Geothermal Play-Based Exploration: Changing the Paradigm

Dear Colleagues,

The concept of play-based exploration was developed within the oil and gas industry, and today, it has reached almost mythical status. One of the reasons for its success is its simplicity, allowing geologists and leadership to make informed decisions surrounding geological risk, technological risk, project risk and planning related to their projects. The application of play-based approaches in the geothermal industry is almost absent, in comparison, despite the fact that the geothermal industry has been active for over 100 years.

In recent years, the geothermal industry has seen an expansion of concepts, and now, we frequently hear terms like conventional, hydrothermal, traditional, petrothermal, unconventional, blind geothermal, Superhot Rock (SHR) and Next Generation. In addition, terms such as Engineered or Enhanced Geothermal (EGS), Advanced Geothermal Systems (AGS), Closed-Loop Geothermal (CLG), Ground-Sourced Heat Pumps, (GSHP), Hybrid Geothermal Systems (HGS), Hot Dry Rock, (HDR), Deep Hot Dry Rock Geothermal (DHDRG) are also common. Geothermal systems may be considered as low, high, ultra, or superhot temperature or low, medium, high, or super-high enthalpy. Finally, when describing geothermal projects, many consider them in relation to their power plant, describing them as dry steam, triple flash, double flash, single flash, and binary cycle projects. The proliferation of names and acronyms is hugely misleading and confusing for a non-geothermal audience. Some terms are depth related, some inform us of the engineering approach used to extract the heat, and some refer to the thermal state or crustal condition. The oil and gas industry, in comparison, is not entrained by engineering concepts, rather the analysis is organised via a Linnean Hierarchy, for example, in oil and gas, we see exploration organized by basins, facies, plays, prospects, discoveries and fields. The application of an intuitive classification scheme is simply missing for geothermal systems, thus the characterization of risk variance is missing, and as such, it is not easy to make informed decisions on risk or to make statistical comparisons of projects likely to succeed or fail. This Special Issue is dedicated to changing the paradigm within the geothermal industry.  Research is sought to develop this topic from the regional level to the prospect and field development of a geothermal project, and by changing this paradigm, we will be able to harness what could be the greatest source of renewable energy.

Dr. Philip J. Ball
Guest Editor

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• geothermal energy
• play-based exploration
• risk analysis
• heat-in-place, portfolio management, yet-to-find