Great engineers push the boundaries of what is technically possible by applying their mastery of the known to new problems. The Wright brothers leveraged their knowledge of balance, aerodynamics, and transmission technology in bicycles to design the first airplane, repurposing chains and spokes from the family shop to build their early prototypes.

Benoit Deville’s path as a leading engineer in the energy industry has largely adhered to this formula of applying hard-earned technical knowledge to new problems, forging ahead to discoveries that advance what’s possible.

In his current role as technology director for renewables and energy efficiency (including geothermal energy and energy storage) for SLB, he oversees one of the company’s—and the world’s—most promising new energy ventures. Looking back on his twenty years with the company, he views the journey as a process of constant exploration and learning, where a deep reservoir of technical knowledge provided the fuel for each step forward.

Early exploration, innovation, and connections

Benoit’s interest in all things mechanical manifested at a young age. Describing his childhood in France’s peaceful Loire Valley, he reflects, “I was always playing with motorbikes and disassembling things since I was very young. To me, engineering always just made sense.”

After studying engineering in university, Benoit took his first role with a consulting firm, where he was eventually placed on a project with SLB, then Schlumberger, near Paris. In that first role as a mechanical engineer, he quickly became acquainted with a broad range of technical domains.

Benoit admits that the intensity of those early projects was often demanding. But the lessons those experiences imparted were invaluable, fueling him and his colleagues to reach new heights—or depths, in some cases—of discovery. “There were brilliant people developing extremely complex things like nuclear measurements and dielectric tools that send microwaves in the formation to discriminate between water and oil,” he recalls. “I learned more in those years than I did in my entire formal education, which says a lot. It was quite intense, but I loved it.”

In 2015, Benoit took a role as an advisor at SLB headquarters in the US, where he learned to navigate the more complicated social and political terrain that comes with leadership. This led to an important role as manager of artificial lift, and when his department and Completions merged a few years later, he was a natural fit to become engineering manager for artificial lift and completion.

“It was all great,” he reflects, “and then COVID hit.”

A new energy frontier

With operations halted and his US VISA about to expire, Benoit stood once again on the precipice of the unknown. Together with the company, he decided it made more sense for him and his family to return to France and find a totally new role. “Six months later,” he says, “they told me I would be going to new energy.”

Just as his earlier engineering roles required him to understand almost every domain, his role in new energy required dynamic knowledge of just about everything. “Resources, geology, geoscience, geophysics, geomechanics. Geochemistry—I had virtually no knowledge of that,” he says. “But I had to learn. It has been an incredible experience.”

Using oil and gas as the blueprint for geothermal

From the deep subsurface to the electrical grid, every step in harnessing geothermal energy presents challenges that engineers like Benoit Deville have never encountered. Drilling in volcanic instead of sedimentary rock, larger wells, and extremely high temperatures are all unique to the domain.

Benoit remains confident that many of the solutions that can advance geothermal may be found in the blueprint of the oil and gas industry. “Geothermal is similar to oil and gas in that it connects to everything,” he illustrates. “And it always starts with resource explorations. You have to do a survey. You have to make inversions of multi-physics data. You have to create your subsurface map, model, and then plan the drilling and the surface. You have to do everything. It’s very much like oil and gas except we produce water or steam instead.”

Benoit Deville’s path to new energy mirrors the story of SLB, and, in many ways, of the energy industry at large—from an established, complex, and highly technical industry to an entirely new plateau of sustainable possibility driven by state-of-the-art tech and decades of experience underground.

While geothermal is on its way to becoming the stable and significant energy source it promises to be, leading engineers like Benoit Deville hold the keys to unlocking its abundant potential. Given his track record for leveraging knowledge and experience to innovate the energy tech our world needs, we can be confident that the future of geothermal energy is in good hands.

If the Wright brothers used what they knew of bicycles to make humans fly, we’ll need to use our knowledge of the subsurface to harness the power of the heat below our feet.