Houston-based corporation introduces two new energy transition tools

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Houston-based energy technology company SLB has rolled out two new tools for the energy transition. Photo via slb.com

Houston-based energy technology company SLB has rolled out two new tools — one for evaluating sites for carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) and the other for measuring methane levels.

SLB (Schlumberger) says the screening and ranking technology can help developers pinpoint ideal CCUS locations during the site selection process. The company says this tool helps simplify “a complex and multifaceted process.”

“CCUS is one of the most immediate opportunities to reduce emissions, but it must scale up by 100 to 200 times in less than three decades to have the expected impact on global net zero ambitions,” says Frederik Majkut, senior vice president of carbon solutions at SLB. “Ensuring that a storage site is both safer and economical is crucial for the speed, scale, and investment needed to meaningfully drive CCUS growth for a low-carbon energy ecosystem.”

The tool crunches data to identify the potential capabilities, economic viability, and risks of developing a CCUS project. The technology already has been used in Trinidad and Tobago, a two-island Caribbean country, to screen and rank possible CCUS sites.

“Using industry-leading and proprietary technologies and workflows, we provide a consistent and reliable method for screening and ranking potential storage sites, including an assessment of the risk, to ensure economic feasibility and long-term reliability,” SLB says on its website.

SLB unveiled the technology at the ADIPEC energy conference in the United Arab Emirates.

Prospective sites for CCUS projects include oil reservoirs, gas reservoirs, salt caves, and shale formations. More than 500 CCUS projects are in various stages of development around the world, according to the International Energy Agency.

Texas is poised to become a major player in the CCUS movement, with Houston set to serve as a hub for CCUS activity. Next March, Houston is hosting a major CCUS conference at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Sponsors of the event are the Society of Petroleum Engineers, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, and Society of Exploration Geophysicists.

The other tool released by SLB measures methane levels. Specifically, it’s a self-installed methane monitoring system that relies on sensors to detect, locate and assess emissions across oil and gas operations. Methane represents about half of the emissions from these operations.

“The technology automates continuous methane monitoring — eliminating the need for manual data collection during typical intermittent site visits, which only offers producers a small sample of their emissions,” says SLB.

The new joint venture, OneSubsea, is based in Oslo, Norway, and Houston. Photo courtesy

Houston company closes offshore JV deal to drive innovation, efficiency in subsea production

teaming up

A new joint venture with co-headquarters in Houston will explore opportunities in the market for subsea systems that tap into offshore energy reserves.

The business, called OneSubsea, is a joint venture of Houston-based energy technology company SLB (Schlumberger), Norwegian energy engineering company Aker Solutions, and Luxembourg-based energy engineering company Subsea7. SLB holds a 70 percent stake in OneSubsea, with Aker’s share at 20 percent and Subsea7’s share at 10 percent.

The financial foundation of the joint venture is a combination of $700.5 million in stock, cash, and a promissory note. In addition, SLB and Aker folded their subsea businesses into the joint venture, which was announced in 2022.

“As demand grows for cost-effective, efficient, and sustainable energy,” the joint venture says, “a large portion of the corresponding supply increase will come from offshore developments resulting in strong deepwater activity … and the need for innovative subsea solutions.”

OneSubsea is based in Oslo, Norway, and Houston.

As Aker explains, a subsea system “provides a way to produce hydrocarbons from areas not economically or easily developed by the use of an offshore platform.” The system’s ocean-floor components are connected to subsea pipelines, riser systems, and other equipment.

Hydrocarbons are the key components of oil and natural gas.

“The offshore market is demonstrating a sustained resurgence as operators across the world look to accelerate development cycle times and increase the productivity of their offshore assets,” says Olivier Le Peuch, CEO of SLB.

Mads Hjelmeland is the newly appointed CEO of OneSubsea, which employs about 11,000 people around the world.

“OneSubsea’s extensive technology portfolio and engineering expertise enable us to address future market trends and needs at a unique scale. In doing so, we aim to fulfil our purpose of expanding the frontiers of subsea to drive a sustainable energy future,” says Hjelmeland, who is based in Houston.

Hjelmeland’s tenure with the previous iteration of OneSubsea began in 2014. That’s a year after SLB and Cameron, a supplier of equipment, systems and services for the oil and gas industry, formed a joint venture known as OneSubsea to serve the subsea oil and gas market. SLB owned a 40 percent stake in OneSubsea, and Cameron owned a 60 percent stake.

To establish OneSubsea, Cameron contributed its subsea business, and SLB pitched in a $600 million payment to Cameron along with several business units.

In 2016, SLB acquired Cameron in a cash-and-stock deal initially valued at $14.8 billion. OneSubsea then became a subsidiary of SLB, and that subsidiary is now part of the newly reconfigured OneSubsea.

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Experts on U.S. energy infrastructure, sustainability, and the future of data

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Digital infrastructure is the dominant theme in energy and infrastructure, real estate and technology markets.

Data, the byproduct and primary value generated by digital infrastructure, is referred to as “the fifth utility,” along with water, gas, electricity and telecommunications. Data is created, aggregated, stored, transmitted, shared, traded and sold. Data requires data centers. Data centers require energy. The United States is home to approximately 40% of the world's data centers. The U.S. is set to lead the world in digital infrastructure advancement and has an opportunity to lead on energy for a very long time.

Data centers consume vast amounts of electricity due to their computational and cooling requirements. According to the United States Department of Energy, data centers consume “10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building.” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory issued a report in December 2024 stating that U.S. data center energy use reached 176 TWh by 2023, “representing 4.4% of total U.S. electricity consumption.” This percentage will increase significantly with near-term investment into high performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). The markets recognize the need for digital infrastructure build-out and, developers, engineers, investors and asset owners are responding at an incredible clip.

However, the energy demands required to meet this digital load growth pose significant challenges to the U.S. power grid. Reliability and cost-efficiency have been, and will continue to be, two non-negotiable priorities of the legal, regulatory and quasi-regulatory regime overlaying the U.S. power grid.

Maintaining and improving reliability requires physical solutions. The grid must be perfectly balanced, with neither too little nor too much electricity at any given time. Specifically, new-build, physical power generation and transmission (a topic worthy of another article) projects must be built. To be sure, innovative financial products such as virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs), hedges, environmental attributes, and other offtake strategies have been, and will continue to be, critical to growing the U.S. renewable energy markets and facilitating the energy transition, but the U.S. electrical grid needs to generate and move significantly more electrons to support the digital infrastructure transformation.

But there is now a third permanent priority: sustainability. New power generation over the next decade will include a mix of solar (large and small scale, offsite and onsite), wind and natural gas resources, with existing nuclear power, hydro, biomass, and geothermal remaining important in their respective regions.

Solar, in particular, will grow as a percentage of U.S grid generation. The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) reported that solar added 50 gigawatts of new capacity to the U.S. grid in 2024, “the largest single year of new capacity added to the grid by an energy technology in over two decades.” Solar is leading, as it can be flexibly sized and sited.

Under-utilized technology such as carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) will become more prominent. Hydrogen may be a potential game-changer in the medium-to-long-term. Further, a nuclear power renaissance (conventional and small modular reactor (SMR) technologies) appears to be real, with recent commitments from some of the largest companies in the world, led by technology companies. Nuclear is poised to be a part of a “net-zero” future in the United States, also in the medium-to-long term.

The transition from fossil fuels to zero carbon renewable energy is well on its way – this is undeniable – and will continue, regardless of U.S. political and market cycles. Along with reliability and cost efficiency, sustainability has become a permanent third leg of the U.S. power grid stool.

Sustainability is now non-negotiable. Corporate renewable and low carbon energy procurement is strong. State renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and clean energy standards (CES) have established aggressive goals. Domestic manufacturing of the equipment deployed in the U.S. is growing meaningfully and in politically diverse regions of the country. Solar, wind and batteries are increasing less expensive. But, perhaps more importantly, the grid needs as much renewable and low carbon power generation as possible - not in lieu of gas generation, but as an increasingly growing pairing with gas and other technologies. This is not an “R” or “D” issue (as we say in Washington), and it's not an “either, or” issue, it's good business and a physical necessity.

As a result, solar, wind and battery storage deployment, in particular, will continue to accelerate in the U.S. These clean technologies will inevitably become more efficient as the buildout in the U.S. increases, investments continue and technology advances.

At some point in the future (it won’t be in the 2020s, it could be in the 2030s, but, more realistically, in the 2040s), the U.S. will have achieved the remarkable – a truly modern (if not entirely overhauled) grid dependent largely on a mix of zero and low carbon power generation and storage technology. And when this happens, it will have been due in large part to the clean technology deployment and advances over the next 10 to 15 years resulting from the current digital infrastructure boom.

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Hans Dyke and Gabbie Hindera are lawyers at Bracewell. Dyke's experience includes transactions in the electric power and oil and gas midstream space, as well as transactions involving energy intensive industries such as data storage. Hindera focuses on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and public and private capital market offerings.

Rice researchers' quantum breakthrough could pave the way for next-gen superconductors

new findings

A new study from researchers at Rice University, published in Nature Communications, could lead to future advances in superconductors with the potential to transform energy use.

The study revealed that electrons in strange metals, which exhibit unusual resistance to electricity and behave strangely at low temperatures, become more entangled at a specific tipping point, shedding new light on these materials.

A team led by Rice’s Qimiao Si, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, used quantum Fisher information (QFI), a concept from quantum metrology, to measure how electron interactions evolve under extreme conditions. The research team also included Rice’s Yuan Fang, Yiming Wang, Mounica Mahankali and Lei Chen along with Haoyu Hu of the Donostia International Physics Center and Silke Paschen of the Vienna University of Technology. Their work showed that the quantum phenomenon of electron entanglement peaks at a quantum critical point, which is the transition between two states of matter.

“Our findings reveal that strange metals exhibit a unique entanglement pattern, which offers a new lens to understand their exotic behavior,” Si said in a news release. “By leveraging quantum information theory, we are uncovering deep quantum correlations that were previously inaccessible.”

The researchers examined a theoretical framework known as the Kondo lattice, which explains how magnetic moments interact with surrounding electrons. At a critical transition point, these interactions intensify to the extent that the quasiparticles—key to understanding electrical behavior—disappear. Using QFI, the team traced this loss of quasiparticles to the growing entanglement of electron spins, which peaks precisely at the quantum critical point.

In terms of future use, the materials share a close connection with high-temperature superconductors, which have the potential to transmit electricity without energy loss, according to the researchers. By unblocking their properties, researchers believe this could revolutionize power grids and make energy transmission more efficient.

The team also found that quantum information tools can be applied to other “exotic materials” and quantum technologies.

“By integrating quantum information science with condensed matter physics, we are pivoting in a new direction in materials research,” Si said in the release.

Oxy subsidiary granted landmark EPA permits for carbon capture facility

making progress

Houston’s Occidental Petroleum Corp., or Oxy, and its subsidiary 1PointFive announced that the U.S Environmental Protection Agency approved its Class VI permits to sequester carbon dioxide captured from its STRATOS Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility near Odessa. These are the first such permits issued for a DAC project, according to a news release.

The $1.3 billion STRATOS project, which 1PointFive is developing through a joint venture with investment manager BlackRock, is designed to capture up to 500,000 metric tons of CO2 annually and is expected to begin commercial operations this year. DAC technology pulls CO2 from the air at any location, not just where carbon dioxide is emitted. Major companies, such as Microsoft and AT&T, have secured carbon removal credit agreements through the project.

The permits are issued under the Safe Drinking Water Act's Underground Injection Control program. The captured CO2 will be stored in geologic formations more than a mile underground, meeting the EPA’s review standards.

“This is a significant milestone for the company as we are continuing to develop vital infrastructure that will help the United States achieve energy security,” Vicki Hollub, Oxy president and CEO, said in a news release.“The permits are a catalyst to unlock value from carbon dioxide and advance Direct Air Capture technology as a solution to help organizations address their emissions or produce vital resources and fuels.”

Additionally, Oxy and 1PointFive announced the signing of a 25-year offtake agreement for 2.3 million metric tons of CO2 per year from CF Industries’ upcoming Bluepoint low-carbon ammonia facility in Ascension Parish, Louisiana.

The captured CO2 will be transported to and stored at 1PointFive’s Pelican Sequestration Hub, which is currently under development. Eventually, 1PointFive’s Pelican hub in Louisiana will include infrastructure to safely and economically sequester industrial emissions in underground geologic formations, similar to the STRATOS project.

“CF Industries’ and its partners' confidence in our Pelican Sequestration Hub is a validation of our expertise managing carbon dioxide and how we collaborate with industrial organizations to become their commercial sequestration partner,” Jeff Alvarez, President of 1PointFive Sequestration, said in a news release.

1PointFive is storing up to 20 million tons of CO2 per year, according to the company.

“By working together, we can unlock the potential of American manufacturing and energy production, while advancing industries that deliver high-quality jobs and economic growth,” Alvarez said in a news release.

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