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First, a carefully controlled, high pressure, cold water hydroshearing process late last year at the Newberry Geothermal Project in Bend, Oregon, cracked hot rock at 500 meters while producing only microseismic events. This suggested the EGS process, which was put on hold in 2010 because of concern that deep probing at California and Swiss projects was causing earthquakes, is manageable.
Early this year, AltaRock advanced control of the process further. It injected recycled plastic into fractured rock at the Newberry site, sealing off separated reservoirs, and continued fracking them individually.
EGS, if proven safe, would turn the earth’s deep heat into productive geothermal power even in the absence of the kind of water reservoir adjacent to the heat source that makes a conventional hydrothermal well viable.
