The Welcome & the Résumé
Welcome to the Major Project podcast, your inside. Look at the high stakes world of billion dollar projects.
Well, welcome to the major project podcast, hosted by me or I'm Matthews. We're diving into the world of high stakes projects, each with budgets of over a billion dollars. Through conversations with industry experts such as James Wiseman, who we have here today. Uh, we are uncovering key lessons, strategies, and insights to help elevate the practice of managing and delivering on these monumental projects.
James, welcome to the podcast.
Hey, thanks Orion. I'm glad to be here. Excited.
Yeah. And so James, you're, you've been a capital projects manager. You've got 25 years of experience in upstream energy business. I know you've led multiple teams through all the stages of major projects, I believe from appraisal to startup.
And you kind of have a deep understanding of both Greenfield, brownfield projects. Um, maybe you can talk a little [00:01:00] bit about your history. I know you've worked at Chevron, um, we worked together at Santos and Tesla and things like that. So maybe just take us a little bit through some of your career.
Sure thing, Ryan. Thanks. I, uh, I like to say I work on energy projects. You know, I've worked on energy projects my whole career. It's the kind of thing that gets me outta bed in the morning, you know, especially the opportunity to do big things, which is really cool. But believe it or not, you know, I, um, I started doing decommissioning projects for three years.
Oh,
wow. And so I got a little bit of the like, kind of like, uh, end of life kind of stuff early in my career. But then after that I kind of pivoted into deep water projects. Mostly like subsea deep water, the, um, capital project side there. And then I also did a stint in a new ventures and exploration group.
Okay. At Noble Energy. [00:02:00] After I finished a few projects, I got an opportunity to do that. So I got to see kind of like the drivers of what makes a good energy lease.
And
like how to get into them. That was pretty cool. And like figuring out different ways to do projects to make 'em economic. And then, yeah, I've done the arctic stuff up here with oil search and Santos dipped my foot into renewables a little bit.
I did big, um, project for Tesla. The, um, like integration of all the teams for their lithium refinery down in Texas was down there in 2023 and 2024. And then, um, did a little bit of renewable energy consulting and now I'm back in Alaska working for the, uh, Alyeska Pipeline company.
Awesome.
I've been all over the place.
Lucky to be able to work in some crazy places like, you know, west Africa, Russia, Alaska, obviously, Texas is a little bit crazy offshore, so it's been a lot of fun and doing these big projects is really, really exciting. Yeah.
Well, [00:03:00] I'm, I'm really excited to get into them with you and I think this kind of brings us to our topic, which couldn't be more perfect to to kind of talk about, which is energy and people like how do we, you know, grow and use the people and skills we have and keep the big projects under control, you know, to deliver on this almost exponential energy demand that's, that is here and is coming.
Very excited to talk about that. And I think when we were listing out a couple questions, one of the ones that was really fascinating to me personally was to talk about scale. Because, energy scaling up and projects that are as big as the ones you've worked on in the billion dollar space, and there's so few people that have actually done this.
It's so unique to have you on and be able to talk about it, but how do you scale fast and how do you do that? How do you do it right In industrial engineering and construction and, and all of these major projects, would you say?
Well, you know, the, the oil and gas like [00:04:00] project execution approach is, is very well structured.
Over the last like 20, 25 years, there's this like stage gate approach that's been developed. You know, you just follow these steps and your project is gonna go great, right? And like, it's just not the case, because pro projects are, are planned and built by people, you know, there have been a lot of learnings along the way.
The, um, getting a project over the line is really, really hard. You know, some of the people that, that we know, they call it like riding the bull and, uh, you know, you're trying to stay on the bull and keep the thing project on track for eight, just eight seconds, right? Is riding a bull.
Yeah. And like, people fall off all the time and people always ask like, why did you fall off the bull? You know, like. Eight seconds. It's not that long. Can't you get this done? And, uh, it's just tremendously hard, you know, it's, it's like balancing on top of a ball and, um, you know, to get a project done, you have to have the right plan.
You [00:05:00] have to have the, the right, and you have to have the right people, and if you don't have that mixture, it's really, really difficult. And obviously both of those things combine to make like the project culture for a good project. So that, that's kind of the,
Riding the Bull: Scale & Stage Gates
the macro view. And then once you get those things set up, how do you go fast?
Because as we're sort of seeing, I think the stat is that 5,000 data centers are gonna be built over the next five years. Maybe that's a little high, but somewhere in that neighborhood. And so we're entering into this period where it seems like more and more major projects are gonna get executed.
In a rapid period of time and they need to be built quickly. And what, what advice would you give somebody that is sitting in a boardroom or maybe in a leadership circle and thinking about building a $5 million major construction project and they want to do it as quick as possible.
The joke I think we talked about once is there's no like big [00:06:00] red easy button that you can push that says do project, you know, execute project.
Yeah. And so like the mega projects take a long time to get all the permits, get all the financing and money together, and then like sanction the project. And so a lot of people think once you get the money, you just push the button and you just go. Yeah. But it's, it's very difficult. Like you said, scaling is, scaling is really tough.
You know, the energy business needs to have some kind of breakthrough in order to do all the projects that we wanna do right now. It's a very strange time where you have like kind of the traditional oil companies shedding people right now. Yeah. And then you've got the other companies that are just desperate for people.
And like, if you look at the number of l and g. Liquification plants that are sanctioned right now or in feed, and how many are gonna be built in the next five years. Like, there just aren't enough people. It's, it's a And that's not counting the data center stuff that you mentioned, Orion. Yeah. So, so it's just a [00:07:00] very interesting time.
The traditional ways of working, you know, like we talked about with the stage gate they are very clunky for, for what the kind of like the new energy business wants to do. You know, if you look at, like traditionally you, you plan, uh, you come up with a scope, you like engineer that whole thing into a big package.
Yeah. Then you buy some materials and then you hire contractors and then you go do the project. Right? So like, that is not the way people want to operate now, certainly not Tesla. You know, it's like the, um, the execution approach is more like what can we buy now and what can we do now so that we can keep things moving fast.
Yeah.
So, you know, like. Like Tesla, for example, on the lithium refinery. Once they knew they were gonna do the project, it was like not a question of like, oh, there's 16 different ways to do this. Like, if we just improve this one a little bit, we'll get one more percent rate of return. So let's work on it a little more.
It was [00:08:00] like, no, we are going full speed ahead. You know, so, so those, those old like kind of stage gates need to just be broken down and so like the new way of executing now is like, what can we do and what can we buy to accelerate the project? So a lot of
pre-feed kind of activity, but also just blurring of the lines between where you're at when you think about a stage gate in a sense,
yes.
Definitely blurring the gates. I, I just think of it as a stream of activities. Now, as long as you know, you have a good project, you just go as fast as you can. And so it's not necessarily, the engineering phase is not necessarily to deliver the best, like 100% design detailed package. It's like needs to be sequenced to order materials and keep the materials flowing into the project.
So this is a little bit in my world of software development, right? We had this transformation where we, everything was [00:09:00] Waterfall, which is essentially somewhat of a stage gate approach to building software solutions. And then Amazon and some of the other really big players came along and they had this same problem of like, we have to execute, we have to build amazon.com and it's a multi-billion dollar investment, but we're moving really fast.
We just have to get it done. And they kinda invented Scrum or Agile methodologies to which essentially just says, we'll just keep paying money and keep this team together and sort of manage all these sort of dots on the board as best we can and just go forward. And that methodology I was really skeptical of at the time.
I ca, I'm a little bit older in the software business and I was like, I don't think that works very well, but it's worked great for them. It takes a leap of faith, I think. In terms of cost control, because when you don't have everything defined and you're just like, we're going, we're gonna order this stuff, let's just do it.
It's hard to give a final number. Right? It's maybe more of a range. Like how do you think the energy business might, [00:10:00] would, do you think they'll accept a model like that? Like how, how would you explain it to people? You,
you know, that is a good question because I think the bigger and slower, like traditional oil companies are struggling with what, how to do this right now.
If you look at like the oil companies. Themselves. They decided maybe five years ago, like maybe a little bit earlier than that, like, we wanna do renewables. Like BP is gonna be doing a lot of renewables. They all opened a new business and they said they were gonna do this, but like, they tried to do renewable energy projects like oil and gas projects.
Mm-hmm.
And like, who's gonna hire a oil company and give them money to do a project that old fashioned way? It's just like, not gelling. I don't know if you've seen, but like, it's just not working for 'em. So, like, as an investor, you know, who, who would I wanna give my money to to build a data center? You know, I, I wouldn't wanna hire a, a midstream energy company [00:11:00] that runs pipelines.
I wouldn't wanna hire an oil company. Maybe I, I dunno who I'd wanna hire. Yeah. Right now there's a lot of financial hucksters out there that are basically like, just gimme money and I'll get some gas turbines and they'll build you. Power plant, so it's a, it's a really interesting time and I don't think there's any like, best practice yet.
Yeah. You know, I think like Tesla is very good at being first and the prize in, in the things they're chasing and some of the data center people are chasing. The prize is so big to be the first mover that like, it really isn't as important to like have a perfectly controlled, cost controlled project as it is to be first.
Right. Yeah. And you know, LNG might be like that too. You know, if you get to ship the first cargo out the west coast, like the Canadians got to do that recently, like, um, l and G Canada or the people in Mexico, you know, there may be some, some huge value there that it's not like captured in your like metrics.[00:12:00]
Or very difficult to capture. So like how, how do you scale? You, you just need to have good plans and good people is your, is my fir first principles for that.
Yeah.
Well, internal, loose.
And I think you're tapping on the door of something that really, it's almost a crisis, if you could say it that way.
I mean, it sounds alarmist, but it's like there's a transformation that needs to happen in the space around thinking about how projects should be executed almost at a fundamental level like scrum to versus waterfall. And sort of breaking down those barriers is gonna be a must to meet the energy demand, which maybe we can, we can, uh, tiptoe into because I'm really excited to talk about some of the sort of things that are happening around there.
Particularly renewable energy. I know that you have some experience and understand the dynamics of what's going on with lithium right now. I know Chevron, I think announced that they're going into lithium, so I'm kind of curious what you're seeing on the, [00:13:00] on the world stage, in the energy space, and particularly in the renewable energy space.
The Energy Mix: Solar Math, Storage & Lithium
You bet, Ryan. Yeah. I'm super passionate about this and it's not because I'm like an evangelist of renewable energy, it's that we need so much more electricity right now, and we we're like a cave diver and we've gone all the way into the cave and like we might not have enough air to make it back out again.
Right.
Oh, like, like I'm a electric rate payer and I, I know you are, we're both, we're all using electricity right now to do this podcast, and like people need more electricity and if as rate payers, if our electric bills start going up 'cause of these data centers, et cetera, et cetera, people are gonna be pissed.
Yeah. So like, we have to find a way to get the energy that we need to do this. And it's, it's gonna be tough, you know, if you just look at renewable energy, it's like, it's sort of intermittent, you know, you've got many different ways to make it. I think like the ones that I'm interested [00:14:00] in talking about is obviously like solar and battery storage.
Like, we'll hit that one first. Mm-hmm. Um, geothermal, enhanced geothermal. It's super hot right now. That was a good pun. We'll, um, we'll talk about that a little bit and then just keep going with natural gas. 'cause we have a lot of it, you know, and it's actually, I mean, I don't know if you saw the news last week, the UN still considers it like a low carbon or I don't know if they called it a renewable, but they call it kind of a green fuel.
Yeah. Anytime natural gas displaces coal for making electricity, it's a good thing. So, you know, let me just kind of work my way through those, mm-hmm. And, um, you're right that those, the majors are. Starting to explore and get into like producing lithium, they're making joint ventures. Exxon I think was one of the first to do a big one here in the states in, in, um, Texas and Arkansas.
And then I think Equinor went in next when they, they both went with local partners and then Chevron just announced they're going in last week. [00:15:00] And, um, oddly enough, some of our friends from Noble Energy are like heading that up. Like, uh, Kristen Ghattas I used to work with at Noble is heading that up at Chevron.
So it's a very small world in the energy business and, and very cool. But like if you just focus, um, on solar, it's like really simple. Probably some of the people of listening to this have solar panels on their house. It's kind of cool, right? Like when the sun's out and it's really hot and you need to run your air conditioner, it's great if you can run it off the solar, right?
So that's kind of cool. Or if you can charge your car if it's in the right place. But like, um, if you look at like the output, you really only get about eight hours a day of like really nice energy production. And electricity has to be 24 hours, seven days a week. So like two thirds of the time you've gotta do something else.
So like with solar, you have to produce three times the energy you need in an eight hour period so that you can go for 24 hours and that'll just get you to the [00:16:00] next day, you know? Yeah. So, so the storage component is a really big deal right now, and that's where, you know, energy storage, there's a lot of different ways to store electricity.
None of 'em are like super awesome yet, you know, you can convert it to hydrogen and then you can have a fuel cell. You can put it into like some kind of chemical storage, which is batteries. Mm-hmm. And, and lithium iron phosphates really pretty good right now. And, um, then you have to be able to, you have to like.
Produce enough electricity out of your batteries to get you kind of, to nighttime when things tend to settle down and there's more electricity available. So that's kind of what batteries are doing right now. But eventually we need, we need to like figure out the fact that like you have to produce three times what you need during the day.
Yeah. And then you have to store it and have it ready when you need it. And then we have to figure out long duration energy storage, which we like barely scratched the surface on that one. How so? Go ahead.
So I'm just curious about that. Like [00:17:00] how do you think the industry, is it, do you see a connection between battery technology then and solar is basically the answer to that problem?
Or is it more like battery, solar's great, but you're gonna need a bridge with natural gas or some other. It's gonna be a mix of energy effectively, to solve this problem, we
need, we need everything on the list, right? Yeah, it's totally true that we need all of the above. So like the, the battery storage and solar, it's, it's getting to be like consumer level now where, you know, people have batteries in their garage and they have solar panels on the roof and they're kind of getting comfortable with it.
So that's why I kind of hit that one first, but there's a lot of other things. I mean, you've got intermittent stuff like wind and sun, and then you've got base load, which you just have to have, you just have to have that steady, like producing electricity 24 7. And you know, nuclear does that.
Geothermal energy can do that, you know, natural gas combined [00:18:00] cycle does that pretty well. Like you need the mix. So that, that's what I'm getting at. Like we definitely need everything all at the same time. 'cause if you look at electricity, demand curves and things. We just need everything.
Yeah. And so when you talk about building like a solar project, like at scale, like a billion dollar renewable energy project, 'cause you've worked both in that space and then you've worked on traditional oil and gas. Are there differences that, say you're somebody that's been in the, the, traditional oil and gas space and you're about to take on a big multi-billion dollar solar farm project.
Like, do you have advice for someone that might be going into that or some thoughts on how those projects should be executed or even planned or defined?
Sure, sure thing. So they're very different as you can imagine, right? I mean, if you just look at a solar farm and use that as an example, it's kind of like a oil and gas unconventional project in that you've gotta get good land with good [00:19:00] sun and good place to build a solar farm.
And then you have to do like. Very efficient design and installation of solar panels and electrical cabling and inverters. So instead of drilling and completing, you know, 16 wells with hundreds of frack stages each, you've gotta get like really good at like planning and installing, thousands of solar panels.
So it actually has some parallels, but it's a very, like, utility scale. Solar is like a very commoditized thing now. You know, people know, like kind of down to the penny how much everything is gonna cost per, per kilowatt hour but that's just for producing electricity for that eight hours.
You know, the, the storing it thing is just starting to ramp up as a big business now. So like, there are a lot of parallels between like unconventional oil development or gas development and like. Utility scale, solar pv. But like I would say the battery storage is kind of like the wild west.[00:20:00]
People have been going out there just kind of like landmen trying to buy land. Yeah. Near, um, electrical substations. Pretty much all bought up now. Right. And so they can put battery storage there so they can like either feed it to the grid or take it off the grid. So there's a very like, intense commercial component that, like the major project, people don't often see that, that part of it.
You're like, why are we building this here? You know? Um, so, and
if you have like a project team that's delivering on that, so if I'm making the translation here from Old World to new, or I guess different world to different the, you have a Drilling and Wells team and they were always sort of like the, could have been considered one of the stars of the show depending on what kind of project you're involved in.
And they're out there getting those wells done for a solar farm. Is it the electrician team at that point that they're like. The workhorse team that is putting together those wires and, or is it, is there not? Yeah, I'm just kind of curious like how you divide up the Yeah. Boy, the groups [00:21:00] there,
You know, like the traditional stuff sort of goes out the window.
I think like the people that have the hardest time right now, or the supply chain in, in procurement people like getting the materials for the inverters and cabling and the solar PV and all that. Probably incredibly hard right now. Um, really, just due to the changing in com envi, uh, commodity environment and, uh, trade.
But like I would say maybe the other thing is just like anything having to do with electrical grid connections, high voltage is extremely high demand and long, long lead time. Whether it's getting like a, um, inner tie or a grid tie done, that take could take like five or six years to get all the way through where you can actually kind of like close the switch.
Incredibly long. And then finding like engineers that can do high voltage, um, electrical is pretty, pretty tight market right now.
Okay. Question real quick, and I know we gotta jump, we gotta talk about geothermal soon. But I [00:22:00] really wanna know, like why do I've heard this before, that procurement is the bottleneck.
Why we're in a digital world now. We all have digital supply chains. How could procurement be, you would think that's, I guess, the intersection of supply and demand, right? It's kind of like the ultimate expression of the capitalistic model. What do you think is, is the difficulty on procurement or. What do you think is going on?
Well,
for just for solar, for example or let's just say any electrical components right now. Orion. Yeah. Like Transformers. Um, it's just like demand is outstripping, supply on so many of those things.
Huh?
And then if somebody puts a 25% tariff on you or you put it on them, right. But just imagine the project economic impact.
Yeah. If you're ordering, you know, 5,000 solar PV module panels, so like, it's just tough to plan around that, that like the companies that aren't getting [00:23:00] tariffed, everybody wants to buy from 'em. So their lead time just went through the roof. Yeah, it's it's very unpredictable. And, and as you know, like to plan and execute, you want predictability.
And it's also like some of the things I know with Nvidia, for example, in the and the factories that are producing chips, like they're, they have huge demand, but in order to actually build a factory to do fabrication of chips at the level of precision that we need, which is probably similar to transformers, it's just not something you can throw up super quick.
And so yeah, that, that supply and demand, maybe it will level out, but it's gonna be a while it seems like.
Yeah. It's just the un, you know, the market like certainty on things like that, and it's just hard to plan with a lot of uncertainty right now,
particularly on a mega project because you're. It seems like it's almost always an international effort to do these projects.
Yeah.
Yep. And like, uh, Tesla mega packs, you know, [00:24:00] they're, they're large battery storage modules. They're the tractor trailer size. Yeah. Uh, 1.3 megawatt hours ish. Those things, like when the administration changed, those things went in high demand and like, you know, if you didn't have your order placed, it was, it was pretty tough.
It was pretty tough there. So that's kind of one example.
Yeah. The, well, let's shift over and talk a little bit about geothermal then. Just going back down that list. Uh, I think that one was next. I'm excited to crack into this a little bit, to, to use another pun. Another pun. Yeah. So,
I, I'm not, I'm not a geothermal expert by any means.
I'm just interested in it and I've, I've researched it a lot because it has all of the makings for a really good energy system for us. And it uses a lot of the skills that we've developed in this country over the last 50 years in, in the oil business, and especially in the last 15 in the unconventional oil business.
Right? So it's like. And it's base load energy, right? [00:25:00] You've got hot rocks, you're converting that through all kinds of different systems to make electricity, right? That's, that's the core of it. Dang, I just made another pun. So the, um, the, the thing that's cool about this is, and it's just really started to pick up the last couple years, is enhanced geothermal energy.
You're not pulling like hot water. Out of the ground that's already there. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, there's a big project out in California in Calistoga. It was producing all through until about 2000. You know, there's already water and there's vulcanism and there's hot steam. And like the people, uh, Unical was one of the companies drilled down, produced that steam made electricity.
Right. So like enhanced geothermal is not that. It's like finding the right rocks that are hot and can conduct the heat and then drilling instead of drilling like, unconventional oil. You still drill two wells and you fracture, but you use it so that you can like inject water down one, well pump it through the rock, through [00:26:00] the fractures that you've made.
Turn it into steam high energy and bring it up the other well. So that's like enhanced geothermal in a nutshell. And like if you wanna learn more about it, VO energy in Houston, like they've attracted a bunch of interest, a bunch of capital, they're doing some really cool projects. You can read more about it on their site and um, that's kind of like enhanced geothermal.
But what's so cool about it? Yeah, it runs 24 7. It's always producing electricity and it uses like these drilling and completion techniques that we've learned in the oil business. You know, if you think like, what is the coolest renewable energy mix right now? It's one that's like close to oil and gas, but produces energy without like, uh, producing CO2.
Yeah. It's like, it's got all the ingredients. So I think it's really gonna take off and, you know, um, if you look at the different parts of the country, the places where people need [00:27:00] electricity, you know, you, you, I'm sure you've heard of like the Pacific Rim and Ring of Fire.
Hot Rocks: Enhanced Geothermal
Mm-hmm. A
lot of people in that area that live in the Pacific Rim and there's a lot of geothermal heat there, so nice, um, if you look at it that way.
But, but other places have it too. You know, it's just, just, uh, even in the, the Permian, believe it or not, I think is is pretty darn hot. Yeah. When you get down.
So how hot do you have to get really? Is it enough to make steam or do you just Well, you have to
get much hotter than boiling water. Okay. You have to get much, much hotter, like kind of like a, a good number for like steam in a steam power plants, like around 700 degrees Fahrenheit.
Okay. And like, if you look at like. Drilling and completion equipment and tools from the oil field, and it's just not, it's just not there for that kind of temperature use yet.
Yeah.
And the kind of rock that you have to drill through is much different.
So are there like reservoir engineering kind of specialists that can find these hotspots too?
Or is it a new field of study and people [00:28:00] are going out there and taking a look at all these old pieces of land? Or like, how do you find these spots? You know, you know,
I think it's a little bit of both, right? Yeah. It's like you need to find the hot rocks that you can fracture. And so instead of looking for like, um, looking for oil, the and like running some economic models on, on how much you'll be able to produce and what costs, this is more about like how much heat and heat flow and how much the equipment and drilling will cost to do it.
So I think it, it really ports over a lot of the, a lot of the people from the oil field.
Yeah. And I guess that ties into something that we sort of started the conversation with, which we eventually we'll have to tip into, which is talking about that the oil business is shedding jobs or has been, maybe that's reversing, uh, and these are really great things to talk about, about these areas that people can go maybe you're a drilling engineer and you're out of a job.
I didn't know anything about what you were talking about with fracking. So that's, that's a pretty great [00:29:00] option that something is going in for creating geo, geothermal energy. That could be a really interesting career path that aligns with those kinds of skills. So, oh yeah,
definitely. Yeah.
And I guess what, how do you think, what would be your advice if someone wants to get into the energy space and maybe make some of those bridges?
The energy business is a great business to get into. Even the oil and gas business is still incredibly challenging and fun, you know? But now there are a lot of other segments of the energy sector that you can get into also. So it's good. It is a really good place. And, um, I think like my like 10,000 foot level is if you don't know what you wanna do when you grow up, but you like science and math, if you wanna become, go to college, become an electrical engineer.
Mm-hmm. And if you don't wanna go to college, become an electrician, like, like, we need those people so badly in this country. The world needs them. Yeah. And if you look at kind of just the demand for electricity and everything that [00:30:00] we wanna do, you can understand why, you know, so I, that, that's my kind of my first advice.
You know, if you're, if you're like. Looking to get into the energy business. There's so many different opportunities, like how do you decide what part of it you wanna go into and, you know, you need to go to meet some people and go to career fairs. You need to go to like the SHO Offshore Technology Conference.
You need to go to like renewable energy conference. Like here in Alaska. We even have a local energy conference focused on renewables. And it's, it's every year in April or May. And, um, you know, that is a fantastic conference. I've been to that one. You know, just the best way to like decide, like, what do you wanna do when you grow up in the energy business is just to talk to people that are doing it, and there there's so many, so many areas.
Now there's, there's the emerging stuff in renewable energy. And like there's probably some things that haven't been invented yet too.
Yeah. AI is somehow gonna work its way into to this. Which might be another interesting topic [00:31:00] to see if you feel like the, I know that AI is impacting energy demand substantially.
I think, what do they say? Bots for wa watts for bots. Is that right? Uh, I haven't
AI & Modular: Construction → Manufacturing
heard that one
before,
Ryan.
Yeah, people are, they, uh, I think the, originally it was Watts for per person is the way that you look at energy and now they're saying it's watts for bots which is, that's nuts for driving demand as well.
Yeah. Yeah. That is nuts. Yeah, it is a lot of electricity And, um, yeah, like we talked about earlier, people are gonna be really pissed off if their electric bill start going up so that they can ask, you know, how to make, uh, scrambled eggs or something like that. And AI will help 'em.
Yeah. Do dunno what we're gonna do.
What, uh, kind of speaking of that, 'cause you're sort of, you're at the high level. Major project craft. Have you seen any impacts, obviously AI's impacting demand, have you seen any AI impacts [00:32:00] start to wiggle their way into the major project space? Uh, yet maybe in terms of how people are executing or using it as a tool or using it to learn, uh, there, there's a lot of conversations going on about it, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts about how that might, how it might impact the space or is already
Well, I, I think it's, it's certainly helping with analyzing performance.
On a major project. Right. There's like you talked about earlier, there's thousands of people building some of these billion dollar projects and they're all over the world. They're fabricating in Asia and transporting and building and installing here. And so it's definitely people are working on, I think you guys might be working on some way to analyze project and performance and control with AI because, you know, finding the needle in the haystack of what's going wrong on a project is very difficult.
You know, find, finding the important data [00:33:00] can be tough,
Yeah.
So especially when you can't like, be everywhere at all the time talking to people and, and like kind of getting the real gist of how things are going.
You
know, so I see, I see a lot of, a lot of room for it to help us there, you know, and, and, um, I'm not really sure when I, when I was at Tesla you know, we were working on the piping for the lithium refinery and, uh, Drew Baglino asked us like, why isn't there a software that can just automatically route and design all this pipe for us?
Yeah. And,
and it was like it, and I was asking myself the same question, like, how can this be this hard that we can't, you know, we had, I don't remember how many linear feet of pipe to route, but it was a lot.
Right?
And it was like, why are people like clicking, you know, from pipe support to route pipe these days?
So, you know, there's, there's probably something gonna happen there.
Mm-hmm. You
know, for sure when it comes to automating some of the design, you know, and that's a little bit scary for some people and it's also really cool. Yeah. So those are [00:34:00] just a few I could think of off the top of my head.
Yeah. And do you think, I know that you have a lot of experience as well in modular fabrication, is that right?
And I wonder if maybe Modular Fabrication and AI will, will both be impacting the space at the same time, because that's kind of a model where AI is like, here's how you route everything. And then Modular Fabrication also kind of simplifies these major projects into sort of bite-sized chunks. Is that kind of the, the way that, that, that works kinda help you scale up and sort of compartmentalize your problem and simplify it?
Yeah, I mean, you've hit on a couple important things there, Ryan. One is that like. Improvement in construction efficiency over the last, like, say just pick 50 years, it's not improved a lot.
Mm-hmm.
And so like turning construction into manufacturing is one, manufacturing has improved dramatically.
Right On, on how fast something can be [00:35:00] built. So like that's what one of the things about Modularization that's cool is like turning part of the project into manufacturing. And the other thing is like, you don't necessarily have the people where you need to construct the project, right? Like offshore, we talked about modules, right.
You, you lift a 10,000 ton module onto an offshore facility. Yeah. Floating platform. So like you build it one place, you bring it there, you put it onto the platform, right. Because you can't get the people there. Yeah. So that, that's another area area and reason that modularization is so cool. You know, you kind of can.
Can break. Like, or if you're building it somewhere and bringing it somewhere where you can hook it up, you just have to find kind of like the right mix of skills. You know, you, you want like, like, I don't know, just kind of some like typical modules you might have, like a gas compression module, power, electrical power generation module, living quarters module.
You wanna get like the right skills to build a living quarters [00:36:00] module where people live and eat and sleep. Yeah. So that's very different than the people that build like the power generation module.
Right. So,
you know, you wanna find the skills there. And I haven't really thought too much about how AI would help with that, but you know what it can help us with is like, how can we change construction more into manufacturing?
Yeah, that's a really interesting insight that I hadn't thought about that particularly the, the fact that we haven't really made a lot of progress and other industries are. Sort of making these exponential leaps. So kinda time to take a few new approaches, I think with modular construction as well. I mean, how would you advise someone that's listening to this podcast, let's just pretend they are working on thinking about executing a major project.
Maybe they're in the planning stages and they're like, wow, modular's a pretty good idea, but I haven't really thought about doing that before. Is it too late? When's the right time, would you say to take the, is it like, it's a, [00:37:00] it's an execution strategy, right? Like you have to, can you shift to it or do you wanna do it at a certain point in your project?
I guess.
You know, and it, it's definitely remember how I said like, you have to have the right plan and you have to have the right people.
Yeah. So
like, this is definitely the planning phase when you decide this. And like, you know, there's, there's the term stick built. That's where you build everything on site.
You just bring it there and build it. And then modularization is kind of the other end of the extreme. Like in the perfect modular project, you just bring it there and set it down, hook up your power and your outputs and things, and you go and you start it up, you know? So it's definitely in the planning phase, you need to decide, and it's gonna based, be based on where you're working, where the talent is.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, and how, kind of like how remote you are and, um, if the capacity's there, I mean, modularization isn't gonna help you if every yard that builds modules is, is chockablock full building [00:38:00] LNG plants.
That's true. So it goes back to procurement in some way as well. You have to make sure you can find someone that can do it for you.
Yeah.
And you know, the, it's not like a solution for everything too. Orion, as you, as you can imagine, you know, the, the, uh, difficulty with modular fabrication is getting the module finished and like pre-com commissioned and maybe partly commissioned before it comes to your project site.
And like a lot of times it's like you have to ship a module before it's done.
Okay. Uh, you know, you got seasonal constraints, you've got a permit requirement. Governmental rules you if you have to start, you know, sometimes you have to ship the module when it's not ready yet. Those are the challenges, is getting 'em done before they ship out.
Well, and I is that, I guess what if I were to try and make a case then for doing this, let's say it is the right setup, is there, like the Modular Construction Association of America that you, that will sell you a book on this?
Or like, how do you. [00:39:00] Build out that, uh, case to leadership that might have never done a modular project. And I think you may have actually helped encourage groups to do some modular work in the past that hadn't done it before. I'm, I'm curious if Yeah. How, how you go about like helping people understand the value and get a project to, to shift to a modular focus if it needs it.
If you look at like, just pick a name plate of something, let me use oil and gas. 'cause I'm used to that. You wanna produce 60,000 barrels per day of oil, right? Mm-hmm. And so, you know, you're gonna need say, 20 big modules to do it, or on a offshore facility, maybe three super mega modules. So like you, you look at the cost, like you look at the cost and you look at how much faster you can do it.
And there's usually an immediate value addition there, right? Mm-hmm. Where it might be a problem is if you need to use local labor, you know, some [00:40:00] places like, okay, great, you're gonna build all of your modules overseas, bring 'em here, and there's gonna be like five jobs to hook 'em up, right? Like, uh, five full-time people.
So, you know, that's an extreme example, but you really want to, you really wanna look at that, like before you decide like maybe part of the project is modular and part of it isn't, you know, 'cause there's some intrinsic value. Inherent value in, in having the local people. Yeah. You know, involved and invested in the success of the project too.
So, but usually the value is pretty obvious. There. There are some downsides, um, just if you think about having to lift up a giant heavy steel structure, you have to put a lot of structural steel into a module that you wouldn't need if you're just building it in place, you know? Okay. So there's, there's extra steel weight in there, but.
People kind of tend to think of structural steel as not that expensive, especially in like a high tech fab. So it might, it's probably okay.
Coach, Not Commander
Thank you. Does that answer your question? It does. And I think this is a good time to segue 'cause we've talked a lot about energy and the topic was people and energy.
And one of the things that I remember about you, James, we were in a meeting, this, you're the first person I've ever had on that actually was my you know, I, I was able to work with and had your, I, so I got to be under your leadership a little bit. And it was really great and I appreciated it. And I remember we were in a meeting, meeting, I don't really remember what was going on, but it's something.
And you were able to come in and you set the tone. You deescalated a crisis. And said sort of, Hey, let's like, wait a second, let's just pause and make sure we don't, you know, this isn't you, you, you paid attention to the people and you thought a lot about, I think just sort of the trade-offs and wanted to make sure everyone was okay and that, that we took the time to do it right.
I think it was a good call at the time, and I just remember thinking [00:42:00] like, James is really savvy as a culture setter and as sort of a leader. And now that I have you on the, the podcast, I can kind of ask you what kind of advice you would have for people or how to kind of run teams. Uh, and, and I don't work within your space anymore, so I'm not even plugging you as, as a as a boss.
But like the, I guess like what kind of strategies and techniques have been helpful for you to develop your leadership style and what advice do you have for, uh, people that want to be successful in leading these mega scale projects?
Right on. Now. That's a great question. Thank you. I, uh, I like to think that I've got some skill in this area, Orion, and I'm glad to hear from somebody else.
Engineers don't always, aren't always viewed as the most empathetic people. And, you know, it's like, it's like dollars and cents, it's like solutions in math. It's, uh, but projects are built by people a hundred [00:43:00] percent. They don't build themselves, you know? Yeah. Uh, you really have to look at it as a team and I don't believe in the, like traditional command and control leadership style is like going forward as a great way to work.
I don't think people like working in a team like that. And nowadays people have lots of choices about where they wanna work, and so people wanna be a valuable member of a team. So like the project manager is almost like a coach at this point. Or project director. Mm-hmm. You know, you, if you've got a really good team, you're just helping them like drive toward the goal line.
And so, seeing how people work and finding out how they communicate, I always do that with people when I set up a team and meet with them for the first time. Hey, do, if something's going wrong, do you want me to text you, call you, email you. Like, when's a good time? If you're not available, just tell me, like, I'll call you in 10 minutes.
You know, just going through that with everybody and, and realizing that like it goes both ways [00:44:00] is, is very important. You know, you wanna communicate the way people like to communicate. Some people like a email where they can summarize everything, all their thoughts in one spot. Some people are just text me, Hey, call me.
Yeah. You
know? So that's a big part of it. You know, looking at yourself as a coach and letting, letting your people do their thing is, is really important. You know? Um, people hate to be micromanaged. The thing is in major projects though, like you do have to be controlling the project and moving it forward.
So it's, it's not to say that you can't control, 'cause you, you absolutely have to, but it's really about like helping the teams see the milestones that are coming up and like getting everything lined up to hit those. So if you, if you help people get those things lined out, you have a good plan and you know, people have the tools to execute, then you can kind of just let 'em rip.
And I mean, that is the best team to be on is where everybody's, and, and then people just look to you as the leader to help them if they get stuck. You know, that, that's [00:45:00] kind of the way I look at it. Definitely a lot, a lot more asking these days than telling, you know, in, in the major project world that that's like really, really important and just recognizing, yeah, people want to always be learning on the job.
So, major projects take a long time. Just getting the project, like through the, um, planning and, and funded and to execute takes a couple years and then executing a major project can take two to four, two to five years maybe. So, you know, people need areas to grow on the team, move around and like find new challenges.
I mean, there are just very few people that are coming into the workforce that wanna do the same thing for five years. Can you imagine?
Yeah.
So, you know, having the, you know, so as you go through the different phases of the project, you know, people can move around to what they're interested in or what they're good at, you know, and wanna do more of.
So I really encourage that. I mean, those are just some of the things I do. Always remaining optimistic. I mean, I'm sure you've seen that about me as well.
Yeah. People [00:46:00] would never do
projects if they weren't optimists because there's so many things to overcome, you know, to get, to get some, one of these mega projects delivered.
And so, you know, I'm always optimistic about getting the project done 'cause I know, you know, when people work together as a team, there's really nothing they can't do. And so just, um, keeping that level of optimism super important.
And it's engineers, like you started with your comment, oftentimes have a hard time with that style.
I think. And again, from the development world that I'm in we run into that a lot where folks are people are a math equation and we're gonna solve it and then we're gonna factor that math equation and get rid of a few people and then it's still gonna work. And like somehow something about that doesn't quite work all the time.
Have you. Any advice to someone that might be listening to this and they're like, yeah, you know, that's kind of true. I'm an engineer. I kind of just sort of see it as like moving [00:47:00] people from A to B, but maybe I could should try to soften, maybe become a little more Wiseman in my approach. How would you advise them to, to kind of learn that style?
Would it be, is there some books in that you might have read or ways to kind of adapt? Because I think there's more people that are in the rigid, when you come through the science hard sciences, it's often a, it's a often a transition to um, to that sort of management style.
I would be hard pressed.
I, I think a lot of these things are very difficult to learn by reading a book, and they're very easy to learn by doing. So like, my first thing that I would recommend is not, I'm not like slagging on any books. I'm just saying like, is to ask a lot of questions, right? As you're going into this the best way to learn how to like get the, a [00:48:00] successful project for everyone is just to ask a lot of questions.
Find, and that's how you find out what's important to everyone. So that's kind of number one. And like number two is that a lot of times the best technical solution is not the best overall solution, you know? So, tell me more. You've got this whole new arena of like stakeholder management where like.
If you successfully complete a project and mis meet all your targets, but like the stakeholders, the people that are gonna be interacting with or using your project or benefiting from it, if they're not happy, then you may not be successful. Yeah. So like this whole thing of like finding out some technical solutions and then just talking to the people that are gonna be involved.
You know, just to use like a tight example, it's like the operations team, the commissioning team, the communications and local affairs people. Hey, here's some different options that we're working through. Like, what are the pros and cons, [00:49:00] right? Just asking those questions will really take you far.
You know, it's, it's tough to learn a lot of these things from a book. You, you really have to try 'em out on a smaller scale and, and just learn as you go. Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of, a lot of, um, a lot of good books about. Major projects and they, they talk through, like how big things get done is kind of a cool book.
Talks through a lot of project failures and why they failed and talks through some of the, like prototyping you can do and how to plan. But it's like great. Like you really have to practice. Yeah. You, you really have to just practice to do it.
Well, and I guess I wanna touch on one thing that you sort of triggered in that description, which is that projects, and we talked about this with modularization, but projects are executed by people and then people in the community that those projects exist, live with the results of that project.
They are [00:50:00] integrated into it, into the fabric of their lives, possibly for a really long time. I'm just curious about, like, as you were talking about like these projects have to work for you, it seems like the stakeholder management and the. Like being in, in connection with the communities that you're gonna impact and hopefully have a good outcome for them is like a new, not new, but it's, it's always been important.
Maybe it's more important today than ever before as the world's sort of getting smaller and people are able to communicate across all different types of communities and, and so that the impact of these projects has to be sort of woven into the community and thought through in a more.
Deliberate way, maybe. Do you think that's the case these days?
Yeah. Well, if you look at like a perfect outcome or what might be a perfect outcome, say for like a electricity projects, say on the West Coast somewhere. You want people at the end of the [00:51:00] project when the thing is started up, you want everybody around there either that's worked on the project, that's benefiting from it, that lives nearby.
You want 'em to be proud of that, that thing that you did, right? Yeah. Like that is your hallmark of success, right? Is like, wow, I've got a steady job working at this facility now, you know, s seven days a week, 12 hours a day I'm working there. Or like, yeah, we're producing this thing and exporting it and we're like increasing the GDP of our country.
You know? So there's, there's like getting that pride in, in project is very important and it's another thing that helps with the stakeholders. Yeah.
That's really cool. So speaking of stakeholders and, and people and the energy business, would you say that as we talked about this, we said oil and gas is shedding geothermal, solar, wind, nuclear is on the rise.
Is that a fair thing to say, [00:52:00] uh, at this point or perhaps like it's balancing out. And I'm curious, like, as you are managing these different people, do you have any advice for how to sort of bring someone from one space to the next, uh, how to level them up and make them feel comfortable on a team?
Maybe if you're joining a team of engineers that have been in the oil and gas space a really long time, how do you, how do they bring in someone from the solar side? Like how do we keep this community together and grow together rather than being so siloed?
Y you know, just first though. I do, I don't know what's gonna happen in the oil and gas.
I don't know, they are shedding jobs right now. You can read about it in the newspaper, but like, um, it's a very strange time. Like there's, there's plenty of oil and gas right now, but there's not plenty of electricity and there's not this like growth and exploration happening where like, we know where the oil is gonna come from in five years.
We don't know right now. It's really [00:53:00] weird. So I'm, I'm just not sure what's gonna happen there. But like, as far as putting together a team with a mix of these folks. That is really interesting. You know, coming into, like say Tesla, when we were building the lithium refinery, it was really fascinating. We had people that had recently built like the battery module factory in Sparks, Nevada.
We had people that had been working as operators in the chemical plant for Exxon in West Texas or East Texas. You know, we had people like me from the upstream business you know, and a lot of construction management. So it was an interesting mix, you know. Um, I see like the key to success there and coming in is just being willing to learn how the other people do things.
You know, I, I, um, I had a, a very like fixed in my mind way of doing things at, and I, I started to like listen to everyone at the Lithium Refinery project and I realized we're not like [00:54:00] making high pressure flammable. Liquids, fluids out of this project were making lithium hydroxide. And so like, okay, so the stakes weren't quite as high, you know, we weren't, nothing was gonna blow up.
So that, that was kind of like, something I learned by talking to everybody.
Let's, uh, yeah, let's shift over and talk a little bit about the job market. We were, we've been hinting that oil and gas space is shedding jobs, but it's really not just the oil and gas space, it's kind of everywhere. There's a lot of transition happening in the workplace.
Some might be AI related, it might be tariff related economy shifting, things like that. I guess just maybe giving some of the younger listeners that might be in college, some tips about this energy space, which we also said needs a lot of jobs. So maybe there's some advice that you could give our younger listeners that are looking to go into this field.[00:55:00]
The Next Generation & Moore’s Law for Energy
Right on. If you've seen some of the comics, you know, like there's a lot of jokes. It's like, oh, so, uh, you know, the doctor's like got the baby and he is like explaining to the parents, you know, I got some bad news like your son or your daughter's an engineer, and, and that one always cracked me up, but like, no engineers are, are problem solvers.
And there, there are so many problems facing, facing the, humans and the planet right now. And like. Having enough energy is one of 'em, but there are so many other ones. You know, just like developing things to help people live longer and be healthy. Have clean water and clean air to breathe, get to the places they need to be, right?
So there's just so many fun things to work on. You know, if, if you don't know what you wanna do, but you like solving technical problems there's so many opportunities out there. And so, the best thing to do is like, talk to people that are doing these, solving these problems, you know, as a, um, early career person, or if you're in [00:56:00] college, there are so many events that are like pre-made just for you to go and kind of get a flavor of all of these different areas.
Oh, you know, I think wastewater treatment is really interesting. Or I think building semiconductors is really interesting. Or I think drilling for geothermal energy or natural gas is interesting, you know, so you've gotta really find what you're interested in and when you're younger, you know, it could be a lot of things.
So try 'em all, try everything. Say yes to everything. If somebody calls and says, do you wanna get on a helicopter and fly offshore tomorrow? Can you be there at six in the morning? Say yes. So like, yeah. Talk to people, try things and, um, you know, there's this huge demand, like you were saying earlier, like, I don't know if like the marketplace and the business knows what it needs right now.
Mm-hmm. You know,
to, to satisfy what the world needs. It's like we need [00:57:00] a lot of electricity, but at the same time, like electricians are like in high demand and nobody wants to become an electrician. You, you know, or like how many electrical engineers per year are graduating from universities in your country?
You know, so it's like what's there's not that meeting of like supply and demand for talent right now. It's very confusing time. You know, finding out what you're curious about and what you're interested in is probably more valuable than saying like, go to this training class or go to this job board.
You know, start with what, what's exciting for you? 'cause there's so many problems to solve.
What was exciting for you as a young man when you started getting into the energy space, would you say, was it a spark for you to, to, uh, to continue our puns? Oh, definitely. Yeah.
No, definitely. I grew up working on boats and fishing and doing ocean things like [00:58:00] diving, fishing boats.
So I knew I wanted to do, to do something in the ocean, and I knew I wanted to be an engineer. So like I just had to find like a melding of all those things. And like literally when I looked at the college applications and I saw that there was offshore engineering, I just like checked the box Orion. That's how it got, I got into it, naval architecture and offshore engineering check.
And literally that's how I got into Cal University of California, Berkeley. Like they were looking for people that were interested in that. And so, I was very fortunate and you know, when I graduated. I tried working as a Bridge bridge engineer for a little while 'cause the bridge is over water.
That was kind of cool. But then when I found out what people were doing offshore with some of these like mega floating facilities and the deep water projects that are in like 8,000 feet deep water, you know, producing oil and gas there or, or maybe in 10 years wind, like I was fascinated, [00:59:00] moving these giant facilities, 10,000 tons.
You know, there's a crane vessel now that can lift 20,000 tons almost. Wow. So like I was, um, I was fascinated. So like I just kind of had to find a mix of what I was curious about and what I like to do, and then find out kind of a little more about those engineering disciplines. And it just slotted it right in perfectly for me.
And I think then also what's interesting about what you, what we've said here is we're like mentioning that like businesses we're in a time of flux. The way that these things are done is not the way that they were done before. And it's sort of like younger people are the torch bearers that come in and share an a, an energy of change that's needed in this space right now.
So I guess like I would think that if you're young and you're like, I don't have anything to contribute, it's like hearing our conversation. It's like obviously there's a lot of things that are going to be changing [01:00:00] and the younger folks coming in. Are really good at that. So it's a really great time to get into the energy space, even though if you look at it from afar, maybe you're, maybe you're thinking, oh, it's kind of in flux.
That's a bad sign. It's actually maybe, maybe one of the best signs. Yeah,
yeah. Like the newer generations of workers, like, they don't, like if they, if they see a way of doing things that they think is dumb, they'll just wanna do a better, do it a better way. It's like, this is dumb. I don't wanna do it this way, I wanna do it this way.
And so, like, you get some really, really great innovation there. And so you just have to be able to say like, this is the goal. This is what we wanna do. You guys are much better at me than innovating and finding these new ways of working. Like go forth and do it. And like, usually if you just kind of set out the objective and the goal, uh, people are just incredible at finding really cool ways to do things.
Yeah. Now that's, that's so much fun. Yeah. The reason that solar and battery [01:01:00] storage is like accelerating and, and like really penetrating the market right now is if you compare it to other, like large mechanical things, like a wind turbine is large, it's just a large mechanical device. It spins around, turns a generator.
Those are, there's like just not a lot of room for improvement and they, you, they can only get so big. Yeah. Wheel and and likes with oil and gas, you know, there's like, yeah, you can like drill so many wells and get the bigger facilities, but there's some limits there. But like with like microelectronics solar panels and batteries there really isn't a limit there.
Like there's a technical limit. I think it's like. I don't remember. I think it's one kilowatt per square meter maybe, um, from the sun and like, like we're gonna get there. And it's like really is following Moore's Law where if you look at like a solar panel from five years ago and like the size, cost, and output and compare it to one [01:02:00] today, it's amazing.
And, and like look at cost and capacity for batteries. It's the same situation. You know, if you look at like, gosh, I don't know, just a little, a little like lithium iron phosphate, LFP battery for your, for your trail, your, uh, camper. Yeah. Like that used to cost a thousand dollars and they were big and heavy and now they cost like $300 and they're small and light.
And so, and that has happened really quickly. So I, I can see how, like, remember how I talked about how you, you need to make like. All of your electricity in eight hours and store it for the rest of the time.
Right.
Like, or even longer. So like I can see that as being possible.
It's interesting because we're at a time where I think people don't think about it like that, but there seems like there's an inflection point.
If you drive a Tesla, it's like 300 to 400 miles is your range. And there's still range anxiety. That's like not quite enough for everybody. [01:03:00] But if you double that and you get the same performance out of that same power to weight ratio, battery pack and Moore's law is about doubling every seven years,
I believe.
I don't recall the period. Yeah,
yeah. Yep. It's not that long. It's, it's that changes everything. If you have a car that can go 800 miles, if you can store that much power, and I didn't realize that's true as well on the solar, that there's more to gain from the actual. Cells as they're capturing the light.
Huge. And that, that's following Moore's Law as well. That's really, really cool.
Yeah, I mean, another example that with that, with the panels is like if you were an early adopter and you put a 10 kilowatt solar array on your roof I don't know, let's just say it's like, um, 30 panels, maybe 35, something like that.
And then. Today, like you were getting maybe 200, 250 watts per panel.
Mm-hmm
Today, the exact same size panel, same configuration. You could be getting twice that.
Wow. [01:04:00]
And to replace your panels with the new ones. It like, it makes economic sense. It's amazing. So you can go out there, you've got the same rack, you've got the same size panels.
Do you like as long as your inverters are right and everything, or you may need a few more, but you can like unplug your old panels, bolt down your new panels, and you can like double your production. Wow. Like people, like, uh, people are starting to realize they can do that now that they're gonna wanna charge their car at home or like, you know, charge their batteries to, to, to power something later they're starting to realize, oh my gosh, this is, this is like literally that doubling you were talking about.
I was trying to convince my parents in San Diego to do it. They, they have the, you know, early adopters and have the old panels and like, it's just remarkable how far it's come and how simple it is.
What do you think there's an inflection point where like, how I, like for example, I know that there's, uh, lithium ion and there's solid state batteries are kind of maybe coming.
Um, there's [01:05:00] other liquid states that they're working on as well. I think that Tesla's more interested in, but do you think there's some inflection point in the future that we're gonna hit that's gonna cause sort of a major shift in the economy? Like the
battery tech, I wouldn't even try, I wouldn't even try and guess on that one.
You know, like, like if you just look at like energy density Orion. Mm-hmm. Like a gallon of diesel fuel, just like, just kicks, kicks the butt of every other kind of energy storage right now. Yeah. A gallon of diesel fuel has so much energy in it compared to like, say it weighs six pounds or whatever, six pounds of batteries not even close.
And so we, we've got a long ways to improve, you know? And so, but like if you just use a, a light duty car, a family car as an example, like they're pretty darn good now. Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm not sure we may even be past the inflection point with some things.
Mm-hmm. [01:06:00] But
like, are we ever gonna have an electric boat or an electric aircraft?
You know, that energy density may just never be there for that.
If you can do it with I guess the question starts to become, are you building a bomb or are you building a battery? Right. That's the trick on energy storage is to make sure there's no runaway catalyst situation. So maybe that's, it's tricky because I think that gallon of diesel fuel is a bomb in a way.
So maybe there's some leeway there, but I'm
hopeful. Yeah. I mean, gasoline is, gasoline has a lot of energy density too, and it is a bomb.
Yeah. You know, so, yeah.
It's just how you look at it, um, anytime you're gonna get all that energy in one spot, it's gonna be, it's gonna be dangerous if not handled properly.
But just going back to your question on the inflection point it's like when people don't even notice what kind of energy they're using is when you know it's succeeding. Yeah. I mean, right now. Like the barriers that are like in [01:07:00] holding back, like adoption of electric cars. If people can just fill up a, fill up an electric car, just like they fill up a gasoline or diesel vehicle, they don't see the difference there.
It's like literally like, I don't know, plug in for, you know, two minutes and you're charged.
Yeah. Great.
And if there's a electric charger on the every corner that there's a gas station, people won't notice that anymore. Nobody wants to be stranded. You know, when you're stranded right now you can get AAA to come, bring you some gas.
Yeah. If
you're not a good planner. And so like there's a solution there. The electric solutions are starting to come out. They're not super good yet, but like AAA will bring a little trailer with batteries and they will charge your car now.
Oh, really? So like,
yeah. Yeah. Really not everywhere, but like a lot of places they will.
So like when you don't even notice what form of engineering you've used is, is kind of when you're at that, that point. So there's, there's a cell phones, right? I mean, I don't know, just for fun. Yeah, you gotta look at the Nissan Leaf [01:08:00] ad. Like what if everything ran on gasoline and you know, the guy's got his cell phone and like, there's like a little two stroke engine and it's like put putting smoke out the top and like, obviously like little like micro, like little devices now.
None of them need to everything kind of just runs on batteries and electricity now.
Yeah, it's
kind of cool. I was just thinking about that the other day, like, um, how instead of bringing like a little battery powered generator camping with you nowadays a lot of people just bring one of those little like, battery solar things and throw up a couple of solar panels on a kickstand.
Yeah. You know, when that gets to be like replacing people's generators then, you know, we'll start to see a inflection point there too.
Yeah. We're, um. I do, I have one of those arias that I take camping, and it's actually pretty fantastic. And you can throw up a little solar panel and charge it up if you need it.
And it has a lot of energy, like just a small little suitcase, little carrying [01:09:00] size battery. Yeah.
Probably one kilowatt hour right there. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But yeah, and, and it, it's just, you know, being able to keep it topped up and filled. People worry about stuff like that. Yeah. You know, so yeah. The best way is to just try it out and play around.
Unfortunately, it's not free to try those things out.
I think as people, I, I know this from getting, having an electric car, there is a, you know, people make that shift to electric and it's it does, I would not wanna go back to a cell phone that's put putting, and I still have like a minivan for hauling my kids around.
But the electric car has a place in my life now and has for like 10 years and I wanna. Keep doing that because because it's just a better solution. It's more optimal and you can feel the environmental benefits of it. You, it's I mean, I know with manufacturing it's not completely clean, but the the health effects of using just electric and starting to sort, sort of phase out some of those other energy [01:10:00] sources when they're close to you, like gasoline is is nice.
It it is, but you know, it, it's never gonna like take over until it's the best solution for everyone. You know, like, like there are a lot of people that like, are just happy to do something good for the environment but that doesn't mean that the platform will succeed. Like when it works better than an internal combustion vehicle.
And when people are like making those kind of choices when they go to buy a new one, that's when you know that it's successful. Yeah. And so yeah, there's still a long, long way to go in a lot of areas, but yeah, someday we're gonna be like able to cut the cord on electric electricity, like coming into your house, you're, you know, like just getting an electrical connection for like a major facility right now is very difficult.
People are gonna be wanting to make their own energy and electricity. So there's, there's just a lot of cool things being done right now. Like the Costco projects I worked on, I forgot to tell you about those. Um, we'll have to mix [01:11:00] this in here somehow. Is like Costco, literally like. They're building so fast, they could not get enough electricity to their facilities
Off-Grid, Critical Minerals & the Close
really.
So like they just said, we're gonna generate our own where we can. And so they've like gone all in, in a few places on batteries and storage for their facilities so they can continue to build and they, because they just can't do that five year weight to get like a five megawatt, uh, electricity connection.
Yeah. And
so they're, they're going for it. So like you can imagine a big giant Costco warehouse, perfect place to put the solar panels up and put the battery storage in the back and,
yeah.
Good to go.
They have a lot of
space. When it gets to be like that, where you're not even connected to the grid anymore, then you know, you're, you're winning.
I, I've also, and I don't, I don't remember where this came from, so maybe I'm spreading rumors, but I believe they're working on changing the regulations for what constitutes who can build. Power plants because a lot of these data centers are [01:12:00] drawing so much outta the city grids that the, maybe Microsoft wants to be able to build a nuclear reactor right next to their giant data center and generate their own power for that, which would be a really great solution.
So you're starting to see going from a single massive controlled system to a decentralized system where. Effectively, we all have mitochondria in our body. We, we as organically have come up with that model and I think that's where we'll probably end up on a, on a civilization wild scale as well.
Yeah. A lot of distributed stuff.
You know, one thing we also didn't talk about yet is the fact that, like to do all these things we're talking about, we need a lot of materials.
Yeah. You
know, and there's so many companies right now that are, that are emerging and they have materials in their name that whether they're like recycling old materials for repurposing like batteries or just coming up with new materials for magnets or motors or [01:13:00] electrical components like that is a huge area.
And you know, for people also looking to like transition out of one career field into another one or start something new like materials mining. Processing and deployment is exploding right now. Like it is a, it is just anybody that's interested in that will be able to find a place.
Tell us about that space.
I want to hear more about I, 'cause it's not a space that I've really dipped my toe into. So when you talk about materials manufacturing, there's like academic research going into like what kind of materials can be used and then there's the actual like mining for rare earths and things like that. Maybe can you break that down for us a little bit?
Sure. Well, I mean the, the simplest one is just copper and iron. Yeah. Right. Like of course, like we just need so much more copper than anybody can mine and make right now, you know, getting the aura outta the ground is kinda the mining [01:14:00] part. The processing part is getting it into copper that you can put into wires and cabling.
So like, um, that's kind of when I, when I mean processing that's it. And so like, those are the really simple ones, but like, if you look into, like, there's a lot of talk lately about critical minerals and rare earth elements.
Yeah. And,
you know, they're, they're some of those, they, they're not actually rare.
Like lithium is like, not rare. It's everywhere. Okay. But like, getting it into a form that you can use in a battery is difficult. It takes a lot of processing. So like, um. Those areas are where they're needing to draw in more talent right now is getting so, so like, um, you know, the, the different materials that we're talking about are all over the place, but like a lot of 'em have to do with like microprocessing motors instead of, driving a crankshaft with, gasoline.
Mm-hmm. Like everybody wants to do with motorists now, but like the magnets and the components of a motor need a lot of these elements. So [01:15:00] that, that's kind of like an example.
And then why is it so difficult, I guess, to refine these elements? Like what is tough about are we're talking about lithium or like other things like beryllium or.
Just random. Yeah. Cobalt, manganese. Pick stuff off the periodic table here. Yeah. Yeah. Like
You should just search critical minerals. I, I did it the other day when I was giving a presentation about it which ones are found in Alaska? Like, everyone on the list is found in Alaska, so, um, Alaska
should have a boom around those.
It's
got a lot of good materials up here. So like, um, yes. They, they, they have to be very pure and giving them to like a pure, uh, state that you can use in something is just, requires a lot of processing and like, some of the older ways of making, like lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide or a lot of let's just not even use lithium.
A lot of the mi mineral processing, like uses like an acid roasting step. Yeah. And you end up with a huge waste product at the end of [01:16:00] that. So like when people talk about, oh, refining all these rare earths and everything is so dirty. There are dirty ways to do it. And there's probably, there are a few, like much cleaner ways that have been invented recently and like, really we need to pivot to those.
Like, but, but when people talk about dirty rare earth processing, it's 'cause like yeah. Acid roasting and all these byproducts like, please don't do it that way if you can help them.
So really it's like, take a shovel just for me 'cause I'm a simple 10 about everything. Uh, you're, you're saying like you shovel throw a bunch of acid in to a VA in a way, or heat it up to high temperature along with a bunch of dirt.
And then out the other side comes, you know, there's some separation that might go on and then you, you have all this sort of like acid laced. Dirt essentially as a byproduct that you then dump. I think as you're at simplest
level, that's pretty much what happens. [01:17:00] Yeah. Right. So like, you've got this or, and it has a lot of different things in it.
It's a crushed rock that you crushed it up. Yeah. Right. And you wanna like get the, um, ions out that you need. So like, the best way to break something down to a bunch of ions is just to just drop it in acid.
Yeah.
Right. And then all that, all the ions are released and floating around an acid solution, and then you like stuck out the ions that you need, right?
Yeah. And then you end up with like the waste product afterwards. So there, there's, there are much better ways to, to get what you need
out of a solution. And the better ways are more expensive. Is that why? And 'cause of refineries aren't usually at least, I mean, speaking from the US' side, but like I don't hear a lot of talk about those.
Manu the, I guess maybe that's a new emergent field that we're just starting to see, uh, pop up. Yeah, no Tesla,
Tesla's way of getting lith useful. Lithium out of the ore is really awesome. It uses a pressure leaching and, and, and they've talked about this publicly, so it's not like proprietary, but [01:18:00] they use a better way to, to release the lithium.
And so, you know, more people should do that. And, and is it more expensive? That's a really good question. You know, it's like when you factor in the, like, cleanup of the byproducts it, you, you know, you gotta compare on equal footing. But yeah, that's one, you know, like, um, direct lithium extraction is kind of cool.
I mean like for years people have just been using like, um, activated carbon. It just kind of looks like black granules of coal, but it's activated carbon and you can absorb things into that and then you can get 'em back out later. So there, but there's many, like more high tech media now. Where you can absorb the, um, things that you need and then you can like wash 'em out of your media to use.
So that is a really cool field right now.
Wow. To get into.
Yep.
And so these rare earths, like where's the science of those new techniques getting developed? Is it all over like it's all over. It's smart
chemical [01:19:00] engineers that are all over the place, right. Industrial engineers, chemical and mechanical that are coming in and chemists that are inventing it from, you know, the science research part, you know, 'cause research development, pilot kind of scale kind of thing.
So a rare earth sort of race or there's sort of maybe there's a Moore's law for refining min rare earth sort of minerals into useful product without the. Hazardous byproducts is hopefully following that seven year doubling Yep. Trend as well.
There are a lot of ways to do it better.
Orion. Yeah. And that, that's where people should focus their energy and curiosity and attention. Right. And I think, I mean this is, we're talking about projects and engineers now and yeah, there's a big problem, there's a big prize if it can be solved and like smart people should work on it.
I think communities are a little afraid that I am see that it doesn't, a lot of [01:20:00] people don't want a processing facility in their neighborhood because it was so dirty for that, I guess all of human history until recently that we've been able to do these things better. So it's good that we're getting the word out a little bit, that these technologies are coming up and they are not.
They are becoming economically competitive, particularly when you factor in the total cost of remediation. Exactly. Like in, in Oregon we have these these old mining situa. We have lakes that just are filled with awful tailings. Yep. Yeah. Tailings. And it, and the, the plan that we, that I think everybody does in that situation is just to not disturb it.
But really we've sort of socialized the law. Those companies are all gone. They don't exist. So there's the it's a new generation. It's, you know, the kids of Oregon are going to have to solve that problem, but the, so the economic cost of that was never modeled in the 1840s or whatever when they were like doing their, their, um, [01:21:00] their stuff.
So I do think there's a lot of I think that the cost of environmental cleanup can really factor in a lot of times. Or like, you just don't wanna socialize those losses on and, uh, when there's a better option. Yeah, I know
exactly
what you mean. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm a hundred percent
behind that
one.
Awesome. Well, was there any other little things from that presentation you said you just, uh, went through, uh, rare Earth's presentation. Did, was there an upshot to your presentation? Were you making a case for
doing
a big project or what was the Oh,
yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm, I'm sure if you, if you read the news now, you know that we've outsourced this kind of work to other countries.
There are a lot of things that we use that we aren't, that we aren't like ref processing and refining ourselves. And like we're exposed. You know, if you were to like, just throw down a big curtain at the Pacific and the big curtain at the Atlantic, we would have trouble [01:22:00] like building what we need. Yeah.
And so, critical minerals, rare earths and processing and making things here in the US is like a great idea. And we're smart. We've got a lot of good people that can do it. We've got people that wanna do it and like we, we just need the, um, like drive to do it ourselves. Like it's a little bit of a dirty job.
And so like, we should like, want to do some dirty jobs like this. Yeah. It's gonna be good for our country and good for our kids and, and like careers for people.
Yeah, I think Alaska will be a good place to potentially pull some of those projects off too. I hope that, I hope that happens. I, I think so too.
Well, you know, we've got so much coastline in Alaska, a lot, a lot of these things you need a coastline for. And we have in Alaska, two times the coastline of the whole, of the United, rest of the United States.
Yeah. [01:23:00]
So, lot of opportunity there.
Well, the future is going to be very cool and I really appreciate you taking the time to come on here.
On the video you can see I have this giant beam of light that has been hitting my face. I think it's sort of like a sign that solar power and renewables are the future, and perhaps solar in general if you're wondering what to go into. But I think thank you James for coming on. If people wanna get in touch with you or wanna connect with you do you have a LinkedIn?
Is there a good way to, uh, to connect with you that way?
Oh, thanks for asking Ryan. I do, I I do. I, I really like talking to people in other industries and just bouncing ideas. I'd love to hear from other folks. I'm really easy to find on LinkedIn. There aren't a lot of James Wisemans on there. Uh, you'll be able to find me right away.
I actually do look like my picture on there too, which, you know, kind of sometimes rare, but yeah, I'd, I'd love to, I'd love to hear from folks. Please connect, you know, and, um, if we get a chance to meet in [01:24:00] person, even
better. Fantastic. Well, James, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I learned so much today about leadership, energy, people, projects, lithium, geothermal, fracking.
It's been a great conversation and I really appreciate your time today. It's great to see you. Thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you, Ryan. I really appreciate being here.
Thanks for listening to the Major Project podcast. Be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at the major project podcast.com.
Until next time, keep building big.