DRILLERCAST & TheDriller.com Newscast Replays
Drillercast is a podcast all about drilling. Drill trainers Dave Bowers and Brock Yordy host a wide variety of experts, mentors, and drillers who have drilled all forms of drilling. Brock and Dave will address training, safety, operations, innovation, and everything relevant to the drilling industry.
DRILLERCAST & TheDriller.com Newscast Replays
Armageddon Got The Drilling Wrong, But the need for Drillers Right!
What's truly "spooky" this Halloween? The unprecedented demand for drilling professionals! In Episode 3 of The Drillercast, hosts Brock and Dave discuss the industry's workforce "nightmare", from record-breaking apprentice classes to new legislative support.
Fitting the holiday, they analyze the drilling inaccuracies in the blockbuster Armageddon. While the movie's physics are a "nightmare", the hosts agree with its core premise: it's easier to teach a driller to be an astronaut than an astronaut to be a driller.
Why? Because drilling is more than a procedure; it's a "science and an art", requiring microsecond adjustments and a feel that takes years to develop. Listen to the full episode to hear why the skills of a driller are truly out of this world.
That's right. This is a new episode, and we are really excited to be back. You can find us bi weekly. Head over to the driller.com for the best content in the drilling and construction industry. Now please that awesome music by Far Under. Let's go. We've made three. And the first two of the Brock and Dave podcast, the bad podcast, trailer cast, are out there and are doing quite well. Gotten some good feedback on um hard hats versus helmets. And the talking pay is is a big deal. And this episode is dropping on Halloween. And um there's a lot of spooky things going on out there in the construction industry and in uh in community in general.
SPEAKER_02:So how are you doing, Dave? I'm doing well. I don't know about spooky everywhere, but we've noticed uh you know a demand that we hadn't seen uh for a long time. We just recently have uh added seven brand new uh drooling apprentices this time of year, which almost never happens, right? So uh I think for our area there in Chicago, it it brings us over 30 for this year, which you know that's brand new people on top of the on top of the people that we have. And after uh the evaluation, which is two weeks, was done, we placed all of them and really have already been told by February they want another one. I could have probably used more people for this one, uh, but we used the projections that uh that were provided to us, what the industry thought that they could could handle, but I could easily have put three or more four other people to work right away um in new careers in drilling that is gonna uh you know, not jobs in drilling, careers in drilling. They they've been they've been laid out a uh a course curriculum and a learning schedule, and and we're gonna help them with that. And it's an exciting time. Uh, you know, I I have never seen it this busy all over this at this time, which is a good thing, right? It's a good thing. A little scary though, because it's scary because can we maintain this? We need we need to continue to move forward. I recently had a uh had a contingent of um uh lawmakers at our facility that we did some stuff for geothermal uh that are working on a new bill in Illinois to promote geothermal and to uh hopefully uh you know mirror what they have in in uh New York in order to drive this industry forward. So it's an exciting time. Uh as long as we can maintain it, we can build careers. We just don't want to we don't want to put people in a in a career that then all of a sudden uh dries up some. Uh but we're gonna have its construction, we're gonna have those pits and valleys, but uh hopefully we can ride as many highs as we can by being proactive.
SPEAKER_01:It's it is an exciting time. And you know, the the last episode we talked about the importance of pay, and you know what? The prevailing wage aspect of the geothermal ITCs, along with many states across the country, including starting with New York with Governor Hokel, who did the Thermal Energy Networks and Jobs Act. And uh the way we're looking at this as a family sustaining wage is fantastic because we're we're creating sustainable energy with people that can continue to do it. And I um you graduated seven new apprentices. I talked to 75 fourth graders this week, and um it was three science blocks, and I was given uh just under an hour, and so you know, we we teach a lot, and uh had a couple takeaways from this. First, I was like, okay, how many slides do I need for you know just under an hour with questions? And at first I did 30, and then I was like, you know what, I'm gonna put some filler in there because I'm worried they're just gonna glaze over. So I put 45.
SPEAKER_02:Can I guess what you needed? What I'm gonna say 10. I'm gonna say 10 because the questions are going to be uh substantial at fourth grade.
SPEAKER_01:I you know what? So Mrs. Brooks uh Winchell Elementary, she is teaching in energy section right now from the beginning of the year, and they're talking about a fictitious town called Ergstown having blackouts, and the curriculum uh that is working is talking about renewable energy. And as my daughter has come home and talking talked about different sections, um, they've talked a lot about wind and solar, and then they talk a little about hydro. And so I went, huh, Brill, are they talking about geothermal? And she's like, No, that's what you do, that's not renewable energy.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you know what it that's a microcosm of um the the outlook of the general public is that they don't understand that it is a renewable energy because although it's electricity that runs it, the efficiencies are so high that that we're actually you know uh using you know a kilowatt of energy and maybe delivering the equivalent of three or four kilowatts of energy to the to the area. So, you know, it is a renewable energy, but that it tells it tells you because that teacher didn't see it that way, that that the population as a whole hears the the name, but equates that with maybe hot rock energy, or just they don't know what it means.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's the curriculum. And I'll tell you what, I don't know who will end up listening to us on and we I don't know how many times we preface this part of the nightmare. Um I scoured, you know, and I I meet people at conferences all the time that go, I'm doing K through 12 curriculum. I'm talking about geothermal and renewable energies to K through 12. And I think we have a lot of upper middle school through high school discussions, and you can get into some pretty broad things. But I went to the major associations looking to see what they have, and I know Christine Hofer kicks butt at New York Geo and talks with the Bose students and whatnot, but uh J Egg has the the coloring book and some very uh great foundational stuff. Um, but I needed something fourth grade science with a fictitious town called Erbstown that's having rolling blackouts. And um hey, I just built it.
SPEAKER_02:Brock, what's the geology of Erbstown?
SPEAKER_01:You know, that was a question asked by a fourth grader. Yeah, Brock, but uh you know, the sun shines everywhere and the wind blows everywhere, and uh, you know, we we get this. Um how is this geothermal gonna work? And what's funny as as I'm also talking with because of uh the big buffoonal bill that shifted the um IROA IRA to the new geothermal, new normal that we're seeing as Damby Lyon is talking about hey, we're coming up with leasing programs for builders in residential homes. And I I am involved in a in a program for you know geothermal as a service right now as well on my my big kid job. And I said to uh little Billy, and that's not his name, but uh, we're keeping these individuals uh in their wholesome world. I said, This works everywhere. And I I literally had an aha moment because I literally just had the same discussion with very rich financially smart people that I go with. You were able to sell 400 acres of solar panels or 90 windmills where the sun shines sometimes and the wind blows sometimes, but uh 15 feet below the surface, it's 52 degrees or 47 degrees, or if we're down in Texas 65 or 70 degrees, and it's been that way for several million years.
SPEAKER_02:Well, the the thing the thing people don't understand is just the battery concept, right? The earth is a solar battery, period, full stop. The the energy from the sun is absorbed by the earth and is stored. All we're doing is accessing it, right? And then learning how to turn that into either heating and cooling, you know. As long as I have a temperature difference, and then we're already using what you already have free on, or um, and by the way, I didn't hit the temperature difference bell right there. That was my phone. I'm about to shut the uh the sound off. This this, by the way, is in fact a amateur uh well, I shouldn't say amateur. This is a professional podcast run by two amateurs at podcasting, professional drillers, amateur podcasters, right? I know I bet the different. I think at this point I'm a professional podcaster, and uh nobody believes I'll give you professional podcaster, I will give me amateur co-host. How's that? No, just because you know they also won't probably uh I'm gonna have to really work, and I and I love doing like stuff with young kids, but because of spending as much time as I have with adults, um I I really have to concentrate if I'm with young, young kids. I never swore the entire time my kids were young, and if you swore in front of them, it pissed me off. Now I'm the one that has to be biting my tongue because I almost in it, and so I've recently found that oh, hey, you've become a little more like you were in the field and a little less like you were at home.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I um I didn't have any Freudian slips, and uh I once in front of the mountain states uh water well drilling conference teaching um recruitment and 20 and then hiring 21st century employees, and this this class I taught was 2017-2018. And I I said the fudge word as a uh as talking about a young man having his hand smashed and what that meant to a company, and I I said it in a comical like manner, but I had to write a letter and apologize. And um funny enough, when I apologized to the entire association, everybody's like, we don't remember you saying it, but one individual did, and they needed to know that I I overstepped my bounds by saying it. Um, I think they're also the same individual that would have rather been in a uh class on variable speed pumps and not listening to some 37-year-old kid at the time talking about how we need to hire all individuals, not just you know, the same traditional individuals we've been hiring ourselves.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's it's really hard to find those same traditional individuals because our our economy is driving many of them uh away from what they traditionally did, right? Uh farming is much, much harder to to do now, especially under our recent uh uh changes in in what's going on. So if there's no if there's no future in it, they don't want to continue in that kind of work. So they are available, but now we have to make this uh attractive. And that's the that's the hard thing. We we really have to make again, and I know this is a broken record coming from me. We have to show them the career and show them what advantages we have coming to this industry, you know. Um we uh they are out there, but there's just as good a candidate who are just as hungry from everywhere else in the country. There's uh I have a couple female uh apprentices that are cornerstones for their company now, right? I've got I've got some gentlemen from the uh you know from rough areas in the inner city that work for uh you know traditional water well companies, you know, all that they have to be able to do is get to the job, and that's that's one of the problems we have is that uh when we recruit from the inner city is that uh we don't typically you can't get public transportation to the job, so you have to have your own car, which a lot of times there's nowhere to put a car in the city. Uh, so it doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_01:Well, what does it cost? Like, let's talk nightmares, it's Halloween. What is parking cost for a construction worker for a day?
SPEAKER_02:Well, parking cost for a day uh in our area a lot of times is uh worked into the budget of the job. Uh but what I'm talking about is somebody who's got to own their vehicle but lives in uh an area that doesn't have the infrastructure except for on the street. And then when it's on when you have a vehicle on the street, uh, you know, you don't know in some of those areas, you know, how can you afford to have a nice car on the street? You probably can't, and then you have to rent a garage or something in order to be able to put it's it becomes a another hardship for them to be able to do it, so it becomes a difficult recruiting tool. And so when you do run into those people that hey, I can get do you have good reliable transportation? One of our one of the basic questions that we have to ask in our initial interview, do you have reliable transportation? Right, and it makes sense though, because what's the one thing a contractor cannot abide? Someone who's not there on time or just doesn't show up because you know, hey, I had a I had a flat or my my cars broke down, you know. So the I don't have I'm not I don't have an answer for that as far as how we fix it, but but it's a consideration that we have to look, okay, when we are recruiting from these other areas, that it's hard. But I've got some guys that came from those areas and still live there that you know have seen the benefit of you know working for one of these companies and you know being able to work towards being able to move out of that area because it's extraordinarily expensive to live in the city. I know that's a hard thing for you to understand, but even when you're living in one of those areas that's that's uh run down, it's extremely expensive. So getting out of there compared to you know growing up where where I grew up or where you grew up is what way more expensive than it was when we were growing up. But in towards the cities is even is even worse. And so to move out now, you need to find a decent job to even get an apartment now. Apartments cost more than what my initial mortgage, and that's for a one-room apartment. My initial mortgage was less money than what than what some of these people are paying for apartments. Heck, some of the car payments for a newer vehicle are up around where uh you know where we used to have housing for that. So so I was shocked the other day. Somebody told me that they're you know they they were paying on a you know basic basic car, like not even a like fancy car, not sports car, not a big car, small car, and they were, you know, oh it's my payment is six hundred dollars a month, plus insurance, plus and I'm like, how I I don't understand how at the wages that we are offering, how are we how are we really gonna work somebody out of that, you know, uh more hours, more whatever, but it it becomes a difficult choice, especially when you can choose the fast food restaurant a mile away for similar money, and then now I'm not burning all that fuel.
SPEAKER_01:It's a yes, yes, and this is the same discussion we just had. You know, we we talk family sus sustaining wages, and um you're absolutely right. Uh a reliable vehicle and insurance, and then you you're in the third largest city in the country. Um, when you get into parking or traffic or fuel, the amount of road time, like those all have to be considered, you know, or you go work for buckies, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, if there's a buckies buy it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um and it's that's the other end of it, you know. In in the nightmare of we need more workforce, as you're talking about I've never heard of you saying we just graduated seven in October when we surely know that we are in late October, like slush, snow, ice, um, road conditions, like winter is coming, and that you know, you're gonna get somebody just started, and then we're gonna have to slow down.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I guess from what we're seeing on some of the companies that are that are hiring these people, right? Uh they're not seeing a slowdown. They're seeing where they have to stop, they'll stop. Other than that, the the schedules are not gonna let them stop, and the amount of work is is pretty high. So, because you know, remember we service the entirety of industrial drilling, you know, so it's geothermal, it's geotechnical, it's uh construction drilling, it's dewatering, right? So we've we've seen uh all of this stuff. Will there be a slowdown for some other institutions? Sure. Uh the geotechnical side, though, doesn't believe there's gonna be a slowdown. They've actually said if we could provide it, they'd they'd add crews, and you know that's that's crazy dog. Plus, there's a lot of traveling going on too. So, you know, some of these companies know they don't want to they they want to keep their machines busy, so they might look for some work down south or some some other stuff and to be able to to keep things rolling. Because once, you know, like anyone, once you get somebody trained that you like, laying them off is a bad idea because if I have to lay you off, what's to say that somebody who has other work doesn't snatch you up, and then there's no guarantee you wind up back with me, right? So the more you know, if if all you're looking for is a warm body, that's not a problem. But if you're looking for somebody building a career understanding what you guys do and helping your company forward, you can't afford to do that. So so I think a lot of them are looking at more long-term solutions of hey, we're getting quality candidates through here through this system, and we wanna we wanna try and keep them busy as long as we can so that we don't put the resources in training them the way we want things done and how this system works for our company, and then have to worry about training somebody else next year because we laid them off and they went to work for our competitor, right? Uh, so we see a lot of this coming. They've already told us they need more people in February that we're going to have to run, we're going to have to run another evaluation in February so that when weather starts to break in March, they can add crews. So, I mean, it's a it's a great problem to have that I'm re retooling all of our scheduling that would that we've traditionally done because you know I have other we do have other things that the instructors do. You know, we do stuff with the with the heavy equipment operators for safety classes. I teach the case on classes, we have some other stuff to do, but drilling is my primary thing. So, you know, we're going to we're gonna have to shift our schedules all around to figure out okay, this new this new reality we're in, how do we meet it? Right? Because it's it's on us to to make sure we give quality candidates to the contractor, right? And so we're gonna do that come hell or high water.
SPEAKER_01:It's um it's a good problem to have. And you know, as we've rolled into the intro and we've thought about workforce as a nightmare, I uh I for years have wanted to have this discussion with you. And I think we're we're finally able to on Halloween. Um not a very scary movie, unless unless you really start thinking about it. You know, do you know what movie I'm talking about or I'm thinking about, don't you?
SPEAKER_02:Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. You're you're not you're not flying me to an asteroid, are you?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, oh yeah, and we have that like 3-1A Atlas asteroid flying by us right now.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we do, and um I'm not sure if we could catch it because you know uh let's talk reality here. It's moving faster than what physics say it should, right? And that's and and I'm uh let me preface this. Dave Bowers is not an astrophysicist. Dave Bowers can barely drones. I do fly drones, but they don't move that fast. Dave Bowers has seen things, is all all he's seen. But if it's moving faster, how are we catching it? Right? We're not catching it to put a to put a uh drill rig on it. I'm I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01:No, um and uh I love this conversation because I forever I would say I'm too.
SPEAKER_02:It's your favorite movie, I think.
SPEAKER_01:First, everything until they land and pull a drill out is my favorite movie, and then and then I just have so many questions, and um the theaters I did too. I started the drive-in movie theater with my girlfriend at the time, Lena Dussel.
SPEAKER_02:Uh I saw well, I saw it in the theaters, I believe, with my father, mother, and my wife, if I remember.
SPEAKER_01:Because it was summer blockbusters.
SPEAKER_02:We we don't have that anymore. The only I can only think of two movies I saw with my parents and my wife. The other one is Titanic. Anyway, so I saw this with my and as soon as the the drilling stuff started happening, I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. This is the least realistic drilling that I've ever seen in my life.
SPEAKER_01:Uh it's it's funny because it's zero atmosphere and it's moving, and I don't know what the tubing is that's coming out of the hole as they're drilling. Like, are we drilling reverse? Are we drilling with air? Like what is it a kick?
SPEAKER_02:Like, what what is the kick? This is this is this is was what was breaking my brain, is that we were we were drilling and exhausting uh exhausting cutting. So that leads you to believe there's some sort of compressed air source, compressed nitrogen source, air source. Look at the size of the machine. There's nothing else hooked to it, right? It's not pulling a giant tank, right? So it it cannot. There is nothing to compress to make what's going on go on, right? And that was just but there's no fluid, so it had to be some sort of compress uh of gas media, right? So to me, I could not come up with uh and and just like you, I think at that time at that moment, my uh my I could not suspend my belief long enough to finish this movie, right? Because I'm like, they could have they should have done something, right? Because you can hammer all you want, nothing's gonna come out of the nothing's gonna it look like a top hammer rig, which are not known for real speed, by the way.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's great. And it I love how our driller egos are. Like, nope, like the drilling's not realistic enough on a planet-killing asteroid. Yet, we can believe from the beginning of the movie that it is easier to train a driller to become an astronaut than it is for an astronaut to become a driller.
SPEAKER_02:They didn't train them to become astronauts. They really didn't. They told them they taught them how to put a suit on, basically, right? That the astronauting part was done by astronauts, right? Um, I would love to have the opportunity, uh, however, you know, that also is somewhat unrealistic. I believe you have to be in shape a little bit to withstand the the G-forces of uh takeoff, re-entry, those things. There's a reason that astronauts aren't you know shaped like me or you, typically, right?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I I don't know. It's uh it's hilarious. And at the same time, when I think of recruitment, and I think of the beginning of that movie, and I I actually have the like Bruce Willis monologue in my phone of um that what catches me in the first like 20 minutes, you know. Um we get past the the comical offshore stuff, and we get to Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton talking. And uh Bruce Willis says, you know, drilling is science, it is a science, it's an art, you know, and that's something we talk about, right? That that learned response, those microsecond adjustments. And you as a a drilling instructor and a drone pilot or a a pilot with um earplanes and everything else, like I have always said that drilling is very similar to being a pilot, like a test pilot, not a not a dragon rocket that mission control controls the entire way up, but you know, back to the response.
SPEAKER_02:Here's the similarity, right? Is that you're constantly of this is a similarity between radio control, not with drones, but with with like radio control aircraft that that don't self-fly and uh drilling. You're constantly having to decide what that next outcome should be. What what's going on now? How do I correct it? What's the next outcome, right? Whether it be you're trying to fly, you know, just easy circles or you're trying to fly aerobatics or whatever it is, it's the same thing going on, and it's why uh you know, being a an operator of a drill rig, where I learn I know what the levers do, and being a driller is a is a relatively long process, and it really starts from the day you start running a rig and ends about the time where you stop running a rig because you're gonna constantly learn there's constantly gonna be something new, and you have to interpret on very limited information. We don't have a we don't have a uh a live camera at the bit, right? We've got uh drilling action, sound of the rig, the color of the cutting, or the color of the fluid coming out if you're using mud. We've got what the you know, and we're making decisions based on that. And my uh uh the speed that it's penetrating, right? All of those things, and we're making decisions on what to do. Think about that first time you went out on the on a rig. Uh, I believe the the story goes that you kind of buried it a little bit trying to show how fast you could go, right?
SPEAKER_01:It wasn't my first time, that was just the first time at the at the controls on the platform.
SPEAKER_02:No, that's what I mean. The first time that you were you were the driller, right? So I know what I'm doing, look how fast I can go. And you know, we we tell people all the time that you know it's it's really that a lot of times for most drilling, it's the turtle in the hare, right? If if you're rushing, bad's gonna happen. If you find a rhythm that you can maintain over that entire day, you're gonna get things done. And that's and that's the that's the real key. It's the same thing flying, right? If I'm if I'm trying to go from one maneuver to the next maneuver and I'm reacting to the aircraft, chances are we're gonna have a crash. Chances are we're gonna stick a bit, chances are we're gonna have a problem. But if I'm not going over my abilities, so ahead of the aircraft, right? I'm not, I'm not uh uh what is his name? Jace, I believe. Jace the ace is like the bet right now the best aerobatic 3D pilot for RC, right? Uh whatever. I just know his name, right? His name is Jace. I don't remember his last name is. Anyway, I'm not him. If I try to fly like him, we're picking sticks up, right? Because I don't have the ability. I have the ability to do things that that I know I can do as long as I stay inside of my ability and I don't let the aircraft get ahead of me, where I'm making uh I'm making reactions to what it's doing rather than planning what it's doing. And and it's the same thing planning a drill job, right? Maybe that first hole on a geothermal job, even for an experienced guy in bad conditions, it can get ahead of him, but it won't get ahead of him. Has he studied logs of that area? Has he worked in that area before? Has he right? That whole experience element, and if he does his homework, chances are it's not going to get ahead of it. However, the rest of the job should go relatively smooth, except for something unforeseen that he can't predict. But those things become less and less as he does his homework. Uh it's no different. You and I did that job uh years ago at uh Lasma. I know that Lazma is horrible drilling, right? And we so when we showed up, we had all these contingencies. That why are you bringing all that? Because I don't know. I've been out here before, I've seen so many different issues happen here in Lasma. So I had to plan for every contingency, and we got the project done, not as quickly as I would have liked, but the project was finished, right? Uh and all the all the parameters were met by the end of the project. Client was happy. That's all that matters, right? Now, if I have a choice between a job in Lasma and a job in Wilmington for the same money, I'm taking the Wilmington job every single time.
SPEAKER_01:I it I couldn't agree more. So you're saying um you wouldn't go to an asteroid and drill if you could drill 30 minutes from home.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, if I can drill 30 minutes from home, I'm not going to an asteroid because uh I don't think I can get logs on an asteroid. I can get uh you know, and they're gonna tell me it's horrible things too. They're gonna say, oh yeah, it's iron. Right? Well, great.
SPEAKER_01:That's gonna drill fabulous. Iron pyrite, I think, is what uh what we get into. I uh I want to read this that's line. So after he goes, you know, drilling is a science, it's an art. I'm a third generation driller, doing it all my life, and I still haven't gotten it all figured out. Goes on. I sent, I assume you sent me for me because somebody told you I was the best. Well, I'm only the best because I work with the best. You don't trust the men you're working with, you're as good as dead. Now you want to send these boys into space, fine. I'm sure they are good astronauts, but they don't know jack about drilling.
SPEAKER_02:Well again, but I I agree with one thing, there's one thing I agree with what he said, right? Anyone who tells you they're the best, run. Run. If someone else tells you that guy's the best, that's fine. But if anyone in construction says, yep, I'm the best, uh, and by the way, every jeweler believes they're the best. Uh I can prove it.
SPEAKER_01:I have proof right here. This is gonna make people want to go watch the video portion um from Mrs. Brooks fourth grade class.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no. Can you see it?
SPEAKER_01:You are a well geothermal drill master.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Now I've been validated I I do I do ab I do like that you got the Mrs. Brooks fourth grade class badge of approval, except that what they showed in that picture was hot rock geothermal. So did you really explain it properly?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, now you're now you're challenging me, and I love this. So, all right, Dave. This is the back of the card. Because we did talk a little hot rock, but not a lot. And uh boom. They wrote, I love science.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, now that I can get now, now is that not great? That's fine. I just had to question your uh and apparently Alicia and Rachel, uh, you know, they got what you were laying down because I see their signatures there. But then all in all, you know, I'm pretty now I'm now I'm happy with what you did. But what the other side, man, it was it, it was, I thought for sure that maybe you had jumped from our normal cold rock and have become a a hot rock guru uh somehow that I was unaware of. I mean, you may have.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, you're you are you're rangy, but uh I uh I did get to inadvertently, and I find myself in these situations many times lately, or my time my entire career. Um last year I got to be part of Project Inner Spaces Geo project. So I got to go to Texas AM and talk with all the rest of the geothermal drilling professionals, and I was one of few geoexchange heating and cooling. You know, they wanted to talk power generation and high pressure, high temp. And I have some background in that. So it was fun. Thank you, Halliburton and Bayreuth. And um I've been sitting on this panel, you know, let's talk about oil field drillers and drilling asteroids and oil field drillers drilling other things. You know, I'm sitting on this panel with um a working group, not a panel, with the IADC, the International Association of Drilling Contractors, and they they do some great stuff and they have a well-controlled school. And that team has made job sites safe and has put a certificate program together so that people understand well control. They they are now doing geothermal well control, and so geothermal well control, they're going to talk about all the bad things that can happen in a geothermal well. And they've classified these wells and um geoexchange is what they're going by. So heating and cooling, geoexchange, geothermal versus power generation or hydrothermal or hot rock. Um they're getting lumped together, and that's why we're busy right now, is because big G and little G for the the big uh Buffoon O'Bill, you know, they're they're all one. And um the discussion came up you do not have well control without a diverter and blowout preventer. And it gets better because a oil and gas professional in the state of Michigan jumped on the call one day, not knowing anybody else was from the state of Michigan on there, and uh made a statement about how it's the wild west, and um we need we need these risk matrix and control measures in place. I fully agree. What I didn't agree with was suddenly saying that our great industrial drilling companies, geothermal, water well drillers, geotechnical drillers, mining professionals, everybody you've been teaching. How long have you been teaching them, Dave? Uh 16 years. 16 years. How often in 16 years in our discussions, we've talked about well control, we talk about volatile atmospheres, we talk about the dangers and looking at the risk matrix. And there, every rig ought to have a four-gas meter, or now today, you know, it's just as easy to get a five-gas. And we should be very cognizant, especially H2S and all the geotechnical and environmental stuff we do around refineries and plants and that. But to say that geo-exchange geothermal, that forever we went 300 feet, and then we went 500 feet, and suddenly 800, and now they're talking 1600 feet in the state of Michigan. Oh, you better have a flame to be able to flare off that methane we're going to encounter. And you better have all the control measures in place, because frankly, we have a footprint to do that, right? Am I going to be able to do that in a dense urban area in your? How can you teach this, Dave?
SPEAKER_02:Uh the short answer is you really can't, however, right? Um I I'm not a I'm not an engineer. But I question myself, do we need to do sixteen hundred foot geothermal holes? Does it make sense? Now the the fact that you can design it, great. My concern is the uh the the precision it takes to be able to uh uh install loops at those depths and those. I don't think we need blowout protectors and all of that. We do an awful lot of uh you know 2,000 and 2,500 foot water well for municipality without blowout protectors, right? You don't need a blowout protector uh for that unless history shows that you should have something like that in the area, in which case you should not be planning a geothermal job that deep there, right? It comes back to planning again, but um there does need to be new SOPs put together for if I'm gonna go that deep, the precision it's gonna take to make sure we don't shut off those loops, uh, you know, pinch them or or blow them out on the bottom because of uh hydrostatic pressure, uh, because you know, uh in case you you need to go to uh a little bit of school, some of the drillers, you know, we don't we didn't go to school for any of this, right? Uh so you learned on the job like a lot of guys. Well, the way to find out that you didn't get that right is not when all of a sudden the system fails. Because I got a lot of time in in that. But think about if we wind up with a a hole that's relatively dry, and we put that geothermal loop in at 1500 feet, it what is the what is the burst pressure for that material depends on what they've they spec for the material, and then we have to make sure as we're grouting that that we're bringing the fluid inside and outside the loop up at the same level so that we can protect it against either blowing it out or shutting it off, because with water, every what 2.31 feet is one PSI. But now when we go grout, which is so much heavier, it might be a PSI for every three-quarter foot, right? Or every foot and a quarter, depends on what the specific gravity is. So now we've got to be able to play that game as we're grouting to make sure, but we can't fill that loop uh up a hundred percent because if we do, now we can blow it out at the bottom before we ever get grout to it because the pressures that we're putting on, you know, think about it, it's just like going down the at the bottom of a pool. The pressure that changes on your ear, the same thing is happening to the loop uh at the bottom of the hole. So what is the what is that pressure at 1500 feet? We're looking at we're looking at over 600 pounds of pressure, right? So now we have to counteract that with the grout, and it just is gonna take some a little bit of knowledge and a little bit of uh of SOPs and retraining the crews to where you don't do the same thing every time. You're gonna have to say, Hey, where's our water level? Right, so I know what we're what we're submerging in. We you know now it becomes more precision drilling, uh, like anything. Whenever we increase in depth, we increase in complication, right? Uh, and that's on all drilling everywhere. When you increase in depth in depth, you're gonna increase the complication of proper finishing of the well.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's tough. Um, everything you said, you just hit the nail on the head, and it's been a wild ride in your 16 years of teaching geothermal 16 years ago. Um, I was designing, I wasn't designing, I was field testing thermally enhanced groutes and working with both states, and we were putting two loops in one hole, you know, and going to 400 feet. And um, you know, the the discussions were well, they want us 500 feet. And again, we got into the discussion of all right, cool. Does everybody have dual action piston grouters now? Um, mix 111 came out at 72% solids. You know, we were trying to put Mix 111 down a hole, or we were trying to do one 50-pound bag of bentonite and 400 pounds of sand, you know, and like water quantity and quality and pumping time and trimmy size. People freaking out, well, you want me to go to an intercourt of trimming? You know, like uh, and here we are. Cool. Can we get to that depth? Sure. Are you getting to that depth in an adequate production time? Because we we have this discussion many times over, and um I can drill 1500 feet a day in the many areas of the Great Lakes State if it's three, 500-foot holes. I'm not drilling one 1500-foot hole, even if we want to look at all of the great um press releases out there that say they're there, they just broke the drilling record in feet. Those are 2,500 horsepower rigs with a staff of 35 people, no different than what Bruce Willis said in here about um, I'm only the best because I work with the best. And they we trust each other and we keep ourselves safe. And so um I want oil-filled technology in geothermal. And I I our advancements, um, including everything that's come out so far, and coil tubing rigs are a new generation of what we're doing.
SPEAKER_02:I was gonna say that that that's the game changer for us is the coil tubing rigs. But you know, we first off, is there an there before we can get widely implemented, there has to be projects for them that make sense because the costs are what they are, right? Coal tubing rigs, right? And so we really need to start, you know, looking at things in a in a in a light, it a lot of times the tail wags a dog in this in this industry, right? You're gonna be hard pressed to find a contractor that wants to go buy a coil tubing rig on the off chance that the projects are gonna be there for them. The projects kind of gotta come first, but they can't really afford to do the projects unless they have someone to drill it.
SPEAKER_01:So right tool, right tool for the right application. But the the reality is as we look at scaling, and we've tossed out many different numbers with the Geothermal Drillers Association and whatnot, going back in recruitment. And to hit 2050 goals, we need like 65,000 drill rigs drilling 600 holes a year for the next 24 and a half years, which means if I have 65,000 new drill rigs out there, I have 180 or 200,000 new employees. Like not to mention, and we talked about this last week, um, the drill, the water well industry just at 10 and a half million dollars worth of revenue. So they're busy. And uh full circle back to add in surface casing and a sophisticated blowout preventer, and now build them to scale so that they're reasonably priced, so that they are a safety mechanism we can implement, or put the risk matrix at hand. But I drill 3,600-foot wells in South Florida into the Lower Floridian, and we don't have well control on those. There are plenty of deep holes out there, and well control designed appropriately, has established surface casing. So once we get done cemented established surface casing, what is my cost per foot to drill that? But what is my lateral cost per foot to tie that in? Because let's think about this, Dave. I I gotta finish that hole, I gotta remove that surface casing on surface with my blowout preventer, have everything sealed. But when my tie-in crew comes in, what did my cost per bore to get it to six feet below the surface? Like, can you imagine?
SPEAKER_02:No, no, it's gonna be it's going to be relatively high. And unless there is some sort of mechanism that's saying that this is the way you have to go, it's gonna it's gonna do this a similar thing possibly to some of the cold rock. Uh residentially, it will not be viable anymore. But then again, on top of it, uh uh residentially, you know, how viable is heating oil out east, right? That doesn't make any sense either, right?
SPEAKER_01:So um I'm just saying from a standpoint of cutting a hole, you know, right trenching, making a trench big enough that now I can get down there with a concrete saw, right? And then after I get done with the concrete saw, I have to cut that surface casing without it.
SPEAKER_02:You can chip the concrete possibly, but yeah, all in all, yeah, it's you've you've just taken your tie and crew and you've probably increased the numbers on your tie-in crew, you've increased the by far the time that they tie in, right? Um so really what we what we need to find. Well, and even beyond that, let me let me think back on this a little bit. We also then have to possibly, and that depends on the area. Now the design of the of the systems is going to change because you're no longer uh down to the rock, you're no longer tying into the formation because you're tying into the you're tying into casing. And uh, so then we need to use thermally enhanced cementatious grout to be able to put that there's a lot of things that that would have to possibly change, and it may only be a few feet that they have to change, but but I think that's it's a wholesale change in the designs of the project, how long the projects will take. Um I think there's gotta be a better engineering solution to what we're talking about for well control for these kind of things. Um and it might just be that you have to look at the area that you're in and not and not uh not plan to go uh deep enough that we're gonna need to use that extensive of well control. Because we have to be uh we have to be efficient or or this this industry can't can't continue.
SPEAKER_01:I I I see it. We need the risk matrix, you know, and I remember calling you in the in the middle of this discussion and being like, hey, how do we come to a similar risk matrix as what we have for trenching? When do you need an engineered system versus when do you need just benching versus soil classification? You know, all of those components. And we have to make it um executable and that somebody can be the competent person on site because we cannot over engineer these systems. And I think we'll have some systems out there that do this, and they'll be good. And uh it will be a smaller footprint because every engineer right now all they see is more vertical feet. So what if I lose 50 feet to casing, I have 1550 feet of vertical.
SPEAKER_02:But that but that probably means that you you over drilled it. Right. But I I understand it is the the the temptation as the footprints we have the working gets smaller, the temptation to put more vertical depth in these loops, but it's always like you said, it's always got to be okay. Does this does this make sense? Just because it'll heat the building, right? Doesn't make it uh make sense or safe. I can heat your building with a mini nuclear reactor out of a sub, it doesn't make sense for me to do it, right? So are we because you know we're so in enamored with that we can do it, we gotta we gotta start thinking, should we do it? And you know, or it could simply be the that we have to change, uh okay, we have this footprint for a vertical outside, and we can only go 500 feet or 600 feet or a thousand feet there because deeper than that it's gonna not be practical. Okay. And then we have to start looking at what are our what are our options? Because really, how much is how much are we can have a hybrid system, right? Where the geothermal system supplements a a tradition more traditional system. Um, there's a lot of ways you could go with this. I mean, as a as a driller, man, drill, drill, drill is what I want to see, but at the same time, I don't want engineers experimenting killing people for one, but then on top of that, killing the industry because they've over they've overpromised, right? And I guess that's maybe just because I'm more of a a realist when it comes to this kind of thing. Uh, but I just I just don't see where that makes sense. So you there are times when you when you told me that that's how deep they want to go. I know I'm not gonna let you talk. Uh when you told me that's how deep they wanted to go on that project where you after you, I think we were on the phone, you hung up, Derek and I stood there and were like, what and we couldn't come up with why why why it made sense, but obviously, you know, everything drilling is is case by case, but like I said, it's it's it's gonna change everything about how you have to approach a project is based on the geology and the depth you want to go, so it's a scary thing.
SPEAKER_01:And I want I want to leave this with this as we wrap up that uh the world's greatest driller, Harry Stamper, and uh mad props to uh Bruce Willis in all of his roles, and you know it's um it is sad to see you know these these iconic Hollywood action heroes, you know, um become old, and we see that they're not bulletproof as John McClain or Harry Stamper or whatnot. And I think this is the the quote for the industry right now, and it starts with uh when Harry's talking to NASA and he's like, What's your contingency plan? He goes, I'm sure you got a team of men sitting around somewhere right now, just thinking shit up, and somebody backing them up, and you're telling me you don't have a backup plan? You gotta have some sort of backup plan, right? Billy Bob, we don't have a backup plan for this. And this is the best that you can do that the government, the US government could come up with. I mean, you're NASA for crying out loud. You're you put a man on the moon, you're geniuses, you're the guys thinking this stuff up. Like we we can we can take science and physics and I welcome oil and gas into this, I welcome NASA into this, I welcome every bit of what we understand as microsecond reactions and developing this industry. But at the end of the day, as much as I want more textbooks and I want more advancement and virtual reality and all of this, it is a lot of fun to get those young individuals on the rig platform or with the remote in their hand and watch them get to create a hole and discover the unknown.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's it it's rewarding. Uh it's also it's also a little humbling. I had a gentleman uh yesterday uh who drew the short stick, right? I had that we were we had we had groups out grouting, but I needed uh to go back and and pull casing and do some other stuff uh for a hole and that I'd that we had set down to rock and we'd done some coring and so I had to remove all the core pipe and all it wasn't really that much stuff. Um but you know after taking the the uh the core adapter and all that stuff off, and and he spinning case, and he's like, I can't feel my forearms, and I laughed. I go, Well, you only might have another 12 hours of this to do someday, and he's like, I go, you'll you'll get stronger, or you or you won't, but it's it's kind of fun that you know he goes, is it always like this? I'm like, well, yeah, there are times when I can't feel my forearms, but it just takes a lot longer before that happens. Um, you know, you're gonna you're gonna have those hard days, but seeing people willing to willing to meet that challenge, because he he was beat after that. And I'm like, you okay? And he's like, Yeah, I'm fine. I appreciate the opportunity to to do it though, to see it. And and I thought that was a that was a great response to that. I I appreciated the opportunity to do it, right? And and so hopefully when he gets to the job, and I believe he did wind up out with a uh uh I think he's out with a water well company, uh starting next week. And you know, he's gonna get a chance to run a chain wrench an awful lot. Uh he'll get he'll get used to it, you know. It but it's it's uh it's a rewarding thing. But with all with all the stuff going on, I'm excited. And uh I always am interested to see what what we're gonna do next, right? What is this next phase gonna be? Uh, you know, if you if you have a uh an idea or something you want to discuss with Brock and I, or you you have have just got off a project that like the ones we're talking about, where you approach something at a depth or in a way that that is not standard and you want to discuss it, you know, uh drop a line because we would love to discuss it. Brock and I don't don't uh pretend that we're the only ones that know anything about about anything. Uh so you know if you could if you want to discuss why you think that engineering uh deeper and deeper systems, and here's how it can be handled, I would love to have that discussion.
SPEAKER_01:I would too. And I think uh that is a great discussion. And as you talk chain wrench and where do we go, and one of the reasons why coil tubing is so um advantageous right now is the fact that we're not handling tooling as much and that repetitive stress injury, but I'm back to Harry Stamper, and I'm only as good as the people that are around me, and we need to get to a point where ergonomics and um engineered systems are removing us from needing that that type of monotonous work. And let's face it, as the oil and gas industry transitions into um geoexchange geothermal, there's not that many drillers, as there are a lot of really good people at working at heights and tripping pipe. And that's because that rig, 75% of its time is putting pipe in the hole or pulling pipe out of the hole. You know, it's so the the idea that we're just gonna go into normal Illinois and run holes as fast as we can, you know, it it goes back to that that test pilot running that SS 135 and listening to the bit chatter.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. You were on an SS 135 on that project.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, there was the SS 135 on that project. It was a short wheelbase, it was a sweet little rig.
SPEAKER_02:Nice, nice. So, yeah, I had an SS 135 uh at Rocket Soul. That was one of our rigs. So uh anyway, that that's uh discussion for a different day. So uh it's been a pleasure, Brock. I I'm glad we're back doing this. It it was a fun discussion this morning, and uh no Wilson. He's Wilson, he's here, right? I just finished my coffee before we started talking about. Which uh, which son is the sign for far under or wants uh that's on, but and far under far under is uh is no longer, however, uh there's a new band being formed correct right now. Uh some of the members of Far Under are in the band, but uh Far Under, I think was has been like about a year or so since he said he didn't have time for it anymore. And then shortly after that, you know, he trained a replacement, and then shortly after that, the whole thing fell apart for him for those guys. So some of the people in Far Under, the drummer and the uh, I think the the lead guitarist are gonna be part of this new band. My my son said he's gonna play uh uh guitar on the new band, not bass. He's looking for a bass player capable of playing the stuff that he had put together, uh that which sounds odd from what he was telling me. He goes, it's not normal stuff, it's stuff that you really gotta get into. So we'll see what this new thing sounds like. Uh, I'm sure it will be heavy. That's all I can tell you.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I love it. Thanks, Dave, for your time, and uh we'll see you all in another week. All right, bye, everybody. Thanks. Thank you for listening to Drillercast. Please follow us on your favorite podcast platform or find us on social media. Next, connect with us at the driller.com. There's all kinds of great content there, and it's your best way to continue this discussion or initiate a new one. Come on the show, have a debate with us. The intro music is provided by Dave Bowers Sons band Far Under. Now, for the legal disclaimer, the views and opinions expressed on Thrillercast, the Brock and Dave Podcast, the bad podcast, are those of Brock Yordy and Dave Bowers, along with the opinions expressed by these hosts, their guests, other creators, drillers, helpers, and authors. And they do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of our employers or companies, groups, and associations we volunteer to work with or BMP media. Any content provided by our hosts, guests, bloggers, authors, drillers, helpers, field technicians, grouters, mud pan shovelers are of their own opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, anyone, or anything, even that pesky sticky clay. We have the best intentions here at DrillerCast, and just like in drilling, sometimes the unexpected conditions arise, creating genuine discussions. Because yet again, nothing on the driller cast is scripted. Thanks everybody.