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0:00 Transform your startup journey with the energy tech nexus. Connect with fellow founders, access critical resources, and be part of a community shaping the future of energy and carbon tech. Your

0:10 path to building a Thunderlissard starts here. Learn more at energytechnexascom. Well, welcome to the show. Today, we are in the studio with Herman Libet, who is the co-founder of ALMA Energy

0:23 And ALMA Energy focuses on clean energy

0:28 through direct lithium extraction. So I'm really excited to get into that. So tell us a little bit about this technology and what you plan on doing with ALMA Energy. Yeah, OK. So thank you very

0:39 much for having me here. And so what we are doing is basically we deliver critical minerals to the global energy transition. So we see we are in a technology transition Now we are going away from

0:53 the fossil fuel driven.

0:58 energy system into something different, whatever it will be, it will be certainly something exciting and you simply, the way how progress works. So we deliver the critical minerals and on that we

1:10 produce green lithium and an important here is we try to deliver it at a high rate of return. So because the economic aspect is very important to drive the energy transition. Without the economy

1:26 driver, you do not get a transition. So that's very important for us. What we do with our technologies, we avoid a couple of things which makes it very environmental green. So we avoid fresh

1:39 water production and not, sorry, fresh water usage and we do not need any chemicals for our technology. And on top of it, the technology has a very small footprints or no excessive land use. Yeah,

1:54 and also to talk to us a little bit about that, how the traditional. way of extracting lithium and how bad that is for the environment and why we needed better way. So yeah, of course, there is

2:05 not, we're talking about direct lithium extraction, there's no traditional way. So there is some technologies are more advanced, I have to say, none of these technologies have actually entered

2:17 the full production stage. Okay, so they are on testing on pilots. And there are basically three lithium extraction technologies. One is ion exchange, the other one is a solvent technology, and

2:34 then an absorption kind of system. So how do people get lithium for batteries today for like Tesla? They got it usually out of the refining. So ion exchange is usually the, let's say that is a

2:45 traditional way that is basically used over in the GILI production, and here comes the advantage of our technology. we do not have actually the demand for fresh water in the production. So these

3:01 technologies I mentioned before, they all need fresh water just to flush out the lithium because they have usually some kind of a process stage where they're buying the lithium, but then you have to

3:14 liberate it to make it accessible as a product. So it needs, usually it needs fresh water and it needs a lot of chemicals So our technology is basically based on electrodial uses and that uses

3:31 selective

3:35 membranes. And these membranes are basically, the whole process is basically not using any chemicals of fresh water. We just use the brine as it comes out of the ground of wherever it comes from.

3:47 We also, our technology can be used to recycle batteries because what they do nowadays, they leach out the chemicals and the components. then they have to extract them. So the technology is

3:59 basically

4:02 useful at the classical production or liquid mining, how we call it, or recycling existing batteries. Yes, and you're a geoscientist, right? Your background. So tell us a little bit about how

4:18 is lithium actually present in nature? That's a good question and it touches a little bit our exploration,

4:27 let's say concept and secret. But lithium comes out of what you call the pegmatytic suite of rocks. So you have to be, you have to have somehow a connectivity to the basement. And this is where

4:43 the lithium is actually concentrated. And then it makes it by circulation of waters, hydrothermal waters into certain reservoirs. And that's very important where we combine lithium extraction with

4:56 geothermal, because that water

4:60 circulates through the subsurface, and it heats up, and it takes in a lithium. So you get a brine, basically, at the end of the day, which is hot and rich in critical minerals. And so

5:14 fundamentally, lithium is trapped in a salt, right? Is that - No, it is. What does brine, if it's not salt? So I just assume it goes salt water. Okay, yeah Brine is basically what we call out

5:24 of the oil and gas industry is basically a saline liquid. That's usually what the drillers call it when they drill for oil because there's a lot of water. And by the way, I want to tell you one,

5:37 this little unknown secret, or very well-known secret, the oil and gas industry was primarily a water-producing industry. So we always handled a lot of water and we call it waste water or waste

5:53 water. order brine and so but there is in this in this trash is a certain treasure because there's heat in it and there is least human it so when we want to harvest that so that's very important this

6:07 is where we come in historically or from our background we have that knowledge out of the oil and gas industry we know how to drill these things we know how to handle large quantities of fluid we have

6:21 to bring out of the ground and we can turn that what the old industry said with the trash we can turn into a treasure like what's the ratio of uh what do they call it um i know this gas to oil ratio

6:34 but i guess there's a water oil ratio correct what is that typically that we call it water cut water cut yeah okay the water cut can i talk to somebody in Nevada and has an oil well and the water cut

6:46 was 993 percent so So that's. doing very rough math. For every barrel of oil, there's 99 barrels of water, so that's the ratio. Or you could say more than 99 barrels of water you have at the end

7:02 of the day and you have less than a barrel of water. It's a little skim on the top. And that water is actually Brian, is that what you're talking about? Yeah. So, and usually the ratio, I can

7:12 give you an example from the unconventional production, which is a big thing today in the Peramian Basin and the Appalachian Basin, the Marcellus and so forth. The average water cut for a mature

7:27 valley is between

7:29 65 and 85. So, that water needs to go somewhere. And here's the thing, if we can extract lithium from it, we can actually add a value to the wastewater. Handling wastewater or produced water in

7:44 the oil and gas industry is a cost factor. So, I work in certain areas, and we looked at economic models, and we had areas where the water handling was up to a premium of15 to20 a barrel. To

8:00 handle the produce water. Okay. So you see, when we can extract, and this is the important thing I forgot to mention, our technology actually desalinate the water. So we take not only the

8:13 lithium out, which is the precious part, we can sell and bring to the market. And this market has a huge gross potential, but we can also desalinate the water. That means for whoever produces

8:25 something out there, you do not have to re-inject that water in the ground or head. So you could use it for irrigation. So it's a gray water kind of quality. Exactly. So and you could actually at

8:38 the end of the day, maybe you find the city and say, okay, we want to purify it more, and we put the investment in it to do that, fine. But for us, it's basically at the moment we can offer

8:50 desalinated water. I wouldn't drink it. I was thinking like just as a sidebar, like there's a lot of discussion today about PFAS and how it's in drinking water. I'm like, well, this stuff's been

8:60 locked in the ground. It's probably PFAS-free. If you really want, there's a bottled water company concept in here. That's for sure, yeah. The PFAS is another aspect. So the water is definitely,

9:11 has no anthropogenic contamination on it It has, however, it's loaded with a lot of stuff of chemistry. And this is what we do is with this concept, we filter it out, okay? So we end up with a

9:26 lot of lithium and we have a base case scenario where we end up with

9:38 about 36, 000 barrels of these alienated water a day when we put in through 100, 000 barrels, it's a huge number. but be aware when you are in the old gas industry, these numbers are just normal.

9:52 Yep, yep. Okay. And for the layman at home, so barrel is also already like, whatever it is, 42 gallons. So like, this is like, you multiply 50 on top of these numbers. And it's like, oh,

10:02 there's a lot of volume, but that's where the opportunity comes from, right? So I'm from Europe, so I'm a metric guy, but I learned the hard way for the barrelists and things like that. So the

10:13 point is that you can make not only, and this is another aspect of the technology I forgot to mention, in order to precipitate all these cations out, let's take calcium magnesium, you have to get

10:26 them somewhere out of the brine, and we precipitate them as a carbonate. Okay, so that is basically a limestone, and when you have a calcium magnesium mixture, you get a dolomite, which is

10:39 actually a good raw material So,

10:43 but the key here is we need CO2. Yeah, so it's a way to lock carbon. So we are really 100 million year sequester, guaranteed sequester of CO2. So

10:55 CO2 to crystallize this? Yes, you basically precipitate a carbonate out of it. It's a little bit the same when you live in some areas, not in use, but when you have your cooking pot or your

11:09 cattle or your tea, and it gets this nice little crust. At the bottom, right. That is your carbonate Okay, so, and when you go up, let's say up in the Appalachians or in the hill country, all

11:22 these nice hills are made out of limestone. And they're there for a million of years, so I can sequester CO2 with that technology permanently. So, yeah, you're gonna basically, for lack of a

11:34 better term, grow rocks, and then the idea is that by itself, it might be a dolomite that wouldn't have a derivative of use, but it could be - putting a pit in the ground or something like that.

11:46 Yes, or you could use it as building material if you want. But these are all these revenue streams which are secondary or tertiary in the system. And what we learned is we have to focus on one

11:58 thing. That makes the money. Yes, and because when you look at it from the prospect of a investor, they wanna see the revenue stream. Okay, and if I add all these things in every little aspect,

12:14 let's say dollar mite, it is an additional revenue, fine. However, it's also a risk element. So when it's always about risk and reward. So what we do is basically, we calculated out what our

12:28 technology brings on benefits. So what we have is about, we can sequester between 16 84 tons of CO2 per day.

12:43 In return, we get between three and four and a half tons of lithium carbonate equivalent out, which is actually what we built our economic model on it. Is that pegged to a certain size well, or

12:56 that'd be more like a processing a certain amount of water? It's a certain amount of water. And there's another good question actually, because it really depends on the chemistry. So the bandwidth

13:07 I showed you, I told you between three and four and a half tons of lithium is really depending on what water quality or brine chemistry we actually get into the process. So the efficiency of your

13:20 process depends very much on it. And actually the economics of it, all right? So coming back to the initial question, what kind of traditional extraction technologies are out there? Some of them

13:34 have really big challenges because when they have not the right brine chemistry, they have to put so much - preconditioning upfront on their brine before they run it through their technology that

13:49 renders the whole process uneconomic. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So your solution is actually more economic. Correct. Because it's robust and it's ability to take in a lot of different places.

13:59 Absolutely. Yeah. So it's a fairly robust technology because we just bring the brine in and it's basically based on desalination technology, all the membranes we use are off the shelf. So all the

14:14 hardware which goes into the technology is already developed. It's out there. So we do not have to do that and we coming out of the desalination industry. So we have a lot of experience of our

14:28 engineers, have a lot of experience on desalination in Middle East and most of our colleagues we work together are sitting in West Texas. It's pretty hot over there and the Rio Grande is not a big

14:40 river. So they need a lot of desalinated water or fresh water for their population. So we are talking about the I-10 corridor, I-25 corridor El Paso, Las Cruces area. But

14:55 the key here is that the technology provides

15:00 these lesion carbonate and the economic model we have built on it looks that we have a rate of return of north of 25.

15:11 And that's a very good rate. I'll take that deal. Exactly. So from our point of view, of course it's an early stage, but we think this is an economic viable solution. And as I said before, we

15:26 need to know very carefully what kind of water chemistry we can actually run through Of course there is certain brine chemistry which is not capable to do that. So, you want to avoid that pitfall,

15:42 but you build a great technology and then you have, Oh, but what kind of brine do I have, actually, and then I run in that bottleneck? So, what we do at the same time, and this is what I said

15:53 in earlier on, we're looking in oil and gas fields because the two reasons for it, the first three are more than one, two reasons, actually But one of the main reasons is we do have access to

16:06 water very easily, we know what they pump out of the ground, we can analyze it and see if it's compatible with our technology. The second thing, what's always important when it comes to projects

16:20 is the risk versus reward. I told you the reward, it's north of 25. It's a good number. The risk is however the other important issue, so you have to balance that out So when I go into oil and

16:33 gas fields I minimize my risk.

16:36 I do not have to drill wells. There are a lot of wells around. I have a lot of understanding already of the subsurface. So this is not a prospect. It's not an exploration exercise. We have

16:49 already an asset. It's a low risk. It's a terminal low risk. It's already been exploited. It's already been studied. Correct. There you have core samples. And low risk transfers usually in low

16:58 cupcakes and in a higher chance of success of your project. So you can do that Of course, you have to spend money. There's no question on it because you have to build technology, particularly on

17:10 the surface. Our technology we built in a modular system. So each, you need different modules and each module fits on an 18-wheeler, on a truck to trailer. So when you build it depending on the

17:26 capacity you are looking at, you just put just a battery of these guys out there. Okay, so then it's mobile so you can kind of take it wherever. And I guess your goal is then to do it while

17:38 production is happening because that way you get access to the water. Yes. Yes. We could also deploy it to a recycling plant, battery recycling plant, you see? So you are highly mobile and it

17:50 depends on the capacity of the operations over there, how much water they have or prime they have to treat, then we just built the battery out. Got it. Yeah. And so for those of you who are kind

18:02 of familiar with or not familiar with the oil field, like there's an oil field, oil pump level, and maybe at a pad they'll have whatever it is, 68 pumps. But usually they have these batteries

18:15 that fill up with water and then they have a truck take it away to a central processing or disposal well. So I assume you would either set up a separate battery or separate destination or would it be

18:26 potentially at the disposal site? Yeah. It could be anywhere in between. But it's not necessarily like one system per well because there's a way they set up No, you build, of course. You build,

18:35 yeah. So what these guys usually do in the operation, the oil and gas fields, you see there are certain tanks next to the oil field. There are usually three when you drive out there. You see

18:46 three tanks. One is for the oil, one is for the water because they have a little very physical separator on site. And I think the middle tank is for overflow either oil or thing or what they

18:58 couldn't separate. So they have these three greats.

19:03 And what you can do is you, and what they do usually nowadays, they gather the water. Okay, when you drive in certain areas, you see

19:14 these black plastic pipelines pipes lying on the ground, and that's basic to gather the water. 'Cause there's so much volume, 'cause it's so much more. Yeah, and here's the thing. So in most

19:25 states, the regulation says what comes out of the ground has to go back into the ground. So they gather the water and then they hand the water over to a water handling company. and they are pressed

19:38 to water down into subsurface. This is a really delicate point. You heard we had a very strong earthquake out in Texas. The causality between water handling an earthquake trigger is not proven,

19:52 but as a earth scientist who starts his career in the United States as a Southern California earthquake center,

20:00 I have my thoughts.

20:03 Okay. You're putting a lot of volume down It's got to go somewhere. Yeah, exactly. So, and this is another important thing. If I do not have to re-inject all the produced water, that is a big

20:17 upside for the oil producers or whoever is out there and take it, obviously. So we don't switch off oil and gas production tomorrow. We cannot do that, okay? So we will have oil and gas or

20:33 hydrocarbon production fading out slowly. but it's time to address the problem you have, is it? And the more we minimize the problem and the negative outcome, the better for everybody. And if you

20:49 can make it

20:51 more financially attractive for these guys, and they do everything as long as there is a financial attractiveness and an upside in it, that's the principle where we live in, that's our thing. So

21:04 tell us a little bit about like what phase of your company you're in right now with these projects. You were just talking to us before about, you took a trip over the summer. Tell us about where

21:15 you went and what you found out, and what are you gonna do next? So what we found out, we found a couple of assets we are very interested in. I cannot tell you here where and what it is, but it's

21:28 very attractive. We look at it, and maybe, I don't know if I mentioned it, but we try to combine this lithium extraction also with heat extraction. The reason is very simple.

21:42 We started as a geothermal company and we learned very quickly that risk and reward game, well, we know it from our career anyway, but we know that it's very hard to make geothermal and attractive

21:55 economic business. So we added this lithium to it in order to make it attractive and I gave you the number, north of 25. It looks very good. So, but we have still these geothermal on our soul and

22:13 our heart and we try to combine both. So we have areas where we're looking for hot valves and that's particularly and it's not, it's clear to everybody who work in this area. It's not a secret.

22:28 You look for areas where you have a gas lag natural gas, thermogenic gas is hot, you crack oil. And so these are good places. So we looked around in these areas where we have gas. We run into a

22:43 lot of opportunities.

22:46 What we also saw is important is sequestration of

22:52 CO2, because a lot of these operators have a lot of CO2 on their hands and they do not know what to do with it. They usually let it bubble out in the atmosphere, but the regulatory environment

23:05 changes. Okay, we know we have the problem with methane leaking out of gas valves, but there's also a lot of CO2. So

23:15 this CO2 has to be handled. And as I said before, our technology is capable in that process to

23:24 take in the CO2 and sequestide So it's a win-win situation and we are looking basically in these traditional oil and gas fields simply as a starting point because we want to reduce the risk as I

23:39 discussed before, we need to have a de-risk environment and because it

23:46 just drives the capics down. This is suddenly you have a geothermal where you can generate power and then you have a way to clean the water, but I assume it takes power to kind of run those systems.

23:57 Correct, yeah. And then also to capture the CO2 So the important thing is what we do with the electrodioluses, there's a word electro in it. So when you go in desalination, they're drive it by

24:09 pressure, which also requires energy. That's called reverse osmosis, but the driver is basically a pressure difference. Here what we do is we drive it by electrodes. So we apply, it's like a

24:23 battery, just the inverse. We apply an electric field, which allows us to drive these cuttions which are dissolved in the brine. through these stack of membranes. And so we filter sequentially

24:38 out different, it goes on the water chemistry a little bit bival and then monovalent systems. There is a little bit of challenge I have to mention. And so what we end up is a lot of sodium because

24:52 brine has a lot has a high salinity. And then you have a little bit of

25:01 lysium Yeah, it's almost like that water cut problem. So, exactly. No, but this is in the process, basically. So we end up in the concentration difference can be three, four magnitudes. OK,

25:13 so we have to bring down the sodium level in order to effectively extract the lysium. And so we are talking to a lot of companies and a lot of research labs at the moment. help us to bring. This is

25:33 the last thing what we offer.

25:37 Who wants sodium other than molten salt? What would you do with it? What we do is we make salt out of it because we have, before it started as salt, so the electrolysis process splits it in

25:49 chlorine and so we combine it with sodium so we end up with pretty nice salt.

25:58 But we could also do other chemical products out of it. It's basically a question on the fantasy and the innovation capability of our chemical engineers and then we can look if there is a market for

26:12 it. So it could be sodium hydroxide or something like that, which you could bring out to the market. So what we do with the electrodial uses, we take that brine with all its parts in it and in the

26:26 process we have the capability to split it in each. different element, which is in it. I didn't touch other things. So lithium is our low hanging fruit. So when we dream about it, because we do

26:41 not do that at the moment, but we're working on it, we are looking in other critical minerals. There's a lot of these things in that brine. So it comes with a lot of chemistry, and we have to see

26:56 what kind of technology we can deploy at the end of the day, rare earth elements. So the biggest problem are the heavy part of the rare earth element suite. So these - Hard because there's not a

27:08 lot of supply or hard to separate. No, it's not hard to, separation is a technology, more is a demand at the moment. So because these are the elements which are used in the semiconductor industry,

27:20 in the chip industry. And as you know, there is a strategic monopoly on the supply chain. And there's a lot of desire to break that, that quasi-monopoly and make the market a little bit more open.

27:34 So if we could offer a production on that side, that would be interesting. But at the moment, we are focusing on a low-hanging fruit at the first thing. We think lithium has a huge future.

27:48 So we have this lithium-iron batteries, but now you may heard about all these news about these solid-state batteries. Samsung just wants to bring something to the market There are others that do

27:59 that. And the funny thing is, you need even, I think more lithium-iron battery, because the solid-state is made out of a lithium-metal nano. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the demand will go up. The

28:13 other thing is also that the quantity on the market will go up simply because everybody holds back on an EV vehicle, me as well, because why I should do a lithium-iron battery, which is basically

28:27 have to replace after eight years. or something like that, I don't know the real number. So solid state has a completely different expectation. And I think when the solid state batteries come to

28:39 the market, it will give a huge boost to the electrification of the mobility sector. And lithium is the material, which is number three in the chemical periodic table. It has the highest weight to

28:47 charge ratio So it's light, and if you need, everything which moves has a weight issue. And so when you have very, very, very dense energy storage capability, it's the best thing. Are you ready

28:47 to lead the decarbonization charge? Energy Technexus is your platform for growth, offering unique resources and expertise for energy in carbon tech founders. Join us at energytechnexuscom and start

28:47 building your Thunderlisset.

29:28 Yeah, 'cause you mentioned there's some things that you still need to kind of tweak on the lab and figure out the sodium levels and how you could decrease those so you could extract it a lot easier.

29:38 But how ready are you to actually do a pilot in the field? Yeah, so we work parallel, so we try to solve that problem now. That's where we are standing at. And what we do in parallel, we look

29:54 for the right side As I mentioned before, this was this summer trip, for instance, one of these things. An important here is it's not the least young concentration you are talking about. We are

30:06 talking about

30:09 the chemical composition of the brain. So we take samples and then we analyze and we invite everybody out there who has water samples from wells, from springs, whatever they have to talk to us.

30:27 because we analyze them in a complete water analysis. So we have a lab on hand, which is capable to actually detect in a very, shall I say, qualified way the trace elements, because these

30:43 concentrations are very little. And so we do that at the moment. So we work in parallel, what is the chemistry and is it digestible or compatible with our technology? Yeah, so finding the right

30:58 concentration of brine in different parts of the world. Yeah, but the concentration is not - Sorry, not the concentration. The right mix, right. Yeah, the right chemical composition. Chemical

31:08 composition, okay, yeah. That's very key in order, because you need, it's not only the least, it's the same like when you cook something, all the ingredients have to be right to make a great

31:20 dish, and this is the same thing. So you have to have the right ingredients, So you net that some spies is. just spoil it

31:30 and other spices are really very desired. And so that's basically how we're looking at it. And so we do that in parallel. And at the moment we are doing the sampling campaign, we have an event

31:43 with smaller operators here in Texas next month, in September, where we try to raise awareness, we see skies. Hey, give us your produced water. We can see if there's an upside for it Okay,

31:58 because that's very important. And they're usually measuring this anyway, right? Or do you have to send it to a new lab to get more precise? You need a very, very good lab. So we tested a couple

32:08 of labs and I can tell you, you know what you do, you do all these nasty things. So you give blind samples and things like that. And some stuff came back, it was all over the place and numbers,

32:17 he said, hey, wait a moment. Okay, it can happen. And it, very because easy not is. 'Cause measurements element trace it's such a

32:25 small percentage. correct. And then they have other chemical elements which make it even harder to separate and measure them. And so only a few labs can do that very good. So you have to figure

32:38 that out. In general, in the past, and that's another thing why we see Elysium as a huge running room, there is there are databases and measurements which are dating back 20 years or even longer

32:52 At that time, we didn't have the analytical capabilities to measure correctly the concentration.

33:00 You can say, Oh, yeah, that's

33:04 not good, but it can be also an advantage. So we have now the analytical lab capabilities have increased so much. So mass spectrometers are basically standard instruments when I was a PhD many,

33:16 many years back.

33:24 It was a monstrous machine and, oh God, we had so many of them. But it was a huge operation. Now the thing is really a box. It has a size of a fridge. Yeah, oh, I've seen one that's

33:37 microwave-sized, which is amazing to me. So they are really very, very, so, and the resolution is there. So that's very important. And the rest is how you prep your samples. That's good, how

33:50 good you lab guys. So you have a team now, you're working on this How are you funding it and how do you kind of plan to fund it going forward? So yeah, we are looking, of course, when it comes

34:00 to a pilot, we are fully aware that then we have to put, really, we have to, what do you call in the old days, we have to cut steel, and when you cut steel, that costs you. And so we have a

34:14 plan. So we think a pilot will be somewhere below 10 million. It's more for the surface facilities because you scale up. We try to do a pilot on an existing value. We do not want to do a

34:29 demonstration on a drill and own value. As I said before, it has risk and it needs a lot of topics. So if we can avoid that, we reduce our pilot costs a balance sheet. So we just offload that.

34:46 So this is why we are looking in Euler and Garsfield, okay? Because these stuff is existing there. The other thing is permitting, to be honest with you, this is a headache. When you go in an

34:56 Euler and Gars area, all the permits are there. The people are used to it. You do not have any kind of nimbi or whatever kind of problems on it. Because it is something, it's more welcomed over

35:09 there. I said, Hey, maybe it's something great. Oh, it's green, perfect. We love it anyway. So you run more through open doors than in other areas, okay? So it has a lot of positive aspects

35:22 But the key is here that. we just offload the risk and the costs on the cupcakes on the subsurface side. And that's not, and then later on, when you upscale to large quantities, then it's a

35:38 little bit of a different story, but the next goal is to establish a pilot at a place where the water chemistry works. Yeah, so. And things like that. So to recap, so you've looked at a couple

35:49 of different, well, you've analyzed and said there's a couple of different locations to go You visited a couple of different sites. You're doing a call to try and get samples. And so you're not

35:59 quite at the point where you have like an LOI or a commitment for a specific location, but that's something in the next, you're like six months. So we have, at the moment, we are in the process

36:08 of negotiating some assets. Good, good. So we have

36:15 two assets. Well, you know, you know, how negotiation work. You never know where you're standing And it's always a back and forth until it's signed. But I think we are very confident to have two

36:27 assets on our fingertips. Number three, and the question is, if we really what the quality is, and then we have another asset where we work heavily on it, and that's basically the key thing. So

36:43 we have basically four opportunities. On the technology development, we are looking to, we work a lot with academic people Okay, and academia is great,

36:58 but they're slow.

37:01 So what we are looking at is we wanna accelerate the technology development. So we are talking to the labs here in the US. So DOE has a couple of labs to, and they use, at least you missed for

37:13 them on critical minerals became a focus area. And so we are talking to semi-trust was yesterday always a guy from a national lab. They work actually on exactly what we are doing. So we agreed

37:29 already that we have a strong alignment.

37:33 And then we are looking, of course, for startup guys here in Houston. And this is why we like Houston. We hate the heat here.

37:43 What made you come to Houston in the first place? Oh, that was basically our historical. It's basically the industry I worked the oil and gas industry. So you came here to work in the oil and gas

37:55 industry? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, Katrina blew me out of of New Orleans. And this is where we I started working with Shell in here in Houston and then made my careers with the oil

38:07 industry. I have seen a lot of projects because one of my things in the industry was, of course, exploration, but also business development. what is actually make sense where we can make. And

38:20 this is where the focus was always, what is your rate of return? And I have seen, and I know what numbers entices the investor.

38:31 So, and you need to know how much money you have to get in, what's your rate of return, when you have your money back, you need these cash flow curve, things like that in order to get these

38:43 people enticed on it So when we did that, and we know also where and at which point you have to price in the technology risk, okay? So at a certain point, the technology risk is actually covered.

38:60 And I think in our case, once we have the pilot done and we know what comes out of it, that technology is basically in stone or whatever happened to it But this is basically what we are looking for.

39:15 Our aim is to bring it to a pilot stage. because then we make it, we demonstrate basically the capability of the technology and how we can actually implement it. And then the rest is big investment

39:28 at the end of the day, obviously. And so like for the first pilot, like who's the target investor? 'Cause it's not venture dollars. Is it

39:37 project finance? Is it a blend? Like who do you think is that targeted? So we have priorities, of course. The best life is you have non-dilutive funding Yeah, it's just heaven. The second thing

39:50 is corporate investors. Simply because usually these guys beat your language.

39:57 They're pulling in the same direction. So you look more for partnership. And then the last thing is then big capital investment. That goes from funds to banks, whatever you call loans, whatever

40:10 is out there. That would, we would love to have that after the past of the pilot. or in the stage where the pilot you wanna upscale the pilot

40:25 and make it more attractive or

40:29 things like that. So for the pilot, you're anticipating like the equity investor will come from an industry partner and I would assume just where this sits, it's not necessarily the super majors,

40:42 it's gonna be a media producer who does have this as a strategic challenge and they put it in and off the balance sheet. And so we observe

40:54 one of the mid-size operators here in the oil and gas industry and they try to, their technology, we know where they're standing and they need to pivot on their technology development. And so we

41:09 see something like that as a potential partner where we can say, hey, let's try our technology, let's try our concept. and can you help us and be honest,

41:23 you know, when you are a startup, your resources are very limited, not only financially, but also on brain power. And so you need interesting, good people, and we come out of this industry,

41:37 and it is usually a large resource industry financially, and also on human resources. So they have no less problems on that end. So we would like to tap into that when it comes then, because when

41:53 you do

41:57 the technology, or you drill valves, or you complete valves, they have engineers, this is their bread and butter business, they know that And so it makes no sense to reinvent a wheel. You can

42:12 use their project engineering on the feed if they're partnered. And the experience. You know, it's really, it's, I, I, I drilled a couple of wells in my life and my partner, Natalia, she

42:25 drilled even more on shore. And you know, on what kind of people you have to rely best practice is so important. I observed a lot of follow a lot of wells on the geosurmalside in Europe.

42:41 This is not industry based. And they completely overbatch it over time and make so many mistakes, which translates in overbatch it in underperforming returns. Yeah, exactly. And you know, sorry,

42:57 you know, this is why I told you you need a big truck to impress.

43:02 But you want to talk to these people. You know, there's a guy, whatever, you know, in the middle of Texas. And you know, only he's chewing tobacco on it. I don't know. That's not God. But

43:15 you know it He did it. He knows what he's talking about. So what a best practice and experience is very key here. So when you combine that with these guys, because drilling wells is not an easy

43:28 thing,

43:30 I can show you a little photograph from a place where that drilled a well, it was a runaway well. So that drilled it in '74. And the Christmas trees, these are all these valves you have on the

43:42 well. It's all there and some pipe sticking out And water is gushing since '74. So they were able to seal it, 'cause they didn't have a blowout. Yeah, so they just took the equipment and run.

43:55 Yeah.

43:58 And it's what we call a runaway well. So things can go very quickly, very bad. So I worked on things in Asia, Southeast Asia, and there was a small operator that didn't know what they were doing

44:15 and it was about a matter of time. I appear that drilled into a over-pressure mat and they couldn't retrieve anything and there's a village next and I saw a picture three months later and all what

44:27 you saw out was what you saw was a plane and the tower of the minaret was sticking out of the wall. They made a new lake. Yeah. Oh are, you serious? Yeah. Wow. This is a lot of experience.

44:40 Correct. All right, that people have You do not want to go into this business, subsurface business without experience. Green horns will be, it's very dangerous and these kinds of guys have these

44:53 know-how, the best practice they know and you want to rely on these people and that's key. When you think about like working with these partners, like what do they want or turn? Like they want the

45:04 IRR, but are they just concerned about the one project or is there something else that they're usually looking for when you're talking to them? Yeah, so what, it depends when you get some, let's

45:15 say your corporate partner on board. You can play then all these aspects we talked about, sequestration.

45:22 So some of these guys, we have one

45:28 company, very big company, and they have a CO2 problem. Not here in Houston, but somewhere else. And they use it because they produce something else, which makes a lot of money for them So what

45:44 you

45:46 do is your CO2, okay, and you see our regulatory environment has changed. When you can handle it, you get some incentives, tax incentives,

45:59 sorry. Or when

46:03 you do not handle it correctly, you get penalized, okay. So these guys are in that situation So we are a CO2

46:13 of taker.

46:17 It could be the reason why these guys may want a project in that neighborhood because you don't want to pipe SEO2 across the country. They have a pipeline system, which goes a couple of hundred

46:31 miles, believe it or not, just around SEO2,

46:35 but they can put something in that neighborhood and maybe the deal maker is not the lease you. Yup, yup, it's fair. Maybe it is SEO You do not know what the situation is at the end of the day.

46:49 And I think they have that SEO2 problem because they came by accident to a nice material commodity, which they can sell to the market. And this is why they run it. It's not oil, it's not gas. So

47:04 you see, you have to have this flexibility to adapt to what is a local situation, okay? And that's what we try to do here, To evaluate which is a good place, learn more about what is a good place.

47:17 good place where we can do it. And as I said, our dream is to combine geothermal, with the lithium extraction, because we can onsite produce the energy we need to run our electrodiocese from the

47:31 heat. So it's a basically, we maximize the return on that waste wall.

47:39 You were touching on this a little bit earlier. How has it been the journey to then kind of go from,

47:46 working with Shell, working with these big companies to then now saying, you know what? We're going to start our own company and start our, do our own project. So, so I, it was, it's quite

48:01 interesting because we did geothermal in the oil industry. So our first project I came across geothermal was we evaluated scenarios for production in Southeast Asia.

48:18 That was not with Shell, it was with Marathon Oil, which is gone now because they got bought by Konoko Phillips recently. And we looked at it and these islands had fumaroles and geysiers and things

48:31 that hey, there is a lot of heat around, can we use, can we harvest the power and produce electricity because when you do operations, you need a lot of electricity, you run pumps and all sorts of

48:45 things And that's all driven by electricity, sometimes gas. But

48:53 so that was my first project.

48:57 And then you talk to the oil engineers and at that time say, nah, let's put a diesel generator in here.

49:06 But then I came across the EGS study from MIT in 2005, 2006. then they showed what the energy potential is in the country. It was a very high-level study, and it was about how many exojoule I

49:25 thought, what on earth is an exojoule? And

49:29 so, we went into that, and I looked at it and said, Hmm, there's a huge potential. And I talk to drillers all the time, because we work together and actually in the company, be honest with you,

49:44 drillers had always the best food on the floor.

49:49 But anyway, so we talked to the drillers, and I know that they had a lot of hot valves. So that drillers said, Oh my God, you know, I'm before target, but I reach a temperature. And there's a

50:05 magic number in the industry, it's 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Because all the instruments, you know, you drill a well, you have to record there's instruments for wire line locks. They are all

50:18 certified to 400 degree. So when I go higher than deeper than 400 degree, for what reason I cannot ever collect data. Yeah. Okay. And so even if you can't reach target deaths, you just might be

50:33 done. You stop. Yeah. So the limit was that because the boss said, oh, otherwise you have to pay for the broken instruments and the service provider writes us a huge bill on that. So we don't

50:46 want to do that. So 400 was always the limit. So in the drill, I always said, oh, 394.

50:55 Just to be safe. To be sure. And so you see that, and we had a lot of hot wells, particularly here in the south, and you abandoned them. Oh, they're too hot You don't even hit the source rock.

51:13 Right. So the reservoir, you just got to abandon it. It's part of the business. And so you, you, you say, okay, let's go somewhere else. But important here is that we have a lot of hot wells.

51:28 Okay, even if I don't reach my hottest target, but I get a good idea where I have my temperature and here comes in AI and machine learning and all these things where you extrapolate in a nice way to

51:42 figure out where is your hot spot, where's your sweet spot, what kind of formation is it, which has the right reservoir performance to retrieve that temperature and

51:53 the same applies for the chemistry. Okay,

51:59 so you use these data also. They are not perfect, not no data is perfect, but you need a very good strategy to optimize your assessment and where you go. That's basic classical exploration, and

52:14 you can apply the same workflows. I gave a talk on that on OTC in Houston. This is the Ocean Technology Conference. I mean, we are unsure. I don't know why I did it at offshore conference, but

52:27 this is what it is. They invited me for that. And anyway, so the point is really that you use these existing technologies and the knowledge and the best practice and the work and the experience of

52:41 these people and transform it to a new strategy and a new concept. That's all what you do. Pretty simple.

52:49 And it's a huge, huge, huge, huge future for them. Because on the end of the day, we have a lot of over-mature oil and gas fields. So the last count I had from the '90s, we had over 2 million

53:03 holes in the United States. So the country has more holes and a Swiss cheese There are millions of valves out there. And sooner or later, in every field, every oil production, one day expires or

53:19 ex-horses. It over-matures. And then what do people do?

53:25 So with the geothermal and the lithium, at least in certain areas, we can give these people a future.

53:32 That's a very important aspect for us, what drives us And what has helped you in the startup ecosystem, the innovation ecosystem in Houston, in really driving these projects forward? I think the

53:45 important thing is that you get in use, the important is you get a network, you get a community, and a welcoming community. So you guys are a welcoming community and help us. Because the problem

53:59 is when you are a little startup, you know, we are running the thing basically two people manage the whole thing, you cannot do that. Okay, you cannot, we are doing, it's incredible what you do.

54:15 You know, you do fundraising, you do management, you do bookkeeping, you do technology, you do export, you have to do everything. So you exhaust very quickly, and I can tell you, there is

54:25 sometimes a lot of exhaust in the system and mentally, and

54:33 it's, so you need this kind of environment which supports you, okay? And it's very important for us to have that. Otherwise, you cannot live, you cannot survive. And networking is also very

54:47 important. So it's so great, you know? So we love it, these events you guys have, you just hang out there and you run in people and say, hey, wait a moment, this is interesting. Can you do

54:59 this and could do that for me? So I remember at one of our lunch meetings, I met this guy with a drilling technology. what's his name? He's got the cool edge bits.

55:13 This was great. So I talked to his dad who developed this new technology. And I think this is amazing because and then it spins further because I have another contact. They try to do really ultra

55:29 deep hot dry rock. And these guys tell me I can drill at higher temperatures because I do efficient cooling of the drill bit. I said, hey, wait a moment. This is great. You can go into

55:43 temperature ranges where conventional drill bits already fail. So even if I can push the whole whole three, four thousand feet deeper, that's that's the game. So all

55:57 that came out of this discussion No, that's amazing. So this is a spin. Yeah. And you need that spin and Houston, why Houston. Houston has this oil and energy industry. So, well, for some

56:13 people, it's the Antichrist. I understand that.

56:18 It's, my daughter is one of them.

56:24 So you have to understand that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said, You wanna work with me in the oil? Nope, they have ethical concerns, okay, good. But what I wanna say is there is this huge

56:33 synergies out there As I said before, experience, technology, knowledge, if we speak the same language, we can go in, we can head in the same direction. And this is very key. And this is why

56:45 you, and the very important thing for me is the only industry which has actually a very well developed risk culture is the oil and gas industry. So when you're sitting here in Houston,

57:04 We drove around in the country. We looked at a lot of pump checks. And each pump check has a nameplate on it. That's the

57:13 API number. And then there's a telephone number in emergency case. Please call.

57:19 And the phone number, the area code is either 713 or 832. Yeah, someone here has got to pick it up and figure it out. So across the country, everybody who operates that stuff out there is located

57:32 in Houston So this is the key, it's the AP center for new technology. So looking at

57:42 the time, so where can people learn more about the company, your projects, and how can they get in touch with you? Oh, the easiest way is we have a website, wwwalmaenachinet, sorry, the.

57:56 com was taken. So. net, almaenachinet,

57:60 and there we have, The easiest way is we have a contact there. and otherwise they can contact me. Should I give my email out to us? We can share your LinkedIn, and if you want, we'll share your

58:11 email on the show down. Okay, okay. That's the best way, or just meet us and come in to

58:20 your - Energy techniques, yeah. Exactly, come to the energy techniques, and just talk to us. This is the best place to communicate. And that's what we do.