Geothermal Energy Case Studies 1: Exploiting newly abandoned or late-life E&P wells
....a sustainable alternative to P&A-ing and walking away!
Free
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Alan J Cohen
» Director - Business Development & Partnerships
» PETROLERN LLC
Full Agenda
Friday, October 15, 2021
Webinar
Online
One thing we have realized is that oil & gas folk are being told that there are many skills that are transferable from oil & gas to Geothermal Energy; this may well be both true and important but it is also clear that there is inadequate understanding of the business case amongst oil & gas companies and investors ‘over here’.
One of the views that a certain UK Major is said to hold is that Geothermal Energy = Oil & Gas prices as Input, Utility prices as Output => Poor Economics.
Obviously Re-purposing (modern) E&P wells reduces the Input prices…….
David Bamford is well known around the oil & gas industry both as an explorer and a geophysicist. He retired from BP plc in 2003, his last four positions being Chief Geophysicist (1990-1995), Business Unit Leader (General Manager) for first West Africa and then Norway (1995-1999), and finally Head of Exploration until 2003.
He has undertaken asset and company valuation projects for investment banks, hedge funds and small oil companies. He has been a board director of Tullow Oil and Premier Oil.
He holds a Physics degree from the University of Bristol and a Ph.D in Geological Sciences from the University of Birmingham.
Future Energy Partners Ltd
Future Energy Partners (FEP) is a unique oil and gas advisory service which prides itself on technic
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Talk Description
Authors: Alan J Cohen, Joseph Batir, Kevin Kitz, Hamed Soroush
Geothermal energy currently plays a small role in meeting the world's energy demand, and commercial production has been mainly focused on high-temperature, often volcanic formations that limit development to certain regions of the globe. For over a decade, research and discussions looked into opportunities to produce geothermal electricity and/or heat from existing lower temperature sedimentary formations, yet there is still no commercial development.
To improve the profitability of these resources, Petrolern has developed an integrated, patented screening platform to identify appropriate oil and gas wells for being converted to geothermal sources of heat and/or electricity. These existing late-stage, shut-in, or unplugged holes remove the significant cost of drilling new wells. The screening tool integrates modules defining critical parameters for the Reservoir, Borehole, Surface System, Environment, Infrastructure, and Economics, with screening tests at intermediate stages to define potential profitability for conversion of a well or group of closely spaced wells. Uncertainty of parameters and sensitivity of outcome to relevant parameters are handled through probabilistic simulation and economic viability is determined for each project.
Our projections from sample conceptual conversion projects indicate repurposing some oil and gas wells to geothermal heat and power production is profitable with an internal rate of returns (IRR) in the range of interest (7 to 27 %) to investment banks. Sample costs of produced electricity are in the range from 3 to 5 US cents per Kilowatt-hour, even without tax credits or abandonment deferrals. Co-production of hydrocarbons and geothermal energy is also feasible. Not only does the conversion of geothermal energy avoid the cost of drilling new wells and defer the cost of abandonment for the life of the geothermal system, it also indicates commitment to green energy solutions. Project costs can be kept even lower as cheaper more flexible modular power systems are tested and become commercial. These are under investigation. |
Internationally recognized executive and geoscientist, Dr. Alan J Cohen serves PETROLERN LLC as Director of technology partnerships and business development for geothermal, carbon storage, and oil and gas. He has over 35 years of experience in leadership and senior advisory positions in upstream oil and gas E&P operations, green energy solutions, R&D and technology maturation in the geosciences and engineering, and in midstream. He served as Senior Executive at the US Department of Energy ($90MM budget), was CTO at two technology companies, and Chief Geophysicist at Royal Dutch Shell - North and South America. He was Adjunct Professor - Geology at University of Louisiana.
Now working technology partnerships and commercialization in: real-time subsurface monitoring, novel downhole tools, physics-based machine learning, and greener energy solutions. Has done business development and led projects on all continents in over 30 countries. Alan holds a PhD and MS (Physics) from Harvard University and BSc (Chemistry) from McGill. Patent co-inventor on de-risking the conversion of fossil energy to geothermal power or heat.
PETROLERN LLC
PETROLERN LLC is a leading-edge technology company working on subsurface solutions for carbon storag
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