| Title | GOVERNMENT DRILLING PROGRAM FOR GEOTHERMAL EXPLORATION IN INDONESIA |
|---|---|
| Authors | D.N.I. Apriani, J.B. Randle, A. Paripurna |
| Year | 2018 |
| Conference | New Zealand Geothermal Workshop |
| Keywords | geothermal exploration, government drilling, deep slimhole drilling, financial risk, resource uncertainty |
| Abstract | Indonesia is the world’s second largest geothermal electricity producer with an installed production capacity of 1,925 MWe (May 2018). The Government of Indonesia aims to increase the production of geothermal energy to 7,200 MW by 2025, making Indonesia the largest geothermal energy producer in the world. Government can play an important role in accelerating the development of geothermal energy, especially in greenfield areas. Government involvement in the exploration phase is one of the key success factors in countries with high utilization in geothermal energy, such as New Zealand and Iceland, and in fact in most other countries with geothermal developments (with the notable exception of the USA). The exploration phase in a geothermal project remains the highest risk due to the uncertainty of the resource. Because of this high risk, many prospects in Indonesia remain undrilled by developers. In order to solve this issue, the Government of Indonesia in cooperation with The World Bank and the Government of New Zealand, has announced the Indonesia Geothermal Energy Upstream Development Program (GEUDP), in which the Government of Indonesia will undertake the exploration phase, including the drilling activities, before geothermal working areas are tendered to developers. The focus of this program is to develop geothermal prospects in the more remote areas with difficult terrain, and hence less commercially attractive, especially in Eastern Indonesia. To minimize the financial risk in the exploration phase, the use of the right technologies also plays an important part. Deep slimhole drilling is being encouraged for use in the Government program for geothermal exploration, due to the significantly lower capital cost of both the actual drilling and the infrastructure preparation. Deep slimholes also potentially have a major role in assisting early exploration of those geothermal prospects that are increasingly challenging because of ambiguous surface indications, remote locations, and difficult terrain. |