060 From Oil and Gas to Nuclear at ONS in Stavanger, Norway

[00:00:00] Martin Hjelmeland: Do you guys have any thoughts about what is different this time and how can one ensure that the current momentum that nuclear energy sees is going to continue and we’re actually going to see some hardware being deployed out there?

[00:00:14] Doug Sandridge: Yeah, I see a lot more momentum now than we saw at any of those other previous renaissances.

Now you can’t predict anything because if you have another nuclear accident, you don’t know what that’s going to do to galvanize public opinion. So we can’t say for certain, but things look different now than they did before Fukushima. There was a nuclear renaissance kind of fomenting, but not like we have now.

We didn’t have 80 SMR and micro reactor developers. The public perception is very positive around the world for nuclear energy in the U S even in Germany. You know, I see statistics 65, 75 percent of the population, but the demands, the sheer demands for energy are so amazing right now. And so I don’t see, it’s, it’s almost an unstoppable ball right now, because the, the sheer demands for electrification, electric vehicles, uh, AI, all of these things, I find it’s going to be very difficult to stop this momentum at this point.

[00:02:22] Mark Hinaman: Hey, what’s going on, everyone. We’ve got a special treat for you today. We have a recording from a panel discussion that we did at ons, which is the offshore north sea conference in Norway. So it was four Americans and one Norwegian on the panel, along with the, uh, organizer who’s of course, Norwegian. Which might be a little strange to folks, why there’s a conference in Norway about oil and gas, some of the conferences focused on oil and gas. Um, and there’s, there’s four Americans talking about nuclear on it. And all four of those Americans come from the oil and gas industry. So it’s because Americans are currently trying to build and, people may not know this, but there’s no nuclear energy in Norway. And they’ve got a ton of oil and gas.

It’s 25% of their economy and almost 50% of their exports. Um, but no nuclear. They’re trying to build a bunch of off shore wind. They have a bunch of hydro and the most more electric vehicles than anyone else in the world. As far as a percentage of vehicles per capita. But there’s a small, but growing contingent of people who are loved the idea of nuclear in Norway and wants to build even more of it. One of those voices is Martin Hjelmeland. Uh, he was a previous guest on our podcast.

He invited me to speak and kind of grew this panel and got all the speakers together to come in and talk about nuclear and how oil and gas has expertise could add to it. So that’s what this panel discussion is about. Unfortunately we don’t have a video of the recording, but we’re able to get ahold of the audio recording and a snagged picture from the event to put over, the frame. So if you’re watching online, then you can just imagine that we’re talking and yeah. Watching the video. I hope you enjoyed the recording.

I have to say at one point. I said oil and gas companies should go and build nuclear reactors. And I wanted to clarify what I meant by that. Oil and gas companies have the capital and cash right now to perform the research and development necessary to get some of these things to market, which is awesome. The industry is in a really healthy spot. And I, I think can be confusing where to start, which reactors worked best for their operations, with the best opportunity to decarbonize. So I’ll use this as an opportunity to say we’re starting a consortium of oil and gas companies to explore this idea and answer some of those questions. Um, we planned to launch it in Q4 this year. So, if you want to pull your capital with other companies and not take all the risks yourself, feel free to reach out.

With that, let’s jump into the panel discussion. I hope you enjoy it.

[00:04:47] Martin Hjelmeland: Okay, everybody. I think it’s seven o’clock sharp. So, I think we’ll get started on this, uh, this session. On, um, from oil and gas to, to nuclear. So to introduce myself, my name is Martin Hjelmland. I’m a postdoctoral fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Uh, we have a research project going on, investigating the role of nuclear energy.

And during, during my work, I dug into the nuclear history of, research history of Norway. Norway is actually the sixth country in the world to build a research reactor. And, uh, this was in the fifties and sixties. And it never became a nuclear energy, uh, adventure in Norway from that research. But a lot of that research that was conducted, uh, was utilized within the oil and gas industry.

So for instance, you have this multi phase flow technology, which is now in the hands of SLB. 90 percent market share worldwide, and it’s saved billions of dollars, or created billions of dollars of value in the oil and gas industry. You have tracer technology, injecting isotopes into the well, understanding more about how the oil wells work and function.

You have corrosion technology, control room technology. All this technology was commercialized within the oil and gas industry. So then, basically the questions was then is, Okay, is there a possibility to reverse this such that the oil and gas industry has something to provide for a potential nuclear sector?

So I’ve been very fortunate to have such a distinguished, uh, group of guests, uh, coming with me for this, uh, this panel session and discuss this, uh, this topic. So, uh, how we will do it is I’ll introduce, uh, the panel and ask you guys some questions individually and then, uh, in the end we’ll have an open discussion and, uh, see, see where this, uh, this takes us.

So, uh, first of all, uh, Doug, uh, Sandwich over here. You were born in the energy industry, with a father working around the globe as an exploration geologist for Philips Petroleum. You actually lived in Norway in 1967, prior to the Ecofisk discovery. And, uh, this morning you showed me a bit of piece of a sample from the ECOFISK drilling, showing the potential of 20, 000 barrels of oil production per day.

So I think, uh, that is quite interesting and, uh, very nice to have you back in Norway after so many, so many years. And the thing is, you actually started to study as a nuclear engineer. And this is your own words. You wanted to woo the girls because it’s a very fancy profession. Um, but due to an accident in the US that, that turned the nuclear industry on its head, you ended up working in the petroleum industry.

You have 45 years of experience from petroleum exploration companies in the U. S. and you are currently a VP at Fulcrum Energy Capital Funds, as well as an energy consultant and founder of Energy Policy U. S., an organization that promotes non partisan energy education, as I think all energy education should be, because we’re dealing with physics, not with feelings.

And his last endeavor has been to create this, um, Uh, declaration of oil and gas executives in support of nuclear energy where he’s gotten more than 120 signatures for executives in the oil and gas industry in the us and you’re now hoping to expand some of that list with some, some executives over here in the, in, in Europe.

And, uh, Nathan Snoke. Uh, you have more than 20 years of industry experience and is now the global account manager for new energies in Halliburton. He has previous operational, technical and managerial roles throughout his career, both in the US and internationals. But his primary focus has been related to strategy development and business planning.

And he holds a Bachelor in Finance from Liberty University and an MBA from the University of Denver. And then we have the only Norwegian on the panel, uh, together with all the Americans. So Einstein, down , uh, you moved to Steger, uh, while he was, uh, 16 years old, uh, for an education with the aviation industry.

But after a bachelor in mechatronics, master in management and 16 years in the I km group, uh, you’re now the deputy CEO. And for those who don’t know IKM Group, it’s a Norwegian oil service company that employs more than 3, 000 employees. So a big player in Norwegian standards. And your primary focus is on subsea and renewable business areas.

Mark Hinaman. He began his career working with his hands as a teenager in the natural gas fields and a coal mine in northwest Colorado. So, you got your hands dirty in the beginning and learned from there. Following your engineering study, he navigated a diverse area of technical and project management roles across multiple states.

Embracing an engineering discipline within the upstream oil and gas industry. And this, uh, experience afforded Mark the unique opportunity to serve as a founding member of Franklin Mountain Energy, where he was pivotal in steering 40 percent of the annual capital budget, and was instrumental in growing the company production from 500 barrels of oil per day to 50, 000 barrels of oils per day.

But now, he is principal and founder of Fire2Fission, an engineering and development company dedicated to commercializing nuclear technologies. He also has a great podcast called Fire2Fission. So if you guys are interested in that, you should, uh, you should check that, check that out. Highly recommend it.

And last but not least, uh, Scott Livingston. Uh, he is the President of Energy Product and Services, which is one of the two operating segments of NOV National Oil. Waco, uh, graduated from Texas A&M with a bachelor’s in Industrial engineering, a master’s in Logistics management, and attended the advanced management program for Workington Business School.

He has served eight years in the US Air Force, involved in maintenance, logistics and program management for new aircraft weapons systems, finishing as captain. So now we’ve got the credentials of the panelists.

I think we should get started on the questions. So I’m going to start with you, Doug. Uh, what made you initiate the declaration of oil and gas executives in support of nuclear energy?

[00:11:34] Doug Sandridge: Thank you. About four years ago, I was I was alarmed at the fact that there were a lot of countries and a lot of states in the U. S. that were moving to close down existing nuclear plants. And this seemed insanity to me. We’re trying to decarbonize our world, we want safe, reliable energy, and we’re closing down nuclear power plants.

I mean, this is so stupid. So, uh, I decided that I would get involved. Uh, in activate, uh, as an activist to try and save some of these nuclear power plants. And so I was involved in advocacy in Germany and in the United States. And, um, so as I worked with these groups, these pro nuclear groups that were trying to save these power plants, as you might imagine, a lot of the people that were involved with those groups were, uh, climate activists.

They were not oil and gas people. In most of these organizations, I was the only oil and gas person there. And so, as I was in these organizations, I realized there was this real distrust and real hatred for the oil and gas business. Now, partly because of, for climate reasons. But also, a lot of the, the, uh, those folks really believed that the oil and gas business was out to get them.

And I was at a meeting one time in California and one of the, one of our, one of our mutual friends made the statement, Well, we know you oil and gas guys hate nuclear and I know that you go out of your way to, uh, to undermine our industry. And I thought, I’ve been trying to think, what can I do for, for the nuclear cause?

What can I do to help this cause that would be meaningful? And I thought one thing I could do is to dispel this myth that oil and gas people do not like nuclear energy. And I, I pushed back at that meeting. I said, you know what, um, Heather, this is Heather Hoff. And I said, Heather, I don’t know where you get that from.

I don’t know all the oil and gas people that work in the, uh, in the United States. I don’t know all four million of them, but I know a lot of them. And I said, I don’t know anyone in our industry who does not like nuclear energy. Everyone in our industry understands the high value of a safe, reliable, affordable technology like nuclear.

And so I decided, I’m going to go prove to all these idiots that, Oil and gas does not hate nuclear energy. And so I had this idea that I would, uh, write a declaration of support and go around and see if I could get oil and gas executives to sign this declaration. And it would be mutually beneficial and would help raise the awareness of oil and gas and nuclear to the public.

But it would also help the nuclear industry, you know, say, We don’t need to worry about the oil and gas guys. We got enough enemies without having oil and gas. And so far we’ve had 120 executives in the United States who signed this declaration of support for nuclear energy.

[00:14:18] Martin Hjelmeland: Yeah, that’s wonderful. And also to riff a bit off of that because, uh, people in the oil and gas industry typically has a very firm, uh, understanding of the value of energy dense fuels.

And maybe has the capability of understanding that. Society relies so heavily on fossil fuels that just clipping the cord for fossil fuels is not a sustainable way to solve our transition.

[00:14:45] Doug Sandridge: I think as oil and gas people, we were uniquely positioned to understand how important safe, reliable, dispatchable energy is.

And I think we, even though it was not our industry, we felt like we could come out and support somebody else’s industry because we realized how important it was.

[00:15:02] Martin Hjelmeland: Yeah. Also just ’cause you started as a nuclear engineer, you went 45 years into the oil and gas industry and here we are still going back to nuclear.

Is, can you say something of why, why this passion for, for, for nuclear?

[00:15:19] Doug Sandridge: I guess I just always thought nuclear was a great solution and it, it wasn’t meant for me to be. Because of the timing of the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania when I was in college. So it wasn’t meant to be, but I’ve always felt like nuclear energy was a great energy source.

And so now I’m honored at this point in my life to be able to help propel this energy forward. And I’m hoping that all of us here can help Norway recognize the importance of that.

[00:15:50] Martin Hjelmeland: Okay, I think we continue to Scott Livingston, NOV. So, NOV, your company, recently spun out Shepard Power. A company that will utilize, according to the website I’ve dug up, a company that will utilize proven nuclear solutions to provide low carbon energy to industrial partners.

Can you say something about the back story of doing this? What was the thought process of NOV and oil service company like yours going into this field?

[00:16:22] Scott Livingston: Sure, sure. Um, congratulations on finding the website. We’ve not made it easy. It’s just been a quiet rollout. So just starting the backstory, uh, NOV has been around over 150 years, uh, involved in designing and manufacturing equipment and providing services, uh, to the energy industry, certainly traditionally the upstream oil and gas.

And more recently, like all of our companies involved in, in, uh, renewable technologies. Um, so, you know, our, our expertise is, is manufacturing, scale, global projects. In 2020, a large, global, US based E& P approached us and basically said, hey, NOV, have you thought about micro reactors, nuclear micro reactors?

And the answer was hardly. Um, thankfully we had some people on our organization that had, uh, had started looking into this, but, um, we started investigating this, uh, this technology, speaking to the community, uh, speaking to the government, a lot of nonprofit agencies over a multi year period. Essentially what we discovered, uh, were two things.

And before I mention that, just to back up, this ENP shared with us two concerns they had. One, they needed help on their clean energy ambitions, their requirements. And secondly, they were concerned about the future resiliency of the energy power generation needs that they had to continue to support their operations.

So to fast forward to what we discovered, uh, were essentially two things. One, as Doug mentioned, there was resounding support from all the EMPs, both global and U. S. specific, that felt like nuclear should be a part of their portfolio. And then secondly, the U. S. nuclear industry, I’ll just stop there, didn’t know how to manufacture.

Their background is large, water cooled, bespoke projects. That, of course, are always over budget and take too long, require a lot of civil structures. And so, um, what, what a micro reactor thesis provides is scale. The intention is to develop a standard design that you can attain some scale, bring the cost down.

And that’s what the energy industry is about, is trying to lower the cost of production to the most sensible manner. So NOV became very excited in that. We worked with these EMPs and we, we stood up Shepard Power. And essentially, we, our ambition, uh, that we’re working, uh, agreements right now is to own micro reactors, operate them, and provide long term power supply contracts.

And this would primarily, initially, be behind the grid solutions, uh, which is what our customers most need. their pressing need is at the moment.

[00:19:25] Martin Hjelmeland: Very interesting. But, uh, can you say a bit more about why you think your company is suited, suited to develop into this, uh, this sphere?

[00:19:36] Scott Livingston: Well, as you can, if you think about this landscape that I just described, you have this demand for this new technology at scale.

You have this community of traditional developers of nuclear technology. And what you’re missing is somebody in the middle to, again, to aggregate that demand, provide a supply chain response and capability in order for this to scale. That’s our experience, um, bringing together that demand, being able to help capitalize it to provide the right supply signals to the supply chain in order to develop the necessary components, fuel, et cetera.

In order to scale this. Also, we have experience working with regulations, permitting, things of that nature. And we’ve, uh, we’ve pivoted in dealing obviously with the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the U. S. And frankly, their support and their interest in their work right now has been overwhelming in helping support, uh, this, uh, this new thesis of this advanced nuclear technology solutions.

[00:20:44] Martin Hjelmeland: Do you also have any, uh, ongoing projects or what kind of stage are you in, uh, partnerships, uh, how far?

[00:20:51] Scott Livingston: We’re finalizing commercial agreements right now on the demand side with our customers. We already have, uh, supply agreements, uh, with two leading companies in the U. S. that are involved in micro reactor technology.

[00:21:03] Martin Hjelmeland: Yeah. And this only in the U. S. or are you thinking about going globally as well?

[00:21:10] Scott Livingston: This is U. S. Canada at the moment. We’re primarily working with the U. S. regulatory agencies. However, there are agreements are already in place with Canada, the U. K. Um, in regards to their permitting around nuclear technologies, so we, we, we see this scaling into Canada quite easily and a lot of the nuclear technologies that are used in North America are equally involved with a lot of capable Canadian companies.

Um, so it, at the moment it’s, it’s just US or North America based. Okay.

[00:21:42] Martin Hjelmeland: Yeah. The reason I’m asking is we have this heated debate in Norway about electrification of our oil and gas installations. So if we could get some American assistance onto that, that would be wonderful.

[00:21:53] Scott Livingston: Well, that sounds very, uh, very interesting. Uh, but to be honest, we’ve got a big mountain ahead of us, uh, to scale in order to bring this to fruition in the US. So, uh, I don’t want to dream too far in advance.

[00:22:08] Martin Hjelmeland: Oh, wonderful. Okay, uh, we continue on to, to Mark Hinaman. So, uh, your company, Fire2Fission, serves as an energy project developer. Uh, and aims at tapping into the similar market as NOV.

Uh, where, uh, you’re not, uh, constructing the nuclear reactors yourself, you’re sort of like kind of bridging the reactor vendors and the, uh, and end takers. Uh, can you say something about this micro reactor technology, its capabilities, and give us some insight into

[00:22:43] Mark Hinaman: Sure. Yeah, we’re, we’re really excited about these new systems that are getting developed.

And we say new, that’s, that’s really just new to be commercialized. The technology is not new. I mean, the Department of Energy in the United States studied all these reactors in the 50s and 60s and built over 50 react, different types of reactors and tested all sorts of them. There’s papers that have been published globally about these technologies and essentially companies are just going and digging those papers up and then Dragging them out of the lab and then going and building these new systems.

Um, or advanced systems. Which is really awesome. Uh, their power capabilities, they’re between kind of the one to twenty megawatt power level. Um, the physical footprint should be about the same size as a well pad. Um, so you can think on the order of like a hundred meter radius around the facility. Um, and the goal, yeah, like those micro reactor systems are dispatchable, deployable.

Initially, you’ll still have to have site specific licensing. Uh, but we anticipate accelerating that to be I mean, you guys published a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They said it needs to be less than six months to get an environmental permit in the U. S. So, Rich, thank you for doing that.

That’s very helpful. Uh, we’re really excited about working towards that goal.

[00:23:59] Martin Hjelmeland: Can you say something more about how flexible are these systems? How long are the fuel cycles?

[00:24:09] Mark Hinaman: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I forget all the details. What people don’t know. So, a big benefit is the refueling time can be Meaning like, there’s so much energy in the nuclear fuel, that it can be on the order of years, rather than on the order of hours, right?

You think about refueling a frack fleet, or refueling a drilling rig right now with diesel. You have to bring a new load out every day, versus with some of these systems, it’ll be two years, five years, ten years at full power. Um, people talk about nuclear as a base load solution, which is a little silly to me, because some of these reactors will be able to ramp and load follow on the order of a megawatt a minute.

Which is huge, right? And you think about how the Navy reactors and, uh, aircraft carrier reactors load followed. They’re essentially direct drive connected to the propeller of a ship, load following as they accelerate and decelerate. So, same principle, just applied to your field operations.

[00:25:07] Martin Hjelmeland: Uh, this capability sounds wonderful. But the question is, uh, what kind of prices can we achieve? And do you, do we see any, what kind of CO2 prices would you, for instance, be required to be able to be, uh, economic compatible against natural gas or, or diesel? Do you have any,

[00:25:25] Mark Hinaman: uh, as, as the first of a kind systems, I’d, I’d say somewhere between six and 7 a gallon.

Uh, which if you convert to liters, right? Multiply by four, sorry for being here, but, yeah, or whatever. Uh, which I think is actually still cheaper than, uh, gasoline is in Norway. Uh, so it’s probably cost competitive in Norway right now, yeah. Um, I learned this week while driving around the, the countryside, but yeah.

Um, as specific dollar per CO2 number, that, that’s kind of tough, but, you know, when, when you think about new technologies, every single first system that you build is gonna be really expensive. Um, the first offshore platform that we built was very expensive. The first jacob rig. The first shale wells that we drilled in the U.

S. were 10 15 million dollars. I remember drilling wells in 2011 in North Dakota that were approaching 10 11 million dollars. And then fast forward 5 years, we’re drilling basically the identical system, actually improved wells, improved well performance, and we’re down to sub 5 million dollars in Texas.

And that kind of improvement over time is It’s something that the industry just is lacking. It needs reps. It needs people to go out and build this stuff. And as we do that, the prices will come down. And the physics, really, if you look at how much energy there is, the amount of material that it’s going to take to build these systems, the physics supports that it should be the cheapest energy on Earth.

So.

[00:26:44] Martin Hjelmeland: Uh, could you also mention if you have any specific projects or what kind of industrial offtakers are you talking with?

[00:26:54] Mark Hinaman: Yeah, yeah, so similar to Shepard Power, we’re excited about this project development role. Can we come in and fit that niche, that need can we help people understand what technologies are best suited for them?

Um, so yeah, we’re looking at putting together, uh, Um, consortiums or study projects to help companies say, well, this is a big landscape. There’s over 80 different types of advanced nuclear reactors that are getting developed. Which one fits your application? Which one can we utilize? What’s the timeline to get these permitted?

How do you get them permitted? Who do you, who do you talk to? So we’ve been studying all these questions and, Putting together a path and a plan to actually execute on these things. Um, so we’ve got prospective projects in Texas and Colorado and Utah and looking at industry partners. We’re working on standing up a industry consortium to study some of the highest value add projects, um, to be able to deploy projects.

And if there’s anyone in the room that’s interested in learning more and getting involved, then yeah, come talk to me afterwards. Love to talk to you. A wonderful, shameless plug.

[00:27:53] Martin Hjelmeland: Thank you, Mark. Okay, so we’re moving a bit further to Nathan. So I have a question, because there has been, or there is some concern about the spent nuclear fuel or nuclear waste that is commonly referred to.

In Norway for instance, we have an energy minister that has said that we cannot look into nuclear energy because the waste problem has not been solved. But I know that, uh, You are working together with customers and trying to provide a solution for this issue. Can you elaborate on that?

[00:28:28] Nathan Snoke: Yeah, absolutely, happy to.

So, you know, at Haliburton, our core, we collaborate with our customers, engineer solutions. You mentioned waste is a big challenge, which means it needs a big solution. And when we look at the customers we’re working with, they are identifying technologies that will help place that subsurface, deep borehole.

which is very scalable. But it’s in its early stages and much like everything we do on our low carbon solutions group, it’s how do we take the technologies that we’ve built, The core skill sets, the competencies, and translate that into new areas. So whether that be CCUS, hydrogen, or in this case, new food disposal, with our customers, well, we know we can reduce that learning curve that is always associated with the new technology.

Kind of as Mark mentioned, the price of drilling shale wells over that period of time. Dramatic! And that’s because the people in our industry are phenomenal at solving challenges and collaborating together to bring those to market. Yep. So we know that by working with them and understanding what those unique challenges are when it comes to those disposal wells, which are things such as lithology, formation, evaluation, barriers.

Well, these are things that people in our industry do on a daily basis. And we’ve been doing for over a hundred years. So it’s a, we’re very excited to be able to apply that in new ways.

[00:29:43] Martin Hjelmeland: Yeah, cool. Because I think, uh, like the, the, the title of the session is from oil and gas to nuclear, to seeing whether the oil and gas industry has.

Technology and competence that can be utilized within the nuclear industry. And I think this is a great showcase that, uh, you have more than a hundred years of experience doing this and for someone else to come in and do the same thing, I think would be, be very hard, uh, hard.

[00:30:09] Nathan Snoke: Yeah, I mean, our industry is perfectly set for it.

When you look at process engineering, process safety, I mean, all of these directly transferable skill sets that we can bring to it, and as I mentioned, just really shorten that learning curve, and come kind of, you know, ready to go to work mentality to it. Ah, cool.

[00:30:25] Martin Hjelmeland: Uh, could you say something about, uh, What are the unique challenges between drilling for oil and gas and drilling for storing nuclear waste?

[00:30:35] Nathan Snoke: Yeah, uh, well, uh, absolutely happy to do that. But they are different, but kind of the tool set that we use to look at those differences are very similar. So one of those is going to be, well, what sort of base rock do we need to store that in? Um, what sort of depths? What are the characteristics of that formation?

Porosity, permeability, these sort of considerations, which When it comes to our subsurface understanding and insight, we can absolutely help those clients understand what those are, model those, uh, provide consulting services and understanding where would be the best place to put those wells. And we will then support them in construction of those wells.

[00:31:12] Martin Hjelmeland: Yeah. Very interesting.

[00:31:13] Nathan Snoke: Thank you.

[00:31:15] Martin Hjelmeland: Uh, we move on to the only Norwegian in the panel. So, Oystein Stjern, uh, Deputy CEO of IKM Group. I don’t think I’ll spoil anything by saying that you don’t have any nuclear activities going on.

But what we’ve seen in the public debate in Norway, that if we are to transition away from oil and gas, we need to transition into some technology that we have an advantage in. So we built floating oil and gas installations, and then we can build floating wind turbines. But from I see it and from the discussions that I’ve had before and today is this process engineering and this, this technology and competence is perhaps just as valuable for going into a nuclear industry.

Do you have anything you can riff off or provide your thoughts on that subject? If

[00:32:16] Oystein Stjern: first of all, I think, um, we should acknowledge that the oil and gas industry and the technology developed within it. Definitely can play a role with also within the nuclear. So the debate in Norway, I think, is more based on the price regime.

So five years ago, if these are Norwegians, we didn’t pay to use power. It was almost free. Yeah, almost free. This has changed, also leading Norwegians to be more positive to other under industries and also nuclear. Um, uh, what we’ve seen in Norway, there is a technology approach. So what can the supplier industry contribute with?

I think we should be technology anarchists. We could contribute wherever it’s reasonable to contribute. And you, you mentioned the multi phase technology. It’s the, it would be the other way around with the process industry. Um, but what we need to look at in the Norwegian segment is. is mostly what would be the cost of energy, the levelized cost of energy to get investors to invest into nuclear in Norway, because that’s the barrier.

We’ve seen business cases. We are open to invest in nuclear, but we need to see the business case that can triumph other, other industries. And that we’ve yet to see. And that’s probably why we see this, or we have this debate, or we can all be united that this is something we want, but still it doesn’t go fast enough.

So for the offshore wind part, you could, we could easily debate whether we should subsidize offshore winds. We had a statement from even Ericsson earlier today, uh, in one of the debates that, uh, if you scale offshore winds, it would be much cheaper. They wouldn’t need subsidize. Nuclear needs to fight that in Norway.

That’s why scale is important. So the technology needs to be developed. We need business cases that is good. And then also Norwegian investors will invest into this.

[00:34:18] Martin Hjelmeland: Okay, so, uh, the next question was like, uh, what factors would need to change for you to initiate in a potential nuclear project? So you Basically, the first answer was cost, of course, but do you see any other barriers for yourself?

[00:34:37] Oystein Stjern: No, I think from the ICAM group side, we’re more on the specialist maintenance side. So obviously, um, what we do look at is the, uh, after things are put into operations, if we build, Power plants and so on. That’s, that’s interesting to us. But we also do investments in early phase technology. And that’s when I’m back to the business case itself.

We need to believe that this is actually doable. And for Norway, government play a huge role. As you mentioned, the minister of industry. Uh, we need regulatory aspects in place. Uh, we need the people on board to accept this. That’s also a part in Norway to discuss. Uh, and the question is whether or not that’s, that’s going to go fast enough.

But first of all, the business case needs to be, we need to get it on the paper and show a positive return on investment. And then I think, uh, many investors in Norway are also positive to invest into this, but we need to see that more clearly, I think yet.

[00:35:39] Martin Hjelmeland: Okay, so I think this wraps up the first part of the questions. Now we can have more open discussions of the panelists. And I would just want to Does anyone want to follow up with the questions of some of the other answers?

[00:35:55] Oystein Stjern: I have one question. So, so I’m not too much into technology with nuclear, but it would be interesting to have some guesstimates on when will the first SMR be ready to scale?

Uh, when do we expect this to actually play a significant role? Because that’s interesting for us at least as for maintenance side and also from an investor side. So any reflections on that would be good.

[00:36:17] Scott Livingston: I mean, our, our latest estimates, or I should say what we’re pursuing is to have the first of the micro reactors, um, delivered in 2030.

Yeah. Um, now that is a drop, right? That, that would be in the initial three to four, which is a drop in the bucket. The, the demand scenario just in the U S and the interest level from the customer base, we need. Tens and twenties per year delivered. Over there. It’s a, this has the opportunity to scale very rapidly.

[00:36:53] Oystein Stjern: Yeah. And that’s not too far ahead. Even in the region context, that’s not too far ahead. So that would make it an option for different energy forms also in Norway, I guess.

[00:37:01] Mark Hinaman: I guess I can, I can comment on that further for the timeline horizon. There’s multiple microreactor developers that will be testing in what’s called the Dome, which is Idaho National Labs test facility, essentially in 2027.

That’s their target. It’s public. You can go and look and read about their, their time horizons and when they expect to be there. Um, that’s kind of the first step to get data to demonstrate that these microreactors work how we think they’re going to work, and there’s very little reason to believe that.

And there’ll be some learnings along the way. But if you look at every other reactor vendor, you said SMRs, which for the crowd, SMRs typically means 50 to 300 then micro reactors is kind of this one to 20, one to 50 megawatt. Um, it, it’s almost like there’s another reactor vendor that expects to be delivering a system every year from 2027 on, meaning X Energy, Oklo, NuScale, Kairos, BWXT.

Radiant Nuclear, Allo Atomics. Like, they all, and a lot of them are American companies. There’s some, uh, well, Copenhagen Atomics is another organization. Um, and some Canadian companies. But, there’s just, there’s so many that are coming to market. And the 2030 timeline I think is, it’s a decent target and it sounds like a round number, but I think we can really accelerate that.

And, the 2030s, I wouldn’t be surprised if the growth in this industry just takes off and it will be the largest growing segment of the energy industry in the 2030s.

[00:38:27] Martin Hjelmeland: That was very interesting, because a part of my research, you also see, building a nuclear power plant, it creates a lot of energy. And in order to get that scale, you need to construct a lot of those power plants.

And, uh, for a small country like Norway for instance, you wouldn’t need that many power plants until the market is completely overfilled with power and energy. So, uh, And also given the amount of, uh, startups that are coming and are providing solutions. Uh, do you foresee that, uh, every one of these companies are going to be alive in the 2040s or there’s going to be very harsh competition about getting, uh, being able to supply unit number 10, 20, 40, 50 and have that, uh, that learning curve.

[00:39:22] Scott Livingston: Competition is good. That breeds innovation.

[00:39:27] Martin Hjelmeland: Oh, I totally agree. I totally agree.

[00:39:31] Mark Hinaman: Sorry, you’re staring at me. I’m happy to let other people talk. But I also love this idea. Like, if you look at the number of shale companies, oil, like US, and sorry, my experience is colored from US shale, but There were so many startup oil companies throughout the 20 teens that boom, bust, some of them sold to bigger companies, a lot of them went bankrupt.

But it’s the free market capitalist environment that we live in. This is the game, this is business, right? But the more companies that exist, there’s a secondary effect in the market that will be more powerful than just the companies competing against each other. And the analogy that I like to give is, when we frack wells and we buy frack sand, there’s If there’s a new mine that opens up close to where you’re fracking, and closer to your wells, then that eliminates transportation costs and makes that frack sand way cheaper than it would have been if you’re shipping it from across the country or across the world.

But that mine needs the investment case, needs a number of customers to be able to open up and run that business. And the same is true on every facet of the nuclear industry. We need fuel providers. We need technology manufacturers. We need turbine manufacturers. We need, uh, regulators. We need lawyers. We need cap, uh, financiers, everything.

And the more companies that enter the space and demonstrate that there’s demand signal for this technology, the cheaper it’s going to be for everyone.

[00:40:52] Scott Livingston: Yeah. Interestingly, when we started this, uh, endeavor, we were We presumed that the biggest risk and the biggest challenge was going to be that regulatory path.

Could the U. S. pivot to a permitting scheme to support this dispatchable mobile type reactor technology? And to our surprise, to date, the regulatory agencies involved have been very supportive. They’ve applied a lot of resources towards this scheme. The ADVANCE Act was passed in the administration recently, which supports nuclear technologies and advanced nuclear technologies.

Um, so there’s been a lot of very positive, uh, impetus towards that.

[00:41:37] Martin Hjelmeland: I think the only thing, uh, politicians in the U. S. can agree on, the Republican and Democrats, is nuclear.

[00:41:42] Scott Livingston: Yes. We found a common, uh, we found a common cause. That’s right. Yeah. That’s why we decided to invest in it. It can’t go wrong. But, um, the supply chain and fuel has leapfrogged, uh, in the regular, the regulatory concerns that we have in regards to just the risk of, of, of actually being able to migrate to this scalable, Component equipment and especially fuel manufacturing.

So that’s where we’re spending even more of our energy, working, uh, with partners and agencies.

[00:42:21] Martin Hjelmeland: Esten, did you have a comment or?

[00:42:23] Oystein Stjern: Oh yeah, no, I was just thinking, we were challenged earlier by the oil and gas industry looking at the nuclear as a competition or whatever, like it’s a threat to our industry.

So I think everyone is on board with the trilemma now, so we need to resolve this world CO2 problem. And in that aspect, also the oil and gas industry. companies, at least in Norway and probably abroad, are investing into renewable energy sources. And I think, uh, Dr. Fatih Birol said earlier today that, uh, last year, 75 percent of power plants were built with renewable energy, and then it was, uh, 15 or 20%, no, 15 percent with, with, uh, oil and gas and then the rest nuclear.

So there is an increasing, uh, and I don’t see, uh, what I see again with the oil and gas Companies and the producers is that they don’t invest in wind if they don’t get return on investment. But they will invest in wind and in nuclear if they can showcase a return on investment. That’s interesting to them.

So this is market driven. It’s cash driven and it’s investor driven. So that’s why it’s important, I think, to to, to state that, okay, this technology works. You have a technology readiness level that’s acceptable. You resolve the issue that you have with storage of, um, um, um, yeah, leftovers. And then, then you can move ahead and then it’s safe.

So I, I don’t know if you see the same, but I’m not seeing that there are looking at nuclear as an opponent anymore. It’s more as an opportunity, but it’s still not mature enough. So that’s the debate we have in Norway.

[00:44:04] Martin Hjelmeland: Because then, talking about the economics, because here in Norway we’re putting a lot of resources and efforts into offshore wind. But in order to improve the economics, we’re providing subsidy to that technology alone. Uh, so you’re sort of like subsidizing and skewing the competition. Uh, a little bit. Uh, do you have any, any, any thoughts about technology neutral subsidies or remove the subsidy at all?

Or, like the IRA in the USA has been very, very lucrative for all low carbon, uh, solutions and not just favored one specific. Uh, anyone want to share their thoughts on, uh, economics or subsidies or?

[00:44:56] Nathan Snoke: Well, what I would say is this, when it comes to oil and gas, and the transferring the skill set over, we’ve got a 160 plus year record in the oil and gas industry of taking a resource that at one point looked uneconomical.

You know, you identify wherever it might be located on the earth. The North Sea, some of the harshest conditions on the face of the earth, to deserts, you know, to the north slopes of Alaska, places that you wouldn’t think you could make a resource economical by any sort of means. And yet when you apply our skill set, and the grit that our industry has, we’ve been able to do that.

And I think that, that level of determination and engineering to get to that solution, I think it’s 100 percent transferable to this, and will lead to growth. But it, it takes that level of, uh, entrepreneurship, that is also just, uh, instilled in our industry, and I think we’re all very proud to represent that, and we know that we can certainly help tackle this challenge by applying that as well.

[00:45:48] Martin Hjelmeland: Yeah. Oh, and, uh, I think, uh, Also this, uh, this grit and being able to provide the world with oil and gas, it also has this extreme value. That’s why the world is consuming so much of it, because it drives modern society. So I think also that’s an aspect that’s been forgotten in the public debate. It’s always focusing on the negative side of the fossil fuels, but we also have forgotten what it actually has provided modern civilization and humanity and the lifestyle that we’re currently using.

[00:46:22] Oystein Stjern: And fossil fuel will be a part of the energy mix for a long, long time still. So that’s a part of it. The question is how much. But you asked about subsidies in Norway. So So it would be interesting to getting the American view on subsidies in Norway, obviously, but for Norway, I guess the government, um, are trying to find technologies or business that they see directly can inflict not only bringing technology from oil and gas into renewables, but also create to work and create business in Norway.

So that’s also part of, of that part. We have, uh, uh, a lot of hubs along the coast with Aker Abel and so on that needs work to be done. So that’s also a part of that strategy, I guess, but in general, the market should resolve this, but if you’d like to speed something up, maybe a more. Something that would benefit every renewable technology will be more profitable and more successful instead of just going with one of them.

Yeah, I agree. And I guess that’s what they’ve done in the USA.

[00:47:27] Scott Livingston: Yeah, I agree with those nine. I mean, I think it’s very important. I think subsidies incentives have a place. I think when, uh, when that subsidy or incentive becomes a longterm crutch, um, then maybe the right bet has not been placed. Um, but the idea is to kickstart that initiative, um, that should then be able to scale to provide a sufficient return and be competitive in the marketplace. Um, I mean, one of my businesses is in the fiberglass, uh, glass reinforced epoxy composites. Um, and we’re benefiting greatly from the initiative and the investment in the U S to build, uh, microchip fabrication plants, which are billion dollar endeavors.

And so, uh, we’re very happy about that political and geopolitical tension that’s driving that investment, um, by a lot of world class companies to do that. So, yeah, I agree. Uh,

[00:48:24] Martin Hjelmeland: I’ll throw in another question because like, uh, the aim is to lower our CO2 emissions, cut our CO2 emissions. But some of the technology that you guys are working on is going to be used within the oil and gas industry.

So there’s sort of like this dilemma about, uh, helping the oil and gas industry to produce more oil and gas.

[00:48:48] Scott Livingston: How do you, well, I, I think, uh, one way, one perspective, uh, and it was said earlier, I think it was, I was saying Doug said there, um, to what degree you agree may vary, but petroleum production is going to continue for a very long time.

At dinner, I was reading the Wall Street Journal and Exxon just dropped their latest forecast and they were projecting oil and gas production and demand to remain the same through 2050 based on the current trajectory. And that’s even with renewables continuing to grow. Now, That’s Exxon. I recognize that may not be the most popular supported opinion here.

Um, but nevertheless, I think that underscores the fact that there is going to continue to be robust production around the world. So why not underpin that production with emissions free technology to provide the generation source, which would provide a significant benefit.

[00:49:50] Oystein Stjern: And, and to be honest, that’s what we’re doing in Norway now, just with electricity.

So you have the same, just not with nuclear, you put electricity, uh, offshore to reduce the emissions that Norway needs to do. And it’s a hard, uh, obviously in Norway, it’s hard to explain to the public that you need to spend this electricity to reduce the CO2 emissions because the prices of electricity goes up.

But that’s what you’re talking about with regards to using nuclear for the same, uh, goal that, that could be viable. Yeah.

[00:50:22] Mark Hinaman: I’ll say, I mean, We don’t burn all of the hydrocarbons that we produce. Is it 50 percent of the liquids? Doug might know this number better than me, but of the liquids that we produce aren’t lit on fire, right?

They’re used to produce balloons and the paint on these tables and everything else in here, right? And it’s awesome, it’s cheap and it’s cool, right? Um, and that’s not going away, right? We need those molecules still. And so if you’re trying to decarbonize an industry, and really, like, I’m not driven, I mean, I’m an environmentalist, I grew up in Colorado, it’s a beautiful part of the world, I love Norway, lots of environment, but like, the world needs energy.

And it needs more energy, and this is just going to be one more tool that we use to produce energy. That’s how I see it.

[00:51:04] Nathan Snoke: Apparently we need data centers, and apparently we need data crypto mining too.

[00:51:11] Oystein Stjern: No, but it’s, the world needs energy. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a politician that’s able to be re elected after cutting the energy consumption by its public.

So, I think we need to tackle this problem realistically and see that we need more clean energy, not less of it.

[00:51:34] Martin Hjelmeland: Doug, do you have anything you want to add? Want to comment, or if not, I have a

[00:51:40] Doug Sandridge: Well, I don’t like subsidies. They do distort the market. And, um, I mean, they do have their place, as we said, to, to get the flywheel spinning.

But, unfortunately, some of these subsidies that were meant to be temporary end up being 30 year endeavors, and that was never the intention, and it’s counterproductive to productive development. So, it’s bad.

[00:52:06] Martin Hjelmeland: Uh, then I can ask because, uh, in the early 2000s, uh, there was a lot of buzz in the nuclear industry, talking about, uh, nuclear renaissance.

Uh, do you guys have any thoughts about what is different this time and how can one ensure that the current momentum that nuclear energy sees is going to continue and we’re actually going to see some hardware being deployed out there. Uh,

[00:52:33] Doug Sandridge: Yeah, I see a lot more momentum now than we saw at any of those other previous renaissances.

Now you can’t predict anything because if you have another nuclear accident, you don’t know what that’s going to do to galvanize public opinion. So we can’t say for certain, but things look different now than they did before Fukushima. Uh, there was a nuclear renaissance kind of fomenting, but not like we have now.

We didn’t have 80 Uh, SMR and micro reactor developers. Uh, the public perception is very positive around the world for nuclear energy in the U S even in Germany. Yeah. You know, I see statistics 65, 75 percent of the population, but the demands, the sheer demands for energy are so amazing right now. And so I don’t see, it’s, it’s almost an unstoppable ball, right?

now, because the, the sheer demands for electrification, electric vehicles, uh, AI, all of these things, it doesn’t, I, I find it’s going to be very difficult to stop this momentum at this point.

[00:53:40] Scott Livingston: I think, uh, one of the key things is those previous renaissances were not necessarily driven from an environmental emissions free standpoint either.

And I think coupled that coupled with the advanced technologies for anybody that dives into that, um, are a very compelling force.

[00:53:56] Oystein Stjern: I totally agree. So those two things would It’s a new world now. So this would not go away. And you have also, we discussed earlier, African need of energy. So there is a huge demand for energy.

And that would just pull this.

[00:54:14] Martin Hjelmeland: Another question is, there’s been a lot of buzz in the nuclear industry about small modular reactors. This modularity part where you’re able to have multiple reactors on the same side and you just add on depending on the demand. But I think there’s also a part of modularity that is important that, uh, you can Change out components in your nuclear power plants with components that already exist, for instance, in the oil and gas industry.

So if you can, you can tap into that mature oil and gas market and use those components in your nuclear power plants, you can be able to avoid many of these extremely high costs for some of these important components. Do you have any experience or examples that you can?

[00:55:03] Mark Hinaman: I’ll say it’s really frustrating for me when I look at this.

I was in Prague a couple weeks ago at a nuclear engineering conference. It’s the world renowned, best in the world. Uh, and I’ll say at that conference, the best research was being presented by the Chinese because they’re building reactors faster than anyone else in the world and, and they’re winning, frankly. They’re just, they’re, they’re destroying us. Um, so if that doesn’t, it could, it should be a motivator

but the Expertise that exists in the oil and gas industry. And you look at the technology that we’ve built that exists now. That didn’t exist 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

I mean, it was my job for over a decade to select technologies and use them on specific projects to be able to deploy an effective economic project. And, I mean, the catalogue that I had to draw from was incredible. Like, the technology that gets built in the oil and gas industry is just awesome.

From frack plugs, to valves, to SCADA systems. So at this Prague conference, there was a guy from the US that was like, well, we might be able to make a digital twin to do SCADA systems and like monitor remote operations for nuclear reactors. And I raised my hand and I was like, um, we’ve done SCADA systems in oil and gas for decades and, uh, it’s never a problem.

And the consequence of those SCADA systems is actually significantly more severe and dangerous than any nuclear reactor will ever be. So, I think there’s tremendous technology transfer that can occur. And learnings that the nuclear industry should take away. I mean, frankly, like, oil and gas companies should just go and build these reactors. So hot take. Yeah.

[00:56:35] Martin Hjelmeland: Uh, Oystein, what do you think about, uh, that you’re supplying a lot of parts to the oil and gas industry?

[00:56:40] Oystein Stjern: Uh, I, I think so on the maintenance side, on the parts supply side, on the technology side, obviously as I stated earlier, it’s a lot of things to transfer, but you need to transfer into some kind of business.

So this will not be built by the supply chain. The supply chain would not itself manufacture an SMR. We, we need someone to be in the forefront to finance this. And then I think, then I agree, there is a lot of technology within the oil and gas industry that’s directly transferable. And I think the oil and gas industry is ready for it.

We just, we just need the sort of, uh, one in front that puts money on the table and say, okay, now we’re doing this.

[00:57:22] Mark Hinaman: I mean, what is a reactor? It’s pressure vessels, pumps, generators, turbines, right? These are all systems, like INE, INC are instrumentation control systems, right? These are systems that we use for our operations now.

[00:57:37] Scott Livingston: Yeah. Heat, pressure. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s see, we’ve, we’ve modified our tools to work in geothermal. I mean, so it’s, it’s not uncommon, um, you know, in the U S uh, with Shepard power, we were, as I said earlier, we’re very impressed with the demand and the interest, um, by a large number of EMPs. Yeah. We’re bringing that a sizable portion together, establishing a formal agreement.

That investment is meant that upfront investment is meant to catalyze the supply chain to send that demand signal, which is what’s needed in new technology and new industries. That is the subsidy of sorts. Um, and oil and gas industry is accustomed to working in nonstandard locations and we’ve got the manpower that already knows how to do that.

So, again, I feel like now is a good time.

[00:58:30] Martin Hjelmeland: Okay, we were able to get, uh, four of you Americans on the, on the panel. And one of the issues was it’s a bit difficult to talk about nuclear energy in Norway and somewhere else as well. And we are very lucky to have Øystein, Jan, who is way up there in this.

So, but do you have any, how is this, this debate, public debate, how are you talking with stakeholders in the US? Like how? Why do you think that you’re so mature in the U. S. on these micro actors deployments compared to, say, Norway, where we’re still debating?

[00:59:13] Scott Livingston: In the U. S., our electrical grid is disjointed and stressed.

[00:59:21] Martin Hjelmeland: So you’ve had a lot of pain?

[00:59:22] Scott Livingston: A lot of pain points. And if anybody is familiar with Texas, Of course, we want to do everything bigger in Texas. We don’t like to share, but that also means our electrical grid is closed off from the rest of the country. And as we have storms and environmental events, um, the electrical grid may go down.

To some degree, and especially in Houston, we’re accustomed to that. Hence the generator that’s permanently installed on the side of my house. And you probably have one too. So there is a raising awareness about this demand growth that is happening for electricity, for power. Um, and that’s affecting both sides of the aisle and the political spectrum.

Um, and we’re not going to solve that in the near term with the electrical grid. And therefore. Advanced power solutions that could continue to service this growing demand cases, um, is generally supported by everybody.

[01:00:18] Oystein Stjern: But I will say in Norway, the debate will come, because we used to have hydropower for everything in Norway, then we started to discuss export and exporting energy, then we don’t have hydropower for everything, and then we have the grid issue now emerging.

And in, uh, in the Norwegian way of doing that, we use 10 years building or rebuilding a grid. So that’s also a challenge in Norway. So the debate will come. We will have the same pain points. So if you need more pain, it will come. The question is just how much.

[01:00:52] Martin Hjelmeland: Some, uh, some promising words to finish up this panel.

So, uh, I’m not sure, Doug, you’ve done a lot of advocacy work in the recent years.

[01:01:02] Doug Sandridge: I think it’s easy for me to say. I’m by far the oldest person here, so I have less to lose, but I think, uh, the truth will set you free and we have to be better at, um, being strong enough to speak the truth. We have, especially in the oil and gas industry, we’ve been very good about avoiding the truth.

We don’t want to talk about what we do. We try to be ashamed of what we do, and we should not be ashamed. And the nuclear industry needs to be the same way. We need to have these honest conversations about these subjects, and we can’t run away from our politicians. They may not like us. There may be some of the public that won’t like us, but we need to engage in honest conversations.

Um, You know, I heard an expression the other day, the only enduring victory is education. And I love that term. We need to educate our policy makers, our public, and the way we do that is by speaking the truth. And I think actually one of the things that I wanted to do with my organization was, We feel empowered to speak the truth on behalf of the nuclear industry, because the nuclear industry has been the only industry I know in the world that’s been worse than the oil and gas industry about their own part, their own image.

They will not talk about themselves. They will not speak the truth. They will not say, look what we’ve done for you. Look how safe we are. Look how reliable they won’t do it. So I’m hoping as oil and gas people, we’ve learned our lesson. We can stand up and speak out on behalf of the nuclear industry, but All of us have to just have an honest dialogue about energy, and I think the enduring victory will be education.

[01:02:42] Mark Hinaman: Well, I’ll build on that, Doug. So, the truth Very shortly. Oh, sorry. The truth is that all of the data represents people like nuclear. There’s this mythology that your neighbor doesn’t like nuclear, but you like nuclear. Everyone in this room can take away from this session and say like, Hey, actually we all like nuclear.

And it’s not just me saying that, right? Richard Olington had an awesome slide today in one of the presentations that showed survey results. We saw similar results from a survey recently done in northwest Colorado. Like, the data is there that demonstrates that people like it.

[01:03:14] Martin Hjelmeland: I think that’s a much more positive tone to end the panel.

So I think we conclude that and I would like to thank you very much for participating in the panel. And for all of you who have been watching, I hope it’s been, uh, you’ve learned something and, uh, it can spur some imagination and, into see what the, what the future beholds for. For oil and gas and, uh, the nuclear, uh, potential synergies there.

So, thank you, thank you very much.

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