Publications

As oil and gas reservoirs mature and the clamor for renewable energy in the overall power mix increases, there is a push to transition from fossil fuel-based power. The oil and gas industry drills approximately 50,000 oil and gas wells per year. When oil and gas wells reach the end of their economic life, thousands are plugged and abandoned. Those wells have the potential to unlock an installed capacity of 34 gigawatt electric (GWe) for geothermal by 2030 through infrastructure reuse. GreenFire Energy Inc. (GFE) has been developing its versatile GreenLoop closed-loop geothermal technology for several years now. In GreenLoop, a downbore tube-in-tube (co-axial) heat exchanger circulates large volumes of a variety of working fluids. The working fluid returns to the surface at elevated temperatures through an insulated tube and can be flashed to produce power either at an existing steam condensing power plant, or an integrated Organic Rankine Cycle power-generating system. Besides, the hot working fluid can also directly be used for district heating/cooling applications. The downbore closed-loop heat exchanger only extracts heat and not mass from the resource, thereby conserving water and maintaining pressure in the reservoir. GFE field-tested GreenLoop at the Coso geothermal field in 2019 and are working in different projects worldwide now. This technology has the potential to repurpose oil and gas wells especially in areas with steam flood operations, hot basins, and abandoned deep exploration wells. GFE is currently testing the GreenLoop technology for oil and gas well retrofit through advanced testing capabilities in collaboration with the Wells2Watts geothermal consortium members, led by Baker Hughes. The testing capabilities will use a test well in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma USA, to improve the GreenLoop technology design. The advancement will result in showing geothermal energy and renewable electricity production are possible after oil and gas production has declined and further deferring well abandonment.