Jennifer Pallanich, senior technology editor, Hart Energy: The oil and gas industry is fueled by technology. David Reid of NOV is here today to talk to us about how they’re developing technology from their drilling know-how, and applying it to things like geothermal. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
David Reid, chief technology officer, NOV: Geothermal’s been a ton of fun because it’s not just geothermal, it’s learning how to do hot rock. And so when you start to work out new ways to solve their problems, we’re going to bring that into drilling applications. I mean, we immediately turned up in geothermal and they were like most renewables struggling with cost. So they were squeezing and squeezing on cost. And we turned up and said, how about an expensive bit? And they were like, “No, that’s a terrible idea, but let’s try it.” So then we try it, we’ll give you a shot. 400% faster. 400%. It is like, how could they have not? They weren’t even used to good drilling bits. And so as they got it, they were like, “this is incredible.”
DR: So we’re now looking at, we started saying everyone was working on high temp sensors. How do we get high temp sensors? Let’s keep getting them higher temperature. And we’re like, “Well, why not make it colder?” “Oh yeah, we're using chillers.” No, but even colder. Like what if we get really cold? So already do Tuboscope coatings, but people hadn’t thought of ‘em as thermal coatings. So we started building up thermal coatings. We started using fiberglass in our systems. And so liners are fiberglass. And so these are all things that are growing out of, what if we got the temperature down? Let’s get the mud temperature down, let’s keep it down. And so we're continuing down that road of building systems that are designed to hold colder fluids, which then affect the wild, which now allow you to use the kind of electronics that we’re using already. So it’s great to be doing those things, which are great value over geothermal. I mean, we’re killing it across the geothermal at front because they’ve just not had people come in with new ideas. But that's immediately going to help, let’s say the Middle East with high temp applications. So yeah, we’re having a lot of fun in that space. That's really a fun area.
DR: I’m liking the energy transition pressure. So we’re having to learn, how do we reduce carbon? How do we take weight out of systems? I mean, we’re a big fiberglass company. We just don’t do a lot of it in the drilling space. But tons of weight reduction and smart things we can do with fiberglass. That has been really cool. And power systems, there’s tons of waste that we always allowed. And so we’ve got systems that are capturing power off of the brake system from the top drive being pulled up and down. And so since we’re capturing that energy, we’re reusing it, we’re balancing it. We’re allowed to use less power, less fuel, doing it with hydraulic systems. It doesn’t end in that. There’s so much inefficiency in the power systems. So we’ve got tons of products. We’ve got software that just will manage the balance of use of your engines. And so those areas are great. So yeah, we’re enjoying all of it. There’s so many different things that we’re playing with that are fun.
JP: Thank you so much for joining us, with David Reid of NOV and me, Jennifer Pallanich, in this Hart Energy Live Exclusive.