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Nabors Industries Ltd. invested $8 million in GA Drilling, a.s. to expand its clean energy portfolio by adding deep-drilling technologies tapping super-hot, ultra-deep rock reservoirs.
This agreement complements the pre-series investment round recently concluded by GA Drilling, with the total value of those new investments exceeding $20 million.
The investment will allow Nabors to implement its energy transition strategy targeted at high growth potential, lower-carbon energy markets. Through this and three other clean energy venture investments, the company is establishing several ecosystems of technologies that will benefit from synergies with its existing operations and competencies.
"Now is the time to invest in innovative and bold geothermal solutions that have the potential to unlock terawatts of clean, renewable and reliable energy on a truly global scale," Anthony G. Petrello, chairman, CEO and president of Nabors, said in a press release on March 30.
"Given the expected sharp growth in global energy consumption over the next decades, the world will require an even sharper growth in sustainable energy supply. I am convinced that geothermal energy will be a key contributor to the necessary increase in clean energy generation."
Based in Bratislava, Slovakia, GA Drilling is a geothermal technology company specializing in plasma drilling. By integrating its contactless PLASMABIT drilling tool into Nabors' automated and lower-emission drilling operations, the collaboration should accelerate field commercialization and eliminate traditional economic barriers of ultradeep projects to expand global access to geothermal energy.
Paired with Nabors' prior investments in GeoX Energy, Sage GeoSystems and Quaise Inc., the GA Drilling investment aims to make geothermal energy widely accessible across geographies while reducing cost per unit of energy generated to match the cost of other energy sources.
"The present agreement will allow us to move faster through the final stages of PLASMABIT development, leveraging the synergies to integrate this revolutionary drilling tool into the systems of the rig," Igor Kočiš, founder and CEO of GA Drillling, said in the press release. "Together, we will work toward meeting imminent demand to rapidly diversify the global energy mix."
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