Russell Greco, VP of Strategy and Planning at Battalion Oil, sat down with us to talk about how his team uses Planner for everything from weekly operational scheduling to M&A evaluation.

What stood out most? The speed.

When midstream constraints forced Battalion to quickly re-evaluate their drilling schedule across multiple assets, they were able to research, build scenarios, gather input, and make a decision in about a week – something Russell estimates would have taken a month without Planner. “There really aren’t other planning tools in the space that are as clean, functional, and fast,” he said. “That speed is key.”

The full interview is below, along with a complete transcript.

Transcript

Introduction

My name is Russell Greco. I’m the Vice President of Strategy and Planning at Battalion Oil. We use the Pod2 Planner for operational scheduling, scenario analysis, corporate-level cash flows, and some M&A-related work.

How We Use Planner Day-to-Day

The planner is absolutely part of our weekly operational check-ins. We’re a small, highly collaborative organization, so all disciplines work closely together. Everyone is either directly using the planner or working in planner-adjacent workflows. It’s been valuable to have a common application we can pull up quickly to answer questions like: what are we doing next, and what do the next three to six months look like?

Inevitably, there are frequent and sometimes large changes to our schedules. We’re constantly adjusting well order or working through new surface issues to make sure we’re prepared for the near term. That’s where the planner becomes a crossroads for land, legal, and operational workflows. All of that ultimately ties back to production, which is critical. We need to understand how production will grow, what the profiles look like, and how changes in timing affect outcomes.

Being able to quickly reconfigure schedules and see how timing plays out is extremely helpful. We take production profiles at face value and quickly compare different versions or plans. The timing data is exported into other tools, where it ultimately rolls up into corporate reserves and cash flow models.

Short-Term Planning & M&A

We do a lot of short-term planning and typically plan out at least the first one to two years in detail. Beyond that, we’re always looking at ways to develop more inventory and plan further out, knowing things will change. The planner makes that process much easier. We’ve also used it on the M&A side. When evaluating a potential asset, you often don’t have full detail, so locations may be more generic. The ability to quickly integrate a potential asset into our existing schedule and reconfigure everything allows us to build a pro forma production view. From there, we can export the data into economic tools and layer in additional analysis.

Why We Switched from Enersight

There really aren’t other planning tools in the space that are as clean, functional, and fast. That speed is key. You can build Gantt charts or “horse blankets” in spreadsheets, but there’s no tool that works as well, as quickly, or integrates as seamlessly.

We used Enersight for a long time. It has a Gantt chart, but in my opinion, it’s not well supported. It works, but it’s clunky, hard to change, and doesn’t flow well. Scheduling was never its strong suit. Eventually, we realized we weren’t getting enough value from the broader tool to justify continuing to use it, especially given how weak scheduling was.

That’s when we started asking who was actually building fit-for-purpose oil and gas planning tools. Pod2 stood out. Beyond the planner itself looking slick, the support, implementation, and customer success are truly unrivaled. There’s a great tool, but more importantly, there are great people behind it.

Support & Responsiveness

The team walks you through implementation and setup, and if something doesn’t meet your needs, they step back, work through it, and come back with a solution or a clear timeline. The tool is always evolving, which matters—you don’t want a dead product. Having direct access to the people who support and build the tool is invaluable.

What really stands out is how responsive the team is. They answer questions, listen to feedback, and provide visibility into development timelines. That level of transparency is something I’m not accustomed to with traditional software vendors.

Pod2 is a tight-knit group of industry veterans who came up through upstream oil and gas planning. That experience shows in how products are developed, implemented, and refined. You understand the problems because you’ve lived them, and you apply that understanding to product development and prioritization.

Value at Any Scale

At Battalion, we run a very lean organization. We’re not running twenty rigs, but the tool delivers value at our scale just as it would at a larger scale. For us, the biggest value comes from dynamically changing assets and drill orders. For example, this past year we faced midstream constraints on one asset. The planner helped us evaluate risk and determine whether we would have sufficient takeaway capacity.

When we needed to switch between Asset A and Asset B, we could quickly reconfigure schedules, account for constraints, work through permits and well readiness, and validate that the timing made sense. Being able to compare outputs across scenarios and move back and forth quickly was extremely valuable.

In those cases, we had to research, build scenarios, gather input from subject matter experts, and make a decision. With the planner, that process took about a week to a week and a half. Without it, it easily would have taken a month. The more complex the problem—or the more rigs and locations involved—the more valuable the tool becomes.

Even as a small organization, the planner allowed us to compile inputs quickly, compare scenarios side by side, and make informed decisions.

Process, Not Just Software

Pod2 is a group of upstream planning specialists who live and breathe planning and process. You’ve taken lessons from some of the best tools built in the past and applied that knowledge to create tactical, fit-for-purpose tools for the upstream planning space—tools that could likely extend into other industries as well.

Just as important, you focus on the process around the tool. You’re not just delivering software and walking away. You support the process before, during, and after implementation, helping ensure users actually end up with a better planning workflow—not just a new tool.

Integrations

For us, the most critical integration was Aries, along with Excel as a general sandbox. Getting data in and out was straightforward and easy. The customer success and support teams were extremely responsive, whether the connections were manual or automated. We were able to integrate Aries very effectively.

We also used some Enersight connections early on, which worked smoothly, though we eventually moved away from Enersight because it didn’t add enough value for us. Excel remains a key junction point since many workflows still rely on it or export data to it.

Recommendation

If someone is evaluating planning tools, I’d recommend they try Pod2 Planner first. Not because others don’t build good tools, but because the trial is flexible and the support team is excellent. You may still decide to go another route, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how well the team works with your design constraints.

At the end of the day, the tool is fast, responsive, clean, and well organized. Building your own tool will likely cost more money, take more time, and cause more frustration. If you’re solving a very narrow, bespoke problem, building something in-house might make sense. But the moment that problem evolves—as it always does—you’ll quickly run into the limits of what you can support internally.

That’s when it makes sense to rely on specialized tools and teams who are already investing in shared development and continuous improvement. In my experience, that’s where solutions like Pod2 deliver real, lasting value.

If you’d like to take a look at the Planner for yourself, schedule a demo or check out https://pod2.co/planner/ for more info.