Progress report on the long-term flow testing of the HDR reservoir at Fenton Hill, New Mexico
Through mid-December 1992, long-term flow testing of the Phase I1 Hot Dry Rock (HDR) reservoir at Fenton Hill, NM has been conducted for an aggregate of 24 weeks at near-optimum aseismic injection conditions. This period of flow testing, which began on April 9, 1992, included several reservoir shut-ins due to equipment problems and an intervening lower-injection-rate Interim Flow Test lasting about 6 weeks. With the exceptions noted above, the majority of the flow testing for that period was conducted at an average injection rate of 7.2 l/s and at pressures up to 27.3 MPa. However, this high level of injection pressure has not produced any discernible reservoir microseismicity, indicating that we have been operating the reservoir at pressures below the threshold for fracture extension. The permeation loss from the boundaries of the reservoir at these elevated pressures has averaged about 0.7 l/s, a very low rate of water loss considering the very large volume of fractured rock (about 16x106 m³) comprising the pressure-stimulated reservoir region. Temperature logging across the 350-m production interval, centered at a depth of about 3500 m, indicates that there has been no measurable drop in the mixed-mean reservoir production temperature at the top of this interval since the time of our first temperature log in mid July. Most recently, we have conducted additional intermittent reservoir testing at higher levels of production backpressure during a period of reservoir pressure maintenance using a high-capacity rental triplex mud pump.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 888939
- Report Number(s):
- SGP-TR-145-30
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Proceedings, eighteenth workshop on geothermal reservoir engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, January 26-28, 1993
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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