"Enter the "Hive." Just outside of Denver, a small team of people oversees Liberty Energy's entire fleet of fracking operations nationwide, largely to supervise the AI-automated work with human eyes. Instead of golden honey, the Hive facilitates the churning out of millions of barrels of black gold-the crude oil produced from Liberty's increasingly AI-dominated hydraulic fracturing, called fracking, that now requires fewer crews and people. Amid lower oil prices and activity levels, those savings are key."
""We are rapidly getting to full deployment-I expect by the end of this year we'll be there-where this will all be done via AI computer algorithms," Gusek said. "That's not something a human can do. The role on location evolves a little bit from an operator deciding the throttle position and gear each pump was in to now providing oversight as a computer executes all that work, and does so at a level of efficiency we just simply couldn't achieve before.""
"Liberty, founded 14 years ago by President Trump's new Energy Secretary Chris Wright, is now led by CEO Ron Gusek, as the company has grown into a U.S. fracking leader along with the more household name of Halliburton. The companies are leaning into autonomous, digitalized oilfields for safer, faster, cleaner (on a relative basis) and, ultimately, more cost-efficient work. The combination of horizontal drilling and fracking revitalized the U.S. oil industry 20 years ago."
A small Hive facility near Denver centrally monitors Liberty Energy's nationwide hydraulic fracturing operations, using AI to supervise automated equipment and reduce on-site crews. Liberty, founded 14 years ago by Chris Wright and now led by Ron Gusek, has scaled alongside firms like Halliburton toward autonomous, digitalized oilfields that aim for safer, faster, cleaner and more cost-efficient work. Fracturing intensity has increased with more sand, water and downhole visualization, enabling optimization along each foot of long horizontal wells. AI algorithms increasingly execute complex pump controls, shifting on-site roles from manual operation to oversight by more tech-savvy personnel.
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