Brock Yordy:

Good morning. Welcome to episode 136 of The Driller Newscast, your resource for the news stories, policymaking, and everything that matters to us in the drilling and construction industry. 

I'm your host, Brock Yordy, and this week I'm so excited because we have Robert Meyer and Dave Bowers, both contributing writers and professionals in the industry, to talk to us about what they're excited about at Groundwater Week and the presentations they're doing. But before that, we also have Johnny Oldani joining us, our new editor at The Driller. We are super-excited. He's in Golden, Colorado. He's right in the middle of all things water, Colorado Compact, oil and gas, geothermal. We are so excited to have him. I want to jump right into this interview.

One week from today, we will see you on the show floor. Stop by The Driller booth 25. We have a happy hour that will start at 2:30 on the opening day of the show floor, but before that, make sure you're in classes on Tuesday morning.

Go see Robert's, go see Dave's. Go see mine. It's going to be a great week. We can't wait to be there and just celebrate 2024. Thanks. 

For this week's feature, we're going to jump into what's going to happen next week at National Groundwater Groundwater Week, and I have two of my favorite industry colleagues, friends, fellow drillers, teachers, founders, and board members of the geothermal industry. We just at this point have committed ourselves to everything. And so you're going to see a familiar face here with Rob Meyer and obviously the infamous Dave Bowers. And then there's this random guy that's on this call. And so before we jump into Groundwater Week, guys, we need to do a job interview and see if this can be our new Driller editor. Dave, why don't you ask a good, inquisitive interview question.

Dave Bowers:

Pre-apprentice, can I first ask Robert something? Robert, you know how he said that we've decided that we're going to be involved in everything, right? I distinctly remember somebody who is way out ahead of us in committing to things. But that aside, yes, I will ask the first question of our new potential editor, and it's simply this: why this industry?

John Oldani:

Yeah, it's a great question. So for me, I come from a background where I'm good at growing stuff. I took a newsletter about the financial news, stock market, and grew it from 0 to 300,000 in under a year. When I saw this, to be honest, I'm not an industry professional like you guys in terms of the drilling industry, but I know how to grow stuff and I love how important this industry is. I bring a strong commitment to listening to the industry professionals and kind of bridging that gap to make it accessible to people, but also get the information that people need that actually affects our everyday world.

Brock Yordy:

 Rob, should we let 'im in on this whole financial thing that anybody who has a large amount of capital to invest shouldn't be investing in drilling?

Robert Meyer: 

Yeah. So my first question is how do you spell driller?

John Oldani:

D-R-I-L-L-E-R. 

Brock Yordy: 

Perfect. You're hired. 

John Oldani:

All right, cool. It's funny, that's the only interview question I got in the first interview too.

Dave Bowers:

Well, just because Brock didn't know how to spell it.

Robert Meyer:

Because that was too many letters for Brock to handle.

Brock Yordy:

You're absolutely right. Johnny, go ahead and introduce yourself to the industry. Obviously you are hired. We know who the big boss of The Driller is, and it's clearly none of us on this call.

John Oldani:

I'm John, Johnny Oldani. People call me Johnny because my name rhymes. I grew up in Royal Oak, Michigan. Me and my wife in 2020 decided to do the whole van thing, so I built out a van, did that kind of hippie lifestyle for about two years, and then settled in Colorado. Now, I’m about to have my first kid and trying to figure out what everything is that I've been buying and what it does and how to be a dad. So that's basically the biggest thing about me in the past year or so. And then, yeah, found this and I'm just really excited to get going. Got thrown right into it this week. It's my first week and I love it.

Brock Yordy:

Excellent. Did you settle that van down by a river?

John Oldani:

No. No, but the amount of times I've heard that joke, yeah. No, but I did end up having to sell it, give up that lifestyle, but now I'm building out a little cargo trailer to turn into just a camping, a little camping vehicle, so nice little side hustle.

Brock Yordy:

Well, excellent. Robert and Dave, we should outline to Johnny what it's like to be on a jobsite and then what the National Groundwater Conference is going to be, and when he gets baptized by fire in just over a week and a half.

Dave Bowers:

Well, to start, most jobsites depend on who's running them, but many we see, and Robert and Brock can agree, some of 'em look like chaos, but it's like anything else; a good driller, their site's going to look organized. But too many sites that we see are chaos and tend to be a little bit, I shouldn't say the sites, the people tend to be a little rough around the edges on occasion, on some of our brethren in the drilling industry. But the thing about this industry is that you can't survive unless you're kind of a self-motivated person. It's the only way that you get this. So every driller that I've ever met is the best driller in the world. That's the first thing to understand. When you talk to any driller that you ever meet in their mind, they're the best driller in the world, which of course they can't be because the next guy that you're going to meet, he's the best driller in the world.

Brock Yordy:

It's interesting you put it that way, Dave, because obviously I don't think jobsites have to be chaos. And I think we can break that culture, and we have a great cross-section of this industry right now, from late twenties to mid-thirties to mid-forties to old-man status, right?

Dave Bowers:

Well, why do you got to call me old-man status? That ain't cool. But in any case, no, and you and I have been pushing this for years. We need to figure out how to get the industry to start identifying themselves as professionals and acting the way that the resources that we provide — whether it be heating and cooling or it be groundwater or data, any of those things — that we act in a way that shows the importance of that stuff. An awful lot of people have the mindset of, this is the way grandpa did it; so, our industry needs to move out of, I always like to say the seventies, we're probably in the eighties, maybe nineties, at some point. We have come a long way in the last eight or 10 years, but we're not where your normal construction companies and stuff that are surviving are. But those companies are starting to move into our space, so we are going to have to see what we can do to help the rest of the industry catch up.

Brock Yordy:

Rob, I need your opinion on this. You're executing on projects around the country right now, and you're bringing some discipline to the industry and you have high expectations. You said some great things a few months ago on the Newscast to the students of the pilot tutorial about your choices. Give us some knowledge, man.

Robert Meyer:

Well, I think it's interesting when Dave talks about seeing sites that are in chaos versus Brock's perspective on sites that are in chaos versus my perspective. But then there's the uninformed perspective because even sites that are critically organized, from an uneducated perspective, it looks like chaos. Because one of the things that I find very interesting about the drilling industry as a whole is how many different tools we need to use to do one thing. And we see this play out in the different drill rig manufacturers that try to consolidate different tools onto the rigs so that you have fewer individual pieces, and that plays out well. And sometimes it plays out poorly. It just depends on design. But at the end of the day when I see a site shut down for the weekend and everything's pulled off and organized and all of that, and I'm just like, oh my goodness, how much stuff do we actually need out here?

And we need that for this. We need that for that. We need that for this. And you go back to Dave's background, and Foundation Drilling is a fantastic example of this, where you have any number of different types, sizes and lengths of casing, torches, hoisting equipment, welding equipment, backfill equipment, tremie lines, pumps, all this stuff just to get one casing in the ground. And it's easy to look at that and say, wow, that site is a mess. And then I give you a whiteboard and a pen, and I say, you draw it a different way. Tell me how I'm supposed to run this cleaner. And so it is interesting, and going back to Dave's point about every driller is the best driller in the world. Every driller has a plan that's the best plan to get that hole done. And they're all right because the best plan needs to be executed by the best person for that plan. That best plan cannot necessarily be executed by the other best driller in the room. And so it's just a very interesting dynamic to think about.

You're right, that is the best plan for you, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Not everything needs to be done the same way. And I wrote about this fairly recently, and prescriptive methodologies and prescriptive plans get in the way of project execution. So you detail out exactly how something should be done too much, and it actually gets in the way of getting the thing done. And so there's so many layers to this. And then as you mentioned, going to Groundwater Week, there are so many opinions that fly around the hall at Groundwater Week and they're all right in the context, in the worldview, of the individuals that have those opinions. They are correct. And it's a very interesting world where opposing facts can all be true under a certain set of conditions. And that's kind of a difficult place to work from when you're trying to analytically solve, to say, under these same conditions, I can come up with five different ways to achieve this task. And every single way is right and will work. There's just trade-offs. And anyway, I'm starting to ramble, but that's kind of what I'm sitting here pondering about. And from an outsider looking in the first tripping stones that are going to be run into, it's like, how can all of this be correct?

Brock Yordy:

What's wild is if you look at Johnny's choice as the country slowed down, he sped up and jumped in a van across the country. Our entire landscape of drilling contractors changed during the pandemic because people started working from home. And so thinking of jobs and chaos, I think it's important for our industry, and this will lead into the talks that we're all giving at Groundwater Week next week, but a homeowner on their Ring doorbell or Nest or whatever, looking out and seeing people work in a trench and it's a hundred degrees outside and there's no water in sight, that's a perception of chaos. Job could be clean, every tool could be put away, but it could be a condition of why would I want to work in this, or where is their protection? Then, you may have an orderly jobsite that you have men in a trench that have water, but suddenly they don't have ladders or a smart way of egress, and OSHA drives by and the jobsite was dialed in, and that drilling company goes, “Well, what do you mean, I have to have a ladder X amount of feet?” And I would have to defer to Dave right now.

Dave Bowers:

25 feet. You can't go laterally more than 25 feet without a means of egress, but this is not a safety talk so…

Brock Yordy:

Well, but that chaos is from making the jobsite look like Benny Hill to... I remember doing a cathodic project and pulling in and we had matted everything, and it was beautiful, and then my driller assistant letting the mud tub overflow and have mud running down these shiny mats onto the grass. And it was like, we had this pristine jobsite, and suddenly the pristine jobsite just showed more chaos than if I'd just had dirt there and it had absorbed into the sand.

Dave Bowers:

Well, sometimes, Brock, chaos isn't something that you can see without some knowledge. When I look at something and I call it chaos, it doesn't mean just that the jobsite looks poor. That could be one of the things. But a lot of times it's looked at from a knowledge base saying, whoa, they don't have a plan here, or their plan has gone out the window to come to what Robert was talking about. That's the thing about our industry, is that the flexibility you need to have in order to successfully complete anything, because the ground doesn't want to be drilled. It's that simple. And you can have 12 on a geothermal job. You have 12 holes in a row, identical, no problems, and you get to that 13th hole and the next thing you know, nothing is working the way that it had in the past. And so we have to be flexible so that chaos is going to happen. It's how do we regain our composure and for lack of a better term, the efficiency of a jobsite once that happens. And that's I think, where experience comes in and being able to see some things that the average person can't see.

Brock Yordy:

Let's move into Las Vegas. And Johnny, you've probably been doing a little research. I know that one of our other contributors — you know Dave Bowers and Rob Meyer are both contributors to The Driller, and we get great knowledge and we want more knowledge sharers — but you got to go back and look at an OG article by John Schmidt who, in the article, had been going to the NGWA conference continuously from the seventies to 2012. What perception do you have of us going to Vegas and this conference? Do you have any idea at all?

John Oldani:

I've been to a few conferences, but yeah, it's nothing like this, where it's just very passionate individuals in the same industry. It's usually just a lot of people trying to get their newsletters out there, stuff like this. So I think it's a whole different realm for me, but I'm excited to experience that. And then, yeah, that article that I went through was very insightful to show, just like you said, the passion behind it all. I have it pulled up. He went to 47 appearances in a row from 76 to 2012, and I mean, I was born in ’93. I can't even fathom that. It's awesome.

He talks about how, back then, pumps were pulled by either hand or with a boom truck. It's like, those things I can't really conceptualize because I'm not on the site, but I see the passion just based on one person who's been there forever. And it gets me excited to get more of these types of stories out there. And I want to hear these types of stories, how passionate this individual is about just the jackets that people wear. And now it's like when I go there, I'm going to look for these jackets and be like, oh, that guy's a board member or whatever. It's like, this is the stuff you learn that I would've never thought before.

Brock Yordy:

Yeah, it's a wild conference with a lot of equipment. That is, we are a small industry, but we drive civilization with exploration and what we do. And I think you just dropped some big insight on our workforce development. I'm a co-founder of the Geothermal Drillers Association with Rob, and Dave is one of the founding members of the board, and we have the geothermal conference piece of the NGWA that we're teaching at. And I didn't really think about it, as he's reading this as an individual not familiar with our industry, but pulling pumps by hand — and we're wondering why the new generation doesn't want to work in this industry right now. And it's like, “what do you mean, you used to have to go to the well and drop the bucket to the bottom and then scoop that out?” Of course there's a disconnect.

Dave Bowers:

Yeah, I think that a big piece of this for development is just, I don't think that most of the youth see this as a viable pathway. Unless they grew up in the industry, they don't see it. We don't collectively do a spectacular job of advertising this industry too, and then we got to make this industry desirable enough that they want to come and be part of this industry. And good companies are doing that. And I think that, all in all, we'll get there because I've seen in the last maybe five or six years, the push from high schools especially no longer saying, “Hey, college is the only way to go.” There's now a lot of people saying, “Hey, you know what? Being a tradesperson, there's nothing wrong with that. And you can make a very good living helping humanity in such a way that doesn't need a college degree.” And I think that's one of the things we need to get better at, is making that sale.

Brock Yordy:

So making that sale. We talk about a group of people not being able to look at a jobsite and understand quite the chaos, and we talk about a new generation coming in and then sharing knowledge just within our small industry. And I want to turn to Rob's presentation that's going to happen on Tuesday because it's a vital conversation and we'll get to ours, Dave. But Rob, you got challenged in the discussion. Mind you, as being co-founder of the Geothermal Drillers Association with me, you and I have been on a lot of phone calls across the country about geothermal borehole regulation and groundwater regulation and how it relates, and you're doing a class with Tom Howell of Western Michigan University on the similarities and the differences of a geothermal borehole on a water wall. Can you speak about that?

Robert Meyer:

Yeah. When I was talking to Tom about it initially, I was really talking about what is the basis of the discussion, and the basis of the discussion comes back to this infuriating comment that I hear, which is, “It's just a geo hole,” or something along those lines. And what that is, is deriding what we're actually doing; we are still drilling into and through the same aquifers that we do for capturing water for use. We're using the same method, we're using the same equipment, we're using the same fluids, — everything's the same. The only difference is the end product. That's it. But the methodology to get it there is the same. And so, what that means is that the risks associated are the same. And really when I think about the Groundwater show last year versus the years prior, last year was a stark difference in audience.

And when I say that, there were more new people there that have never been there before than I've seen in any of my years going to the show. And that's great. I love it. I'm all about it. But part of that is knowing the audience. And when I look at the types of courses, short courses and half-day courses and things that are being covered, there's a lot of high-level stuff, which is great. I love it. I love to see the continuing ed that's at a little bit higher level than just, “Hey, here's mud and here's how to mix it,” and all of that stuff, which I understand. But then, what that does is, it leaves all these people that are fresh, brand new into the industry who want to do good in the industry, kind of like, “Okay, so I know enough about drilling to be dangerous, and now all that I have available to me is this super-high-level thing without any building blocks.”

And so, really, what I'm trying to do is bring the focus back to the basics of, if you're drilling geothermal boreholes, you are now a groundwater professional, whether you like it or not. As a groundwater professional, you have these kinds of baseline things that you need to be concerned with, whether you like it or not. They are there. Groundwater protection is now a responsibility of yours. Understanding lithology is now a responsibility of yours, understanding waste disposition and fluids interaction within an aquifer. All of these things now become your responsibility to understand. So, I want to highlight resources that are available, but then also highlight areas where we don't know that much. One of the things that Tom was talking about was thermal conductivity of different types of sedimentary rock and things like this. And I was like, that would be great, because I don't even know where to get that information except for some places that I think those are generally rules of thumb, and rules of thumb are great, but where do I go to get it from the horse's mouth and making those resources available so that people can become experts on their own?

Because as we know, there's no place that you can go to become a geothermal drilling expert. That's why we're investing so much of our time and training as part of the work that we're doing with the association. And so, really what, my intent is, is to focus on, at the end of the day, if you're going to do this, you're now a groundwater professional. Groundwater protection is a principle responsibility that you have. And so you need to understand the basic principles of aquifers and all of these things. And I was so happy to see that Tom Hanna is also going to be teaching a class while we're there, and I'm going to direct people to go to that one too because he's just so knowledgeable on groundwater and hydrogeology and all of these things. But really the course is really heavily focused on a lot of the basics and the realities of if you're going to be on a rig or if you're going to own a company that's going to have rigs in operation, groundwater protection is now a principal responsibility that you've taken on. Congratulations.

Brock Yordy:

What's fantastic is, as this class got built out and we talked about a curriculum, we got a scientist involved, we got a hydrogeologist involved. By the way, Tom Hanna is also a western Michigan University alum, so that's pretty cool and very integral in the groundwater and wells books with Johnson. But what's cool is to hear that Tom brought other pieces to this discussion of thermal conductivity of sedimentary rock, and I was going to roll that right into Dave. With Dave, you teach more than just geothermal and water. Well, and when you talk geotechnical and environmental address protection of groundwater,

Dave Bowers:

Well, I mean, the biggest part for us is groundwater protection anyway. Because, like Robert said, you have to understand that as soon as you're going to make that hole, you are now responsible to protect groundwater. So what we typically do is from the get-go, start talking about the ability of water to move through different substances that may be involved and why something is good for a grout or good for backfill. If you're just backfilling, why do chips make more sense? And showing the ability for these different items to restrict the flow of water or chemicals or anything else, because every time we drill a hole, you're making a conduit to potentially contaminate something. And so one of the earliest things that we do is talk about low permeability items and why we use them and where we use them and where maybe it's okay to use some backfill and where it's probably not. But if you're going below what your average sewer line is being dug in your area, you really need to start thinking about what do we need to do to seal that hole? And then what the importance of what you're drilling through does for. So the material that you're drawing through is also going to have a play in that.

It doesn't make sense. If everything we do is in medium sand to then grout it up, we go to 35 feet in medium sand and then we grout the hole a hundred percent with thermite doesn't make a lot of sense because we're not really sealing anything in that case. Maybe it makes sense that we're going to be sealing just the top of that because that's where the layer that is impermeable is. So understanding some of that and looking at some of the rules for water wall, even when you're a Jew technical driller or doing geothermal, knowing the water wall rules for your state that you're working in is of utmost importance so that you can make sure that you're correctly executing the job.

Brock Yordy:

And beyond protecting groundwater and being professionals and being geothermal professionals and drilling professionals. And as we're wrapping up this discussion, it leads right into our talk that we're giving on Tuesday that is on safety. And you want to give a little overview of what we're going to get into?

Dave Bowers:

Well, I'm not giving that away, but I do have some notes here. So that's pretty close to having it created. And besides, no one knows what I'm going to say, including me most of the time. 

Brock Yordy:

Every podcast.

Dave Bowers:

Every podcast, no one knows.

Robert Meyer:

But I know you're going to say a lot. I know you're going to say a lot, though.

Dave Bowers:

That's true. I'm probably going to say a lot now. He said wrap it up, but now I'm pissed off. So we're probably going another 30 minutes. Anyway. No, in reality, what we're going to talk about is jobsite scenarios where something bad could happen and how to get yourself some help in ensuring that you can remediate that, whether it be internal just with your company or if you want to reach out for help at no cost to you. We've got some resources you can reach out to do audits of your processes and the stuff that your standard operating procedures both on the jobsite and at your shop to make sure that you're doing what you can and that you've identified all of the hazards that are commonplace in your workplace. Now, one of the things about that that I really liked, the way that Robert put it earlier when he talked about decision making, and the only way we make good decisions is we have to identify hazards.

And then we have to assign those hazards and see if it's acceptable. And if it's not acceptable, we need to figure it out, we still got to get that thing done. How do we mitigate that down to make that risk acceptable? And that's what this whole thing is about to look at, how are we going to go from, we need this done, here's what the regulations are, and here's how we can be effective and profitable while still meeting all of those things. Because too often somebody in the interest of speed lets safety go or in the interest of being profitable will ignore maybe a hazard they shouldn't ignore. Or sometimes it just doesn't understand the hazard.

The worst thing that can happen to anybody is to do something wrong and nothing bad happens and not scare 'em so that they get to the point where they do it wrong consistently. And by wrong, I mean unsafe. They do it unsafely consistently. It never happened before, but it's only a matter of time. So we're going to have, I think, a pretty fun way of bringing all this in over an hour and hopefully getting some audience participation. Because that's the other thing, if you've ever attended something that I've done, I like to have fun, you've probably never noticed that. Yeah, I see you're sleeping. You've never noticed that. I can't stay serious for more than about 30 seconds. So we're having some fun.

Brock Yordy:

I love that. I think there's a big piece here with 80% of unsafe acts. 80% of our injuries are unsafe acts. And Rob and I were just having a big discussion because we have all these new people coming into the industry and we have people going, “You know what? I think I'm going to get some funding and I'm going to start a drill company.” And they don't realize the expense of an injury from the direct cost to the indirect cost to the languishing cost of now being deemed, well, you guys are going to get somebody else hurt. Or what does that cost your insurance? And it's impactful.

Dave Bowers:

Yeah, the overall cost of somebody getting hurt is not the cost of taking care of that injury. The cost is always going to be much greater. It could be worse yet if somebody, God forbid, were to get killed, the cost there just is immense. And it may be the cost of somebody's business or even somebody's life because they may feel that they could have done something to stop it and didn't.

Brock Yordy:

A big piece. And with that, we're going to wrap up. Thoughts, Johnny? I'm putting you on the spot. I'm putting you Johnny on the spot. Ha!

John Oldani:

I got to go. Yeah, I mean I'm just kind of absorbing all that. It's really insightful to hear industry professionals just talk about this, so I could listen to you guys all day. Well, not all day, but for the most part, and I guess I'll leave with - I'm instructed to watch Armageddon this weekend. So what are your favorite drilling-related movies besides that?

Brock Yordy:

There Will Be Blood. 

John Oldani:

I was going to say that was going to be my favorite. That's the only one I've probably seen.

Brock Yordy:

And Rob and I have been dealing with the Railroad Commission in Texas right now, so it's so appropriate.

Robert Meyer:

Well, I was just going to say there's a new series that came out called Landman and it is awesome. It really is pretty good. Bob Thornton. Yeah, and it's kind funny watching LinkedIn and all of the oil and gas industry professionals that I'm connected with due to my work in Texas and New Mexico, pretty roundly well received as these are some of the realities of life in the oil field, and it's pretty interesting. And obviously oil and gas exploration and production drilling are not really part of what we're talking about here, but there's a great deal of similarities. And specifically with the crews that I work with in Texas, there's a lot of people that have worked back and forth in both industries. And so there's a lot of that that I'd like to pay attention to because it helps me manage people because I understand their training and I understand the environments that they've worked in.

And we also drill on these same sites for environmental purposes. So it's important for me to understand the regulatory landscape specifically through the Railroad Commission of Texas — don't ask questions, it doesn't make sense — that regulate the oil and gas EMP world in Texas and all of those things on top of OSHA and femsa and all of these different regulatory agencies that collapse in on oil and gas. And so that is an interesting show that's been here recently. But I would say Brock mentioned one of the best Daniel Day Lewis films ever, in my opinion. And then Armageddon, everybody just loves it at the Groundwater show. You can ask anybody about Armageddon and they all love it.

Brock Yordy:

I love it. Thanks for your time today, guys. And obviously just like Taylor Sheridan pulling all of his friends into 11,000 series all at once being written, and I have no idea, but that just looks like so much fun to me. And I laugh every time another one comes up because I go, I know my core group of friends that I trust to execute on education or a new association or teaching or whatnot are always being like, yes, this sounds like it would be a great opportunity, but no, how much time do I have left to be able to do these things and my business?

So I appreciate you two a ton. Welcome, Johnny. It's going to be great. I'm sure a year from now when you think back about this or you watch it again or whenever you'll realize like, whoa, the first year was in dog years and your beard will be gray.

Thank you so much, gentlemen. Thank you for joining us for episode 136. Download the NGWA show app, get your classes put in place, know where you're going to be. Find Robert, find Dave. Have great discussions with them about our professionalism in the industry. Meet Johnny at The Driller booth, booth number 25. I can't wait to see you. It's going to be such a great week. And again, always groundwater week is just such a whirlwind. And next thing we know we're home and it's Christmas Eve and we're like, how did we get here? 

Cheers, everybody, be safe. Travel safe.