Jennifer Pallanich, senior technology editor, Hart Energy: What if the future of well construction lies in the perfect blend of digital innovation and teamwork? This is your Hart Energy LIVE exclusive with Baker Hughes and Corva.

Matthias Gatzen, executive director, digital well construction business, Baker Hughes: It's really about taking Baker Hughes' longstanding industry experience and Corva's superior digital platform, and bringing those together, and driving performance and efficiencies for our global customers.

Courtney Diezi, COO, Corva: We have over a hundred completions drilling and geo science apps that can be used in different ways to solve problems in real-time and using historical data. And then we also have something called Dev Center, and it allows our customers and our partner companies to be able to deploy apps on top of our platform very quickly.

JP: What does Baker Hughes bring to this collaboration?

MG: So we bring over a hundred years of industry experience, and so if you think about it, a lot of the digital offerings that we have, we've been running internally for our day-to-day operations. And so we can actually take those applications now and make them available to our customers and actually every single Corva customer. Secondly, we can take Corva now and offer it to our global customers. So we have an incremental sales channel. And so thirdly, the opportunity that we have is that we can run Corva internally, and we are actually rolling that out right now to drive efficiency performance in day-to-day operations.

JP: Okay, and speaking of efficiencies, what kind of operations efficiencies might we be seeing on rigs as a result of this partnership?

CD: Yeah, so Corva's deployed originally on unconventional drilling. That's really where we got our feet on the ground six years ago. And there, we were driving things like tripping speed, improving ROP, getting best in class performance across the platform. We also do some things that help prevent hazards so that we can use that historical data, understand what's coming up, and mitigate. We have a lot of track record on the unconventional. We started moving offshore a couple of years ago, and so we have the same sorts of metrics as well as those engineering apps that help prevent the hazards.

JP: I understand that during this partnership, Baker Hughes has started populating the Corva app store with apps. Tell me about some of those.

MG: If you take a look at the app store, it's a fantastic opportunity to take any application that you have and bring it onto the app store, make it available for your operations running Corva or any operations globally. And so what we're doing is we're taking some of our long-term experience in driving efficiency performance like i-Trak—drilling automation—and putting that on the Corva platform. And so the first one we're actually building right now is an ROP based application. We're taking our i-Trak automation platform and taking the best of those applications and one after the other changing the industry, and really bringing them onto the Corva platform. So the first one we're building right now, and it's shortly to be released is an ROP based application. It's very exciting. It's a vibration based model that's really geared at driving efficiency and performance, and it takes your downhole data. And the Corva platform brings that together and drives efficiencies.

JP: Okay, interesting. So you announced this collaboration back in January at the Baker Hughes annual meeting. Correct? What have you guys accomplished since then? I mean, it's been about six months.

MG: So we have multiple pillars we're focused on. Firstly, we're rolling out Corva into our global operations and driving performance and efficiencies in the Baker Hughes operations, and really our customers are appreciating that. Secondly, we're also a sales channel for Corva, and so we're in multiple discussions globally and rolling out Corva with our customers for their day-to-day operations across their entire fleets. And thirdly, as we just talked about, we're taking applications and making those available on the Corva platform either Baker Hughes applications or also our customers’ applications that they want to run on Corva.

CD: Yeah. The other thing that we've both been working really hard on is deploying our first on-premise instance of Corva along with the Baker Hughes team. So that's gone very well, and we're looking forward to doing more and more of those.

JP: Well, that sounds exciting. So sometimes a customer or a country will have a restriction on data. How do you deal with those restrictions?

CD: Yeah, so we've been working on that actually for a couple of years leading up to this partnership. So we have been able to take Corva, which is a cloud hosted environment, and we've been able to package it up so that we can deploy it fully on premise within a customer's architecture if needed, but we can also deploy it on any cloud within any country. So with these different scenarios, we're actually able to accommodate whatever in-country data restrictions the customer may have. All operators have really realized that digitalization plays a big part in their future strategy, and so having a proven digital platform like Corva partnering with the wide breadth of experience of Baker Hughes means that we can deploy so many solutions very quickly for the industry or for a specific customer's needs.

MG: Yeah, I mean, I could just say I think we're changing the industry one app at a time right?

CD: I think so.

JP: That's fun. So what's next for this collaboration?

MG: Look, I mean from our perspective, Baker Hughes, as I said, we're rolling out the application globally. Fantastic results. In many, many discussions with customers right now, and the first are already starting to use Corva in the international space, and building apps, apps, apps, right, so making those apps available to our customers, and also having our new customers build their own apps.

JP: So in line with that, I understand that there's a hackathon coming up?

CD: There is. Actually, we have two events coming up. So the hackathon is first, that's in July, and we have 24 hours for our customers, partners to come in, work with our own developers and deploy an app on Corva's app store. We've done this several times before, and it's incredible what people are able to accomplish in this time. So that's one event that's coming up. The other one is Corvacon, that's our big annual event in early November. We do technology spotlights with all of our partners as well as talk about whatever Corva is coming out with next.

JP: So this has been really fascinating. Thank you so much. I can't wait to hear more about the latest updates on your collaboration. Stay in the know with the latest innovations in the energy industry with Hart Energy exclusive interviews at hartenergy.com.

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