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.

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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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