GA Drilling

Have you ever read a technical report so flawed you wondered how anyone approved publishing it? I read one last week. Morpheus Research put out a short-seller report on Fervo Energy with a title promising hidden setbacks and a commercial build out destined for failure. With a title like that, one would expect rock solid evidence of impending doom (pun intended). Instead, the report makes several dubious claims. I took particular exception to two of the most egregious. The first is a 90°F temperature drop that Fervo supposedly concealed. In reality the wells were briefly shut in during March 2024 and cooled off. The second is about a supposed drilling cost “plateau”. The chart Morpheus relies on covers Fervo’s first fifteen wells at Cape, out of more than one hundred planned, which is too early to call anything a plateau. Subsurface geothermal is something I know a bit about, so I put on my Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap and did the detective work Morpheus should have done before publishing. Read my full article to see Morpheus’s claims debunked: https://lnkd.in/gfqz7Hy4

What would one less trip save you on your next section? 🤔 See for yourself. Put your section length, spread rate, bit cost, and last trip count into our drilling cost calculator to see what you can save in rig days and dollars with NexTitan, an autonomous downhole drive tool that applies weight on bit at the bit.

If hard rock is what makes your next well expensive, this is the test data to look at. 👇 NexTitan, an autonomous downhole drive tool, applies weight on bit at the bit, so drilling is faster and bits last longer. Read about the test well, results, and the limits found along the way, so you can decide if NexTitan belongs in your drilling plan.

Everyone wants to be Fervo. Fervo unlocked a new business model for geothermal. For most of the past decade a geothermal technology company had one job: develop the technology, prove it in a test well, and sell it to whoever built the power plant. That model is starting to change. Companies that started with a drilling or heat extraction technology now develop and own projects. Quaise built millimeter wave drilling and is now developing Project Obsidian, a 50 MW plant at Newberry in Oregon. XGS built a closed loop system and is now developing 150 MW in New Mexico with Meta as the customer and Baker Hughes doing the engineering. Sage built a geopressured system and now has a storage project running in Texas and a 150 MW project with Meta in development. Mazama built the hottest engineered geothermal system on record and is now building toward a commercial plant at Newberry. Each of these companies could have stayed a technology supplier. Instead, they are taking on development risk themselves. Why? I think the reason is simple. Fervo showed that a technology company can carry a project through to production and get rewarded for it in the public market. Once that path exists, staying as a supplier means handing the largest part of the upside to someone else. At the same time, the challenge is not just building projects, but building repeatable technologies that can scale globally. The winners may not only be the companies that invent better technology, but those that can combine technology, project development and execution in a scalable way.

COST, PRODUCTION, AND RISK. Every operator deals with the same three problems. NexTitan grips the borehole and applies thrust at the bit. That keeps weight on bit steady and the bit engaged, so you drill faster, drill further, and trip less.

LOWER DRILLING COST IN HARD ROCK. Hard, abrasive rock means slow drilling, worn bits, and NPT, all of which add rig days and cost to every well. NexTitan grips the borehole and applies thrust at the bit. That keeps weight on bit steady and the bit engaged, so you drill faster with fewer trips.