GA Drilling Gets Fund, Signs Pact with MOL

High-tech deep-drilling company GA Drilling signed a EUR 4.2 million funding agreement with Lead Ventures and a service agreement with MOL Group.

Lead Ventures, a Budapest based venture capital firm invested funds provided by MOL Group, and Hungarian Eximbank.

The deal gives GA Drilling access to onshore production wells to test its disruptive PLASMABIT plug & abandonment technology in real field conditions.

The agreement is a major step in enabling the commercialization of the PLASMABIT technology, which can bring positive environmental impacts, and significant cost and time reductions when compared to conventional methods of decommissioning of unused oil wells.

GA Drilling is a world pioneer in developing innovative technology for contactless drilling and P&A milling using its proprietary electric plasma disintegration process. The technology opens opportunities within multiple sectors with the initial focus being the environmental plug and abandonment of old wells, slot recovery and other decommissioning services. In parallel, the company continues to develop further applications for hard rock drilling enabling access to deep geothermal energy, as well as tunneling and mining of raw minerals.

The aim of partnership with Lead Ventures and MOL is to enable GA Drilling to successfully deliver its first commercial application for oil & gas industry, testing PLASMABIT in real field conditions onshore. In the meantime, GA Drilling continues to seek strategic partnerships with other oil majors for offshore platform and subsea wells for testing PLASMABIT worldwide.

“The novel solution developed by GA Drilling has the potential to positively disrupt a very traditional segment of the energy markets. In our view this is one of the most promising energy innovations in the Central European region. Lead Ventures is committed to support those innovative companies which require substantial funding to further their development and has the potential to be the next success story in Central Eastern Europe.” - said Ábel Galácz, CEO of Lead Ventures.

“GA Drilling now has the ability to commercialize its technology with a major oil company in an operational environment as an integrated services company. We can now optimize our PLASMABIT P&A process and prove the commercial effectiveness of the application for the global market. Having MOL Group and Lead Ventures as strategic partners demonstrate the transition, we are making from a technology company to an international service focused business," said Igor Kočiš, co-founder and CEO of GA Drilling.

Igor added: "It validates our combined efforts, our belief in PLASMABIT as a significant game changer with considerable upside in various applications for the industry. We appreciate continuous support and trust of our equity investors, R&D backing from EU public grants, loan from Slovak government to refinance the long-term infrastructure and extending of industrial cooperation, jointly bringing us to today’s success.” -