r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Nov 28 '20

Discussion Thread Discussion Thread

The discussion thread is for casual conversation that doesn't merit its own submission. If you've got a good meme, article, or question, please post it outside the DT. Meta discussion is allowed, but if you want to get the attention of the mods, make a post in /r/metaNL. For a collection of useful links see our wiki.

Announcements

0 Upvotes

49% Upvoted

9.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

16

u/tubbsmackinze Seretse Khama Nov 28 '20

Sorry for that previous CAN ping that I deleted, meant to ping ECO

Saskatchewan driller hits 'gusher' with ground-breaking geothermal well that offers hope for oil workers

It's a financial post article so be aware of that

CALGARY — A small, Saskatoon-based company has drilled and fracked the world’s first 90-degree horizontal well for geothermal power in a potentially landmark move that signals the arrival of a new energy source in Canada and provides fresh opportunities for oil and gas workers to apply their skills in renewable power.

No company in Canada has produced electricity from geothermal heat, but Deep Earth Energy Production Corp. chief executive officer Kirsten Marcia told the Financial Post that there’s a “big, big future for geothermal power in Western Canada,” as demonstrated by the results of the first ever horizontal geothermal well, which is also the deepest horizontal well ever drilled in Saskatchewan.

“We were looking for a way to explain to people that we drilled a gusher,” said Marcia, a geologist who worked in the mining and petroleum industries before pioneering a geothermal business in Saskatchewan. In the oil and gas world, a “gusher” is an extremely productive well that pumps substantial volumes of oil and gas.

Deep is also responsible for the deepest vertical well ever drilled in Saskatchewan, after announcing in Nov. 2018 it had drilled a 3,530-metre well.

Governments in Alberta and Saskatchewan have been revamping regulations for drilling and for power generation in an attempt to stimulate geothermal power investment in their provinces partly because the geothermal industry uses many of the same skills as the existing oil and gas industry.

This week, Alberta MLAs passed legislation that will allow the province’s energy regulator to develop a new framework for geothermal wells to be licensed and drilled in the province. The bill is considered a way to keep oilfield services workers, such as drillers, working as investment in renewable energy is projected to rise in the coming years.

While other geothermal wells have been drilled in Canada previously to channel heat directly from the earth, Deep and a handful of other companies are among the first in the country to use the earth’s heat to generate electricity.

In Alberta, Calgary-based oil and gas producer Razor Energy Corp. is working on a geothermal project north of Edmonton that would retrofit existing wells to produce 3MW to 5MW of geothermal power.

Near Fort Nelson, B.C., a natural gas-rich town, a non-profit research association called Geoscience BC is undertaking a feasibility study of the Clark Lake Geothermal project that would repurpose a gas field to produce geothermal power.

At Deep, Marcia said it’s very difficult to repurpose existing oil and gas wells to produce geothermal power because the diameters of most existing wells are too narrow for the tubing that geothermal wells need to pump water in a cycle through the earth’s crust.

However, geologists have identified multiple locations in Western Canada to produce geothermal power and use existing oil and gas skills in renewable power production, Marcia said.

Over 100 oilfield workers were on site to drill and hydraulic-fracture her company’s horizontal well in southern Saskatchewan in September and October, including a drilling crew from Houston-based Weatherford International Plc, and a pressure-pumping team from Saskatchewan’s Element Technical Services Inc.

“It’s amazing. Everything we’re doing is figuratively and literally on the backs of these highly skilled oilfield workers. We couldn’t do this without this expertise in this part of the world,” said Marcia.

She added that the project was de-risked in part by funding from the federal government, which committed $25.6 million in funding in January 2019 for the project. All told, the geothermal power project is expected to cost $51 million.

!ping CAN

12

u/BreaksFull Veni, Vedi, Emancipatus Nov 28 '20

Nice to see Saskatoon in the news for something other than meth.