Service Firms for Wind and Solar Energy
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Currently, solutions companies for renewable energy assets are fragmented. End-to-end companies, like those in oil and gas, are starting to enter the market.
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The Oilfield Service Industry in the Time of Energy Transition
/Oilfield service (OFS) companies are walking a tightrope as they balance continuing to service legacy oil and gas customers with developing and deploying services in the renewable space.
Three of the big players—Schlumberger, Halliburton, and Baker Hughes—are each taking their own path to green energy transformation.
Halliburton formed its own clean energy incubator/accelerator.
Schlumberger launched a new clean energy business unit.
Baker Hughes is weaving clean energy tech into its existing verticals.
Balance is the name of the game as OFS leaders are forging ahead in a rapidly changing energy sector, maintaining their core competencies, and navigating new and maturing markets.
From Progressive
Halliburton is looking ahead and putting themselves in the clean energy tech space. In 2020, it formed Halliburton Labs, an incubator/accelerator helping with the growth of innovative, early-stage companies focused on cleaner and more affordable energy. The lab recently announced its second cohort and is investing in companies that are working on edge and AI solutions, carbon management, and more.
Clean energy isn’t relegated to the incubator at Halliburton. In January 2021, the company announced that it had successfully deployed the industry’s first electric-grid-powered fracturing operation on several pads for Cimarex Energy in the Permian Basin. According to the announcement, the operation lowered the emissions profile and used utility-powered electric fracture pumps that achieved 30-40% higher pumping performance than with conventional equipment.
In 2020, Schlumberger launched Schlumberger New Energy with the goal of having its portfolio made up of 50% or more renewables. Ashok Belani, executive vice president for Schlumberger New Energy, said each renewable energy type “will have an economy or industry ecosystem of its own.” Schlumberger New Energy hopes to realize the business opportunity within many of them.
One area Schlumberger is focusing is carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) because of its legacy knowledge of underground reservoirs. Earlier this year, Schlumberger New Energy announced a partnership with LafargeHolcim, a multinational building-materials manufacturer,to capture and sequester emissions at two of its cement plants.
Baker Hughes CEO Lorenzo Simonelli has said that the company is rebranding itself as an energy technology company, even bringing on a vice president of energy transition, Allyson Anderson Book.
Book said, “We’ve been involved in hydrogen, CCUS, geothermal, and energy storage for years, so this is a natural progression for us to leverage what we’re doing in our core company. But, we’re also looking at new frontier spaces.”
Baker Hughes will collaborate with Bloom Energy on the potential commercialization and deployment of integrated, low-carbon power generation and hydrogen solutions over the next few years. The company also acquired Compact Carbon Capture (C3) in late 2020 and is accelerating adoption and deployment of new fuel sources and emissions solutions, including hydrogen, CCUS, geothermal energy, energy storage, and net-zero LNG.
As these OFS companies balance priorities and walk the tightrope, let’s hope they don’t fall OFF.
