About Us
We harness what’s beneath us to power what’s ahead.
Blacktail was formed with a focus on generating and regenerating power from geothermal reservoirs, providing the world with sustainable baseload power.
The industry was focused on the end goal. We focused on how to get there — and built a turnkey model to deliver it.
Ahead of Schedule
Visionaries by necessity. Trailblazers by design.
Clean baseload power has never been the hard part to imagine. The hard part is the commercialization and scalability gap — the distance between a proven reservoir and a plant on the grid, stretched by long timelines, cautious capital, and a supply chain that lagged the opportunity.
Everyone was focused on the destination. No one thought about the road. Our turnkey model was built to bridge that gap: wellhead, surface, and ORC scopes engineered together, with fewer handoffs between contractors and one team accountable from spud to power.
Ahead of Schedule isn’t a slogan. It’s the standard we build to.
Good Energy
Good Energy is how we build.
Social
Good for communities.
Stable, long-term jobs. Local hiring and local suppliers written into project scopes early. Reliable power that strengthens energy independence and resilience.
Economic
Good for investors and owners.
Shorter development timelines and lower project risk mean faster paths to revenue — and more affordable, carbon-free baseload power.
Environmental
Good for the land and water.
Carbon-free geothermal runs 24/7 with no intermittency and a small footprint — developed with care for the ground it comes from.
Leadership
The team behind the model.
Joe Navar
Founder & CEO
Joe started Blacktail in June 2022. Within 18 months its geothermal wellhead systems were running in the U.S., Guatemala, Kenya, and the Philippines.
He began as Lead Wellhead R&D Engineer at Cameron, a Schlumberger company, bringing new API 6A wellhead technology to market, then ran the Artificial Lift business at The Weir Group. He built Mesquite Technologies, grew it 489%, raised $1.5M in seed and Series A, and sold its hardware and software to NOV in 2024.
MBA from Rice. B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UT Austin.
Tim Phythian
Co-Founder & CTO
Tim runs operations, engineering, and project development. For more than a decade he has built equipment that has to hold up in the field — pressure-control systems, wellhead equipment, and modular power — across oil and gas, geothermal, and distributed power.
At Blacktail he leads the geothermal wellhead technology and the modular Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power concepts, and owns how a project moves from engineering to built.