Welcome back to Project Obsidian 🌋
Project Manager Paolo Rossi is back, alongside Trenton Cladouhos, to give a behind-the-scenes look at the progress of the world's first superhot geothermal power plant.
This first resource confirmation well is underway and will help prepare the site for several future steps, like:
🗻 confirming the resource to help the team understand the geology
🔥allowing the team to test innovative technologies downhole at superhot temperatures
🔍 acting as a monitoring well for the second and third wells
Check out the video for more on the team's progress to date and what's ahead.
Video Transcript
Paolo: Welcome back to Project Obsidian. I'm Paolo Rossi with Quaise Energy, and since our last video, a lot has changed up here. So today I'm going to give you a behind-the-scenes look at all the progress that's going into the world's first superhot geothermal power plant. Come on, and let's take a look.
Behind me is our drilling operation. This rig and our partners at Nabors Industries have been hard at work on our resource confirmation well. In a little bit, we'll talk to one of our expert geologists, but for now, let's get an aerial view of the rig.
Okay, now that you've flown around and seen what we're doing here at Project Obsidian, I want to introduce my friend and one of the pioneers of the superhot geothermal movement, Trenton Cladouhos.
Trenton, great to see you.
Trenton: Great seeing you, Paolo.
Paolo: Can you tell us a little bit about what's going on with this resource confirmation well and what the purpose is behind it?
Trenton: Sure. The first purpose is to confirm the resource, to understand the geology below us. Second is to test innovative technologies downhole at superhot temperatures. And third is a monitoring well for future work when we've drilled the second and third wells on this same pad.
Paolo: How does this well compare to other wells in the area and the broader U.S.?
Trenton: We're going to be drilling this well to 15,000 feet and 700 degrees Fahrenheit. That'll make it one of the hottest, deepest wells in the continental U.S., similar to some other wells in this area.
Paolo: So Trenton, you've been working on the Newberry volcano for quite some time. What's so special about this place?
Trenton: Newberry's special for geothermal development because we can reach superhot temperatures at just 15,000 feet. Very few other places in the U.S. you can do that.
Paolo: And is this a fairly active volcanic region?
Trenton: Yeah, so Newberry is just half a million years old. The latest eruption was 1,300 years ago, so we know there's a lot of heat still underneath this volcano.
Paolo: This is a great view of the volcano from here.
Trenton: Yeah, so that ridge line is the edge of the caldera. 70,000 years ago, the caldera formed in a giant eruption. Across that ridge is the Newberry National Volcanic Monument, two lakes, the youngest eruptions in the caldera. Right here, we're about two miles away from that caldera rim. But the magma underneath the current caldera has heated the rock to 700 degrees right below our feet, two miles away.
Paolo: Wow. It's a really stunning view. It puts the whole thing into perspective: the scale of that volcano being so big, and what a little footprint we have here and how much energy we can create.
Trenton: Yeah, we're just five acres right here, and we can drill down and directionally to extract 50 megawatts of heat.
Paolo: That's incredible. As a final takeaway, what comes next after this resource confirmation well?
Trenton: The final step on this well will be to put a wellhead on the casing that you see sticking up there. Then this entire rig is going to move, drill an injection well all the way down to 15,000 feet or more and then drill a production well. We'll connect those wells in the subsurface and after that do a flow test in which we'll be injecting cold water into the injector and producing hot water from the producer and proving out 10 to 15 megawatts of electricity production potential.
Paolo: Well, we look forward to following that as well. Trenton, thanks for your time today and for walking us through the confirmation well. It's really informative.
Trenton: You're welcome.
Paolo: Folks, thanks for following our progress here at Project Obsidian. We look forward to bringing you more updates in the future. For now, on behalf of Quaise Energy, I'm Paolo Rossi. We'll talk to you soon.