Bill promotes geothermal development in oil fields

• Bill would establish national goal of 50,000 megawatts of geothermal power by 2015.
• Oil and gas leaseholders could co-produce geothermal energy without additional lease process
• Initiatives would encourage public and private development of geothermal heat pumps.

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester wants to encourage developers to use the hot water they bring up from the ground in the process of producing oil and gas to generate electricity and heat buildings.

The Montana Democrat on Tuesday introduced the Geothermal Energy Opportunity Act.

It would allow oil and gas developers on public land to co-produce geothermal energy without going through an additional competitive lease process, said Marnee Banks, a Tester spokeswoman.

In many cases, federal land under production for oil and gas also have a geothermal resources, she said.

Montana’s federal land contains some of the best renewable energy in the country, and the state should lead the nation in reducing carbon emissions, Tester said in a statement.

“Developing Montana’s geothermal resources will expand our energy portfolio and create good-paying jobs that can’t be outsourced,” Tester said.

Montana has more than 25,000 square miles of high-potential sites and areas, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Kathi Montgomery, a Montana Department of Environmental Quality energy program specialist, said hot water often comes out of the ground along with oil and gas. That water must be treated and re-injected into the ground. She was at an injection site once where the water was 180 degrees.

“That is hot enough to generate electricity,” she said.

The hot water from the oil and gas production could be separated and run through a turbine to generate electricity, she said. The electricity could be used to meet needs on site or sold, she said.

There is no geothermal generation in Montana this time, she said.

“It hasn’t met the cost effective test yet in Montana,” she said.

The state is a net exporter of electricity and other resources that are less expensive to develop are available, she noted.

She was not aware of Tester’s bill.

In 2013, Tester introduced a bill that would have given loans to developers that risk exploration of unproven areas of geothermal energy that also encouraged co-leasing of land with oil and geothermal services.

That bill is rolled into the new legislation, which also contains new provisions, Banks said. One change is that direct loans in the original bill have been replaced with a public-private cost sharing measure in which the Department of Energy would be given the authority to issue grants.

The amount of funding associated with the bill hasn’t been set and still must go through the appropriations process, Banks said. Tester is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Geothermal energy often rises naturally to the earth’s surface in the form of hot springs, geysers and volcanoes, according to the DEQ’s Geothermal Program.

Geothermal systems are located in areas where the Earth’s crust is relatively thin, where volcanic activity brings magma close to the surface and in tectonically active areas.

Most geothermal systems are formed above deep-fault or fracture zones that provide pathways for the groundwater to circulate up to the surface and to percolate back down again, according to the DEQ.

Montana has the potential to develop significant new sources of geothermal energy, according to the DEQ.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that more than 22,000 megawatts of electric power could be generated from known geothermal resources in the western United States.

Tester’s bill would establish a national goal of producing 50,000 megawatts of geothermal power by 2025.

The University of North Dakota is using a DOE grant to develop and test a geothermal generation unit in North Dakota across the border from Baker, Mont., Montgomery said.

Direct use of hot water is the most common application of geothermal energy, in which hot groundwater is simply piped in to heat buildings, floors, greenhouses, pools or preheat circuits.

Tester’s bill also would establish initiatives to promote the development of geothermal heat pumps so that state and local governments, public universities and non-governmental groups could directly use geothermal energy.

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Karl Puckett at 406-791-1471, 1-800-438-6600. Twitter: @GFTrib_KPuckett.