United Downs geothermal project pushes planned workover op’s to mid-May 2020

Construction at water storage pond, UDDGP project, Cornwall/ UK (source: project website)

Alexander Richter 5 Apr 2020

The United Downs Deep Geothermal Power project in Cornwall, UK has announced that it has postponed its workover operations planned for March until mid-May 2020.

The project reported in March that it had finished drilling and having entered the evaluation period as the third phase of the programme.Preliminary results from the drilling have been described as promising. Both wells intersected the fault at the predicted depth and the temperature at the bottom of the deeper well is around 190 degrees Celsius, which was also as expected. Downhole measurements have confirmed that there are lots of natural fractures and early indications are that the permeability is promising.

The project now needs to carry out a series of measurements and hydraulic tests to evaluate the fault structure, make sure the wells are in good condition, and evaluate the amount of geothermal energy we can sustainably harness from the system.?The work was to be carried out during the first half of 2020, how the announced postponement will effect the timing will have to be seen.

A water storage pond was built allow the project to  carry out further tests on our deep well UD-1. The facility will store water produced from the well so that it can be allowed to cool and analysed before either being re-injected or disposed of offsite.?

The ‘workover’ drilling rig was to be mobilized to the site in late March to remove a temporary downhole packer from UD-1, carry out some more downhole ‘logging’ measurements, attempt to collect sidewall cores and carry out the production test. This is now expected for mid-May.

The workover rig is much smaller than the one used for drilling the wells; about half the mast height and less equipment on the ground.

Source: UDDGP