Newspaper Page Text
Energy report
Geothermal energy eyed for the future
By BILL CRIDER
Associated Press Writer
DELCAMBRE, La. (AP) -
\n old dead natural gas well,
eactivated for a great ex
ieriment, is gushing 5,000 bar
els a day of boiling hot salt
rater that fizzes like soda pop.
The fizz is natural gas, dis
olved by enormous pressure,
laturated into stratas of hot
rater trapped several miles un
lerground along the Louisiana
ind Texas coast in a geother
nal area.
There is an awful lot of gas
town there. The trick is to get it
>ut in any way which would
nake the effort worthwhile.
Optimists say if engineers can
ust figure out how to capture
hat fizz, the nation’s gas
hortage is over for another 50
r ears or more. Critics call the
ffort a waste of money.
“There are people who don’t
>elieve all this, it is pie in the
ky to them,” said 0. Carroll
larkalits, dean of the School of
B/t - dH
'
Sil' *L
\ 9
Summer story
Little Leann Kelly enjoys book at Flint River Regional Library as the summer
reading program there got under way.
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Engineering and Technology at
McNeese University in Lake
Charles, La., and director of
this budding research.
“But if the critics are right,
we have got to know it,” he
added. “And if we are right, we
need to know that, too.”
In any case, federal officials
could not resist the enormous
potential in the multimillion
dollar program now focused on
the old well out among the
mosquitoes of Tigre Lagoon.
A U.S. Geological Survey
study estimated that the geo
thermal hot salt water under
Texas and Louisiana contains
24,000 quads of methane gas
within drilling range. Some ex
perts say there is more than
that.
A “quad” is a unit of giant
measurement. It is one quad
rillion British Thermal Units —
btu. A btu is the amount of heat
it takes to raise the temperature
of a pound of 39-degree water
one degree Fahrenheit.
Roughly speaking, a quad is
equal to the btu’s in 170 million
barrels of oil or a trillion cubic
feet of natural gas.
So success would mean gas to
bum, gas for plastics, cleaner
skies, trillions of dollars in
profits, international political
impact.
Failure would mean the fed
eral Energy Development Ad
ministration — ERDA — will
write off a few million bucks in
tosses and try something else.
“At least we will know, one
way or another,” said John Sa
lisbury, Washington, chief of
research assessment of
ERDA’s geothermal energy
project.
The term “geothermal” is
applied to areas where millions
of years of pressure from the
earth’s crust has created heat.
In this instance, the area of
deep heat and great pressure is
precisely defined — and why
not? It is 200 miles wide and
stretches from New Orleans to
Brownsville, Tex. Drillers who
have put down 300,000 holes
along there since 1920 used to
blunder into it frequently.
Before instruments were per-
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fected for early detection, hit
ting the geothermal area unex
pectedly was disastrous. Sud
den entry into subterranean
areas of pressures of 11,000
pounds per square inch could
spit drill and casing up out of
the hole in a violent blowout.
“If you drilled into it unpre
pared — whoopee,” said Sa-
Page 9
Griffin Daily News Friday, June 17,1977
lisbury.
ERDA has data from thou
sands of oil and gas wells but
drillers dealt with the geopres
sure zone as little as possible —
limiting their effort to getting
on through it.
“The ingenuity of American
engineers will figure out away
to do it,” saidKarkalits.
