Nevada Geothermal Power issued a release today outlining plans for more drilling on the Blue Mountain project. One of the more difficult and risky activities in any geothermal project is the drilling phase which costs an average of $1,300 per meter drilled for production wells. NGP announced that it has engaged ThermaSource to commence drilling activities May 1 of this year and that they will extend well #38-14 from it’s present depth of just over 600m (~2,000 feet) to just under 1,100m (~3,500 feet.) If necessary, a second production well will be drilled to tap the resource. Our estimate for costs for this activity could range from $650,000 to $1,950,000.

Our research shows that the average production well is capable of producing 4MW of output, this is dependent on resource temperature, pressure, and flow rates. The best known producing geothermal wells are in Iceland with an output of 15MW per well. The Blue Mountain project has a most likely field production estimate created by Geothermex of 47MW. Thus, to fully harvest the field, we estimate NGP will need to drill between 10-12 production wells and at least 3 injection wells. Given that the field depth is between 600 and 1200 meters, we estimate the drilling cost for the total project to come in between $17M and $21M if all of the drilled wells are productive.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under Geothermal.