USA, Alaska:

Ormat says Spurr Geothermal Project Still in the Works (Anchorage Daily News)

It has been a year or two since much has been heard about Ormat Technologies' project to explore for geothermal resources on the flanks of Alaska's Mount Spurr, the active volcano about 80 miles west of the city of Anchorage. But the project is continuing to progress, Alison Payne, a consultant working for Ormat on the project, assured the Alaska Rural Energy Conference on April 29.

"This project is still alive and well," Payne said. "We're in a bit of a hiatus, looking into options for a power plant to be built in the future. We're planning on drilling again in 2014."

Ormat anticipates doing some fieldwork this year, locating well sites for that next phase of drilling, she said.

With the volcano just 40 miles west of a natural gas-fired power station at Beluga on the west side of Cook Inlet, Ormat's concept has been to build a utility-scale geothermal power plant, using heat from the volcano, and to connect that power plant via a new transmission line to Beluga. The Beluga power station is connected into the Alaska Railbelt electricity grid.

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