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Carlos Araque

Co-Founder and CEO, Quaise Energy · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveengineerLinkedIn ↗quaise.energy ↗

After spending 15 years in oilfield technology at Schlumberger and serving as Technical Director at MIT's venture fund The Engine, Araque co-founded Quaise Energy in 2018. At Quaise, he leads the commercial development of millimeter-wave gyrotron drilling technology to reach deep superhot geothermal energy 10 to 20 kilometers beneath the earth.

14statements → 10claims → 6claims resolved → 50%fully supported → 3.93/5average certainty → 2.07/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 1said about them ↓

3 supported 2 partly supported 1 contradicted 3 not yet assessed 1 not checkable as stated how the 10 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 7 assertions · 3 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 10 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 6 are resolved, 3 are not yet assessed, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Carlos argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Araque: Existing geothermal regions reach 800°F closer to 3 miles deep
“Everywhere where you have geothermal today is very likely one of those places where you'll find the 800 degrees Fahrenheit at three miles, closer to three miles than closer to 12 miles.”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 9:04 Digging deep for super hot geothermal

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Araque: Traditional hydrothermal wells reach at most a mile deep at sub-boiling temperatures
“For traditional hydrothermal not, not very deep at all. You're going maybe a mile at most, and you're getting as hot as what the water that's down there gets you. It's usually sub-boiling. It's hard to get to boiling temperatures. You're talking about 200 degr…”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 4:05 Digging deep for super hot geothermal

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
60% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Carlos Araque on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Carlos Araque said on Catalyst that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2029
Araque: Super-hot geothermal will achieve $50 to $100 per MWh globally
“The higher outputs will be a big part of bringing those LCOEs down, and we see a hundred dollars per megawatt hour at the meter, no matter where you are in the world. Now, that includes the shallow and the deep systems. If you look specifically at the shallow …”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 28:43 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2026
Araque: Quaise will achieve 25-30 MW EGS flow test by end of 2026
“For us in particular, the project in Oregon gets that flow test by the end of this year. By the end of twenty-twenty-six, Quaze has a commercial-grade Injector producer per EGS system producing 25 to 30 megawatt equivalent electric output from a flow test.”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 33:31 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2028
Araque: Quaise will run first supercritical geothermal flow test by 2028
“From there in twenty-twenty-eight, so two years later, we'll do another version of that, that is not at three miles, but a little bit deeper and above the 400 degrees Celsius or so. We're basically walking up the temperatures of that site to unlock those outpu…”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 33:57 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Insight
Araque: Drilling super-hot geothermal is a vastly larger hurdle than fracturing
“The drilling by far outweighs the fracturing. The fracturing does happen in nature. We see this in nature every time a hydrothermal vent or a mine forms. This is the process by which it does so. So there's evidence in the geological record that The fracture in…”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 16:15 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Disclosure
Araque: Quaise is securing a take-or-pay PPA for its first project
“So we're already getting into market. In that location with a real take or pay PPA because we know that we can point to all of the solutions with precedent.”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 23:39 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Insight
Araque: Oil and gas drilling is limited by temperature, not depth
“Oil and gas systems are not depth limited. They are temperature limited. You will find people drilling with mechanical drilling systems all the way down to eight miles, nine miles, pushing really out there, but not hot, right? So the gap is not depth. The gap …”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 7:00 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Assertion Supported
Araque: Existing geothermal regions reach 800°F closer to 3 miles deep
“Everywhere where you have geothermal today is very likely one of those places where you'll find the 800 degrees Fahrenheit at three miles, closer to three miles than closer to 12 miles.”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 9:04 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Araque: Shallow super-hot geothermal requires only incremental oil-and-gas hardware evolution
“So talking about the shallow ones, it's incremental improvements. There's a lot of precedence already in oil and gas. There's something in oil and gas called SAGD, steam-assisted gravity drainage, which injects steams, steam at temperatures up to 600 degrees F…”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 20:39 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Assertion Partly supported
Araque: Over 50 super-hot geothermal wells have been drilled worldwide
“And just like that location, I can point to more than 50 wells drilling the world by people looking for super hot hydrothermal systems that are going to be in the three to four mile range and are going to be in the 600 to 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Some of them a…”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 26:02 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Insight
Araque: Non-productive downtime matters far more than instantaneous drilling speed
“A lot of people overemphasize instantaneous speed, like, oh, we can drill a hundred meters per hour instantaneously, but that matters less than your consistency. So non-productive time in drilling is what starts to take over your drilling economics. You start …”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 30:12 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Assertion Contradicted
Araque: Traditional hydrothermal wells reach at most a mile deep at sub-boiling temperatures
“For traditional hydrothermal not, not very deep at all. You're going maybe a mile at most, and you're getting as hot as what the water that's down there gets you. It's usually sub-boiling. It's hard to get to boiling temperatures. You're talking about 200 degr…”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 4:05 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Assertion Supported
Araque: 800-degree Fahrenheit rock exists between 3 and 12 miles deep globally
“Always looking for 800 Fahrenheit, and you'll find it anywhere between three miles to 12 miles deep, depending on where you are in the world.”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 6:22 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Assertion Supported
Araque: 800°F Geothermal Wells Transfer 10x More Power Than 200°F Wells
“So at the end of the day, the same wellbore, let's call it eight inch in diameter, very typical size it will transfer maybe one to 10 megawatts electric equivalent. If it's flowing at 200 degrees Fahrenheit, I will transfer 10 times that if it's flowing at 800…”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 9:56 Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Assertion Partly supported
Araque: China's 11-km borehole took an entire year for the final kilometer
“The Chinese recently did an eleven-kilometer haul, and I'm switching units because they, it's been reporting those units. So, about eight miles deep. The first 10 kilometers took a year to drill, and the last one kilometer took another year to drill.”
Carlos Araque Mar 5, 2026 ▶ 31:01 Digging deep for super hot geothermal

The other half of the tape: Carlos Araque's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on Catalyst. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Shayle Kann 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
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0112024episodes it came up in
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2024 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Digging deep for super hot geothermal Mar 5, 2026 19m
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