Kevin Gray

With over 35 years in the drilling industry and more than 5,000 days of rig-site operational experience, Kevin now focuses on delivering advanced drilling optimisation solutions to the geothermal sector. His career spans high-performance directional drilling, extended reach applications, real-time operations, and world-class technical training — all redirected toward addressing the specific challenges of geothermal well construction.
Kevin is a lead member and founding contributor to the IADC Geothermal Committee steering group, where he was instrumental in developing the IADC geothermal well classification system and initiating the IADC Geothermal Drilling Conference and is now a lead contributor to the soon to be published Global Geothermal Well control guidelines. He is also a founding member of the UK’s APPG on Deep Geothermal, helping shape policy and standards across the sector. His expertise has been shared globally through speaking engagements at geothermal conferences in Vienna, Taiwan, Hawaii, and London, and he is an established training provider for Geothermal Rising.
Through Black Reiver Consulting, Kevin provides geothermal operators, developers, and investors with services including technical training, asset evaluation, drilling performance optimisation, and due diligence. He supports a range of geothermal startups and has contributed to the development and commercialisation of enabling technologies — notably as the originator of the Geo-Lok geothermal wellhead system, now being commercialised by Oil States Renewables. He is also a published author on geothermal topics across several industry platforms.
Earlier in his career, Kevin was consistently the highest-rated instructor with Schlumberger’s NExT training organisation and lead trainer with the award-winning Merlin ERD team. He designed and delivered industry-respected courses in ERD, stuck pipe prevention, directional drilling, and real-time operations. He authored the first global SOP for directional drilling support centres, developed human dynamics training for real-time operations teams, and led the offshore team that created the first multi-axis real-time vibration monitoring tool. His input into the development and field testing of Schlumberger’s PowerDrive RSS tool contributed significantly to the redesign of the X5 variant.
Kevin continues to drive performance gains in geothermal drilling by merging deep technical expertise with proven field experience, focusing on solutions that work in real-world rig conditions.