WorldWide Drilling Resource

It’s Getting Steamy Adapted from American Association of Petroleum Geologists Over the past few years, the oil and gas industry has expanded the type of energy resources developed. Companies have looked for dwindling reserves to maintain operations for greater amounts of energy production and have seen growth in gas shales, oil sand, oil shale, and tight gas sands. However, there is another hid- den resource within the depths along with oil and gas, geothermal energy, which is obtained by tapping underground reservoirs of heat within the earth. It produces almost zero emission and has a small impact on the environment. Whenever geothermal energy is mentioned, our minds may think about hot springs, or volcanos which is pretty natural considering their depth formation. Since heat is energy, the industry needs to realize it has left an available energy re- source in the ground which was considered a nuisance in the search for the hydrocar- bons, an energy resource that renews itself. The question still remains, could this energy be economic to develop? This energy has gained the attention of several companies which have begun harnessing it for electrical power generation. Ideas have also been brought to the forefront of generating electrical power from several water wells. Because of its high percent capacity factor, geothermal energy is once again poised for expansion worldwide. Due to its continuous supply, it is not vulnerable to the irregularity of oil and gas pricing. Geothermal energy has been classified as the original renewable energy resource. Generation of electricity from geothermal energy could provide a steady, dependable cash flow to support oil and gas com- panies. Only time will tell if geothermal energy production will reach its full poten- tial. The Direct Image ® Team at Geoprobe Systems ® announced the commercial release of the Optical Image Profiler (OIP) Logging Tool for capturing soil images using both visible and ultraviolet (UV) light sources. The OIP directs high-intensity UV light at the soil, which causes hydrocarbons in the soil to fluoresce. An image of the soil is captured by the camera and analyzed for fluorescence. Visible light images of the soil may also be ob- tained. The logs can then be used to create highly detailed conceptual site models. The OIP is also driveable using Geoprobe ® 54, 66, and 78 Series ma- chines. )+ ')+ $(!)+' -$)( % ( -$ % ( -$ )' 000 % ( -$ )' - +- 2).+ .,$( ,, 0$-# ).-# )+ 4, & $(" ' (.! -.+ + 1*)+- + +)/ ( ,- &$,# ,$( ,$( )/ ' + .+ *+) . - &$( 3 # '' +, $-, 3 &.,- + +$&& # '' +, $-, 3 / + .+ ( +$&&$(" ,2,- ', 3 $(" $-, ." + $-, 3 + 0 +) , +) , 3 '' + + %).- -)(", 3 ) % -))&, - 17 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® JULY 2016