Thursday, 4 March
Latest news from the two leading Australian companies: Geodynamics and Petratherm
Geodynamics announced last week that it is antering a Joint venture with Origin Energy to explore shallow geothermal resources on their existing licence areas in Eromanga Basin in South Australia. In the new JV, named the "Innamincka Shallows", Origin Energy will be the Operating Company. This is in contract to their existing Joint Venture targeting HFR resources in the Eromanga Basin, aptly renamed "Innamincka Deep", where Geodynamics is the JV operator.
"The new joint venture will leverage Origin's experience, while the Geodynamics team will continue to focus on the development program for the deep resources, which have significantly greater geothermal potential. This work program remains on track and we will continue to keep shareholders informed of developments." said the Geodynamics CEO Gerry Grove-White.
Whether Origin Energy is looking for HSA resources elsewhere and whether it will be seeking leases also in the Queensland Great Artesian basin, where significant HSA potential is expected, has not been addressed. We, and everybody else, will be montoring the developments in that space.
A few days after we heard this from Geodynamics and Origin, we read yesterday the Petratherm announcement that the Spanish subsidiary of Petratherm, Petratherm Espana, signed a MoU with Enel Green Power to develop electricity producing geothermal projects in Spain and to expand to Portugal and Canary islands. Enel Green Power is the Enel Group Company that is fully dedicated to the development and operation of plants generating energy from renewable sources. The company has over 500 plants operating worldwide, with 4700 MW capacity from a mix that includes wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass energy sources. The company has a strong presence in conventional geothermal energy with over 1000 MW of geothermal plants operating or under development, of which approximately 700 MW are operating in Italy and about 60 MW operating in USA. One little anecdote that stuck to my mind when I was listening to Guido Cappetti of Enel a couple of years ago in a European Conference was that all Enel geothermal power plants in Tuscany were architect designed to blend with the rest of the Tuscan landscape. Nice.
In another news item from Petratherm yesterday, the Managing Director Terry Kallis announced that Paralana temperatures meet the company expectations with temperatures of 190 oC at 4000 m. An ASX release from Petratherm states that the temperature measured at 3,674 metres using a continuous logging tool was 173°C, whilst a separate maximum temperature logging tool measured a temperature of 176°C at a depth of 3,672 metres. Based on the temperature logging data, the extrapolated Paralana 2 bottom hole temperature is between 185°C and 191°C at a depth of 4000 metres.
Paralana 2 bottom hole temperature is between 185°C and 191°C at a depth of 4000 metres.
Click here for the rest of the blog