Faster and faster
Drilling faster is a big driver for technological development in every aspect of the subsurface industry, and the shallow geothermal sector is no exception. “We can significantly increase the drilling…
Geothermal
Drilling into new frontiers – drilling into magma
No, it is not entirely new. Drilling straight into magma has happened before. But in Iceland, the Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) consortium is now going to research it more rigorously…
Finding a hotspot in Alaska
Domestic gas production in Alaska’s Cook Inlet is declining rapidly, and for that reason, there is now an incentive to further increase the share of renewable energy. One candidate to…
Monetizing the geothermal resource
“The Client we work with in Dakota at the moment applied fans to cool the produced fluids from their assets before it was piped away. Now, we extract the heat…
How subsurface data helped answer the question why flow testing results of a geothermal well disappointed
“Why would we need resistivity data if we are drilling for water”, some people argued when the Amstelland-01 geothermal exploration well was planned a couple of years ago. Now, almost…
A critical look at Fervo dataset suggests lower output
In July 2023, Fervo made public a pre-print containing plots and analyses of a well test in Nevada related to their project Red. This allows for a more detailed analysis…
A huff-and-puff reservoir
“I would not be in this business if we would not think we can produce competitively priced energy”, said Mike Eros from Sage Geosystems during his talk in the Geothermal…
Gravel and geothermal energy
It is well-known that Munich is benefiting from a favourable setting in terms of deep geothermal energy production. A little less well-known is that Munich also sits on a much…
Geothermal energy from buried basement rocks
Closed-loop shallow geothermal boreholes drilled up to a depth of around 200 m are quite common in Estonia. But recently, the Geological Survey decided to embark on a project to…
FORGE – first injection test successfully completed but no pressure equilibrium achieved
A couple of months ago, the FORGE project in Utah, USA, reported a successful stimulation and circulation test at their flagship Enhanced Geothermal Systems project. “These tests in stimulated hot…
Removing barriers to geothermal project development
Trying to work with the current myriads of non-standardised terms, definitions, and well design types for geothermal projects is challenging. Interest in the sector is growing rapidly, but its technical…
How the winner of a technology competition made room for the losers to take over the market
Sweden comes third in the list of countries using geothermal energy. But it is not deep geothermal energy, it is shallow geothermal – mostly sourced through closed loop systems of…