| Say what now? It's a gyrotron variation that requires tweaking to be useful in vertical and horizontal boring, currently supported with ~ $100 million raised from investors. Ongoing development might well require that annually for ten years or so. It can likely kick along fine with that amount every four or five years. This is easily within the envelop of currently ongoing development in both the energy and mineral resources exploration and aquisition domains. When I worked tracking mineral resource development we looked at any and all mineral prospecting lease aquisitions and ownership changes globally, but for development we ruled out any intial prospectus for under $50 million as "too small to be of interest". And that was just mineral exploration, O&G is where the big money plays. Current drilling costs within Oil and Gas (and geothermal, a small but growing field) are huge, any work that can bring those costs down will be pursued and supported as long as some small glimmer of light shines ahead. Eg: for a small example you could look to the R&D work being put in to reduce drill costs by 50% here: https://www.power-eng.com/renewables/fervo-energy-claims-70-... Fervo says it drilled its fastest Cape well in just 21 days, a 70% reduction in drilling time from Fervo’s first horizontal well drilled at Project Red in 2022.
Fervo says the increase in efficiency has resulted in cost reductions, with drilling costs across the first four horizontal wells at Cape falling from $9.4 million to $4.8 million per well.
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