If Texas was a country, it would be the sixth largest oil producer in the world.
It's big business, but it’s also old business, and it’s an industry ripe for disruption. For three Austin entrepreneurs, they wanted to make the industry more tech savvy and efficient.
Oil Patch Pro, a new mobile app that launched in the app store this month, helps oil and gas operators quickly create and share location data with their team, consultants and service providers in the field. With the app, workers can get customized driving directions, contact info, vendor lists, status updates, and well data all on their smartphone.
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“Nobody is really doing what we’re doing,” Marketing Director Chris Olfers said. “It’s real data, mapping you from real places to a real [oil] well.”
Olfers, Erich Sowel and founder Chris Weyand all had seen pain points in the oil industry. Olfers and Weyand had worked for a petroleum consulting firm and saw that oilfield service companies couldn’t find oil operators, and industry workers were out of sync — especially in places with bad cell service. The absence of cell service was perhaps the most problematic, rendering the device useless when you’re lost in a maze of oil fields. The trio made sure the app had offline capabilities, caching the information in the app to make sure you have the information and data in the oil fields without a network.
“We want to explain to companies how our app with help them, how it will save them money and time and cost and fuel,” Olfers said. “When you open the app and you don’t have cell service, which is a lot of the time when you’re out in the field, you’ll still have access to that data without a network.”
The app is currently free to download and test, with a subscription model for businesses kicking in based on the number of users.
The trio began working on the company in 2014 and are currently privately funded. It’s only available in Texas, for now, but they plan to roll out in other oil and gas states in the coming months and continue to add new features.
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