"The future of energy production is moving today in a different trajectory because of the research and capabilities of GCGE. After working with them on the SMU Power+ project, it became very apparent their ability to problem solve and work together would lead to a successful future. "
Maria Richards, SMU Geothermal Lab Coordinator
SMU Geothermal Lab
“When I heard that I said, well gosh… why hasn’t anybody ever done that before?” said Octane Energy’s CEO, Jerod Blong, when he learned that the Power+ GeneratorTM captures waste heat and converts it to electricity. Octane Energy plans to use AC drilling rigs, which run 100 percent on electricity, all of which is generated on the well site by “almost locomotive-sized diesel engines running almost 24 hours a day,” as Blong describes it. The best diesel engines use only around 40 percent of the energy burned to do their work—the other 60 percent is ejected as heat. Blong wants to recapture at least some of that other 60 percent and let the Power+ convert it to electricity, thereby reducing diesel fuel use and cutting CO2 emissions.
“What it looks like we’ll be able to do is to power all the ancillary trailers on the location, like the company man’s trailer, our pusher’s bunkhouse, and our crew houses,” he noted. “All of our jobs are camp jobs because the folks that we’re employing, we want to bring in from outside the Permian Basin because we’ve got a labor shortage.” Blong looks forward to furnishing electricity to those facilities with the Power+ GeneratorTM for just the cost of the equipment.
He also believes that, because the producer is usually the one paying for these things, his company will be able to offer this as a value-added proposition for its own customers.
Geothermal to power enthusiast Mario Messina, President of Dallas based Messina Inc. urges operators who have shut-in or plugged wells to do an analysis to see if the well is a candidate for producing electricity. Acording to Messina “part of that analysis is determining if the downhole temperature is hot enough and whether an avenue exists to run the fluid through the hot rock” and added that determining the cost also includes ascertaining what it will cost to transmit the electricity to the power grid. He said it also might mean re-fracing the well. “You have to look at the total economic package,” Messina explained. “But most of the cost of geothermal energy is drilling the hole.” Refering to the Power+ GeneratorTM Messina continues “If you already have a well, you are halfway there.”
Messina, Inc.
“We try and support valid research projects where possible,” said Gordon Moore, regional facility engineering manager at Denbury Resources, Dallas, Texas, referring to Denbury Resources role as a partner in the O&G Produced Water to Power project at a Denbury well in Mississippi.
