Recorded October 13, 2022
In this panel discussion, our Seth Moore talks about the importance of partnership in bringing new, innovative technologies that meet both production and ever-evolving ESG requirements to market. Together with GD Energy, Catalyst is part of the technology transformation that is driving the energy transition to a cleaner future. Hear how they are contributing, along with other industry leaders, TJ McIntyre and Irvin Schwartzenburg from SICK.
Watch the video here:
Seth Moore, Catalyst Energy Services at 18:54
Relevant links:
Seth Moore | LinkedIn
Catalyst Energy Services | LinkedIn
GD Energy Products | LinkedIn
Craig Fleming | LinkedIn
SICK Sensor Intelligence | LinkedIn
Irvin Schwartzenburg | LinkedIn
TJ McIntyre | LinkedIn
Transcription:
Craig Fleming:
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today’s webcast, “Ways to Increase ESG through new Flaring and fracturing Technology.” I’m Craig Fleming, Technical Editor of World Oil and will be your moderator today. Joining us for today’s event are TJ McIntyre, Upstream Account Director, and Irvin Schwartzenburg, Applications Engineer for Flow Products from SICK. Today’s webcast will also include presentations by Seth Moore, Executive Vice President and CEO from Catalyst Energy Services, and Tony McClain, Vice President of Sales from GD Energy Products. TJ McIntyre is an experienced sales and business professional with more than 25 years of international and domestic work experience and sales negotiations, strategic business planning, execution and operations management for equipment manufacturers in the oil and gas industry. Spending the last 10 years in the hydrocarbon measurement industry, TJ has a proven history of expertise in the field. Underpinning this is his military acumen, developed by the United States Air Force reflected in his dedication and fundamental belief that all obstacles are surmountable. TJ also has a bachelor’s degree in Russian studies from the University of Houston with 30 years of experience in the engineering field. Urban Schwartzenburg applies his experience as an application engineer for SICK flow measurement products. He works to provide customer and product support for equipment manufacturers and suppliers in the oil and gas industry and electrical engineering graduate of Louisiana State University. Irvin has been a key figure in providing real solutions to difficult technical applications presented by six customers.
Craig Fleming:
Seth Moore is the Co-founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Catalyst Energy Services. With more than 38 years of industry expertise, Seth dedicates himself to research, engineering new technology and the implementation of cutting-edge methods within the fracturing arm of the energy sector to improve operating efficiency and lower environmental impact. Seth worked for 28 years at Halliburton. In addition to serving in leadership with Magna Energy Services, key Energy Services and Integrity Applied Science, Seth earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Petroleum Services from Nicholls State University before attending Texas ATM where he earned an MBA.
Craig Fleming:
A natural leader and communicator. Tony McClain serves as GD Energy Products’ Vice President of Sales and has been with the company for 23 years. Over the last decade, Tony has led the organization’s commercial team and leverages a deep understanding of research and development, engineering, marketing and sales to offer the best technical solutions to the company’s customers. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Tulsa in addition to an MBA from Rice University.
Before we get started, let’s review a few housekeeping items. Following the presentation, we’ll have a short question and answer session. You can participate in the q and a session at any time by asking questions during the presentation. Just type your question in the box, located on the bottom left corner of your screen, then click the submit button. You may enlarge the slide window at any time by clicking on the arrows on the top right corner of the slide area. If you’re experiencing problems with the program, press F5 on your keyboard to refresh the presentation. You can also visit the help guide by clicking on the slide window. First off, we have TJ and Irvin from Flow Products at SICK. Their topic is “Everything You Need to Know about Flaring in 2022.” Now, let’s get started, Irvin.
Irvin Schwartzenburg:
All right, thank you, Craig, for introducing us. My name’s Irvin Schwartzenburg and we’ll take you through some of these first few slides. To kind of set the expectations and just kind of understanding Why any of this stuff is important we’ll do a quick review of the greenhouse gases. We always hear people talk about carbon dioxide, methane, and how greenhouse gas is affecting the environment and really to understand why is this important. So, to begin with, if we can classify these gases and their effect of the warming or the potential warming, there’s a factor called the greenhouse warming potential. And what this is, is a measure of the heat energy that, basically, emissions of one ton of any given gas will absorb over a period of time, relative to one ton of carbon dioxide.
Irvin Schwartzenburg:
So, carbon dioxide is kind of the baseline, and the other gases will be related to that in the relative terms so we can understand how much more effect those gases may have. So we’re concerned about these gases trapping that heat energy in the atmosphere, and of course, trapping the heat energy it can’t dissipate. And of course, therefore, it can cause some warming to the environment. So we talked about carbon dioxide, that’s kind of the baseline. And what’s interesting about this, if you see the lifetime in years, carbon dioxide really doesn’t dissipate. It won’t break down into, into lesser components that will mitigate or create less an effect on the warming. But the other gases will. So like methane, when you look at that, the interesting thing here highlighted in yellow is one ton of methane gas has the effect of tons of CO2.
Irvin Schwartzenburg:
So releasing methane directly into the atmosphere is a huge hit to the atmosphere as is compared to CO2. However, over a time period, that methane will break down and you can see in a hundred years it will break down to 24 times. So it’s still a very, very high impact on the environment. And just to give you an idea of some of the other gases, we all probably remember some of the earlier refrigerators like, the R 12 refrigerant. So in that case right there, the R 12, you can see it had just a huge potential – 10,000 times of carbon. So for us in the production world, we’re worried about methane because it has such a higher impact. Now, if you take the methane and you’re able to flare it, you’re able to break it down into CO2.
Irvin Schwartzenburg:
And of course the CO2 is oxidized where it’s gonna have a much shorter effect to the atmosphere, closer to – you’re back down to one unit of CO2 versus the 84 units of CH5. So, while the methane concentrates in the atmosphere, we’ve established as a much stronger effect than CO2. So, as an example, if you take a look at one ton of methane, that initial impact is about a hundred times out of CO2. And even after a hundred years, it’s still an effect of 25 times over CO2. So really, that is the goal of this off this layering. So you wonder, why do we flare? Why do we wanna burn this? It’s really because it’s taken that methane and converting it to something that has a lot less of effect.
Irvin Schwartzenburg:
Now, the EPA of course, is demanding us to do reporting, and they’ve been consistently revising this. And, the latest reports and guidelines from the EPA, really establish what needs to be reported and these greenhouse gases, for the different industries and facilities that are out there. We all have a duty now to report this., what is going out. So to give you an idea, we always talk about the oil and gas locations. And if you look at this map, this is from the EPA, it shows all sources of greenhouse gases. And so while everybody looks to our industry, and our industry must do what we can to help prevent it, what you notice here is that there are a lot of sources for greenhouse gases. And if you overlay these greenhouse sources with the maps of the oil and gas fields, you’ll see that they do coincide.
Irvin Schwartzenburg:
But this, this happens everywhere, and it’s important for us to try to mitigate this, these sources as best we can. Now, as I said, Subport W with the government, they’ve come back and they revise it on who has to report and what you’ll see across the board for production, as you start to move more upstream, pretty much everything in production is gonna have to be reported. And that’s where the technologies come in to be more efficient. Flaring to measure the flare to more accurately report, it becomes very, very, critical in these companies, getting, the ratings and the numbers down correctly. And so of course, that’s where we come in, with flare emissions. Flares can take several different forms. Flares can be in terms of a safety, flare where there’s an upset and say like a process plant, and all of a sudden you have to have a release or down in, as you move more towards a production world, you can get just a continuous flaring off of tanks, a very low volume, but still that is, gas emissions that need to be accounted for.
Irvin Schwartzenburg:
And again, the goal of this is to flare these things to convert that impact from methane down to a CO2. So TJ, don’t know if you’re here, but if you’re able, would you like to take it from here?
TJ McIntyre:
Sure. Let’s go forward from here. So this is just, this shows kind of three different, flare applications. You might see kind of along the entire value chain in the oil and gas production industries. So you have, federal chemical facilities, offshore production and onshore production. And, those are three areas where, we’ve all seen the huge flares, outside of the petrochemical facility, especially if you live around the Gulf Coast. You’ll see something like that, pretty much visible in the night sky and, all across the Permian Basin., anywhere you have flare production or flare or, sorry, you have oil production or you have oil and gas processing. So one of the things that we wanted to exemplify here in our discussion is, how you measure flare gas.
TJ McIntyre:
So in the past, in most regulatory regions for production, what was allowed was simply a calculation. And it was just a system balance of the gas that you calculated might have been released by your, by your application or by your production unit. Could be a compressor station, it could be a tank battery, whatever. What became required was more, was more clarity on, on that measurement. And so people started using things like thermal mass meters and other measurement devices were pretty common. And the problem is with those is the turn down that’s required. For flare, you can imagine that it’s gonna trickle along from a production facility as it’s producing gas.
TJ McIntyre:
And then all of a sudden they have a problem. They have to blow down, they have to release a ton of gas. And so you’ve got a huge turn down required. So you might go from a trickle of say, 0.1 foot per second all the way up to 350 feet per second in a microsecond. And so, that’s, that’s the type of difficulty that this application has. What we propose, and what is being adopted in, in a lot of the different, by a lot of different producers is, is ultrasonic flow measurement. And ultrasonic is nice because it doesn’t have a restriction in the, in the pipe. You’re actually shooting an ultrasonic signal between two transducers across the flow. And because of the angle of the transducers, they’re able to, to handle the huge turn turndown or the difference in, in flow rates required for this difficult measurement. And essentially what an ultrasonic measurement device is, is you’re sending an ultrasonic signal back and forth between two transducers that signal the time difference between the signal with the gas and against the gas is calculated in microseconds and high speed trans in high-speed processors. And that, it becomes essentially a volume of flow through that pipe.
TJ McIntyre:
The actual flare system is composed of probes, transducers are at the end of the probe, and those probes reside on the flare header. They actually protrude into the gas stream a little bit. And, the time difference between those probes is what develops the volumetric measurement. Depending on the pipe size, you could have generally pipe sizes from – as far as flare headers from four inches, that you might see in a production, in a tank battery facility – or you could get up to huge, petrochemical we’re finding, flare headers, which might be, up to 96 inches. So it’s a wide variety and depending on that, that diameter and, the temperatures involved, that determines the type of flare probes that we recommend.
TJ McIntyre:
So, as I mentioned, you actually have a normal flow, which might be a very small low flow point, one foot per second, and depending on the, on the type of gas and in a petrochemical facility, it’s not just hydrocarbon that they’re releasing if they have a, have an upset, it could be, a wide variety of different types of gases. Some of those I actually have to combust, cause combustion in order to, in order to get them to flare and burn. and, and it goes all the way up to when they, they actually have a huge upset and you get up to that 120 meters or 393 p/per second, which is really the max that, most measurement devices, well, ultrasonic measurement, can detect. The sensor itself is titanium.
TJ McIntyre:
You can imagine the force that’s exerted on the probe, that caught – when you have a have a release like that it can be pretty extreme. And so using the titanium to hold those transducers in a stable way, in a repeatable way that’s not going to be damaged by the release, is pretty important. So, we use the titanium and, and we have very, very little to no issues with, with any kind of type of damage to the probes. All this is evaluated real time by the producers. You have our flow gate software, which provides some diagnostic details of the actual gas flow, the actual process of the measurement. We’re talking about a 5% measurement, which is generally accepted by the EPA. Well, it is accepted by the EPA from one foot per second to, to max flow. And, and then generally, from 0.1 foot per second to one foot per second, it’s about 20%, which is accepted by the EPA. So that’s the challenge is hitting those uncertainties in the volumetric calculation. And all that is, monitored through our diagnostic software.
TJ McIntyre:
All this is trend analysis provided. And in this trend, when we trend this data, from that we can actually evaluate whether the measurement is good measurement or not good measurement. And we do that as we analyze that trend and report that via what we call one click verification. So it’s a report that that can be provided to the operator that he could show as a third party report verifying that the measurement is actually good measurement. And so it’s a report that they could show the EPA or North Dakota regulatory body, New Mexico or, or whatever regulatory body is requiring them to measure their flare measurement. With that verification also trending data is provided. It provides the details of the measurement – the results and the good measurement verification. And that’s what we have on our side with SICK.
Craig Fleming:
Good deal. Thanks, TJ and Irvin. Next we have Seth from Catalyst Energy Services and Tony from GD Energy Products. Their topic is “Eco-conscious, Hydraulic Fracturing has Arrived.” I’ll now turn the presentation over to Seth and Tony,
Seth Moore:
Thanks Craig, and thanks TJ and Irvin. It’s great to see another company doing their part to reduce emissions. Currently, the challenges that the hydraulic fracturing industry is seeing is really something that’s been going on for probably the last 10 years or so – it’s how do we innovate and how do we bring technology in that has an environmental benefit to it, but also satisfies the needs of investors, that doesn’t have an operating expense that’s outside maybe the norm. And, and really, when you look at the CapEx, OpEx, the returns and and ESG component, it’s a delicate, it’s a dance. It’s really a delicate. And I think we saw in the last few years, complicated all of that. So it’s when you look at new technology that we’re gonna talk about today. It was all of these pieces had to come together. And at Catalyst, we took a deep dive at what was out there, and we looked at doing things a little different, but we certainly viewed technology as an investment – it can solve these challenges.
Seth Moore:
When we started the company, we realized that we wanted to do things different, and we understood that in order to do that, it took really good people. It took making sure that you had safety and quality first, and that you had a team around you and an atmosphere and a culture of constant innovation. These things are easy to say, but it takes a lot of effort and, the innovations not just through your own people, but through the partnerships that you create as well. And, and we’ll talk about that some later as well.
Seth Moore:
I’d like to talk about my partners a bit, quickly. Bobby Chapman, certainly an industry vet veteran, CEO, a great leader, someone that I look up to immensely, someone that I’ve known for – since last century. We go way back, and he’s an industry veteran that has accomplished a lot of great things. He’s been clear from day one, that we were gonna set out to change the face of frac and create technology that checks all the boxes. And we’ll talk about that more. Mike Morgan, our CFO, again, another industry veteran, been a great leader in the part that he plays. And I certainly feel honored to work with both of these gentlemen.
Seth Moore:
The fun part though, is talking about our technology. VortexPrime is the eco-conscious hydraulic fracturing technology of the day. And it’s something that we’ve been commercial with now for, for a while. It’s, something that we developed in house. It’s really exciting what we’ve been able to do. And I was listening to TJ and Irvin talk – we look at this technology as something that really propels, kind of the stewardship of our industry forward through the reduction of emissions. And I know we’ve all got looking at ways to be more environmentally conscious, but how do you do that and how do you, going back to my CapEx discussion earlier and OpEx discussion earlier, how do you do that and make it produce returns that people can be pleased with?
Seth Moore:
I think the thing here that really just jumps off the page, is the amount of waste reduction that we get, or fuel reduction that we get, on a typical day. We can burn on a frac site with conventional diesel technology, we may burn six to seven tanker loads of fuel a day, sometimes upwards of, could be upwards of 30, 40,000 gallons of diesel a day depending upon the application. So this, this virtually makes that go away. When we started this, we were not emissions engineers, but we realized that there was a tremendous amount of savings, a mission benefit from that. The other thing, we started looking at the waste streams and just the amount of liquid waste and the physical waste. It has to be transported and has to be recycled or disposed of.
Seth Moore:
And we were really amazed when this tech, the technology that we created had such a large impact on reducing that waste stream. So it’s not so much the emissions coming out of the engine, but it is the effects of less waste equals less trips, which equals less emissions. Also had a large decrease in our footprint. And some of the areas that oil and gas are located are in areas where people live and, or there are crops, or it’s in remote areas where a lot of earth has to be disturbed in order to make sites. So this less footprint really, really helps as well.
Seth Moore:
So, again, VortexPrime is, is something that, kind of checks those boxes. Well, I, I guess I jumped out ahead of myself here. VortexPrime is a hydraulic, it’s a turbine powered, direct drive frac pump. So it, this technology will replace probably three traditional pumps on a normal, let’s call it a normal setting. So what used to take maybe 20 to 24 pumps now takes maybe eight. So these are very horsepower dense units. They, have a lot of – they pack a lot of punch in a small pack package. So the thought was to amp up the horsepower and reduce the number of units to that. We could do the same of work with less equipment. Back to this being a gas turbine. It’s consuming natural gas instead of diesel. So you have the emissions benefits of that which are tremendous.
Seth Moore:
The frac footprint comparison really is, it kind of jumps off the page at you. This is just comparing eight, eight pumps to 20 pumps. But you can see there’s a really big reduction in the number of and the size required. The other benefits of that are certainly faster set up, requires a smaller — other support equipment can be, some of the manifolding equipment can be downsized as well. You have less potential leak path, leak points and the maintenance. There’s much less maintenance support required, as well, the safety side of it. I think there’s several things there for me that we, I don’t know, that we didn’t think about in the early days when we were developing the technology, but while we were developing, it became really evident.
Seth Moore:
And the big part of it was our ability to move and set up in a very short period of time compared to other pieces of equipment. But the most thing dangerous thing that we do is drive. And now we’ve reduced those trips sometimes through school zones, sometimes through small towns, through roads. We have reduced that number greatly. So, that’s been very beneficial. The other thing we do is rig. It’s dangerous. It’s reading up and reading down, and now we have a lot less of that to, to potentially have strains and sprains and finger and hand injuries. So I’m excited that there’s the benefits of that. Another thing that happens, it’s really bad on our environment, is idling equipment. In a traditional sense, a lot of diesel equipment idle, and its complete combustion. And that produces really bad effects on the environment. This technology, we’re able to shut it off and restart it in minutes. It’s some of, some of the other technologies that are hours, four hours or more. So there’s a benefit to VortexPrime that others don’t have.
Seth Moore:
We talked about that just fewer workers, less maintenance and fuel savings really a lower systems cost. The overhead part is a big benefit as well. The fewer trips, really, as Bobby has said before, this really checks all the boxes. And, and I don’t know any other way to say it, but we have a CapEx formula, CapEx signature to this technology as well. To many that OpEx, this is our, I guess a little bit of a bragging slide, but, Vortex Prime has certainly helped contribute greatly to our success as a company in the last four years. We’ve achieved some statistics that we’re proud of. And unlike with all statistics that you pop up, sometimes you’ve dated these, we’ve exceeded 12,000 stages.
Seth Moore:
The team has done so with amazing safety results. And, it’s been really good to see, the performance over time, the innovation over time. And, I’m really, really excited to see what the future holds, as we continue to innovate with this technology today. I’m also thrilled to introduce one of our partners kind of for the implementation of Vortex Prime, GD Energy products, and has been there with us, along the way. They are, an out of the box thinking company as well. Tony has, has led that. He’s been my point of contact and has been a great partner. He’s a friend now for sure. And, I look forward to continuing our path together on this exciting journey that we’re on. With that I’m going to turn it over to Tony.
Tony McClain:
Hey, thank, Seth. I really appreciate that, and I appreciate the introduction and, likewise feel the same way. It’s been a great journey, and I think we’re just on the cusp here. So, good morning. My name’s Tony McClain. I work for GD Energy Products., many of us know as Gardner Denver Pumps. Our business division was divested in 2021. And, with that came a new name that better reflects our commitment to the upstream oil and gas industry. We’re super excited to be here today because we were selected by Catalyst to provide the high-pressure pump for the Vortex Prime unit and help bring this new technology to the market.
Tony McClain:
So, since 1859, GD Energy Products has been designing and perfecting pumps, that’s what we do. We make pumps for pump guys, for the global frac drilling and well service markets. If you look back in our history, we’ve built the first drilling pump over a hundred years ago, and the first frac pump over 60 years ago, so we’re backed by 160 years of development. I’ll tell you, our pumps have a legacy of being highly reliable, highly engineered, really for the most severe duty applications that the oil field can throw at us. And, including this change from conventional diesel driven pumps to turbine direct drive pumps. And I’ll tell you, it was definitely a challenge.
Tony McClain:
So besides just being a pump manufacturer, we’re also here to serve customers like Catalyst, across every piece of operational support, including aftermarket. So this is next generation fluid end design and technology, parts, consumables, field service repairs, just anything that we can provide to keep these pumps up and running. And I’ll tell you specifically, for the Catalyst Vortex Prime application, we really had to take a comprehensive 360 degree approach to our support plan. Most important for us was surrounding Catalyst with our engineering and regional support teams., we used advanced data monitoring techniques to watch the pump. The team worked in the field at the shop, behind the desk, designing to ensure that we supported Catalyst through the entire product launch, which really meant that we had to understand this jump to 5,000 horsepower. We had to make sure that we had spare parts available and really help Catalyst maximize the pumping efficiency of the unit. So, while Catalyst is operationally focused in the Permian Basin, I can tell you at one point, we actually talked about taking the unit to the Rockies. And, with 16 locations around the world and in every major North American shell play, we stood ready to support them with local parts and service.
Tony McClain:
So, GD Energy Products has a long history, a legacy of innovation, and what we would say – continuous product improvement. And, when I look back in time at my years here, I think about this ever-changing, ever-evolving industry that we’re in. From the dawn of the Shell development in the mid two-thousands, to continuingly higher-pressure shale formations to 24 hour operations. And now we’re embarking on this new change to, lower emissions. So, as Seth mentioned, this moving from conventional diesel fleets to lower emission drivers such as turbines, really opens the door for new power density pump drivers. This is a real fundamental change in how you operate and drive a pump. And so, with the Vortex Prime unit, we can now generate very high horsepower in a very small footprint. But really the only way to capitalize on that technology is we have to have a higher horsepower pump. So over the last three years, we’ve been developing a pump that can meet this challenge and help Catalyst unlock the power of high horsepower, low emission drivers, such as turbines.
Tony McClain:
So prime for more energy efficient performance. A Thunder 5,000 can be driven by gas turbines can also be driven by electric or dual fuel. It gives our customers flexibility to reduce their carbon emissions in the way that works best for them. The pump is really an evolution of 20 years of experience. It’s a 5,000 horsepower pump. It has 11 inch stroke., we’re using stainless steel fluid ends, and, it’s really helping us to drive longer performance life by slowing the pump down, reducing fatigue cycles and helping reduce consumable costs by as much as 37%. As Seth mentioned earlier, the alternative power system with this pump allows Catalyst to do the same amount of work with eight units that would take others 20 units. So utilizing less equipment, fewer trailers on the well site results in a smaller footprint, and utilizing natural gas significantly reduces fuel costs for the operator.
Tony McClain:
So besides the pump, we’ve continued to be committed to safety and the environment. Seth mentioned safety earlier. I think the best way to stay safe working around these pumps is not to work on the pump at all. Our engineers are constantly looking for ways to improve products, to extend maintenance intervals, so customers can avoid unplanned maintenance. One small example is Catalyst is actually using a seat in the pump that gets upwards of a thousand hours before required change out. So that reduces seat changes from five down to one over that same period of time. It’s quite a breakthrough technology. And then, of course, we’re always committed to the environment, so have other programs in place that, that we use, such as Core Power Ends, Plunger Manufacturing, where we take used components, recondition them, and really try to reduce or eliminate scrap coming back from, from the field, back in the factories. We actually recycle all of our machine chips, just for a data point. In 2021, we recycled over 10 million pounds of metal across all our locations, so quite an accomplishment for back at the facility. So really in summary, we’re trying to reshape the way we do business. It’s about discovering innovative approaches, and to help deliver reducing our overall environmental impact.
Craig Fleming:
That’s a great point, Tony. I’d like to interject the thought here. From my experience for partnerships between companies, to work there has to be synergy. Clearly, this partnership has found that symbiotic relationship. So what are the key pieces of the formula that have enabled Catalyst Energy Services and GD Energy products to make this partnership work?
Seth Moore:
So, Craig, I think innovation on this scale certainly is not possible without a partnership. I know that term gets thrown around a lot, “partnership.” But I think, with GD Energy products and Tony and his team and the engineering side if GD, we really did come together in a partnership. And, I think that really helped propel this technology along. I think it made both of us better. But it’s a great example of what two committed firms can do when they come together and work together as one.
Tony McClain:
Yeah, I would Seth, I think one thing that was really important to the development of the unit was data. And, I think for us, one of the things that was really unique is that typically we only see one side of the equation, when it comes to data. We see the pump data, but we don’t always see this operational data. And, I think that, when we looked at that pump development, all that data allowed us to come back and tweak and make things better. And we learned together as a team. And it was through that collaboration that really, in my opinion, helped make the Thunder 5,000 a success and make VortexPrime a real success, and something that’s gonna be breakthrough technology.
Seth Moore:
Yes, certainly I would agree with that. Tony mentioned earlier, their monitoring system that provided – we’ve got over 12,000 stages now and — and some of the data that we got through monitoring the Thunder 5,000 through that technology of GD Energy products — really helped you make a better product in the end and see things that we weren’t, wouldn’t have been aware of. Just as a frac company., really at the end of the day, it helped us meet our, make our production goals. Certainly with environmental standards in mind. How do you, where do you, where do you run a system? Cause this is a, there’s a lot of moving parts, so to speak. Where do you, you run a system to get the most out of it? And, and really the kinda of the technology, the technology of the Thunder 5,000, along with the, the great support that we had from GD Energy products to help us achieve that.
Tony McClain:
Yeah, I, I would say, Seth, that, we really had to bring all 160 years of pump expertise to the table. And I would say, a lot of people look at a pump and they say, “Well, it’s, it’s pretty conventional technology.” But, this application was anything but conventional. We really had to be creative and Catalyst was a great partner for us. And I look back, I think about the facts, Seth, you really challenged us. You constantly said, “How do we improve? How do we go fast? How do we innovate fast? How do we evolve?” And I just really appreciate the fact that, through all that, you really helped us innovate and, and bring, this product to market. But it was that collaboration and working together, that was a great partnership for us,
Seth Moore:
Right? Well, the commitment toward better technology and really better ESG performance overall, it’s not a small change. I mean, what we’ve done required, a lot of effort, and it certainly wasn’t for the fame. But with better technology, light, light, VortexPrime, we’re able to literally re remove a bunch of our reliance on diesel horsepower and without sur, sacrificing production or without, a cost increase that can’t be, justified. And, I’m really excited about what all that means for our environment and for our industry., certainly it takes a, it takes a, a pump to be able to handle that as well. And, and, and you guys really stepped up to the plate there, so thanks.
Tony McClain:
Well, I, I appreciate that, Seth. I love your, “Not for the faint of heart,” cause boy, I’m telling you, there were times where we really were tested there. I think this innovation piece, it required incredible engineering support. We would test, frankly, we would fail. We would change, we would retest. We would just, we were just constantly evolving. And I just really appreciate, the, the support and the patience, from Catalyst. My goodness, Seth, you’ll remember there were days where it was trying on everybody, but I think back, and one of my proudest moments on this project was, those days when we had both our engineers and Catalyst support teams in the shop working on the unit. My goodness, I think they were in there on a Sunday trying to figure out, “How do we get this thing working? How do we, how do we make sure that we minimize, any down time?” But just working alongside with a great partner, really helped us to, to fine tune and really prove out this technology.
Seth Moore:
Yep. A hundred percent agree., we’ve come a long way together. It’s been great. and we couldn’t do it without trusted partners, like you guys and some of the others that we’ve been able to work with and build these long-term relationships. It’s really improving our, our part of the space, the hydraulic fracturing part, but really our entire energy industry. And I think that’s better for the future. It certainly makes us better stewards of the industry — that really excites us. I don’t mean to sensationalize it, but it, it excites us. The, the small part that, that we get to play in it. And again, we, working guys like you, I’ll say it’s never been boring — the innovation that we’ve, we’ve, created and accomplished in the last, few years has not been. And it takes, takes partners like you to make that a reality. So thank you.
Tony McClain:
Well, I, I just conclude by saying, Seth, that, I think, that commitment from the top, and from your leadership team and, and then the constant communication, without those two, I don’t, I don’t think we have been as successful as what we’ve been. So, again, I think, we’re excited to be part of this change and, I think this is just the beginning of what’s possible.
Seth Moore:
Well, thanks, Tony, thanks for being part of the, of this presentation today. I appreciate you, being here.
Craig Fleming:
I, thanks. It’s, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks, Seth. Thanks guys., we’ll now transition to the question-and-answer portion of our webcast. You can submit your questions in the q and a box located on the bottom left corner of your screen, and also remember to, indicate which company you want to address your question to. So let’s get started here. First question, this is for the, the SICK presenters. I’m not getting how measuring it flare volumes can help a company’s ESG score.
TJ McIntyre:
No, that’s, that’s a good question. so, so, from, from every, all the participants here on this panel, I mean, you can see that the industry’s trying to clean itself up. And, and we, we all recognize, from the, from the largest, multinational to the, to the smallest, producer that, it’s, it’s important for, for the industry to be, as, as emissions free as possible. And so part of that is quantifying, what those emissions are. knowing, knowing, what the, what the emission is that, the volume that’s coming out., certainly all the regulatory, bodies are, are or will be, bearing down on, on these, these producers and, they’re gonna be regulating and finding them for flaring too much. And, gas production isn’t going away, regard, regardless of what they may say, it’s, it’s here for, a long time to come. And, that gas has gotta go somewhere and there’s not a pipeline available. The only thing they can do is either inject it back in the formation or flare it. And so, being able to control that flare, and, and monitor the volume is important. So, sorry, long-winded answer, but
Craig Fleming:
Good deal, great answer. Here we have a, a question for set. Will Caps, CapEx, investments like that of new technology be seen as a costly risk? Would the cause be passed on to your client’s customers? With us?
Seth Moore:
Yes. Sorry. Sorry. yes. The, the, the cost is, is, the, the consumer always ends up paying the cost of whatever technology is used, right? Whether or not it’s a, something new or, an exciting, like what we’re talking about today, or whether it’s old technology. The, the thing that I would say is, kind of the risk around all of this is in, is in doing nothing and not changing. We have to realize that what was acceptable five or 10 years ago in the, in the near future will not be acceptable. So, I’m excited about what really the new technology can do to kind of de-risk what, what it is that our industry’s doing. And I think that, I think we’ll be rewarded for that, both, both long term and, and short term.
Craig Fleming:
Good deal. Thanks Seth. Great answer here. We got a, a question for Tony., there are several different 5,000 horsepower pumps on the market. What is the advantage of the Thunder 5,000 versus other pumps that are available?
Tony McClain:
Yeah, I think the, the biggest difference, in, in the pump is, is really around the, the stroke length. So, we use an 11 inch stroke, pump. And, really the, the value of that is being able to, to slow the pump down. So for a given flow rate, the pump actually turns slower, which means less cycles on consumables, such as valves, seats, plungers, packing. and, and that really puts dollars right back into to our customer’s pockets. So, that, that’s one of the things we see is the biggest difference, between our pump and other pumps that are on the market. And, I think Seth could provide some more color potentially, but, we, we really are seeing those savings as compared to, some of those other designs that are out in the market.
Craig Fleming:
Thanks, Tony. Here we have a, a question for Catalyst and GD Energy. What are the challenges, that you’re ran into as partners? How did you work through these issues?
Seth Moore:
Well, when two innovative companies really comprised of passionate people are committed to a, a singular goal, you, you kind of have to learn to manage the ups and downs of the process, and simple. We really had to kinda learn to work together as a single entity. And Tony and I spent a lot of, Saturdays and Sundays on the phone, and we had to, I don’t, I don’t wanna use the word intervene, but, make sure that our teams understood, the goal, because when you’ve got that much passion, on a project, it, you, you have to learn to manage that. And, and we were able to do that, obviously, but it, in the early days, there were, it, it took a bit of effort. I’ll, I’ll let Tony put his spin on it, but that’s, that’s kind of how I remember it. So,
Tony McClain:
No, I, I think it’s a great, great point, Seth. I think, we, I, I think back to those early times too, and I do think that we had to, we did have to figure out how to work, together here. I, I think the, the other big challenge that, that I would say is that sometimes it, it wasn’t necessarily, it was, it wasn’t necessarily a pump issue that caused a challenge. It, it might have been the whole system. So, sometimes we had to work together. I, I’d give you a good example, just on, for example, the lube circuit was one that, boy, we, we really wrestled through that one, because this was a change. No one had run 5,000 horsepower with, with a turbine. And, so this was a new, something new that we had never seen before.
Tony McClain:
And so I, I just think that was one that you, both engineering teams had done lots of theoretical calculations, but until we got it in the field and we actually ran it, we, we didn’t really know what we were gonna get into. So that was one that we, we just had to set together and go, Okay, guys, how are we gonna work together to solve this? And, and I do think that it was that, that collaboration and commitment and, and Seth and I just saying, Hey guys, we’re, we’re gonna figure out how to get this. We’re gonna figure out how to get this all working together. That allowed us to get through it.
Craig Fleming:
Thanks, Tony. Here we have another question for the SICK presenters. What is your opinion about fiberglass based remote controlled sensors for emissions monitoring?
Irvin Schwartzenburg:
Yeah, so, yeah, so this to me, I think he may have meant fiber optic based. I think it’s, still new. I’m not, that familiar with the technology. I’m not aware that, there’s, there’s many out there in the market. I think it has potential, all it is great that, the new technologies are coming out there, but, but, I’m looking forward to see it being vetted, everything like that. I think one thing that it, will probably be very useful is, is a great cost position on detecting, I’m not sure how it’s gonna do on measuring, when you get into flares, flares can be a real dirty environment to try to get good measurement., being optical base, there may be some contamination issues, but, I’m sure before anything is being brought out, it’ll be well vetted. And I think the industry welcomes, new technologies like that. So I’m, I’m looking forward and I’m, I’m hoping that it becomes very successful and cost effective for us and the industry to allow us do our jobs better.
Craig Fleming:
Perfect. Here we got another question for Seth. A Catalyst at an average of 95 barrel per minute, a fleet of eight pumps would need to run about 12 barrel per minute each in the Permian, that’s about 3000 horsepower per pump. Have these pumps really ever been used at 5,000 horsepower?
Seth Moore:
Yeah. Good, good question. I, I think, just like, in a con traditional fleet where you have maybe 20 to 24 pumps, you don’t pump with all of those pumps at the same time. Typically here, we would go down hole with five pumps. So, we’ve achieved, we have exceeded 5,000 horsepower, so, that’s kinda what we rate ’em at. But during, during the field trials and testing, we certainly exceeded 5,000 horsepower. But, in applications of 10, five psi at, at 20 barrels per minute per pump, that’s a’s pretty impressive. we don’t, we don’t have to run ’em that way all the time, but with eight pumps, that gives you some redundancy and the ability, should you, have a pump, a mechanical issue or electrical issue or something pop up during a, during the stage, you have, a redundancy there in order to come online and fill that gap. So, yeah, we typically would run five, five pumps, in a stage.
Craig Fleming:
Thanks, Seth. Now, now back to Tony. Every shale play has varying pressures and temperatures. Where has the Thunder 5,000 been commissioned?
Tony McClain:
Yeah, so we’ve run in, in virtually every different, shale play. So, obviously with, with Catalyst we’ve been focused on the Permian Basin, but, we’ve run these pumps, up in the northeast and south Texas. I’ll tell you, a couple of the tougher, applications have actually been internationally, up in Canada, Middle East, even over in China. So we’ve run a number of different, applications to, to prove out the technology. So,
Craig Fleming:
Good deal. I think we’re out of time for today. We’d like to thank everyone for attending today’s webcast. We’d also like to thank SICK, Catalyst Energy Services and GD Energy Products for putting together this timely and informative presentation. Finally, an on-demand version of the webcast will be made available in the coming days. It’ll be emailed to everyone. This concludes our presentation. Thank you, Craig.
About Catalyst Energy Services
Catalyst Energy Services started with the idea that technology is the key to the future. We take the stewardship of preserving our world’s resources seriously and are dedicated to constantly innovating our sector of the energy industry to achieve cleaner, safer, and optimized production. Built by an accomplished executive team with over 100 years of hands-on experience in the field, engineering, and business management, we are an emerging stimulation service company specializing in hydraulic fracturing treatment.
