Energy News Beat
In this episode of Energy News Beat – Conversation in Energy, host Stuart Turley sits down with Rachel Collins, CEO of W Energy, discusses the company’s significant investments in integration, unveiling Stream Plus, a fully integrated platform covering accounting, production, land, and field services. She highlights the importance of customizable dashboards, regulatory compliance tools, and data transparency to streamline operations in the traditionally siloed oil and gas industry. W Energy has also expanded internationally, with a strong R&D team in India, and is focusing on midstream investments and infrastructure development. Looking ahead, they plan to enhance their platform, expand their market share in North America, and introduce quarterly podcast updates to keep customers informed.
Please check out W Energy Here:
https://wenergysoftware.com/
Connect with Rachel on her LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-collins-2b8481/
Thank you, Rachel, for your time and leadership at NAPE, and I look forward to your updates next quarter. The United States’ energy security needs energy.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
00:36 – W Energy’s Growth & Investment in Integration
01:44 – Introducing Stream Plus: Fully Integrated Platform
02:37 – Business Intelligence & Customizable Dashboards
03:41 – Addressing Industry Silos & Data Transparency
05:25 – Regulatory Compliance & Reporting Tools
08:59 – Energy Sector Growth & Global Demand
09:37 – International Expansion & R&D in India
11:54 – Midstream Investment & Infrastructure Needs
17:16 – Upcoming Product Enhancements & Roadmap
20:50 – Plans for More Frequent Podcast Updates
21:17 – Closing Remarks & Next Steps
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:00:08] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy Newsbeat podcast. My name is Stu Turley, president and CEO of the Sandstone Group. Today is not just a great day. It’s a fantastic day because we’re here live at NAPE and we’ve got Rachel Collins. She’s the CEO over there at W Energy. Welcome. Thank you for stopping by the podcast. Oh, it’s absolutely a fantastic. You did so great last year. Give us a little bit of an update of what’s going on at W enery
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:00:36] last year. Hasn’t changed. So we have been hard at work. We’ve invested tens of millions of dollars into our product. No way. And we have been focused on integration. So we truly have an integrated platform. Everyone says they have it. We can show you go to our booth and we’ll show you how we’ve integrated. We have the county integrated.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:00:57] Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You’re saying integrated in the oil and gas space that is traditionally not integrated. That’s typically how all these operational silos
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:01:08] you can’t. You don’t have a single source of truth of your data. And so we’ve been hard at work making that a reality. I actually grew up as a developer. I’ve been in use in 29 years. And so I told our team, let’s not talk about it until it’s real. That’s why we’re so excited here to announce Stream Plus because we’ve been hard at work kind of under the radar to make sure that we have some. What is Stream Plus? Stream Plus is our integrated platform. There are two key components. So Stream Plus has the integration of all of our core capabilities. So it’s accounting, it’s production, it’s land, and it’s field services, which is interesting. No way. All of it. Now define land because
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:01:44] that everybody knows Landman and we know Billy Bob Thornton. Well, oh, that’s a
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:01:49] conversation, right? What a popular show now. So we’re talking about land management, lease management. I mean, so what we can do with our land and GIS solution integrated with field services is oftentimes you know about the payment obligations in your exactly. There are other non -payment obligations. And so, for instance, if you need to keep your property well manicured, we can automatically create tickets for your technicians to go and make that happen. So we make sure you don’t lose your lease. So those are things that we’ve been working with our users and customers to really understand why integration is important.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:02:24] So if I was a person, a salesperson working for energy, what would I want to pay or how would I sell Stream Plus in a what would I say to an executive to say,
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:02:37] I gotta have that? Well, I think to an executive, the most important thing is our new business intelligence tool. We call it data view. And what we’ve done is when we say we’ve integrated all the data amongst our core capabilities, we also have all of that in a data warehouse so that our customers can create their own reports, dashboards, and you have full
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:02:55] access. So for the first – Customizable dashboards are critical because it may not be the same for each EMP operator. Well, exactly. It’s customizable.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:03:04] You can tailor it for your business, but it gives an executive a full view across the entire business, which is very difficult, as you know,
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:03:12] because it is highly siloed. Incredibly siloed in the Stream Plus. So if we’re sitting here taking a look at it, it’s now integrated. That’s not normal. That’s not normal. It is not normal. And when you’re talking about in our new president’s world of drill, baby, drill, I see that we’re not going to be just drill, baby, drill. We’re going to be drill, baby, drill when fiscally responsible, but we can’t be fiscally responsible if we don’t have the accounting or the tracking.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:03:41] That’s exactly right. And what’s interesting is everyone talks about having data, and oftentimes you’ll have solutions and service providers that they have your data, they take it hostage, and you have to pay to gain access in different ways.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:03:54] That bugs me.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:03:55] Yeah. And we don’t do that. So we have an open data model. We believe that it can only be valuable when it’s shared. And so to your point, you have to have that holistic view of your business. And when we talk about your new policy and growth, to your point, you have to make data driven decisions. You have to make sure that it’s just not shoot from the hip anymore.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:04:13] Oh, no.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:04:13] Because most of us have investors behind us, and there are certain expectations. So I think we’ve done a lot to enhance that. And we’ve been doing it for a couple years now. So it’s just all come together and we’re thrilled to have a booth that highlights that.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:04:27] It’s so cool. I’ll tell you what’s really cool is over the last 10 to 15 years, ESG has not had a very good overall effect except what has done for the oil majors and the oil privates is give accountability and the money back to the investors. Oil companies are doing a great job, but yet it’s the accounting that makes a difference in knowing whether or not they’re profitable.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:04:54] That’s very true. And you know, now what we hear from customers is there is a labor shortage oftentimes. And so the more that we as service providers can make things more efficient, so that you save time and your people are working on value added activities and sort of researching, you know, in order to do the work that they need to do. That’s what we’ve been focused on. So less manual input, you know, we don’t have duplicity of data where you don’t have you can add things or something. So we have improved data quality, and all because of that integration that we’ve been investing in.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:05:25] And I probably should know this, but I don’t. So this is an off the cuff question here. And that is regulatory issues in the oil and gas space are terrible. And how does W help with that issue? Because Lee Zeldin with the EPA has now got a mandate from President Trump and that is to, for every new regulation that comes out, which costs our EMP operators lots of money to get rid of 10.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:05:50] Yeah, well, so it’s a great question. The way that we support our customers is number one, just knowing the industry nor a business and knowing the differences where where you operate. Exactly. You know, I mean, it’s vastly different. And so that we have expertise throughout the business that we’ve had working for us for over 15 hours. So people have never had a job outside of W. This is where they have grown up and grown their career. So some of it is just our industry knowledge. But the other thing is, obviously, you know, that that also comes with a lot of regulatory reporting. Right. And with that, you have to be able to create your reports quickly. And so we’ve made sure that we give our customers that optionality and adaptability. So we have embedded reports, but we’ll never create enough for every customer. Right. And so what we’ve done is open things up with a business friendly data model so that you can create your own. And you don’t have 30 data experts to do that.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:06:45] I’ve heard through the grapevine from some people that use your stuff that it is so cool being able to get the customer reports because it is it may be important on this one. Well, how do you get that in this field? But it’s not the same over here.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:07:02] That’s right. And that’s where you have data quality issues because you have these fragmented disparate systems that you’re having to replicate the data. And so what we’ve done is made sure that we elevate the quality and it saves time. Right. So we’re really proud of our data view product. It’s been exciting. And we have great feedback from all of our customers that, hey, G industries have been looking for this for a long time.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:07:24] So if you have this much success of putting in tens of millions, billions, it’s a beautiful investment, as President Trump would say. It’s a beautiful investment. And where do you see 2025 going
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:07:37] for Debbie right now? Well, we are back to growth mode. You know, that is cool. It’s pretty cool. So we’re really and we’re focused on our customers. So if our customers are successful and happy, then we earn the right to go out and go after logos. But I think first and foremost, you have to have reference ability. You have to make sure that your customers are on a bit path. You know, a few years ago, I think we grew so quickly that we had some growing pace and challenges, which is how you manage it. It’s normal. And just like any sports team, when you have new investors, a new GM, new team members, it takes a couple seasons to kind of gel and come together. But I’m two and a half years in. And I’ll tell you, our team is stronger than it’s ever been. It’s not remarkable. And so we’re ready to go. We’re ready to continue working with our customers. And then we’re going after new customers and we’re looking to grow organically.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:08:28] Do you feel that everybody is out there saying in the in the industry or not in the industry, but everybody saying peak oil has already been here. And I don’t believe that’s the case. I believe that we are going to you can’t make a iPhone out of a windmill. Right. We’re going to need oil and gas for a long time. And when we get like Stargate and Abilene and we now need natural gas pipeline or natural gas power, we’re going to need a lot of natural gas just to help supply the A .I. demands coming around.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:08:59] That’s exactly right. Well, I’m a technologist. And so, you know, I don’t I want to say in my lane, however, I will tell you, I just went to the World Oil Forecast Breakfast last week. OK. And Baker Institute has some amazing information to share, which it just reinforces that there will be growth in the energy sector into perpetuity. And it’s not just a U .S. conversation or even North America, because both the demand for energy is relatively the same so far in the United States or more developed countries. But if you look at this globally, you look at the developing countries in Asia and Africa, there is a huge demand.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:09:36] So Debbie is going international.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:09:37] Well, we are international.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:09:39] Did you know that? I did not know that.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:09:40] Half of our team is in India. No way. That is our R &D center. We bought a company a couple of years ago called Seven Lakes Technology. Nice. We brought with them almost a hundred technologists throughout India. And so why that’s great is even though our customers are all in North America, we have our product team working throughout normal business hours and then our developers can work throughout the night on issues or development. Isn’t that cool? It’s pretty cool. I mean, we were 24 7, honestly.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:10:09] Now, on your customer base, though, your target are mostly U .S. based oil and gas operators.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:10:15] That’s right. For now, we have, you know, enough market share to be very healthy and high growth. We want a lot more. We want the market share.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:10:23] Are you going to be looking to Canada as well?
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:10:25] We already are. So when I say North America, I’m talking U .S. and Canada. Outstanding. And so we’re looking at both. And I think once we get to a tipping point where we feel that we’ve captured enough market share here, we might look outside of North America. But I think there’s enough for us to do here and focus on our core. And that’s where we’re going to.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:10:41] That is outstanding. I’ll tell you, saving money, it’s going to be so critical because if President Trump is over here going drill, maybe drill thinking he’s going to get the sixty dollar oil, it’s not going to happen because we’re going to have to have the costs come down in order to do that. And we can’t have the cost come down unless the accounting and the integration is done. So you’re kind of critical. I hate to tell you this.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:11:07] Well, we are. Absolutely.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:11:09] I mean, I just ruin your day by calling you critical.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:11:12] Critical options. And we know that. And, you know, as an accounting solution, it just needs to work. Yes. It needs to be accurate. And so we know that. But we also know that we need to be efficient. We need to help our customers be more efficient, take the cost down. So I agree, we can help with those things. But you also pointed out that as we are, you know, drill, we have all this production. You’ve got to be able to get that commodity out of the area. There’s so much infrastructure that still needs to be built for us. And that’s why you’re seeing Midstream really pop up. And it started in Midstream. And so we have accounting solutions and gas transportation in Midstream. So we’re seeing so much more activity than we have before because of the infrastructure investments to the commodity.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:11:55] When President Trump made the emergency declaration, that was absolutely brilliant. And when you sit back and think now that we can get pipelines built, pipelines are critical. And I got tickled at President Trump when he said he was going to go ahead and start back up the Keystone pipeline. That’s not going to happen because they’ve already thrown away all their side of the pipeline. But boy, New York and all that whole area up there could sure use some pipelines.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:12:26] That’s right. And other clean energies that you haven’t seen any movement like nuclear energy. I mean, Texas has several nuclear plants, which you don’t see a lot of new plants being created. My father actually comes from nuclear energy. And he’s always like, that’s the cleanest energy. Why can’t we embrace that? So I think you’re going to see, you know, you’re going to see a surge in all of the energy sources, whether it’s hydrocarbons or it’s renewable, sustainable energy. I think you’re going to see more about across the board. And what we’d like to see is infrastructure to start exporting because you see so much production. How can we start looking a little more like Saudi
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:12:59] Oh, absolutely. And I love the idea that we’re going to be exporting more and more LNG. President Trump is out there. He’s swinging the tariff stick around and either you’re going to buy my LNG or I’m going to raise tariffs on you. And I think Europe’s listening and all of a sudden he’s yesterday. He lifted the Biden ban on all the Gulf of Mexico, drilling and everything else.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:13:25] You mean the Gulf of America?
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:13:26] Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. I am so stupid. Go for it.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:13:32] I love his bold moves. And did it great. It has been interesting in some of the announcements and how everything so interconnected that the stock market has been so volatile. I mean, I watched that. I just stopped looking. We don’t want to look at our investments right now because we know they’re all level out in time.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:13:47] I think that what people don’t understand is that Canada tariffs everything that we do. And so you sit back and everybody’s going, oh, President Trump is going to be bad. No, he’s rate sizing the world economy to where it should be.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:14:04] He’s making it equitable.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:14:06] Exactly. As it should be.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:14:07] Just over indexed in a direction where it and you see it, you know, they say that Americans have the highest credit card debt ever right now. And so I think that, you know, putting money back into the hands of Americans, that’s what we need.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:14:19] And for what, Rachel, was really cool is that you’re at the end of the important part of this. And as Americans start looking at oil and gas investments because energy investments and oil and gas investments are critical. And knowing that the EMP operators have a great accounting package is almost if I was buying into someone, I’d say, what’s your accounting package? I’m afraid I would ask that.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:14:47] Well, of course you would. I mean, that’s part of diligence. If you’re going to invest in a business and, you know, and these are huge investments, you have to know the entire business and you need to know the solutions and the partners that are supporting you. It’s not just our software either. I mean, you know, we hear time and time again that it’s our people. Is there knowledge of the industry? Is there domain knowledge? That’s extremely important.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:15:09] Last year, when you and I were talking, you started as soon as you mentioned people, you did it again. I don’t know that you realize as soon as you said, my people, you started really. You love your people.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:15:21] They’re the best.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:15:22] Isn’t that great?
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:15:23] They are the best. I mean, honestly, best team I’ve ever worked with. And it’s such a privilege to have them. And I would say that this business so nice because everyone says, oh, we’re a cultural company. Everybody says that. And we live our culture. We do not have politics. The team that they’re so supportive and committed to one another is just us and then to our customers and that support and everything else works out. We have a strong team that knows what they’re doing.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:15:48] I’ll tell you, we need to arrange a trip to India because I would love to go over and visit them.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:15:53] You have to go. I went last year.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:15:56] Oh, cool.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:15:57] So we started a rotational program. You might see some of our team members walking around. So we have some team members from India here. The culprit having the best time and they’re wearing their cowboy hat. So maybe I went to Bangalore last year. We had an office there and all of the team came in and I did it was my first time in India and I didn’t know what to expect. And I loved every minute of it. I loved every minute. I loved the crazy traffic and everyone hawking at each other and no stoplights and no stop signs. I thought it was hilarious. The people, more than anything, are so happy and gracious. So we had a great time. We’re really fortunate to have a team there. And we often hear that having teams in India, you see a lot of attrition. We have we don’t have any of that. Our employee retention is like 98 percent, including India, as we have a great culture and team there.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:16:46] You said 98 percent retention and employees. Yeah, that is really, really good.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:16:51] And that’s a testament to our our Chief People Officer, who is amazing. She’s based in Tulsa. She’s here right now.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:16:58] Chief People Officer. What a cool title.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:17:01] Formerly Chief H .R. Officer by China. Try to look.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:17:05] OK, but, you know, when we say that here and thing, what is coming around the corner and after your products that are releasing right now, what is going to finish out 2025 for you?
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:17:16] Well, you know, when you’re building a software product, it never ends. So we have our product road map through the end of the year where we have taken all of our older systems and modernized them and it will be fully released. All of it will be fully available by the end of the year. So we’ve changed our tech stack. We’ve made we invested integration. We’ve done a lot to become multitenant. That’s important because we can go after smaller customers and we can be more economical.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:17:43] Nice.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:17:44] So we’ve done a lot just to be able to have the breadth in this space that we can go after large enterprise, middle market, which is where we started, but we can also go down market. No, so that’s what you’ll see between now and the end of the year and continuing to build upon our data view solution, building more reports, more stores, more ways to export data. That’s what you expect now. But we have roadmaps well into next year. We’re investing heavily in midstream. So we are creating in our midstream products. We have plant accounting and we have gas transportation, but we are now investing in terminal management. We are finally looking at Mays B compliance. We just partnered. The press release will come out soon that we have a new measurements partner that the capabilities can apply to both midstream and upstream. So a lot of bolt on complementary capabilities as well that will be introduced.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:18:32] That is really cool because I believe that like we would be dead neat without midstream. Absolutely, because we cannot get the product enough of the product down and we’re going to need a lot more pipelines coming up here pretty quick.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:18:45] And you’re seeing it. I mean, you see the investments being announced, the one marathon partnership, you see Enbridge, a lot of those investments and we’re feeling that.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:18:53] And Kinder Morgan was seven point five billion, I believe, just recently. So, yeah, we’re getting the pipelines rolling.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:19:00] It’s funny. That’s where I started my career. It’s what was Peter Morgan. I was at Tenneco Energy, which was in El Paso. And it’s funny how things come full circle and all of that experience is now relevant, even though, you know, we’re very much focused here on upstream.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:19:14] Oh, that is absolutely outstanding. Well, how do people find you?
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:19:17] Well, they can go to our website. It’s energysoftware .com and any of us are available. So all of our leadership team is listed on the website. You can reach out to all of us. We’re still a small company and we still talk to all of our customers directly. We have a chat group that we monitor 24 seven. So you can ask questions and you can find us here at NAPE. I mean, we’ve got a huge new booth. I hope you’ve seen it.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:19:38] I’ve been here on podcast. I will divide. So, yeah, all right. And I love all your staff. I just absolutely love them. And being able to be this side of it as an operator, seeing it from this side is not just a podcast host. I get to hear the inside of what’s going on in your place. And I like it.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:19:57] I think we’ve really gone through an amazing transformation over the past few.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:20:00] I’m a big fan. I’m over here going to you too.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:20:04] I think everyone should be. We have such a bright future. And I think we’re really doing the things that will leapfrog us.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:20:11] Yeah, it’s one thing if I’m a podcast host talking about subjects, it’s another one I can see here and I can hear stories about what is actually happening in your software. Yeah, and that makes a huge difference.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:20:22] People are talking about it and they say something’s different over a W, something’s changed. Yep, we love that because we love the scuttlebutt talking about all the work that we put in. It just shows that we’ve done the right things. We’ve made the right investments and it’s paying off.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:20:35] You know, I’m sitting here thinking as we podcast next year at NAIT, it’s going to be pretty crazy to think where you went the first time we met. Now, we’re not going to we can’t wait until another year until our next podcast. Let’s not do that.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:20:50] Let’s do this monthly. Absolutely.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:20:52] And I think that is not a bad idea. In fact, giving your customers a quarterly update is a great idea.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:21:00] You’re spot on. I mean, because things are moving so quickly and changing so quickly, I mean, we’re embedding AI across all of our product and we’re learning new use cases every day. It’s important for us to communicate that.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:21:12] I’ll have my people talk to your people and let’s get a quarterly update scheduled.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:21:16] Let’s do it.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:21:17] I like. Thank you for stopping. I do appreciate it.
Rachel Collins – CEO, W Energy Software [00:21:20] It’s always a pleasure.
Stuart Turley – President anc CEO, Sandstone Group [00:21:20] We’ll see you guys soon.
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