Maverick Drilling Technologies

A case study on pricing a directional drilling system in the oilfield services industry for use in graduate and executive education.

A New Challenge

The weekend was approaching, and Houston’s energy professionals were wrapping up another work week and heading out to happy hours around the city. But Nathan Parker wasn’t ready to unwind. A petroleum engineer by training and now a product manager, Nathan was preoccupied with a pricing dilemma. He was tasked with pricing Maverick Drilling Technologies’ ambitious new offering, the NaviRig + PADS directional drilling system. NaviRig was Maverick’s new directional drilling equipment platform designed for horizontal wells, and PADS (Precision Automated Drilling System) was the proprietary AI-powered software that optimized drilling operations by reducing non-productive time and improving wellbore placement accuracy.

As a new product manager at Maverick Drilling Technologies, Nathan was both anxious and excited to have this opportunity. He had worked as a software developer at Baker Hughes for three years after earning his petroleum engineering degree. Then, he returned to graduate school and completed his MBA from Rice University earlier that year. With the energy sector recovering from the pandemic downturn, recruiting was easy, and Nathan had accepted Maverick’s product manager job offer six months earlier, in April 2022.

The Strategy Session

The mahogany conference table in Maverick's executive boardroom reflected the early morning sunlight as four key players gathered for what everyone knew would be a pivotal meeting. Leading the discussion was Samuel Davis, Maverick's drilling equipment division head and Nathan's direct supervisor. Seated across from Nathan was Diana Wilson, the company's Chief Scientific Officer, whose team had spent two years perfecting the PADS software. The third attendee was Wei Chen, Maverick's marketing director, whose market research had identified the independent operator opportunity that NaviRig was designed to capture. Notably absent was Jack Reynolds, Maverick's Sales Director, who was traveling to meet with potential customers. His absence created an interesting dynamic—the pricing decision would ultimately need his team's buy-in for successful execution.