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  • A 50-Year-Old Pipe Support Company Where 100 Employees Now Build Their Own AI Agents

    A 50-Year-Old Pipe Support Company Where 100 Employees Now Build Their Own AI Agents
    2026/08/28

    A garage full of Ethereum rigs once set a house on fire, and that was only the warmup. Rakesh Agrawal and Lloyd Kirchner run Piping Technology & Products, a 50 year old Houston manufacturer where 100 employees now build their own AI agents and a welding cobot just got unveiled to 450 people on the shop floor. Cut cables in West Texas, new collar jobs, Pope Leo, and why the guy with the pickup truck had every reason to be nervous.

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    Click here to view the episode transcript.

    00:00 The house fire
    05:07 A cryptic DM about dad's company
    06:15 What Piping Technology makes
    09:56 Family business and the second chair
    12:43 Every tech wave since dial up
    17:02 Getting AI to actually spread
    20:14 The guy who cut the cables
    24:04 Unveiling a welding cobot
    26:16 Pope Leo and new collar work
    35:32 Agents on the quoting desk
    42:22 The CIO problem
    44:22 Letting Claude psychoanalyze you
    49:04 Guardrails and permissions
    53:11 Five years out
    57:56 Intention and action

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    1 時間 1 分
  • Silicon Valley and Oil and Gas Are Playing the Same Game

    Silicon Valley and Oil and Gas Are Playing the Same Game
    2026/08/17

    Houston has always run on optimism, spending everything to drill a hole where nobody has drilled before and then finding out what came back. Leon Coe, founder of Amplify Intelligence and the Houston AI Club, thinks that same instinct is exactly what AI needs. He and Chuck get into why executives cannot delegate this one, why augmentation beats automation, and why your own level of ambition is a hard ceiling on what the models will ever hand back.

    https://www.meetup.com/houston-ai-club/events/316056350/?eventOrigin=group_upcoming_events

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    00:00 The perfect podcast length
    02:03 What executive AI coaching actually is
    04:48 Building the Houston AI Club
    08:50 Why Houston is wired for AI
    14:29 Augmentation, not automation
    18:29 Talking to AI instead of typing at it
    22:41 Cost savings versus new revenue
    24:37 The real prize in oil and gas
    27:54 What executives are actually asking
    31:52 Banned in 2024, bought in 2025
    33:31 Why you cannot delegate this one
    38:51 The Burton McMurtry card story
    40:32 Ambition as a technical limiter
    44:08 AI as a thought partner
    48:23 The September 3rd operator spotlight
    50:24 Where to find Leon

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    51 分
  • Why Oil Companies Leave So Much Money Downhole

    Why Oil Companies Leave So Much Money Downhole
    2026/07/10

    Everybody chases the drill bit, but the real money can hide in wells that have produced for years. D.J. Snyder left drilling and completions to chase what nobody wanted to touch: production. His company Vannevar builds downhole tools that squeeze more oil out of wells already in the ground, using a marginal gains mindset borrowed from F1 and the Tour de France. Chuck gets into frac plugs, pumper routes, why nobody shuts in a well to fix it, and how AI could give operators one source of truth.

    Click here to watch a video of this episode.


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    Click here to view the episode transcript.

    00:00 Meet D.J. Snyder
    01:05 From drilling to the overlooked world of production
    02:47 Old tech, new problems: gas, sand, and horizontal wells
    06:24 Physical widgets and the marginal gains mindset
    08:32 Why there's no one size fits all
    13:00 Heresy: actually watch and fix your wells
    16:57 The AI promise of one source of truth
    18:43 Rethinking the pumper's daily route
    22:57 War stories, the Bakken, and naming tools
    25:18 ROI, payback, and how you really sell it
    28:25 Who to call, what it costs, and building a company
    36:03 How AI reshapes the work itself
    38:16 Robots, drones, and the future of the field
    40:14 Why boards say yes and value beats cheap
    44:53 Wrap up and where to find DJ

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    45 分
  • The Best Oil Investment Most People Don’t Understand

    The Best Oil Investment Most People Don’t Understand
    2026/06/30

    You can own the dirt under someone's ranch without ever setting foot on it and still collect a check every month while an oil company does all the work. Karl Brensike of Harvest Mineral & Royalty Partners calls minerals the single greatest asset class on the planet, and he makes a pretty convincing case for it. Chuck digs into how regular folks can finally get a piece, why people really decide to sell, and the apple pie scheme that squeezed a million bucks out of Chevron.

    Click here to watch a video of this episode.


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    Click here to view the episode transcript.

    0:00 - Mineral versus royalty, explained for mom
    1:23 - Why US mineral ownership is uniquely American
    4:28 - The first oil lease and the Far and Away land rush
    8:11 - Splitting estates and why mineral owners keep multiplying
    9:25 - Karl and Chuck's history and the 2014 Thanksgiving crash
    10:43 - Why people actually decide to sell
    11:55 - The early days of investing in minerals
    14:46 - The Caritas run and the perfectly timed 2008 hedges
    22:17 - Buying ahead of the drill bit with Haymaker
    23:33 - Why everyone should own some as an energy hedge
    26:08 - The four kinds of buyers and the grassroots game
    27:22 - The thesis behind Harvest
    44:46 - Crazy mineral stories from the field
    48:09 - The Toby Bean apple pie story

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    51 分
  • The Stablecoin Backed by Real Barrels of Oil

    The Stablecoin Backed by Real Barrels of Oil
    2026/06/25

    What if you could stash a barrel of oil in a digital bank account and drop it in your kid's Christmas stocking? That's the wild idea Wil Harris of Energy Substantiation is chasing, building the stablecoin of oil. He breaks down how WTI coins work, why nobody had ever banked a barrel before, and Chuck puts on his critical investor hat to try and blow the whole thing up.

    Click here to watch a video of this episode.


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    Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.
    Apply today at collide.io


    Click here to view the episode transcript.

    0:00 - The barrel of oil coin on Chuck's dresser
    2:08 - How Wil ended up bridging crypto and oil
    4:03 - What a stablecoin actually is, explained for mom
    10:05 - The minus 37 dollar day, USO, and True Tracker
    12:21 - Banking a barrel: minting, redeeming, the bank of oil
    19:25 - Critical investor mode: what protects your money
    24:08 - Credit reviews, unencumbered barrels, and ABLs
    28:50 - The reverse Dutch auction and the trading platform
    32:16 - A brand new form of capital for producers
    36:06 - Crypto adoption, 700 million accounts, and the Yeezys story
    38:34 - Selling the company, line fill, and credit over time
    45:59 - Who they want to hear from and WTI as the world standard
    48:34 - Still early days and how to reach them

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    51 分
  • The Candy Crush Guy Now Secures Oil and Gas AI

    The Candy Crush Guy Now Secures Oil and Gas AI
    2026/06/02

    Running data security for Candy Crush during a pandemic turns out to be solid training for almost anything, and Sam Texas brought that hard earned paranoia to Collide. From flipping thrift store suits on eBay to keeping the world's biggest mobile game alive from Sweden, his road to oil and gas was anything but typical. He breaks down defense in depth, SOC2, and why locking down AI inside a company becomes its own arms race once the machines start fighting the machines.

    Click here to watch a video of this episode.

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    Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.
    Apply today at collide.io


    Click here to view the episode transcript.

    00:00 The Candy Crush guy comes to Houston
    02:07 eBay suits, semiconductors, and a detour to Sweden
    04:50 How a LinkedIn DM turned into Collide
    07:13 Going all in on Claude and chasing SOC2
    09:40 Security explained, Fort Knox style
    12:42 What's set in stone, what's in flux
    14:29 The AI versus AI arms race
    15:04 The Mythos model and real reasons to pay attention
    16:32 Big brother advice for adopting AI safely
    20:00 Data exfiltration and what keeps him up at night
    22:30 The next 30 to 60 days at Collide
    24:39 Securing the bleeding edge for an industry that skipped SaaS

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    28 分
  • Can AI Predict the Next Oilfield Disaster?

    Can AI Predict the Next Oilfield Disaster?
    2026/05/19

    Cority has been quietly building environmental, health, and safety software for forty years, and Amanda Smith runs the strategy keeping up with AI that changes every six months. She and Chuck get into why a system of record beats raw AI on life or death calls, how a 600 page permit went from months to minutes, the stat that 95 percent of employees are already using shadow AI, and the PDF problem that has every energy company stuck.

    Click here to watch a video of this episode.

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    Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.
    Apply today at collide.io


    Click here to view the episode transcript.

    0:00 The Cority story and 40 years in EHS software
    2:30 How the software shows up on a rig and in the office
    5:45 The SaaS apocalypse question and why context beats raw AI
    9:30 Amanda's family mining history and why this work is personal
    11:00 Recruiting AI talent to Houston and the six month change cycle
    15:00 Shiny objects versus solving real problems
    18:00 Auditability, HIPAA, and the black box problem
    19:30 Where Collide is heading as an operating system
    23:00 Employee resistance and the friction point playbook
    27:30 Six hundred page permits, 3000 filings, zero mistakes
    30:00 Agentic workflows as the new source of record
    34:30 Correlation, causation, and the shale revolution lesson
    37:30 The PDF problem and using 2 percent of energy data
    41:30 Learning to drive as the AI adoption analogy
    43:00 What we are not talking about today that we will be in five years
    48:30 Ninety-five percent of employees are using shadow AI

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    53 分
  • 90% of the Oil Is Still in the Ground. This Is the Technology Built to Get It.

    90% of the Oil Is Still in the Ground. This Is the Technology Built to Get It.
    2026/03/18

    Jon Slominski, Founding AI Engineer at Collide, sits down with Chuck to break down what it actually takes to build AI that works inside a real oil and gas enterprise. From agent hierarchies that read and write across legacy systems, to a mapping interface that lets you chat your GIS data into shape, Jon shares what he's building, what wakes him up at 4am, and why the biggest unlock might still be the 90% of oil we haven't touched yet.

    Click here to watch a video of this episode.

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    Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.
    Apply today at collide.io


    Click here to view the episode transcript.

    0:00 - Intro and Jon's background
    1:30 - How Collide has evolved since Jon joined
    4:00 - Agent hierarchy explained
    6:10 - The hard part: taking AI from POC to production
    9:30 - Auditable search and why citations matter
    10:00 - What Jon is most proud of
    11:20 - The mapping interface coming to Collide
    13:50 - What keeps Jon up at night
    16:50 - Using AI to unlock the 90% of oil still in the ground

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    20 分