UW is accepting a $3 million donation from the Halliburton Company to go towards building a new energy and engineering research complex and funding energy research. University President Dick McGinity, Governor Matt Mead and others joined Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar yesterday at the capital building in Cheyenne to make the announcement in front of legislators as they broke for lunch.
The UW High Bay Research Facility will conduct research in large scale experiments that exceed the capacity of traditional engineering laboratories, according to a university press release. Lesar said the public-private partnership puts Wyoming ahead of other universities in the field of energy and will have far-reaching benefits.
“You’ve got the first move and advantage right now,” Lesar said. “My advice: go for it.”
The state will match the donation, McGinity said, bringing the university within $2 million of the $15 million dollar private industry donation goal set by the university to upgrade facilities for energy and engineering research and academic programs.
“It’s a very valuable three-way relationship,” McGinity said at the announcement.
McGinity and Mead both said the remanding $2 million needed to reach the goal in is the works. The source of the donation could not be revealed at this time, said Energy Task Force Co-Chair Tom Botts.
“Hopefully there will be an announcement in the next few weeks [to] put that over the goal line,” Botts said.
$13 million has been raised by the university by from Hess, ExxonMobil, Marathon, Ultra Petroleum, Baker Hughes and Shell companies, according to the press release. Each of the companies, Halliburton included, focus on oil. Halliburton, Batts said, wants to focus research on fracturing technology and fluids and that the university also wanted to build on unconventional resources, like shale gas and coal conversion.
“For the state of Wyoming, that’s a no-brainer,” Botts said. “There’s a lot of resources and a lot of opportunity to increase the recovery.”
The university press release says the plan will focus in-part on renewable energy, which includes increasing efficiency so that such resources are more cost effective. Botts said the research will be broad and not just about increasing recovery of resources.
“All of those factors are tied together; you can’t just focus on one in isolation,” Botts said.
What the focus would ultimately end up being, Botts said, was what made sense for industry and the state. Not deciding a focus up-front, he said, should be an important focus of tier one schools.
“As it grows, part of what will determine that growth is what attracts industry investment [and] what attracts industry partnerships,” Botts said.
Each of the speakers during the news conference emphasized his hope that the relationship with Halliburton would enhance and become more integrated with the university. CEO Dave Lesar said he sees multifaceted benefits and far reaching implications to the relationship.
“We see a benefit to the state, we see a benefit to the university and ultimately, with the research done here, a benefit to U.S. energy production,” Lesar said.
Private-public partnerships, Laser said, are a struggle and rarely move beyond a discussion stage. Laser and Botts attributed this partnership to Wyoming’s initiative.
“Here, you guys get it done,” Laser said. “I think that’s going to be a good template for states to follow, because we’re getting one to the finish line.”
“What he’s found is when the state decides to do something, it gets done fast,” Botts said.
Mead has been going for his goal of making UW a leader in engineering and energy as he has formed Energy, Engineering, Stem Integration Task Force in 2012 and making statements since the beginning of the year reaffirming his commitment to developing coal and natural gas energy in the state. The task force, which includes Board of Trustees President Dave Bostrom, former Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal and former UW President Tom Buchanan, focuses heavily on UW as being the foundation of energy development in the state.
