Foro Energy is commercializing high-power lasers in the oil, gas, geothermal, and mining industries with a unique capability and hardware platform that uses field-packaged high-power fiber lasers and fiber-optic cables to transmit the laser power over long distances.

Upon reaching technology critical mass, high-power lasers potentially will have the same type of impact on the oil, gas, geothermal, and mining industries that is occurring in the automotive, manufacturing, defense, and medical industries.

When working with power levels of 20 kW, SBS can cause a significant portion of the laser power to be transmitted backwards through the fiber, resulting in catastrophic damage to optical components as well as the laser itself.

As Secretary of Energy and Physics Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Steven Chu acknowledged: “Foro has been able to overcome this technical challenge of how to suppress SBS. They’ve made tremendous progress in being able to send high-intensity laser power over long distances through fiber, where many other people thought it was going to be impossible.”1 Technologists at the company have successfully engineered a high-efficiency optical transmission cable for high-power lasers.

As a set, these laser hardware components form a platformLaser power cordfor multiple applications and industries, and are covered by over 3,800 pending patent claims.

One of Foro Energy’s initial proofs-of-concept to establish that its high-power laser transmission platform could be used with commercial drilling equipment was achieved through the integration of its laser hardware platform with a coil tube drilling rig.

Laser-mechanical drilling of ultra-hard rocks is one of the major applications for high power lasers in the energy and mining industries.