USA, Oregon:

Stimulation Data Analysis is Underway at Newberry EGS Demo Project (Altarock Energy)

Opening the wellhead master valve at the start of the November, 2014 flow test.

Another busy field season at Newberry wrapped up at the end of November. The pumps, piping and other equipment has been put in storage and the well is shut in for the winter. Over the next few months we’ll be analyzing the data collected during stimulation and working with the Department of Energy to move forward with the project. The next stage in the Newberry EGS Demonstration project includes planning, permitting and drilling a production well.

The stimulation injected almost four million gallons of water over 32 days of pressurized pumping. During this time 397 microseismic events were detected by the seismometer array, indicating the depth and volume of the EGS reservoir produced. Biodegradable diverters were injected on two separate occasions during stimulation and resulted in the creation of multiple zones of increased permeability within the reservoir. More information about the diverters, to TIZMs, can be found in our previous blog post.

Preliminary results from the stimulation were presented at the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting in December, and the poster summary from the meeting can be found here. The analysis of the pressure, flow, seismicity and water data will continue over the next few months. The reports generated from the dataset will inform planning, permitting and execution of the next stage of work at Newberry. While data analysis is ongoing, scientific papers are currently being prepared for publication and will be presented at scientific meetings in the near future.

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