Commit to ComboCurve for Reserves

We spoke to Luke Cone, a former Senior Technical Engineer at ComboCurve. His story sheds light on why ComboCurve continues to be a frontrunner in the industry, and why he champions using ComboCurve for reserves at his current company.

From the Past to the Present: Luke’s Journey with ComboCurve 

Luke joined ComboCurve after five years at W.D. Von Gonten & Co., a consulting firm providing a wide range of petroleum engineering, geological services, and petrophysical modeling to domestic and international oil and gas companies, midstream companies, and financial institutions.

His prior experiences exposed him to the complexities of manual forecasting and developing type curves for tens of thousands of wells in unconventional plays across North America – a process that consumed valuable time and resources. Luke was responsible for evaluating over 100 M&A opportunities for many different companies on the buy side. He was also creating and maintaining clients’ mid-year and year-end reserve reports, and performing financial evaluations for reserve-based lending banks.

Throughout his various projects, Luke consistently sought ways to streamline and improve his processes. He often wondered why the industry was still relying on antiquated software and clunky workflows. While at W.D. Von Gonten, he was shown a demo of ComboCurve and was blown away by its potential. Luke immediately recognized the value in ComboCurve’s commitment to seamlessly tying in auto-forecasting, type curves, mapping, scheduling, reserves, and economics all in one platform.

“I was really excited after seeing the demo and wanted to learn more. I listened to a podcast with Armand [Paradis] and Jeremy [Gottlieb] and their discussion perfectly aligned with my vision of what software like this could do in this industry.” – Luke Cone

The Next Big Thing

Luke’s background provided him with a strong technical foundation and extensive industry connections. This made Luke an ideal fit to contribute to ComboCurve’s platform and advocate for its adoption within his network and beyond.

“I felt that ComboCurve was going to be the next big thing. I wanted to be part of that movement. Additionally, I knew that learning the platform inside and out would benefit my career going forward.”

In 2022, Luke made the move over to Grit Oil & Gas, an upstream E&P company, as a Senior Reservoir Engineer. Grit, an early adopter and advocate for ComboCurve, uses the platform as its primary reserves tool. Many clients rely on ComboCurve predominantly for forecasting and type curve analysis. Grit, however, leverages its extensive economic features and daily resolution capabilities to manage its reserves process and facilitate efficient business operations.

Every Tool on One Platform, with Seamless Integration into Legacy Software

It’s important to note that while ComboCurve offers the combined capabilities of other tools such as ARIES, Spotfire, and PHDWin on a single platform, Grit still needs the ability to convert to other reserves tools, driven by their affiliation with financial institutions that still use them. Nevertheless, ComboCurve’s integration with ARIES and PHDWin ensures a seamless conversion workflow between the different platforms. Grit is able to get the best of both worlds.

Daily Resolution: A Game-Changer

One of the standout features for Luke is ComboCurve’s daily resolution capabilities. This has a profound impact on various facets of their operations. This includes daily and weekly variance reports for production surveillance, as well as tracking midstream takeaway capacity. Unlike ARIES, which restricts well scheduling to the start of each month, ComboCurve allows for scheduling on the actual day of the month. This drastically improves the accuracy of new wells’ forecasts, which ultimately impacts projecting cash flow and tracking the company’s budget. Furthermore, in Aries, forecast segments are confined to monthly increments, whereas ComboCurve offers the flexibility to shape your forecast or type curve on a daily basis if needed.

Leveraging ComboCurve’s API Connection to Instantly Run Full Cycle Well Economics

Grit’s ability to connect their daily production data via ComboCurve’s API enables Luke to deliver daily production updates. He can also compare wells’ production to forecasts, and make fast, data-driven decisions in real time. He will often run full-cycle economics on newly drilled wells, utilizing actual daily production data and an adjusted forecast or type curve thereafter. This is done while also effortlessly accessing STRIP pricing and the well’s latest economic assumptions within the platform. These workflows provide an early insight into the potential rate of return, NPV, and breakeven price for a particular well or pad. This exercise is difficult in legacy reserves software programs due to their lack of resolution.

A Financial Future Through Informed Decision-Making

Luke’s experience with ComboCurve tells a story of versatility and innovation. He constantly emphasizes how easy it has been to champion ComboCurve for reserves since its launch.

“There are so many things I do daily where ComboCurve makes my job easier. It has become such an important tool in my work. I fear anyone not using ComboCurve for reserves or is hesitant about fully converting to ComboCurve, is just going to fall further behind. Daily resolution is the biggest value add for us as an operator. I don’t know what others are using as an alternative. These are billion-dollar businesses being run on antiquated software that can’t even tell you what their company is supposed to be producing on a given day. That ability is just huge for us for so many different reasons… Once you have ComboCurve and truly understand how to use it to its full potential, there’s no going back. – Luke Cone

The integration of ComboCurve can be a key differentiator in the industry. For Luke Cone, and Grit Oil & Gas, those key differentiators are the ability to run their entire reserves process with daily resolution quickly, efficiently, and more accurately all in one platform. We are honored to evolve alongside champions like Luke Cone!