Energy Bytes

Digital Wildcatters
Digital Wildcatters
  • 4.2 (5)
  • Technology
  • Updated Weekly

Welcome to Energy Bytes with John Kalfayan and Bobby Neelon. Your essential guide to the intersection of data and energy. This podcast dives deep into the world of energy, shedding light on how data, AI, and technology are revolutionizing this sector. Each episode equips listeners with insights into the most efficient tools and resources, paving the way for a data-driven future in energy. From technical nuances to broader industry trends, Energy Bytes offers an unparalleled perspective on the evolution of the energy industry. Join us as we decode the algorithms of energy, one byte at a time.

  1. 2d ago

    EP 88: Kevin Kong from Everstar

    Building a nuclear reactor in America used to take three years. Now the paperwork alone can eat a decade. Kevin Kong, CEO and Founder of Everstar, went from scaling Bird scooters to using AI to untangle nuclear permitting, supply chains and robotic welding. We get into why large reactors can beat SMRs on cost, how the US lost its nuclear supply chain, the jobs a new reactor fleet could create, guarding export controlled data, and how they always knew when Shaq was riding a Bird. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 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 Click here to view the episode transcript. 0:00 Intro1:12 From Bird to Everstar6:33 The library book that started it all10:16 Nuclear myths and the Watts Bar story13:49 How the US lost its nuclear edge19:38 AI for nuclear permitting27:05 Models, physics and regulation32:58 SMRs vs large reactors41:34 Data centers and nuclear jobs44:05 Knowledge gaps and robotic welding50:16 Security and export controls53:43 Simulating plant operations58:43 Building across teams1:01:54 AI native energy companies1:06:59 Scaling chaos at Bird1:09:39 Book picks and where to find Kevinhttps://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

    EP 88: Kevin Kong from Everstar

  2. Oct 19

    EP 87: Mahyar (Matt) Mohajer from Blue Spark Energy Inc.

    Scale builds up downhole and the usual fix means chemicals, pumps, and a pile of equipment on surface. Mahyar (Matt) Mohajer, CTO at Blue Spark Energy Inc, breaks down a wireline tool that fires electric pulses to shatter it instead, and why bringing samples back up matters just as much. Plus twenty years at Schlumberger, opening a Houston headquarters, and what a five month old team can build when AI does the heavy lifting. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 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 Click here to view the episode transcript. 00:00 What Blue Spark Doeshttps://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

    EP 87: Mahyar (Matt) Mohajer from Blue Spark Energy Inc.

  3. Oct 12

    EP 86: Samra Nawaz & Vinay Acharya from WellWorth

    Upstream finance teams have been white knuckling giant Excel models for decades, and the husband and wife team behind WellWorth thinks that era is over. CEO Samra Nawaz and co-founder Vinay Acharya talk with John and Bobby about automating capital structure logic, running 50 scenarios at once, why they built an Excel add in after swearing they never would, and how AI lets a two person team ship like a much bigger one, plus a detour into local models and soaring GPU prices. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 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 Click here to view the episode transcript. 0:00:00 Intro0:00:51 Meet WellWorth0:03:23 Why finance still lives in Excel0:09:02 Building for flexibility0:11:20 Getting data in and out0:17:08 Automating capital structure logic0:19:53 Build vs buy0:22:25 A&D vs FP&A workflows0:28:07 Living models and faster decisions0:34:55 Scenario analysis0:36:44 Lookbacks and actuals0:39:44 How AI fits into WellWorth0:41:53 Day to day AI tools0:45:07 Agents and plan mode0:50:19 AI for everyday decisions0:53:27 What's next for WellWorth0:58:17 Scaling across business units1:03:19 Speed round1:04:42 Local models vs cloud compute1:11:09 Wrap uphttps://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

    EP 86: Samra Nawaz & Vinay Acharya from WellWorth

  4. Sep 4

    EP 85: Aarya Borele from Evardi Energy

    Utilities are drowning in paperwork long before a repair crew ever leaves the yard. Aarya Borele, co-founder and CTO of Evardi Energy, walks John and Bobby through outage requests getting rejected a day out, FERC 881 pushing line ratings from seasonal to hourly, and why 95 percent accuracy is a failing grade when the lights are on the line. Also in here: the grid as cloud infrastructure, Griddy's flameout, and a 49ers conspiracy theory involving a substation. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 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 Click here to view the episode transcript. 0:00 Agents, VMs and running everything at once3:26 Back in the studio4:34 What Evardi does5:45 Uri and the incentive problem10:28 When the ISO rejects your outage12:35 How the grid actually works15:02 FERC 881 and hourly line ratings17:46 Where Evardi fits in21:37 Blackouts in India and Kenya25:28 The grid as cloud infrastructure30:17 Griddy and the wholesale gamble33:45 The stack, compliance and weather models37:40 Accuracy in critical infrastructure40:22 Jargon, bad data and context45:56 Models, local hosting and token costs55:29 The 49ers substation theory57:13 Speed round1:05:38 Physical AI and robot ducks1:11:25 Paying attention in a granola world1:14:09 The askhttps://twitter.com/collide_aihttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

    EP 85: Aarya Borele from Evardi Energy

  5. Aug 13

    EP 84: Ben Dickinson & Bryan Frantz from NexTier Completion Solutions

    Everybody in oil and gas has been sitting on mountains of completions data and barely using it. Ben Dickinson and Bryan Frantz of NexTier Completion Solutions built the fix from the inside out, an end to end frac data platform made by the people running the pumps. John and Bobby get into why the closer you are to the equipment the closer you are to the truth, where frac data standards are headed, and whether efficiency has hit its ceiling. Plus AI coding and the hunt for a good Pittsburgh wing. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 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 Click here to view the episode transcript. 0:00:00 - Back from summer break 0:00:41 - Trying to keep pace with AI 0:10:16 - Who NexTier is and where it came from 0:12:22 - Building an end to end frac data platform 0:15:17 - The industry's siloed data problem 0:20:39 - Agnostic architecture and one tool for everyone 0:26:44 - Borrowing solved problems from other industries 0:31:41 - The tech stack and starting greenfield 0:35:17 - Control systems and the job data schema 0:44:11 - Why frac data has no standard 0:47:08 - Fleet Stream and getting data to customers 0:53:23 - Has operational efficiency hit its ceiling 0:59:58 - How opinionated should the software be 1:03:08 - Physics vs data driven modeling 1:08:41 - The AI coding tools they use 1:10:35 - Western PA wings and pierogihttps://twitter.com/collide_ai https://www.tiktok.com/@collide.io https://www.facebook.com/collide.io https://www.instagram.com/collide.io https://www.youtube.com/@collide_io https://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.social https://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

    EP 84: Ben Dickinson & Bryan Frantz from NexTier Completion Solutions

  6. Apr 10

    EP 83: Paul Brown from BDE Data

    Paul Brown, Founder and Principal Engineer at BDE Data, joins John and Bobby all the way from Scotland for a conversation that covers a lot of ground. From his days as an international drilling engineer dodging pirates off the coast of West Africa to building WellSchematic.com and tackling the nightmare of digitizing 50-year-old multilingual well files, Paul is the rare person who speaks both languages fluently. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 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 Click here to view the episode transcript. 00:00 - Oil prices, energy costs, and life in Scotland vs Texas01:50 - Paul's background and path from drilling to data08:19 - WellSchematic.com and legacy well data as a service10:52 - Drilling war stories: West Africa and the Falklands15:00 - UK oil industry and energy policy34:41 - Legacy well file digitization38:06 - The PDF table extraction problem42:22 - Open source models vs foundational models44:31 - AI stack, data privacy, and cloud infrastructure51:54 - AI's role in the upstream industry56:04 - Getting tech adopted in the drilling world59:06 - Coding journey: from PHP and Laravel to Python1:02:22 - Advice for engineers getting into coding1:09:38 - Programming languages and AI-assisted development1:11:56 - Cursor and Claude Code1:13:55 - Speed round: Scotland, whiskey, and cloud platformshttps://twitter.com/collide_ai https://www.tiktok.com/@collide.io https://www.facebook.com/collide.io https://www.instagram.com/collide.io https://www.youtube.com/@collide_io https://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.social https://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

    EP 83: Paul Brown from BDE Data

  7. Mar 6

    EP 82: John Ely, The Godfather of Frac

    When you have 80 patents and a lifetime achievement award in hydraulic fracturing, you have seen some things. John William Ely, Founder of Ely and Associates Corp, and Jon Harper, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, talk frac history, pre-job diagnostics, the slick water revolution, geothermal, and why the industry keeps pumping the same thing and expecting different results. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 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 Click here to view the episode transcript. 0:00 - Intro and guest backgrounds3:25 - John William Ely's origin story7:45 - Offshore blowout and well control in the Middle East11:25 - How fracturing has evolved over 50 years19:30 - The slick water revolution and where we went wrong27:40 - Pre-job diagnostics and what operators overlook36:55 - Geothermal applications and completions challenges43:50 - Parent-child well interaction and offset communication47:00 - Refracing and diversion54:15 - Increasing recovery factor1:06:35 - Longer laterals, U-turn wells, and land-driven decisions1:12:35 - Knowledge gaps in the next generation of engineers1:25:20 - The untapped tight conventional opportunity1:30:02 - Advice for young engineers entering the industryhttps://twitter.com/collide_ai https://www.tiktok.com/@collide.io https://www.facebook.com/collide.io https://www.instagram.com/collide.io https://www.youtube.com/@collide_io https://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.social https://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

    EP 82: John Ely, The Godfather of Frac

  8. Feb 27

    EP 81: Deren, Dagen and Josh from Firm App

    Owner relations in oil and gas has been shoved in a corner forever, basically a "here's your check, don't call me" situation, and Deren Boyd, Dagen Boyd, and Josh Wright, co-founders of Firm App, are building the platform to fix that. These three started in oilfield safety software with iScout, got acquired by KPA, and now they're tackling the massive gap between operators and their surface and mineral owners with AI-powered multichannel communication. We're talking voice agents with adjustable accents, auto-responding emails, chat widgets that actually work, and an owner-facing app that puts payment info and well data in people's pockets. Plus the OKC crew gives their take on Devon and Expand relocating and what that means for the city. Click here to watch a video of this episode. 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 Click here to view the episode transcript. 0:00 Devon and Expand leaving OKC, what it means on the ground4:42 What is owner relations and why has it been ignored7:18 Timing and the generational shift driving tech adoption10:10 How operators have been duct-taping owner relations together12:05 The owner-facing app and multichannel approach14:38 AI voice agents, email auto-response, and chatbot workflows18:15 Building and rebuilding AI architecture every six months21:29 Under the hood on voice AI, latency, and conversation nuance26:37 School districts, 10,000 page websites, and unexpected use cases34:58 The iScout origin story and oilfield safety software42:17 Getting thrown in the penalty box and winning work back with data46:13 Revenue statements, vendor portals, and what owners actually ask about52:24 NAPE plans and the land community54:48 Business model and implementation timeline55:58 NIL, college athletics, and the dumpster fire1:04:36 Dev tools, Claude Code, and the future of SaaShttps://twitter.com/collide_ai https://www.tiktok.com/@collide.io https://www.facebook.com/collide.io https://www.instagram.com/collide.io https://www.youtube.com/@collide_io https://bsky.app/profile/collide-ai.bsky.social https://www.linkedin.com/company/collideai

    EP 81: Deren, Dagen and Josh from Firm App
See All (91)

Ratings & Reviews

4.2
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Welcome to Energy Bytes with John Kalfayan and Bobby Neelon. Your essential guide to the intersection of data and energy. This podcast dives deep into the world of energy, shedding light on how data, AI, and technology are revolutionizing this sector. Each episode equips listeners with insights into the most efficient tools and resources, paving the way for a data-driven future in energy. From technical nuances to broader industry trends, Energy Bytes offers an unparalleled perspective on the evolution of the energy industry. Join us as we decode the algorithms of energy, one byte at a time.

Information

  • Channel
    Digital Wildcatters
  • Creator
    collide.
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    91
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Digital Wildcatters, Inc
  • Show Website
    Energy Bytes

More From Digital Wildcatters

You Might Also Like