AI data licensing for oil & gas businesses.
Your team built the knowledge. Explore what it could earn.
AI is trained on how real work gets done. Black Gold Data helps an oil and gas owner explore a license of company-owned records the business already created, with Dan Smedstad alongside. You keep control of the pace, and there’s no obligation to continue.
Step 1
The 4-minute overview
Step 2
How Data Licensing Works: A 3-Minute Walkthrough
Provider explainer · Source: Cloudwrx
3:263-Minute Video
Cloudwrx’s explainer walks through the application, offer review, data preparation, and payment process.
Watching is optional.
The video describes Cloudwrx’s process. Eligibility, offers, timing, and data protections depend on the provider’s review and written terms. Payment isn’t guaranteed, and de-identification doesn’t replace permission or privilege review.
Step 3
A suggested order, not a requirement. Open the fit check whenever you’re ready.
Check Your Company's Fit
Checklist
A one-page look before the fit check.
Walk the office through what is ready to describe. The PDF opens directly.
The conversation stays with you.
- 01
A license, not a sale of the company
The question is whether records the business already keeps could be licensed. Black Gold Data doesn’t buy the data, the minerals, or the company.
- 02
Terms come before any transfer
Scope, permitted uses, and the agreement are reviewed before anything moves. Reading this site isn’t a transfer.
- 03
Payment follows an actual agreement
If a transaction closes, the amount and the date are whatever that agreement says. This site states neither.
Why look now
Work you already did can be the asset.
Training AI takes examples of how a business actually runs. An oil and gas company often has that history already: land and title, and the office record of drilling, production, a plant, a pipeline, offshore coordination, or right-of-way. Exploring a license is how an owner finds out whether it can earn, while choosing what stays in.
01
Your history
The useful material is work your people already created in the software the company uses. A finished lease or opinion can be part of it. The everyday trail around it’s the rest.
02
Your terms
Scope is a choice. Client files, landowner personal details, another party’s data, privilege, and sensitive personnel, safety, or infrastructure information stay out until a review says otherwise.
03
Your timing
There’s no date on this page. If a provider wants to proceed, the offer is in writing, and you read it before anything moves.
If an agreement pays
If a license pays, you aim the money.
Proceeds belong to the company. Owners put them to work in different ways. The choice is yours.
Working capital
Breathing room for the business you already run.
Equipment and maintenance
The machines and the upkeep the operation actually needs.
Safety and training
People better prepared for the work, if that's where you would spend it.
Staff and technology
The desk, the field support, or the systems you choose to strengthen.
Debt
Paying down what the company owes. That use of cash doesn't, by itself, increase EBITDA.
The business itself
Reinvestment, or another use you name. The owner decides. This list is illustrative.
Four sectors, one conversation
Operators, royalty businesses, accounting shops, and law firms.
Title-opinion firms are the oil and gas practice Dan knows, and they’re a primary audience. Law firms in other practice areas may qualify too, on the provider’s own fit review. Privilege and client confidentiality still have to be sorted out. Each sector page is here because the records aren’t interchangeable.
- 01Independent E&POperators whose own staff created the lease, engineering, and accounting history inside the systems they already use.
- 02Mineral & royalty businessesPortfolio records a mineral or royalty business already keeps. Not a sale of the minerals, and not a lease listing.
- 03Energy accounting & land administrationFirms that keep the decks and the lease files. Client records stay out unless the client has allowed them in.
- 04Oil & gas title opinion law firmsThe firm's own research, review, and working notes — in email, files, land systems, and its books — reviewed on the firm's terms.
Operating desks
The rest of the chain, still in the office.
Land, title, royalty, and accounting stay at the center. These are the other desks an owner will recognize from the work the company already does.
Drilling and completions
Reports, troubleshooting, and handoffs.
Manufacturing
Planning, work orders, and inspection.
Pipeline operations
Inspections, incidents, and handoffs.
Offshore operations
Logistics and coordination the company keeps.
Drilling and completions
Daily reports, troubleshooting, and the handoff between crew and vendors.
Well testing and production
Test results the company owns, production reviews, and maintenance it documented.
Manufacturing
Planning, work orders, maintenance, quality, and the vendor conversations the plant handled.
Pipeline operations
Inspections, incident resolution, work orders, and project handoffs.
Offshore operations
Logistics, maintenance, inspection, and project coordination from the company’s desk.
Right-of-way acquisition
Negotiations, landowner communications, tract tracking, and maps the company drew.
Only records the company owns, and only where authorization allows. Proprietary third-party data stays out, including another party’s well test. Landowner personal information and client confidentiality still require review. Sensitive personnel, safety, and critical infrastructure details aren't automatically licensable. A rig, vessel, plant roster, or other field headcount doesn't qualify a company, and none of these cards is a statement of value. Office workflows, the software the company already uses, and the rights around the file still control.
Workflow examples on the sectors pageWhere the work already lives
The useful history is work the company created inside software it already uses. Names below are illustrations of that work. They aren’t connected products, and a subscription doesn’t make every record inside the system yours or eligible.
Email
The request, the reply, and the approval still sitting in Gmail or Outlook.
Customer support
Support-team emails, chats, tickets, and the follow-up that resolved an issue in Zendesk or Freshdesk. For an oil and gas company that can include owner, landowner, customer, and vendor conversations the company itself handled. A ticket isn't automatically eligible.
Spreadsheets and databases
Working decks, exceptions, and corrections the team built in Google Sheets, Excel, or Microsoft Access.
Land workflows
Status notes and curative steps the company entered itself in iLandman. Not a public-record service.
GIS mapping
Mapping layers, tract and lease maps, annotations, and spatial analysis the company created. A licensed base map or third-party dataset under that work is separate, and it's not automatically included.
Shared files
Drafts, checklists, and the version the team actually used in Dropbox.
Meetings
Zoom or Microsoft Teams recordings and transcripts the company made, where recording was permitted.
CRM
How a relationship moved in HubSpot, Salesforce, or GoHighLevel: the note, the stage, and why it changed.
Project and work management
Task history, assignments, approvals, and team updates the company wrote in Monday.com.
Team communication
Work discussions and the decision still visible in Slack, where the company has the right to include that thread.
Accounting software
Bookkeeping, reconciliations, billing, and the path a charge or payment took in the accounting software your staff already use.
What this isn’t
- Not a sale of mineral or royalty property.
- Not a marketplace for raw seismic.
- Not a bid by Black Gold Data to buy your files.
- Not a recruiting page for data partners.
- Not a count of rig crews, offshore crews, or other field staff. Field headcount is kept separate from desk work.
- Not a claim that a familiar program is integrated, or that a login makes its contents eligible.
How it moves
Five steps. The agreement does the promising.
- 01
Describe the records, before any files
Which systems hold the company’s own work, and how many years that history covers. No raw files at this step.
- 02
Scope, eligibility, and rights
What the company owns, what a client or partner restricts, and what stays out.
- 03
Offer and agreement review
If a provider wants to proceed, you read the offer and the agreement before anything moves.
- 04
Approved processing and transfer
Only what the agreement covers, prepared the way the agreement specifies.
- 05
Acceptance and payment
If a transaction closes, payment follows the signed agreement. No amount or date is stated here.
Who is asking
I started Black Gold Data so the owners I've worked beside could explore what their own records might earn, and keep the decision.
Dan Smedstad · Landman · Katy, Texas
More than 35 years of leases and title across 12 states, including Williston, the Permian Basin, Evanston, Scottsdale, and South and Central Texas. He has spent that career with the owners who hold the minerals and the title-opinion firms that examine the chain. Other law practices may qualify as well.
Why he started Black Gold DataBefore you decide
All questionsDo we give up ownership of our records?
This website doesn't decide that. A possible license is defined in an agreement you review first: what is included, how it may be used, and what stays with the company. Nothing here is a transfer, and nothing moves before that review.
Are title-opinion firms part of this, or a side note?
They're a full part of the audience. Dan Smedstad has worked leases and title beside these attorneys for more than 35 years, across 12 states. A title practice isn't a fallback category. Law firms in other practice areas may qualify too. Fit is still confirmed by the provider, and privilege and confidentiality aren't waived.
When would a company be paid, and for how much?
This site doesn't state an amount or a date. If a company accepts an offer, payment follows the agreement it actually signs. A timeline mentioned during a fit check is that provider's description, not a promise from Black Gold Data, and it's not owed because someone started a conversation.
Established businesses with documented office workflows and several years of usable history; requirements vary by provider, sector, and dataset. Smaller specialist law firms may warrant individual review; fit is confirmed by the provider.
Next step
See whether the records you already keep are in scope.
The button opens the fit check on historypays.com. No files are collected on this site, and no price or date is offered.
Black Gold Data may receive a referral commission if a company introduced through this site completes a qualifying transaction.