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NZ team successfully delivers 2-week geothermal concept model training in Kenya

NZ team successfully delivers 2-week geothermal concept model training in Kenya NZ modelling workshop, Kenya (source: Greg Ussher | Jacobs)
Alexander Richter 18 Jul 2019

New Zealand team delivers successful two-week long concept model training workshop hosted by KenGen, GDC and the Africa Geothermal Centre of Excellence (AGCE).

Hosted jointly by KenGen and GDC at the Africa Geothermal Centre of Excellence (AGCE) training facilities in Naivasha (Kenya), the New Zealand Government funded African Geothermal Facility (NZ-AGF) delivered a two-week long training workshop on advanced geothermal conceptual modelling to attendees from throughout East Africa from 24 June to 5th July. As part of New Zealand’s support for the AGCE, this second training session followed on from one earlier in 2019 providing introduction to use of the Leapfrog geothermal 3D modelling and visualisation software.

The sixteen attendees came from Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Tanzania, representing most of the active geothermal exploration and development agencies in the region and a wide range of technical skills and experience.  Markos Melaku, the NZ-AGF coordinator, opened the training that was led by Uniservices (the commercial arm of the University of Auckland) with specialist coaches from Jacobs, Contact Energy and Seequent.

In this course the attendees worked as teams developing conceptual models at each stage from early exploration, geophysics surveys and to exploration drilling using real project examples from Kenya and Ethiopia.  They reviewed the challenges of data quality and uncertainty and reflected on the optimism that is inherent in early exploration and often later tempered by drilling results.

The second week of the workshop focussed on the use of Leapfrog software as a tool for integrating scientific data and then developing simple numerical reservoir models for testing reservoir concepts.  The teams challenged and supported each other, and together recognised the value of multi-discipline integration for improved reservoir exploration and development.

The attendees noted that they found geological, chemistry and geophysical concepts outside their core disciplines finally became simple and clear, while the coaches reported that the teams produced some “pretty awesome”* integrated models.

* “pretty awesome” is a Kiwi phrase for excellent (so I am being told).

Source: press release by email