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Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center likely to be sold to private sector

Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center likely to be sold to private sector RMOTC, test site, Casper/ Wyoming, U.S. (source: RMOTC)
Alexander Richter 12 Sep 2012

The Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center (RMOTC) will likely close as a facility of the U.S. Department of Energy and be sold to the private sector. RMOTC has been a test center, among others for utilizing oil and gas wells for geothermal energy production.

REcent news from Wyoming indicate that the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center (RMOTC) “will likely close as a U.S. DOE facility. Budget rectrictions force the center to stop using federal funding to partially fund experimental projects at RMOTC.

This is a sad development as the center has played a strong role in research of utilizing existing oil & gas wells for geothermal power generation, among others.

With a budget of about $15 million in 2008/ 2009, it is now down to $9 million.

It is now suggested that the center looks for a buyer in the private sector. The center currently re-utilizes some existing wells to sell oil for its budgetary needs.

The center might be sold or transferred to the federal government, likely the Bureau of Land Management.

With about 150-180 oil wells, the field generates about $4 million in revenues from oil sells. So while part of the mission is oil production, the second is testing new equipment and techniques. Geothermal utilization of oil wells is one of those focus areas of research.

The three steps of a disposal process as described by the Clarke Turner, the director of RMOTC, an option paper that has already been finished on behalf of the DOE and is being reviewed there. It will then be submitted to Congress in November. In the fiscal year 2013 the field will be prepared for final disposal. The actual disposal will not happen before the financial year 2014.

The general option, so reported, “will include outright sale of the field to private industry and transfer to the U.S. Department of the Interior/ Bureau of Land Management.” It is then expected that oil and gas leases will be leased.

Source: Wyoming Business Report