Come for the Turbocharger, Stay for the Brisket, with Rienk De Vries

00:00 Rhett On this episode of Pipeline Things, we welcome a return guest, Rienk de Vries, back from Intero when we talk about the developments that they are making in the difficult -to -inspect robotics space. Super cool space with lots of room to play, and we talk about why brisket is better than pizza. It's a great episode, and we think you'll love it. Thanks for joining us. 00:34 Rhett All right, welcome to this edition of Pipeline Things. So, we, again... Miss producer always tells me not to date the episode, but truth is we're, we are fresh off PPIM 2026. It was a lot of fun. And if you're there at the show, you know, it's always, it's always a good time to catch up with what's going on with the vendors. It's a good time to see, you know, friends in the industry for sure. 00:56 Rhett And kind of, you know, like. What's shaking? What's going on? I like that you get that annual update. One of the presentations I was in, Chris, and I thought it was funny. It made me chuckle a little bit. The key takeaway on the presentation was this technology is just as good as it was in 2007. 01:18 Rhett It does the same thing. I was like, oh my God. Did I just hear that the technology is just as good as it was in 2007? And I laughed a little bit because I don't think that that's true of all the technologies. You've got technologies out there, thank God, that I think are actively developing and investing and being pulled on to do new things. 01:41 Chris Being validated, leveraging AI because now they have data to calibrate against, all that fun stuff. 01:50 Rhett Yeah, 100%. And that brings us to, I think, who we're talking to today. So, I think one of the cool spaces that remains, I'm going to say, very lightly tapped and I think just continues to have a lot of potential for advancement is really in the difficult -to-inspect market, the challenging market, if you will. 02:07 Rhett And almost, I don't know if we could use the word unconventional. And last time at PPIM, we got the chance to talk to Intero. pretty cool to hear some of the stuff that they were doing. And I will say, fortunately, I think they can quite proudly say that their technology is better than it was in 2007. I think they could say it's better than it was in 2014. It's better than it was in 2021. I think they could say it's better than it was in 2025. And that's really what we're here to talk about today. 02:38 Chris And all the great work they're doing, right? I mean, we just finished posting failure files 2 .0, and we know that Congress has been pushing, right, the PHMSA to continue to use inline inspection, to provide data, to do data integration and risk analysis. So, it's always neat to bring on Intero to find out you know how they are doing all the difficult stuff right. 03:02 Rhett so, without uh without further ado I’m going to go ahead and introduce our guest Rienk is joining us again Rienk de Vries from Intero and uh Rienk I just want to say welcome and thanks for coming back on the show first and foremost. 03:14 Rienk yes, thanks for having me again I think it has been two years. 03:19 Rhett now who put you yeah who put you up to this. 03:24 This time? Yes. The last time, you can remember, I was sort of a surprise guest. Right. Unprepared. 03:24 Chris A pleasant surprise, yeah. 03:29 Rhett And you enjoyed it so much that you requested to come back on? Or was somebody like, no, look, we're not going to go. 03:34 Rienk I think it was a little pool, but... No, no, but again, you know, I think we enjoyed last time. We had a great conversation. Yeah, I think we went a bit all over the place. We talked about pizza, but a lot about pipelines too. 03:44 Rhett Yeah. Look, I make no guarantees as to what will come out of the episode and pertains to non -inspection related things. So, you know, it's the Wild West out there and what might come out today. But yeah, the goal really is definitely to talk about... you guys have been doing at Intero since the last time that we talked to you, right? And there have been some announcements. I am right. Y 'all have advanced since 2007, correct? 04:14 Rienk Sure, yeah. Okay. Fencing every day. Yes, no. Sure. Yeah, no. 04:16 Rhett So, the starting point was one of the abstracts that was there at PPIM was you guys worked with PG &E on the development of a long seam technology. So, I tell you what. Let's start there. I mean, that's obviously something that's pretty new. Can you tell us a little bit about what the genesis was that? How did you guys find yourself with a 10 -inch MFLC tool designed to inspect for long seams and difficult to inspect pipelines? 04:43 Rienk It's a good question, certainly. And I think it's... Let's go one step back because the development of the entire what we call the robotic MFL fleet has been developed in close cooperation with the industry. And it goes back 15 years, I think 15, 20 years ago, this entire technology didn't exist. Having MFL on a robotic system, a self -propelled wireless operator going into a live pipeline. That was really a desire from the industry to find solutions for difficult to inspect in urban area, high consequence areas, to inspect those complex pipelines. 05:16 Rienk And since then, every development, every improvement of the tool has been done in close cooperation with the industry. And this one that we have presented here on the PPIM has been one of the latest developments. That's what we call the long seam module, this time for the 10 inch has been developed together with PG &E for one of their pipelines that required uh inspection on the on the long seams um so yeah close development together with the customer but that's actually you know quite common for this type of type of uh solution that we provide to the market as a reminder one of the things. 05:52 Chris As a reminder I think is really neat about you guys is your call the explorer tool yeah right which is really cool and one of the things you explained last time is it's you know you guys have the pool unit or the tractor unit and this is just a module that you guys can add on to that right and so it's not like you need a whole new design or a whole new development but you have a platform that you can it's not modular but it's kind of modular right you can just build something specific and yeah attach it. 06:12 Rienk This is a good example of that so we used to so the start of development was basically the entire tool himself so you have the driving modules in the middle you have the in the center of the of the tool you got the MFLA traditional MFL sensor module and then on both sides you have the traction units and in the front and in the rear you have a camera and a laser but the middle part the AMFL module you can replace it that's basically what we've done now replace for and CMFL specifically for inspection of the of the long seam. 06:43 Rhett so in this particular case and i want to encourage our audience I’d say go back uh you can find it on d2 integrity uh you can find it on YouTube you can search for the podcast with Rienk de Vries from two years ago and I’d encourage you to go back and get because we're not going to revisit the development of the tools. 06:59 Rhett But one question I have with that Man, there's so many places I want to go, but let me start here. Before I ask you about what that development cycle looked like, which I think is interesting, this unit replaces the MFLA or goes in conjunction with the MFLA? So, is it an either -or in the case of the 10 -inch technology, or do you have both on at the same time? 07:23 Rienk So, we don't have both on the tool on the same time. So, we really replaced the AMFL module for the CMFL. We have occasions where we inspect both for the same pipeline. So first you do an AMFL run, then you go back, and then you do the CMFL run. So, you have two data sets, basically, of the same pipeline. 07:38 Rhett And that's not even uncommon, I mean, even normal pipelines. I mean, it's really difficult. There's really only probably, what, one vendor, Chris? Maybe two that will put C and A in a train? Just because of how much magnetic drag you pull on the tools. 07:49 Chris It's also environment, right? And even in those cases, maybe one of them is a little bit more conducive in a gas line, while the other is more conducive in a liquid. line and so here again at for this discussion it's on stream in a gas line right so um pretty much what we have a standard. 08:10 Rhett Yeah, and so uh Rienk what I want to ask you about is I’m kind of curious a little bit about that development cycle because you mentioned you're working in close collaboration with the operators um, I don't know that I think that that's too unique in the industry. I think operators often come to the vendors with, hey, I have this problem, right? 08:21 Rhett But I do think what is unique is that y 'all kind of bespoke solutions a lot of times may be unique even to only a particular operator that needs that particular configuration, which means that a lot of times I think the operators are having to really partner closer with you because they may be... the only person that uses that particular configuration, for instance. 08:46 Rhett But with PG &E and when they approach you, can you share a little bit about what the timeline to development look like? Because, I mean, I assume they didn't walk to you in November of 2025 and were like, hey, we want an MFLC. And you were like, yeah, let me grab it off the shelf. It'll be ready next month. There's going to be a respectable lead time there. 08:59 Rienk Yes, no for sure no so how this how this goes you know we are uh working in close collaboration with the industry as you said and already shared um so the basis of that for developing more the resource side of the of the technology uh that we deploy is done together with nice search I think you're familiar with uh with nice organization you have a lot of members out of the gas grid operator environment they bring money together and they subsidize development so what we do with them is really the research part of the development first prototype. In this case for the long seam module and then you develop one prototype for one size and that was done back in 2022 for the 20 inch and once was that ready then the follow -up very often is directly with an operator for a particular pipeline. 09:46 Rienk So, we have developed in 2022 the 20 -inch. That was the first module. So, in 2022, that was an MFL? That was exactly the same as the 10 -inch from a technology perspective. 09:57 Rhett So, it was an MFL -C, 20, 20, 22. Gotcha. 10:03 Rienk So, after that, we had an inquiry for a 16 -inch for another operator. So, we conferred it to a 16 -inch, which is... uh scaling down is always more difficult obviously than scaling up from a diameter perspective and this was more even more challenged back to or down to 10 inch um so when you already have the core technology developed and only have to do the upper down scaling for that particular module that's a slower cycle uh that's a shorter cycle uh obviously so to give you an idea you need to think about six to eight months to uh to develop then this particular model specific for the for the 10 inch for this case. 10:34 Rhett And then in that development cycle, do you find yourself doing a bunch of pull test and verification work on the tool? I'm assuming prior to putting it in the pipeline. 10:48 Rienk Yeah, of course. We do a lot of testing in terms of the capabilities and the sizing capabilities and specs of the tool. We already have the experience, in this case, from the 16th and the 20th. So, of course, we have to reconfirm that when you develop the tenants on the 10 inch on the test pools that we got, but there's a lot of testing involved. You don't want to go into a live pipeline with a robotic tool without any proper testing. 11:10 Rhett So, 2022 was the 20 -inch tool. Then you got pulled to 16. Then you got pulled from 16 to 10, correct? And you said that cycle was about eight months. 11:24 Rienk Six to eight months, yes. 11:26 Rhett Six to eight months. 11:28 Chris That's pretty quick. 11:29 Rhett Six to eight months to get a six -inch tool? 11:30 Chris No comment. 11:33 Rienk We do have a six-inch row ball. So, in theory, we could go down there and, you know. Yes. 11:37 Chris I mean, it's got to be challenging to get the magnets. For an MFLC tool, it would be pretty challenging to get the magnets. 11:44 Rienk Yeah, so we only inspect the long seam area, right? So, we haven't, it's circumferential. 11:49 Rhett Oh, so that's an important distinction. 11:50 Chris Yeah, absolutely. That's what I was going to highlight is, is there something unique about it? Because in the paper, it sounded like, in the presentation, that you guys were focused on the long seam. So, the organic question is, does it cover the whole pipe? 11:59 Rienk The specific question here was really on vintage ERW pipelines, on the long seam area, because they are prone for. challenges and threats. And the next question, obviously, is can you do it for the full circumference? That's on the development roadmap. I can't say where we are there, but that's certainly something we look at. 12:18 Rhett But even if you ran the current tool, I'm curious. This might be a dumb question. If it is, I apologize. If you put the tool in, you must obviously... The seams don't always line up. 12:31 Rienk That was in the paper presentation as well. I think it was shown by Michael Kobolek, our sales manager. So, we scanned first with the AMFL. And from the AMFL and locate and then go with the CMFL so we can rotate it and get it in position. 12:40 Rhett but in theory you could rotate the c anywhere you wanted to if you had another portion of the pipe for some reason you want. 12:47 Rienk it's slow obviously by doing that but you could do that and then scan particularly section in full circumference yeah. 12:55 Chris it's very much focused on the long seam is ultimately what we found out. 12:59 Rhett all right so on that uh the work that you did with PG & E um How did it do? What did you find? What did they find, I should say? 13:04 Rienk Yeah, no, we had, as you have seen in the paper presentation, we had a few long seam corrosion spots that we had found. And they had me back reported to PG &E. They were very pleased. 13:20 Chris What I thought was interesting in the presentation is, I always like going back to how we got here. right the why is always fun at least to learn from right looking back you can learn a whole lot and when we think about this application it’s you guys incorporate a camera in it which I think is really neat and so when we think about PG & E and we think about like what can we learn from them you know we always think about San Bruno right and we know that the long seam was of detriment so it's not just the this idea of Well, it's a robotic technology. It focuses on the seam only. But, I mean, this is a very acute solution for a known problem that they had where they had a consequence, right? They had incomplete welds in the seam. They didn't have an ability to assess it because it was theoretically difficult to inspect or unpickable. And this is exactly like the result of a call to action, right? 14:04 Chris Congress said, we need to improve this. We need to be able to get better inspection techniques. And this is a manifestation of that. And in so much, it's... I mean, apparently, the weld was so bad you could have been able to see it visually. Well, you guys have a camera on it as well, right? So, you have an ability to, as you're inspecting with the MFLA, you find the seam, you get a camera to see if it's a complete weld, as silly as that may sound, you know, how bad is the weld or good is the weld, and then you can come in and deploy it with an MFL to say, is there anything that we can't find from the ID? So, I think it's a neat story. 14:38 Rienk It's very powerful, right? Because if you look at it, you're mentioning the camera. Basically, we provide five data sets to the customer. It's the visual, the camera. It's a laser on it in front. You can see dance and, you know, out of roundness. It's the CMFL. It's the AMFL. And lately we have added the IMU as well. for XYZ positioning. So, five data sets together provide you a lot of information. 14:57 Chris Yeah, it's just a cool storyline for me. And I always like bringing that back up, right? Is it's, you know, how did we get here? Well, let's remind ourselves of the story, right? So this is cool to see. 15:06 Rhett So, another simple question. You mentioned the XYZ. We definitely want to talk a little bit about that because that is a newer development as well. So, I want to go there. But before I do, I have one more question. Just curious from a magnetic standpoint, when you swap out the modules from a power consumption standpoint or the MFLC and MFLA, roughly equivalent or are there any changes in power consumption between the two do they go the same distance. 15:30 Rienk Yeah, no I can't we do the same distance yes i think it's uh it's quite comparable so it's not that with the CMFL you can do way longer distance um power consumption is a limitation obviously of the system if you look at you know determines the distance basically, um we could talk about a little more so of course we look at possibilities to extend the range yes that's a that's a big asks from the industry. 15:52 Rienk Currently we are limited to and to uncertain uh distance we have a solution I think we talked about in the last power charging you know we can do we can recharge the tool uh from external uh the pipeline yep um and then continue uh the range but that still requires an excavation and a small uh hot tap so if you can afford that uh that would be an uh yeah enormous uh advantage so we certainly look at that. 16:17 Chris I think the biggest takeaway was it's like it's not necessarily a strong change of the system right so as you're planning the operation component of, we're going to be able to go from here to here by changing the A to the C doesn't limit that right now. It's a one for one right now is the takeaway. That's great. 16:31 Rhett Cool. All right. So, um, well, I tell you what, what I actually want to do is we're going to take a brief break. I want to come back, and I want to talk about the developments beyond that because I know that you already alluded to one, which is XYZ. 16:45 Rhett And for the audience out there, they all know that I'm big on IMU and XYZ. So, we're going to chat about that for sure. But I also want to chat about, you know, some of the other things that you and I discussed about how and where y 'all might get pulled in because I imagine there are other operators out there. The needs in the industry aren't going to stop, right? And as I mentioned, it's kind of the Wild West and the difficult to inspect pipeline. So, audience, hang on. We're going to be right back as we continue our conversation with Rink de Vries on developments in Intero. Thanks. 17:10 Rhett All right, welcome back as we continue our discussion with Rink de Vries from Intero on what's going on with the Intero technology and developments. So, before we get in, there's one topic that we talked about on the last show, Rienk, that we haven't covered yet before, and that's pizza. Have you had pizza since you've been in Houston? 17:41 Rienk No. 17:41 Rhett Are you going to have pizza tonight before you leave Houston? 17:43 Rienk No. But I had some good meat here in Texas. This is not the place for pizza, right? Pizza, you need to go to Italy. Come to Europe, Italy, we got good pizza. 17:52 Chris Naples, yeah, for pizza. 17:53 Rienk Steak is the thing here, right? 17:55 Chris And Tex -Mex, margaritas. 17:57 Rienk Brisket. 17:58 Chris I would agree. 17:59 Rhett So, what's the best meat that you had? Was it a steak or was it brisket? 18:03 Rienk I think it was the brisket. I love brisket. Brisket is good. 18:08 Chris And that's not very common in Europe, right? There's not a lot of places to say... 18:11 Rienk I like cooking. I tried brisket. It's dry. 18:15 Chris It takes a long time. 18:17 Rhett I have done seven on my smoker, and the first six were very weak. The seventh one, I think I finally got where I felt pretty good about it. I'm supposed to be trying another one next weekend. 18:27 Chris It's hard. You can have a recipe, but it's hard to make it taste good even if you have the recipe. 18:34 Rienk But, you know, the whole idea is, you know, hanging around the smoker for six, seven, eight, nine, ten hours, drinking some beers with your friends. 18:42 Rhett Yeah. Absolutely. You got to watch it like a baby. 18:45 Chris Yeah, he nailed that. 18:46 Rhett So, all right, well. then I’m glad that you got some good food in Houston because Houston is a great food community okay so back on point uh the last um the last segment that we were chatting about you mentioned a couple of developments that are coming down one of them being IMU uh so that was super cool can you tell me a little bit about what was the poll on Intero to put IMU on the tools? Because my first impression would have been, you guys are typically doing really difficult segments, but they're not that long. And so hence why you wouldn't have had an IMU on the tool. So how did you get pulled to having it on the tool? What was the driver? 19:18 Rienk Yeah, no driver certainly was getting more accurate in your positioning of your anomalies. You know, after we find an anomaly that needs to be excavated, you certainly want to make sure that you excavate in the right position, not in the wrong position. And certainly, because the area... we inspect are in most cases urban areas so it's expensive to dig a hole in the middle of New York for example but it's a high price tag for permitting traffic control you know high cost so the more accurate we can get digging first and right at the right position It saves a lot of money for our customers. 19:57 Rienk It certainly was a pool also through the NYSERDS organization, as you just mentioned. They use our tool and they follow the developments and they provide also to us what you call the pool from the industry. And this was one of the requests to get more accurate on the positioning. So, we have developed now the solution for the larger diameters. There you go again, for the larger it's easier. For this year, we are scaling it down for below 16 -inch tools, which is smaller, obviously a bit more complicated. But that will be launched this year. 20:28 Rhett I'd like to know, why is it more difficult in the smaller diameters than the larger diameters? Is it space? You've got just more space. Modules are larger. They'll accommodate more, bigger equipment. So, you need to reduce and resize electronics. It makes it more difficult for the smaller ones. 20:45 Rhett Now, I'm also curious. So, did y 'all find it easy to integrate the IMU? Because you guys run it... like y'all are not blazing speeds and typically and you know free swimming tools we're running at very convenient speeds from an imu standpoint 20:58 Rienk No exactly so you might think indeed you know you know i know you're an imu fan so we're going we're going really deep a bit deeper no but you know how difficult can it be right you just put an IMU module. 21:09 Rhett It's more difficult than people think. 21:10 Rienk But it is certainly more difficult and also indeed because you we have relatively low speeds it's ideal for your MFL right because you have higher, better data with lower speeds. But for the IMU, it gets more complicated. But we fixed that. 20:20 Rhett How did you fix it, if you don't mind me asking? 21:24 Rienk I’m not going to go into that detail. 21:26 Rhett No, but one of the things that is interesting, right? Because you mentioned it, so I'll ask about it, is the spacing of the AGMs is a little different than people might think of from conventional. So conventional IMU, people are typically thinking like around a mile. 21:40 Rienk Yeah, so it's shorter distances between the AGMs. Yes, that's one of the requirements. to get it that accurate in our case. And that can easily be done. 21:49 Rhett Cool. You know, so I don't know if you noticed, but around the GRB this year, they had that whole road behind the Hilton torn up, digging up something. Maybe they needed you guys there because I was like, good Lord. I mean, it was like half the road for at least 100 yards was torn all the way up for whatever they were going after. 22:09 Chris And the space next to the hotel. So last night I heard, I was hearing them work. I was like, maybe the high floor would have been more convenient this year. 22:14 Rhett Shout out the window to those guys. You guys should put an IMU on whatever you're doing. Stop digging up half the road. 22:23 Rhett Okay. So, one of the other things that we talked about last time, and I'm curious to get an update from you on is, so I always thought the external inline charging was pretty nifty. But you guys have had like the top-secret turbocharger. you know charging going on can you tell us a little about that where are you guys on that. 22:41 Rienk Yeah no absolutely you know this is on the roadmap already for some time right so we you know one of the questions we often get you know when we explain what the robot is capable of you know we can drive half a mile and then either you need to recharge it from an additional excavation uh two inch hot tap and then you can recharge you can go another half a mile the first question you will get, can you extend the range? We just said excavations in these urban environments are expensive. So, if you don't have to recharge from the external, afford the excavation will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions if you have multiple excavations. 23:33 Rienk So, this again, this is a desire and a pull from the industry. And we're looking at extending the race and there's several solutions. So, the technology that we have right now with the battery technology that we deploy, the batteries, as you know, will enhance every day. So, there are better technologies out there than we have currently in the robot. So that's something we explore to just get more battery power and extend the range of the robot. that's something we look at. 23:48 Rienk another thing is uh reducing energy consumption in in your tool um just like in your car if you use cruise control you consume less energy then you drive yourself and the same applies for the robot so if you can do autonomous driving by the robot by himself you know and when you have a camera in front you have laser in front if you recognize the geometry of the line you don't have to operate it directly from the outside anymore you stay in control but you can autonomously let drive the robot consuming lesser energy increasing the distance so that that is one of the solutions um and the turbo charging that you like to talk about. 24:25 Chris we're anxiously awaiting. 24:28 Rienk generating energy while you're in the pipeline you know by using maybe a turbine we call energy harvesting in the line is a solution that we already have in prototyping and we are testing at the moment so that might come on the market at some point can't say when know these are these are certainly solutions uh because we go in the pipeline um without a tether it's wireless operated so you want to be 100 sure you want to build in redundancy uh you can't let the tool fail or shut down in the pipeline right because then it definitely gets stuck. 24:58 Chris and in all fairness what's interesting Rienk is IMU use most often the most power-hungry technologies on the tool and so if you were to think of like, what is the most limiting device, it would be, hey, well, it's great. We're bringing IMU onto these tools. It's also like, OK, now you got to scratch your head and say, how are we going to do this? So this whole idea of like energy harvesting while it's on stream can begin to offset the cost, the energy cost of the IMU. 25:23 Rienk You know, we have 50 percent bypass on the tool. So, you know, the time in the pipeline doesn't really matter. Right. So, if it takes a couple of hours to recharge the tool just to stay there and the flow of the gas will. let the turbine spin and generate energy to recharge the batteries. That could work. That could work. So that's basically the principle. And again, we have prototypes, we attach things, so it is not that we have to start from scratch, so that will be the way forward to extend the range. 25:48 Chris We're going to have to talk about that again. Next time we bring you on, you've got to give us an update on the turbo. 25:54 Rhett hope it looks as cool as it sounds. 25:57 Chris With the small videos, like somehow, you know, because you have a camera, find out how to like... 26:00 Rhett It's like the turbocharger in your car when you punch the gas. It spools up. 26:03 Chris Yeah, that would be super cool. Hey, that's innovation. We love it. 26:50 Rienk The robotics makes people excited, right? That we can see. 26:08 Rhett It is pretty cool. It's like, you know, I mean, you think about the advancements in free swimming tools, and there's advancements. Don't get me wrong. But I don't think that they have, like, quite the shock value and allure that some of the robotics stuff does, right? Like, instantly, as you started describing automated driving of the tool, I started thinking, like, oh, man, that's probably an area. I'm not saying this. Probably an area where you start to grab onto AI, right? If AI starts to recognize things. 26:35 Chris Have to say it in every podcast. 26:37 No, but it's capable. 26:38 Chris It's fine. 26:37 Rhett I'm not even an AI fan. You know this. 26:39 Chris I endorse it. It's fine. Go. 26:40 Rhett I'm not an AI. Every time somebody uses machine learning, I'm like, that's a great way that you represented Y equals MX plus B. That's not machine learning. But no, in this context. 26:49 Chris It's all about application. It is if you apply it that way. If it's an Excel, it's not. It's linear regression. If it's in an algorithm for some kind of software where you're in a routine, that's AI. 27:00 Rhett My point was it opens up cool doors. I'm not saying that Interos looking into that, but, I'm sure. 27:04 Chris Robots are cool, Rhett. Okay, that's it. 27:07 Rienk But you know, you have to realize this is not as straightforward as free streaming tools are. So, there's a lot of testing involved before you send something in a pipeline. Like I said, there's not a tether. You can't pull it back if something goes wrong, or you just increase the flow and you push it out. Certainly, but these kinds of developments, yes, we are working on this already for years, but before you really will launch it as an accepted tool in a pipeline and a proven tool in a pipeline, it takes time. 27:36 Chris The word that comes to mind almost is reliability. When you think of free-swimming ILI tools, I would almost say we're almost a bit spoiled now. You know, where it's like, hey, we know how to get free swimming tools in and out of pipelines right now. Occasionally, there's always some kind of like catastrophic event. We're like, oh, no, 27:56 Rhett it goes 30 miles an hour and you know, 27:58 Chris yeah, that's what I'm saying. I mean, it maybe even blows through a door. Unfortunately, God bless those people. But the whole point is like. With you guys, reliability, like you say, it really is a big issue. When we talk about testing and development, you guys really think like fail -safe, fail -safe, fail -safe, and that's a big component of it. 28:13 Rienk But that's in the development, right? How you design a tool, but when you deploy it and in between projects, how you do preventive maintenance and all the procedures is super strict. I always say to the... People that operate our tools and the engineers that do the maintenance like flying a plane. If something goes wrong, it goes awfully wrong. So, you need to be very disciplined, very strict in how we do preventive maintenance, how we operate the tools. 28:36 Rhett First run success is 100%. 28:38 Chris Absolutely, yeah. Oh, my God, what a question. 28:41 Rhett What's your first run success? 28:43 Chris What do you mean the tool came out? What are we talking about here? 28:46 Rhett You said something, actually, in that last thing that made me chuckle a little bit, which is, you know, we started off and it was a half mile, and the first question they asked is, can we do longer? I think the industry is always going to ask you guys for more. Like I don't think you're ever going to get to a point. with your technology and probably the next decade on robotics where they're not going to ask you for more. Can we go further? Can you add this technology? 29:04 Chris Oh, there's always room for growth, right? 29:08 Rhett Can you add that technology? Can you do this? 29:11 Rienk If you go unlimited length, we might be able to replace free framing tools, right, with our robotics. 29:15 Rhett But Rienk, let's be clear. I've got at least one pipeline, the longest one I've ever worked on, 600 miles. I don't know how... Recharge in the line, you know. Maybe it takes a while, but, you know, we get there. I need that tool for the next... three years. 29:32 Rienk No, no, no. It has its specific space, right? So that was my analogy the last time. Pizza restaurants and a la carte. We are an a la carte company. Every project is special and we have special tools. And it's not a repetitive commodity. 29:48 Rhett But once you do it, they're going to want to extend that a la carte. Well, you did that. Can you do this? So, I'm curious, if you don't mind, in the last couple of minutes that we have, where do you see you, guys getting pulled in the future, right? Because I'm sure... they're not done pulling on you. And I'm sure they're pulling on you for new things. With what you'd be willing to share, can you tell us a little about where you see maybe Intero getting pulled in the future? 30:07 Rienk Yeah. Now, you know, the range extension is the biggest, I think, added value if we can make that happen. You know, we constantly work on improving sizing accuracy from what we do. AMFL, MFL, CMFL, circumferential is obviously an ask. Improve it. improve the uh liquid capability of the line is another one so yeah, we face sometimes liquid in the line so we have uh that was another actually I didn't even mention it we have released a liquid uh capable uh a tool so we can have some liquid in the line and it will not shut down the tool 30:47 Rhett Liquid in the line. Help me understand liquid. Because you're not talking about liquid products. 30:52 Rienk Not liquid lines. No, but even in gas lines, you have some certain amount of liquid moisture in the line. So, the tool is not fully marinized. So, we're not able to go in a liquid pipeline. Although that's an application area as well. The advantage of this tool is you can go... in and out right you don't have to bring pumps uh frag tanks or pump spreads to be able to push and launch the receivers you can just drive in um so for short lines also in more in the liquid space you would be able to use these robotic tools as a solution for short pipelines, for example, in tank farms. 31:28 Rhett I literally went there. That was the first thing I thought of because that is such a difficult to inspect area. 31:33 Rienk Exactly. So that's the space where we're also in, right, with our UT tools. But to be able to run a UT tool in such an environment, you have to bring quite a spread to be able to do that. And, you know, if the line has certain lines, that's okay to do. But there are short distances, then these robotic technologies could potentially be in solution as well. But that's really further down in the roadmap. I think the other enhancements of the tool that I just mentioned trained extension improving sizing that those are really the first ones to look at. 32:02 Chris Well, the cool thing is like you guys have such a long runway right I mean unfortunately obviously you're informed and kind of pulled by nice search which is neat but again I just go back to the modularity of what you guys are doing like you guys can always break into things like okay well hard spots is a big deal okay well we develop a calibrated low field MFL and like just obviously as you guys are figuring things out it's neat to watch you how you guys are addressing like one thing at a time and it's very tactical right it's very it's very specific. 32:30 Rhett It's very its very industry driven right. 32:33 Chris And it's like you guys are pulled like very specifically and it's just my point is Rienk it's really neat to watch what you guys are doing. 32:36 Yeah no absolutely you hit the nail on the How do you call it? 32:41 Chris On the head. 32:43 Rienk On the head, they go. Yeah, no, absolutely. You're mentioning a few other opportunities as well. And again, you know, it's not difficult to develop the roadmap for a tool like this. 32:51 Chris Yeah, the runway's long for you guys. 32:53 Rienk Yeah, so we really appreciate the cooperation that we got with NYSEARCH and also directly with the industry because they make it happen. You know, we have direct improved from them what their requirements are. So, you know, as soon as you have, you know, like the 10 -inch example that we started off with, you develop the tool. with direct input from PG & E in this case, and you have a test case to deploy it immediately. So that's a very steep learning curve, but that's ideal. 33:18 Chris And the reality is, I mean, one of the things I appreciate, like the service that you guys’ offer is it's it grounds us a bit. Right. Like I said, we're so used to saying like, oh, we just made this line pig. We put a free-swimming tool in there. We just inspected 30 miles. And us often, you know, we'll hear operators, you know, like at PPI, we were recently there. You'll see operators. They do like a graph or like, hey, we have this many thousand miles of pipe, this many miles of HCA's and this percent is pigable. And all that other stuff that we normally don't talk about is what you guys are taking head on. It's like, hey, we're going to. help you guys, even if it's a little bit, but we're going to target HCAs, right? We're going to target MCAs. We're going to target those areas of higher consequence. 33:53 Chris And so, it kind of grounds you a bit to be like, wow, man, this is a good effort, right? We always talk about putting dollars where we think they matter the most. And you said earlier, we're inspecting urban areas. You know, like you said, New York, but same things like PG & E, you know, Northern California is very urban, very hard. And you guys are, again, talk about putting dollars where you're reducing the most risk. So again, it's fun to watch what you guys are doing. \34:17 Rhett Rienk, I want to say thanks for joining us and coming back on the show. Look forward to talking to you guys in a couple more years and hearing about what developments you have, as well as maybe if your food tastes have stayed the same. So again, audience, you heard it here first. Rink isn't into pizza. It's actually brisket that he's into and specifically Texas style brisket is what I heard there. So, if you take him out to dinner. Take him out and get him brisket. 34:37 Rhett No, but seriously, thanks for joining us. Really appreciate you having on the show. And to our audience, thanks for listening. We'll be back in a couple of weeks. And cheers from Pipeline Things. 34:50 Rhett This episode of Pipeline Things was executively produced by Sarah Etier. Special thanks to our guest, Rick de Vries, who joined us from Intero. And this episode was shot at the Post HTX. My name is Christopher DeLeon, and I'm not trying to talk like Batman. I just need to get better.