GreenFire Energy and Energy Development Corporation (EDC) Aim to Restore Geothermal Wells

Imagine if existing geothermal wells which are already located in prime geothermal resources and have usable infrastructure and transmission, can be restored to generate power in a matter of months. There are numerous wells in this situation as some conventional geothermal wells are unproductive from inception. In other cases, the productivity of the wells degrade over time and conventional workovers also fail to regain significant output.

GreenFire Energy Inc. and Energy Development Corporation (EDC) see the potential in restoration as the fastest, least risk, and least expensive path to increasing geothermal productivity and power generation. In a recent announcement, EDC and GreenFire Energy are collaborating to restore an idle well in EDC’s Mahanagdong geothermal field in Leyte, Philippines. The idle well being restored has not been usable due to the high level of non-condensable gases (NCG) produced from the well when flowing. A surface heat mining facility will address the NCG limitations.

EDC provides the Philippines with over 42% of the country’s renewable energy and has geothermal power plants all over the country. Leyte is host to EDC’s biggest geothermal site and also the world’s biggest wet steam field. The Mahanagdong geothermal facility in Leyte has a capacity of 180MW.

In addition, EDC and GreenFire are analyzing other unproductive EDC wells to potentially use GreenFire Energy’s patented GreenLoop technology to enhance productivity. EDC’s “Lazarus Team” has been researching technologies to convert drilled geothermal wells and resurrect them from "dead to valuable assets." Led by Erlindo “Ritchie” Angcoy, Jr., Head of Strategic Technology and Innovation-subsurface Group/Geothermal Resource, the team looks for solid research and technologies and has been working with GreenFire Energy for some time to investigate the possibilities. GreenFire Energy’s closed-loop geothermal technology has a number of alternatives in configuration, working fluids, flow regimens, and related surface systems that GreenFire Energy tailors to for use in each particular resource. The breadth of these alternatives allow GreenFire Energy’s closed-loop systems to be used across a broad spectrum of geothermal resources with a variety of temperature, permeability, and other resource characteristics to develop large scale projects and retrofit geothermal fields.

Steeped in deep intellectual property, GreenFire Energy holds multiple patents in geothermal and closed-loop technologies and developed its technology in concert with U.S. National Laboratories and major universities. The first demonstration of GreenFire Energy’s GreenLoop technology was performed at the Coso KGRA in California, USA in 2019.

See the press release, GreenFire Energy Inc., EDC Collaborate to Generate Power from Idle Geothermal Well