PetroLegacy Energy bought into ComboCurve in 2020. It did not finish leaving its old software behind until 2023. For a company selling speed, that is an unexpectedly slow opening. It is also the detail that makes the story worth reading. A better tool can arrive years before the people around its customer are ready to use it.
- ComboCurve connects well forecasts, reserves, and investment economics.
- Its customers include operators, engineers, mineral investors, and banks.
- The practical prize is less time moving and reconciling data.
The three-year goodbye
PetroLegacy initially used ComboCurve for acquisition and divestiture evaluations while retaining ARIES for reserves. Its concern was compatibility: auditors, banks, and investment partners still worked in the older environment. Changing the engineer’s screen did not change the machinery surrounding an investment decision.
By 2023, according to ComboCurve’s published customer account, more counterparties could receive shared projects directly. PetroLegacy had also become proficient at converting data into the traditional format when necessary. The company retired its ARIES licenses. Screening that had taken a couple of days could now take a couple of hours, its CEO reported.
The lesson is deliciously unglamorous. Before buying software, ask who must receive its output. A clever forecast loses some of its charm if somebody must spend the afternoon translating it.
A curve with consequences
ComboCurve’s founding frustration came from reservoir engineering. Armand Paradis had worked at Statoil, now Equinor, managing shale assets. He expected technical analysis. Quarterly reporting and reserves work instead exposed how much effort went into assembling forecasts. As he told the Journal of Petroleum Technology, “Then, reserves time came.”
Paradis and co-founder Jeremy Gottlieb, formerly a financial executive at Deep Gulf Energy, began building their own answer. The company dates to 2017; the commercial platform launched in 2020. Their backgrounds explain its emphasis: connect what a well might produce with what that production might be worth.
“I want the learning curve to be much faster”
Armand Paradis, on the problem behind ComboCurve
A production forecast estimates output over time. A type curve represents expected performance across a selected group of wells. An economic model then brings prices, expenses, ownership, and investment into the calculation. Each step informs the next. Separating them creates another opportunity for numbers to disagree.
ComboCore puts forecasting, type curves, and economics in one cloud environment. Engineers can inspect wells on maps, compare scenarios, and bring forecasts together across projects. The company’s name comes from “combos,” its term for combinations of economic models. Even the name has a spreadsheet hiding inside it.
The proposition is useful to a buyer screening an acquisition, an operator updating reserves, or an investor testing a price assumption. It belongs to the market for petroleum engineering and asset economics software, where alternatives include ARIES, PHDwin, and combinations of specialist tools and spreadsheets.
The plumbing earns its keep
Consider Zephyr, which operates with a lean team. In a May 2025 customer account, COO Gregor Maxwell described the difficulty of managing manual models beyond roughly 15 to 20 wells. The company had used Excel, IHS Harmony, and ARIES before moving to ComboCurve.
Zephyr’s reported gains involved more than quick calculations. Daily and monthly production data could be imported automatically, and forecasts could feed its financial models. Maxwell also valued responsive human support. For a small team, the person who helps untangle a model may matter as much as the model’s menu.
- 01 Import data
- 02 Forecast wells
- 03 Review exceptions
- 04 Compare economics
Connected steps, with an engineer still in the loop.
ComboSync handles the less photogenic work of moving data. Its documentation describes scheduled pipelines between customer systems, public subscription sources, and ComboCurve. Supported connections include databases, files, and APIs. The customer still supplies access and, in the documented implementation, prepares database views and installs an agent.
That distinction matters. Integration is work, even when the software reduces it. The August 2024 TGS partnership is a concrete example: licensed production, completions, and cost data can enter ComboCurve through ComboSync, reducing downloads and formatting. The arrangement connects a data supplier to the place where a customer evaluates the asset.
Carbon enters the calculation
ComboCarbon extends the same idea to greenhouse gases. Users can model emissions alongside production, build networks representing facilities and emission sources, and compare reduction scenarios with their economics. Equipment investment and operating costs enter the analysis with the emissions forecast.
That lets a team examine a practical question: what changes if it spends money modifying equipment? The software can help compare the cases. A modeled reduction remains a forecast; measuring the outcome requires information from the operation itself.
Series B announced April 2022
Led by Dragoneer and Bessemer
The Series B was intended to support core improvements and expansion into workflows including emissions and scheduling. At the time, ComboCurve reported more than 170 customers and 650% year-over-year growth. Those are dated company figures, useful for understanding the funding moment rather than counting today’s users.
Buy the workflow, keep the judgment
ComboCurve sells business software through a demo-led process. For a buyer, the relevant cost includes licensing, integration, training, and any period spent maintaining two systems. PetroLegacy’s experience suggests an intelligent sequence: start with a bounded workflow, prove the outputs, then bring reporting partners along.
The company’s expertise combines petroleum engineering, financial modeling, and software development. Its careers page advertises fully remote work, open PTO, equity, and regular in-person gatherings. That arrangement fits a product whose appeal includes colleagues working on the same project from different places.
Automation still needs supervision. Wright & Company’s published experience describes automatic forecasts as a starting point for larger studies, followed by review against production graphs. ComboCurve’s own workflow includes identifying high-variance wells and editing their curves. Fast analysis makes that review more available; it cannot supply the reviewer’s judgment.
The portable idea is to inspect the handoffs in your own business. Find where people re-enter data, wait for files, or explain which version is current. Then test a connected workflow on real work. ComboCurve’s story is persuasive precisely where it is ordinary: capable people getting more time to think.