Wednesday, October 31, 2012

USA, Oregon:

Hydroshearing Achieved at Newberry 
(Newberry Enhanced EGS Demonstration Project)

Locations (red dots) of the events in relation to the geothermal
well’s surface location and five of our closest monitoring stations.
(Courtesy Newberry Enhanced EGS Demonstration Project)
The Newberry Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) demonstration project has exciting news to share this morning. Yesterday, they got both pumps running at full capability and brought the well head pressure up to 1800 psi. Shortly afterwards, two microseismic events with magnitudes close to zero occurred near the bottom of the bore hole. In addition, the permeability increased slightly. This means that hydroshearing and creation of an EGS reservoir has begun. As they continue to slowly increase the rpm’s of the pumps, they anticipate many more microseismic events over the next week.