El Paso County Geothermal Project at Fort Bliss. Final Project Report
- Ruby Mountain Inc., Salt Lake City, UT (United State)
- Evergreen Clean Energy Management, Provo, UT (United States)
- Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (United States). Energy and Geoscience Inst.
The El Paso County Geothermal Project at Fort Bliss was an effort to determine the scale and scope of geothermal resources previously identified on Fort Bliss’ McGregor Range in southern Otero County, New Mexico. The project was funded with a $5,000,000 grant to El Paso County from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and a $4,812,500 match provided by private sector partners. The project was administered through the DOE Golden Field Office to awardee El Paso County. The primary subcontractor to El Paso County and project Principal Investigator - Ruby Mountain Inc. (RMI) of Salt Lake City, Utah - assembled the project team consisting of Evergreen Clean Energy Management (ECEM) of Provo, Utah, and the Energy & Geoscience Institute at the University of Utah (EGI) in Salt Lake City, UT to complete the final phases of the project. The project formally began in May of 2010 and consisted of two preliminary phases of data collection and evaluation which culminated in the identification of a drilling site for a Resource Confirmation Well on McGregor Range. Well RMI 56-5 was drilled May and June 2013 to a depth of 3,030 ft. below ground level. A string of slotted 7 inch casing was set in 8.75 inch hole on bottom fill at 3,017 ft. to complete the well. The well was drilled using a technique called flooded reverse circulation, which is most common in mineral exploration. This technique produced an exceptionally large and complete cuttings record. An exciting development at the conclusion of drilling was the suspected discovery of a formation that has proven to be of exceptionally high permeability in three desalinization wells six miles to the south. Following drilling and preliminary testing and analysis, the project team has determined that the McGregor Range thermal anomaly is large and can probably support development in the tens of megawatts.
- Research Organization:
- El Paso County, TX (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Geothermal Technologies Office
- DOE Contract Number:
- EE0002827
- OSTI ID:
- 1240850
- Report Number(s):
- DE-EE0002827-FINAL
- Resource Relation:
- Related Information: Exploration, Drilling and Technology Demonstration at Fort Bliss;Authors: B. Barker, J. Moore, M. Segall, G. Nash, S. Simmons, C. Jones, J. Lear & C. Bennett; Full Paper Presented at the 39th Workshop on Geothermal Reservoir Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, February 2014.; Multimodal Geothermal Development in the Tularosa Basin, NM;Authors: Benjamin Barker, Gregory Nash, Joseph Moore & Carlon Bennett; Full Paper Presented at the 40th Workshop on Geothermal Reservoir Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, January 2015.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Exploration Drilling and Technology Demonstration At Fort Bliss
EEAP lighting survey study at the Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas. Volume I. Final report