Tag: drilling geothermal well

Press Release: Drilling of the Production Well Begins

Utah FORGE Drills Geothermal Production Well.

  • Second deep deviated well in doublet pair.
  • A highly deviated well drilled in hard, hot crystalline granite – will mirror previously drilled injection well.
  • Total length of the well will be approximately 10,700 feet.

 

SALT LAKE CITY, UT., 26 April, 2023 - The Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, is excited to announce that the drilling of its second highly deviated deep well has commenced. This second well will serve as the production well of a two well doublet, and will mirror the existing injection well, which was drilled between October 2020 and February 2021. The new well will be located approximately 300 feet from the injection well.

Like the injection well, the upper part of the well will be drilled vertically through approximately 4,550 feet of sediments at which point it will penetrate into hard crystalline granite. At about 5,600 feet, the well will be gradually steered at a 5-degree angle for each 100 feet until it reaches an inclination of 65 degrees from its vertical point. The total length of the well will be approximately 10,700 feet with the “toe” – or the end of the well – reaching a vertical depth of 8,265 feet. The temperature at this depth will be 440 degrees F.

“This is a crucial next step in the Utah FORGE project’s goal of de-risking the tools and technologies required for making Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) technologies commercially viable” said Dr. Joseph Moore, and Principal Investigator of Utah FORGE. “This new well will serve as the production well. In the future, water will be pumped into the injection well, travel through the reservoir of tiny fractures that we previously opened, absorb the heat from the hard, hot crystalline granite, and then be pumped up through this new production well to the surface. This will help us capture the enormous energy potential beneath our feet and bring low cost, environmentally green, and renewable energy across the United States.”

Once the well is completed, a series of tests will be run to continue facilitating the development of the EGS reservoir and its long-term connectivity. Additional tests will also include determining the stress conditions through short-term injection experiments, during which microseismicity will be carefully monitored.

About Utah FORGE: The Utah FORGE project is managed by the Energy & Geoscience Institute at the University of Utah. Funding for the project is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. The FORGE site is located near the town of Milford in Beaver County, Utah, on the western flank of the Mineral Mountains. Near term goals are aimed at perfecting drilling, stimulation, injection-production, and subsurface imaging technologies required to establish and sustain continuous fluid flow and energy transfer from an EGS reservoir. For more information, please visit our website at https://utahforge.com.

 

Media Contact: Christopher Katis ckatis@egi.utah.edu

Media Kit

Drilling of Well 56-32

Seismic Monitoring Well 56-32

This well is the fourth and deepest of a cluster of vertical seismic monitoring wells that are located near the toe of 16A(78)-32. The well was drilled vertically to a total depth of approximately 9,000 feet about 1300 feet north of 58-32.

Well 56-32 will be fully cased (5 ½ inch) and used for deployment of seismic sensors during stimulation experiments. A Silixa DAS fiber optic cable 7500 feet long will be cemented along the outside the casing. During the drilling of 56-32, MSE (Mechanical Specific Energy) calculations and PDC bits will be used to optimize penetration rates as was successfully utilized in the drilling of 16A(78)-32. Below 7500 feet depth, mud hammer bits will be trialed and evaluated for drilling performance.

Update February 8:

Well spudded at 4am.

Update February 9:

Drilled to 380 ft depth.

Update February 10:

Drilled to 3,300 ft depth. The basement contact was crossed at 3,100 ft.

Update February 17:

Drilled to 5,840 ft depth.

Update February 21:

Well reached TD of 9,145 ft depth.

Worth noting: 

This well, as well as the deep, highly deviated 16A(78)-32, was drilled with specially modified polycrystalline diamond composite or PDC bits. These bits proved superior to the tricone bits used in drilling the previous wells.

According to Reed Hycalog, the bit manufacturer, drilling well 56-32 set a record for a bit run of 1208 ft in 53 hours, drilling on average 25 ft/hr in hot, crystalline granite.