News

Oil & gas firm strikes hot water off the cost of Ireland, exploring option of geothermal power

Oil & gas firm strikes hot water off the cost of Ireland, exploring option of geothermal power Offshore oil platform, North Sea (source: flickr/ Håkon Thingstad, creative commons)
Alexander Richter 17 Dec 2018

Irish oil and gas exploration firm drilling for oil off the south west coast of Ireland ended up finding hot water, but little oil. Now the company explores the option of offshore geothermal power generation.

News from Ireland reported last week, that Irish oil and gas explorer Providence Resources is now exploring the option to generate power from hot water it found off the coast in Ireland.

The resource was found at a depth of 3,000 meters below the sea bed off the south west coast of Ireland in an area of the Porcupine Basin. The project site has gained interest by significant players in the geothermal sector. The Irish Independent reports that some of those players are to travel to Ireland in January 2019 to discuss if and how this option was feasible.

The firm Providence Resources, Tony O’Reilly jr, was looking for oil on site of the Dunquin North area, with though only little oil to be found, but with plenty of hot water.

The option would be to install a geothermal power plant under water on the sea bed.

Despite showing the option on how oil and gas companies can diversify into renewable energy utilising their oil and gas exploration techniques, any development would though be purely research at this stage.

For any electricity to be sold, it would require some heavy transmission investment with the next connection to the grid being 275 kilometres away.

Nearby, at Dunquin South, the company is planning further oil drilling alongside partners  ENI, Repsol and Sosina.

For further background see link below.

An Icelandic company is actually exploring an offshore geothermal option as well off the coast of Iceland, as we reported before. Similar efforts were also explored in Italy some time ago.

Source: Business Irish