Tim Williamson and Nick Morriss, NOV

Today’s episode of Gener8 features a discussion focused on traditional energy and fossil extraction and the future role that nuclear energy might play in supporting the current backbone of our global economy. Joining us today from National Oilwell Varco (NOV), one of this country’s leading gas and oil field equipment manufacturers, are Nick Morriss, Commercialization Director in Renewables, and Tim Williamson, Senior Director for Enterprise Data Architecture & Governance. Together, they delve into the motivations and strategies behind considering nuclear energy to meet NOV and their customer's evolving energy needs.

We begin the conversation by learning about NOV’s preliminary discussions and interest in nuclear energy, which combined with Tim and Nick’s personal experiences, led to direct engagement with NOV’s customers on understanding the potential opportunities in the space. Tim and Nick share progress they've made on a multi-year study that NOV and their customers are engaged in and what kind of questions their customers hope to better understand with this study. We then dove into the challenges and other factors that could limit this opportunity and what existing features of the oil and gas industries lend themselves to consider utilizing nuclear energy. Nick and Tim also shared the impact the study is having within executive leadership teams, what NOV’s future role might look like around nuclear energy deployment, and finally, what the role of the federal and state governments have in this discussion.

We have been watching NOV's activities in this area for almost as long as they’ve been engaged on the topic and we hope that you find this synopsis of their process and thinking as fascinating as we did.