelley from Superior QC — a company that’s literally applying NASA rocket science to drilling. From Blackhawk helicopters in the Army to cutting-edge algorithms that optimize horizontal wells, Tim and Allison share how technology is transforming production, safety, and efficiency in today’s oilfields.

We will lower costs for consumers by utilizing technology. Taking the well data from the rig to the cloud, and back for decisions. This helps understand the best position of the wellbore and extract the maximum amount of oil and gas from the hole. That maximizes investor returns.

We cover everything from:

• Why Superior QC is changing the game for drilling accuracy
• How physics and aerospace engineering are being applied underground
• The reality of women in oil & gas and breaking stereotypes
• Why operators — from majors to mom-and-pops — can’t afford to drill without survey accuracy
• The future of autonomous rigs and safer drilling
• If you’ve ever wondered what “rocket science” has to do with drilling, this episode will open your eyes.

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Highlights of the Podcast

0:12 – Teaser: Host Rey Treviño III says you don’t need a physics or aerodynamics degree to be succesful in oil and gas…but it sure helps! Our super smart guest coming up!

0:57 – Intro: The Crude Truth Intro

1:34 – Oil and Gas Industry update: prices, drilling, and production outlook.

2:04 – Guest intro: Tim Paton & Allison Kelley of Superior QC from West Texas and the Houston area.. boots on the ground!

2:43 – We meet Tim Paton with Superior QC: game-changing software for drilling efficiency. Horizontal wells are mentioned

3:24 – Dallas vs. Houston heat, which is more unbearable?

3:49 – Tim Paton’s background & Superior QC role, Houston based

4:31 – Tim was in the army, he was a stay at home dad for a bit, and now is a oil & gas professional

5:50 – Are Blackhawk helicopters loud or quiet?

7:22 – Tim shares military teamwork lessons applied to drilling, Iraq deployment, Host Rey shares family ties to military

8:14 – Superior QC’s NASA connection: rocket science meets oilfields

9:17 – “It’s literally rocket science what we do!”

9:24 – Allison Kelley’s marketing background & business development role in oil & gas

11:03 – Allison shares what has surprises her about oil and gas. Breaking stereotypes: women in oil & gas

13:22 – Who is Superior QC & their role within Patterson UTI “from bit to barrel”

15:04 – Cloud-based machine learning for drilling accuracy

16:29 – Survey data, downhole navigation & wellbore placement

18:15 – Improving production: oil +8%, gas +15%

20:14 – Rig count, drilling efficiency, and tech adoption

21:47 – The future: autonomous rigs & safety improvements

22:22 – What makes Superior QC different (FITTER vs. old methods)

25:04 – Eliminating human error in survey management

26:52 – Serving majors and mom-and-pop operators alike

27:43 – Why smaller operators need protection & peace of mind

29:01 – Superior QC as insurance for well success

30:29 – Passion for innovation at Patterson UTI

30:47 – How to connect with Superior QC (LinkedIn & website)

32:00 – Why every operator should care about well accuracy

34:13 – Closing thoughts & call for Part 2

35:11 – Sponsors + Outro (RNCN, podcast production services)

Please reach out to Timothy Paton on LinkedIn

Please reach out to Allison Kelley on LinkedIn

Check out StatusJet HERE

We want to thank our sponsors of  THE CRUDE TRUTH.

Tim Paton and Alison Kelley NASA rocket science to drilling | The Crude Truth 143

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

Rey Treviño III [00:00:00] You don’t have to have a physics or aerodynamics degree to be successful in oil and gas, but it sure as hell freaking helps. We talked to the experts on this episode of The Crude Truth.

Narrator [00:00:14] 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 change. 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 [00:00:57] 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 too. Nape Expo, where deals happen. Air Compressor Solutions. When everything is on the line, Air Compressed 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 III [00:01:32] Well, thank you as always for tuning in to another episode of The Crude Truth. Here we are, we are already basically in the last quarter of the year and we are just continuing to roll in the oil and gas. Prices are where they are and companies are continuing to drill wells. And trying to get the best edge that they can in producing those wells and maintaining that production. And today I am just super excited because I have on some amazing guests today, individuals that are out of both West Texas and the Houston area, individuals that literally boots on the ground. But as my teaser said, do have degrees in aerodynamics, their owner has a physics doctorate, if I’m correct. This company is actually changing the game when it comes to certain aspects of horizontal drilling. Today, I’m just so lucky and so blessed. My guests today, I am just super excited, are Tim Paton and Allison Kelley of Superior QC. Guys, thank you all so much for coming to Dallas. How are y’all doing?

Timothy Paton [00:02:48] Thanks, Rey, I appreciate it. Doing well.

Allison Kelley [00:02:48] Thanks for having us on.

Rey Treviño III [00:02:51] No, no, this is so exciting. I cannot thank you all enough for coming on because you guys, and we’ll talk about it in a little while, but y’all have some truly game-changing software, if you will, dare I say, lines of code that you have, this is terrible, crack the code and making these horizontal wells that already cost so much more efficient and more importantly, get more back from production. At Superior QC, and that’s it in a nutshell. But again, I just cannot thank y’all enough for coming on. How’s Dallas treating y’alls so far?

Timothy Paton [00:03:28] That’s great. It’s great and nice to get out of the heat from Houston for just a little bit.

Allison Kelley [00:03:31] It actually feels nice. Look, you think it’s hot here, but I’m gonna tell you something. Go to Houston, and you’re gonna be drenched when you walk outside. So this is actually.

Rey Treviño III [00:03:43] And my studio is real, right? The background is real?

Allison Kelley [00:03:45] Instagram’s real, guys! I didn’t know! I didn’t know!

Rey Treviño III [00:03:49] Well, thanks for watching the show, how about that? And Tim, for those out there that don’t know who you are, let’s start there, Tim, who are you?

Timothy Paton [00:04:01] Yeah, Tim Paton, VP of Superior QC sales department. Been in the oil and gas industry for a little over 10 years now. All with Patterson started at MS Directionals, part of the service company. And then upon the acquisition of MS and Superior Q.C. By Patterson UTI, moved over to Superior Q C side. Been there for the last coming up on eight years now, so yeah, Houston based travel all over for supporting our customers and all our agents.

Rey Treviño III [00:04:27] Wow, and now what did you do before?

Timothy Paton [00:04:31] Yeah, so before oil and gas, I was in the military, did the whole high school to flight school type thing, aviation for 14 years and then got out of that, spent a year being stay at home dad and going to PTA meetings and soccer practice and kid pickup and things like that. And while my wife was finishing up her degree, what a life is the absolute best way to describe it. I knew found respect for, you know, what, what parents do day to day, you kind of being in the military and being away a lot. I didn’t get I didn’t get to do those things. So doing that, it was it was great. But after about a year, I was I was ready to get back to work. My wife had finished up what she was doing. And I called a buddy out in West Texas and said, Hey, man, who’s who’s hiring out there? And two weeks later, I wasn’t Midland, Texas working. So it was a real quick transition from stay at home dad to working in the oil field.

Rey Treviño III [00:05:27] Yeah, now what’d you do in the Air Force?

Timothy Paton [00:05:29] So it was in Army. Oh, Army, I’m sorry. Yeah, Army. Yeah, Black Hawk helicopters. So yeah, it was great. I just, you know, a couple of deployments, things like that, was ready to get home and start doing the family life thing. So yeah it was a good transition though.

Rey Treviño III [00:05:46] Now, are Blackhawks really as quiet as they say they are? They can sneak up on people? They’re not very quiet. They’re very quiet, okay.

Timothy Paton [00:05:50] They’re not very quiet. Okay. No, they’re not very quiet they’ve got depending on where you’re standing and in relation to the the inlets and the exhaust it’s it’s a little bit quieter but you’re displacing a lot of air with those things and they’re pretty heavy. Okay so people know when they’re coming up. Oh yeah they know when they’re come in

Rey Treviño III [00:06:05] Okay, I must have them in how accurate it’s not like

Timothy Paton [00:06:07] It’s not like air wolf or anything like that. Oh, that’s what I was going to say. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

Rey Treviño III [00:06:12] Chuck Norris is not there? No, no, I think so.

Timothy Paton [00:06:16] Door is still on. Nick Cage flying Apaches with women’s underwear over his head. I never saw that happen, but apparently that’s a thing. Man.

Rey Treviño III [00:06:25] Now, which ones are better? I don’t mean better, but more maneuverable, the Apache or the Black Hawk?

Timothy Paton [00:06:30] I mean, maneuverability wise, the Apache is a little bit more, you know, different missions, attack, attack helicopters, as opposed to utility helicopter like the Blackhawk or cargo helicopter like Chinook, just different missions right, different, different payloads, different, different things that they do. So, yeah, but it all works together in tandem. When I was getting out, you know they were transitioning to a general like general support aviation battalions where you had a little bit of everything, all the different helicopters within. One battalion, then you deploy as a group. Whereas previous back 03, like early Iraq, I was, you know, we would deploy as one unit. We would have an Apache unit assigned to us. We would have a Kiowa unit assigned us and a Chinook unit. So the army said, let’s put all these together. And we can, you can train everybody together. They can all train as you fight type mentality. And then, you move everybody in a single deployment to wherever we’re going.

Rey Treviño III [00:07:19] Man, that almost sounds like on the Navy side with a carrier. It’s not just, when they say they’re moving a carrier somewhere, it’s like- It’s a whole fleet. It’s whole fleet, and I think it’s so cool that you’re in the helicopter division because whenever I hear helicopters, I think of saving lives. And my dad’s original oil and gas partner, and I love the opening where we talk about physics and aerospace, because he’s an aerospace engineer. And always we used to joke saying yeah, we don’t need aerospace to do only gas but it sure helps But he he flew the hueys in vietnam And it was like those went in and picked people up on a daily basis that were in harm’s way And so that’s so whenever anytime I think about helicopters like saving lives. So what what a journey you’ve been on

Timothy Paton [00:08:06] Sure. Yeah. And that’s a perfect analogy to write. You don’t need an aerospace degree. It wound up being helpful for me. Yeah. Right. Every riddle was a was a great, great stepping stone for me, go Eagles undefeated in football. OK, because we don’t have a team.

Allison Kelley [00:08:24] Oh my gosh, that was good.

Timothy Paton [00:08:26] We yeah, I mean, it was great. Chad obviously comes from from NASA, from an aerospace background. OK, being able to kind of speak in some like terms, being able to understand math and things like that that go into how our algorithms work. It just gave me a leg up when we were transitioning over to superior. Who’s Chad? So Chad Haneck is the president of Superior QC. Like I said, he was at NASA. He wrote guidance, navigation, control algorithms for the Orion spacecraft. So the Artemis missions recently that went around the moon, that’s going to take people back to the moon, those trajectory optimization algorithms are the same type of calculations that we use in our down-hole software now. So we’re literally, we have the shirts. It’s literally rocket science. We’ll have them up. We can get some for Ray. You can put them in the store and your viewers can go and get a rocket science shirt. But it’s literally, rocket science what we do, but it’s a great technology that we’ve adopted to oil and gas.

Rey Treviño III [00:09:19] Wow, I cannot wait to hear more. And that’s why I wanted y’all to come on. Allison, you are out there letting the world know about Superior QC, blazing a trail right now. For those out there that don’t know who you are, tell us a little bit about you, Allison.

Allison Kelley [00:09:37] So I started an oil and gas actually at an ad agency. And we had oil and glass clients. And so it was a different entrance than most. We did have oil and grass clients. And then when I switched jobs to my previous employer, honestly, with my marketing background, did they take a leap? Of faith in me, yes, but also like I did bring the experience. So they were an incredible company to work for. I think that my goal with them and my goal with Superior is to really amplify their voice, amplify our voice. I want people to who we are, more people. So yes, we have a great product. Yes, we can help you not collide into another world. Yes, we have all these fabulous things, but I think what I really, Alice and Kelly, I guess, to answer your question is, I like to give people their voice in a forceful way. I’m gonna make you have a voice. That’s my problem, is I’m like, no, we’re gonna go do this, we gonna go, Tim’s like, no we’re not, I’m yes we are.

Rey Treviño III [00:10:52] Okay, okay. Well, since you’ve been in oil and gas, what’s one of the biggest like, oh, this? Oh, it’s really not like that. Like, oh you see on the media that you know, maybe, oh this is terrible. But you know what’s one of the biggest surprises you’ve seen so far being

Allison Kelley [00:11:07] Okay, I swear to you, this is not just tooting somebody’s horn. This is real. So when you think about oil and gas, you think old men, which I love a good old man, but you think of old men that are just not very nice. They grew up on a farm or they grew up, they started from the rig and they got to where they’re going, so they like. Actually can be mean because they like work for it. And so that’s what you think of. And so you think it’s just a terrible environment to work in for women, you think it’s really hard and you think it’s not fair and we get the crap into the stick. And that’s just, I’ve found that to be so untrue, especially with the bosses that I have had, like Tim, all the bosses that I’ve had in oil and gas are like. You have a family, go spend time with your family. Get your work done, but go spend time with you family. Right. And I think that’s one of the biggest things. People don’t understand. People think that we’re just a bunch of like mean old people and it’s like, we’re just people. Yeah. We’re just people, we like to hang out just like you do.

Rey Treviño III [00:12:21] Well, that’s that’s always been my thing. It’s like, hey, guys, we all put our pants on one leg at a time. We all have families that we go home to just like everybody else. And hey, we like to we we we do just like like America and we like having I don’t want to say we like, having a good time. But it doesn’t mean, you know, and everybody that can mean different things for different people. But I know exactly what you mean. You know, you do get those that older generation and. By God, they’re gonna let you know that it’s the older generation.

Allison Kelley [00:12:53] But when they worked for it and they they can I’m not hating on them because I I actually admire them. There’s so much to learn

Rey Treviño III [00:13:00] Oh my god, yeah, they forgot more than I’ll ever know. Absolutely.

Allison Kelley [00:13:02] They are so admirable, like they know everything they were in the field, they were in the nitty gritty of it. And so now they’re like in these leadership positions. And I just, I like to go to like operator forums and listen to them speak because they’re so knowledgeable.

Rey Treviño III [00:13:19] Yeah, that is so true. Well, you know, you guys, again, I love joking about it in aerospace and physics with what y’all are doing. But, you now, tell us a little bit about Superior QC. Tim, give us a breakdown. Y’all, part of Patterson. Now, also give us quick, for those out there that may not know Patterson, give us the quick breakdown on Patterson and who Superior Qc is.

Timothy Paton [00:13:43] Yeah. So Superior QC, like you said, we’re a wholly owned subsidiary of Patterson UTI. So when you think of Patters and UTI, first thing that comes to people’s minds are our drilling rigs, right? And that’s what Patterson primarily is as a drilling rig company. Here in the past recent couple of years, the acquisition merger with Nextier combined with Universal Pressure Pumping at the time made Patterson a large completions company as well, along with Altera bits. And we have MS directional for MWD and motors and directional drilling side of it. And then, you know, the warrior for the equipment rental, things like that, right? So it’s just, it’s a large company that you can come to, kind of a bit to barrel, if you will, place where you can and get all of your services in one place with, you now. One company that comes together and works together collaboratively, as opposed to having everything siloed off, right? So it’s just breaking down the barriers between all the different service providers. I haven’t, you know, kind of that, that, that open talks, uh, the spirit QC piece of it, we’re, we’re the software piece of that. We don’t have personnel on location. We don’t have equipment on location, uh. We strictly utilize a cloud-based machine learning algorithm to provide a service. Um, like I mentioned, Chad took some space flight navigations and applied those to, down hole drilling. We have a 24-hour RTOC there in Houston that supports all of our work globally. So everything that we do, it’s manned from Houston. So if you call, if you send a text message, if your email, if go use our chat feature through our web front end, you’re going to talk to somebody in Houston, that’s going to help you out with your job. But basically we’re taking the accelerometer and magnetometer data from the MWD tool. And what’s NWD? NWM measurement while drilling or movie watching, dude, depending on on where you’re sitting, right? We’ll take that data, process it. It goes from the rig site to the cloud. All the data is processed in about three to five seconds and then return right back to the rig. So depending on latency of the Internet at the rig site, they’re getting a corrected survey back fairly quickly, being able to utilize that for their steering decisions, anti-collision scans, things like that. So it’s it’s reducing the uncertainty. In that result, helping better understand where the position of the well board is.

Rey Treviño III [00:16:01] And that’s key right there, better understanding of the position of the wellbore. I always like to tell individuals, whether it’s long-term people that may not know or investors, it’s like, it’s not really about finding the oil anymore. It’s about having the correct wellbored and extracting the oil from the ground. And any leg up that you can have in those attractions are always, always so important.

Timothy Paton [00:16:29] Absolutely. And we have different levels to that as well, right? Fitter, with fault detection, isolation, and recovery. That’s our base algorithm. That’s going to help us with our horizontal placement. Your left, right, left, and right placement. That’s gonna help you better understand where that World War is moving one way or the other. The next step to that, it’s kind of an iteration improvement. Hi-Fi navigation. So with Hi-fi NAV, what we do is we take in EDR data and we’re able to interpolate the structure that occurs between your static MWD surveys. Right now, traditionally, you use minnow and curvature traverse, which assumes a smooth arc between your static MWD surveys. What you’re doing is measuring over the course of 95 feet, a perfectly smooth arc, which anybody that’s ever, if you’ve ever dug a hole in the ground, you understand that you’ve got builds and drops and walks and things like that, that’s happening. So with that BHA, the same thing is occurring. We’re just able to model that, right? So every 15 foot, we’re going to put a survey in there and capture that structure. What that allows us to do is if that structure is occurring above or below your survey line, it’s going to accumulate into TBD error. So that’s going to hurt your geosteering effort. That’s going help you, you know, hurt you getting out of zone, right, you may get lost. So by mapping that structure, by giving that additional input, be able to give a much better idea to your geosteres, to your directional what’s happening with the VHA. On the flip side of that, when you move to the completion side, you can take an MWD survey log that was maybe 250 surveys. Now you’re giving the completion site 2000 surveys, right? So they can see where ESP or artificial lifts should be placed. So they’re not burning up pumps or anything like that. Where to place your fragments, right. Everything that comes into the completion sign and making sure that that well is productive for the next 10, 20, 30 years. That’s where that becomes impactful. And then the last piece of all that, that feeds into our directional advisory platform, which is Hi-Fi guidance. Um, what we’re able to do there is help with slide rotation segments with your conventional motor, steer or non-steer with, with your RSS. So basically giving you recommendations based off of what the BHA is, how it’s performing, um, effective motor yield, um how well you’re the, the DD, the driller is able to hold a slide. Uh, we can grade all of that and make compensations for those.

Rey Treviño III [00:18:39] Now, you know, when you dive into that info, how is it, like, let’s kind of hone in on, like one well, you know? How does that product really help out one well more, so to speak? You know? Is it important to have this on there, this software on that well, or is it what makes a difference?

Timothy Paton [00:19:00] Yeah, so I guess the biggest thing, right, is at the end of the day, you’re gonna measure the performance of a well based on the production, right? Regardless of how fast the well is drilled, how many records are set, how long a lateral is, if it doesn’t produce, then it wasn’t a good well at the of the end the day. So by utilizing a survey management software, by utilizing survey correction, what you’re doing is you’re optimally placing it as well as you can, using the most information that you can. What we’ve looked at, we’ve got a production study that we’re working on now. We’ve looked about 4,000 wells in the Permian wells that utilized our service in real time against wells that did not use Superior QC or weren’t using any type of multi-station analysis software. What we’re seeing is an improvement in gas wells of about 8%, so 8% improved production. I’m sorry, 8% improved production with oil wells and about a 15% improvement with gas wells. Wow. So it’s significant when you talk about how long that well is going to produce how much you know, hydrocarbons you’re going to be able to extract from the ground. That’s where it starts to become impactful.

Rey Treviño III [00:20:07] Wow. You know, right now with the price of oil where it is, have y’all really seen a downturn in just new drilling, new drilling as a whole? Or are you just seeing a bigger laterals and that’s making up for maybe the last production or last new trade?

Timothy Paton [00:20:28] So obviously the rig counts down, right? But on the flip side of that, we’re drilling more wells now, right. Drilling is becoming more efficient. I think historically the oil and gas industry has been very slow adopters of technology, right, you’ve got, and Alison kind of hit on it earlier, where you’ve folks that have just been doing this for a real long time, right and they’re comfortable in doing it. So if something new is gonna come in and upset that apple cart, they’re not gonna really wanna adopt that, right So I think in the past, past maybe 10 years or so, we’ve seen a large influx of technology to the oil and gas industry. And with that, just efficiency gains, right? On the rig side, on the pressure pumping side, completion side, everybody is starting to embrace this. It’s starting to embraced, you know, remote operations, unmanned wells at night, right, where you’ve got a remote DD, remote MWD. It’s just that’s what we’re moving to, right? Fully autonomous rigs, which I think that that’s going to be the future, right. As soon as we can figure out a way to do it effectively, to do it as quickly as we, can the more people you can remove from the rig floor, the safer it’s going be. So HSE comes into play and it’s just, you know, it’s going to become fully autonomous is what the goal is. Wow.

Rey Treviño III [00:21:48] Can you imagine?

Allison Kelley [00:21:49] I can, actually, and I think having those people be, I mean, that’s safety for those things. Like you said, it’s HSE, it those families, the people that are on the rig are going to be safer. They’re going to be in the RTSC, all the things. I think just to tack on to what you were saying, so yes, it is such a slow, oil gas is a very slow adopter from the short time that I’ve been in it. But again, in the same sentence, the short I’ve in it, we’ve actually taken some strides.

Rey Treviño III [00:22:20] You know, Allison, when it comes to Superior QC, what is making y’all different because, well, going back up. So when, with y’alls MSA, which it’s not a master service agreement, it is, what does it mean?

Allison Kelley [00:22:34] So we actually have FIDR, which is Fault Detection Isolation Recovery.

Rey Treviño III [00:22:37] Right, but what does MSA mean again? Multi-station analysis. So not everybody is using multi-station analysis and so what makes you guys though that different in the other companies that are actually using an MSA as far as multi-station analysis go?

Allison Kelley [00:22:56] So multi-station analysis is. I hesitate to say the old way of doing it, if I can, if I’m allowed to say that. Um, so what Chad has created is, we call it fitter, fault detection, isolation, recovery, and instead of having a human analyst sit and check, Oh, I think it’s going to be these three, right? And then the next shift comes on and they’re like, um, I think we need to correct for And they just like, they don’t, obviously there’s more thought that goes into it, right? They’re not idiots, but human error is a real thing. And so what Chad did was create an algorithm that we can check for 27 error sources and no human interpretation. Like the algorithm does it. And so that is a game changer for the industry, for lower positioning, for efficiency. You know, cause like, you know, like Tim said, it matters when you get into production. Do you want to have to drill another well? Because you were like a hundred feet off when you could have been right in the, like where you needed to be. And it’s just, I think it’s a huge gain.

Timothy Paton [00:24:14] Yeah and Chad’s first role when he came from NASA into the oil and gas industry was working for one of the large service providers that’s out there. He wrote their multi-station analysis platform and saw the inherent flaws with it. Like Allison talked about the human interpretation piece of it. You have a person and depending on the training of that person they’re having to choose a subset of error terms that are in an instrument performance model. So your instrument performance model is what you’re using for your anti-collision. It’s what you are using for well planning. It’s basically saying, I want to put my wells here, X, Y and Z on this pad based off of what uncertainties we know. This is where they’re going to wind up. Right. So the analyst will come in and choose a subset of those error terms in that model and say, I’m going to correct for these. If you’re talking about all of their terms there, there’s about 5,000 different combinations. So I could look at a data set and say, I think that it’s this. Alison could look it, say it’s, Ray, you could come in, look at it and say it this. And they all have levels of validity to it, right? But how accurate are we actually gonna get? How granular are we gonna be able to be with the data? So Chad took a step back and spent two years writing this algorithm. And I mean, just sitting in,

Allison Kelley [00:25:33] It’s just, it’s just quiet space. I asked him a question the other day and he goes, Chad’s coding. I can’t answer that right now.

Timothy Paton [00:25:38] Yeah, and he’ll he’ll get in and he just he just heads down and just codes right? That’s just how that’s how it works for him

Rey Treviño III [00:25:44] There are numbers and zeros and ones in the whole language. And, you know, that’s how we got started. Oil and gas variety custom oil and gas software for accounting. So definitely different style of code. But, yeah, no, they give you that zone and they’re like.

Timothy Paton [00:26:01] Yeah. So he said, how, how can I improve multistation analysis? How can I make this easier? How can eliminate the ambiguity of, of a multi-station analysis solution? And, and fitter was that, that improvement, right? So that’s fitters, just the step change iteration improvement over, you know, a 40 year old algorithm, which is great. I mean, it’s served the purpose of the time. It was an improvement over what was happening with single station correction. Um, it was just, you know, every time. Something’s out there, you’re always looking for ways to improve it, right? In our day to day, right, my car gets 35 miles to the gallon now, whereas my car in high school, I got maybe seven miles to a gallon, right. You know, it’s just, you want that constant improvement in your life. That’s what we’ve done at Superior QC is just improve the way that we provide well-wore placement and well-war accuracy.

Rey Treviño III [00:26:49] You know, you talk about improve, so y’all work with some of the majors. Y’all, work with some of those multi multi, you know, nine figure, 10 figure companies. You work with a family office that might drill six horizontal wells a year, maybe up to 12. Allison, what do you tell them about why they need to spend the extra money on your software to help them? Like, what are you saying?

Allison Kelley [00:27:12] Especially, I would say especially the smaller companies. It’s most important because if you think about unintentionally crossing a lease line, that’s gonna, they’re done for as a company. They can’t come back from that and that’s just true because millions, you’re gonna have to argue in litigation about all the things. And so you do that or you do a collision on accidents. So I think like the bigger companies for Anna, they don’t want that to happen. But I think the mom and pop companies are at risk for something like that. And I think… Small investment for. For certainty, and that’s what I would recommend. That’s what would do if it were me.

Rey Treviño III [00:28:03] Tim, what would you say to add on?

Timothy Paton [00:28:05] Yeah, it’s just like Alison said, right? Like you mentioned, we’re the survey management company of choice for nine of the top 10 acreage holders in the Permian Basin right now. Our opinion carries a lot of weight. We’re well trusted within the industry because we’ve proven that our solution works. For a smaller company, it is like Alison has said, another peace of mind. You’re checking on… That all your different service companies that you’re using, right? We’ve got over 200 automated checks that are in our system. So every time a survey comes in, it’s checking every piece of that, anything that a human could have touched, right. We’re trying to eliminate the human error aspect of it, as well as eliminate the humor, the human interpretation piece of survey management. All right, so it’s just, it’s peace of mind, it’s insurance for your well, ensuring that you know, you’re paying for what you’re, you’re getting what you paying.

Rey Treviño III [00:28:58] Oh, you know, guys, I cannot thank you guys enough because what y’all are talking about is something that is a true game changer. It’s something that every horizontal drill could really truly benefit from. And we’ve been able to talk about a few of the features today about that. Yeah, I know it’s, you it is nice to have a little bit more leg up, right? That’s Y’all y’all jokes like it’s not rock scientists, but sure

Allison Kelley [00:29:28] there’s rocket science it’s literally rocket science he came up with that you came up with that didn’t you?

Timothy Paton [00:29:32] No, so it was something that we kicked around. Ryan Kirby, our RSVP, we always kid with Chad, right? It’s, I mean, Chad’s great, so easy to talk to, the most intelligent person I’ve ever had, you know, the opportunity to meet and converse with. For sure. But talks to you in a way that you’re gonna understand what he’s saying. You make sure that you can understand what’s he saying. And I think that’s what that’s what makes it so great. That’s why I like getting up in the morning and going to work. I don’t it’s not like that that dread that you have like, oh, my gosh, I got to go to work, you know, I’m I’m excited. I’m passionate about it. Our team is passionate about it, right? We’re a very small piece of of Patterson, UTI, you know right around 35 employees total within the company. You know, Patterson is what six thousand. Employees total, right? But still a significant piece of Patterson, a significant a piece of the future and where Patterson’s going with technology advancements.

Rey Treviño III [00:30:30] Allison, as we get closer to wrapping up here, first of all, how can, I’m gonna ask you two quick questions and then answer them both. The first part of the question is, how can people get in contact to learn more about this? But then when somebody asks you for the first time, what do you do and what is Superior QC, what would you tell them?

Allison Kelley [00:30:49] So LinkedIn, LinkedIn, I’m all over LinkedIn, always available to answer questions. I would say that my, oh God, this sounds, so my main point, and I said this like day three when I started working, it’s like, so why would somebody not use Superior QC? And if I can get them to sit down and understand, Other companies are doing, I’m not down talking to them. I would never, but what Chad has created. Is literally rocket science. No, but it’s like groundbreaking. It’s pretty important. I agree, yes. And so that’s what I kind of, that’s my main goal at this company is to try to get people to understand that to save the millions of dollars that could potentially, look, you think probability of that’s pretty low, you know, whatever, I get that. I think that about random things all the time. But if it happens. And so that’s like on a massive impact scale. So if you think of just like a lower impact, like a regular, like, okay, like really every well could worry about this. If you go, like you said earlier, if you’re a hundred feet over here and you’re really supposed to be right here, you’re not getting the most out of that well that you can. And so you’re just blowing money. Like lighting it on fire. Lighting it on a fire. That’s what I want people to understand, for sure. Reach out to me on LinkedIn though.

Rey Treviño III [00:32:26] Tim same two questions and before before you answer there’s no doubt there’s a reason why superior has been around for so long getting to connect with you and your leadership team you can see why you guys are at the forefront and why y’all are in nine of the 10 leaves holes in the Permian Basin, and that’s not no small feat. So again, same two questions, you know, for people that want straight answers and when somebody asks you what’s superior QC, what do you say?

Timothy Paton [00:32:57] Yeah, so info at SuperiorQC.com is our email, www.superiorqc.com. That’s our website, our survey portal. Everything is on there. There’s case studies on there, there’s breakdowns of the different services that we provide, some videos and papers that we presented at different industry events and things like that. We’re a technology company, right? We’re here to help you. We have open communication. We’re gonna help serve as a consultant for you to just have a better understanding of where your wellboard is, right. Until we’re able to look underground, 10,000 feet, 15,000 and see where a wellboard is, everything that goes into that is math, right, so you wanna use the most advanced algorithm that you can to help calculate and estimate where your worldboard trajectory is. So, and that’s what we’ve tried to do at Spirit QC is use the most cutting edge technology that we can to help operators better understand and to better produce. You know, when you talk about where the weatherwall is placed and then when you come back for infills, how are you optimizing that lease of errors that you own?

Rey Treviño III [00:33:58] Wow. Wow. Guys, I cannot thank you all enough. You all, the information I’ve shared is tremendous. I feel like we barely scratched the surface. We did. We honestly did. We might need a part two. We might even. I was definitely talking to Tim about that in the pre-production meeting there for sure. But I do want to say thank you both very much for coming up. Yeah, thank you. For sharing about this because again, This is something that is groundbreaking. And as an operator and more importantly as a producer you want to get as much as you can out of those wells So for everybody out there that’s looking to get more production from their wells from day one Please reach out to Allison reach out the Tim superior QC reach out To me and we can get questions to them we always do look for an edge absolutely the oil and gas industry is always a little bit slower sometimes it’s real funny with the newer technologies but man once they catch on they’re like wildfire and wells do even better. I can’t thank you all enough for watching and please continue to watch support and we’ll see you all again on another episode of the crude truth.

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The Crude Truth with Rey Trevino

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