At a time when many trucking companies are figuring out whether to try to adopt blockchain technology into their operations somehow, the (mostly) water-hauling company Nuverra is engaged in not one but two blockchain initiatives.
The energy-focused hauler has a three-year deal with one provider of blockchain technology. Separately, it just completed the first phase of a trial with a major oil company that was working as part of an oil industry-backed blockchain initiative.
Nuverra Environmental Solutions is based in Arizona but is active in most of the major oil basins in the U.S.
Its deep plunge into blockchain technology was highlighted in the past few days with the announcement of the completion of phase 1 of a pilot project between Nuverra and the Offshore Operators Committee Oil & Gas Blockchain Consortium, with the Norwegian state-controlled Equinor as the operating oil company that worked with Nuverra. The Consortium’s membership consists of some of the biggest companies in the world.
The pilot used blockchain technology to track record keeping for the water-hauling and disposal service that Nuverra provided to Equinor for five wells in the Bakken field, the North Dakota-centered producing area. A company called Data Gumbo provided the blockchain technology for the initiative between Equinor and Nuverra.
The other initiative has been ongoing since earlier this year. A pilot project turned into a three-year contract between Nuverra and Ondiflo, a Houston-based blockchain technology company. The blockchain service that Ondiflo provides for Nuverra deals with services other than water disposal, such as dispatching.
The Ondiflo-Nuverra initiative, which went from pilot program to three-year contract on April 1, involves both Nuverra and well operators.
“They’re definitely technology-hungry,” Rana Basu, founder and COO of Ondiflo, said of Nuverra, agreeing that the company is further ahead on adoption of blockchain technology than any other trucking company he knows.
Basu spoke specifically of Greg Tipton, the Nuverra CIO, who he said has been given “a lot of room to be able to make them more and more technologically able to do things.”