Reno Firm Plans Drilling on Oregon Geothermal Property (Northern Nevada Business Weekly)
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| (Courtesy) Klamath Basin Geopower |
Paul Vatistas, chief financial officer of Klamath Basin Geopower, says the company holds geothermal leases on 2,250 acres of privately owned land in Klamath County and has completed analysis of seismic imaging.
He says executives of the company are confident the property can support a 250-degree geothermal resource, and they want to further support that belief with a drilling program this summer.
At the moment, however, they are cautious about their expectations.
“When you’re dealing with the Earth, the Earth can make a fool out of you,” says Vatistas.
The privately held company has financed the initial work on the project through two rounds of equity financing — one totaling $400,000 and one totaling $1 million.
Executives of Klamath Basin Geopower don’t expect that the company would develop a geothermal power plant itself should further studies confirm their beliefs about the property’s potential.
Instead, they probably would look for a third party to build and operate the plans.
“What we are very good at is exploration and production development,” says Vatistas.
Assuming the geothermal resources prove to be sufficient, Vatistas says the Oregon property is likely to be attractive to developers of power plants.
For one, he says the prices that power-plant developers can receive in Oregon typically are stronger than those available in nearby Nevada or California.
Second, the Klamath Basin Geopower lease holdings are close to major north-south power transmission lines, potentially reducing the often hefty costs of power-line construction that face developers of geothermal projects in remote areas.
A geothermal plant operated by U.S. Geothermal at Raft River, Idaho, is currently the only geothermal facility providing power to the Northwest power grid. Ormat Technologies of Reno and Boise-based U.S. Geothermal are working on development of two other geothermal projects in Oregon. Klamath Basin Geopower was launched in 2009.
Vatistas became chief financial officer of the company in mid-2011 after previously working as chief executive officer of Angel Pacific Corp., a management consulting firm headquartered at Tahoe City. He earned an engineering degree at Cambridge University and a master’s in business from Stanford.
Bill Honjas, the president and chief executive officer of Klamath Basin Geopower, and Satish Pullammanappallil, the company’s vice president and chief operating officer, are geophysics researchers who have developed software for geophysics and engineering uses.
