American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.
This paper was prepared for the Oklahoma City SPE Regional Meeting, to be held in Oklahoma City, Okla., March 24–25, 1975. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.
Production of geothermal energy in the U.S.A. to date is 410 MWe. On an "accelerated program", this is to increase to 20,000 MWe by the year 2000. The geothermal projects that will contribute to this growth include dry steam fields, hot brines, moderate temperature/low salinity fluids, geopressured reservoirs, hot dry rock, and magmatic deposits.
The contribution of geothermal energy to the total current U.S. energy needs is 410 MWe. This is approximately equivalent to a daily oil production of 16,400 bbls. per day. This amount of energy is less than .1% of the U.S. daily oil consumption.
The Federal Energy Administration (FEA) was asked to compile a report on what can be done in all energy fields for the U.S. to become energy self-sufficient by the year 1985 with projections to the year 2000. The FEA asked the National Science Foundation (NSF) to compile a portion of this Project Independence Report concerning Geothermal Energy.
Geothermal energy production is very small at present and will not progress at sufficient speed without being accelerated on a large scale to be a significant part of "Project Independence" by 1985 and 2000.
The nest projections were made on business-as-usual condition. This would mean that private industry would continue its current pace using present guidelines, procedures, and practices. The projections were finally procedures, and practices. The projections were finally estimated on an accelerated program. This means that a Federal research program would assist private industry in solving the problems that currently inhibit or restrict their current exploration efforts.
