By Tom Bradley, Baker Hughes
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| Joint GRC/SPE Workshop March 30 - April 1, 2020 https://cement.mygeoenergynow.org/ |
Could it be argued that our time as an industry is limited? Should we look at the history of the coal industry in the last century as a parallel to predict our future?
I propose we look at it another way: Could the energy transition actually be an incredible opportunity for our industry? Traditionally, oil and gas, and green energy have operated in two very separate worlds and almost viewed as opposites – one polluting the planet, and one trying to save it, with few common interests and little communication between the two. But is it so simple? I believe the reality is much more complicated.
For industries such as geothermal and carbon capture, the overlap with oil and gas is obvious. Their objective is to make the best use of a subsurface resource, exactly what we’ve been doing in the oil industry for decades! Geothermal, for example, requires a subsurface energy source to be produced safely and economically, although the energy is in the form of heat rather than hydrocarbons. Sound familiar? Even the subsurface knowledge needed is the same.
At present, geothermal is a high cost and low return business, and new projects often disappoint in terms of their energy production. Many geothermal projects will not even break-even, often relying on subsidies to make them viable.
However, I believe this is an area where the oil and gas industry can make a significant impact on the viability of geothermal projects. After all, we have decades of experience working with the subsurface and realizing an economic return on an asset. As counterintuitive as it may seem, I believe the extraordinary steps the shale gas industry took during the downturn can be used as a prime example of an approach to make geothermal a viable option. The adoption of standardization, technology, and best practices allowed this previously high-cost industry to realize efficiencies, reduce costs, and survive in a low oil price world.
Even extracting shale gas relies on much of the same technology necessary for geothermal development, such as closely spaced directionally drilled wells, fracture properties, stimulation, and so forth. The parallels with geothermal are almost too good to be true.
