Title: Geothermal Prospect Gabbs Valley, Nevada

Attempts were made to cause well Dixie Federal 45-14 to flow by reducing the wellbore pressure opposing possible producing formation. Such pressure reduction was accomplished by using a Magcobar air compressor to lift the water column out of the wellbore. Three series of efforts using this method were performed. The conclusions from these last attempts to flow Dixie Federal 45-14 were: (1) the massive water entry at 5820-5870 feet was shut off; (2) the compressor, with some help from the mud pumps, was able to virtually clear the wellbore of water above the point of air injection; (3) despite evacuatingmore » water from the wellbore to as deep as 7500 feet, the Dixie Federal 45-14 had insufficient permeability to commence flowing on its own as of 7-8-79. The possible benefits of temperature equilibration or other time adjustments within the prospective interval below 8000 feet may include eventual capacity to flow. This potential will be evaluated with future flow attempts; and (4) there is some small liquid entry somewhere between 6290 and 9022 feet which caused the air compressor to go through very long (3-4 hour) cycles of unloading and slowly re-filling the wellbore.« less

In light of the cuttings and geophysical logs from the Campbell E-2 hole, it seems unlikely that a geothermal reservoir exists in the horst block of the Humboldt House area. All known sinter deposits occur in the graben block in the valley, northwest and southwest of Campbell E-2. The range front fault, which may serve as a conduit for deeply circulating fluids, dips to the west and intersects the hole at 890 feet (271.3 m). The presence of sinter deposits and the deeper extension of the fault to the west suggest that the geothermal system may be located to themore » west of the Campbell E-2 hole. The Grass Valley Formation and the Auld Lange Syne Group in general are fine-grained argillaceous and slaty rocks these rocks have a very low intergranular permeability and may not be competent enough to maintan a significant fracture permeability necessary for a geothermal reservoir rock.« less

The quadripole mapping method is a surface based direct current exploration technique to investigate the subsurface resistivity structure. Two orthogonal bipole sources are used. The electric field intensity and azimuth due to each bipole source is measured and by adding the two electric field vectors in various combinations, the apparent resistivity and conductance can be calculated as a function of the direction of the resultant electric field vector at each of the receiver stations. The result is a resistivity ellipse for which only three parameters are needed to define it. This technique was applied to several types of the theoreticalmore » models in order to understand and better interpret the field data. The quadripole mapping method was used in the vicinity of Hualapai Flat to study the subsurface geology and evaluate the geothermal prospect in Hualapai.« less