Extract and re-inject water, from the same well
The city of Munich is blessed with a very permeable succession of Quaternary sediments that enables a high and consistent supply of groundwater flow. As such, there is great potential…
Geothermal
Building a reservoir model for a geothermal field
The first well in the Ohaaki geothermal field in New Zealand was drilled in 1965. However, it lasted until 1989 before power production really started, even though large-scale testing of…
The “nugget effect” in geothermal exploration
“We see permeabilities of 10 Darcy and above 15 % porosity, easily,” says Alan Bischoff. Alan is associate professor of geoenergy at the University of Turku in Finland. In that…
Why data obtained by legacy gas wells are not always a good indicator for assessing geothermal potential
The Upper Permian Rotliegend sandstone in the Netherlands is a very well-explored reservoir. That is because a lot of gas fields are reservoired in this aeolian and fluvial succession that…
Has the Aarhus geothermal project become a little less geothermal than initially planned?
In a recent statement on LinkedIn, geothermal exploration and development company Innargi announced that its flagship project in Aarhus, Denmark, will be developed differently from what was originally foreseen. Where…
An exciting drilling campaign in exciting geology
Did EBN set a trend? That’s to be seen, but the four-well geothermal drilling campaign the Croatian Hydrocarbon Agency recently embarked on to prove the potential of an equal number…
Coring a geothermal reservoir in oil and gas heartlands
Lower Saxony, the German state that finds itself in the north-western part of the country, has a rich history in drilling and coring. But until recently, activities on that front…
Bacterial life is everywhere in the subsurface
Elsemiek Croese. Photography: Elsemiek Croese private archive. “Let’s put it this way,” says Elsemiek Croese from Microbial Analysis, “one of the key ingredients of life is water. In that light,…
Not-so-hot volcanic rocks in Saudi Arabia
This in what a team of researchers concluded in a paper published in the journal Geothermics this year. It must have been a bit of a surprise to find very…
How interested is Eavor in sharing drilling results of the Geretsried project?
If I fail to hear back from companies when enquiring for information about a project, I mostly decide not to write about it at all. But in the case of…
Preventing scaling in geothermal production wells
The Munich area in Germany is lucky when it comes to its geothermal potential. There is a good Upper Jurassic carbonate reservoir at the right depth, and the water composition…
Too fast, too soon
In Geothermal energy production, it is all about the temperature of the produced water, brine or steam. A drop in temperature has a direct effect on the amount of energy…