Every drilling operation has dozens of variables—location, available resources, cost of resources, production goals, profitability, waste and more.

Just like a Taco Bell. (We’ll get to that.)

When PrePad CEO Sean Hervo worked for Shell, his job was to consider those variables and how to use them to make better drilling and completions decisions. At the time, spreadsheets were state of the art.

“In one of my roles, 75% of my time was white space—think about ways to make our business more efficient, understanding more of the details…and optimizing the whole supply chain,” Hervo said in an interview with Hart Energy at the SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference.

PrePad is a startup that specializes in optimizing the economics of drilling and completions. Instead of spreadsheets, PrePad offers a universal completions simulation model that quantifies any scenario based on key variables. Last fall, Chevron Technology Ventures selected PrePad for its Catalyst Program, which aims to boost technology innovation within the energy sector.

Hervo said the work started when Shell executives realized the complexity of the problem, the limitations of spreadsheets and the possibility of a better way.

“Lots of times Shell was trying to standardize, one size fits all,” he said. “That doesn’t really work when you have different value drivers.”

One part of the business might want a low-cost supply, another might prefer to maximize short-term free cash flow, while another might have a production target to meet. One part of the business might be in the Permian, where sand is inexpensive, and one in Argentina, where it isn’t.

Decisions, decisions. And each one affects the well design.

“If you want to generate these different design scenarios and understand what might be the best recipe for this area at this point in time, you need to have a robust way of precisely doing your cost estimates and then understanding how long the completion operation is going to take and then how that impacts them,” he said. “The spreadsheets worked but they’re clunky, they’re error-prone.”

Hervo connected with Brandon Eidson at Shell to create a better solution for generating precise cost estimates and predicting a completions timeline. Eidson became a co-founder of PrePad.

Here’s where we get to the Taco Bell connection.

“He was working at a think tank inside of Shell called Shell Tech Works,” Hervo said. “He said, ‘Oh, this problem can be solved using simulation software. I’ve seen stuff like this for Taco Bell.’”

Eidson had worked at a consulting firm that Taco Bell had solicited support from.

Every location of the Bell “has three or four different fryers, and cash registers, and what am I trying to maximize—pumping out as many tacos as I can,” Hervo said. “It’s a discrete-event simulation, and we had the same sort of problems, or the same sort of opportunity, in the completions world—except a lot more complex.”

With that inspiration, Hervo and Eidson built the model for Shell. It started to gain traction internally around the time Shell started selling assets and getting out of unconventionals, leaving Hervo and Eidson with a nice product and nowhere to use it.

Hervo and Eidson left the company in late 2021, with Shell’s blessing to use their idea, if not the actual software.

“We knew we had to rebuild it anyway,” Hervo said.

PrePad landed their first client in early 2022. Then Devon Energy came on board when one of their people heard Hervo discussing the model on a podcast. Devon is now a client and strategic investor. Other clients include Chevron, Coterra Energy and Shell Canada. The Chevron Technology Ventures selection happened in September.

All of which has got Hervo envisioning a bright future for PrePad.

“We’re at a point where success is ours to lose,” he said. “We have the right partners, tackling the right problems, the capital to execute and a team of smart, driven people. Now it’s up to us to make it happen.”

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