Project: Geothermal Limitless Approach to Drilling Efficiencies
Initiative: Drilling Demonstrations Initiative
Project Lead: Oxy USA Inc. (formerly Occidental Petroleum Corporation)
Project Subs: Los Alamos National Laboratory and National Laboratory of the Rockies
Project Timeline: 10/1/2023 - 4/30/2026
The Office of Geothermal funded Oxy USA Inc.’s Geothermal Limitless Approach to Drilling Efficiencies (GLADE) project as part of the Drilling Demonstrations initiative, which aims to improve drilling rates by at least 25% to help reduce geothermal development costs. The project successfully drilled two boreholes reaching nearly four miles below the surface. The subsequent findings culminated in important drilling-focused results.
The GLADE project’s primary objective was to reduce total cycle time of drilling hard, hot, basement rock, from spud to total depth. To meet this goal, the team trialed a variety of advanced technologies and decision-making processes on twin geothermal wells in the Denver-Julesburg Basin, both from the same pad location and through the same lithology. This project offered an opportunity to drill thousands of feet of granitic basement rock while facilitating drilling speed comparisons and reliable evaluation of geothermal drilling equipment and practices.
Learn more about the Office of Geothermal’s drilling RD&D and work in enhanced geothermal systems and hydrothermal resources.
More About the Project:
- Design-Aware Prospecting for Scalable EGS (Conference Slides)
- Hydraulic Fractures Are Pressure Relief Valves (Conference Paper)
- Hydraulic Fractures Are Pressure Relief Valves (Conference Slides)
- Thermal and Well Flow Performance of Closed-Loop Geothermal in the Wattenberg Area (Conference Paper)
- Forecasting Subsurface Data Value for Greenfield Geothermal Development (Conference Slides)
- Prospecting for Unconventional Geothermal (Conference Slides)
- Greenfield Reservoir Engineering for the Wattenberg Field with Comparison of Advanced, Enhanced, and Caged Geothermal Systems (Conference Paper)