2V (2023-2024): Harnessing the Geothermal Potential of Oklahoma Sedimentary Basin

• University of Oklahoma (OU), United States of America

The overall goal of this project is to evaluate and demonstrate the viability of geothermal production (producing minimum 1 MWe) from an Oklahoma hydrocarbon field and providing energy for two facilities, including Tuttle elementary and middle schools in Oklahoma. With access to four hydrocarbon wells within 1-mile distance of schools, the proposed project plans to use innovative injection/production well patterns and data-driven smart well completion technologies to optimize energy production. Use of existing oil and gas wells allows evaluation of geothermal Deep Direct Use (DDU) at considerable savings, and when successful, provides an excellent option for ‘recycling’ energy resource infrastructure as petroleum resources are exhausted. While the current proposal evaluates direct use, this is a steppingstone towards evaluation of storing high-temperature water in depleted reservoirs of sedimentary basins. The project risk and cost for any geothermal system is mainly attributed to drilling activities. Hence, we propose to use existing hydrocarbon wells in a smart pattern injection/extraction doublet system which require no cost for drilling activities. With millions of hydrocarbon wells available nationally, the project theme is scalable and highly impactful. This project leverages the use of existing wells and facilities, the expertise of a cross disciplinary team with previous geothermal energy, well design, and sustainable energy infrastructure design experience and accomplishments in similar projects. To make this project successful, the OU team is partnered with experts at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and industry experts at Blue Cedar Energy and Baker Hughes Company. This project is an opportunity to begin to transition a subset of the oil and gas workforce and hydrocarbon wellfields towards the production of clean, renewable energy. The hydrocarbon industry sustains a large, highly skilled workforce that is naturally poised to pivot from hydrocarbons to geothermal bringing with them decades of experience in technology that is directly applicable to the development and growth of EGS and other geothermal resources. A core part of the project implementation is monitoring of induced seismicity during the period of the project. We intent to deploy 12 short-period sensors around the region of the project. This should provide a dense network enough to resolve the detection and location of micro-earthquakes (-5

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