PGK monthly meeting

Our guest speaker will be Bastiaan Jaarsma (EBN) and he will give a talk about: “Dinantian carbonates study results from the UDG workprogram / SCAN Dinantian”.

Program:
17:00-18:00 hrs: Social hour
18:00-19:00 hrs: Lecture

Abstract:

To achieve the decrease in CO2 emissions defined in the Paris Agreement to mitigate climate change, the Dutch national energy supply needs to increase in level of sustainability. At this moment there are geothermal projects already in production that replace fossil fuel heating as a sustainable alternative. However, the application of geothermal energy in existing projects in the Netherlands is not sufficient for the provision of high-temperature heat for, as an example, the process industry where temperatures over 130°C are required. It is anticipated that Ultra Deep Geothermal (UDG) energy can potentially make a substantial contribution to the transition towards a sustainable heat supply. To reach these temperatures in the Netherlands, geothermal reservoirs at depths over 4 km are required. The Dutch subsurface at these depths has not been explored extensively until now and is therefore relatively unknown.

At the beginning of 2016, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate, EBN and TNO started a collaboration to explore the possibilities for the development of UDG in the Netherlands. Based on the (still limited) amount of subsurface data and knowledge of the Dutch subsurface at greater depths, the Lower Carboniferous Dinantian Carbonates play was identified as the most promising play in terms of matching heat demand while having repetitive potential to exploit for Ultra Deep Geothermal energy. The goal of this UDG program is to investigate its potential by identifying the best exploration pilot projects for heat production that could be developed.
The UDG program includes the Exploration Work Program comprising 12 multi-disciplinary studies aiming at mapping and charactering reservoir quality, estimating productivity and injectivity, increase the understanding of induced seismicity and identifying UDG drilling hazards. The first phase, which includes 12 multi-disciplinary subsurface studies, has almost finished and results are being published.

This presentation will explain the background and set-up of the UDG Program. Technical results and the implications for the feasibility of UDG will be presented using examples from interpretation of 2D / 3D seismic and gravity / aeromagnetic data, structural restoration, fracture characterization, petrophysical analysis, facies and diagenesis studies, temperature modeling and geothermal power estimations. New insights in induced seismicity in geothermal and the UDG drilling hazard register will be covered as well.