Alberta’s half-a-million oil and gas wells are a proud testament to our province’s innovation in extracting our rich natural resources. But more than 77,000 wells are now listed as inactive, and over 180,000 are abandoned. Converting them to geothermal systems would put drilling and service firms back to work, provide heat and power to farmers who currently see these wells as a nuisance, and slash the abandonment costs that force some juniors into bankruptcy.
Geothermal heat resources are extracted in varying amounts from just about every productive well in Alberta. It’s in the form of produced water, delivering gigajoules of energy to the surface, but it’s considered a waste by the oil and gas industry, and is usually trucked away or piped into disposal wells. Oil companies actually pay to throw these gigajoules away.
