Atomic Show #286 – Chris Wright, CEO Liberty Oilfield Services

Chris Wright is the CEO of Liberty Oilfield Services, which recently became the second largest US company performing the work of drilling and completing oil and gas wells in shale formations.

He is a leader in the field of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal well drilling, having been involved in the revolutionary technology development since the days when George Mitchell was stubbornly experimenting in the Barnett Shale.

Among those who focus on the energy industry and attempt to understand its current situation in order to gain some insights into the future, the growing natural gas supply in the US gets a lot of attention. Cheap natural gas gets credit for a steady drop in annual US CO2 emissions as it has pushed a growing amount of coal out of the market.

That same product – cheap natural gas – has also been blamed for reducing revenues enough at a number of existing nuclear plants to push their owners into closing the plants for economic reasons. Despite successful efforts to reduce operating costs at those plants, shrinking top-line revenue from selling electricity into low-priced wholesale markets means they do not make enough money to meet corporate goals.

After hearing Chris Wright on Robert Bryce’s excellent Power Hungry podcast, I realized it would be worthwhile to invite him onto the Atomic Show to provide a deeper explanation of the revolution in natural gas production.

Chris gets into some deep technical details about how technology has dramatically improved in his field. He explains how competition and a relentless focus on providing a better product has driven that improvement.

He is justifiably proud of the benefits that his industry has provided to the world, but he also provides some important support and advice to people who are working to improve nuclear fission energy.

It might surprise many, including some of Chris’s colleagues, to learn that Chris describes himself as a huge supporter of nuclear fission energy. He provides some compliments and some tough love for those of us who are working to improve the technology’s chances of competing and serving customer needs.

I think you will thoroughly enjoy listening to Chris’s thoughts about energy and its importance for human development and prosperity.

As always, I’m interested in hearing what you think. I’m pretty sure this show will provoke some deep thinking in what might be completely new directions, so I’d like you to share some of those thoughts.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:35 — 67.2MB)

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