Five Miles to Pay Dirt: West Virginia holds significant GT resource down there

In West Virginia, a study out of Southern Methodist University in Dallas found a large area in the eastern part of the state to have elevated heat flow and upper crustal temperatures, at least when compared to the rest of the eastern U.S. The high heat flow has been recognized based on interpretation of bottom-hole temperature (BHT) data from oil and gas drilling in the area. The illustration shows a large swath in red indicating temperatures as high as 200°C at 7.5 km, or about 4.7 miles deep.

The researchers – David Blackwell, Zachary Frone, and Maria Richards of the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences – said that the temperatures are high enough to make this the most attractive area for geothermal energy development in the eastern 1/3 of the country. They further conclude that the heat in place is sufficient to support large scale development of Enhanced Geothermal Systems.

The SMU Geothermal Laboratory began a multi-year project to update the Geothermal Map of North America (GMNA) and estimates of U.S. Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) resources in 2008. The researchers believed that large areas of the Central and Eastern U.S. had been under sampled in all previous national geothermal resource assessments. Since the previous GMNA data sets were completed, about 7,500 new data points have been analyzed and currently more are being processed.

As a result of the new data, the previous estimate of West Virginia’s geothermal resources between 3 – 10 km (~1.9 – 6.2 miles) deep are now revised upwards to 113,300 EJ, an increase of 78%. Previous numbers were reported in the widely-referenced MIT document, Future of Geothermal Energy Report (Tester et al., 2006). The revised estimate of geothermal potential from this stored energy is 18,800 MW of electrical power at a 2% recovery factor.

As the researchers point out, predicted temperatures in the hottest area are as high as 200°C at 5 km (4.6 miles) in discrete locations, and reach 175°C conservatively over a large area of about 70 miles by 100 miles. They add that several wells have been drilled to depths of greater than 5 miles in western and central West Virginia, which proved very helpful in calibrating the temperatures to these depths across the state, determining the extent of the significant geothermal resources, as well as determining drilling conditions at depths similar to those needed for resource development.

The only question is, will anyone take up the challenge of actually developing the resource? Its an extraordinary find, in the east where energy is most needed and in coal country, of all places. Maybe Google will step up with an X-prize…