You're listening to World Oil Deep Dive, conversations with energy industry leaders and engineers about the market trends and technologies shaping the oil and gas industry. Now here's this week's episode. Alright. Now we're here with Justin Blifin, who is the CEO and founder, I might add, of Brigade Energy Holdings. Welcome to the show.
Thanks. Great to be here, Jim.
Before we get started into the real meat of it, Justin, tell me, the audience always likes to know who they're listening to. Why don't you give us a little bit of your background? How did you come to the decision to found a well services company?
Yes, sir. I've got a diversified background, a few different things in my career. I started in the Navy. I was in the SEAL teams for a number of years. Four deployments through the Middle East to Iraq and get on my soapbox around that, and and more relevantly around how lack of a coherent energy policy has driven our foreign policy for a lot of years and decades. And so I've always had an interest in in going into energy, and that's what I did after I got out of the service almost twenty years
ago. For the last fifteen years, give or take, I've been a energy entrepreneur. I've been on the upstream side, was a early member of a company, an upstream E and P company where we went from zero to about twenty thousand barrels a day in the Bakken. I've helped build a a frack company. I've helped build a midstream company. And as a CEO and founder, I've helped build Brigade Energy Holdings over the last seven and a half
years. Brigade is mostly known for its rig business, its well servicing business, which we'll talk a little bit about today, which is Brigade Energy Services. We run about a hundred rigs out of thirteen locations in seven states. That makes us probably the third or fourth largest well servicer in the US, still a relatively small company. We have a couple of other
outfits as well. One is called Energy Overwatch, which is playing in the methane and emissions management sector, emerging sector, and the other is another small clean tech startup called Carbon Shield, which is going after high quality carbon offsets in well plugging and abandonment.
Oh, wow.
So we've got a few different things going on, but I think, you know, really looking forward to talking about Brigade and our rig business, which has been a passion and a mission of ours to evolve that sector, that industry subsector for the last many years.
Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of that, now you guys have something new called SecureWell.
Yes, sir.
Can you tell us about that?
So SecureWell is our effort and this isn't a brigade only effort. This is the Energy Workforce and Technology Council. Oh, wow. Okay. Effort. And five or six well servicing companies have come together over the last couple years, and we have put capital investment into. And more importantly, we've put expertise and manpower and leadership in effort that really many say say should
have been done decades ago. And that effort is creating a new well control program and course and credential for our well servicing industry sector employees. And it is more focused on closed hole or cased hole operations as opposed to the existing courses which deal more with open hole. And so what that really means in kinda layman's term is the traditional well
control course was more for drillers. A lot more of the content was for drilling rig operations, whereas our folks are well servicing operations, and less of the content in those courses was relevant or applicable to our folks. Everybody's been complaining about this for decades. Nobody's done
anything about it. So Brigade, as well as some of our major kinda national franchise competitors in the well servicing sector came together, put our differences aside, and collaborated for the sole purpose of designing a better course with the ultimate goal of making our people better, making the people of the industry better, making the operations safer, and hopefully, maybe aspiring to even save lives someday.
Yeah. No. That's fantastic. And it's odd to me that there wasn't something like that already. Like you said, people complained about it for decades. I guess that leads into my final question is is why are you guys involved with EWTC? I mean, is it because of these type of things? I mean, they're taking action, creating courses?
Yes. So the EWTC has been a great organization for now multiple oilfield service businesses. We Brigade are involved for a couple of reasons. One, they have a number of programs and courses that we can send our people to. Anything from junior and senior managers and emerging leaders down to more junior field staff operational leadership courses, and even some technical courses as well. The programs department, the coursework has been
very great for our workforce. Also, the SecureWell program, as I just talked about, which is relatively new, but we're very excited to be championing that, developing that, and pushing that. And that's gaining a lot of momentum in industry with throughout not just all of our competitors in the service sector, but also more importantly, our customers on the E and P side. Lastly, I guess I would say well, two more things. One is they have a great
scholarship program. So every year, we're able to put some of our brigade employees up for some of the EWTC available scholarships, and we've had some winners over the past number of years, which we're super proud of and pleased with. And then lastly, a very high quality network of industry leaders. I think we have over two hundred fifty, three hundred companies that
represent over six hundred thousand employees. But some of the not just senior top brass, but all the emerging leaders in that organization and being able to listen to them, meet them, get to know them has been wildly valuable for our organization in a number of different ways.
I can imagine. I mean, it's impressive being here at the annual meeting. I mean, it is a who's who of oil and gas here. It's crazy. Right?
On the service side. Yes. And we do have some of the E and Ps, the large E and Ps and some folks as well. But the guts, the leadership of the organization really come from the service side, And it's a diverse array of subsectors. I'm in well servicing, but we have drillers, we have frackers, we have manufacturers, we have, wireline and coil, and then the vast ecosystem of supply chain that supports those organizations is also involved.
So it's a really diverse and robust group of knowledge sharing.
Impressive. Impressive. Well, Justin, thanks for taking the time out. I know it's busy here. There's a lot of things going on. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today.
Thanks for having me. Tell us more about Brigade. Right.
I came from the upstream side. I haven't helped start up a small EMP a number of years ago, and one of the experiences I had was I was always a frustrated consumer of well servicing. And that's a longer story. But as I started looking into the sector, there's a lot of reasons on why, in my opinion and and many others, this sector has been a little bit left behind some of the rest of the oil field that has continually evolved their workforce and the training and the comps and level.
It's not a sexy part of the business. Right? It doesn't get all the love that other parts do. Right?
It's sometimes seen that way. One, they don't show up as much in the capital budget. So new well construction, which is kind of the sexiest stuff, drilling and completing new wells, working on existing wells, including the ones that are seventeen years old. It doesn't yield as much. However, the skill sets of our employees
is vast and impressive. And I think that's sometimes misunderstood by the oil field because drilling and frac and other service sectors are a little bit more up than a pedestal, and well servicing is seen more as a commodity. But having been involved with a frac company in a small role, a start up frack company, which don't get me wrong, high risk,
very skilled. But the average well servicer, just to give you a sense of this, any given week, you'd be doing production oriented work and removing all sorts of different types of configurations of different vintage wellheads. Right. Two weeks later, he's doing, PNA where they don't have title chain of custody of what's going on down hole.
Right.
And they're dealing with all sorts of different complexities down hole that they have to have the experience and the knowledge to deal with. Two weeks after that is forty feet in the air on the night towers on top of the snubbing stack doing completion oriented work.
So a lot of these folks, especially if they get into the crew chief or the operator or the rig supervisor level, they have to have such a broad knowledge base of both what's happening on the surface with all the equipment and the components as well as what's going on downhole, which I think is often very much underappreciated in industry. Part of our investment thesis and our effort with Brigade from day one has been to evolve and innovate on comps and management of the workforce.
It's been a journey. We've been summiting this mountain for a number of years now. We first created doctrine. Just creating the doctrine from file new was a massive effort. Normally, well servicing companies aren't doctrine creators, aren't content creators.
Right.
Just c mapping. What are all the skill sets necessary for a fully qualified expert well servicer, breaking out those c maps and those skill sets into fundamental up to mastery levels. And then not just creating the doctrine, but the more important part is developing the transfer mechanisms to get that knowledge into our people's heads and hands on a daily basis at the field level, and then to trust with Verified to have the systems in place to
check, their proficiency and their development. So we're on that journey. We've made a ton of progress. And, really, over the last year or so, we've started getting some industry recognition from major customers and trade organizations for some of those efforts, and we're starting to see the results. The results have been improving for years, but we're really starting to see more meaningful results over the last year.
That's impressive. That's a great summary of the well service industry. And believe me, I get to talk to a lot of people on this podcast, and it never ceases to amaze me all the different situations. I was talking to a well servicing guy, and we were talking about, is it easy to analyze a job before you do it? He goes, no. It's impossible. You don't even know. A lot of times, you don't even know what's going down hole. Right? It's very hard to be
able to sit there and say, okay. This is what we need to do unless you have all the information. And that's where the drillers, they're making a hole. Right? And the frackers, the guys just drilled the hole. They got the information for that. But on the well service side, sometimes you just don't know. Right?
Yeah. The variety of operational situations that they're dealing with on the week basis is maybe a little bit more vast than some of those other industry sectors. So I think it's important to keep having that conversation, one conversation at a time and getting that message out there to have the industry really think about who they've got out there and how skilled the organization does the business even know how knowledgeable and how skilled the people of the crew is that they're sending out.
Right. And that's where SecureWell comes in.
And SecureWell is a very critical piece that just goes hand in glove with everything I just said, which is beyond Brigade. Again, that's Brigade
Right.
Plus some other businesses sending our experts together to collaborate over a series of workshops and meetings over a series of months with some external third party help to come in and build a new case whole well control program, which is gonna be, we believe, much better for all of the workers in well servicing even outside of Brigade.
Perfect. That's good, man. So next up here, we're with Brian Grudy from Baker Hughes. Brian, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Thank you for the invitation.
Alright. Brian, now you're VP of oilfield services for North America. Right?
Oilfield services and equipment for North America Onshore.
Wow, man. That's a heady position. How did you rise to such a lofty position at Baker?
Yeah. There's never a boring day. That's for sure. So I had the opportunity to join the industry in nineteen ninety six, so my degree is in geology. So it was a natural fit with the oil field services wireline business. So that's where I started as a field engineer. Started in the Permian Basin where a lot of folks start their careers and had the opportunity to work around the world. So I spent ten years abroad in Kazakhstan, Angola Wow. Russia, Venezuela, and a few years
in France. So good opportunity to see the world and see the whole scope of what our industry does. And when I moved back to the US, I joined the construction side of our industry. So I worked in pipeline and facilities for a few years. Oh, interesting. Twenty twenty, joined Baker and stepped into this role basically as the general manager for the North American business. So covering the drilling production
and all of our services underneath. So it's been a fun time because that also coincided with the beginning of COVID.
Right. Exactly. Yeah.
The new guy right around two thousand twenty was not an easy time. But fast forward, and we're at a historical shift in the industry with consolidation and kind of the next chapter of the shale story being written, so it's a fun time to be here.
Yeah. No. I mean, this is a really interesting time, I think. Things have recovered from COVID more or less, like you mentioned with all of the consolidation that's going on. You have a unique position because you're looking kind of at everything over North America. So give us a real quick kind of summary of how you see things going now. You must be thinking about this stuff all the time. What's the next two, three years look like?
Sure. Well, I think the unique aspect of Baker Hughes is just how much of the traditional energy and new energy landscape that we're able to see through one company lens. So that's exciting part of my job. You know, we support all of the traditional upstream customers, midstream customers, and downstream customers in in my
business. And then across the company, we're talking to all the major players who are setting the stage for the next chapters of new energy development in the US, which is really ground zero for the growth that we're gonna see globally for new energy technology. So I think the common conversation right now is really continued consolidation with the traditional energy. We see a more disciplined try to help them solve
those problems and find those gains. The new energy landscape is continuing to accelerate with tremendous investment coming here to the US. And the crossroads. We talk about carbon capture, and you think about what we do traditionally in oilfield services. We know the subsurface. Right. We know how to construct wells. We know how to put things in the ground and keep them
there. There's just a tremendous amount of opportunity when you look at both halves of the energy equation here in North America.
Yeah. I think that whole the new energy idea, so many of those things. I was just talking to someone this week about geothermal type things, and I was like, yeah. That's basically every driller's business. They drill holes in the ground. They can drill holes looking for oh, they can drill holes looking for thermal heat. They can do whatever they need to
do. I don't think many people outside of people in the industry realize how much crossover there is, like, for carbon capture or for geothermal in these other areas, and it's always the quandary. I mean, we all know we're all working on it. Right? We're trying to figure ways to help out those markets. But if you have somebody who says, hey, man. Oil and gas is bad. Baker Hughes, oh, those guys are oil and gas. They're bad.
That's not true. It's not true because we need the energy, number one, but it's not true because that's not all Baker Hughes does. You're in a lot of different areas and moving continuously toward a transition, whatever transition happens.
I think the message is becoming clear each conversation. It's really about emissions. Energy demand is gonna grow. And where that energy comes from is really not the conversation. It's how do we manage the emissions that come from the generation process. And, again, that's where we really have a great footprint as a company to
be able to support in that process. I participated in a panel in Calgary last year, and the conversation was about reskilling and the need to reskill the industry to be prepared for the future. But when you really sit down, then ultimately, they'll be reskilling efforts required. But in the grand scheme, all the know how and all the capability to meet the future energy demands we have in our industry today. So we're an industry of doers. We're
an industry of problem solvers. It takes the balance sheets of big players who are well capitalized. It takes sophisticated engineering efforts and people who know how to execute work and execute projects, and that's really what our whole industry top to bottom is. So there's an element of reskilling and maybe adapting what we do, but the reality is all the seeds already planted and healthy and growing within our core industry today.
Yeah. That's fascinating because that brings us to our final topic in the short conversation because we're here at the EWTC annual meeting. Tell us a little bit about what do you do for the EWTC?
I'm just concluding my term as co chairman
Oh, nice.
For two thousand twenty three, two thousand twenty four. So it's a great privilege to serve with Daniel Hines as as my cochair and support the leadership of the organization and a tremendous membership and support the industry.
Right. And aside from that, I mean, your involvement in there, why is Baker Hughes part of the EWTC? I mean, we're talking about a big organization with a lot of pockets. So why team up with other players under the umbrella of the EWTC?
We've been a long time supporter of the organization. We have a long history supporting. For me personally, I feel like I've been given a lot from mentors and people that I've learned from coming through the industry over the course of twenty seven years. And there comes a time for us to give back and make sure that we're helping the next generations
to grow and be ready. And when we think about that as a company, EWTC is the perfect forum for young talent coming through the industry to meet senior leaders and have access and conversations and the coffee talks that help people think about what's this industry hold for me. Because the biggest risk to everything we do is that
good people stop talented people
stop joining our industry because of so so much of the negativity that's been unduly kind of spread about what we do over the last few years. So that's our big challenge, attracting talented people. And this is a tremendous forum to do it as well as keeping our own employees engaged and helping them grow to see what the rest of the industry looks like and making peer networks and those social things which keep people engaged and actively growing.
Nice. Nice. I'm just curious myself then. Inside Baker Hughes, you guys must belong to a lot of associations, of course. But in this particular one, is it the focus on the workforce like you were just saying? Is that the key benefit of being a member?
Sure. Yeah. It always comes back to people. I mean, we stress over technology development, and we stress over the things that we can touch. But in the end, the last headaches that's always there come back to our workforce and their motivation and their readiness and competence and all of those things. So, again, at some point, it's about the company and the
benefit that the company gets from that. But as industry leaders, we also have the opportunity to serve a higher purpose with our whole industry to make sure that we're creating the opportunity for the broader industry to grow.
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, it is absolutely true that especially with all of the advances we're talking about, service companies in particular, that a lot of those efficiencies and things that we're gaining now are through some machine learning and programming, artificial intelligence, all of these type of things, which should be attracting a much younger, excited crowd because outside of the tech industry itself, I don't know anybody who relies more on AI and that type of technology
than we do. Right?
Undoubtedly. And that's the next evolution of the whole industry. We've done so much from a operational efficiency standpoint and technology development from the perspective of well construction production, etcetera. But now the next layer is how do we apply digital tools to ensure that we get the most out of everything that we do. And it's really digital is something that we treat
maybe as an initiative today. But when you talk to young people coming through the organizations, you realize digital is just how things work
Right. At a certain level. And,
it's not an initiative anymore. It's just the way the world works, and that's where the industry is heading. So I think for those of us who are trying to support and accelerate that effort, it just highlights again the technology is critical, but the people coming behind it to support it who are digital natives and fluent and ready to take on those challenges that just further supports why these sort of efforts are so critical for all of us.
Couldn't agree more, Brian. Thanks for
coming over and experience the conversation. Thank you.
Alright, everybody. Our next guest today is Daniel Hines, COO of Clearwell Dynamics. Daniel, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's exciting to be out here in Scottsdale. Beautiful venue.
Yeah. Isn't it? Oh my goodness. It's hotter than the hubs of Hades here, but I'll tell you, it is beautiful. Right?
Right now, it doesn't feel too hot. We have so much humidity in Texas. This is great. We're loving the low humidity.
Yeah. No kidding. A matter of fact, I don't know if you've experienced when did you
get in? Just got here
this morning. Oh, okay. So we went this morning. I've been here for a couple days, and I'll tell you, man, you feel that dryness. You're like, what is going on? And then you're like, oh, yeah. There's no humidity out here. You can really, really feel it. But, Daniel, before we get started, tell our audience a little bit about your history and background and how you came to be COO at Clear Well Dynamics.
Okay. So I've been in oilfield services, specifically well servicing for twenty two years now. Started right out of A and M for key energy services for six years. I actually got hired on to do IT support of all things. My degree was in information systems in the business school. Wow. Yep. Yep. I did it for about six months and really wanted to work my way into operations. I was a lot more trucks in the field. And long story short, worked my way into operations.
Ultimately, I moved over to Pioneer Energy Services, who was San Antonio based, close to home for me. That was attractive. And Pioneer, ultimately, was acquired by That was attractive. And Pioneer ultimately was acquired by Patterson UTI, and they spun off the well service business to Roe Patterson, a group of investors out of Fort Worth in two thousand twenty two, and that's
how Clearwell Net Dynamics came to be. I've been with Clearwell and predecessor Pioneer Energy Services for sixteen years now and started in the corporate office, worked my way into the field where I I was, operations manager and then a district manager and ran the yard there at Bryan. And best thing they ever did was move me to the field and kinda advance from there. People retire, and I just kinda worked my way up to VP and then now recently COO for ClearWell. So it's
been a ride. It's been a ride over the last twenty two years for sure.
That's amazing. That is amazing. So tell the folks too a little about Clearwell Dynamics, what you guys do. Well servicing, give us a big picture. Sure.
Sure. Clearwell Dynamics is a pure play well servicing and well site decommissioning company. We focus on everything around the well service rig. We're not trying to be everything for everybody. We're not trying to wrap in a bunch of multiple different service lines. We wanna be the very best at everything around that well service rig. So that's a well servicing from completion jobs to repair and maintenance jobs all the way to the end of the useful life of the well in our eco services division
where we do plug and abandonment projects. The eco services, some exciting stuff happening there around technology. We're expanding that into reclamation and remediation of the land
as well. Yeah. Yep.
And then some new technology coming down the pipe around methane monitoring that we're really excited about. So we're excited about the growth and the opportunities in that eco services division specifically. And it's just a really nice complement to our well servicing and production services business that really is the bulk of the company today.
But, certainly, the p and a business was not something that we specialized in at Pioneer and through the years as we grew the company, but excited to see kinda where that goes in the future.
Yeah. It's interesting. I think the p and a business is fascinating. Right? Because when you talk about, like, orphan wells and things that you gotta go back in and take care of, I mean, who's paying for that stuff? Is that taxpayer paying for that? I mean, where does that money come from if there's no chain of custody? Nobody owns it anymore. It's just out there. It's a major problem. It's a big problem.
And as the spotlight kinda shines on that, we think that that business is only gonna grow. And it's gonna be important for companies to partner with the right contractor to get it done the right way. It's not just getting the the well plugged and get it out of your way, pump it as fast as you can and get out of here. It's, hey. Was it done properly? Right. And partnering with the right contractor to do that.
I guarantee you, whoever gets that contract to plug those wells in the past, maybe paperwork gets lost, things get done, but that's not gonna happen anymore. And they're gonna come back on somebody who, if they did the job and it's not completely plugged, it's gonna be a problem, and they're gonna find that company. They're gonna do it. So you're right. You gotta have people who know what they're doing and can make sure that it's gonna stay.
Is there some life expectancy on those? I mean, what are the regulations around that type of thing? Whoever does that job, you're on the hook for twenty five years, or is it fifty years, or how long is it?
That's part of the problem probably in today that there isn't, I think, a life expectancy in a plugged well. We assume that it's forever. I think that some of the wells that were plugged, there's certainly issues out there in the industry, wells that were plugged improperly in the seventies and eighties and nineties even that are being addressed and kinda coming to the forefront now and drawing a lot more attention to it. That's why we think it's gonna be more important too just because of
the focus on that. And we've gotta get it right the first time. Oh, absolutely. We've gotta get it right for the industry, for our children, for the landowners, and for everybody at stake. So
Yeah. For sure. Now here at EWTC, right, you work with Justin who we spoke with earlier on this SecureWell program. Right? Give us a little bit of your take on that.
Sure. SecureWell is a huge advancement for the well servicing industry in cased hole well control. For many, many years, we've trained our rig supervisors, our rig operators in well control training, sent them through well control training. But it was a very drilling focused training. And in some ways, it was applicable. But in other ways, it really wasn't applicable to their jobs. I had a lot of supervisors through the years that came through and said, well, I
went through it. I passed. But it really didn't have anything to do with what we do every day. SecureWell was developed by well servicing experts, by some of my heroes that have been in the business for a lot more years and have forgotten more about well servicing than I'll probably ever know. But the guys that truly know cased hole well servicing operations and developed specifically for the well servicing
business. And it's exciting now that we've got our own training, and we're training to our industry in a training that's applicable to our guys. So super excited about the program and really good feedback from our people so far that have completed the training.
Nice. I guess that leads to my last question in this short time we have together. What's the real advantage? Why is ClearWell Dynamics involved with the EWTC?
For us, the EWTC, there's a lot of different facets there. But part of it is the training that we touched on with SecureWell, other leadership trainings that's available to our management team that we can send them through. A piece of that is ClearWell Dynamics, we're a private company. We're not a small company, but we're certainly not a large publicly traded company either. So we don't have a government affairs
department, if you will. Oh. And so the EWTC acts as our government affairs department, and they're feeding us information and topics that range of all kinds of different regulations coming out of Washington DC and our state government and feeding us that information so that we know what's coming down the pipe before it does. And then also representing us in Washington DC and with our state representatives as well. So there's a training piece. There's a networking piece.
There's the governmental affairs piece. And it's also been very helpful for me personally to be able to network with some of the other experts in the business. Even though they're competitors, if it's around safety, we're always sharing ideas and how we can get better. Because if we can drive a safer workplace and take care of the people that make our living out there in the field, we all win. Absolutely.
A hundred percent. Well, Daniel, thanks so much for taking some time out today. I I know there's a lot going on. Matter of fact, there's talk right now I'd like to be in listening to. So thanks for taking your time and being on the show today.
You bet. Thanks.
Take care.
Appreciate you having me.
Alright, everybody. Our next guest is Scott Livingston from NOV. Scott, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much, Jim. My pleasure to be here.
Scott, tell us you're president of the energy and supply services segment. Is that what we call them? Segment?
Our energy and product and services segment. That's correct. Okay. Alright. EPS. Think of earnings per share.
Do you contribute?
We better. We better. That's the
bottom line. Well, tell our audience a little bit about how you got to this lofty position because there's only two of you, right, in the whole company.
You have your group and one other group. That's right. We're down to two operating business segments for the entirety of the corporation now.
Wow. Wow. That's impressive. That's impressive. So how did you work your way up into that?
Yeah. Well, there's certainly a lot of good fortune, but after university, served in the Air Force for eight years as an officer and, had the great opportunity to work with a lot of cutting edge stealth and surveillance platforms.
Yeah. Okay.
And when I left the Air Force, I wanted to continue that journey in technology, and I thought the oil and gas was a really good fit. And so so I joined Varco in two thousand one, January two thousand one.
Oh, wow. You're old school. Yeah. Very
old school.
I am.
And, yeah, almost twenty four years ago, really got involved in offshore projects and was involved in offshore projects through the merger of National Oilwell and Varco that brought this incredible portfolio of solutions for topside and subsea. And in two thousand six, I was asked to move to Singapore and help staff our project supports for all these projects in Singapore, Korea, and
China, and a few other places. And just had an absolute blast and an experience of a lifetime being involved, leading teams, and this incredible number of offshore vessels that were being built. Right. That the industry had never seen before. When I returned in two thousand twelve, I just continued in in leadership responsibilities for production engineering projects the engineering around offshore projects, and then moved into the onshore side. That
was a real wide awakening. I mean, obviously, shale was really intense at that moment, and that's a very different environment than offshore, especially deep water offshore. But it was great experience and then eventually moved into running our completions business, specifically our intervention stimulation equipment.
Oh, yeah. Okay.
Lot of fun in pressure pumping, obviously, massive market changes, technology continuing to evolve, and our coil tubing and wireline and a number of other things. But a lot of digital platforms that we were also bringing to the marketplace for the completions portion of the well activity beyond just the drilling instrumentation. At the end of last year, our CEO announced a reorganization of the corporation and collapsing from three operating
business segments into two for two reasons. One was to simplify our structures and reorganize our businesses into a better fit in their portfolios to drive synergies, and also look at some consolidation of some businesses within NOV. I was very fortunate to be asked to run our
energy and product and services segment. We have a lot of our well optimization businesses from bits to downhole motors to our pipe and inspection, a lot of our digital technologies around the instrumentation, visualization, cloud surfaces, both the drilling and the completions.
The MAX. The MAX platform.
Absolutely. And then a big business in our waste management solids control. Oh, wow. From cuttings, reinjection, of course, traditional solids control measures with shakers and centrifuges and fluids management. And that's been a very, very exciting business that's continuing to grow both offshore and also in regions
around the world, especially the Middle East. And then finally into our composite solutions, corrosion control, and providing glass reinforced epoxy resin based solutions, tubular solutions, tanks, vessels, structures across a number of industrial segments for the marketplace.
Because you guys are doing some stuff in wind
with that too. Right? We're in wind and equally exciting in that composite space. We're in the new chip manufacturing. What?
Wow.
Production plants, fabs that are being constructed.
Where does that fit in?
That fits into the ducting. Oh. That's required to extract Right. A lot of the fumes from those fab manufacturing systems and then into the pipelines and storage containment vessels on exterior of the plant. And we provide a lot of the composite solutions for that. We're into lithium extraction. Oh, wow. Yeah. As precious metal mining and processing is continuing to grow in the US and elsewhere. We participate in that
again. Storage, transfer, composite solutions is all around this corrosion control that our fiberglass products are able to provide.
Yeah. It's amazing. It's amazing. I mean, the depths of what you guys do at NOV are just mind boggling to me, really. Every once I'll be talking to somebody, and they'll mention some area I haven't heard of. And I'm like, what? You guys do that too? Yeah. Yeah. So good on you. That's fantastic. Right? But, hey, we're here at EWTC. That's why.
Yeah. It's a mouthful.
Yeah. Exactly. No. But, you know, that's the funny thing. I was just talking with Molly recently. We were talking about when they changed the name back before she was there, EWTC was really an awkward thing to say. I mean, from Visa to that. Right. But now it kinda rolls off the tongue. I think it just been talking too much today. That's my problem. But EWTC kinda rolls off the tongue. But we're here at EWTC. Tell us a little bit about what you do for
EWTC. You're on the board of directors. Right?
Right. Well, not only the board of directors. Just a few hours ago, good or bad, I was just elected as the incoming chairman of the board of directors.
Congratulations, I think. I don't I'm not sure. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
So we just kicked off the meeting. There's just a couple hours ago, and they had to suffer Well represented companies throughout a lot of the energy landscape,
not only traditional oil and gas. So
So we have a great board. We have a great advisory board. We're very fortunate to bring on some new members Right. As people were retiring off their positions, and we're bringing in members from companies that had just gotten involved or folks within existing companies that had been involved in the organization for a long time. EWTC is a great merger of the legacy PISA
Right.
That you're familiar with and AESC. We're really happy with the trajectory of this organization and the benefits that we're providing to the sector.
Yeah. Well, this is an interesting thing because you mentioned new members, and I did wanna touch on that because, okay, it'll be a big company. You guys are probably involved in a lot of associations. What value does EWTC bring to the table for you guys? Right. Right.
Well, I mean, it really does fit the branding of the name about that energy workforce and technology that what we are very focused on is providing training and workforce development mechanisms and solutions to the industry, which benefit both small companies and large companies. Small companies don't always have the internal resources to provide effective
training programs. We're touching them from operation supervision to emerging executives to business development, finance, and now even into secure well, providing valuable training to our well servicing personnel. That was just kicked off last year. We've got a well stimulation guidelines, first of its kind, that's being deployed in the US. A lot of great training and I'll just say workforce development tools that are in place and programs that we continue to evolve, and we're gonna continue to
invest in those. The other aspect that we're passionate about is the evolving energy landscape and providing a forum for those technology symposiums to continue to advance the development of the existing oil and gas and other forms of energy. And the industry in oil and gas has just done such a fantastic job of pushing the boundaries of efficiency and also continuing to evolve successfully in reducing emissions.
Absolutely. Yeah. We have a
lot of even here, the panels that we have going on this week are here providing a lot of valuable insights into that road map. And then lastly, we're a trade association, and we advocate on behalf of our sector. We have a very successful and impactful government and affairs, both staff and programs in place, and we're rear up there on Capitol Hill
Right.
Constantly engaged with advocating on behalf of our sector.
Yeah. It was funny because, I guess, Tim and Ron together were just testifying before congress. Just yesterday.
Just yesterday. Just yesterday. Wow. Yeah. They were involved had been asked to come testify on a committee
Yeah.
At a committee hearing, and that happens quite frequently.
Really?
Where Tim is pulling member executives and pulling them up to DC or other locations on where these meetings are happening, or we're helping to host the representatives and committees or Department of Energy at our locations so that they can really come to the coalface and see what's going on.
Yeah. That's interesting because they don't really get much of a chance. I you would think the guys from Texas would know. But other representatives from other places, they may not have the perspective we have on energy production in the US. Right?
Right. And we also want them to appreciate the significant number of jobs. Huge. Yeah. And businesses that are in their districts that are contributing to energy security for us and also energy supply for the greater world.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Was there anything else you wanna touch on? I mean, we don't have much time here today. You're a busy guy now that you're, so when do you officially take over then? Was that today
at lunch? Earlier today. We had our board meeting advisory board meeting at lunch today and That was the official takeover. Elections that were held and
Wow.
Takeovers. So We're super privileged.
We're super privileged then to have Scott, the new chairman, with us. Didn't even know that, but you knew that. You knew that was gonna happen. I didn't
spring that on you. Right? No. It's been a pipeline. I'm very honored, and I'm looking forward to even a greater degree of engagement with all of our member companies in the energy workforce at large over the coming year in order to make sure that I'm staying connected and that we're continuing to move in the right strategic directions that are adding value to our sector.
Let's say there's some companies that aren't involved with EWTC yet. As the new chairman, do they just call you? What are they how how do they get involved?
Yeah. There's a number of ways that we obviously do our best to recruit. I mean, obviously, all of our board, our advisory board, and to a degree, entire membership are all ambassadors for the organization Yeah. And the industry. And they're obviously inviting companies to consider participating. We'll come to this event, and hopefully, they'll see some value in it. They'll see the
value that other companies are realizing. We've got a lot of great staff members always readily available to work with the company and helping onboard them and get them plugged in to our various programs and committees that make sense for what they're doing.
Right. Exactly. But yeah.
Whether it's speaking to one of the board members or one of our staff members, of course, we've got a great website, and anybody can always interact with us in that manner too.
Excellent, Scott. Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your very first day as chairman to come and talk with us. Thanks for being on the show.
Thanks, Jim. Appreciate it.
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