Big Digital Energy

Headlines love tossing around Venezuela’s “303 billion barrels” like it’s a magic switch, but the reality is messy, expensive, and slow. Mark and David Pursell, Adjunct Professor of Petroleum Engineering, walk through why heavy oil, busted infrastructure, and shaky politics make this a long-cycle rebuild, not a drill-and-chill moment, plus what to watch in markets when the story sounds too easy. C...

Trading rigs and rock samples for spreadsheets and shareholder battles, Mark Viviano, CFA from Kimmeridge walks through how he stumbled into energy investing, why shale rewired valuation thinking, and how the sector managed to grow like crazy while lighting free cash flow on fire. The convo hits consolidation, why big institutions mostly hide in the top names, and why activism plus a technical ben...

Collide AI 2025 Wrapped Part 1 turns into a real talk on why forward deployed engineers win where AI pilots stall, with Michael Cortez, John, and Nick Smart swapping war stories from completions, geophysics, and the startup trenches while they map out how Collide Enterprise moves past basic chat tools into search plus workflows that actually hold up in the real world. Click here to watch a video o...

Collide basically did its own Spotify Wrapped and the punchline is simple: the community doubled, the conversations got more technical, and the team got way clearer on what Collide is now and where it’s headed. Crystal, Todd, Jacob, and Sydney walk through 2025 stats, why events evolved, how Energy 101 came back, what university partnerships unlocked, why Collider AI took a pause, and the platform...

Catching yourself rereading last year’s VC emails while you’re back in Silicon Valley is a pretty good way to realize how wild the last 12 months have been. Colin, Chuck, Canisius, and Todd break down how Collide AI is turning fast POCs into real production workflows, why change management is the actual moat, and how a stacked forward deployed team plus community driven distribution is setting up...

Studio one glow up and the gang is officially back as Kirk Coburn, Chuck Yates, and Mark Meyer trade Texas football and tamale truths, then jump into Ford’s EV write down, BP’s CEO shuffle and what it signals, a quick tour of PE continuation funds around Ascent, and Trump turning up pressure on Venezuela before sliding into holiday stories and band lore. Click here to watch a video of this episode...

Adam Crum brings some serious Alaska energy, literally and figuratively, as he sits down with Chuck to talk about where the state’s headed and how he thinks it can get there. He opens up about everything from playing football at Northwestern to steering Alaska through COVID, all the way to why he thinks the state’s future depends on smarter energy development, fixing outdated policies like the Jon...

Chuck and Mark crank up the camp as they riff on the Landman season two premiere, bouncing from the show’s oil-patch chaos to the real-world energy circus. They torch the DOE Loan Programs Office’s messy reputation while breaking down its latest billion-dollar moves, like the $1B revival of Three Mile Island for Microsoft and AEP’s $1.6B transmission upgrade, along with its surprisingly strong 3.3...

COP30’s giving big “save the trees… after we bulldoze them” energy, and Kirk and Mark are all over it. They roast the idea of hosting a climate conference in the Amazon while clearing land for roads, hotels, and runways, right as private jets zip overhead and new drilling permits get stamped. It’s peak irony, wrapped in green branding. They unpack the politics, the money, the energy realities no o...

California’s energy situation is getting messy, and the story behind it isn’t what most people think. Mark sits down with Mike Umbro, founder of Californians for Energy & Science, to break down how policy decisions, refinery shutdowns, and halted oil production are reshaping the state’s entire energy mix. They dig into why geothermal isn’t the quick fix it’s made out to be, how rising energy c...

Bill Gates’ latest climate pivot is stirring things up, and the guys are all over it. Kirk, Chuck, and Mark break down why Gates is stepping away from the emissions-only mindset and putting people back at the center of the climate conversation, think healthcare, infrastructure, and everyday quality of life. From the ripple effects across the energy world to Big Tech’s growing influence, they don’t...

California’s energy mess is heating up, and Kirk and Mark aren’t holding back. They’re calling out what happens when regulators, like the California Coastal Commission, start flexing too hard, leaving companies like Sable Offshore tangled in lawsuits over something as basic as fixing old oil platforms near Santa Barbara. Between the fallout from the 2015 pipeline spill, shrinking refining capacity...

Oil at $500? Yeah, not happening, at least not anytime soon. Kirk, Chuck, and Mark unpack the hype around that wild prediction and explain what’s actually driving oil markets right now. Between OPEC’s chess moves, shifting U.S. production, and global demand swings, there’s plenty to keep traders guessing. They also get into the ripple effects of renewables, how countries are juggling sustainabilit...

Real-time frac data isn’t some future concept, it’s here, and it’s changing the way completions get done. Chuck Yates sat down with folks from ProFrac and Seismos to break down how AI, automation, and acoustic sensing are turning traditional fracking on its head. Matt Wilks and Panos Adamopoulos talk about ProPilot 2.0 and how closed-loop fracturing is giving operators instant feedback to fine-tun...

Trump’s Climate Week speech was anything but subtle, and the Big Digital Energy crew had plenty to say about it. Kirk, Chuck, and Mark break down his unapologetic shots at global green agendas, the messy reality of rushing energy transitions, and what it all means for regular people facing rising energy costs. They don’t shy away from calling out China and India’s emissions role, questioning high-...

Musk is once again moving faster than the rulebook can keep up. The guys dig into his latest play, Colossus AI data centers, and how he’s flipping old infrastructure into giga-scale operations at a pace that makes regulators look like they’re standing still. From Tennessee to Mississippi, it’s a masterclass in sidestepping red tape while pushing the future of energy and tech forward. Kirk, Chuck,...

The shooting of Charlie Kirk has shaken the political and cultural world, raising hard questions about free speech, safety, and what it means to debate ideas in a time this divided. We talk about Kirk’s legacy, whether you agreed with him or not, as someone who pushed for open dialogue and challenged people to treat opponents as humans instead of enemies. From the ripple effects across podcasting...

Norway’s energy playbook has basically turned the country into Europe’s oversized extension cord, but the trade-offs are starting to sting at home. Kirk, Chuck, and Mark get into how Norway’s hydro power and subsea cables made it a powerhouse exporter while leaving its own citizens facing higher electricity bills. They call out how exports are essentially propping up bad energy bets from countries...

Forget the old way of running frac jobs, this one’s all about what happens when real-time data meets smart analytics. NOV is pulling in live completions data and turning it into clear visuals, while Well Data Labs layers on AI-powered insights that let operators tweak things like friction reducers on the fly. Chuck sat down with Eric Zenero from Well Data Labs and Kayla Scherer from NOV to talk th...

Exxon’s latest play in Trinidad and Tobago is a big one, 2,700 square miles of offshore exploration rights that could reshape energy in the Western Hemisphere. Chuck and Mark break it all down: why this territory matters, how seismic programs are setting the stage for massive discoveries, and what it could mean geopolitically as deepwater exploration heats up. Along the way, they get into industry...

Orsted’s massive $9.5 billion rights offering has the wind power world buzzing and not in the way they’d like. Chuck and Mark unpack how the company got here, from ballooning costs and tangled supply chains to rising interest rates that make financing a nightmare. They look at why the Danish government is stepping in with a taxpayer-backed bailout, what it means for big-ticket projects like Sunris...

BP just hit what might be their biggest oil discovery in a decade, and it’s turning heads. We’re talking about a massive hydrocarbon column in Brazil’s Santos Basin, promising structure, but also some tricky CO2 and infrastructure questions that could slow things down. We unpack what this means for BP’s game plan going forward, especially as they try to thread the needle between growth and transit...

Dead whales, wind farms, and Nantucket drama, what's really happening off the South Shore? From plummeting property values to environmental consequences like fiberglass debris and whale deaths, we break down the chaos surrounding the controversial wind farms. Dive into the heated debates between local residents, the Nantucket select board, and Vineyard Wind, the company behind this turbulent proje...

California’s losing refineries, the East Coast grid is running tight, and everyone’s asking, can distributed power actually save the day? In this episode, I break down what’s shaking up the U.S. energy scene, from gasoline price shocks and a shrinking shale rig count to the strain on PJM’s capacity market. We also take a look at how China’s massive hydro play fits into the global picture, and wher...

Everyone’s talking about AI like it’s all GPUs and algorithms, but the real story? It’s energy. In this video, we break down how the U.S. is quietly turning its energy dominance into an AI advantage. We’re talking big moves from Pennsylvania to Texas, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables coming together to fuel the AI arms race. We get into the details on the Homer City Giga Campus, why EQT and Ex...