Visitor “My honest apologies to whoever (or is it whomever?) initially coined the phrase, If needs had been horses,” by David Middleton
[I]f the Texas drilling trade drilled as many geothermal wells because it presently does oil and gasoline, about 15,000 per yr, the state might run itself off geothermal energy by 2027.
- If the “Texas drilling trade” drilled as many CCS wells “because it presently does oil and gasoline wells,” the state might sequester extra CO2 than is emitted from all mounted emission sources, nationwide.
- If the “Texas drilling trade” drilled as many deep disposal wells into crystalline basement rock “because it presently does oil and gasoline wells,” the state might safely dispose of each final little bit of excessive degree radioactive waste in these United States.
- If needs had been horses, we’d all get ponies for Christmas.
Firstly, “Texas” doesn’t have a “drilling trade.” Secondly, if the drilling trade that presently drills oil & gasoline wells in Texas might earn more money drilling geothermal wells than drilling oil & gasoline wells, we might be drilling geothermal wells reasonably than oil & gasoline wells.
Listed below are some “highlights” from the article:
EQUILIBRIUM & SUSTAINABILITY
Geothermal vitality might be off-ramp for Texas oil
BY SAUL ELBEIN 01/24/23AUSTIN, Texas — 4 years of drilling for vitality deep underground can be sufficient to construct Texas a carbon-free state electrical grid, a brand new examine by an alliance of state universities has discovered.
The state’s flagship universities — together with the College of Texas at Austin, Rice College and Texas A&M College — collaborated with the Worldwide Power Company to provide the landmark report.
[…]
“Rock is a good warmth battery, and the higher 10 miles of the core holds an estimated 1,000 years’ value of our vitality wants within the type of saved vitality,” Wisan added.
Many of the state’s inhabitants lives above doubtlessly usable geothermal warmth — so long as there’s a will to drill deep sufficient.
Superheated trapped steam that’s almost 300 levels Fahrenheit — the candy spot for contemporary geothermal — is accessible about three to 5 miles beneath the state capital of Austin and a pair of 1/2 to three miles beneath its most distinguished metropolis of Houston, the report discovered.
[…]
In keeping with the Power Info Company, the state’s substantial renewable potential is assembly a part of this development: Texas leads the nation in wind vitality and has near-leading photo voltaic potential.
However the Republican-dominated legislature…
[…]
The Worldwide Power Company declared in Could 2021 that for the world to satisfy world local weather targets, new oil and gasoline manufacturing must stop, as The Hill reported.
Since that warning, world oil and gasoline manufacturing has continued to extend — and is on observe to hit document ranges in 2023. However Tuesday’s report, which the worldwide vitality watchdog helped produce, urged that geothermal vitality might be a politically palatable offramp for the trade.
The report discovered that if the Texas drilling trade drilled as many geothermal wells because it presently does oil and gasoline, about 15,000 per yr, the state might run itself off geothermal energy by 2027.
[…]
[E]ventually, the fossil gas trade started to drill and advance. “After which positive sufficient, now we’re drilling in 5,000 toes of water offshore with billion-dollar, technically advanced wells,” Beard mentioned.
“And that’s what we might do for geothermal, proper?” she mentioned. “We might go for the deepwater of geothermal, and we are able to do it within the subsequent few a long time.”
The “landmark report” may be downloaded from the College of Texas at Austin Power Institute. I downloaded the report. It’s not terrible. The sections on the geology are literally fairly effectively accomplished.
I’ve nothing in opposition to geothermal vitality, the place an financial useful resource exists.
This form of pondering doesn’t replicate economics:
Superheated trapped steam that’s almost 300 levels Fahrenheit — the candy spot for contemporary geothermal — is accessible about three to 5 miles beneath the state capital of Austin and a pair of 1/2 to three miles beneath its most distinguished metropolis of Houston, the report discovered.
Three to 5 miles beneath Austin? That’s 15,840 to 26,400 toes. There haven’t been a number of oil & gasoline wells drilled in Travis County and I don’t suppose any have been drilled in Austin metropolis limits. Contemplating that the typical depth of wells drilled in Travis County is just about 800 toes, I’m pretty sure that none of them had been drilled to depths of 15,840 to 26,400 toes. And I’m pretty sure that no wells will ever be drilled that deep below the town of Austin.
Austin is on the southeast finish of this cross part. Paleozoic basement rock is lower than 2,000′ beneath the floor.
That form of “pondering” would conclude that the Kola Superdeep Borehole was a very good begin… Though, the concept of changing coal-fired energy vegetation into geothermal energy vegetation, linked to Superdeep boreholes, drilled by Physician Evil “laser” beams, is a reasonably cool concept, from a foul science fiction film perspective.
Radical Plan To Make Earth’s Deepest Gap Might Unleash Limitless Power
TECH
09 March 2022
By MIKE MCRAESince its launch in 2020, a pioneering vitality firm referred to as Quaise has attracted some critical consideration for its audacious purpose of diving additional into Earth’s crust than anyone has dug earlier than.
Following the closure of first spherical enterprise capital funding, the MIT spin-off has now raised a complete of US$63 million: a decent begin that might doubtlessly make geothermal energy accessible to extra populations world wide.
The corporate’s imaginative and prescient for getting nearer to the middle of the Earth is to mix standard drilling strategies with a megawatt-power flashlight impressed by the form of expertise that might in the future make nuclear fusion vitality attainable.
[…]
To this point our greatest efforts at chewing our means by way of the planet’s pores and skin have bottomed out at round 12.3 kilometers (7.6 miles). Whereas the Kola Superdeep Borehole and others like it could have reached their restrict, although, they nonetheless symbolize wonderful feats of engineering.
[…]
Born out of nuclear fusion analysis at MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Heart, Quaise’s answer is to make use of millimeter lengthy waves of electromagnetic radiation that drive atoms to soften collectively.
Units referred to as gyrotrons can effectively churn out steady beams of electromagnetic radiation by shaking electrons at excessive velocity inside highly effective magnetic fields.
By hooking a megawatt-power gyrotron as much as the newest in reducing instruments, Quaise expects to have the ability to blaze its means by way of the hardest, hottest rock, right down to depths of round 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in a matter of months.
[…]
By 2028, the corporate hopes to have the ability to take over previous coal-fueled energy stations, remodeling them into services powered by steam as a substitute.
[…]
$63 million and simply the fitting angle:
A really equitable clear vitality supply, abundantly obtainable close to each inhabitants and industrial middle on the planet.
How we acquired right here
Carlos Araque spent fifteen years working at one of many world’s foremost suppliers of drilling companies to the oil and gasoline trade. Seeing the detrimental impacts of that trade firsthand made him need to do one thing to assist make issues higher. Quaise’s deep drilling expertise is the results of a decade of analysis performed by Paul Woskov on the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Heart.
Aaron Mandell knew each Paul and Carlos and put all of them on the desk collectively. As soon as the primary dialog began everybody knew it was a once-in-a-generation concept. Vinod Khosla was the primary backer, bringing our concepts to life. Two years later, The Engine, a enterprise fund constructed by MIT, led the seed spherical to assist take our expertise to market.
In keeping with their timeline, by 2024, they’ll have constructed the “first full-scale hybrid drilling rig combining standard rotary drilling and millimeter wave drilling capabilities.” By 2028, they’ll have drilled sufficient super-deep wells to transform a coal-fired energy plant to “equitable” geothermal energy. Good luck with that! The corporate appears to be an MIT mission, largely funded by MIT. Has MIT ever drilled a effectively? Wherever?
McMoRan’s 29,000′ Davy Jones effectively took almost 5 years to succeed in its goal.
The primary Davy Jones effectively needs to be most costly effectively ever drilled. McMoRan says its “funding in drilling, completion and different prices particularly attributable to Davy Jones No. 1 approximated $339.4 million as of March 31, 2013” and that its complete funding within the Davy Jones advanced, “which incorporates $474.8 million in allotted property acquisition prices, totaled roughly $1.0 billion at March 31, 2013.”
The Davy Jones effectively was truly drilled in shallow water (~20′). The effectively discovered precisely the form of strain and temperature circumstances that the geothermal pioneers are searching for. They could have even discovered a big quantity of very dry pure gasoline. It was by no means produced as a result of they couldn’t get the effectively to circulation, regardless of very excessive reservoir pressures. The extraordinarily heavy drilling mud required for these circumstances solidified into strong rock (kind of).
However McMoRan has run into bother finishing the primary Davy Jones effectively. In brief, the underside of the wellbore, which at 30,000 toes deep is not any larger than your fist, acquired all gummed up with heavy drilling mud that McMoRan needed to pump down to regulate the effectively’s large pressures. The gunk solidified and has stymied McMoRan’s efforts to finish the effectively and take a look at its circulation.
Whereas utilizing their Physician Evil “laser” to vaporize rock, will clear up the issue of circulating the effectively cuttings as much as the floor, it’s in all probability not going to include the pressures. It would additionally make mud logging reasonably inconceivable and I don’t suppose logging whereas drilling instruments will work very effectively both, with out drilling mud, and with a Physician Evil “laser” on the finish of the drill string.
There’s little question that there’s a enormous technical geothermal useful resource below Texas. Is any of it economically recoverable? Most likely.
Oil & gasoline corporations typically do search for different methods to make cash. Many, if not most, oil & gasoline corporations are actively evaluating the potential of earning money drilling CCS wells. Nevertheless, this gained’t be a “transition” away from oil & gasoline any greater than the catalytic converter was a transition away from inner combustion engines. The trade would love to show a revenue by drilling for over-pressured, super-heated brine. Such a useful resource is definitely comparatively simple to search out. The trade has truly developed strategies of drilling, evaluating, finishing and producing excessive strain, excessive warmth (HPHH) wells (shut in pressures larger than 15,000 psi and flowing floor temperatures larger than 350°F). There are prolific dry pure gasoline reservoirs in HPHH environments, just like the Norphlet formation in Cell Bay. Nevertheless, the trade just isn’t going to out of the blue change from drilling oil & gasoline wells to drilling geothermal wells.
The report does a very good job overlaying the geology and engineering, together with the authorized and regulatory hurdles. It goes off the observe when if will get into local weather propaganda and educational cheerleading and at instances turns into self-contradictory:
We Don’t Want a Attractive Moonshot. We Want Quick, Incremental Steps:
In 100 years of small steps, the oil and gasoline trade has progressed from mining oil from swimming pools on the floor of the Earth, to deep and ultra-deepwater oil and gasoline exploration. The incrementality, and certainly necessity of the steps in between these two shouldn’t be missed. To make the soar from land-based drilling to offshore drilling, simply for example, drillers began by constructing wood platforms in ten toes (three meters) of water, and caught rides with shrimping boats out to their rigs within the morning. Now, a long time later, trade drills essentially the most technically advanced wells on the planet with value tags within the billions, from offshore rigs the scale of small cities, in 5,000 toes (1,500 meters) of water…The Way forward for Geothermal in Texas, web page 352
Whereas deepwater wells are costly to drill and semi-submersible rigs & drillships are enormous, I don’t know of any particular person wells “with value tags within the billions” or “offshore rigs the scale of small cities”… at the very least not within the Gulf of Mexico. Though, the Davy Jones catastrophe could have price over $1 billion.
Nevertheless the pertinent level is that it took us over a century to go from drilling comparatively shallow onshore wells, based mostly on floor geology, the place gushers had been good issues, to drilling wells based mostly on superior 3d seismic surveys in >5,000′ water depths, to goals at >20,000′ depths, the place gushers had been environmental catastrophes. No quantity of Silicon Valley lingo cheerleading might have sped up that course of.
Disruptors Gonna Disrupt:
Startups are main the best way with huge, daring concepts, and new innovators are coming into the house sooner than we might incorporate them into this Report. Disruption leads to step-changes, which geothermal desperately wants. So cost ahead, prepared the ground, and overlook enterprise as
traditional, disruptors.The Way forward for Geothermal in Texas, web page 353
Whereas a number of the expertise that was developed throughout the oil trade’s development from the 1800’s to the 2020’s will likely be relevant to the exploitation of geothermal assets and plenty of oil & gasoline corporations are evaluating the geothermal useful resource potential of their areas of operation, a mix of local weather hysteria-driven activism and authorities intervention gained’t result in this:
An ‘Apollo’ Model Mobilization of Stakeholders Might Drive Ample International Scale for Geothermal to Provide a Majority of International Demand for Electrical energy and Warmth by 2050:
[…]
If we comply with the roadmap of the best human achievements in our method to collaboration and cooperation throughout industries, disciplines, and even celebration strains, we are able to obtain and even exceed world decarbonization targets with geothermal by 2050.
So let’s go.The Way forward for Geothermal in Texas, web page 354
In two pages they went from “We Don’t Want a Attractive Moonshot” to “An ‘Apollo’ Model Mobilization of Stakeholders…”
In the event that they skipped the “Disruptors Gonna Disrupt” cheerleading, they’d have produced a really strong report. Purchase, hey… It’s quite a bit higher than this:
If needs had been horses… A basic!
References
Beard et al, 2023. The Way forward for Geothermal in Texas: The Coming Century of Progress & Prosperity within the Lone Star State. The College of Texas at Austin Power Institute.
Hunt, B.B., Cockrell, L.P., Gary, R.H., Vay, J.M., Kennedy, V., Smith, B.A., and Camp, J.P., 2020, Hydrogeologic Atlas of Southwest Travis County, Central Texas: Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District Report of Investigations 2020-0429, April 2020, 80 p. + digital datasets.
